“Gary, can you take me into town?”
“Shut up!”
Six pairs of astonished eyes looked up at him. He gazed around the circle of faces and hated their trusting, loving expressions. Who did they think he was, a saint?
He pushed them out of his path and, scattering chickens, ran across the yard to the barn. Inside, he found a dark corner where he dropped down into the hay and covered his head with his arms. Yearning and hate and love warred within him.
He yearned to get away from this place. He hated poverty, ugliness, dirt, and his lack of privacy. Yet he loved his family. In his recurring daydreams, he returned from college like a bountiful Santa Claus, handing out goodies to them. But the responsibility of making those dreams a reality was burdensome. Often, he considered simply disappearing.
He never would, of course. Not merely because his sense of responsibility was so deeply ingrained in him, but because of Jade. She made all the ugliness in his life bearable, because in her lay the promise that it wouldn’t always be so. She was the nucleus of all his hopes.
“God,” he groaned. How could he stand a life without her? Jade, he thought miserably, what happened to you, to us, to our shared future? They had planned to get their educations, then return to Palmetto and make the community more egalitarian. Now, it seemed, she had defected to the other side—to the Patchetts. How could she?
“Gary?”
His father entered through the wide barn door. Otis Parker wasn’t yet fifty but he looked at least a decade older. He was thin and wiry, a slight man with perpetually stooped shoulders. His overalls hung loosely on his bony frame. He found his son sitting in the shadowed corner on a mound of sour-smelling hay.
“Gary? The kids said you was acting mean.”
“Can’t I have one moment’s peace around here?”
“Something happen at school?”
“No! I’m just looking for some privacy.” Gary felt like lashing out at something, and his father was a convenient target. “For once, can’t you just leave me alone?” he shouted.
“All righty.” Otis turned to go. “Don’t forget to slop the hog.”
Gary surged to his feet, his hands balled into fists. “Listen, old man, I’ve slopped that fucking hog for the last time. I’m sick to death of slopping the hog. I’m sick of being surrounded by screaming kids that you didn’t have any better sense than to make. I’m sick of this place and the rotten stench of your failure. I’m sick of school and teachers and talk about scholarships when nobody really gives a shit about anything. Being the good boy sucks. It gets you nowhere. Nowhere.”
His rage and energy spent, Gary fell to his knees in the dirty straw and began to cry. Several minutes elapsed before he felt his father’s rough hand shaking his shoulder.
“Looks like you could use a swaller of this.”
Otis was holding out to him a Mason jar of clear liquid. Gary reached for it hesitantly, uncapped it, and sniffed. Then he took a sip. The moonshine seared all the way down to his stomach. Coughing and wheezing, he passed the jar back to Otis, who took a big draft.
“Don’t tell your mama ’bout this.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“Reckon it’s time you learned about Georgie. She’s a nigger lady what’s been making moonshine for years. She don’t charge too much. It’s all I can afford anyway. I keep it hid over yonder under that old saddle, if you ever need it when I ain’t around.” Otis carefully replaced the lid on the jar. “You got woman troubles?”
Gary shrugged noncommittally, though the reminder of Jade’s betrayal burned his gut more than the moonshine did.
“They’s ’bout the only thing in God’s creation that can drive a man to go crazy and talk wild the way you was a-talkin’.” Otis regarded him sternly. “I didn’t like what you had to say about your little brothers and sisters ’cause it don’t speak well of your mama.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”
“Yeah, you did. But I want you to
know that each one of our kids was conceived in love. We’re proud of every single one.” Otis’s eyes grew misty. “We’re ’specially proud of you. Can’t figure out for the life of me where you come from, bein’ so smart and all. I reckon you’re ashamed of us.”
“I’m not, Daddy.”
Sighing, Otis said, “I ain’t so dumb that I don’t know why you never bring friends out here to the place, Gary. It’s plain to see why. Listen, your mama and me, we don’t want you to get educated so you can take care of us and our other children. We want you to get away from here for only one reason—’cause you want to so bad. You don’t want to be a failure like me.
“All I’ve ever had to my name is this sorry piece of land, and it for damn sure ain’t much. I wasn’t even the one that acquired it, but my daddy. I’ve did the best I could to hold on to it.”
Gary almost strangled on the remorse he felt for saying what he had. Otis sensed his guilt and forgivingly patted his son’s knee, then used it as a prop when he stood up.