The Cotton-Pickers

by B. TRAVEN

  Snakes don’t bother me. And in any case they’d hardly want to get up onto the table. And even if they did, it wasn’t sure they’d bite me. And even if they did bite, they might not be poisonous. If all snakes were poisonous and all of them bit a sleeping man who had done them no harm, I would have been a goner long ago.

  The following day twelve natives arrived to work with us. They came from a village in the bush, riding on mules, some without saddles or stirrups. Others had wooden saddles but no reins; instead of reins, the beasts had ropes looped around nose and jaw, for a kind of halter.

  These men, of course, were more used to field labor in the tropics than we were because, with the exception of Gonzalo and Charley, all of us were townsfolk. But they picked cotton slower than we did, and on top of that they took a much longer siesta at noon. This, however, had nothing to do with us, and we hardly gave it a second thought.

  Saturday was pay day, but we drew only enough to buy food for the coming week; to avoid carrying the germs of temptation in our pockets, we left the balance with Mr. Shine. On Sunday we knocked off at three so as to take our weekly bath, pull our sweaty clothes through the water, and send two of our gang to the nearest store for supplies — a four-hour trip. Sunday’s work earned us about a kilo of bacon or five kilos of potatoes.

  This time the Chink and Antonio had gone to buy the supplies. We had written down our various needs on corn husks. The hieroglyphics inscribed on these corn husks could be deciphered by the shoppers only because we’d verbally explained each fantastic symbol. It was dark when the Chink and Antonio returned from the store.

  “What a miserable hike,” grumbled Antonio.

  “Oh, it wasn’t so bad!” Sam tried to soothe it over.

  “Shut up, you yellow son of a heathen,” shouted Antonio. “How can you with your coolie past understand how I feel about packing goods like a burro?” He sank down onto a box which collapsed under his weight, and this further increased his rage.

  “Listen, Antonio, why didn’t you ask Mr. Shine for a mule or a burro?” I asked.

  “But I did. He refused. He said to me and Sam: `How can I lend you a mule or a burro? I know nothing about you, you’ve got no papers to identify you, and even if you did they would probably be fake. Besides, the papers wouldn’t help me to buy a new burro if you ran off with it.”

  “Well, he’s quite right, from his point of view,” I said. “From our point of view, it’s downright mean. But what can we do about it?”

  Just as we were getting under way on the favored topic of workers the world over, expounding with more loquacity than wisdom the unjust conditions that divide men into exploiters and exploited, drones and disinherited, Abraham appeared with half a dozen hens and a rooster suspended on a cord, their feet tied up, their heads dangling. He dropped the birds before us, where they struggled to get on their feet and flap free of the cord that tied them.

  “There you are, fellers, now you can get eggs off me.” He grinned. “I’ll let you have ‘em cheap ‘cause you’re my workmates. Nine centavos each. Cost you ten and even twelve in town.”

  We stared first at the bundle of hens and then at the grinning Abraham. Not one of us had thought of going into the egg business like this, and yet it was so obvious, so simple, and required no special intelligence, so that any of us could have done the same. Sam the Chink showed no envy or jealousy, but only admiration for the enterprising Abraham, and perhaps some shame at having allowed himself to be beaten in setting up a sideline.

  Thus in the course of one afternoon the disinherited and exploited worker Abraham became an owner, a capitalist. He had acquired productive hens while we had bought only food to be consumed. We had wondered why he had ordered no food from the store and had been prepared to deal with the pilfering of our supplies, which we had expected of him. Instead he was offering us future supplies of eggs in exchange for rice and beans or money. He was in business. At the worst, in case the hens went on strike, he could eat them, and the rooster too.

  On the following day Abraham had four eggs for sale.

  4

  We regarded eggs as a greater luxury than meat.

  And now that they were so temptingly close at hand and could be prepared more easily than any other food, so that we could get something better into us for breakfast than the usual thin coffee and piece of dry bread, we felt we would not and could not do without eggs. It suddenly seemed to us that without eggs we would fold up from undernourishment before the end of the harvest, or if we survived the harvest we’d be too feeble to go on to other work.

