Cruel Harvest (26 page)

Mrs. Willoughby did not say anything to me during the drive. We headed out of camp, but I was surprised when we pulled off the road far before the highway. She drove her big old truck down a dirt path toward the creek.

“Where we going?” I asked.

“Just making a stop first, that's all,” she said.

Mrs. Willoughby had a strangely determined look on her face. I sensed something was out of the ordinary, but I had no idea what. When we rounded a bend and I saw Bobby, her oldest son, standing in the clearing before us, I got a touch of fear in my stomach that I could not explain.

Mrs. Willoughby slowed the truck to a stop.

“Come on, Frances,” she said as she got out.

I followed her, and she led me right up to Bobby. His cheeks looked flushed, and he would not look at me. I couldn't understand his attitude.

Mrs. Willoughby put a hand on my back as if to guide me forward.

“Why don't you and Bobby take a walk down by the creek,” she said. “You can get better acquainted.”

I was totally clueless about what was meant to happen. Although part of me was so unsure, I trusted Mrs. Willoughby and liked Bobby as my friend and protector from his brother Dallas. The way he stared at the ground made it seem as if he knew exactly what his mother wanted. Mrs. Willoughby cleared her throat. As if that was a signal, Bobby reached out his hand. I took it and we started to walk down a narrow path leading to the creek.

“Hey, down there!”

The shout came from the road, up behind us. My blood froze. I knew the voice all too well. It was Daddy, and he sounded spitting mad.

Chapter 22
Bobby Willoughby

Daddy stormed into
the clearing like a raging bull. He reached out to grab Bobby just as Mrs. Willoughby stepped in between them. Daddy's eyes were bulging and his face was red.

“Get to the car before I kill you!” he ordered me. “How dare you try this stunt with my daughter!”

Mrs. Willoughby did not budge. She stood firm in front of my daddy as if she had no fear.

“Calm yourself, Broadus. Nothing's happened.”

“Nothings
gonna
happen, either. Do you know how old she is?”

Daddy's voice was louder and meaner than I'd ever heard it before in public. I climbed up the hill to the car, afraid to look back but having no idea why he was so angry. When Daddy was upset, I knew enough not to ask questions. I was worried for Bobby and Mrs. Willoughby, but I was also relieved that his fury wasn't directed at me for the time being.

Millie and Mary Anne were waiting in the car. I could see fear in their eyes. I still didn't know what I had done to make him so angry. I climbed into the backseat of the car and closed the door.

“Why is he so mad?” I whispered to Millie.

“Just be quiet,” she said, shaking her head.

Daddy's angry curses and threats floated up the hill and into the car. He was consumed with rage over something, but I hadn't figured it out yet. Confused and afraid, I hoped Millie would explain, but she wasn't talking.

I heard Daddy shouting outside, but Mrs. Willoughby never raised her voice. I was worried for her. At the same time, she was a titan like Daddy, a force of nature that seemed unstoppable. Finally, he looked back toward the car. I heard his warning to Mrs. Willoughby as he pointed his finger in her face.

“You better keep this skunk and them other heathens away from my camp. If I see this skinny kid jackass near Frances, I'll tear him apart with my teeth.”

He cursed her once more and turned, storming up the hill toward the car.

“Jesus, help me,” I prayed.

Daddy opened the door and got inside. He turned toward the backseat, and little Mary Anne dove for the floor. He slapped me across the face with the back of his hand. I tasted blood in my mouth and felt it running from my nose. Still, I didn't speak. Hot tears spilled from my eyes.
Why!?
I screamed in silent anger.
What did I do?

We arrived back at the cabin, and Millie looked shaken. Mary Anne ran in ahead of us to hide in her favorite corner by the bed. Daddy didn't get out of the car right away. Millie and I hustled into the cabin as fast as we could. She paced around the shack, picking things up. I watched her for a moment, my head tilted. It reminded me of something, but I was not sure what it was.

A few minutes later, Daddy charged through the door.

“You tramp,” he spat at me.

I was still confused. I had no idea what he was talking about, but it was not an uncommon thing for him to call me, so I thought little of it. Then he started to scream at Millie.

“She was going to prostitute her out to that son of hers. I might as well have taken money from the witch.”

Daddy went on and on. I started to understand there was more to that moment in the woods than I had thought. I was almost a teenager by then, but the motivations behind adult behavior still occasionally escaped me. It became clear that something was meant to happen between me and Bobby, and that Mrs. Willoughby was the instigator behind all of it. Bobby was eighteen and I was not quite thirteen. The full impact of what Mrs. Willoughby had planned didn't sink in until I had some time to spend alone with Millie much later. She finally explained it to me. I later found out that Mrs. Willoughby assumed that if her son and I were together and I became pregnant, my dad would naturally want me to marry Bobby. She didn't know Daddy!

My head hurt as I tried to understand. Daddy knew what he had been doing to me for years. It made no sense that he would be so mad about the difference between my age and Bobby's. Why was he so mad about it?

The answer to that made me feel worse. As he ranted, I remembered that I was simply his property. He owned me, Nellie, and now Mary Anne. We were nothing more to him than a chair or a sack to hold cotton. Although Daddy's words sounded protective, I knew they had nothing to do with parental protection or love. Mrs. Willoughby had done something to defy him and tried to take what was his. That was why he was spitting mad.

“Pack up this trash,” he bellowed. He spun on me. “Did you ever touch that boy? Did you kiss him?”

“No, sir,” I pleaded. “Never. I'd never!”

“You
better never!”
He mocked me. “You won't ever get a chance to touch
any
boy! You're just like your mama! I ought to kill you!”

He slapped me across the face again, hard. My ears rang, and I felt dizzy as I stumbled back and slammed into the wall.

