Mississippi Cotton

by Paul H. Yarbrough

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.” She turned and walked the length of the counter to get my Coca-Cola. By the time she got back, the straw-haired lady and the belcher had plopped down on the stools to either side of me.

  “Well, now did ya ever see such a right smart whisker of a boy as this one?” the straw-haired lady said to the waitress.

  “Well, he certainly is a sweet little man. Here’s your Co-Cola, Darlin’. That’ll be a nickel.”

  “What can I get y’all,” she said politely to the other two, offering no smile.

  “Lemme have a cup of coffee, Sweetheart,” Yeah Boy ordered. He roared like she was a half a mile away.

  “Me too, Dearie,” the straw-haired woman said.

  I wanted to watch the pinball machine players so I got up. “Thank you for the Co-Cola.”

  The smile lit up again. “Well, you’re jus’ more than welcome, Darlin’. You come back to see us, ya hear?”

  I stood next to the pinball machine and watched as some teenager and his friend, both about Farley’s age, played it. There was a guy in an Army uniform playing the other machine. I decided to watch the teenager.

  There was an excitement watching the balls bounce, hitting one stob, then another, lights going on and off, sounds like a cash register made: ca-ching, gong, ching, ching. He was really playing great—ca ching, gong, ching, ching, body English, ca-ching, body English, too much—tilt!

  He swore with all the anger of a guy who’d just lost a nickel.

  “Now you just watch your mouth over there!” It was the pretty waitress. “There’re ladies and children in here. If you don’t watch your mouth I’ll have a policeman here in two shakes.”

  The teenager slumped and mumbled, “Yes, ma’am.”

  I backed away and decided to get back on the bus, since the fifteen minutes were almost up. But, mostly, I didn’t want the pretty waitress to think I was friends with the cussing teenager. When I looked back I saw the straw-haired lady in the back of the station closing the door on one of those lockers they have in bus stations.

  Before I got to the door, I heard that familiar sound from the belcher, still at the counter. Everyone else heard it, too.

  “I think your bus is about to leave,” the pretty waitress said to him.

  Yeah Boy and the straw-haired lady got back on the bus behind me and took their same seats. The bus pulled out and made its way through downtown Yazoo City, which wasn’t as big as Jackson but bigger than Flora for sure, and soon we were on Highway 49.

  I had finished my sandwiches before we reached the city limits when I noticed she didn’t have her big round bag. She had a brown grocery sack rolled down from the top. I had been taught that it wasn’t polite to pry, but I didn’t want her to forget something important to her. “Ma’am, did you forget your bag in the bus station?”

  “No, no,” she whispered. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

  Yeah Boy had pulled his hat down over his eyes. In a way I wanted to ask him about the dead guy he had mentioned earlier. But I didn’t. I was afraid she would wake up and shush him again.

  She slept, grunting, snorting like she was having a dream. Somehow the family book my mother had given me had gotten wedged slightly under the straw-haired woman’s butt. She was a little bit wide and I guess when she sat down she sat partially on the book, which was beside me. I had to get it before she smashed it completely. It was just a spiral notebook and wouldn’t survive her load long. I had been admonished to be very careful with it. I very carefully tugged at the edge of it. She gave a quick snort. I pulled some more. Another short snort. Gave a quick yank. It was free.

  Since my companions were asleep I opened it to the middle just to see what my grandmother had written. She had often read some of her writing to Farley and me.

  Our farm was a broadly covered area of green stalks, blanketing the ground for hundreds of acres all around. In a slow-motion explosion, day-by-day, week-by-week, the land revealed the white birth of cotton, the king crop of the Mississippi Delta. There were great vines of honeysuckle on one side of the house. The aroma seemed more noticeable in the open country, too. It occupied your nostrils like a natural perfume; a fragrance of home. Also, large, fifty-year-old sweet gums, magnolias and four giant oaks fortified the house and yard, forming a canopy of shade, from the hot dusty summers. There was no Bermuda grass or St. Augustine, just yard grass, crab grass, lush and green from the rich soil. We cut it with mower and sling blade.

