James Hall - Miami Noir

“Looks like you could use some help.” She reached over and put her hand on the boy’s. But Speck stood up.

“We’re managing,” he said.

“I was just observing,” she said. “And I was thinking that if you did need a helping hand then maybe you’d put in a good word for us with your daddy.” She smiled sweetly. “I sure could use some rest.”

The boy backed away a few steps and then turned toward the main shack. “We’ll see,” he muttered.

Back inside the main shack, he watched the girl rubbing her feet in the middle of the clearing. He knew his father would let her and Calvin stay on. The sawyer wouldn’t ask where they’d been, what they were running from. He’d never bothered to ask any of the hired hands. All that mattered was the work. In their time on the ridge a half dozen men had come and gone. Black, white, young, old, every one had something or someone trailing them, pushing them south and then, when there was almost no farther south to go, west toward the swamps. This ridge was the edge of the solid world, and no one who thought he had any other choice would put up with the heat and bugs and toil for more than a few days. The sawyer would let the strangers stay for as long as they were help. He would overlook their trouble because he had no choice. He’d make use of them, the same way he’d made do with the cranky tractor and balky sawmill. The boy would put aside his suspicions too, because the girl would be close for a while. But it wouldn’t be for long. This was not a place where strangers took comfort or refuge.

Speck was up early the next morning, and as he stood at the edge of the woods, he watched Marcy shuffle out of the helper’s shack and make her way to a little creek just beyond the clearing. She was carrying clean clothes, which she hung on a branch, and then leaned from the waist to pull off the dingy dress she was wearing when she arrived. The boy saw the gray hem rise like a curtain revealing pale shins and thighs, the dark triangle between her legs, the slight swell of her belly, and the circles of her breasts. She waded into the green water up to her waist and bathed, and as she climbed back onto the bank she turned and looked up into the woods where Speck stood still, trying to make himself invisible. If she saw him, she pretended not to notice. She pulled on the clean dress quickly, washed her dirty clothes, and hung them on tree branches to dry. Then she slowly made her way back up toward the mill yard. The boy moved over to the sawmill and pretended to study the machinery.

Calvin appeared in the doorway of the helper’s shack, barefoot and shirtless, and when he stretched his arms mightily high over his head, he revealed a red scar that curved along his pale flank. When the boy looked over, Calvin balled his hand into a fist and made a pumping motion toward his groin. The boy glared at the man.

John Talley came out of the main shack eating a biscuit. He walked on over to Calvin. “Well, sir, I guess we might see how it works out with the two of you here awhile,” the sawyer told Calvin. “I don’t know you from Adam, and I don’t need to know. But the fact of the matter is, I have to get this lumber cut and delivered to the collection yard. Truth is, it’s hard, hot work, and I’ve had men come and go that wasn’t up to it. But you’re saying you can, so I am offering you a chance.” Together, they worked out the wages. They agreed Calvin would be paid after the sawyer delivered the last load of lumber to the collection yard.

“I’d like to get to work,” the sawyer said. “So soon as you’re ready, come on out to the mill. I’ll have Speck show your girl to the supplies so she can get started on dinner. You be quick about it,” he then told Speck. “We got work to do.”

For a week, Calvin worked shoulder to shoulder with the sawyer and the boy, cutting the pine, dragging it back to the clearing, and bucking the timber at the tractor mill. And then one morning when Calvin didn’t show up for breakfast, the girl said that he had left the night before to take care of some business.

He still hadn’t returned the next day, and that night there was light in the window of the helper’s shack, and the girl was moving about inside alone. Speck stole closer in the darkness to the window.

Marcy wore a clean white dress, and arranged around her on the bed were women’s things, brushes and tins and powder. She sat with her back to the window and picked up the brush and began to stroke her brown hair. But then she heard the boy at the window and turned with a start. “You scared me,” she said.

Speck moved closer and looked around inside.

“It’s all right,” Marcy said. “I’m all alone.”

“I’m sorry,” Speck said.

“Sorry I’m alone, or sorry I caught you peeping in my window?”

“I saw the light and wanted to make sure everything was all right.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I just wanted... Sorry,” he said, and he turned to leave.

“Wait a minute,” Marcy said. “Go around by the door. I’ll be out.”

When she met him at the door, the boy reached to touch her cheek. He wanted to do something, to kiss her, maybe, but he didn’t know where to start.

Marcy reached up and took his hand before he touched her face. “Be careful,” she said.

“I was just—”

“You was just maybe figuring we’re alone out here and you’d take advantage of the situation. If my daddy knew, he’d—”

“I’m sorry.” The boy turned his head to check the edges of the clearing. “Where is he?”

“He went looking for something to drink,” Marcy said.

“He won’t find much around here.”

“He’s got his ways. He says he’s got a sixth sense.”

“A what?”

“Sometimes he sees things before they happen. Not always, and not that he can control it, but I seen it work. Like coming here.”

“Visions, like?”

“I don’t pretend to understand it.” The girl’s face darkened for a second and she shivered. “I shouldn’t be talking to you. If he knew I was alone with you...”

“He won’t know if you don’t tell him. We’re just talking. So why are the two of you out on the road?”

“There was trouble.”

“With your mama?”

She looked up at the boy. “My mama’s dead. This trouble was with the law up in Duval County. They said Cal, my daddy, they said he stole. Said I was in on it. It was a lie, but we had to go anyway. I didn’t have no one else, so I went with him. I didn’t have a choice.”

“You could leave him.”

“He needs me, and I need him. You understand that, don’t you? Ain’t that why you’re out here in nowhere?”

“I could leave. I will someday.”

“But you haven’t yet.”

“It don’t seem right, though. You, a girl, out on the road.”

“Well, we’re not on the road now, are we? Come on inside. There’s something I want to show you.”

Marcy took Speck’s hand and led him inside over to the bed. She reached down and slid the battered suitcase from underneath. “This is my hope chest.” She untied the twine and lifted the lid. She took a carefully folded white cotton dress from the case and then a patchwork quilt, a pair of polished black leather shoes with hard buckles, something made of lace that she quickly hid beneath the quilt, the brush and mirror, and finally a photograph — Marcy when she was a fair-haired child wearing a long white dress — in a gold frame.

“This ain’t the hope chest itself, naturally. It’s what goes in one.” She arranged the few pieces on the bed. “These are my pretty things. I’d hate worse than anything to part with these.” She lifted from the suitcase a wad of newspaper and unwrapped a small glass globe.

“I thought it’d be broke,” she said. “It’s so delicate.”