Arly (16 page)

I couldn't speak. A “thank you” wouldn't even come out my mouth, the way it ought.

“You're leaving Jailtown, for good. Mrs. Newell's cousin and his wife once had a son. He'd be about your age, had he lived. So they want you for their own.”

It couldn't be true what Miss Hoe was saying. Nobody runs away. I kept remembering Mr. Clete Yurman and how he got dragged back to Shack Row, behind horses. And then working on half wages. But the face of Miss Binnie Hoe was looking at me straight, and I knowed she wouldn't make up a story. It sure weren't easy to believe they be people in the world like a teacher.

“I never knowed my ma,” I said. “But I hope when she was alive, that Mama be somebody like you.”

It was all I could say to Miss Hoe. Inside, I wanted to tell her that I needed a person to love, to hold close, somebody more than Addie Cooter or Essie, even closer than Brother Smith. Maybe, instead of a wife, I only wanted a mother.

“I have some sad news too,” Miss Hoe told me. “It seems like they caught Huff Cooter and brought him back.”

“I know. I took him food.”

Miss Hoe blink her eyes. “That was foolish. A very risky thing to do.” Then her face turn soft again. “Yet I'm glad you cared enough to be so brave. Now then, until nightfall, you're not to budge from this house. When the hour comes, I shall be leaving with you.”

“You're going to Moore Haven too?”

“No. Only you. But we mustn't risk our chances. Liddy Tant warned me about some of the cruel things that happen here after dark. Even to someone she once loved.”

Around noon, Miss Hoe somehow got Huff Cooter out of jail and returned to his mother.

Mrs. Newell fed me again. Twice. Once in the later morning and then again before sundown. We'd spent the afternoon fitting more clothes on me which Mrs. Verna Newell rolled up for me into a bundle. Inside, she and Miss Hoe tucked some brownie cookies, and something
else. It was a thing real special … Miss Hoe's book about that boy named Tom Sawyer, which she give me because I'd once give her a snake fang toothpick.

Miss Hoe also give me a clean white handkerchief so's I wouldn't no longer blow my nose on the ground.

Soon as it reach dark, I said good-bye to Mrs. Newell, thanking her again and again for all her doing.

“Bless you, Arly,” she said.

Miss Hoe sneak us both out the back door of Newell's Boarding House, and together we walk through the shadows toward Brother's boat dock. I took notice that my teacher took me clear across the other side of town and nowhere close to the Lucky Leg Social Palace.

I stopped.

“Miss Hoe, I gotta do something before I leave Jailtown. One more thing. Somebody I got to go visit.”

Miss Hoe looked alarmed. “Who?”

“He's at Shack Row. He's been there all his life, so I don't guess he'd be nowhere else.”

“Very well, but I don't like it. Let's hurry.”

Somewhere, off in the Florida night, a dog barked, and my body turned wet. Walking quietly through the stand of custard apple trees along the lake shore, we made it to Shack Row. I took Miss Hoe's hand so she wouldn't stumble in the shadows. Behind our shack, the only place I ever called home, the moonlight lit up a mound of fresh sand. Miss Hoe waited behind as I kneeled down.

“Papa,” I said, “maybe it ain't right, but I got to leave you.” I looked up, then down again at his grave. “There be trees above you, Papa, so you'll rest in shade.”

Stretching out a hand, I grabbed some of his grave dirt and poured it into my pocket. It was all I could take with me of Dan Poole.

“I'm ready,” I told Miss Hoe.

“And I'm glad you came to say farewell to your father.”

At the boat dock, Brother Smith was waiting for us, holding a Coleman lantern. When he spotted us hurrying his way, he smiled, and come to greet us. “Be best we take Arly by water,” he said to Miss Hoe, “on account Mr. Broda's gunners might lug him back, like they done to other runaway people.”

Reaching a hand inside his shirt, Brother fetched out his mother's Bible. Opening it gentle, he cracked it almost in half, like he didn't care which page lay open, then pointed to something with a big finger. The pages yellowed in the lantern light.

Miss Hoe squinted. “Isaiah,” she whispered.

Brother nodded. “Swords into plowshares. Arly, your fighting time be ended. Now comes the time of planting, to harvest.” He flashed a grin at our teacher. “That be all I remember Mama tell me. Once I fought. Now I harvest my fish.”

“Bless your heart, Brother Smith,” Miss Hoe said. “I'm glad you're reading your Bible now.”

Brother shook his gray head. “No, not hardly, as my sight is too olden. Be a shame to waste a Bible under closing eyes.” He handed his Bible to me. “Arly Poole, you keep it. Thataway, it'll git readed proper for years to come.”

“Thank you, Brother,” I said. “But I couldn't take it. That just wouldn't be right. You give me a lot already.”

Brother Smith pressed it close to my chest. “Take it along. It be all I got to give you. Don't got nothing else to match your worth.”

It weren't easy to thank Brother Smith for being
such a good brother to me. All I could do was look up at him. His grin telled me that he understood.

