by Ron Hall
For most of the next hour, I sat alone at a corner table, fixated on silhouettes of shirtless men drenched in sweat and women in dresses that clung to their bodies, locked together in a slow, sexual kind of dancing I’d never seen before. I’d heard the music before, though, real, live blues sung by people with names like Lightning Hopkins and Big Fat Sarah over scratchy air-waves beamed live from Laredo at midnight by Wolfman Jack.
I pretended to swig on the PBR. But when I was sure nobody was looking, I let it slosh on the dirt floor as I discovered that the smell of beer nauseated me, kicking up memories of me looking for my daddy at the Tailless Monkey Lounge.
5
It didn’t take long for Big Mama’s house to burn down to a heapin pile of smokin red coals. When the flames had died down, I sat there next to it just a-cryin, not understandin why God would take away the person I loved the most.
After a little while, somebody come and took me and Thurman to live in Grand Bayou with BB, my daddy. I didn’t know him very well, and I still don’t know what he did for a livin, just that he worked in the city—Shreveport, I think, down past where my aunt Pearlie May lived. Maybe he was workin on the railroad stackin hisself some paper money ’cause he was rich enough to buy him a car, a big ole two-door like a Pontiac.
BB was a big man, heavyset. He wadn’t six feet tall, but he looked it, and even though I was just a little fella, I could tell he was popular with the ladies. BB liked the ladies, too, and used to keep three or four of em on a string at the same time. That’s why on Sunday mornings, he wouldn’t set foot in the New Mary Magdalene Baptist Church. One or two of his women was already married, and they and their husbands was part of the congregation.
That didn’t mean BB didn’t love Jesus—he just had to find a different way to visit Him on Sundays. So me and him and Thurman would go to church kinda like we was goin to a drive-in picture show. Now, the church house wadn’t too far off the road. It was painted white and had a real nice pecan tree spreadin some shade over some raggedy grass out front. Instead of parkin and goin in through the big double doors like the rest a’ the folks, BB’d pull his Pontiac right up beside the church house. They musta knowed we was comin ’cause when BB drove up, the preacher’d come over and slide up a window right next to the car so we could sit in that Pontiac and listen to the Word of God.
I couldn’t see nothin inside the church, but I’d hear the choir and the congregation singin some spirituals. I had some favorites, and I would sing along.
He’s got the rivers and the mountains in His hands,
He’s got the oceans and the seas in His hands,
He’s got you and He’s got me in His hands,
He’s got the whole world in His hands.
I hoped He had Big Mama and Chook in His hands. I was purty sure He did.
After the singin was done, the preacher’d commence to preachin. He had a style about him, liked to start out soft and low like he was singin a lullaby. But ’fore long he’d work hisself up into a righteous sweat. I remember the way he said “God”—kinda long and drawed out, sounded like “Gaw-ud.”
And he just loved to talk about sin.
“Now sin is when you misses the mark that Gaw-ud is aimin for you to hit,” he’d say. “Bein’ lazy is a sin ’cause Gaw-ud is aimin for you to be diligent. Bein foolish is a sin ’cause Gaw-ud is aimin for you to be wise. And bein lustful is a sin, ’cause Gaw-ud is aimin for you to be chaste. Can I get a witness?”
“Amen!” the church would holler. “Praise Jesus!”
I couldn’t see nobody sayin’ it ’cause I was way down below the windowsill. But I remember that the folks inside seemed mighty enthusiastic. After the sermon, the choir would sing some more. Then someone would pass the offerin plate out the window, and BB would drop in some coins and pass it back in.
Me and Thurman wadn’t with BB but for a few weeks when he left the house one night and didn’t come back. One story goes that his car broke down on Highway 1. Another says it was sabotage. Either way, he pulled off the road out there by the Grand Bayou Social Club, and a man charged outta the woods and stabbed BB to death. Folks said the man that killed him was the husband of one of the women BB was messin with. I never found out if that man was one of the ones that worshipped with us on Sundays.
The next day, my uncle James Stickman come by and picked me and Thurman up in his wagon, pulled by mules. We went to live on a farm where my uncle James and aunt Etha was doin a little sharecroppin.
