Mississippi Cotton

by Paul H. Yarbrough

  We were lying on the grass close to the gazebo where a low-key checker game was lingering. We had our tee shirts off and some of the other boys were barefooted, those with country-tough feet. I had sissy city feet and kept my Keds on. We were just yakking and talking about most anything that came up, but mostly about baseball.

  Casey was busy with one of his talents that he was sure would land him in Hollywood one day. Anyone worth his salt could put his hand under his armpit and by pumping his arm up and down make a sound that was a cross between a duck’s quack and a frog croaking. But Casey could make it sound like Swanee River. He was really proud of it. One of the boys, called Nick, said he wanted to be Casey’s agent. He didn’t want Casey’s talent wasted on something as minor-league as Hollywood; he swore he could get him onstage at the Grand Old Opry in Nashville.

  But Nick said Casey needed to add some more tunes to his repertoire. Nick had suggested How Much is That Doggy in the Window and maybe White Christmas. So far, Swanee River was all Casey had been able to play. His prospects for the Grand Old Opry didn’t look good to me.

  “When is your brother comin’ up?” someone asked me.

  “Maybe this weekend, I think.”

  “Your parents comin, too?”

  “Yeah.”

  Most everyone up here knew Farley and me, and a lot of them knew he had his driver’s license. A guy was viewed different once he got his driver’s license. He became a man-of-the-world, licensed not just to drive but to live life on the wild side—burning rubber, spinning out on gravel roads. Some even used their new freedom to dodge watchful eyes and smoke cigarettes. A driver’s license was the gateway to life.

  So when they asked if my parents were coming, the question they were really asking was, “Is Farley coming alone in the car?”

  “Son of a dirty dog!” One of the checker players shouted a modified exclamation. It was not the traditional son-of phrase since children were present. He had slammed his fist on the table and upset the checkers. Baseball’s Game of the Day on the Mutual Broadcasting System was broadcasting the Dodgers/Cardinals game. There was a socket in the light fixture of the gazebo and someone had plugged in a radio. Pee Wee Reese had just knocked in the lead run and though Reese was a good Southern gentleman, it was said around the gazebo, from Kentucky, he was playing for the enemy—the Brooklyn Dodgers.

  “Now you did that jus’ cause you wuz losing, you redneck low-life,” his partner said.

  “I did not, and anyway I wuz winnin’,” the redneck low-life replied.

  The two men playing were not among the checker greats of Cotton City. They were a couple of unknowns and unranked, as far as I knew. If they were of any great skill, there would be several others watching. Everybody was paying more attention to the ball game than to the checker game of these two. But to them it was an important game, I suppose. They both got up and walked to the café, perhaps to try dominoes but more likely for coffee. If they weren’t great at checkers, they had better stay away from a money game. One of them had unplugged the radio and put it under his arm, so the game was over as far as we were concerned. I heard later that Brooklyn lost. Musial hit a home run in the bottom of the ninth.

  Any commotion in Cotton City was easy to spot. And when a sheriff’s car and a highway patrol car pulled up in front of the jail, everyone stirred. Even baseball and an exciting pennant race couldn’t keep our minds off what we were thinking.

  We had been so involved in the checker game, and then the police cars, that the crash of thunder scared us. We turned and looked behind us. Hugh black clouds were moving in on Cotton City.

  It had not rained in two weeks, and that morning it looked as if the drought would continue. But by the middle of the afternoon the dark warning clouds had built and bubbled upward. They were caused, my daddy had once told me, by intense heat and humidity, and these were about to explode. An afternoon blackness had covered the county, and car lights were being turned on.

  We ran from the gazebo toward our bikes. Big drops were falling. We needed to get home before getting drenched. Lighting flashed, followed soon by a crash of thunder, indicating the strikes were close. Riding a bike was dangerous in thunderstorms; a boy in school was killed by lightning when he was riding his bike. I wanted to get home before we got killed. It seemed everyone else feared tornadoes, but I feared lightning.

