Devil on My Heels Read online

I’m trying to decide whether to invite Chase in for some iced tea or something when he says, “Gotta go. I’m meeting some friends over at Whelan’s.” Whelan’s Drive-In is the local after-school hangout. Chase reaches across me and opens the door. Suddenly I get this crazy notion in my head. I want to grab his hand before he lets go of the door handle. Instead I stumble out of the car, mumbling, “Thanks for the ride.” But I don’t think he hears me with the radio blasting as he peels down our dirt road.

  3

  I toss my books on the front-porch rocker and head around back. Our dirt driveway continues on behind our house and leads to the groves.

  I’m trying my best not to think about wanting to reach for Chase’s hand and his being in such an all-fired hurry to drop me off and leave. A breeze rustles the leaves of the orange trees. I push thoughts of Chase out of my head and let the scent of orange blossoms fill me up. It is Valencia season. Orange trees, thick with dark green leaves, glossy yellow-white blossoms, and clusters of oranges, surround me. That’s what I love best about Valencias—the trees have blossoms and fruit on them at the same time.

  Sometimes, when I stand still in this place, it’s as if I’m melting into the air. For the tiniest moment everything seems to be as it should. Not good or bad, ugly or beautiful. Just what it is. Nowhere else on earth do I get this feeling.

  The dirt is soft and sandy. It spills up over the sides of my loafers. If you aren’t careful you can sink right up to your shins. I take off one loafer at a time and shake it out. After that I keep to the tractor ruts where the dirt is packed down.

  I reach a crossroad and stand there for a few minutes, deciding which way to go. Up ahead Travis Waite is digging through one of the orange crates, probably checking to make sure nobody is cheating my dad by hiding bad fruit. The pickers are paid by the crate, so sometimes they hide spoiled fruit on the bottom. But not very often. Most of our pickers are honest, hardworking folks.

  With any luck at all, Travis will be too busy to notice me. He doesn’t like me talking to the pickers because it slows them down.

  Some of the younger kids come running up when they see me. Most of them are barefoot and not wearing much besides ratty old pants and dirty T-shirts.

  I know a couple of them by name: Teak and Jody and a few others. But there are also a lot of new faces. Three small boys, probably not older than six or seven, pass me, lugging a wooden ladder. It takes all of them and one older boy, who comes over to help, to lean it up against one of the orange trees.

  The ladders are twenty feet high, wide at the bottom and narrow at the top. They aren’t the easiest things to haul around. Once, a few years back, I tried to move one of those ladders just a few inches and it toppled over on me. It about cracked my skull open. I had a knot the size of a golf ball on my forehead for a week.

  Some of the kids skip backward a few feet ahead, keeping their eyes on me. I wonder how many of them, if any, went to school today. Education is a little spotty for most of the migrant kids. They sometimes help their folks with the picking instead of going to school. The more crates they fill, the more money their families make, which isn’t much. But my dad says at least they’re making an honest living and not looking for handouts.

  I look around, but I don’t see Gator. Old Eli is up ahead, though. Eli has been working in our groves since before I was born. He isn’t a seasonal worker like the others. He oversees the pruning and spraying, the weeding—all the things that have to be done to make sure you get a good crop. And when the oranges are ready, he sometimes helps with the picking. Eli is darn proud of being a fruit picker. He told me once how his family has never done stoop labor, which is picking row crops.

  Eli empties the oranges from his sack and heads back up the ladder to pick some more. The strap of the large canvas bag hangs over his shoulder and across his chest. The bag bumps against his hip as he climbs. His hands are as dark as chestnuts and as wrinkled and tough as walnut shells, but they’re fast. Fruit seems to fly off that tree. He goes right on tossing oranges into his sack while he nods my way.

  “Well, Miss Dove. Nice to see you out here.” He pinches the brim of his cap in greeting. “You ain’t been around much lately.”

  I shade my eyes and look up at him. “Not for a while,” I say.

  The pickers were at our groves late last fall when the other oranges were ready. Then they came back at the end of March when the Valencias needed picking. I haven’t been in the groves at all this season.

