Free Cy in Chains by David L. Dudley

boys’ most important rules: no snitching. If any boy
did
snitch, he would pay. And when you were chained to other boys a lot of the time, you couldn’t escape.
    â€œYou understand me?” Cain said.
    â€œYes, sir!” That would be the end of it. Cain was too lazy to do more.
    â€œLet ’em eat,” he told Stryker and Prescott. “But don’t let ’em dawdle. We got a lot of work today.”

Seven
    S TRYKER AND P RESCOTT FOLLOWED C AIN INTO the cookhouse. Then Jack and his boys went in. Today was Jess’s guys’ turn to go last, so they waited outside.
    Mouse was in an ugly mood.
    â€œWhat’s a matter?” Jess asked him.
    â€œNothin’.”
    â€œThat ain’t what yo’ face be tellin’ me.”
    â€œThat stupid beetle,” Cy suggested. “The one Prescott squashed, right?”
    â€œI gon’ kill that son’bitch one day,” Mouse muttered. “Just you wait. I gon’
kill
him!”
    â€œDon’t you talk that way,” Jess warned. “If Prescott ever find out, he kill you first.”
    â€œWhat I care? Dead be better’n this.”
    â€œIt was only a beetle,” Jess said. “You can find ’nother one.”
    â€œI don’t want no other!” Mouse snapped. “’Sides, anything I get, he kill.”
    â€œThen don’t get no more,” Cy said. “Leave things alone if you wants ’em to live.” He’d learned that the hard way, and paid for it every day.
    â€œShut up!”
    Cy pushed him. “
You
shut up. You spend half the day pokin’ ’round under logs and rocks ’stead o’ workin’. I’s sick of it.”
    â€œHe do good as he can,” Jess said. “You know that, Cy.”
    â€œNaw, I don’t. When he gonna start doin’ his share? He ain’t nothin’ but a baby.”
    â€œYou got that right,” Ring put in. He flicked Mouse on the ear.
    â€œQuit it!” Mouse cried. “I ain’t no baby!”
    â€œThen quit actin’ like one,” Cy told him. “Forget about yo’ damn lizards and frogs and do yo’ job.”
    â€œDon’t try an’ tell me what to do!”
    â€œSomebody got to,” Ring said.
    â€œY’all quit,” Jess warned. “You want ’em to hear you fussin’?”
    Inside, they picked up tin cups, plates, and spoons. Rosalee and her helper, Sudie, a slovenly black girl, served up grits, fatback, and pone. There was water to drink—that was all there ever was. At the end of the room, Cain and his men sat at their own table, enjoying fried eggs and potatoes, real bacon with meat on it, and biscuits with honey.
    To Cy, of all the thousand large and small punishments of this life, having to see and smell decent food he couldn’t have himself was one of the worst. The grits on his own plate were watery, the chunks of fatback flabby, half cooked. He’d eat everything, though. Dinner was a long ways off.
    Mouse wouldn’t touch his food, and neither would Billy. Mouse was too angry, and Billy couldn’t get anything down. He tried with the grits—gagged—and all he could do with the fatback was push it around with his spoon. West jumped on the cold grits before Davy could get at them, and Oscar wrestled the fatback from Darius. They’d learned you always ate anything you could get, no matter how nasty. Jess made Billy put his cornpone in his pocket, promising he’d be hungry later.
    When breakfast was over, the boys loaded the wagons. Stryker and Prescott chained them in two long lines, and the trek to the work site began. It was a long hike, and while the leg irons were mostly an annoyance to the bigger boys, they tormented the smaller ones like Darius and Mouse. Today, Billy was the one having a bad time. He was trying, but he tripped and went down more than once. That stopped the line and brought a round of cussing