“A long time back,” Brother spoke in a low voice, “I hated all white folks with a hot fury, like they's be a fire inside my belly. Then I see a little white girl fixing to drown. For a breath, I figured I'd just allow her to sink under, for old Okeechobee to take her deep. But it weren't right. So I dived in to save her. Turned out, she be a Tant child. Captain Tant's only.” His hand rested light on my shoulder. “On that day, I rescue more'n Miss Liddy. I save my own soul.”

Right then, I knew what Brother Smith was telling me. To forgive.

“Here,” said Miss Hoe, stuffing a scrap of white paper in my pocket, “is the letter and the name of Verna's cousin, with the street where he lives in Moore Haven. His name is Alfred Bonner.”

I nodded. “Yes'm.”

“Boat's ready,” said Brother Smith. “Arly, say a proper good-bye to your teacher lady.”

How, I was wondering, would I be able to make words out of all the feeling inside me? Not even the gentleman who'd wrote the book about Tom Sawyer could do it decent enough. All I could do was hug her and hold her close to me, knowing that I'd always remember her goodness. Her little body was shaking, so I patted her shoulder, the same way you'd do for a baby.

“Arly,” I heared her whisper to my ear, “let me tell you again … you're my morning of life … that one wonder of a child that every teacher dreams of discovering. And there you were, ready to blossom in Shack Row. Now go forward, Arly Poole, and don't look back.”

I nodded silent.

It come to me what I could say, but I'd save it until the boat would be away from the dock. Only one word, but she'd be pleased that I could master it, and use it proper. It be a word to claim that I weren't no longer bitter about nothing or nobody. Only thankful.

Brother Smith loaded me and my clothes bundle into his little sculler boat, sat facing me, and start to work the oars. The bottom of the boat felt gritty and damp beneath my bare feet. Sitting on the stern seat, I twisted around so that I could wave to Miss Binnie Hoe. In the night, she stood on the dock, a small woman growing smaller with the first pull of the oars.

I waved. So did she.

Then I spoke the word I was saving to tell my famous lady because she would understand. A name to hold in her heart. Even if I couldn't no longer see her face, I knew my one good-bye word would make her smile all over.

“Genesis.”

THE END

Today, here in Florida, there are thousands upon thousands of little Arly Pooles.

Their names are Marita and Pasco. In many cases, this is the only name they know. They move as pickers do, from field to field, grove to grove, from one Shack Row to the next. They wear rags. Their little faces stare, without expression, from the cracked windows of old school buses, no longer yellow, that will never unload at a school.

These children are thin, and hungry.

And ours.

R. N. P.

There are several worthy organizations in Florida that deserve our salute, and our support:

Florida Association of Community Health Centers

Community Health of South Dade

East Pasco Health Center

Florida Community Health Centers

Florida Rural Health Services

Redlands Christian Migrant Association

Ruskin Migrant and Community Health Center

Southwest Florida Health Centers

West Orange Farm Workers Health Association

If we all help, we can make sure that children as well as vegetables are growing, and greening, in our Eden—Florida, our home.

Robert Newton Peck

The author dedicates this book to another Florida author, a writer of excellent novels such as
Angel City
and
Forever Island
. His name is Patrick Smith. Hi Iris.

I also dedicate this book to a teacher who earned thirteen dollars a week in a one-room, dirt road school. Her clothes were as shabby as ours. Yet her torch guided us from the darkness, and our respect for her forever endures.

And to President Calvin Coolidge.

Robert Newton Peck

A Day No Pigs Would Die

Path of Hunters

Millie's Boy

Soup

Fawn

Wild Cat

Soup and Me

Hamilton

Hang for Treason

Rabbits and Redcoats

King of Kazoo

Trig

Last Sunday

The King's Iron

Patooie

Soup for President

Eagle Fur

Trig Sees Red

Basket Case

Hub

Mr. Little

Clunie

Soup's Drum

Secrets of Successful Fiction

Trig Goes Ape

Soup on Wheels

Justice Lion

Kirk's Law

Trig or Treat

Banjo

Soup in the Saddle

Fiction is Folks

The Seminole Seed

Soup's Goat

Dukes

Spanish Hoof

Jo Silver

Soup on Ice

Soup on Fire

My Vermont

Hallapoosa

The Horse Hunters

Soup's Uncle

My Vermont II

Copyright © 2008 by Robert Newton Peck

All rights reserved.
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce, or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages

First published in the United States of America in 1991
by Walker Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc.
E-book edition published in March 2013
www.bloomsbury.com

All the characters portrayed in this story are fictitious.

Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Canada, Limited, Markham, Ontario.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from his book, write to
Permissions, Bloomsbury Children's Books, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Peck, Robert Newton.
Arly / by Robert Newton Peck, p. cm.
Summary: Although Arly Poole seems bound to follow in his father's footsteps as a field worker in Jailtown, Florida, where his family lives in 1927 in the shadow of a cruel boss, his world suddenly seems larger when a schoolteacher comes to town.
[I.Florida—Fiction. 2. Teachers—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.P339Ar 1989
[Fic]—dc 19 88-24339 CIP AC

ISBN: 978-0-8027-3555-3 (e-book)