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I said, “Yes sir.”

“What were you doin’ there?”

“I heard there was a fight, so I took off and watched it.” I wasn’t about to include Dewayne, at least not until I had to.

Stick dropped to one knee so that his chubby face was eye-level with mine. “Tell me what you saw,” he said. “And tell the truth.”

I glanced at my father, who was hovering over my shoulder. And I looked at Pappy, who, oddly, didn’t seem at all angry with me.

I sucked in air until my lungs were full, and I looked at Tally, who was watching me very closely. Then I looked at Stick’s flat nose and his black, puffy eyes, and I said, “Jerry Sisco was fightin’ some man from the hills. Then Billy Sisco jumped on him, too. They were beatin’ him up pretty bad when Mr. Hank stepped in to help the man from the hills.”

“Right then, was it two against one, or two against two?” Stick asked.

“Two against one.”

“What happened to the first hill boy?”

“I don’t know. He just left. I think he was hurt pretty bad.”

“All right. Keep goin’. And tell the truth.”

“He’s tellin’ the truth!” Pappy snarled.

“Go on.”

I glanced around again to make sure Tally was still watching. Not only was she studying me closely, but now she had a pleasant little smile. “Then, all of a sudden, Bobby Sisco charged from the crowd and attacked Mr. Hank. It was three against one, just like Mr. Hank said.” Hank’s face did not relax. If anything, he looked at me with even more viciousness. He was thinking ahead, and he wasn’t finished with me.

“I guess that settles it,” Pappy said. “I ain’t no lawyer, but I could sway ajury if it’s three against one.”

Stick ignored him and leaned even closer to me. “Who had the two-by-four?” he asked, his eyes narrowing as if this were the most important question of all.

Hank suddenly exploded. “Tell him the truth, boy!” he shouted. “One of them Siscos picked up that stick of wood, didn’t he?”

I could feel the stares of Gran and my mother behind me. And I knew Pappy wanted to reach over and shake me by the neck and somehow make the right words come out.

In front of me, not too far away, Tally was pleading with her eyes. Bo and Dale, and even Trot, were looking at me.

“Didn’t he, boy!” Hank barked again.

I met Stick’s gaze and began nodding, slowly at first, a timid little lie delivered without a word. And I kept nodding, and kept lying, and in doing so, did more to harvest our cotton than six months of good weather.

I was skirting around the edges of the fiery depths. Satan was waiting, and I could feel the heat. I’d run to the woods and pray for forgiveness as soon as I could. I’d ask God to go easy on me. He’d given us the cotton; it was up to us to protect it and gather the crops.

Stick slowly stood, but he kept staring at me, our eyes locked together, because both of us knew I was lying. Stick didn’t want to arrest Hank Spruill, not then anyway. First, he’d have to put the handcuffs on him, a task that could turn ugly. Second, he’d upset all the farmers.

My father grabbed me by the shoulder and shoved me back toward the women. “You’ve scared him to death, Stick,” he said with an awkward laugh, trying to break the tension and get me out of there before I said something wrong.

“Is he a good boy?” Stick asked.

“He tells the truth,” my father said.

“Of course he tells the truth,” Pappy said with a good dose of anger.

The truth had just been rewritten.

“I’m gonna keep askin’ around,” Stick said and began walking toward his car. “I might be back later.”

He slammed the door of his old patrol car and left our yard. We watched him drive away until he was out of sight.

Chapter 10

Since we didn’t work on Sunday, the house became smaller as my parents and grandparents busied themselves with the few light chores that were permitted. Naps were attempted, then abandoned because of the heat. Occasionally, when the moods were edgy, my parents tossed me in the back of the pickup, and we went for a long drive. There was nothing to see-all the land was flat and covered with cotton. The views were the same as those from our front porch. But it was important to get away.

Not long after Stick left, I was marched into the garden and ordered to haul food. A road trip was in the making. Two cardboard boxes were filled with vegetables. They were so heavy that my father had to place them in the back of the truck. As we drove off, the Spruills were scattered across the front yard in various stages of rest. I didn’t want to look at them.