  By the time we reached the highway, the clouds were blacker and the rain came down in sheets. Our mission was just to get home alive. We were soaked. I pedaled as hard as I could, with the storm closing around us, but my thoughts kept going back to the commotion at the jail. Was Looty in more trouble? Were they fixing to take him to the county jail? Or maybe to Parchman?

  We reached the gravel road that led to the house. The water had turned the surface into a slick, slimy, muddy runway. The drainage ditch filled, and streams of brown water flowed down both sides of the road. Each pump of the pedals squished water through the laces of my Keds. Casey’s bike didn’t have fenders, so the mud spun off the rear tire and sprayed his back, turning the back of his blue overalls brown.

  Cousin Carol was on the front porch when we raced into the yard. She shook her head, her hands on her hips, frowning at our appearance. “Why didn’t y’all leave before it started to rain?”

  Taylor gave the traditional answer. “We forgot.”

  That was never a great answer, but it was the only one you had. It wasn’t like we could say: “We didn’t want to.”

  “Now y’all are completely soaked. I just don’t know,” she said.

  Big Trek came out on the porch to view the scene. “Ahh, rain’ll make ‘em grow.”

  “Well, mud won’t make them grow,” Cousin Carol said. “Would you just look at this one?” This one was Casey. I think since he was born, Casey always seemed to get the dirtiest when we played, or the most food on his shirt when we ate, or the most bad things to his clothes whatever we did. Over the years Casey probably thought This One was on his birth certificate.

  Without fenders on his bike, so much mud spun over him that he looked like a wet gingerbread man. Even his hair had mud in it.

  She made us take our clothes off on the porch while she went inside for dry ones. Standing on the porch in our underwear was a great opportunity to moon each another. We were laughing and giggling until we heard Cousin Carol call from upstairs, “Y’all better not be doing what I think you’re doing. If I catch somebody, he’s going to be in big trouble.”

  “We’re not,” Taylor yelled. He put his hand over his mouth to keep from laughing.

  Big Trek walked back out onto the porch. He threw a towel at each of us then sat down in the porch swing. “Did you see your daddy downtown, Taylor?”

  “No, sir. We were just listening to the ballgame and sittin’ around at the square.”

  “We saw the sheriff and the highway patrol at the sheriff’s office,” Casey said.

  “Oh, yeah? What were they doin’ there, do ya s’pose?”

  “Don’t know. They pulled up jus’ before the storm started.”

  Big Trek pulled out his old briar pipe. It had a curved stem and a big bowl. It smelled wonderful. When he smoked it, it seemed as if he were contemplating all the problems over all time; smoking, moving in the swing, staring out across his beloved land. And maybe he did have solutions to all the problems, for all I knew.

  He said, “Well, I hope your daddy didn’t get stuck somewhere.” He reached over to the open window and turned on the radio, turning the knob to get a clear station. The static from the thunderstorm was bad. “Wonder if this storm is just local or something movin’ in from the west. Prob’ly just a local wash. That’s what I think. But we sure need it. Cotton’s gonna get stunted if it don’t get some moisture.”

  A clap of thunder rocked the house, indicating something close-by had been hit—probably a tree just down the road.

  “Good grief!” Taylor said. “That sounded like a bomb.” He looked through the screen, through the wall of r
ain. “Well, Big Trek, whadayathink would happen if lightnin’ hit the windmill? You think it would kill us on the porch?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” He wasn’t paying attention, still fiddling with the radio. “Maybe, prob’ly not.”

  Cousin Carol stepped onto the porch, an armful of clothes in her arms. “Here, put these on.”

  “Why can’t we just play in the rain in our underwear?” Casey asked.

  “Because there’s too much lightning. You might get killed. And if you get killed, who’d Earl Hightower have to hoe cotton?” She smiled. He smiled back. “Besides, playing in your underwear is crude. Now get these clothes on.”

  “I was born to be crude,” Casey said.

  “You’re going to wish you were never born if you don’t do what I say.”