  The house was apropos to the Mayfields and their lives. But it was almost home to all of us. And each of us was in many ways like the other.

  The rooms seemed bare, though wallpapered: browned by age and time and dust and humidity. Various prints of artwork: The Blue Boy; a ship sailing an unknown sea presenting dark sails against a moonlit night; a lake in the mountains somewhere, unknown but to the artist. A clock rested on the mantle in the living room, the hourly chime spilling throughout the house, somehow more wistful after bedtime.

  The ceilings were high, and the furniture was dark mahogany, firm and sturdy and had a look of dominance. Though it could be scarred, it would hold its ground when bumped by an elbow, or a toe without a slipper; though it shared its masculine power with a feminine gentleness: No drink touched its skin absent a coaster.

  The wall along the stairway was festooned with photographs of the Mayfield tree: great and grand uncles and fathers, many deceased; the depictions clearly etched, fading with age. One, a former Confederate soldier, an empty sleeve pinned to his chest.

  I got sleepy as I read. I closed my eyes for just a bit.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Trailways bus had taken us up Highway 49 into the Delta, winding around bends and curves, as the rivers and streams set the course for the highway. As we passed through towns I could see the reflection of the bus in the store windows, a distortion waving up and down like a silver and red ship. The ride from Yazoo City had taken over an hour. Riding the big bus became tiresome as we got closer to Greenville. I still had more than an hour before Cotton City.

  The straw-haired lady and Yeah Boy remained on the bus. He had been asleep since Yazoo City, and she slept on and off. She told me, in one of her awake moments, that she was going to Clarksdale. That wasn’t too far above Cotton City, so I knew she’d be with me until I got off.

  “Greenville, Misissippi,” the driver’s voice squawked over the intercom. “We’ll be here about thirty minutes. Get out if you want and stretch your legs.”

  “Have a couple of belches,” I said under my breath.

  “What’s that, hon?” asked the straw-haired lady.

  “Oh, nothin’,” I said. I didn’t realize she was awake. Her eyes were closed and her head had been on the headrest.

  Yeah Boy didn’t budge. I guessed the medicine bottle must have had some sleeping stuff in it.

  “Are you gonna get off, ma’am?” If she wasn’t, I was gonna have to crawl over her or get her to move.

  “Well, I believe I will. I think I’ll just giv’ this ol’ body some movement. Maybe get the circulation goin’. Whadayathink, Mister Jake?”

  I kind of wished I’d never told her my name, because every once in a while she called me Mister Jake. It would’ve been pretty hard not to tell her my name though, since she’d asked. My parents had always told me to be careful about giving information to strangers, but it was pretty hard not to when trapped on a bus with someone who kept asking.

  “Yes, ma’am. Circulation would be good, I guess.” I waited while she uprooted herself from her seat. She put the brown sack under her arm and shuffled down the aisle with me right behind her. A few others got off, too, but the belcher remained asleep, or unconscious, or whatever he was. I figured the driver would know if he was supposed to get off; or if he was dead.

  I had thought about watching pinball again, but nobody was playing either machine. I thought about trying one nickel, but I was afraid there might be some FBI guy hanging around waiting for me to scrub the
pooch or whatever it was Farley had said. I went to the counter for another Coca-Cola instead.

  Greenville was bigger than Yazoo City. The bus station had a bigger counter, and there were more people milling around. It surprised me that there was nobody playing the pinball machine. There were more of those bus lockers too. I didn’t understand why. I thought lockers were something that you only needed at the Y.M.C.A. to keep clean underwear in and stuff like that.

  The straw-haired lady had already plopped down at the counter. Although I didn’t want to sit next to her, I didn’t want to hurt her feelings and sit a hundred miles away. She already had her coffee and had finished some makings when I walked up. I sat down in time for a great cloud of smoke.

  “And what can I get you, my handsome little man?” said the lady behind the counter.

  They were always saying nice things to me, and I didn’t really mind except I hated feeling cute all the time. “I’ll have a Co-Cola in the bottle, please, ma’am.”

  “One Co-Cola comin’ up.”

  “I believe you drink as many Cokes as I drink coffee.”

