Five Miles to Paradise

24

The rich get richer while the poor scream silently in the night.

Screams of frustration, hunger, and hopeless desperation. Silent screams, muted pleas to merciless Fate. Silent because the poor are too exhausted to waste their energy on such futile acts. Silent because, even if they vocalized their complaints at the highest decibels humanly possible, no one else would care.

Too hungry, too tired, too beaten, the poor lie down to sleep, only to awaken to another day of endless chores that profit them nothing. They will always be in debt. They will always be screaming. Silently.

Heck passed the flimsy sharecroppers' shacks with weatherworn, unpainted, boards leaning and rotting from time and neglect, and patched roofs, some with large holes left gaping against the elements. A fragile refuge against Mother Nature, disease, and ill-fortune.

A litter of dirty children lolled under the leaning porches, seeking shelter from the blister and boil of the sun. Barefooted. Ragged. Swollen bellies. Languid in their motions, playing with sticks or rocks.

Solemn eyes, even in the smallest, bore into him as he drove by. Faces dusty with grime. Duplicate versions of their parents. Grave, sober despair that should never be found in ones so young, blanketed them like a shroud.

A woman stood in the doorway, alert, on guard. 

She was an old soul, not in calendar years, but in seasons of failed crops, sickness, and doubt that she and her husband would ever be able to provide enough food for the children they had brought into this world. A permanent crease of worry scarred the mother's forehead, carved into her delicate skin by the chisels of fear and anxiety. She stared at Heck, wondering what would happen to her children if illness came, if disaster struck.

Resigned, but worrying, still.

Heck had been in many of these dilapidated dwellings. They were different, but somehow, all the same. Spartan. Fragile. Gloomy.

A rusty bucket of drinking water. Bare walls, blackened with age and the smoke of countless fires from cooking meals or staving off the chill of night. A pallet on the floor. Perhaps a bed, no mattress, just ropes to suspend the weary between earth and heaven. A bit of food in the larder, if they were lucky. No extra clothing, save what was on their backs.

They were not lazy, for intelligence burned in the eyes of folks who had to be creative and flexible to make do to survive.

A sharecropper leaned against his sagging porch post, cigarette dangling down from his lips, red glow pointing to the ground. His stare warily followed Heck's car, relieved when the sheriff passed by his humble abode.

Eviction came at the hands of the law.

They rarely smiled at Heck.

Occasionally, a rough, calloused hand was thrown up in greeting, but more often than not, they simply gazed at him with work-worn faces, the stubble of a day's whiskers popping from their chins, suspiciously watching until his car disappeared in a cloud of dust.

Heck passed a family going to pick cotton in the fields. Mother, son, and daughter had long sacks slung over their shoulders or tucked into apron strings. Each one wore a large straw hat, sweat-stained, but shielding their brows from the sun's burning rays.

Toddling behind was a baby, no more than four years old, a miniature copy of the rest, even down to the small muslin sack she clutched in her small, black hand. A straw hat, raw on the edges, crinkled and curled, shaded her cherubic cheeks.

Barefoot, they silently marched down the dirt road toward the endless rows of low-growing plants. They did not lift their heads to acknowledge Heck as he drove by.