Cruel Harvest (20 page)

When Daddy returned to the car I woke up for a second. He turned to look at me over the back of his seat.

“They didn't want you in that home anymore. That old woman begged me to take you off her hands. You two can't do anything right, can you? They wanted to pay me to get you out of their hair. Your lying, no-good Mama didn't want you either. Looks like I'm all you got, so you better be real good or I may leave you in the woods.” I tried to push the terror I felt at his words out of my head, but I could not.

I managed to drift to sleep again, and my mind filled with images from Connie Maxwell and pictures of Mrs. McDonald's sweet, gentle face. I slept the entire trip. As long as I could sleep, I could dream about the life that had been torn from me. I never wanted to wake up again.

I was asleep
more often than I was awake during Daddy's flight from South Carolina. The farther we got, the more the shiny veneer he'd shown the adults at Connie Maxwell peeled away like the skin of a rotten onion. He had put on a good show, but it was all an illusion. Late one night, as I slept in the back, the car came to a stop. Nellie woke me up, and I looked out the window. I knew for sure that we had returned to my nightmare.

Outside sat a cabin. It was much like those we'd lived in before Daddy was arrested. This one, though, sat alone on a small rise with a patch of woods blocking it from its nearest neighbor. Inside, there was only one room. Cobwebs and dust covered the place, and without Mama there to do her cleaning, they would remain long after we moved in.

Daddy threw a quilt on the floor in the corner. He told us that was to be our bed, and then he walked out, leaving Nellie and me alone in the dark cabin. I could barely find the strength to walk over to the quilt. Once there, I collapsed again. I had no idea that I was suffering from a deep depression born of being ripped away from my one chance at a normal childhood. Nellie and I did not even say a word to each other that night. Instead, we slept.

The next morning our old life began again. Daddy woke us early. There was no breakfast. We did not have clean clothes or toothbrushes, and there were no electric lights to turn off when he led us outside.

“Get in the car. Both of you,” he ordered.

Daddy drove about a mile to a cotton field. When he parked, we got out of the car without saying a word and walked through a patch of scraggly pines. The trees parted, and a sprawling cotton field opened before us.

“Welcome to Texas,” Nellie whispered. That was the first hint I had of where he had taken us. Like zombies, we filed in and received our cotton sacks. Soon our bloody fingers were picking balls of white out of their sharp nests. It was as if everything in between this and the last cotton field we'd worked had been a dream.

The hours passed in a haze of backbreaking work and numbing silence. If I slowed my pace, Daddy needed only to give me a look to speed me up. There were other children there, but I spoke to no one. I just pulled cotton and stuffed it into my bag.

At the end of the first day, Daddy collected our pay and told us to get back in the car. Off we drove to the town's only food store, the general market down the road. Inside, Daddy pointed at a red-wrapped torpedo of bologna, and the man behind the counter sliced it for us. He also grabbed a loaf of bread from the rack.

As Daddy got ready to pay, the old man behind the counter looked me and Nellie over. Daddy started to get uneasy, especially when the man reached down behind the counter. He came up with a stack of magazines and comic books.

“Your girls like to read?” he asked.

Daddy nodded, looking none too friendly. The old man ignored him and stuck the stack of books out to us.

“Go on, take 'um. They're old, and I'm ready to toss 'um anyway.”

“Thanks, sir,” I muttered.

Although I did not show it, I knew this man had just handed us treasure. I hid my excitement because I was afraid that if Daddy knew how much the magazines and comic books meant to me, he'd snatch them away. So I stayed silent, acting as though they weren't worth anything.

After paying for our food, Daddy had plenty of money left. He shoved that into the pocket of his pants, and we walked outside.

When we arrived at the cabin, Daddy handed us the food but did not get out of the car. Instead, he rolled down the window of that old gray Studebaker.

“Make your dinner. And you better not leave the cabin,” he said.

He drove off, and we went inside. There was still an hour or so before sunset, so I made a sandwich and curled up under a window to read a comic book. Nellie did the same. As the shadows crept across the small cabin, she lit a kerosene lamp. We lay on our stomachs on the cold plank floor with the light between us. I read until I could not keep my eyes open any longer.

“I'm going to sleep,” I said.

“Me too.”

I walked over to the quilt Daddy had thrown on the floor. I had gotten accustomed to a bed and pillow, so it was hard to get comfortable. Nellie shuffled about beside me.

“You think they're looking for us?” I whispered.

Nellie did not say anything right away. I rolled over and could smell Daddy on the ragged quilt. I twisted onto my back, startled by a vivid flashback of a night long ago—me petting Brenda's hair as she sobbed herself to sleep. A chill ran up my spine as I stared into the shadows.

“They are
not
looking for us. They didn't want us any longer,” Nellie stated flatly.

“Why did they make him take us away?” I asked Nellie. “What did we do?”

“They didn't want us there no more,” she said. “That's what he told us. That's it.”

“Maybe they
are
looking for us,” I said. “I wonder if Mama knows we're gone.”

“Hush up and go to sleep,” Nellie grumbled. “I don't want to talk about it anymore.”

I hushed but did not fall asleep right away. I listened as her breathing evened out and was replaced by the sound of insects in the woods. A fox cried out in the distance, sounding like an injured child. I shivered again and thought about everything and everyone we'd left behind.

The crash of
the door hitting the wall woke me with a start. The moon was full, and by its light I could see the silhouette of a man I assumed was Daddy. A jug hung from one of his fingers as he staggered into the cabin. The stringent stench of pure alcohol burned the inside of my nose.

“I'll show that mongrel witch,” he grunted. “Left me in prison to rot.”

