The August sun baked the freshly tilled soil to brick-hard chunks, driving the fire ants far underground.
Josie squinted defiantly into the yellow glare, despite her mother's warnings that doing so would blind her. Lying on the tattered upholstery of her father's Ford truck, Josie had a perfect overhead view of the sun through the tinted strip high on the windshield.
After several unflinching minutes and watering eyes, Josie was satisfied the sun had surrendered its mysteries. It was red and surging, vibrating and alive. It reminded her of a dead cat she had seen on the side of the road, its belly full of maggots, inert but buzzing with activity within.
The interior of the truck was hot, even with both windows down, but it was shade, and the nearby house was a lot hotter.
As if to punctuate her thoughts, the screen door screeched open on protesting hinges, and her mother, Louise, came running down the wood steps. Hanging onto the hem of her dress was four-year-old Cal Jr. Leading the parade was her father, Cal Sr.
Josie figured her mother was on the losing end of their "discussion" because her daddy's jaw looked set and his eyes hard and her mama's voice rose and fell like the clucking of chickens in the hen yard.
"Calvin Coggins! It's not FAIR that we foot the WHOLE bill. Your sister in New Orleans AIN'T poor. She should PAY for part of the expense and your brother in Georgia, too."
Josie pictured her mother "pecking" at her daddy's heels and suppressed a giggle. "Bok, bok, bok, pa cok."
The procession passed before her narrowed gaze like geese in a gun sight. The man walked silently, briskly, his eyes focused ahead on nothing, everything. They were blue, troubled eyes, and for a moment they met Josie's eyes, picking her out like radar in her hiding place. She ducked lower, and he kept walking.
As the woman passed in front of the truck, Josie gripped the steering wheel and stomped the accelerator. If the engine had been running and the transmission in gear, she would have scored a direct hit. "Splat!" Unfortunately, her baby brother would have been killed, too. Collateral damage.
With one big shoe propped on the hub of the tractor wheel, Calvin pulled on his work gloves, then mounted gracefully to his seat and cranked the starter. It sputtered and wheezed, then coughed black smoke from the exhaust pipe.
He backed the tractor into position, grinding the gears, and aimed it expertly down the field of gray clods, leaving in its wake a smell of gasoline and neat, half-moon shaped rows.
"Damn you, Cal Coggins! We ain't through talking about this. You come back here right now." She shouted, trying to make herself heard above the roar of the tractor but only succeeded in turning red.
Josie knew the significance of that red face. High blood pressure. Doctor Allen had said it was over two hundred the last time her mother had one of her "spells." The girl wondered if this would be the day her mother had the promised stroke.
Cal Jr., a mass of ginger-red curls, swung from his mother's skirt in a wild maypole dance. When she stopped a moment and the boy could free a hand from its precarious hold, he alternated sucking his thumb, twisting his curls, howling in long, drawn-out cries and pointing in his father's direction.
"I wanna wide with da-hee!"
"I said no! Your daddy can't ride you on the tractor today. It's too hot and dusty. We're gonna go back in the house and have a cool drink, sugar."
Josie sniggered. Her mother always tried her "sweet" voice first with the child because he was now four years old, and when he had one of his tantrums, he was almost too big for her to handle. But it wasn't working this time. He threw himself down in the dirt and screamed and kicked.
"I wanna wide with da-hee on the twack-ter, tuh-day!"
Louise stomped her foot in frustration, stubbed her big toe and coughed as the hot wind shifted and blew a billowing cloud of dust into her face.
"Damn fool. We'd starve if it was up to him." Her voice trailed off as she squinted into the sun which was already making its journey down the afternoon sky.
She jerked the still screaming child by the back of his shirt and made a fast-paced retreat across the yard toward the house, paddling his behind with her free hand. "I'll give you something to cry about. Now, get in that house."
Josie, seeing her mother's approach, crouched low behind the steering wheel. Then, at just the right moment, she pounded the horn with both hands. Her mother jumped, sputtering a string of threats, her whole body in motion like hot grease popping in a frying pan.
The woman nearly jerked the screen door off its hinges, dropped the boy on the porch and went into the house.
Josie slid down from her high seat to the ground and slammed the truck door. A slow howl rose from the interior of the house, her mother's voice. The rest of the afternoon, she would lie on her bed and yell at Cal Jr. who probably needed his diaper changed. Her little brother, who Dr. Allen had diagnosed as "mongoloid," had not yet learned to stay out of their mother's way.
"Josie Coggins!" A large head of frizzled red hair stuck out of the bedroom window. "Get that lazy rump of yours into motion and come fix supper. I'm having a stroke. I just know it."
The girl smoothed her own frizzy hair with a spit-moistened finger down each side of the part. She sighed, grateful that it was the only likeness she bore to her mother.
Josie was a daddy's girl. She inherited her father's love of the farm: twenty-five acres, fifteen under cultivation and the rest pine forest, with a two-bedroom house, a barn for animals and a flow well that fed a small duck pond. They owned the farm, and at only twelve years old, Josie was taking over more and more of the chores every year.
But fifteen acres of crop to plant and harvest was a lot for a man and a girl alone, now that her grandpa was gone.
The major bone of contention between her parents was that the land itself was her mother's inheritance and in her name. The house they had built after they married, so it belonged to both of them. That was community property. Josie had learned that in civics class.
