Mississippi Cotton

by Paul H. Yarbrough

BB laughed big. I was kind of embarrassed being called a city boy, but something in his laugh told me he was going to be my friend, too.

  The subject of the dead guy at the river hadn’t come up. And I figured I’d better not bring it up now. And despite Taylor’s big talk about asking BB as soon as he saw him, Taylor didn’t mention it.

  We had piled back in the truck and Cousin Trek was taking us on the rest of the Sunday afternoon drive. I had met BB and we had gotten set for meeting him in the morning at seven. After seven, Taylor told me, we’d just work “until we were dead.”

  I wasn’t sure what part of the county we were driving through. Cousin Trek had made too many turns for me to keep track. I was just happy being in the open bed of the truck joking and fooling around with Taylor and Casey.

  I wanted to talk more about Looty, and I wondered what else there was to know. After we found the dead snake yesterday, Taylor and Casey told me about him. Taylor said he was kind of a crazy man who lived by himself. His house was not far from theirs, and his grandparents had once had a lot of land and a lot of money. They had lost most of their money a long time ago, and no one seemed to know much about Looty’s momma or daddy, or whatever became of them. He lived with his grandmother from the time he was about five until a few years ago, when she died.

  That’s when the story got a little stranger. Taylor said he had it on good authority that after Looty’s grandmother had died, Looty cremated her in the bar-b-que pit. It was a big brick one, and certainly could handle a little old lady about a hundred years old, or whatever she was. Casey swore that Looty kept her ashes in a mayonnaise jar on the mantle in the living room.

  Once Looty started living alone, he started using his .22 rifle to shoot crows and blue jays that got in the vegetable garden. His grandmother never would let him use it, even after he was grown. But after she died, he got to be such a good shot that he had to spend ninety days on the county farm for shooting somebody’s chickens. While Looty was on the county farm, Cousin Carol and Cousin Trek helped take care of his place. They felt sorry for him.

  I scooted over next to Taylor so he could hear. “I said, how come you never told me and Farley about Looty before?” Casey scooted over next to me so he didn’t miss anything.

  “Well, we aren’t supposed to talk about him much. Daddy says he’s jus’ an unfortunate guy, and we were too little to be swappin’ stories anyway. But when we found that snake shot, Casey jus’ shot his mouth off.”

  “Well, I still say it’s a good guess,” Casey said.

  I missed some of what Taylor said and he had to say it again. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything about the snake to Cousin Trek,” I said.

  “Naaa, it’s okay. We jus’ aren’t supposed to be blabbin’ lots of stuff about him. I mean about Looty. But I guess it’s okay now. We were jus’ kids when that rule was first passed,” Taylor said.

  “Did your momma and daddy see the ashes in the mayonnaise jar when they went inside the house? You know, when he was in jail?”

  “Oh, yeah. But Daddy said that it was a jar full of sand most prob’ly.”

  Cousin Trek turned the truck for downtown. “I’ll bet Daddy’s gonna buy us a Co-Cola,” Taylor said.

  Casey mumbled something.

  “What?” Taylor asked him.

  “I said, I don’t think it is.”

  “Is what?”

  “Just sand.”

  CHAPTER 8

  The next morning came quick. It started getting daylight early, and I wasn’t ready to start anything, even at twenty cents an hour. I thought maybe no one would notice me tucked away on the top bunk buried under the sheet. Maybe they’d think I was dead and leave me alone until my parents came. Maybe they’d just forget I was here. I would have rather painted the state capitol building than get up.

  “Let’s go, boys,” called Cousin Carol. “Time to get to work.” The gentle voice that I had heard all weekend had a sharp edge. Maybe it’s just that anybody’s voice would have a sharp edge at five-thirty in the morning.

  We had stayed up late last night talking about BB and Looty, and us going to Clarksdale on Wednesday. I don’t know what time it was when I finally fell asleep, but it was late. I could tell that now.

  I swung my legs over the edge and was greeted by the tickling fingers of Taylor. “Stop it, you idiot!”

  “Now stop that, Taylor,” Cousin Carol said. “You’re just going to start something.”

  Casey walked into Taylor’s room. He was rubbing his eyes. “It can’t be time to get up yet. I’m sure this is a dream. I’m goin’ back to bed.”

