John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“I know what you thinkin, son, but nobody gone sneak out this camp in a turp barrel.”

“But they told me—”

“That nigger was in pieces ,” he say, quiet. “And even then it was a tight fit.”

Clarence climbs down, careful not to step on his chain, and moves his ladder around the tree. You got to leave some bark between the cat-face slashes or else the tree gone die on you, but you can fit three or four boxes on a pine this old, hacking higher on the trunk every year. And then one day there just no more point to it, too high to climb for too little gum and they cut it down to burn. Brumby one of the few old ones in camp aint been used up like that, look in their eyes and it’s nothin left. Hollow wood.

Clarence sets the ladder again and climbs halfway up and takes a look. They cut the low branches away, so you can see a fair piece. Reese is riding off toward the dippers on the whiteface pony. Reese would be easier to fool but Sunshine is short-legged and night-blind and won’t get you out of the county. Clarence is waiting for Musselwhite and his racer.

Musselwhite is the meanest and maybe the smartest of the shotguns, cut you with his eyes and take note of things, and is always bragging how much he won running his Lightning on Saturdays. Lightning is a sorrel quarterhorse and all Clarence need to know about that is it can cut fast through the trees and every time Musselwhite ride it past the boiler fires it shies and crow-hops.

“Getting hungry,” calls Wilbert from the next tree. Wilbert born hungry and stayed that way ever since, and how he keep so fat on turp-camp food is a wonder. Supper always the same paltry hoecakes and beans, one plate to a man, brought out by the ox team that come to get the morning dip. Another year in this camp, maybe I fit in that barrel, thinks Clarence.

“Be some hours yet,” he calls back.

“My stomach set to rumbling.”

“An I thought that was the Carolina Special , come to carry us away.”

Wilbert is just another thief, though he go in for housebreaking instead of livestock like Clarence. Caught wearin a ring he stole, tried it on his finger and couldn’t get it off.

“ You don’t steal nothin ,” Tillis used to say, “ less you already know where you gone sell it .” Tillis had three, four people worked at big stables, happy to buy whatever they led in as long as it wasn’t too local.

“I been thinkin bout peach pie,” says Wilbert.

“Aint none on that wagon.”

“Man needs a dream.”

“Not me.”

“Yeah? You always sayin how you gone walk right out of here.”

“A dream means it aint true,” Clarence calls back, digging grooves into the tree. “And it won’t be walk in.”

Only a pair of men have tried to rabbit since Clarence come to the camp, Garvey James who was found after the count tied under the wagon that goes to Socastee every evening and Jimmy Lightfoot who got lost in the swamp till Musselwhite shoot him close with the shotgun and drag what’s left back in behind Lightning.

“Horse aint built to carry two,” he say when they were called out to take a look. “You boys remember that.”

The chipping ax is weighted in the handle and got a reach long enough to knock a man out of the saddle, if that’s what it come to.

Clarence’s hands are sticky on the rungs as he climbs down. The face below where he’s slashed is crusty white with dried gum and come winter them that’s left will scrape it down into boxes. Not him. There is needles and twigs and pieces of branch laying around everywhere and wire grass growing in patches wherever it can get hold between the trees. Once a month they spose to send a gang out to rake and do a underburn but it aint happen for a while.

“Musselwhite comin,” calls Wilbert from his ladder.

“Which way?”

“Virgin pines. Aint in no hurry.”

“Damn.”

If this is the day he got to be quick. Got to be bold . Clarence pulls his cap off and works the match out first, then the key. The key is not cast, but made from different pieces of metal hammered together.

“It work fine, you’ll see,” say Brumby. “You just be sure an throw it where God can’t find it when you done. They gone spect me anyhow, but no use handin em the evidence.”

“I could come by for you,” Clarence tell him then, and meant it, too. Old Brumby as near as he ever got to a father. “They won’t think about me headin back to the camp.”

Old Brumby shake his head. “Only way I leave this place is in that ,” he say, pointing at the coffin he already built, lid all polished and carved in flowers. Anybody else, unless your family claim you in three days, it’s just a trench out back of the tar pit. No box, no nothin. “What I done,” say Brumby, “this where I’m spose to die.”

Clarence sits so that Wilbert is out of sight on the far side of his tree and tries the key. They are big old Lilly irons, ankle-busters, and when the jaws spring open his heart take a jump. Anything you can think of out of metal, that Brumby can make it. Clarence throws the leg irons over his shoulder, grabs a short branch with some needles left on it and presses it up against the wet gum on the tree. He is careful with the match, holding the head close to his fingers and striking it on the heel of his shoe. Once, twice — the third time it takes fire. He puts it to the branch and then that down into the pile of twigs and scrape gum he has kicked together at the base of the pine, which catches right away. Wilbert leans his big head around the tree.

“What you doing down there?”

“What it look like I’m doing?”

“How you get them irons off you feet?”

Clarence hurries from tree to tree, lighting whatever looks like it will take, flames starting to lick up the faces, wire grass smoldering here and there.

“I dreamed em off,” he says. “You wait till you can’t see me no more, Wilbert, and then you call out to that peckerwood.”

He runs. Not so steady at first, legs free to stride for the first time in a year. Even got to sleep in the irons, quarters guard watching while you thread the long chain through, handing it from cot to cot till you all tucked in, just you and your crotch crickets and the twenty-nine other men hooked in your row. He runs a half-acre south and slides down into the old creek bottom and then cuts back toward the virgin pine, bending low, throwing the leg irons under some deadfall and carrying the chipping ax in his right hand. He waits then, squatting and smelling pinesmoke.

He doesn’t peek up till he hears Wilbert holler fire. Musselwhite is only just past him. The woods rider slows Lightning to a walk, stands in the stirrups and pulls his shotgun from the scabbard. The sorrel starts to snort and dance as it smells the smoke. Musselwhite gets off quick and ties the horse short to a pine, just like he spose to. Don’t worry bout any man with his ankles chained stealing a horse.

The shotgun walks toward the fire and Clarence counts trees. At twenty trees buckshot can still take you down, forty and you might only need to dig some out of your hide. Clarence waits thirty and then runs for Lightning.

The horse is all lathered and quivery, eyes rolling. He’s only rode a couple horses he stole and they don’t like it much, strange rider, dark outside. There’s no way he can hold this one by hand if he unties it first.

“We wants to get away from that fire, don’t we?” he croons to the stamping animal. “You an me both.”

It tenses but doesn’t buck when Clarence climbs on. The tether knot is pulled too tight to mess with, so he wraps the reins about one hand and chops with the ax—

They are free from the pine. There is no steering the horse at first, Lightning just bolting flat-eared and low away through the virgin trees, Clarence throwing the ax clear and holding tight, thinking how every time he cut a low branch down here he was saving his own life. Somehow the horse don’t kill them both running so fast, smashing into trees, and they are gone at least a mile before he hear Musselwhite whistle for Reese to come back and come loaded. Clarence pull back gentle on the reins, crooning more, and the horse eases into a canter. Run this pace all the way to the Waccamaw, then walk him north along it a piece before you let him drink. Dogs won’t catch them. There is still the river to cross, and himself hungry and in stripes and by noon the word be on the wire and some riders out. But he knows how to stay clear of the swamp and how to travel by the stars and it is still clear in the sky above the treetops, clear with a little bit of a breeze carrying the piney wood smell that they say is so good for your lungs. Clarence hears himself laughing.