Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye Read Free

for the kick-off. It would mean that Holiday and Jinx would be waiting on the dirt road, half a mile from the highway, beside a thicket of eucalypti. It was up to Toko and me to have the guns by then and when the third blast was heard we were to make a run for the thicket, a hundred yards from the cantaloupe patch. Once in there we would be safe, for the trees were so close together the guards couldn’t get through on horseback. These were not the eucalypti with the thick trunks, these were the small ones, with trunks no bigger than your leg, and so numerous that you had to walk through them sidewise.
    After we had finally crossed the bridge and were strung out northward again I kept my eyes on the irrigation ditch, looking for the rock Holiday had said would be daubed with white paint. Toko was on my left, between me and the ditch, but he was no help at all.
    He kept his face and his eyes straight to the front. We were only a few feet apart, but it was too far for me to say anything without being overheard, too far for me to try to close the space without attracting attention, which would have been highly suspicious: these bastards would sell a guy out for an extra spoon of sugar, and I was too busy looking for the rock to waste time trying to catch his eye. We were getting closer and closer to the patch where we would be broken up and put to work, and I had to locate that rock before then. No rock, no break and we would have to start all over. I had set my heart on crashing out of here today. Jesus, I didn’t want to have to go through the waiting again. This was what came of dealing with a senile old bastard like Cobbett, this was what came of not having any money. Jesus, that was the answer – money. You got just what you paid for – be it a handkerchief or a prison-farm guard. Money. That was the answer to Nelson’s success, and the success of all the other bums – money. Jesus, would I ever have any money? Get me out of here, God, I thought, and I’ll get the money. I’ll endow a church.…
    ‘… Halt’ Harris shouted.
    The detail stopped.
    ‘The first eight men with Burton!’
    Burton was another guard. He counted off eight men and started leading them off across the field.
    ‘Forward march!’ Harris yelled at the rest of us.
    We started moving again and I glanced at Toko and saw that his face was paling beneath the tan, and that began to worry me all the more. Jesus, didn’t he have sense enough to know that if the rock wasn’t there, it just wasn’t there and there was nothing we could do about it but start all over! I winked at him a few times and looked away and then I saw it.
    The rock.
    It was the size of a baby’s head and it had a daub of white paint on the top. The corners of my heart were caught and pinched with joy. The rock was only about twenty feet from the iron-wheeled chemical privy that always rolled with us to the different fields we worked. Holiday had put the guns as close to the privy as she could. A hell of a girl, that Holiday. A hell of a buy, that Cobbett. She really must have given him something to remember her by. I looked at Toko. He hadn’t even seen it…
    ‘…Halt!’ Harris yelled.
    The detail stopped.
    ‘You next ten men with Byers!’
    Byers came up on his horse and counted off ten of us and we started following him across the patch.
    ‘Forward march!’ Harris yelled at the others, and what remained of the detail moved off behind us.
    Still side by side. Toko and I picked our way carefully across the patch so as not to bruise the melons or the vines. The cantaloupe patch, like the other fields we worked, was leased to a civilian contractor and he was very particular about his melons and vines. They must not be bruised. It was a very serious offence. But so far as anybody knew, he had never complained about the guards riding their horses through the patch.
    ‘I didn’t see it.…’ Toko whispered.
    ‘Did you look?’
    ‘Sure. Whaddya suppose