  Eli is watching me. His eyes have heavy, half-closed lids that make him look as if he’s weary to the bone. “Well, you a young lady now. Too old to be playing in the groves.”

  “He’s right, Miss Dove. You shouldn’t be out here by yourself.”

  I smell Travis Waite before I see his face. He comes up from behind and stands next to me, watching Eli. His jaw rolls in slow circles as he chews his wad of tobacco. What I smell, though, isn’t tobacco. It’s whiskey. That surprises me.

  This is a dry county. You have to go over the county line if you want anything stronger than beer. Travis Waite might raise hell on the weekends, hitting the beer joints with his buddies, tearing through the dirt roads in his pickup, shooting at any poor animal that moves, but in all the years he has worked for us, I’ve never known him to drink on the job. Or maybe I just never noticed.

  Travis stands there, rubbing his beard stubble with the back of his hand. Everybody in Benevolence knows Travis Waite is one of the best crew bosses around. My dad has been dealing with him for years. They went to school together. Even played on the football team together, along with Chase’s dad. But that doesn’t mean I have to like him. And to be honest, I don’t. Standing less than three feet from him has set my skin to crawling on more than one occasion.

  Eli nods at Travis as he backs down the ladder with his full canvas bag, rustling the glossy leaves on his way. He pulls the drawstring at the bottom and oranges tumble into the wooden bin. He looks over at us and smiles, showing off the dark gaps where some of his teeth used to be.

  Another picker is sitting down, leaning against one of the crates. He has his back to me, but I know right off it’s Gator. His threadbare dungarees have holes in both knees and his faded red T-shirt is still damp from the rain. I’m relieved to see him. Although I can’t for the life of me figure out how he got back here so fast.

  He’s sitting with his knees pulled up, sketching something on brown paper with a piece of charcoal. Delia saves paper sacks from the grocery store for Gator to draw on. She’s been doing this for as long as I can remember.

  I walk over to see what he’s drawing. It’s a picture of Eli up on his ladder. Gator’s captured something in Eli’s expression. Whatever it is, it makes me proud to know Eli.

  “Hey, Gator,” I say.

  He looks back over his shoulder and gives me a nod. Neither of us says anything about his being in the cemetery.

  Travis creeps up beside him. He nudges Gator’s hip with the toe of his boot. “This ain’t no art school.”

  “I’m taking a break.” Gator squints up at Eli, who is heading back up the ladder, and draws a few more lines.

  “You want to work on my crew, then you’d better get moving.”

  “I get paid for what I pick,” Gator says. “I can decide for myself how much money I want to make.” He glances up from his drawing. There is something disturbing about the look in his eyes when he stares at his crew boss.

  “Yeah? Well, it just so happens I also get paid for what you pick. And if somebody in my crew ain’t pulling his weight, then I’ll find somebody who will.” Travis sends a stream of tobacco juice Gator’s way, missing his bare feet by a hair. He points to the top of the tree next to Gator. “You got a bunch of shiners up there.” Shiners are oranges the pickers have missed. They stick out like bright lightbulbs.

  Gator jams the charcoal in his back pocket. He gets to his feet, slowly rolls up the brown paper, and tucks it in his other back pocket. He never once looks at Travis. Withou
t a word he walks over to one of the other trees, picks up his canvas sack where he left it, and climbs the ladder.

  The thing about Gator is that he has this kind of unhurried, prideful way of carrying himself, which bothers some folks, him being colored and all. But I’ve never minded. I guess people think he isn’t being respectful or something. Mostly I think it’s because he doesn’t even notice them.

  Travis grabs the shiner pole. My first thought is that he’s going to throttle Gator with it. But he just flicks off the few oranges left behind on the tree. They hit the ground with dull thuds.

  “You need a ride back to the house, Miss Dove?”

  I can’t figure why Travis Waite is so all-fired anxious to get me away from here. All I want to do is walk through the groves for a while. “No thanks,” I tell him.

  “Don’t mean no disrespect, Miss Dove, but I think it would be best if you got on home.” Travis is watching me; his dull squinty eyes put me in mind of dried peas. They lock onto mine. It’s as if he is willing me to understand something and save him the embarrassment of having to spell it all out for me, which I am not about to do.

