The Taste of Poverty

The rural south in the US has a way about it that pulls you in. It's sandy rivers with swampy ponds. It's red clay cliffs near vast lakes. It's field of cotton blistering under the sun. It’s rows and rows of pine forests, with amber needles where the grass should be and tall dark trunks looming up over you. Due to their fast growth, the lumber industry booms there. The really straight pines become powerline poles across the state. The less describe become boards and the really crooked are turned into wood chips or particle board. I can look at a pine tree and tell you what it will be cut for. We had our own land that was cut for timber, but it wasn't replanted. The seedlings cost money and took too long to return it.

After clearing it, we planted the land. Fields and fields of corn and green beans to harvest and sell. Both of my parents came from a long line of farmers, and they spent their childhoods much like I would spend mine. The land we lived on was inherited from my dad's grandfather. Seventy acres of prime land out in East Texas. Several of my aunts and uncles had their own farms. We would trade crops. They would come over and pick their share from ours, and we would do the same in their gardens. Sometimes we would be given extra meat from a slaughtered animal. One of my uncles kept bees so we always had fresh honey in exchange for letting their boxes sit with the crops for the season. They were a fascinating creatures, but after watching them sting one of the dogs to death after it knocked over their hive, I was frightened of them.

We were poor and my siblings and I knew that. Most of our food came from the farm. Down at the barn we kept chickens, geese, pigs on occasion, and milk goats. Mother would make soap and cheese from the milk and the birds were useful for eggs and meat. We tried to cull the extra roosters early. The pigs worked as scrap buckets and also another source of meat. I figure my heart was too weak because as I grew older, the pigs were less and less.

Fruit was a particular expense my father always said we did not have the money to spare on. If we wanted to eat it, we had to grow it. We kept a large personal gardens on the front half of the property, a good three acres worth. My two siblings and I spent all summer from school tending it. We planted fruit bushes and trees as well. There were pears, wild plums, orange and lemon, blueberries, wine grapes, blackberries, strawberries, and many other delights. Whatever we decided we wanted. We created a separate garden just for growing melons and pumpkins. The main yield tomatoes, carrots, lettuces, cucumber, spinach, and peppers most years. Sometimes we tried different things, but mostly dad stuck to his favorites.

There's one particular summer that sticks with more stubbornly when I think back on my childhood. I had just turned twelve. My brother, who was only ten, and I were out in the barn late in the afternoon, refilling water troughs and securing pens. He stopped what he was doing and stared out at our garden.

"Look," he whispered. "There's a kid over there."

Sure enough, bent over the tomatoes was a kid with dirty blonde hair and sun tanned skin. She looked wild and earthly. As if she was a creature from the neighboring woods that lines the edge of our property. She was stooped over, her arms stretching out then vanishing into a plastic Walmart sack at her side. My fists clenched.

"I think she's stealing our crops," I hissed. My brother squinted in that direction, as if to make sense of it.

"Is she really?"

The girl moved down the row and plucked free several large cucumbers. Before I could even form my next thought, my brother was dashing over to her, waving his arms above his head.

"Hey, hey, stop! Give that back," he hollered. Her eyes snapped up, wide and white. That's when I noticed the second child, a girl maybe a little older than me, further down the row, her bag already bulging with purple peas. Quickly, I turned off the well spout and broke into a sprint. We had worked hard to grow this food, so hard. My back was still sore from weeding just the day before.

Both girls dashed away into the woods, off of our property. But, today the property line did not stop us. A chiding part of my brain thought that I should get dad or mom, but I pressed onward. The girls would be gone by the time I could get an adult, and I could not let Dylan chase them alone. The trees quickly swallowed us up. Spider webs clung to our faces and needles crunched under our feet as we raced after them.

They loomed before us, just out of reach, as flits of color between the trunks. My lungs burned with each breath and my heart thundered in my ears. Hoping I could command more of them being older and a girl myself, I called out between raspy breaths.

"Stop. You have to. That's our food! We just want it back."

My words only seemed to encourage them. Like rabbits dodging a hound, they slipped further from our reach. Then, all of us burst from the trees into a yellow field. A large hill loomed before us, and at the top was a house. The two girls slowed to a walk. The elder siezed the younger's hand and glanced back at us. Her cheeks were flushed, whether with fear, shame, or from the run, I could not say. She stared at me. It felt like she was peering straight into my soul. They were dirty children, dirtier than us. And, just like us, they were barefoot. Their tattered clothes hung to their gaunt frames. The decrypt trailer house behind them with its sagging porch whispered of their woe.

