Free Dirty Rice by Gerald Duff Page A

and Coushattas and the white eyes lived in East Texas, but it was the place where lots of colored folks made a living, too. Mike Gonzales was a lot lighter in color than most of the ones I was used to seeing, but when he talked I could tell he wasn’t from Cuba. They talked Spanish on that island, and back then I didn’t know what that sounded like. But I knew where Mike Gonzales had learned to speak a language, and that wasn’t Cuba.
    Everybody was drifting out of the clubhouse by then. It ended up that Dynamite and me and Mike Gonzales left the clubhouse at the same time and stopped together on the street outside. The air had cooled some, and a little breeze was blowing, kicking up trash in the gutters and moving the ends of the Spanish moss back and forth where it hung from the limbs of the live oak trees. The light was changing the way it does late afternoons in that flat country, and everything looked greener than it really was. Everything you could see looked like there was a light inside trying to get out.
    â€œListen,” Dynamite Dunn said. “I know y’all got to go eat that supper Velma Doucette’s been cooking, but what you going to do after that?”
    I looked at Gonzales, and he shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “Go on to bed and get me some shuteye before we got to come back here again in the morning.”
    â€œHell, gentlemen,” Dynamite said. “The night is young. Y’all ain’t that wore out, are you? I didn’t notice you bending over and shaking and sucking in long breaths today. I recommend we ought to stay up tonight at least until the damn chickens go to roost. What about you, Gemar? You done throwed so many strikes today you ain’t got nothing left in the tank?”
    â€œWhere can we go?” I said, “that we can walk to and that don’t cost nothing? I ain’t got a cent until the Rice Birds pay me some wages.”
    â€œLet me tell you about getting paid by the Rice Birds,” Dynamite said. “The eagle screams on Friday, but sometimes he gets a case of the croup and has a hard time getting his holler to work. He takes a little throat problem, see, and he will need his medicine.”
    I wasn’t surprised to hear Dynamite say that about getting paid by the people you’re working for, having had the experience of having to hunt folks down when I was owed money. They would get the slows now and again when it came time to reach down in the pocketbook.
    I am still owed money today by some of them sawmill teams I played for, where they said they’d give me a dollar or two if I’d show up with my bat and my glove at stated times and locations. The way it worked then was they paid you by the game, sometimes as much as two dollars.
    A fellow whose name I ain’t never going to forget, Dan Mayfield, told me if I’d pitch for Carter they’d give me a dollar for every ten they pulled in from what folks paid to get close to the field and from what he called the concessions income. It sounded like money to me. Turned out after the game was over with that my share of the proceeds didn’t amount to nothing. I never got a cent for that game, since Mr. Mayfield explained it to me when I showed up to get paid that the overhead had eat up all the money that came in from folks. My share came out to be zero, but I still liked pitching in the game, though. I was always glad I’d played in every game I was in.
    So when Dynamite mentioned the problems the eagle had on some Fridays with being able to holler for the Rice Birds to come get their pay, that got my attention. “How do you take care of that?” I asked Dynamite.
    â€œWhat I do,” he said, “is I have got real close with Theodora Fontenot, the lady who y’all ain’t met yet, that works in the office and handles just about everything day to day, and she lets me know when I ought to go get in line