Josie knew the argument her parents were having that morning was not over. Josie prepared supper as quietly as she could, careful not to bang pots together and upset her mother, napping in the back room.
At precisely 6:30 pm, she saw her father through the window park the tractor in the barn. He stopped beside the back porch to brush the dust from his clothing and wash himself off with the garden hose. She set the dishes, knives and forks on the table and using oven mitts retrieved a skillet of pork chops from the stove, along with a pot of butter beans and rice, and a pan of biscuits. The smell of food woke her mother and brother who entered the kitchen.
Cal sat quietly at the head of the table, passing dishes, scraping and spooning food onto his plate and buttering his biscuit. He looked across the table at his wife. Her eyes met his as she prepared to take her first bite, the fork an inch from her mouth.
"What's wrong? Something wrong with the food?"
He looked down at his beans and rice and again at her.
"Salt and pepper? It's on the stove. Josie, get it for him. I'm still feeling a bit woozy."
Louise narrowed her eyes and stared accusingly at Josie who ladled the largest pork chop onto her dad's plate and then helped herself to the second largest, meeting her mother's gaze with mock innocence and a questioning shrug. The woman let the disruption pass. She wasn't out to get Josie that night.
"Cal, now you've got to admit that I'm right about your papa's funeral. We fed the old gentleman and boarded him here for five years. None of your relatives wanted him. It's only right now that they help pay these funeral bills."
"None of them ever bothered to come visit him either, even when he was so sick near the end. They didn't want to see him when he was alive, so they don't need to come around here now pretending that they gave a damn, curious about an inheritance. That was my papa. I don't want their money."
"But Cal, if he had a burial policy or if he had left us some money, I could see this as our responsibility, but he died without a nickel to his name. These bills add up to over nine hundred dollars. That's our whole berry crop."
"He had money, but you know his medical bills took it all."
"His drinking and gambling, if that's what you mean. He ran his old car off the road and ended up in the hospital because he was drunk."
"I already paid the bills. It's done, so let's not talk about it anymore."
"How? We don't have no nine hundred dollars."
"Bank loan. We'll be paying a little every month until the crop comes in."
"And what did you use for security? Not my land, I hope. I didn't sign any papers."
"No, woman. Nothing of yours." And that was it. Josie knew whatever her daddy had done, it had cost him, not her mama.
Cal Sr. sat quietly, slicing a large piece of salt pork in the beans into small pieces and mixing beans, rice and meat into a gooey paste. He ate slowly, chewing thoroughly, then swallowed.
Louise sat quietly. Too quietly, Josie thought. The remainder of the meal passed in silence.
When he was done, Cal rose and wordlessly went out onto the porch. A few moments later, Josie followed and found him there studying cloud formations in the western sky. She sidled close, taking his hand in hers.
"Think it's gonna rain tomorrow?"
"I hope so. It'll keep the dust down. Good dinner, Josie.
Josie breathed a sigh of relief. Sometimes, arguments between her parents became blowups, and her father, a man of few words, would escape into the night to drive around for hours. Josie's worst fear was that her father would one day become so angry that he would cut his losses and run. She always hoped that if the worst came about, that he would take her along. She had, after all, shown that she was a good worker, better than her mother. He wouldn't leave her behind.
She looked into his face. It was the first time that she had ever noticed her daddy was getting old. His face was wrinkled and his hair turning gray at the temples.
"Daddy? Are we in trouble?"
"No, baby. This is nothin' for you to worry about."
"If you put up the crop for collateral, you're taking a big risk," Louise nagged through the screen door. "Anything could happen. Hail, flood, drought. If the Florida market beats us, we won't make back our costs."
"It'll be a good crop. No reason to think different. Don't go borrowing trouble, woman. And I'll plant an extra crop this summer, cukes and pole beans."
"But what about that bank note? Are you making the payments?
"Don't you worry about nothin'," he said.
The back door slammed.
Josie thought her daddy seemed rather calm. If he was worried, he didn't show it. He put an arm around her and drew her close.
"Daddy. Have you ever thought about leaving us?"
He looked down at his daughter, his eyebrows raised.
"Do you think I would run out on you and little Cal or your mother? Is that what you worry about?"
"No, I guess not," she said. "But things around here get kinda bad sometimes, with mama's condition and all."
He cleared his throat, holding back a chuckle.
"You know, you're right. Things have been kinda tense, but that happens and then things tend to get better. You wanna know a secret not even your mama knows? We're gonna move."
"Where? When?"
The farmer pointed off down the road.
"I'm going to talk your mama into selling this place and buying a bigger place closer to town. More land, more crops. We'll be able to hire more labor. You won't have to work so hard. Things are gonna get better, Josie girl. You don't run out on me, now, and I promise you'll be glad you stayed. OK?"
The girl and her father sat in silence. Josie wondered about how her mama was going to feel about selling the farm and moving. She figured her mama's face would get really red and she'd yell really loud.
But, in the end, they would all move. Josie felt a kind of victory sharing such a big secret with her daddy. He had confided in her before he told her mama. For a moment she thought about her mother, probably asleep by now, and her little brother, asleep in his crib. They were the ones that needed taking care of, and the secret put her square on the side of the caretakers with her daddy.
She gave a little shiver, and her daddy stood up and offered his hand.
"Let's try not to wake the others."
Together, father and daughter entered the darkened, quiet house.