  “The weather man jus’ said there’re thunderstorms all o’er northwest Mississippi and part of Arkansas,” Big Trek said. “Says it must be some stuff comin’ in from the west. Lots of buildup jus’ for one afternoon. I still say it’s local. Damn weathermen don’t know what they’re talkin’ about most of the time. I hope Trek gets on back soon.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be along soon,” Cousin Carol said. “And I wish you wouldn’t cuss in front of these boys.”

  She didn’t sound worried. But she probably was. If she wasn’t she probably would’ve said a little bit more about the cussing. It had always seemed to me most mothers worried about things like danger. Next to cussing it got you their biggest lecture. My mother had said to either Farley or me at least a million times, ‘you had me worried to death’. She had never said it to my daddy, at least not where I could hear, but she just got a worried look when he was late from a trip and it was raining or something.

  “Well, I guess so,” Big Trek said. His eyes roved the dark sky. He took his pipe out of his mouth and looked at it like he was going to talk to it. It had gone out. “And damn is in the Bible.”

  Cousin Carol didn’t reply. She just set her teeth on her lower lip and shook her head then looked at the sky.

  I remembered all the talk I had heard over the years about the Great Flood of 1927 and how it had changed people’s lives in the same way it had changed the land itself—washing and scouring and moving and changing large areas and volumes of land and people. “Big Trek, do you think there is going to be a big flood like way back in 1927?”

  “You mean from this little storm? Naa. This is just a little rain. In 1927 it rained for weeks and weeks. And it was raining all over the country, North and South. The rivers like the Missouri and the Yazoo all were filling up. And it wasn’t just us here in Mississippi that got flooded. Arkansas got the worst. And Louisiana and Tennessee. All the way up to Illinois. And down the river below Memphis the river spread out as far as sixty miles. It was in the spring when it always rains more anyway. Why they had to dynamite some levees down in Louisiana to save New Orleans, they said. Naw, this is just a little rain, boys. Won’t be any widespread floodin’ today.” He banged on the radio a couple more times trying to get the static out then turned it off. He relit his pipe.

  The three of us watched the rain. It was so hard that if you’d run to the windmill and back as fast as you could, you’d still get soaked. The wind was passing to the southeast. Big Trek smoked his pipe and was silent after he turned off the radio. I thought maybe he was really worried about Cousin Trek and just didn’t want to say it. So when he decided to tell one of his stories, I was sure it was just to get our minds off Cousin Trek.

  The story was about two colored people who were killed by a panther back when Big Trek was a young boy, around 1900. The Delta was still largely undeveloped farmland, and there was still a lot of unclaimed swamp and woodlands. Alligators, bears, wild hogs, even panthers still roamed.

  One night when he was fourteen, Big Trek said, he was riding home with his younger brother on an old mare. Apart from the crickets and frogs the air was still and soundless. A sudden distant, high-pitched scream jolted him and shocked his blood. I got goose bumps. Casey scooted between Taylor and me.

  Big Trek said the screams came from close to the swamp, and he was so frightened he began kicking the old mare on her sides as hard as he could, trying to get away from the swamp. But her age and a lifetime of work had left her with a slow gait, no matter how hard she was kicked. Big Trek said it was the longest horseback ride he had ever made.

  When they got home he told his daddy about the screams. His daddy told them to go to bed. His daddy walked outside and held up a lantern looking as far away as the light would stretch into the darkness. But he never went beyond the porch. Big Trek said that after he and his brother were sent to bed the light in the front room burned brightly that night. His mother and daddy stayed up into the early hours talking about something. But he never learned what they talked about.

  The next day two colored sharecroppers had been found dead, mutilated almost beyond recognition. The man was on the porch with his throat torn away; parts of his wife had been dragged or carried to the edge of the field where it met the woods. No man could have done this, the sheriff had said.

  Also, men didn’t make claw marks or leave panther tracks. The thought of a wild panther about kept Big Trek and his brother close to the house for a long time.

  Throughout the county there was a mild panic that year. Men kept their shotguns loaded with buckshot or slugs close to the front door. As a rule, wild animals don’t attack humans unless the animals’ young are threatened or they have rabies. An animal attacking someone on the front porch put everyone on alert.