  “I guess.” I didn’t know what else to say. I had no way of knowing how much coffee she drank.

  “I must be addicted to this ol’ coffee.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She put about three big spoonfuls of sugar in her cup and began stirring it. My mother and daddy never let me have coffee, so I didn’t know if sugar made it taste better or not. They had started letting Farley have coffee about a year ago, and he put five spoonfuls in the first time. My mother told him that was way too much. She told him he could have two at most, and if he wanted, he could have a little milk or cream in it. My daddy told him that only sissies put milk and sugar in their coffee.

  “Here’s your Co-Cola, Sugar. That’ll be a nickel.”

  I had seven pennies and gave her five. My daddy had always told me not to hold onto anything with Lincoln’s face any longer than you had to. He had told me that if I ever got a five dollar bill, to get change for five ones. George Washington was a fine Southern gentleman. Abraham Lincoln was a skunk.

  “Thank you, Sugar.” She turned and put my Lincoln discards in the cash register.

  “Afternoon, ma’am.” The big deputy sheriff sat down on the other side of the straw-haired lady. At the same time, a Mississippi highway patrolman sat down next to him. The deputy spoke and tipped his cap to her. “Two coffees, Rachel, if ya please,” he said.

  “Two coffees comin’ up.” She turned back and put two cups and saucers down in front of them, then poured. “Y’all find out anymore ‘bout that dead fellow in the river?”

  I froze.

  “Not much. Not much to work with. Just a dead white man. Older fellow.” He reached for the sugar. One teaspoon. “Two colored fellows found him while they were fishin’. He’d been shot twice it looked like.” He glanced at me and stopped talking.

  “Trailways Scenic Cruiser now departing from dock six for Jackson, Magee, Mendenhall, Hattiesburg, Gulfport and Biloxi.”

  The blaring intercom broke my trance. The deputy’s story was as exciting as any I ever read. Except this story was true, and there was a real dead man.

  The straw-haired lady paid less attention to the story than to her coffee, dipping her finger in the cup and stirring it and licking her finger. She didn’t seem to care, or maybe her medicine made her sleepy. But the others at the counter seemed to hang on every word. The waitress stood and listened to the deputy, the coffee pot in her hand, chewing what smelled to me like Dentyne.

  It was different when you heard something coming from a policeman standing right beside you. Someone who knew the real truth instead of your friends in school talking about what they heard somebody say, or what they’d bet had happened. And it was a little scarier listening when you were by yourself instead of with your mother and daddy. I wondered if my cousins in Cotton City had heard about the dead man. I could hardly wait to tell them.

  Another blare: “Trailways Scenic Cruiser leaving in five minutes from dock number two, for Cotton City, Cleveland and Clarksdale. Please board now.”

  “Well, Hon, we better get back on. That old bus’s liable to leave us. You wouldn’t want to walk to Cotton City, would you?” The straw-haired lady pushed her cup away, a giant lipstick smudge on it.

  “No, ma’am, I guess not.”

  “I can tell you one thing—I’m too wore out to walk to Clarksdale.” She laughed.

  “Goodbye, sweetheart. You come see me again, you hear?” The waitress gave me a small wave, and the highway patrolman flipped a two-fingered salute from the bill of his cap.

  The straw-haired lady and I walked through the back exit to the bus docks and were about to climb aboard when we saw Yeah Boy descending the bus steps. The driver waited by the door for passengers to board.

  “Excuse me, sir. Aren’t you continuing?”

  “Better believe it. Jus’ gonna git a coffee here.”

  “I’m sorry but we’re fixin’ to leave, sir.”

  “Leave, I thought we wuz gonna be here half an hour or so?” He had put his rumpled up sport coat on and was rubbing one of his eyes.

  “We’ve been here for jus’ about that now, sir. Now we’re fixin’ to leave.”

  “What? Leave?”

  I think it jus’ then dawned on him that he had slept through the entire layover.

  “Damn!”

  “Excuse me, sir,” the driver said. “But there’s a lady here.”