  Cousin Carol grabbed him by his ear and pulled him back. “Do I sound like a dream?”

  “Ow, ow, ow! It sure don’t feel like one.”

  “Doesn’t.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “No, it was not.”

  “I mean it’s what I meant to say.”

  “I think tonight maybe y’all won’t stay up half the night talking.” She glared at all of us. “Will you?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Well, y’all wash the sleep out and hurry on downstairs. Breakfast is almost ready.”

  We dressed and made our way downstairs. Cousin Carol was busy in the kitchen. Cousin Trek was having a cup of coffee and whistling his favorite tune, The Bonnie Blue Flag. I looked out of the kitchen window; it looked like the pink eastern sky was about to build into another hot day.

  “Have a seat, Mr. Jake,” Cousin Trek said. “You too, boys.” Casey was still rubbing his eyes.

  A large glass of milk and a glass of orange juice marked our places at the round table, a red and white checkered tablecloth draping off around the edge about six inches. The tablecloth was on for every meal but seemed to stand out more at breakfast for some reason.

  Breakfast was eggs, toast, bacon, grits with lots of butter, plenty of milk and orange juice. The sustenance began to bring us back to life. Back from the peace of deep sleep and soft beds—just in time for Mr. Hightower.

  He drove up about six-thirty. He was like family, the way he knocked on the screen door and with a quick “Good mornin’,” walked right in.

  “Good morning, Earl,” Cousin Carol said. “Pour yourself a cup and sit down.”

  Earl put his brown hat in the chair next to him. In his work clothes, he looked tanned and strong—a real cotton farmer. His blue cotton shirt sleeves rolled up revealed big hairy forearms, with hard-looking muscle that came from farm work. He had a gentle way about him, but a mannerism that made you know he was definitely no softy. One of his big hands swept around the cup, not using the crook, and took a big swallow. Black. No sissy coffee for Earl Hightower.

  “BB is gonna meet us at seven over on that twenty acres on the far side. That right, Trek?”

  “Yep. We saw him yesterday afternoon. Drove by there. He’ll be there at seven. Prob’ly already there.”

  Cousin Carol poured some milk out of the bottle into my empty glass. She refilled Casey’s and Taylor’s. “Want some eggs, Earl?”

  “No thanks, Carol. I ate an hour ago.” He winked at Casey. “I had two rattlesnakes and a panther’s haunch. I’m full and ready to work. Ready to get burned up in this hot Delta sun of ours.”

  Casey yawned. I could tell he had heard these kinds of stories before. I wished Mr. Hightower had left out the part about the hot Delta sun.

  “I think there’ll be enough to do for these young fellows for most of the day in that twenty acres alone. If it’s not, I’ve got some other things, if it’s alright with you, Trek.”

  “Yeah, that’ll be fine. They’re all ready to go,” Cousin Trek said. Casey yawned again. Cousin Trek picked up the newspaper.

  “What’d the Browns do?” Mr. Hightower asked.

  “They lost. Nine to one.”

  “Maybe you ought to sign up with them, Earl,” Cousin Carol said.

  “Oh, yeah. Ya think so?”

  Probably the favorite baseball team in Mississippi next t
o the Jackson Senators was the St. Louis Cardinals. But some followed the pitiful St. Louis Browns, the American League team in St. Louis. The Cardinals mostly had pretty good teams, but the Browns stunk up the place.

  She poured some more coffee in his cup. “Anybody that eats rattlesnakes and panthers for breakfast oughta be able to hit a curveball.”

  We had to get all the equipment into Mr. Hightower’s pickup. Since he rented from Cousin Trek, who supplied the hardware, Earl provided the labor. Mr. Hightower did use his own truck, but then most everybody did. We loaded hoes, rakes, shovels and a big corrugated tin barrel of water. It had a single dipper hooked to a small chain clipped to the top. That made me a little nervous, not having your own cup. I hoped the hot Delta sun would kill the cooties.

  “Want ‘em back here at noon to eat?” Mr. Hightower asked. He had just slammed the hood on his truck. I think he was checking his oil because I saw him wipe something with a piece of paper.

  “No, I gave them some sandwiches. Just find them a shady spot to eat. If they don’t die, then have them back in time for supper.”

