Alligator Bayou - Donna Jo Napoli [59]
We dodge in and out of the trees until we come out on a field. A shabby building sits in the middle.
“Hurry.”
Big fat drops are already falling. We run flat out for the building and duck inside the front door just as it starts to pour.
It takes a while for my eyes to adjust to the shadows. Patricia puts her package in a dark corner, then comes over to stand beside me. “Lucky us. We just made it.”
“Where are we?”
“This is an old cotton gin. That there …” She points. “That’s the old boiler. And that’s the gin stand.” She walks to the wall. “Follow me.” She climbs the wall holding on to nothing but those rough logs, all the way up to a loft. “Come on.”
It isn’t as hard as it looked. I’m up there with her quick. Straw pads the floor except for a spot in the middle that’s been swept. “Who comes here?”
“Men. They play craps. Coloreds ain’t allowed to gamble. But on Saturday night, people have to. Late tonight they be coming here, bet on that.”
“How do you know about all this?”
“Everybody know.”
The rain drums on the tin roof. I walk to the end of the loft and look out the open gable end. “It’s coming down hard.”
“Better for napping.” She lies on the straw. I stretch out near her. “You really going to school in September?” asks Patricia.
“Mmm-hmm,” I say, mimicking her. “You sure you’re not going back with me?”
“I’m sure.”
“Will you work for rich people in some big house?”
“Ain’t enough rich people to go around, Calogero.”
“So you’ll work the cotton fields?”
“You got to chop two hundred pounds by midafternoon, then carry it to the gin—the running gin, not this old place—to get them tenacious seeds removed.”
“Tenacious seeds?”
“That’s what my uncle call them. They stick.”
“I bet you’re strong enough to do all that,” I say.
“Thing is, you get old and tired overnight. And skinny. I like fat better. I’d rather shake than rattle, any day. I don’t know what I’ll do, but I’ll find work.”
The noise of the rain outside seals us in. I roll on my side and look at her. “What’s school like?”
“Beatings ain’t allowed. The last teacher, though, she smacked us with her ruler.”
“Did she get fired for it?”
“Ain’t nobody told on her. If you told, your folks would whip you for misbehaving in school—hurt you a lot worse than a smack from a ruler. But Miss Clarrie, she’ll give you a bawling out, oh, yes, but she ain’t never hit nobody.”
“What else?”
“Well, you’ll see. The most important thing, though, is love your teacher.”
“Love her? How come?”
“She good to us. And, ain’t nobody else love her. The white folk hate her for teaching us. And she ain’t allowed to live near the colored folk and…”
“Why can’t she live near you?”
“The law. Whites go one way—coloreds go another.”
Maybe that’s why we live outside town proper—maybe the Jim Crow laws don’t allow Sicilians to live anywhere inside town, not with the whites, not with the Negroes.
Patricia’s still talking. “And since our parents never get to know Miss Clarrie, they never get over being afeared of her. You know, feeling stupid around her.”
“Oh.” I sigh. Miss Clarrie’s got it worse than Sicilians; there’s only one of her. “She must be lonely.”
“So you got to love your teacher. Rest now, Calogero.” She closes her eyes.
I stare up at a spiderweb. Then I move a little closer to Patricia.
“Don’t go getting no ideas. Move away, Calogero. Now. Scat.”
One kiss. What would one kiss hurt? I close my eyes. And I’m inside that first kiss we had, out in the dark of night. The taste of her. I open my eyes. I can’t let myself think of the second kiss, behind the rose trellis, or I’ll never sleep.
Something’s moving down under this loft. Pad pad pad. My whole body clutches. A panther? I shimmy silently on my stomach to the edge and peek down. An animal walks up the wall. Rings on its tail. A raccoon.
“Hey,” I call. “Scat!”
That raccoon turns and runs headfirst down the wall and disappears. I never saw something that big run downwards headfirst before.
I’ll stand guard. Except I’ve got no weapon if something big comes.