We knew the man that lived there. Our parents said he was dangerous. A chained dog from somewhere on their property barked. I froze at the end of the woods and held out my arm to stop my brother. He glared up at me, but accepted my command. He swung his arm up to greet the girls with his middle finger and stuck out his tongue.

"Dylan," I hissed, popping him upside the head. "Come on, let's go back. They beat us." I added.

He fumed all the way back. Talking about how they could grow their own crops. How we should shoot them for trespassing, something he had learned from Grandpa. How they were robbing us.

"Taking a man's food is worse than taking his money," I consented, allowing my own anger to rise to the surface. For a moment, staring into the eyes of those girls, I had sympathized. But now, as my own stomach rumbled for dinner, I felt cheated.

"We have to tell mom," Dylan proclaimed. He was right. We needed to tell dad too.

My mother was at the sink when we told them, washing dishes from cooking. Our house belonged to my great grandfather, and it was just as aged and fallen to ruin as the other homes down the street. The paint peeled from the walls. Mold bloomed in a corner from recent rain. The bare wood floor creaked and groaned beneath us. My foot found a hole to fiddle with.

Father stood in the entryway to the next room, listening with a perfectly composed mask on his face. Mom audibly gasped when we explained what had happened. Admittedly, I told it with more flare and energy than I probably should have. I tended to do that as if to make up for my brother's silence around my parents. Father seemed most concerned about us chasing the children.

"You shouldn't have followed them once they left the property," he scolded. "You trespassed."

I felt my cheeks burn in shame. Dylan puckered out his lip but did not offer a verbal protest.

"Do you think their dad sent them?" Mom asked. Dad nodded.

"Kids don't just sneak in at dusk with bags on their own," he offered. His eyes moved to the gun in the corner near the door. "I have the mind to call the police, half the mind to visit their dad."

"Do you think they needed it that bad?" Mom asked. My father looked strained at the question. He was a harsh man but even he loathed the idea of hungry children.

"Well, if they come back, I will stop them and call the police then," he decided at last. "If their sorry excuse of a father wants to trade or something, we can do that. But, I won't tolerate thieves."

He turned back to me and pointed his finger sharply.

"If I catch you trespassing or letting your brother trespass, I will beat you till you can't sit. You hear me?"

"Yes sir," we said in unison.

Their next visit was at night and to steal fruit. Truthfully, the plums and pears were in such an abundance it really did not matter. It was by chance that we caught them that time. My elder brother was with us this time, carrying the crawfish bucket for us while we prowled the yard. I held a large flashlight in one head and a long stick in the other.

The rain had drawn up the crawfish from their burrows, to build mud towers and eat grass. It was extra fun to spear behind them with a stick and quickly scoop them up to drop in the bucket. At the end of the night we would compare all of our bounty and keep our favorites. We had already set up a special tank for them. The rest would be fed to the chickens in the morning.

As I beamed my light around the yard looking for the glint of tiny beady eyes, a flash of pink caught my attention. There was the girl, at the base of the plum tree, her little sister beside her with a bad wide open. She was garbed today in a short pink dress with her hair yanked back into a messy bun. They were still both so dirty. I froze for a moment, debating if I should tell my big brother, Joe, or let it go.

But, Joe had already noticed. He moved closer to me and set the bucket down. The angry crawfish writhed inside it, making almost a mechanical sound as they blew bubbles.

"Dylan, go get dad," he commanded. His free hand squeezed my shoulder and in friendly tones he called out to the girls, "What are you doing here so late? Did your dad send you?"

Joe was not angry. Not like I had been. He seemed to understand the dire nature of the children better than I was able to. When they took off to the property line in a dash, he did not pursue, or let me. I twisted my arm in his grasp, trying to wrench it free.

"Are you going to just let them go?" I accused.

"No sense in chasing them," he said with a shrug. That was a lie. Joe could beat those girls in a race to the trees. He had beat me often enough I should know.

From the house, the porch light clicked on and dad stepped out with his gun. My blood froze and chills raced down my arms.

"Why does he have a gun Joe?" I squeaked. My brother shrugged again, as if that was an asnwer to everything.

"Probably just to scare them. Or in case their crazy father is around."

"You two, get inside," Dad thundered. "Your mother has called the cops."

I really could not say what happened after that. Father never did disclose the exact details, and we were all banished to our shared room when the cops did arrive. Only, the cops did no good. Nothing was proven. That night was only the start of visits from the girls next door.