I lift a hand to shield my eyes from the sun. “Sure will,” I say.
First thing this morning, the coffee had been boiling and the biscuits were nearly done, their spongy white centers firm to the touch, when Daddy first made mention of the horsemint and crabgrass taking root in the lower field. I had already sliced through one tomato, one of the first good ones we’d taken from our garden, and was cutting the rotten spot out of a second. Dale was sitting next to Daddy and chewing one of those tomato slices. As quick as a dribble of juice ran down his chin, Dale dabbed at it with a napkin he held wadded up in one fist. I didn’t have to ask if he’d washed because his hands, nails, face, are always clean. Dale being that clean has always troubled Daddy. Juna was standing at the window, waiting on the coffee and soaking up the only bit of sunlight we’d get in the house all day.
I always do the cooking. Juna is never allowed. Daddy fears her sinful nature might bleed into the pone if she were to mix it or taint the slivers of ham if she were to brown them. Instead, I do the cooking and Juna is, every day, sent out of the house first thing in the morning with chores enough to keep her busy until sunset. Busy and far from home. This makes Juna the harder of us two sisters, and me the softer. Dale too is soft because Daddy has always figured Dale is safer if he spends his days with me. Being soft was tolerable when Dale was young, but now that he is almost ten years old, being soft has started to be something that might carry on into manhood. It has started to be something shameful.
Daddy sat at the kitchen table, his plaid shirt hanging open. Wiry black hair dotted with gray formed a small triangle in the center of his sunken chest, and beneath it, his skin was white. His face had gone a week without seeing a razor, and the stubble and tufts that had managed to fill in were streaked with gray. As he did every morning, he was blinking and staring at the fingers on each hand and counting them as best he could, trying to decide if he could see them as clear today as he did yesterday. He was making sure the whiskey hadn’t worked on his eyes while he slept. Seeing Daddy doing his counting reminded me to put out the lamp we leave to burn through each night. Daddy never wants to wake to blackness. He worries that if the kerosene burns out, his eyes will burn out too.
“Take a hoe on over there, and Dale should take one too,” Daddy said, reaching for a second biscuit before swallowing the first. “Should take the better part of the day.”
He was talking to Juna. I didn’t know this because he was looking at her. He never did. Daddy is afraid of Juna. She has the know-how, but that isn’t what frightens Daddy. He has always been certain there is evil living inside Juna and that it makes its home in her eyes. Those eyes are dark, almost black. A person as fair as Juna should have pale-blue eyes or maybe soft hazel, but hers are black. Daddy never looks Juna square on.
“You’ll see to the fields today,” Daddy said, and using his fingers to tear off a piece of that biscuit because his teeth aren’t rooted solid enough to do it for him, he popped it in his mouth. “And I want Dale going too. About time the boy did some real work.”
Daddy had seen the same as me. He’d seen Dale swiping away those dribbles of our first good tomatoes before they could reach the tip of his chin and those clean nails of his and smooth knuckles. And Dale had been wearing a freshly washed shirt buttoned up under his chin and he’d been smiling. Smiling for no reason. Daddy couldn’t do much about poor land and little rain, but he could damn sure see to raising his boy to be a man.
After first pouring herself a cup of coffee, Juna swept past Daddy, close enough her skirt brushed his knees. He jerked his legs aside, and she sat opposite him, where she shielded her eyes with one hand as if the sun were too bright. But it wasn’t. She was playing with Daddy’s fear, making him worry his eyes were fading.
“Thought to gather blackberries today,” she said, squinting into sunlight that wasn’t there. “Hadn’t planned for tobacco.”
She laid her head off to one side at an awkward sort of angle that made a person wonder what she was looking at. It made a person think Juna could see things others could not.
“Too early for berries,” Daddy said.
“Come early this year.” It’s part of the know-how, having a knack for knowing where the best berries will be found. “Don’t think today is the day for tobacco. I have a feeling.”