  The slaves, said Abraham, who had it from his granddad, were generally kept in good condition, like horses. But no one worried about the condition of the “free” worker. If he got ill through malnutrition due to substandard living conditions because of low wages, he got sacked.

  Opportunistic arguments of this kind were advanced by Abraham so as to ensure a ready and regular market for eggs. Such observations on man’s condition were all the more acceptable to us since, generously enough, he supplied us with eggs on credit until the next pay day. Abraham did this purely out of the kindness of his heart because, as he explained it, he did not want to see us, his dear fellow workers, fail from malnutrition in later life, that is, after the harvest.

  Within three days we couldn’t imagine how we had ever existed without eggs. We had eggs for breakfast, we took eggs along to the field for lunch, and of course we had eggs for supper. We were even baking eggs into our bread.

  There was no doubt about it, Abraham understood chicken farming. Often he left the field as early as three to look after his hens. He gave them plenty of corn. Every other evening just at twilight he went off — he never said where — with a sack. He always returned with his sack full of corn long after we had turned in.

  Those six hens and the rooster, apparently aware of our need, did their best to protect us from malnutrition, laying a generous supply of eggs in honest return for the abundant grain they received.

  Well, the hens laid four eggs on the first day; on the second day, seven. On the third morning, lest we doubt his word, Abraham took us to the three old baskets he’d hung up for the laying hens and let us count. the eggs for ourselves. There they were, seventeen eggs now. Having counted these eggs at sunrise, we doubted Abraham’s word no more, not even when with beaming face one morning, as if he’d won in the national lottery, he informed us that the hens had laid twenty-eight eggs in one day! It was no concern of ours what Abraham did to his hens to get such results. The Chink said that the Chinese performed miracles in squeezing nutriment from a particle of earth or the last egg from a hen, but that Abraham outdid even them.

  Abraham cut him short: “You’re all a lot of fools. You know as little about scientific chicken farming as the farmers around here, who are the biggest fools of all. In Louisiana we know how to handle hens. I learned it from my grandmother, who gave me some good clouts before I got the hang of it, but now even the smartest farmer wouldn’t stand a chance against me if I ran a chicken farm here. I’d show him how to make hens pay.”

  We just went on eating eggs. But the eggs took their revenge: they devoured us. They devoured our wages to the extent that none of us would reach his set target, whether it was for a new shirt, new trousers, or simply a railroad ticket to a place with better prospects. Even Sam, whose countrymen are often unjustly charged with preferring to run around naked rather than spend a penny on a necessity, owed Abraham a neat sum for eggs.

  Compared to our first week we were living like princes now, thanks to the eggs, and also to a night rainstorm that provided us with enough rain water to wallow in baths.

  Yet the rain lost us half a day’s pay, turning the cotton field into a muddy swamp from which we could hardly lift our feet.

  By the third pay day it was plain that we couldn’t get along on the miserable wages paid us. At the end of the harvest we’d have barely two weeks’ wages in hand, and all of that would be spent before we could marc
h out of the bush and on to the next job, wherever it might be.

  “It’s those damned eggs ! ” said Antonio, as we sat around the fire talking things over. “Those eggs are enslaving us miserably.”

  “But we didn’t have to buy them,” I put in. “Abraham didn’t force them onto us. He could have saved them up and sold them to the store.”

  “That’d be more work for him,” said Gonzalo.

  At this moment Abraham came back with his evening’s corn and, overhearing us, threw his sack down. “So you’re talking about eggs! Haven’t I done right by you all? Every egg freshly laid! I’m entitled to my money, ain’t I, fellers?”

  “Nobody talked about not paying. If you don’t know what we’re talking about, better keep quiet,” I told him. “Listen,” broke in Antonio, “we were saying that unless we give up the needless luxury of eggs we’ll have worked all these weeks for nothing.”

