The Convict and Other Stories

I watched him drive down the road in the dusty twilight, past the pond where under the surface the late sun was trapped in a red ball as motionless and dead as my heart.

But I should have had more faith in Uncle Sid. I should have known he was too angular to fit very long with a bunch like the Growers’ Association. The next Tuesday night, when I had gotten Juanita to come over for dinner, he came back from the meeting so mad that you could have lighted a kitchen match by touching it to his face.

“What happened?” I said.

“That little whipsnip of a preacher stood up in front of the meeting and said I was working a couple of Mexicans that was communists. And anybody that kept communists on his payroll after he knew about them might just stand some looking into himself. Then a couple other of them mealymouth sons of bitches turned around and looked at me and said maybe every grower ought to make out a list of who was working for him.”

“Mr. Willis likes to put a finger in your eye if he can.”

“Juanita, I got to hire on six more men next week. You ask your daddy to send me a half dozen of them union Mexicans or nigras or whatever they are. I don’t bargain on wages, I pay by the piece, but they’ll get more than they will from the likes of that preacher. Just make sure your daddy gets me six hard workers that ain’t welcomed nowhere.”

It was a strange collection that showed up at the house the next week: two old men, a boy, a one-armed man, a Negro, and Billy Haskel.

“When did you get in the union, Billy?” Uncle Sid said.

“I figured it wouldn’t do no harm. I ain’t worked nowhere since Mr. Willis run me off.”

“Is that you, José? I thought you were in the pen.”

“They let me out.”

“Well, all right, boys. You can pick up your baskets at the barn. Come back to the house at noon for your lunch.”

Uncle Sid watched them walk across the lot, his hat tilted sideways on his head.

“Damn, is that the bunch that’s got people spraying in their britches all over the county?” he said.

Two nights later it was hot and breathless, and dry lightning was flashing on the horizon. I kept waking up every hour, caught between bad dreams and the hot silence of the house. Toward morning I felt the heat begin to go out of the air, and as my eyes closed with real sleep, I saw the lightning patterns flicker on the wallpaper. Then something in my sleep told me that the color was wrong—the cobalt white had been replaced by red and yellow, and there was a smell of rubber burning.

I heard Uncle Sidney walk from his bedroom to the gun rack in the kitchen and then open the front screen door.

“What is it?” I said, pulling on my Levi’s.

“Look there. It was done by somebody with experience. They nailed strips of tires along the wood to give it extra heat.”

The cross was fifteen feet high and burning brightly from top to bottom. Strings of smoke rose from the crosspiece like dirty handkerchiefs, and in the distance I saw a flatbed truck roaring down the dirt road toward the blacktop.

Uncle Sid shaved, put on a fresh pair of overalls, and sat down at

the kitchen table with a coffee cup and notepad.

“What are you doing?” I said. Outside, the light had climbed into the sky, and I could hear a breeze rattle the windmill blades.

“Making out a list of genuine sons of bitches and possible sons of bitches. While I’m doing this, Satch, see if Billy Haskel’s here yet, and you and him put that cross in the back of the pickup. It probably won’t fit, so get a boomer chain out of the barn.”

Billy and I loaded up the charred cross and propped the top end against the cab and stretched a chain across the shaft. I hooked on a boomer and locked it down tight.

“The sheriff ain’t going to be too happy when your uncle drops this smelly thing in his office,” Billy said.

Uncle Sidney walked out of the house with his notepad in his shirt pocket. He had on his new short-brim Stetson hat, a cigarette twisted in the side of his mouth. His knees rose against his stiff overalls.

“What are we doing?” I said.

“Cutting a notch in their butts. You boys hop in.”

We drove out to Mr. Willis’s farm and saw him in the field not far from the road. He tried to ignore us at first by looking in the other direction, but Uncle Sidney began blowing on the horn until every picker in the rows had stopped and was staring past Mr. Willis at us. His face was tight when he walked over to us.

“Somebody left this in my front yard last night and I want it to get back to the right place,” Uncle Sidney said. “You reckon I ought to leave it here?”