I sat in the back between the boxes of vegetables and watched the dust boil from behind the truck, forming gray clouds that rose quickly and hung over the road in the heavy air before slowly dissipating from the lack of wind. The rain and the mud from the early morning were long forgotten. Everything was hot again: the wooden planks of the truck bed, its rusted and unpainted frame, even the corn and potatoes and tomatoes my mother had just washed. It snowed twice a year in our part of Arkansas, and I longed for a thick, cold blanket of white across our winter fields, cottonless and barren.

The dust finally stopped at the edge of the river, and we crept across the bridge. I stood to see the water below, the thick brown stream barely moving along the banks. There were two cane poles in the back of the truck, and my father had promised we’d fish for a while after the food was delivered.

The Latchers were sharecroppers who lived no more than a mile from our house, but they might as well have been in another county. Their run-down shack was in a bend of the river, with elms and willows touching the roof and cotton growing almost to the front porch. There was no grass around the house, just a ring of dirt where a horde of little Latchers played. I was secretly happy that they lived on the other side of the river. Otherwise, I might have been expected to play with them. They farmed thirty acres and split the crop with the owner of the land. Half of a little left nothing, and the Latchers were dirt-poor. They had no electricity, no car or truck. Occasionally, Mr. Latcher would walk to our house and ask Pappy for a ride on the next trip to Black Oak.

The trail to their house was barely wide enough for our truck, and when we rolled to a stop, the porch was already filled with dirty little faces. I had once counted seven Latcher kids, but an accurate total was impossible. It was hard to tell the boys from the girls; all had shaggy hair, narrow faces with the same pale blue eyes, and they all wore raggedy clothes.

Mrs. Latcher emerged from the decrepit porch, wiping her hands on her apron. She managed to smile at my mother. “Hello, Mrs. Chandler,” she said in a soft voice. She was barefoot, and her legs were as skinny as twigs.

“Nice to see you, Darla,” my mother said. My father busied himself at the back of the truck, fiddling with the boxes, killing time while the ladies handled the chitchat. We did not expect to see Mr. Latcher. Pride would prevent him from coming forward and accepting food. Let the women take care of it.

As they talked about the harvest and how hot it was, I moved away from the truck, under the watchful eyes of all those kids. I walked to the side of the house, where the tallest boy was loafing in the shade, trying to ignore us. His name was Percy, and he claimed to be twelve, though I had my doubts. He didn’t look big enough to be twelve, but since the Latchers didn’t go to school, it was impossible to lump him together with boys his own age. He was shirtless and barefoot, his skin a dark bronze from hours in the sun.

“Hi, Percy,” I said, but he did not respond. Sharecroppers were funny like that. Sometimes they would speak, other times they just gave you a blank look, as if they wanted you to leave them alone.

I studied their house, a square little box, and wondered once more how so many people could live in such a tiny place. Our tool shed was almost as large. The windows were open, and the torn remains of curtains hung still. There were no screens to keep the flies and mosquitoes out, and certainly no fans to push the air around.

I felt very sorry for them. Gran was fond of quoting the Scriptures: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” and “The poor will always be with you.” But it seemed cruel for anyone to live in such conditions. They had no shoes. Their clothes were so old and worn, they were embarrassed to go to town. And because they had no electricity, they couldn’t listen to the Cardinals.

Percy had never owned a ball or a glove or a bat, had never played catch with his dad, had never dreamed of beating the Yankees. In fact, he’d probably never dreamed of leaving the cotton patch. That thought was almost overwhelming.

My father produced the first box of vegetables while my mother called out its contents, and the Latcher kids moved onto the front steps, eagerly looking on but still keeping their distance. Percy didn’t move; he stared at something in the fields, something neither he nor I could see. There was a girl in the house. Her name was Libby, age fifteen, the oldest of the brood, and according to the latest rumors in Black Oak, she was pregnant. The father had yet to be named; in

fact, the gossip currently held that she was refusing to reveal to anyone, including her parents, the name of the boy who’d gotten her pregnant.

Such gossip was more than Black Oak could stand. War news, a fist-fight, a case of cancer, a car wreck, a new baby on the way from two people lawfully wed-all these events kept the talk flying. A death followed by a good funeral, and the town buzzed for days. An arrest of even the lowliest of citizens was an event to be dissected for weeks. But a fifteen-year-old girl, even a sharecropper’s daughter, having an illegitimate baby was something so extraordinary that the town was beside itself Problem was, the pregnancy had not been confirmed. Only rumored. Since the Latchers never left the farm, it was proving to be quite difficult to nail down the evidence. And since we lived closest to them, it had apparently fallen upon my mother to investigate.