  “Needless lux’ry, you call it?” Abraham yelled. “You want to walk aroun’ like skel’tons when the cotton-pickin’s over? Now I’m collectin’ my money! Antonio, you owe … “

  I didn’t care who owed for how many eggs. I paid my own bill and left for the shelter to turn in. On the way I could hear squabbling over the accounts, although it must be admitted that Abraham seemed absolutely honest in his business relations with us. But as I was dozing off that night I resolved to do without eggs the next week.

  At dawn on Monday, as I was making my way to the fire, I heard Antonio shouting: “Where are the eggs this morning, you black-as-coal Yank? I want five eggs!”

  Abraham was counting the eggs in his baskets and continued as if he hadn’t heard Antonio.

  “Hey there, didn’t you hear me? I want five eggs. Or shall I lay them myself?”

  “What’s this?” asked Abraham, all innocence. “I don’t want to force my eggs on you and rob you of your hard-earned wages. You’d better save the money. You can get along without eggs, like you did the first few days here.”

  We rose up like one man against Abraham’s new tune, against his interference with our established way of life.

  “Who do you think you are, you black nobody, telling me what I should and should not eat,” chimed in Gonzalo. “Give me six eggs at once or I’ll smash your woolly skull in.”

  “All right,” Abraham agreed, “if that’s the way you want it I’ll supply you with eggs, as before.”

  “Well, how else?” asked Sam Woe quietly. “Filst you tempt us into eating eggs, and when we get used to them you tly to withhold. Give me thlee eggs!”

  The Chink was right. Just when we’d got used to the eggs, their high food value, easy availability, and simple cooking, were we suddenly to be denied them because of Abraham’s whim? Why should I deny my poor self, and torture my poor body with the sight of beautiful, fresh eggs sizzling merrily in the others’ frying pans? “Give me six!” I ordered. And once I had eaten three fried eggs and boiled the others to take for lunch, my spirit was subdued and penitent.

  So we kept on eating eggs.

  One afternoon a few days later Mr. Shine stopped me on my way back from the field and talked about his farm, how he had started with sixty dollars of hard-earned money, how he had hacked the bush out with his own hands, and how he had widened a narrow, overgrown twelve-mile mule track into a road fit for his truck.

  “It took me twenty years of hard, very hard work to build up this place. And yet we gringos, who helped make this part of the country what it is today, feel that we must be ready to get out on short notice and leave everything behind. These people — with some reason, I admit — hate us like poison because they fear for their political and economic freedom and independence, which means everything to them.”

  Mr. Shine wasn’t the first North-American farmer to tell me this.

  “Some years are very good. I’ve had as many as four crops of corn in the same year, something I’d never get back in the States. And I must say the cotton’s very good this year, first-class fiber, if only I can get a decent offer for it. The trick is in knowing just how long to wait, just when to sell. But I can’t understand what’s happened to my hens. We’ve never had so few eggs as in these last weeks. My neighbors are also complaining about their hens, and they’re wondering what’s going on in their corn bins that they fill up in the evening and find a little lower in the morning. Same happens to me. Must be rats, I’d say.”

  That evening I told the gang what Mr. Shine had said about his hens.

  “There you are, fellers, there’s the true American farmer for you!” said Abraham. “They’d eat their own fingernails, they’re so mean, and they begrudge the po’r hens a handful of grain — then complain that they’re not layin’. How kin they if they’re not rightly fed? Look at my hens! I don’t spare the corn, so I get what I want from them. They only have to be well fed and properly treated, and then they do their duty. My good grandmother Susanne taught me that, and she was a clever woman, you can take it from me, fellers. And that’s a fact! Another thing,” he went on, “it’s not the rats that get into the bins of those greedy farmers, it is the po’r starvin’ hens which at night instead of sleeping prowl around to pick up a few kernels of corn lest they starve to death, po’r little animals.”

  And we listened to him. After all, Abraham had the proof of his chicken knowledge in eggs.