I knew from his words that somebody was going to get a beating. I tensed up and tried to stay silent. That didn't work. He stumbled over our legs and cursed like a madman. He started kicking my legs and back. I don't even think he knew what he was kicking. Nellie and I scrambled out of his way and prayed silent prayers that he would pass out. The past washed over me like a typhoon. I knew the nightmare was back, and we were right in the middle of it. Only this time, I was wide-awake. I did not want the pain. I was afraid of it. What I did not realize was that this night would be far worse than any pain he had inflicted on me before.

Before morning, I
awoke to Daddy sleeping between me and Nellie. When he stirred, his rough, dirty hand found my body. I lay next to him, unable to cry out for help and wishing I could die. I
wanted
to die. I wanted to forget forever the horrid quilt I was forced to lay on beside him, the abomination of a father violating innocent trust, the stench of mildew, whiskey, and my daddy that made me physically sick to my stomach. I was unable to stop him, and I felt like a trapped rabbit in a fox's den. I cried silent tears and stifled the noise by holding my hand tight over my mouth. And at the same time I knew if I made a sound, he would kill me.

I cried out in my mind,
Daddy don't!
My body felt dirty, and I was ashamed. I thought it was my fault, that I had done something to cause this abomination. For some unknown reason, he didn't consummate the sexual acts he forced on me and Nellie, not like he did Brenda, but the humiliation, disgust, and loathing was the same. He violated my body, soul, and mind and made me wish I could die and never be touched again.

I didn't understand how a father, even a bad father, could ruin his child's life. I still don't understand it. I said nothing to Nellie. She looked at me, and I guessed she knew. What she may also have known, which I did not that first morning, was that this was to be our lot. She must have known she was part of it now. We were alone together with him, without Brenda or Mama as a buffer. There were no limits to his repulsive acts, and nobody to stop him. We were his prisoners now, and we could never predict what his twisted mind might cause him to do. If we did not lay beside him on that filthy quilt, we would be beaten without mercy, and after the beating, the abuse would happen anyway. I suspected that he enjoyed our resistance so he would have an excuse to beat us.

Every night, I prayed. I asked for Daddy to not come back home. Often, he came back too drunk to touch us. One morning, he awoke and grumbled about how ungrateful we were and how no one else wanted us. Then he ushered us out to the fields as if nothing was amiss. When we got there, the foreman was late. Daddy stood a little removed from the other workers. One man came over and introduced himself. Daddy grunted a response, but the man did not get the hint.

“These your kids?” the man asked.

Daddy nodded.

“Their mother about?”

“She's dead,” Daddy said, a wicked smirk on his face.

“That's a darn shame.”

“What business is it of yours?” Daddy hissed.

The man shook his head and walked away. It was the last time that anyone there bothered to speak to us. Instead, we did our work and trudged back to the cabin. We went to the market and bought bologna and bread most days. Some nights Daddy sat on the one chair in our cabin and ate. All the while, he'd have a jar of white lightning or a quart of whiskey nearby. Once he started drinking, he just got meaner and meaner.

“That nurse in the infirmary was a pig,” he slurred. “Stupid cow. She bought everything I fed her. She's the one that helped me break out of the rat hole your Mama and sisters put me in!”

I tried to ignore his words. Instead, I cleaned the cabin top to bottom, watching him swig from the bottle and mutter incoherently. I suddenly understood why Mama cleaned all the time. I did it in the hopes that I could stay out of Daddy's way until he passed out.

Although Nellie and I never spoke about it, I knew he abused her as he did me. She endured the dirty quilt much as I did, in utter silence. I noticed, though, she tried to stay out of his way as well. As I swept away cobwebs, she read in the corner, eyeing Daddy just as warily as I did.

“Frances,” Daddy suddenly barked.

“Yes, sir,” I said, my eyes on the floor, my heart missing a beat.

“What are we picking again?”

I blinked, confused and panicked. I thought it was a trick question.

“Cotton, sir,” I said.

“That's right.”

Daddy took another swig and his head bobbed forward. I realized he was poisoning his brain, killing his brain cells with the moonshine he was drinking. All I cared about, though, was that he fell fast asleep where he sat, sparing me and Nellie for the evening.

Life stagnated for
a time. Both Nellie and I dreaded being the one that had to go to sleep beside Daddy on the quilt. Nellie, always the brasher of us two, would blurt out her hatred for him and didn't seem to notice if he heard or not. To silence her, fearing the wrath that would be lashed on her if he heard, I would take her place those nights. On other nights, I would pass my dinner to her, knowing what would befall her once the sun set.

One night, Nellie sat petting me. It was to be my turn to endure, and Daddy was in a fouler mood than normal.

“Where is this doctor?” he barked.

I knew what he meant. He had heard that Mama let a doctor and his family adopt my baby brother, Robbie. Daddy had made his intentions clear before we left South Carolina. He wanted his son back.

“I don't know, Daddy,” I whispered.

“You do, and I'll kill you for lying to me.”

I pleaded with him. “Mama never told us. One day we came home from school and he was just gone.”

He slapped me hard enough to knock me off my feet.

“Liar.”

“Mama was never honest with us,” Nellie blurted out.

It was not true, not really. I knew that Nellie was using another tactic, one I never learned. She was using Daddy's utter hatred for Mama to distract him.

“She was a lousy mother,” he spat.

I knew he had switched to talking about Mama, so I inched away, not making a sound. A splinter lodged into my bare foot as I shimmied across the floor.

“I don't want to hear that name again, understand. She is a lying, backstabbing Jezebel.”

Daddy went on like that for hours. The entire time I just wished and wished that he'd pass out. But that night it was not to be. When he ordered me to the quilt on the floor, I could barely breathe for the bile rising up in my throat. He took away everything, and reveled in the degradation. I knew in my soul how evil he really was. I suddenly understood how Brenda and Mama had been pushed so far as to consider murder.