The Convict and Other Stories

“Satch, what you done in last Saturday’s ball game ain’t worth piss on a rock.”

An hour later I was driving down the blacktop in the mauve-colored evening, my hair combed back wet, the smell of the fields blowing cool in my face. Rain clouds hung like bruised fruit on the horizon, and the crack of dying sun on the edge of the land sent long shafts of spinning light across the sky. The breeze bent the corn along the tops of the stalks, and jackrabbits sat in the short grass by the side of the road with their ears turned up in vees. Dead and salted crows had been nailed to the cedar fence posts to keep the live ones out of the field, and their feathers fluttered like a bad afterthought.

I didn’t understand the feeling I had, but it was like both fear and guilt and at the same time neither one. I had never thought of myself as being afraid of other people, but maybe that was because I had never been in a situation when I had had to be afraid. Now people whom I had never thought about came into my mind: boys at school who never called Mexicans anything but pepper-bellies; the café owner who would turn a Mexican around in the door before he could even reach the serving counter; the theater manager who was suddenly sold out of tickets when anyone with skin darker than a suntan came to his box office.

I saw her sitting in a swing on her front porch. She wore a white blouse with a round collar and a full flower-print skirt, and she had put a red hibiscus in her hair. She closed the truck door, and we banged over the ruts and drove out on the highway toward the root-beer stand.

“I talked with my father about Billy Haskel,” she said. “He’s an organizer for the pickers. He’s going to try to get him on in another field.”

“Your father’s in that?”

“Yes. Why?” She turned her head at me, and the wind blew her hair across her cheek.

“Nothing. I just heard some things the growers say about it.”

“What do they say?”

“I don’t know, they’re communists, stuff like that.”

“My father’s not a communist. None of them are.”

“I don’t care about that kind of stuff, Juanita.”

“Your uncle is a grower.”

“He’s nothing like Mr. Willis, or some of the others. He doesn’t hire wetbacks and he wouldn’t fire somebody for drinking in the field.”

Up ahead we saw the lights of the root-beer stand and the cars and pickups with metal trays on the windows parked in the gravel under the canvas awning.

“Are we going inside?” she said.

“I don’t care.”

“Let’s get it in the truck.”

“Sure, if you want to.”

“Hack, you don’t have to take me here. We can just go for a drive.”

“What’s the big deal about a root-beer stand? I should have asked you to the show, except they’re still playing Johnny Mack Brown.”

“You don’t have to prove something for me. I know you’re a good person.”

“Don’t talk like that. We’re just getting some root beer.”

But while we waited for the waitress to walk out to the pickup, my hands were damp on the steering wheel and I was conscious of the conversations and the glow of cigarettes in the cars around us. The waitress in red-and-white uniform set the tray on the window and looked at me for the order, then her eyes went past my face into Juanita’s.

“What, say it again,” she said.

“Two root beers. One root beer and then another one on the same tray,” I said.

The waitress went away and then looked back over her shoulder at us.

“Don’t be sarcastic with her,” Juanita said.

“I know that girl. She’s got tractor oil in her head.”

After the waitress brought our root beers, I picked up one of the heavy ice-filmed mugs and handed it to Juanita. When I reached back for mine, I saw a boy from my baseball team walking past the window toward the restroom.