James Hall - Miami Noir

“Look there,” he said.

The two strangers stood at the head of the log wagon path that led to the road to Perrine, eight miles to the east. The young girl, carrying a suitcase strapped up with a piece of baling twine, stood alongside a much older man with a canvas bag like a sailor’s duffel slung over his shoulder. Both were chalked with dust. The man was lean, sharp-boned, dark, and bristled with a growth of whiskers. The girl was rounder, but a bit frail too, her brown hair tied up under a man’s brimmed hat, in spite of which her nose and cheeks were red and freckled from the sun. She wore a shapeless dress that came down below her knees but clung to her body under her arms and along her chest where she was wet with sweat.

John Talley beat the sawdust from his bib overalls with a stained handkerchief, pointed to the tractor, and told his son, “Cut that off.” He wiped his hands, sizing up the two, and left a trail in the sawdust and wood scraps as he shuffled across the mill yard toward the strangers. His big voice echoed from the board sides of the two box-house shacks and the slash pine beyond them. He said, “If you folks’re lost, then you done a good job of it.”

Speck slid down from the tractor and moved over to the empty shack where there was a double-bitted ax resting against the wall. He reached into his pocket for a whetstone, spat on it, and began working the blade.

“Mr. Talley?” the man said. “My name’s Calvin Hallaway.” He untangled his hand from the girl’s and offered it to shake, but the sawyer turned his attention to the boy and the ax even while telling the stranger that, yes, John Talley was his

Calvin’s narrow, hooded eyes darted while he surveyed the contents of the yard: the two shacks, the portable mill, the tractor, the beat-up Ford truck. He took a long drag on the cigarette clinched in his tight lips and then pinched the butt and flicked it away.

“What brings you here?” the sawyer said.

“Well, sir, it’s a long story,” Calvin said. “We come from up around the lake. Been working our way south, you might say. We stayed a time in Miami, but that was a regular hellhole. I’m an out-of-doors man, sir, like yourself, I suspect.”

They had been on the road for weeks, Calvin said, riding when they could but mostly on foot. “It’s unusual to see a man and his daughter out on the road, I’ll grant you. But there’s nothing usual about these times. Them last few miles liked to done this little girl in,” he said. “I felt just terrible about it. Thought I’d have to carry her sometimes. But she made it. This here’s Marcy. Say hello, honey.”

The girl nodded.

“My daughter,” Calvin said.

They had heard in Perrine of the sawyer and his tractor-run sawmill from a man at the collection yard on the Florida East Coast Railroad.

“Fella there said you maybe need some help,” Calvin added. “I been logging and sawmilling all over, up in Georgia and Carolina, mostly, but up and down the coast in Florida too. All I know is timber. And Marcy can cook real good. She’d be a big help to your wife. We’re not looking for a handout. We want to work.”

“There’s no wife. Just me and him.” The sawyer pointed to his son. “We manage. This is Speck. He usually knows better than to gawk, but we don’t get many visitors. Come on over here, boy. These people are looking for work.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Speck said.

“Ain’t we mannerable,” Calvin said. He grinned like he’d heard a secret. “Pleased to acquaint you too, young chap.”

“I can’t give you an answer now,” the sawyer told the visitors. “But you can stay the night in the empty house here. It’s not much, but it’ll beat sleeping in the swamp. We’ll see if we can’t get you something to eat. I’ll let you know in the morning about staying on.”

“That’s much appreciated,” Calvin said. “They told us you was fair.”

Inside the helper’s shack, Marcy had pushed the suitcase under the bed, taken her shoes off, and was examining her blisters. Calvin was stripped down to his dingy undershorts and sprawled on the mattress.

Speck watched them through the window of the shack, then listened just outside the door.

“You think they’ll let us stay here for a while?” Marcy asked.

“Depends,” Calvin said, lying back with eyes closed and blowing cigarette smoke toward the roof slats. “You saw the way that boy looked at you. Wouldn’t hurt our chances if you was to show him some attention. Must be a lonely thing, strong young fella like that one, working out here on this ridge, nothing but gators and toads for company day after day.”

“What are you saying?”

“Nothing bad, baby girl. You’re a charmer. Just be nice to him. Maybe get him to put in a word with his sourpuss of an old man. We need some time here. Maybe after they get to know us better we might even be partners. Or something like that. They got a nice truck out there, did you notice that?”

Speck paused a moment at the open door to the hiredhand’s shack to make his presence known before he walked in. Calvin remained where he was on the bed. Marcy jumped up and hurried over to the door, and when she took the canned goods Speck had brought over she brushed her hand across his. She was a couple of inches shorter than the boy, and she looked up to speak.

“Thank you, Speck,” she said.

“You’re a regular little gentleman,” Calvin said, lifting up from the bed. “Your daddy must of raised you right. But you don’t favor him.” He turned to Marcy. “He must take after his mama. Maybe he’s his mama’s boy.”

“You should stop,” Marcy said.

“He knows I’m just fooling,” Calvin said. “You didn’t take offense, did you, son?”

In reply, Speck shook his head and walked quickly out the door. Marcy followed him.

“You shouldn’t let my daddy bother you,” she said. “He didn’t mean no harm. He was just saying how much he admires you and your father for working so hard up here all alone.”

They were standing in the middle of the clearing between the two shacks, near a rough-hewn table with stumps for chairs.

“Do you mind if we sit here awhile? My feet ache from walking.” The girl’s palms were rubbed raw from carrying the battered suitcase, and the broken-down brogans had rasped blisters on the heels of each foot.

She said they had walked all morning from Perrine before turning off onto the log road and heading up the ridge into the woods. Some cars passed. Two or three slowed before speeding on, and one pulled to the side of the road, but it too hastened away when the driver apparently got a closer look at the two.

“People just aren’t too trusting,” she said. “But just listen to me complain. It sure was nice of your daddy to let us stay.”

Speck spat in the dirt and sat. “What do you want?” he said.

“Just talk,” Marcy said. “How old are you? How long you been out here? How much longer you going to be working here?”

The boy said he was sixteen. He and his father had hauled the tractor mill up Cutler Ridge more than a year before and had been working this stand of scratch pine ever since. But no matter how hard they worked something was always breaking down, and then the sawyer would say it was God’s will. They were on a contract with the owner of the land, a farmer who himself barely scratched out enough of a living to make his mortgage payments to the land company. If they didn’t finish here in the next two weeks and move the mill they’d forfeit the contract, and the lumber already cut would go to the farmer.

“Where’s your mama?” Marcy asked.

“She died in a hurricane three years ago,” Speck said. “That’s why we came out here. My dad was a minister in Miami, but he said he was through with preaching. He was through with people, I guess. We come out here and went to work for ourselves.”