Free The Five by Robert McCammon Page A

by a comment or a shrug.
    “We’d better go,” Ariel told him.
    “In a minute.” He was waiting for his jeans to dry out a little more, which wouldn’t take too much longer in this heavy heat.
    “Everybody okay?” Mike walked up on the other side of Nomad. “John, you past your fit?”
    “I’m past it.” His fit had been eclipsed by this scene of hardship. Nomad knew that things were rough, with his personal disappointments and the band breaking up and all, but at least he didn’t have to labor in a blackberry field and live in a shack. Maybe he was heading that way, but not yet. He glanced back and saw that George had stopped the Scumbucket and had come around to the passenger side. George was using a towel from somebody’s bag to mop up the seat. Terry had gotten out too and was walking toward Nomad, shaking his head and showing a wry grin.
    Someone came out of the field and crossed the road in front of Nomad. He felt himself being examined. When he returned the attention, he saw it was a slender young girl with long, glossy black hair. On her head was a raggedy old wide-brimmed straw hat. The small buds of her breasts were visible under the open workshirt and sweat-wet gray tee beneath that, and she wore sun-bleached khakis with patched-up knees. On her feet were dusty sandals. Before he could catch her face, she had looked away; all he was left with was an impression of penetrating eyes in a pool of shadow.
    He watched her take her basket of blackberries to one of the pickup trucks and give it to a man who dumped its contents into one of several smaller flat plastic containers. She said something to the man, who smiled and showed a silver glint of teeth. Then she removed her stained leather gloves and shrugged off her workshirt and put them on the ground, and she passed by the table that held the platters of food and also a supply of paper cups that one of the other women had brought. She went to the well, where she cranked the handle that pulled up the pail. She took a ladle from a hook and dipped it full. Instead of drinking it, as Nomad had thought she would, she turned around and filled the offered paper cup of an older, sweat-drenched woman who had followed her out of the brambles and had likewise given her blackberries to the man at the pickup truck. The girl spoke and touched the woman’s arm. The woman’s heavily-lined face smiled, and she nodded at the comment and went to get her food.
    Then the next person, a white-haired older man who displayed thick, tattooed forearms after he’d removed his own workshirt, came forward with his offered cup. The girl filled it, and she leaned forward and said something and patted his shoulder, just a quick light touch, and when the man turned around to go get his lunch Nomad thought he could see a boy looking out from the wrinkled face.
    “We’re good to go!” George called, wringing the towel out on the ground. Two children about seven or eight years old were standing beside him, monitoring his progress. Their arms were crossed over their chests and their expressions as serious as any lord of the domain.
    But Nomad was watching the procession. Between thirty and forty people had come out of the field. They were all ages, from early teens to elderly. All of them were burned dark by the sun, and all of them walked with a weary step until they reached the girl at the well, whose smile and touch seemed to revive them in some way Nomad could not understand.
    Their day was most likely only half over. When their lunch was done, they would go back into the brambles. Maybe they kept at it until all the containers were full. Maybe they’d been at it since sunrise. Nomad figured the berries would be driven to a farmer’s market, or to a winery, or somewhere to be processed into jelly or jam. It was a hard day’s work, in anybody’s book. He thought, watching the girl and the people who filed past, that she was giving them more than just the water. A pat on the