  After we loaded the truck, the three of us piled in the back. I was wearing my worn blue jeans, white tee shirt and baseball cap. Casey and Taylor had their denim overalls, no shirts, and straw hats. It would be hot. It would be dirty. But I would get almost two dollars when the day was over.

  All Farley would get would be to drive around town with his friends and talk about Dixie Daniels and her progressive bosoms. I almost felt sorry for him.

  My back was about to break and it wasn’t even ten. In order to hoe you had to bend, and staying in a bent position while moving nothing but your arms back and forth and shuffling your feet along the long rows left you with a backache. The sweatband on my baseball cap had absorbed all it could, and the salt was being carried by the sweat upward around the sides and out to the bill.

  If a cow got near me she would lick my head off. I waited as long as I could, to avoid the water can, the one with the common dipper. But I finally surrendered after over two hours and sucked down two dippers, scoured with everybody else’s spit and cooties.

  BB was in fact the relentless worker Cousin Trek had talked about. I believe behind a mule he could have turned more ground than a tractor driven by a stock car driver. Taylor and Casey worked hard, too. They sweated and got dirty and drank spit-water, but they didn’t seem as worn as I did. Casey was two years younger than me but fifteen yards ahead of me in his row, and I was glad Cousin Trek was paying me by the hour instead of by the yard. As I watched my country cousins, I knew why Farley had had such a fight on his hands with that little guy a couple of years ago.

  “Well, Mr. Jake, I can tell you ain’t a lazy boy.” BB smiled that big bright smile I had seen yesterday. “Your momma and daddy make you work at home, I can tell.” He hoed a couple of shallow weeds in my row that I had missed. “Don’t worry if you stay a little behind. This work in the fields is as hard a work as there is. And this Mississippi cotton makes you work hardest. That’s one reason it’s the best cotton—it’s the hardest to get. But the best kind of work is hard work. And the best crop’s the one hardest to get.”

  I don’t know if what he said was a riddle, or if I was just too tired and dizzy to understand.

  I took my cap off and ran my hands through my hair just to shake off the sweat. BB’s talking to me gave me a chance to straighten my back, take a break. Maybe he knew that. “I never heard that—that hard work is the best work. I thought you only worked hard so someday you didn’t have to work hard.”

  BB pulled out a red and white bandana from his back pocket and wiped his face. He smiled that big black and white smile again.

  “Well, lots of folks think that I reckon. But I think they’re wrong. Yes, I do. I think they’re wrong.”

  He looked at the sun, holding his head at a sharp angle, and I don’t think he even blinked. The sweat reappeared almost as soon as he had wiped it. He seemed strange to me in a way, but it was like he had a special wisdom, too. Sort of like my daddy or Cousin Trek. It was kind of like he knew just what to say at the right time. I wondered why he had joined the army and gone off to war when he had had a chance to go to college and play football.

  “Well, we’ll be eatin’ dinner in a bit. You’ll get your second wind by then.”

  Second wind, I thought. Any wind would be nice.

  “Hey look!” Taylor yelled across the long rows. “A king snake. Who wants him?”

  “You can have him for dinner,” BB yelled back. “If he don’t have you.” He laughed. “Don’t forget it’s August. Only time you gotta be careful of king snakes.”

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  “Not sure,” BB said. “Just in August, for some reason they’ll latch onto you and squeeze you, they say.”

  I would have taken my shirt off, but it was so wet that it felt cool clinging to my body, like standing in front of a fan after getting out of the tub. I felt almost cold in the shade by comparison to the fields, and nearly five hours of dust settling on me had turned to mud. I was just glad to sit down for a while; out of the sun; away from bugs; away from spiders; away from snakes; and away from the cotton.

  We had plopped down in front of a large shade tree close to the road, and filled the jelly glasses from the thermos of iced tea Cousin Carol had put in Taylor’s bag. As soon as I poured mine I gulped it down before I even looked to see what kind of sandwiches I had.

  In the distance I saw the old pickup that had been parked at BB’s house yesterday. It was approaching at a pace that made it look hot and tired, struggling with its own life. A plume of white smoke trailed from the exhaust. The rattles made distinct sounds, like a jazz percussion on the rough road. Smoke, Farley had told me, was a sign that a car was burning oil. Ben Samuels pulled off the road and onto the grassy shoulder.