A lotta folks called croppin a new kinda slavery. Lotta croppers (even white ones, what few there was in Louisiana) didn’t have just one massa—they had two. The first massa was the Man that owned the land you was workin. The second massa was whoever owned the store where you got your goods on credit. Sometimes both a’ them men was the same Man; sometimes it was a different Man.
The Man that owned the land was always wantin you to plant less and less food, and more and more crops he could sell for cash money. In Red River Parish that meant plantin cotton from the doorstep to the edge of the road. That Man wound up bein your massa ’cause seemed like no matter how many bales a’ cotton you turn, you always end up in the hole. The first year me and Thurman was with Uncle James and Aunt Etha, I think we turned two or three bales a’ cotton. The next year, we turned five bales, but we was still in the hole. Didn’t get no money, didn’t get nothin but the privilege of stayin on for the next season to pay off what we owed. I was just a little fella, but I still couldn’t understand how we could work so hard ever year, and ever year end up in the hole.
I always knowed white folks didn’t think much of black folks back then—thought we was mainly lazy and not too bright. But I found out years later they thought black croppers had the extra burden of bein a little bit like boll weevils—ruinous. Someone told me they read where a planter said a crop-per has nothin, wants nothin, expects nothin, don’t try to have nothin, but wastes and destroys everthing.
That planter hadn’t met my uncle James. He worked hard bringin in all that cotton for the Man, and he expected to be paid so he could provide for us. He was also the kind a’ man who would speak his mind. Nobody messed with him—not even the Man. After ’bout three years, Uncle James got tired a’ bein in the hole, and he told the Man he was tired of it and was fixin to move us all to a big plantation where he heard he could get a better deal. I reckon the Man didn’t argue much or worry ’bout what Uncle James owed, ’cause he never did come after us.
The plantation where we moved stretched wide and deep, field after field stitched off with rows a’ pecan trees. And ever one a’ them fields was dedicated to King Cotton. First year we got there, the cotton flowers was just abloomin, and I remember seein rows and rows, acres and acres, of red and white flowers marchin off to meet the blue sky in ever direction.
The Man at that plantation hired on Uncle James and Aunt Etha to pick cotton and also do a little more croppin. Big Mama’s sister, my great-aunt, lived there, too. I don’t remember what I used to call her, ’cept Auntie. Maybe that’s ’cause I was scared a’ her and some a’ that mumbo jumbo she did with powders she grinded up from leaves and roots. ’Specially after that time she made it rain.
Uncle James did his plowin with a mule named Ginny. Now, in those days used to be a big argument over which was the better animal, a horse or a mule. I grew up to be a mule man myself. Mules live longer than horses, don’t get sick as much, and don’t complain about a swelterin summer. And you can train up a mule to mind. He turn right when you say “Gee” and left when you say “Haw,” and come when you whistle. That ain’t the case with horses, which act kinda persnickety ’bout doin what they’re told. A mule don’t stomp on your cotton bushes, neither, like a horse do with his big ole clumsy feet. And you don’t need to waste time feedin a mule, neither. Ginny knowed how to get up in the woods and hustle for herself.
When Uncle James got out in the fields with Ginny, Thurman and me would follow along behind the plow. Sometimes we’d get to
horsin around and bouncin dirt clods off each other’s heads. But only when Uncle James wadn’t lookin. When he was lookin, we acted like we was all business, drop-pin cottonseed in the spring and huntin for armyworms in the summer-time. When we was busy and quiet, I thought a lot about Big Mama, and my belly hurt.
Aunt Etha worked right out in the fields with us, too. She was a right purty red-bone woman, tall and gracious. She worked right alongside Uncle James, choppin cotton, scrapin the rows, and pickin, too. But when the sun got high, she gen’lly picked up her skirt and headed back to the house, ’cause she was in charge of the cookin.
You might think in those days that the women did all the cookin, but that wadn’t true. It was just that the women did their cookin in the house, and the men did their cookin in the woods.
Prohibition was gone, but you still couldn’t get no store-bought whiskey in Red River Parish. I’m tellin you, the woods was sproutin corn-liquor stills like toadstools.