  Travis lifts his ratty old baseball cap and scratches the top of his head. His dark hair is plastered to his scalp with oily sweat. “Your daddy won’t like you being out here alone, Miss Dove. Being out here by yourself . . . well, now . . . it’s asking for—”

  He stops and jerks his thumb toward the tree where Gator is picking Valencias. “I don’t want you putting yourself in any dangerous situations is all.”

  Danger? I’ve been playing in these groves most of my life. Suddenly Eli’s words about my being a young lady take on a whole new meaning. I don’t like what Travis is insinuating, that I’m not safe in my own groves anymore.

  It is almost five-thirty, but the sun is still bright. “I’m not finished taking my walk yet,” I tell Travis as I head on down the dirt road, going deeper into the groves.

  When I’m no longer in his line of vision, I slip behind a row of orange trees. I snap orange blossoms from a lower branch and tuck them behind my ear. I kick off my gritty loafers, unhook my stockings from my garter belt, and slip them off. The sand warms the soles of my feet and the spaces between my toes.

  If I were still a kid, I would rip off my narrow skirt with its tiny kick pleat the way I used to toss aside my overalls and polo shirt. I would take off running and leaping between the trees. Wild and free. If I were still a kid, I would do it in a heartbeat.

  4

  Delia throws sausage into the cast-iron skillet. Grease rains over the stove. She has on an old pair of painter’s coveralls, a T-shirt, and black high-top sneakers that make her look more like one of the pickers than our housekeeper. Actually, they’re her husband Gus’s coveralls. Ever since he got himself killed in a hit-and-run a few years back, Delia has taken to wearing his clothes.

  I asked her about that once. She said it wasn’t any of my business what she wore or why she wore it. End of conversation.

  Delia nods her good morning.

  Overhead the ceiling fan makes scraping sounds as it whirls. It’s not even ten o’clock and Delia already has three fans going in the kitchen. That’s how I always know, without bothering to turn on the radio, that we’re in for a scorcher.

  I slide into the chair across the table from my dad. He’s got his face in some dusty old account ledger. Bills are stacked beside his plate like piles of those skinny French pancakes. In between scribbling numbers into a column, he takes a bite of grits dripping with egg yolk. He chews. He studies an invoice. He writes in the ledger. He forks another mouthful of eggs and grits. He chews some more. My dad has been known to take up to two hours to eat breakfast. I know this from Delia. I’ve never actually stuck around long enough to find out if it’s true.

  “Morning, Dad,” I say.

  He looks up from the ledger and grins at me. He’s got dimples so deep you could lose the whole tip of your finger in them. “Mornin’, sugar.”

  This is about the extent of our conversation each morning. We usually don’t have much to say to each other.

  Dad stretches his arms out in front of him and cracks his knuckles a few times. His hands are wide, with long, bony fingers and knuckles the size of large marbles.

  Delia comes up behind me and scrapes sausage, bacon, and two eggs over easy onto my plate. I plunge my fork into my eggs just as somebody knocks at the back door. My dad doesn’t seem to notice. He’s too busy adding up figures.

  Delia swings open the screen door and Travis Waite steps into the kitchen. He takes off his sweat-stained cap and gives Dad and me a crooked smile, exposing brown tobacco-stained teeth. I stare down at my eggs. The runny yolk has started to congeal.

  Travis tells my dad he needs to see him outside.

  I keep my head down. I shove my food around the plate with my fork, putting everything in order. Sausage at eight o’clock. Bacon at twelve. Eggs at four. I reach for a hot biscuit, butter it, and watch the butter melt. It runs over the side and oozes into the palm of my hand. I lick it off.

  The screen door bangs once, then twice. When I look up, Delia and I are alone. We stare across the room at each other. We both know Travis wouldn’t interrupt my dad’s breakfast unless there was trouble.

  I slide my chair back. Before I’m even on my feet, Delia says, “You just keep that backside of yours right where it is.”

  “You want to know what’s going on as much as I do.”

  “Travis Waite didn’t come here asking to talk to you, did he?”

  “Something’s going on.”