“Get your sister,” he growled at me.

I ran out the door, rushing to find Nellie. She was out front leaning on a tree trunk and reading a magazine. Nellie had a way of removing herself from the people around her. It wasn't that she didn't care. She just found a way to avoid getting attached or involved.

“Come on, Nellie. Daddy's on the warpath.”

“Now? Why?”

“Just come on, please.”

Movement caught the corner of my eye. It was Mrs. Willoughby's car returning to camp. I felt an almost undeniable tug to run to her, jump in the back of that truck, and escape. Daddy bellowed from inside. His face appeared in the doorway, the shadows adding a demonic cast to his angry expression.

Mrs. Willoughby's car rolled closer. I could not move. My mind wrapped around one thought:
Why did she take me into the woods?
If she wanted me to be with Bobby, there had to be a reason. I loved Mrs. Willoughby and wanted to talk to her badly.

“Get in this house, now!” Daddy screamed.

I moved, breaking the trance. I could just make out Mrs. Willoughby's face through the window. She appeared to be staring right at me. I ran into the house, Nellie right on my heels.

Daddy packed our belongings in the back of his car. We were leaving.

“Field is still full,” Nellie said. “We ain't never left a full field before. Not unless Daddy's been in trouble. Did he get in a fight again?”

I shrugged. I could not tell Nellie what I knew. We were leaving because of Bobby and Mrs. Willoughby. Daddy was going to get us away from that family. He would make sure we never saw them again. If Nellie found that out, I knew she'd blame me for it. So I stayed quiet and bit my lip, trying not to cry.

Daddy came back into the cabin. Sweat dripped from his brow, although it was cool outside.

“Get out to the car,” he ordered.

I grabbed Mary Anne from where she sat across the cabin, and along with Nellie made it out to the car. We climbed in without saying a word. We knew that anything could set Daddy off again. Even Mary Anne seemed to understand that.

He and Millie got in, then he started up the car.

“Tramp,” Daddy hissed. This time, he wasn't talking to me.

I looked up when he said that and saw Mrs. Willoughby standing off the road up ahead, her arms crossed over her small chest. Bobby was not with her. She seemed to stare right through Daddy, who revved the engine. The car lurched forward, pointed directly at her. She did not move. Only yards before hitting her, Daddy cursed and straightened it out. We rolled past where she stood.

In that instant, my eyes locked with Mrs. Willoughby's. There was sadness there, and something else. Failure, maybe. When I looked at the expression on Mrs. Willoughby's face, my mind cast a vision of Millie cleaning after I came back from the clearing. It struck me why her actions seemed so familiar. They reminded me of Mama when she was nervous about Daddy's anger. In a strange way, Mrs. Willoughby standing there did the same thing.

I waved to her, but she turned away as if hiding her face. Our car pulled out of camp, and that was the last time I ever saw her.

Chapter 23
Spiders

After leaving the
migrant camp in Arkansas, we took a departure from the series of jobs Daddy had lined up. He avoided any farms we had worked in the past. I believe he was avoiding any chance of running into the Willoughbys. Instead, we worked small jobs from one Southern town to the next, and we spent most of the spring and summer living in the car. Just when I thought things couldn't get much worse, Millie announced one day that she was pregnant.

While the baby in her belly grew, her personality seemed to shrink. Food became scarcer, but Daddy always seemed to find a way to get drunk. As the heat pressed on us like a smothering blanket, he lost his temper more and more often. I would try to leave the campsite early in the evening on the days he got really drunk, and I always found an opportunity to take Mary Anne with me. We would find a tree near where Daddy had parked the car and climb up to the highest branch we could manage. Perched comfortably in the branches, I would tell her fairy tales. Sometimes she made up stories of her own. She would add a funny twist to “Jack and the Beanstalk” or make Cinderella a teenage rock star. She had a good imagination, and I encouraged her to exercise it. Sometimes we stayed up there all night. I always hoped the car would be gone in the morning, but it never was. Daddy didn't ever remember us sneaking out. He never remembered anything when he sobered up.

As the baby's time neared, Daddy found work at a new cotton camp in the South. We moved into the usual small shack. One night, as soon as the sun went down, Daddy sent Nellie, Mary Anne, and me outside, telling us to stay near the cabin and not to come back until he called. Millie was screaming, and I assumed they were fighting. I tried to get Mary Anne as far away as possible. I didn't find out that Millie's baby had been born until we were ready for bed. Daddy delivered his son that night. They named him Broadus. Millie was back to work in the fields the following day, pulling a long cotton sack behind her with her infant son sleeping at the end with a diaper over him for shade. I don't remember Millie's son very well, but I do remember that saying his name troubled me because he was named after Daddy. Daddy did not allow Mary Anne to play with or hold him. Mostly I left him alone, and so did Mary Anne.

When the cotton had been picked, we moved again and again. November slipped into December, and the air took on a chill as we drove northwest. Daddy found some odd jobs, but they did not last long. Because the new baby was so tiny and vulnerable, the situation turned desperate quickly.

By late December we were all cold, hungry, and worn-out from traveling. It seemed as if we drove aimlessly. The heater in our old car barely worked, and the baby cried constantly. One evening at dusk, we were traveling down an icy road near Joplin, Missouri. Five months had passed since Millie's son was born.

“The gas is low,” Daddy grumbled from the front seat. “We got to find some place to get in for the night or freeze.”

I held on to Mary Anne. She was shaking from the cold and making soft moans. Nellie was on the other side. She stared out the window.

“The baby's cold,” Millie said.

“Shut up,” Daddy snapped.

I could hear the tension in his voice. We had been driving for two days, and he had no money for alcohol. He was on a dangerous edge, and I worried for Millie and her child, more because of Daddy than the cold.