A lotta folks think moonshiners was all hillbillies and rednecks sittin on the porch drinkin white lightnin outta Mason jars in the broad daylight. And sometimes that was the truth. Uncle James told me one time about some no-account white cropper he knew that spent mosta his days lyin out in the yard with a jug a’ liquor, wallerin with the pigs and just as happy. Uncle James didn’t think much a’ him.
But right respectable folks was shinin, too. I knowed some colored folks worked on other farms and plantations owned by white men—bankers and such. Wadn’t a one of em wadn’t cookin up some liquor somewhere on his place. The Man had him a still tucked up in the woods so he could make a little sippin whiskey. When I got older, he took me up there a time or two.
“Climb up yonder and let me know if you see anybody comin,” the Man’d say to me, and I’d climb up in a tree and watch for the sheriff.
Anyhow, Aunt Etha did all the cookin at Uncle James’s. Anything we’d kill, she could make a meal out of it—possums, coons, rabbits, it didn’t matter. Possums was a little extra trouble, though, ’cause you got to know how to deal with a possum. First you got to throw him in a fire outside and burn the hair off him. Then you got to scrape him down and put him in a pot and boil him, or maybe put him in a pan by the fire and let him roast with his head still on him. You can’t get the grease out a possum ’less you do that.
Aunt Etha raised us a garden, too, ’cause there wadn’t no such thing as goin down to the Piggly Wiggly. Only store you go to was the Man’s store and that was just for a little salt, pepper, and flour ’cause we never did figure out how to make that. So mostly, whatever we was eatin was comin out of the woods or the ground. Aunt Etha’s garden was fulla good things like field peas, butter beans, onions, sweet taters, and ash taters. I remember the sweet smell when she’d cut up a mess of wild peaches or pears and cook em down with sugar. It was a fine mornin when she rolled out the biscuits and put out the preserves, tastin sticky and sweet, like heaven in the summertime.
We growed our own greens—collards, turnip, and mustard—all simmered down with fatback and a little bit a’ salt, with a great big ole slab of corn bread on the side. We got the cornmeal by takin the corn that we growed down to the little grindin mill over by the Man’s store. The white folks at the store would grind the corn for us and give us the meal, and the Man would put the grindin on our bill. I never did know how much it was exactly.
He gave us our milk for free, though, for takin care of his cows. ’Cept we’d get blamed if one em went dry.
Now Christmas was killin time. Every year, the Man gave us two hogs to raise. We killed em at Christmas and hung em in the smokehouse. I was in charge a’ the smokehouse, and I had to build the fire and keep it goin, which was the best job ’cause I got to sneak me a little piece of meat ever so often.
Aunt Etha used to love to make cracklins, which is somethin you don’t see much of no more. She’d light the fire under a great big cast-iron wash pot and fill it up with slabs of pork fat. Then she’d cook that down till the pot was fulla hot bubblin lard with crispy little curlicues of hard fat floatin on the top. Them was the cracklins, and the smell of em fryin up would cause folks to drop their hoes in the field and follow their noses to the smokin pot like ants to a church picnic. We’d eat em like they was candy and make cracklin corn bread with the scraps.
Them hogs gen’lly lasted us for mosta the year, ’cause we didn’t let nothin go to waste. Now the white folks was kinda picky about which parts a’ the hog they’d eat. Not us. We ate the pig snout and the pig tail and everthing in between—from the rooter to the tooter!
You can’t be wastin’ nothin when that’s all the meat you got to last you for a whole year. Even then, we had to stretch it out some, fillin in with other kinds a’ meat. I guess we’d eat about anything ’cept for a skunk. I drug a skunk in the house one time, and when Aunt Etha saw it she started hollerin, “You get that skunk outta my house, boy!”
Uncle James whupped my tail, but not right then ’cause I stunk too bad. I had to go back down to the creek and wash off that stink with some lye soap, then go back and get my whuppin.
I got my share of whuppins, usually with a switch off a pecan tree. Sometimes, I’d go way down the road past where I was s’posed to go, and talk to a little girl I liked, ’cause I thought that was worth the whuppin when I got back. I got more whuppins for that than anything else.