  Delia pours the grease from the skillet into an empty coffee can. I watch her hands. The skillet is heavy, but the pan doesn’t even wobble as she chips away at the crusted bottom with the spatula. “If it’s something you need to know, your daddy’ll tell you.” She stabs the spatula in my direction. A few drops of grease splatter on the linoleum. “Your breakfast’s gettin’ cold.”

  Delia and I have been having these battles of wills since the day I learned my first word: beans. Delia leaned right into my face, lifted the green mush from the baby-food jar, and pointed to it. “They’re peas, baby girl. Not beans.”

  “Beans,” I said. “Beansbeansbeans.” I went right on saying that word until Delia held up a roll of adhesive tape and threatened to seal my mouth shut, temporarily putting an end to my defiance.

  My own recollection of this momentous event, which happened when I was barely a toddler, is nonexistent. My dad is the one who likes telling the story. He’s got a whole stock of stories about our wars—Delia’s and mine. But he’s never taken sides in them.

  Delia is eyeing me, trying to size up what my next move is going to be. I brush a few biscuit crumbs from my Bermuda shorts and pick up my fork. It’s not worth the effort, arguing over something I can wheedle out of my dad when he gets back.

  Only, he doesn’t come back.

  I go upstairs to read my latest issue of Seventeen. When I come back down an hour later, Delia is dumping the food from my dad’s plate into the trash.

  I’ve got an appointment to get my hair cut at noon. Then I’m supposed to meet my friend Rayanne Beecham at the movie theater. My dad hasn’t given me my allowance yet. And it is a two-mile walk to town. I have been hoping he will give me a ride. It’s not like I can’t walk that distance. I do it all the time. But it is already eighty-five degrees outside and the air is so humid it makes my lungs feel spongy.

  I run back upstairs and check my wallet. Three dollars. My haircut is going to cost a dollar fifty, plus the tip. The matinee costs fifty cents. I do the math in my head. If I don’t get popcorn, I can stop by Whelan’s Drive-In after the movie for a Coke and maybe a hot dog or hamburger. My only problem at the moment is finding a ride. I decide I’ve still got time.

  I file my nails and try out my new nail polish. The exact same shade of shell-pink pearl that the model on the cover of Seventeen is wearing.

  When it’s almost noon, I stand at the top of the st
airs and listen. Silence. “Dad?” I shout. “You down there?” Nothing. “Delia?” Delia doesn’t answer either.

  I have no idea where she’s got to. But if I don’t get moving, I’ll miss my hair appointment. There is nothing left to do but grab my purse and start walking.

  By the time I get to Luellen’s beauty shop I am twenty minutes late and feeling like one big drop of water. My blouse sticks to my back and sweat dribbles down the sides of my face. My hair is a hopeless helmet of frizz.

  Luellen is snipping away at Erdine Tucker’s hair while Erdine sips an RC Cola. Erdine is a senior. She gives me a floppy wave when I come through the door.

  Luellen has a waiting area set up in one corner of her beauty shop. I take a seat and flip through HairDo magazine. That gets old real quick. You can spend just so long staring at photos of models who all look like they belong in a Breck shampoo ad.

  Some girl I’ve never seen before is busy sudsing up Marilee Redfern’s hair in the sink across the room. Mrs. Redfern is Judge Redfern’s wife and head of the school board.

  The girl has her own hair pulled back in a ponytail. She’s not much more than a little slip of a thing.

  The front of her uniform has large splotches of water on it. Luellen makes everybody who works for her wear uniforms—light blue with white Peter Pan collars and white aprons. They look like waitress uniforms.

  Luellen’s face is shiny with perspiration. Little strands of red-brown curls stick to her cheeks. She brushes them away with the back of her hand. “Phew, it’s hotter than a griddle in Hades out there today. You want another RC, Erdine, honey?”

  Erdine shakes her head. “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “How about you, Dove?” Luellen calls over to me.

  I shake my head. “No thanks. You sure could do with an air conditioner, Luellen,” I tell her. “Folks don’t want to spend money getting their hair done on a day like this. Their do’ll flop before they even make it through your front door.” I don’t bother to mention that my legs are stuck to the turquoise plastic seat cover.