  Water stood in large pools around the house. We stared into the yard, absorbing Big Trek’s tale.

  “Now Big Trek, you shouldn’t be telling these boys horrible old stories like that. They’re too young.” Cousin Carol had come back just as he finished the story.

  “Aww, they’re old enough. And anyway, it’s a true story. They’re gonna hear ‘bout it someday anyhow. It’s a growin’ story.” He grinned. “Like rain, ya know?”

  “Just the same, I don’t think it’s something appropriate for them to hear. They don’t have to grow up all the way right now.”

  Big Trek puffed and blew a smoke ring. He didn’t reply.

  Cousin Carol sat down next to him in the swing. She was wiping her hands with a dish rag; a troubled look covered her normal smile. “But the reason I came out here was to tell y’all that the phone is out of order. I tried to call down to the feed store to see if Trek was there, but it’s dead. Must have something to do with the storm.”

  She walked back inside. I think she just told us to reassure us that there was a reason Cousin Trek hadn’t called. Or maybe she just wanted to interrupt the story.

  “Did you know the colored people, Big Trek? I mean the ones who got killed?”

  “They were Ben Samuels’ momma and daddy,” he replied, a huge cloud of smoke rising up around his face. His stare focused across the open, soaked cotton fields.

  The three of us looked at one another—Ben Samuels’ parents.

  After a minute I asked, “Did they ever get the panther, Big Trek?”

  “No.”

  Taylor and Casey and I had started playing Chinese Checkers, since we couldn’t go out. The rain was steady. Big Trek had remained in the swing smoking his pipe, staring down the road, which looked more like a creek now. Cousin Carol was inside and occasionally came out onto the porch to look down the road herself.

  “Look!” said Casey. “I see Daddy’s truck. There he comes.”

  We pushed our faces against the screen, trying to see through the rain. Cousin Trek’s truck slid down the road. The tires seemed like wet feet in the tub, sliding to one side then the other. The windshield wipers swished back and forth trying to keep ahead of the rain. The headlights made it seem like he was driving faster than usual.

  “Looks like he’s home, Carol,” Big Trek called into the house. But she had already come out and was waving at the truck.

  Cousin Trek wore one of th
ose yellow raincoats with a hood that made him look like a sailor on a ship’s storm deck. It was the same kind we always had to wear on rainy days at school. Farley says they make you look like a loon, like a giant egg yolk with legs.

  As soon as Cousin Trek got to the porch he took it off and shook it, then hung it and his hat on a hook by the screen door. He didn’t seem to have his joking way that he always had. He looked at us without saying a word, beads of water ran down his face.

  “Is something wrong? I was kind of worried. This is a bad storm,” said Cousin Carol.

  “Looty’s gone. He broke out, I guess you’d say.”

  “What?” Big Trek asked. “Whadaya mean he broke out? I didn’t know he was in. You mean he was arrested? I thought they had jus’ been talkin’ to him. Just holding him down there for questions.”

  Casey and Taylor and I sat in silence. We were scared that if we said anything we would be told to leave. Cousin Carol didn’t speak either.

  “He walked out the back door. He wasn’t locked up or anything and at some point everyone looked around, and he was gone,” Cousin Trek said.

  A crash of thunder shook the house and we jerked. Big Trek opened the screen door and banged his pipe on the door sash. No one spoke. I wondered if everybody else was thinking the same thing—was Looty really a murderer?

  CHAPTER 17

  I awakened to Taylor nudging me, whispering. “Shhhh. Be quiet. Don’t wanna wake up everybody.”

  It was still dark. The rain must have stopped, since I no longer heard the torrents that had worked like music, putting me to sleep. I had been sleeping so soundly that it still felt like a dream even though I was awake. “Wha..? Whadaya want?”

  “Shhh. Something’s goin’ on. Somebody came to the house after we came to bed. It was around midnight. I heard them talkin’ downstairs. Their talkin’ waked me up.”