  Yeah Boy glanced at the straw-haired lady as if he was still asleep. “Oh, well…”

  She gave a broad smile, exposing her familiar teeth again. We got back on the bus. Yeah Boy went back to sleep. At least I knew he wasn’t dead.

  The trip was almost over. I could see the familiar outskirts as the bus approached and slowed, then stopped. The town was the same as I remembered. The sign read: ‘Cotton City, Heart of the Delta, Pop. 909’.

  There was a water tank, painted ‘Cotton City, Home of the Mustangs’; the First Baptist Church; the one and only picture show, the Majestic; a few small businesses; two filling stations; and two grocery stores, though not either as big as a Jitney Jungle. Everything was close to the town square.

  The square was a patch of grass in the middle, big enough to play chase and roughhouse football. There was a line of pecan trees along one side. It had swings for little children, crisscrossing sidewalks, and a gazebo in the middle where old men played checkers all day.

  Dr. Henry had been city champion of the world-class checker championships for about the last twenty years. There was a story that some very old dentist had driven all the way from Shelby to play him. Supposedly the dentist left town crushed, having lost twelve straight games to Dr. Henry. Dr. Henry was ninety-three when he died last year.

  There had only been one man in the county who could come close to matching him—a lawyer named Mr. Bainbridge. But he had died some years before I was born. Shot to death when he got caught cheating at cards in Vicksburg one night, Farley told me.

  He lived in another town in the county, a lawyer who had a bad reputation for not accounting to his clients regarding their bills. This is something that I overheard my daddy and cousin say one time when they didn’t know I was listening. He was a gambler who would try to win money at anything, whether dominoes, cards, checkers or anything you could bet money on.

  Now Dr. Henry wasn’t a gambler but a reliable man of great character, my cousin had said. But when he played checkers, he was fierce. One Saturday afternoon Dr. Henry and Mr. Bainbridge sat down for twenty-one game match where the man who won eleven was the winner. The gazebo had a crowd of over fifty people watching as Dr. Henry took the match, 11-7.

  It was only a week later that Mr. Bainbridge went gambling in Vicksburg. Some say he was trying to recover his checkers losses.

  No passengers got on or off during the brief stop, but the driver dropped off some deliveries. The bus station in Cotton City wasn’t much bigger than the on
e in Flora.

  I thought maybe I should ask the bus driver if I should get my suitcase out, since I would be getting off soon. My mother had said that I should ask him as soon as I got to Cotton City to let me off at Trek Mayfield’s mailbox. But I had forgotten about getting the luggage until I saw him pull out a package. Now he would have to get less than two miles down the road and open that big side compartment again.

  “Excuse me, ma’am.” She didn’t say anything, just grunted some. “Excuse me, ma’am.” I nudged her shoulder and she just grunted some more. Just then the Yeah Boy reached across the aisle and whacked her arm with the back of his hand. A big whack, too. The straw-haired lady lunged forward in her seat like she had been hit with a mallet.

  “Wha—whas goin’—are we there? We in Clarksdale?”

  Yeah Boy looked at me and said, “That cough medicine made her a little drowsy, I imagine.” He stuck his finger inside his shirt and scratched his stomach.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I got to tell the driver something. I’m sorry I got you up,” I said.

  “Oh, don’t you worry a nickel’s worth, hon’. You jus’ go right ahead.” She got up and stood in the aisle rubbing her arm. She gave Yeah Boy a nasty stare.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  I scooted down the steps and was able to get to the driver before he had closed the compartment. “Excuse me, Mr. Riley.” His name was printed on his nametag. “My mother and daddy said to ask you if I could get off at Trek Mayfield’s mailbox just outta town.”

  “Well, I think that’ll be okay, son.”

  “The reason I’m tellin’ you now is because I thought you might want to get my suitcase out now. So you wouldn’t have to do it two times in jus’ a few minutes.”

  “Well, that’s a good idea. I appreciate that, little buddy. Let’s see, you gotta a claim check? You haven’t lost it, have you?”

  I dug down in my pocket and found it among my pocket knife and the change I had gotten from breaking one of my dollar bills. It was pretty crushed and rumpled, but you could still read the numbers.