  “Hey, Daddy. What’re are you doin’ here? I thought you’d be workin’ all day at home.”

  Ben walked up slowly, limping. Yesterday when I had met him I guessed he was about sixty something, although I hadn’t noticed a limp. I figured it was one of those old people things I had heard my mother and daddy talk about, like arthritis or lumbago or something. Old people tended to limp and get bent with age. It was kind of sad. Both Ben and his son had to limp around the fields.

  “Well, I figured you boys would like summin’ with yo dinner—summin’ cool and sweet.”

  I knew before he said it—watermelon. Sugar cane and watermelon both were sweet, but only watermelon was cool and sweet, because you could keep it iced down.

  “Julius, I’ll let you tote it outta the truck. Been keepin’ it in a wash bucket of ice water.”

  Taylor and Casey and I lay back against the trunk and relaxed like a trio of hoboes traveling through the county. I was tired, but happy as a pig in slop that I had made about a dollar so far. I began to struggle with a tuna fish sandwich, pulling at the corner of it with my teeth, which were exhausted just like the rest of me. I couldn’t understand how even your teeth could get tired. Another slug of iced tea. It was a nice dinnertime. Iced tea from my own glass and now a piece of watermelon—my own germs, my own cooties. And shade.

  “Looka here, boys,” BB said. “Cold watermelon.” He had it hoisted on his shoulder and carried it as effortlessly as if it were a jar of honey. He put it down beside Ben who had brought a lunch pail from his truck, then took a seat in the shade.

  “Thanks,” we all said.

  “Well, you boys are mighty welcome. You deserve it, workin’ hard as y’all have.” He opened his lunch pail and pulled out a hard-boiled egg. He took out a small salt shaker, sprinkled then chomped more than half the egg in one bite. “Is Mr. Earl comin’ by ‘fore quittin’ time?”

  “He might, Daddy,” BB said. “Said he was goin’ into town, then he was goin’ to check on his field hands over on that place down across the road. What you need him for?”

  “Well, the sheriff come by wantin’ to ask some questions ‘bout th
at man o’er at the river.”

  I couldn’t help asking, “Are you talkin’ about that dead man they found in Greenville?”

  Ben looked surprised. He finished his egg and took out his pocket knife and began to scrape the bowl of his pipe.

  “Why, Mr. Jake, whadda you know ‘bout dat bidness?” He chuckled, a light kind of curious laughter that made me laugh a little bit too, though I wasn’t sure why.

  Taylor and Casey looked at me. They wanted to know too if it had been Ben, and was the “Julius” I had heard about at the bus station our BB?

  Cousin Trek and Cousin Carol hadn’t said anything about the dead man since I got to their house Friday. I didn’t know if they even knew about it, but they were just like my mother and daddy when it came to stuff like that. They had probably read about it in the paper or somebody had told them, but it just wasn’t the thing to do, talk about such things in front of us boys.

  “I jus’ heard some deputy or somebody talkin’ about it. The waitress had asked out loud about it. I jus’ heard them talkin’.”

  BB had taken a large butcher knife from Ben’s lunch pail. He cut the watermelon right down the middle then cut the two halves in half. It was dark red, ripe red, and sweet.

  “Well, we jus’ found dis man in the river. He was dead. Dat’s all we really know. He was dead. An’ you really couldn’t tell who he was. Looked like the fish’d been gnawin’ on him a little, maybe,” Ben said.

  He took a box of wooden matches from his overalls and struck one. He let the flame burn almost down to his fingers—like his thoughts had momentarily drifted—before he rested it in the bowl and puffed up a cloud of sweet, cherry-smelling smoke.

  “Daddy, now don’t scare these boys,” BB said.

  “Aw, dey gonna hear ‘bout it sometime. It’s all over da county by now.” He turned toward BB. “Don’t ya think?”

  “Well, what’s Mr. Hightower got to do with it?” Casey asked.

  Taylor slapped him on top of the head with two fingers. “Shut up, dope. That’s none of your business.” The truth was, Taylor probably wanted to know as bad as Casey did, as bad as I did.