Free Body and Bread by Nan Cuba Page A

wasn’t right. “Shut up,” he said. He was sure Cyril had heard.
    Sam worked alongside the others for an hour, this time without talking, their hoes’ clips and soil shuffling like soft brush beats. Sometimes one stretched, holding his breath, then released it, satisfying as a belch. Grasshoppers rattled free of the plants, chirring. Once when Sam tilted, arching his back, a buzzard circled three times, disappearing toward the railroad tracks.
    o
    The blisters on Sam’s hands throbbed. Sweat dribbled down his forehead, burning his eyes. When his nose dripped, he sneezed, dropped his hoe, wiped his face with his itchy t-shirt. He walked to the truck for a drink, the water tinny in its metal lid, quenching. Then he soaked his head, the water stinging his neck, shoulders. Oh, he thought, and put on his shirt.
    Cyril leaned toward the cotton plants, his hat shadowing his face, that dishrag protecting his neck, his shirt-sleeved arms pumping, his body drifting. Like a damn machine, Sam thought. Kurt, on the other hand, swatted weeds like flies, his body all strains and jerks, the sun roasting his arms.
    In a minute, they joined Sam at the truck. Kurt got a drink then opened the door, stepped, grunting, onto the running board, and grazed his hip on the gearshift knob as he threw himself across the seat. Too much Budweiser and armchair football, Sam thought.
    After Cyril doused himself, he sat beside Sam. He stared, unblinking, toward the field’s opposite border at a silhouette of trees, a green mesa amidst the sky and scrub.
    “See something?” Sam asked, peering.
    “Great horned owl. Listen—”
    “Shit, you can’t see that from here.” Crows—Sam had no idea how many—squawked like ducks. Another one appeared, plunked itself among the maze of limbs and leaves. “Those, genius, are crows,” he said.
    Cyril seemed not to notice Sam. “Look, in the top branches of that middle sycamore. Its face is heart-shaped.”
    Sam searched the center trees, each visible limb, trunk crook. “Man, there ain’t nothing there.” He shoved Cyril, who bumped the side of the truck.
    Cyril waved a balancing arm, scowled. “The crows are diving at the owl because it eats their babies. I’d say there are five of them, gathered around him at the tank.”
    “Tank?”
    “The caliche cow pond on the other side of those sycamores and poplars.” He pointed, and as if commanded, the owl rose and flew, five crows darting, diving at its head, swatting with their stiff-legged feet, as it drifted forward.
    Ten feet overhead, its body floated, a deformed moon swimming through blue. Its short wings agitated then stiffened, fluttering, then grew still.
    Kurt stayed in Austin the next summer. When Sam arrived alone at the cotton field, Cyril might have already chopped a full row.
    “How’s it going,” Sam would’ve said.
    Cyril nodded then, his hat brim tracing a check mark. If he noticed Sam’s change to a long-sleeved shirt and gimme cap, he didn’t let it show. He clipped weeds again.
    Sam got a hoe out of Cyril’s pickup, chopped along an adjacent row. Flipping short taps, he almost kept up. By Nugent and Pelton standards, Sam thought, Cyril was strange enough to get talked about, picked at like his own parents harped at him. But Cyril’s difference came from his foreignness, while Sam’s otherness was tied to “unacceptable” habits like telling what he honestly thought, remarks others labeled “disrespectful,” while he called them truths. “Sam’s on another wavelength,” our mother said.
    Sam swung his hoe with minimum effort, having developed an instinct for where and how hard to chop. Each thump signaled a clip of Johnson grass. He squeezed a cotton boll, marveling that a bloom could be so soft, so fibrous, perfect as store-bought socks. An hour and three rows later, he took off his hat, wiped his forehead with his shirtsleeve; sweat beaded again. He aimed his face into a rustle of wind as a jet unfurled a smoky