“The heart of a child is fulla foolishness,” Uncle James’d say with a stern face, quotin the Scriptures. “But the rod of correction will sure ’nough drive it out.”
Sometimes when I’d get in trouble, though, he’d get a little smile in his eye. “I ain’t gon’ whup you this time,” he’d say. “But do that again and I’m gon’ whup you good.” One time I had whuppins stacked up about four high. Uncle James was a good Christian man.
While he took care of our foolishness, Aunt Etha took care of our bodies and souls. Mostly, we never got very sick, but when we did, my auntie sure ’nough had the cure: Somethin she called “cow-lip tea.”
Now cow-lip tea was brown and thin, kinda like the Lipton tea the Man sold at his store, but a durn sight more powerful. Cow-lip tea come from them white toadstools that sprout up outta cow patties. But there’s a secret to makin it: You got to use the toadstools and part of the cow patty, too. That’s where cow-lip tea got its name. “Cow” from the cow patties and “lip” from “Lipton.” Least that’s what Aunt Etha always told me.
The way you make cow-lip tea is you get the toadstools and a little dried cow patty and grind em up in the sifter. You can’t use no fresh green cow patty to make no good tea, ’cause you can’t grind it. So you take that dried patty, and after you get it ground up like fine powder, you put it in a rag and tie a knot on top. Then you add a little honey to a boilin pot and drop that rag in the water till it bubbles up and turns good and brown. Now you got cow-lip tea.
If I was sick, Aunt Etha’d always make me drink a canful.
“All good medicine tastes bad!” she’d say, then put me in the bed under-neath a whole pile a’ covers, no matter whether it was summertime or wintertime. In the mornin, the bed’d be soppin wet and the sheets’d be all yella, but I’d always be healed. I was nearly grown before I figured out what I was drinkin.
6
I spent every summer at Granddaddy and MawMaw’s until 1963, when I enrolled at East Texas State, which at the time was the cheapest college in Texas. By that time, girls, their pursuit, and eventual capture were pretty much the center of my universe. But the little college my family could afford was stocked mainly with farm girls. By contrast, my buddy Scoot Cheney and I had heard that Texas Christian University, ninety miles west in Fort Worth, was slopping over with Rich Girls. And while I’d grown up nearby, I’d never been on the campus.
In our fantasies, Rich Girls would jet around town in dent-free, late-model sports cars, belong to country clubs, and live in houses that didn’t have wheels on them. We were certain they would also be miles better looking than farm girls.
As it turned out, that was pretty close to the truth. But my first encounter with such a delicious creature fell victim to a wardrobe disaster.
My dear mama, Tommye, had always made all our clothes, so when I packed my bags for college, they were full of shirts she had carefully and lovingly sewn from feed sacks. But when I got to East Texas State, I noticed that most of the boys wore khaki pants and madras shirts, the kind made with that natural dye from India. Feed sacks, apparently, were out.
Worried, I called my mama. “Everybody here is dressed different than me. They’re all wearing madras shirts.”
“What’s madras?” she asked.
I fumbled around for an explanation. “Well, it’s kind of like plaid.”
Now, Mama meant well, but to her plaid was plaid. She drove down to Hancock’s Fabric Store and bought several yards of it, and whipped me up a matching shirt-and-shorts set.
In the meantime, Scoot and I landed our first blind dates with TCU girls, a pair of Tri Delta pledges. We were taking them to Amon Carter Stadium to root on the TCU football team, the mighty Horned Frogs, before a sellout home crowd. The friend who fixed us up told me that my date, Karen McDaniel, looked like Natalie Wood.
Well, a date like that called for a new outfit, so on the way in from East Texas State, Scoot and I detoured by my house so I could pick up the one my mama had just finished. She beamed with pride when she handed it over, a pair of longish shorts and a short-sleeved, button-up shirt, both blue with black and green stripes as wide as highway centerlines. I knew it wasn’t madras, but I figured it was better than a feed sack. When I modeled it for Mama, she bragged about how handsome I looked.