She had enlisted me to help with the verifying. She’d shared some of the gossip with me, and because I’d been watching farm animals breed and reproduce all my life, I knew the basics. But I was still reluctant to get involved. Nor was I completely certain why we had to confirm the pregnancy. It had been talked about so much that the entire town already believed the poor girl was expecting. The big mystery was the identity of the father. “They ain’t gonna pin it on me,” I’d heard Pappy say at the Co-op, and all the old men roared with laughter.

“How’s the cotton?” I asked Percy. Just a couple of real farmers.

“Still out there,” he said, nodding at the fields, which began just a few feet away. I turned and stared at their cotton, which looked the same as ours. I was paid $1.60 for every hundred pounds I picked. Sharecropper children were paid nothing.

Then I looked at the house again, at the windows and the curtains and the sagging boards, and I stared into the backyard, where their wash hung on the clothesline. I studied the stretch of dirt that led past their outhouse to the river, and there was no sign of Libby Latcher. They probably had her locked in a room, with Mr. Latcher guarding the door with a shotgun. One day she’d have the baby, and no one would know it. Just another Latcher running around naked.

“My sister ain’t here,” he said, still lost in the distance. “That’s what you’re lookin’ for.” My mouth fell open, and my cheeks got very hot. All I could say was, “What?”

“She ain’t here. Now get back to your truck.”

My father hauled the rest of the food onto the porch, and I walked away from Percy. “Did you see her?” my mother whispered as we were leaving. I shook my head.

As we drove away, the Latchers were crawling over and around the two boxes as if they hadn’t eaten in a week.

We’d return in a few days with another load of produce in a second attempt to confirm the rumors. As long as they kept Libby hidden, the Latchers would be well fed.

The St. Francis River was fifty feet deep, according to my father, and around the bottom of the bridge pier there were channel catfish that weighed sixty pounds and ate everything that floated within reach. They were large, dirty fish-scavengers that moved only when food was nearby. Some lived for twenty years. According to family legend, Ricky caught one of the monsters when he was thirteen. It weighed forty-four pounds, and when he slit its belly with a cleaning knife, all sorts of debris spilled onto the tailgate of Pappy’s truck: a spark plug, a marble, lots of half-eaten minnows and small fish, two pennies, and some suspicious matter that was eventually determined to be human waste.

Gran never fried another catfish. Pappy gave up river food altogether.

With red worms as bait, I fished the shallow backwaters around a sandbar for bream and crappie, two small species that were plentiful and easy to catch. I waded barefoot through the warm, swirling waters and occasionally heard my mother yell, “That’s far enough, Luke!” The bank was lined with oaks and willows, and the sun was behind them. My parents sat in the shade, on one of the many quilts the ladies at the church made during the winter, and shared a cantaloupe from our garden.

They talked softly, almost in whispers, and I didn’t try to listen, because it was one of the few moments during the picking season when they could be alone. At night, after a day in the fields, sleep came fast and hard, and I rarely heard them talk in bed. They sometimes sat on the porch in the darkness, waiting for the heat to pass, but they weren’t really alone.

The river scared me enough to keep me safe. I had not yet learned to swim-I was waiting for Ricky to come home. He had promised to teach me the next summer, when I would be eight. I stayed close to the bank, where the water barely covered my feet.

Drownings were not uncommon, and all my life I’d heard colorful tales of grown men caught in shifting sandbanks and being swept away while entire families watched in honor. Calm waters could somehow turn violent, though I’d never witnessed this myself. The mother of all drownings supposedly took place in the St. Francis, though the exact location varied according to the narrator. A small child was sitting innocently on a sandbar when suddenly it shifted, and the child was surrounded by water and sinking fast. An older sibling saw it happen and dashed into the swirling waters, only to be met with a fierce cunent that carried him away, too. Next, an even older sibling heard the cries of the first two, and she charged into the river and was waist-deep before she remembered she couldn’t swim. Undaunted, she bravely thrashed onward, yelling at the younger two to hold steady, she’d get there somehow. But the sandbar collapsed entirely, sort of like an earthquake, and new cunents went in all directions.