But the mammoth vehicle was already rolling forward. Coot froze in his tracks and realized what was happening. He looked out the narrow glass doors. He could see Blake standing on the pavement in the rear window.

“Please!” shouted Coot. “Look! He’s right there. Back up and let him on the bus!”

The bus did not stop.

Blake’s figure was getting smaller in the distance. The tall, wiry man with the mustache stood on the curb.

“Blake!” Coot said through tears. “Don’t do this!”

Coot could feel the bus engine beneath his feet. The driver changed gears and picked up speed. Soon they were on the highway. Blake’s figure was a pinpoint on the far-off landscape.

The driver gave Coot a look. “He told me it was for your own good, son,” he said. “But he told me to give you this.” The bus driver removed something from behind his own seat.

A hickory baseball bat, brand-new, wrapped in ribbon.

Book II

Thirty-Two
Babies into Girls

Paul watched the sun rise over the tobacco field. Whenever sun spread itself on the leaves, it looked like the backyard of heaven, dotted with the first colors of a coming autumn. The fading green color of the world was overwhelming, the scent clean smelling. The aroma of wet dirt and earth was strong enough to taste.

The sound of a radio nearby cut through the rural morning. It was blasting an official voice into the air, one that talked about a war and the invasion at Pearl Harbor. The voices on the radio had changed since the war began. Men talked a little louder and more staccato. They had anxiety in their words, and fear.

Paul’s family had worked on four tobacco farms in three years before they finally found work with Mister Pettigrew. And in those years of uncertainty, Paul had never found a man who was as kind as Pettigrew. Most men in tobacco farming were bitter, looking for fast money, and treated their mostly black field workers with cruelty. The hateful things Paul had heard and seen done had changed the way he viewed the human race.

But Mister Pettigrew was not like this. He hired Paul, Vern, Eulah, and Pete and had paid them the wages of three workers. Even though they did the work of eight workers, it was steady money. Pettigrew treated them like his own family. During holidays he invited workers to his own home to celebrate. He gave gifts to the children of the field workers. He served mountains of food. Long tables were filled with casseroles, pies, and dishes of all kinds. And his men worked hard for Mister Pettigrew because of it.

In the early sun, Paul watched the morning’s first workers move through the crops before the midday heat got too strong.