Free Cy in Chains by David L. Dudley Page B

useful, it was West. Maybe getting things from Rosalee didn’t satisfy him. Maybe he
was
the thief who made things disappear. Cy thought about West having those three pounds of fatback all to himself and wondered if he had other goods he kept secret.
    Jess wrapped the rag around Cy’s hand and tied it. “Now, you be careful,” he told Billy. “See what happen when you don’t watch what you doin’?”
    â€œI
was
bein’ careful,” Cy said.
    â€œI see that.”
    Billy just stood there. He hadn’t even picked up his shovel.
    â€œI show you,” Jess said. “It ain’t hard. But we gotta get goin’ ’fore Prescott notice.” He grabbed the shovel and made Billy take it. “Come on, now.”
    â€œI don’t want to.”
    â€œNeither do any o’ the rest of us. But they ain’t no choice.”

Eight
    W ORK THAT MORNING WAS JUST LIKE ALWAYS: difficult, dirty, and dull. Occasional cussing meant the palmetto had bloodied another hand or foot. A cry of pain meant that Stryker or Prescott had decided someone wasn’t working hard enough and needed a taste of the whip.
    The trick was not to attract attention to yourself. If you did get cut, you tried not to shout “Son of a bitch!” or “Damn it all to hell!” If you were so beat you felt like dropping your shovel and falling to the ground, you kept on going. Anything to keep the boss men from messing with you.
    At first, Cy worried that Billy would attract attention the way a lantern attracts moths. The kid couldn’t seem to figure out where he was or how he came to be there. When Jess first gave him the shovel, he acted like he didn’t know what it was for. But then Billy surprised them all. Once Jess got him started, he put his scrawny back into the work and gave Prescott no excuse to use his whip, not even to cuss him out for slacking off.
    At dinner, Prescott handed out the usual grub—cold sweet potatoes, cornpone, and water. Cain found a tree to lean against, took a long drink from his flask, pulled his hat down over his face, and fell asleep, just like he did every day.
    Mouse stuffed his cornpone into his mouth, cramming it down his gullet the way a hog goes at a mess of slop. That kind of behavior used to bother Cy, but it was nothing compared to some of the other boys’ nasty habits, so he didn’t give it a second thought anymore. After the pone, Mouse took his own good time with the sweet potato. First, he put it in his lap. Then he used a thumbnail to slice it open, longways. Next he pulled the potato apart and pinched out some of the stringy orange meat. One strand at a time, the sweet potato went into his mouth. There it got chewed to a pulp, like a cow’s cud. Mouse pulled pieces from the skin until it was empty. Then he tore the skin in pieces and put them in his jacket pocket.
    Billy had watched the whole thing like it was a circus sideshow act. “What you gon’ do with them peels?” he asked.
    â€œEat ’em. What you think?”
    â€œHe right,” West added. “You best eat anything you can get.”
    West lived by that creed, and he’d proved it time and again. He was always on the lookout for something to put in his belly—wild grapes, blackberries, dandelion greens, even minnows and crawdaddies, raw. And then there was the extra food he managed to get from Rosalee.
    Billy appeared to consider West’s valuable advice, then retrieved the skin of his own potato from the ground and put it in his pocket.
    It was time for the back-to-work gun to go off, but nothing happened. Cain was still asleep under his pine tree, and Prescott was nowhere to be seen. He often disappeared after he’d eaten: the boys figured it was to relieve himself. Stryker rolled a cigarette. He was never in a hurry to get back to work, if walking around making threats could be called work. All this meant some precious free