  5

  That same evening we came unanimously to the conclusion that we had to eat properly to keep up our work power, but that at the same time we had to see to it that a certain sum was left over at the end of the harvest so that we shouldn’t have worked for nothing, like slaves just for our keep — that therefore, in a nutshell, we weren’t being paid enough. If we got eight instead of six centavos a kilo, we could just about scrape through.

  With this thought in our minds we went to sleep.

  The next morning as soon as the other workers arrived in the field, Antonio and Gonzalo went up to them and explained that we intended to ask for eight centavos a kilo from now on, plus two centavos a kilo retroactively. These people, natives and more independent than we were, especially since they all had their own parcels of land, readily agreed.

  Then Antonio and Gonzalo and two of the other men went up to the scales and told Mr. Shine how matters stood.

  “No,” answered Mr. Shine, “I’m not going to pay that, and that’s that! I’m not crazy! I’ve never paid that much. I don’t make that much on the cotton.”

  “All right,” said Antonio, “then we’re packing up. We’ll be off today.”

  One of the local men intervened: “Listen, señor, we’ll wait another two hours. Think it over. If you say no, we’ll saddle our mules. And we’ll take good care that you don’t get any more men.”

  With that the conference came to an end. The four returned to the field and reported Shine’s answer. The men left the rows they were picking, went over to the trees, and lay down to sleep. While I was also making my way toward the trees, Mr. Shine called, “Hey, Gales! Come over here a moment!”

  “Now,” I said while approaching him, “if you think I’m going to act as a go-between you’re quite mistaken, Mr. Shine. If I were a farmer I’d be on your side and I’d go with you through thick and thin. But I’m not a farmer. I’m a farm hand, and I stick with my fellow workers. You understand, don’t you?”

  “Yes, of course, Gales. In any case I’m not trying to win you over to my side. You couldn’t get the cotton in alone. But let’s have a quiet talk about it.”

  Mr. Shine lit a pipe. His elder son, who was about twenty-six, lit a cigar, and the other son, a fellow of twenty-two or so, peeled some filthy-looking paper from a piece of chewing gum and popped the gum into his mouth.

  “You’re the only white man among the pickers here, and as I’m already paying you eight you are really neutral and can talk with us. I take it you haven’t told the other fellows that you’re getting eight?” asked Mr. Shine, taking his pipe from his mouth.

  “No,” I said, “I haven’t had t
he slightest reason for doing so.”

  The fact is I hadn’t. But I knew that had the subject come up, not one of the men would have felt wronged at my taking that extra two centavos. It wasn’t any skin off their backs. And not one even now would accuse me of not having brought the subject up. What good would it have done them to know? Some things we didn’t find it necessary to talk about. Our common lot was something else again.

  Dick, the older boy, climbed into the back of the truck, propped himself against a bale of cotton, and dangled his legs over the side. Pete, the younger one, seated himself at the steering wheel and dozed off, still chewing his gum.

  The old man leaned against the truck and, swearing the while, fiddled with his pipe that now went out, now got choked, now needed refilling although the tobacco in it hadn’t yet burned through. Only by the way he was handling his pipe did the farmer give any outward indication of the excitement that was fuming within him.

  When about five minutes had passed without a word being spoken, Pete sat up and suddenly burst out: “You know what I’d do if I were in your shoes, Dad? I’d pay up and say no more about it.”

  “You’d pay up, would you?” Mr. Shine was furious. “The money doesn’t come out of your pocket. That makes `I’d pay up’ very easy. All right then, I’ll take it out of your money.”

  “You won’t do any such thing, Dad! Or, if you do, you’ll have to give me the money for the cotton sold. Otherwise it wouldn’t be fair.”

  “Oh, don’t make me laugh! The money for the cotton sold? Have I sold even a dime’s worth yet? I tell you, Gales, no one’s offered me a penny yet. And what prime cotton it is this year! It’d put the whitest snowflake in all Alaska to shame. And just look here” — he tore off a pod nearby and holding it close to my nose squeezed it between his fingers — “the softest down is like barbed wire compared with this. Well, Gales, say some.. thing! Don’t stand there as if you’d lost your tongue!”