by James Still
Blunt was waiting at the door to lead me to the fields, along with Ernest and the Knuckleheads. When Anson brought me out he hesitated. “Maybe the boy ought to stay at the house. He's already had a long day,” he said.
“No longer than the rest of us,” Ernest said. He was not relinquishing his mandate readily. “Young fellows can take it better than us older ones. They bounce back quicker.”
The walk sliced through the fields of barely opened cotton to a farther field a half mile distant where the plants had a week's advance growth. Ahead we saw the pickers, some dozen of them, snatching at the bolls. Most of them were part of Blunt's Indian-Mexican family, the rest, other hired hands. Their arms worked like pistons. The most adept could pick up to four hundred pounds a day.
We were to work apart from this crowd, who busied the rows like a swarm of bees feeding on clover. We chose a set of rows and began. For me, it was as if I'd never left the business; with the others it was an awkwardness gradually overcome. To pick a boll of cotton would seem not to be difficult, as it is not. The point is cotton weighs like air, next to nothing, and pays a cent a pound, so elbows must fly. And there is an art to snatching the locks without puncturing the cuticles of your fingers on the dry sharp point of the boll. I had acquired this art. Cadillac and Rance and Ernest had bleeding fingers within a half hour. And there was the sun beating down even at five in the evening, apparently refusing to set, and there was the headache breeze fanning across the land. That half hour convinced the three of them that our stay at Chinaberry had to be short, that we should move on as soon as we could raise a stake of money enough for grub and gasoline. And to replace all four tires, which were slick as a pool ball. The transmission had also been acting up.
The pickers strode back and forth to the wagon, where the waiting baskets were filled with cotton, then weighed and dumped. The three of us together—the Knuckleheads and I— had not yet filled a single basket. I was performing with the best of them, if not better, but still we hadn't gathered much.
We saw Anson approaching at a distance on his saddle horse, Blue. Blue was a roan, her name at odds with her coat. The identifying number at the auction where she was purchased had been stamped in azure paint on her rump.
On a Texas afternoon with the air like glass, you can see farther than any place earthly, and the man and his horse appeared long before they drew up at the wagon.
Anson set a glass jug—full of lemonade and wrapped in burlap—on the wagon and hitched Blue to the wagon wheel. He strode out to us, walking beside me and dropping cotton into my sack.
The three of us had not a dry thread on us and the water was dripping from our noses. Anson's face was dry as a hat. Not a bead of sweat dampened his brow.
Anson sauntered away down the row, an imposing silhouette against the white sky.
“Don't that man ever sweat?” Rance whispered.
In the field, a jackrabbit sprang up and hopped away, in not too much of a hurry.
“Gosh dog!” the Knuckleheads said as one.
Being only familiar with the cottontails back home in Alabama, we were astounded. It was as if a mouse had become as large as a cat.
“Them ears!” said one.
“Big as a calf!” said the other.
Ernest was less impressed. The sun beating down and the prospect of the endless rows of cotton before us would have dampened any elation. Lifting his hat, he rubbed a hand across his head back to front where the hair was thinning, and the gathered sweat came off in a shower.
“If you Knuckleheads don't get to work, you'll be eating jack-rabbits,” Ernest said. We were so stuffed with food from Anson's table that it made the work all the more laborious. To the right of us, the pickers were cleaning up the cotton, working like machines, elbows flying, hands snatching.
I got drowsy and yearned to take a nap. The heat was like a curtain we moved through, our motions dulled and heavy.
My drowsiness grew.
“You're getting too hot,” Anson said, appearing beside me as if out of the blue. “Let's go to the wagon, get you a drink of lemonade, rest awhile.”
I followed. He poured me the cold lemonade. The alkaline taste of the water surmounted even the lemon juice and the sweetening. It tasted like medicine. But it was cold.
I sat in the shade of the wagon, and I could not keep my eyes open. Anson had not spoken. Now he said, “Sleepy sleep. Sleepy sleep.” Those were the two words I was to hear nightly in the future, when I started sleeping in his room.
I slept, and when I wakened, the sun had lowered a bit. Cicadas cried out. I was bathed in perspiration, and Anson was fanning me with his hat. My cotton sack had little more than a wad of cotton inside, but he had shoved it under my head. There was not a dry thread on me, despite Anson's fanning.
When I opened my eyes, Anson peered down at me. “Little Man, let's go to the house,” he said. Then he called to Ernest, “I'm taking this boy to the house. The heat is getting to him.”
Ernest, with a sweep of his hand, indicated go ahead.
The Knuckleheads had stopped picking and were watching us. I saw their mouths working and knew what one of them was saying: “This makes my tail cut cordwood.”
But before Anson lifted me into the saddle, he picked me up and hung me by the galluses of my overalls on the steelyards, weighing me as he might a sack of cotton. He trembled, and he trembled again swinging me up onto the horse's back.
“Sixty-nine pounds and thirteen years old,” he remarked. “We need to put some pounds on you.” And then, “Are you right sure you're thirteen?”
I said I was right sure.
“Let's say you're six,” he said. “To me, you're six.”
I didn't respond. I didn't know then that he had had a child who had died at that age. Little Johnnes.
Now at last he asked my name. I told him. He studied me a moment.
He was never to address me by it.
We were to only have that one day in the cotton fields. Anson hadn't needed us in the first place.
On our second day at Chinaberry, he had other jobs for us. Having already apprized Ernest's experience in the livery trade, he proposed that Ernest work with the horses at the ranch, in part to spell himself. That way, at least until fall roundup, he'd have more time at home. Cadillac and Rance were hired to deliver ice in drays to houses in a town some dozen miles away, starting from an ice plant the Winters family owned. All leapt at the chance of doing otherwise than they were now doing. Particularly Ernest, who saw a chance for higher-class employment.
“Now you Knuckleheads won't have to pop another sweat,” Ernest said to Cadillac and Rance. “And you can eat all the ice you want.”
In hindsight, I believe that when he first laid eyes on the four of us, the wheels were already turning in Anson's head. In things that mattered to him, he was fast on the draw. The second morning of our stay, I woke up and found that Ernest was already off to the ranch and the Knuckleheads were gone to the ice plant. Anson had preceded Ernest in a truck, Ernest following. Blunt had taken the boys in the pickup truck. Ernest had apparently abandoned his mandate, aware that I was in more caring hands than his own. And he had been told about Blunt and his longtime career as guardian of Anson and Jack in childhood, so he figured Blunt would become my shadow as well.
I waked in that far room at Chinaberry, alone. The house had blinds rather than shades, and they were half-open, the sun already high outside. I heard doves calling. And I had hardly cracked my eyes before Lurie was standing in the door with a pan of water, a washrag floating in it, and in her other hand a goblet of water with a floating lump of ice. Even with my taste buds dulled by the ice, the water was just barely drinkable.
Lurie set the pan down on a bureau, looked into the chamber pot by the bed, and finding it empty, pointed to it and withdrew. I jumped out of bed, used the pot, and pushing it under the boards, climbed back in. I was sleeping in the single nightshirt I had with me. Lurie returned, pulled back the sheet, and set
about washing my face and neck, not neglecting my ears. She examined my feet ruefully. I had washed the surface dirt from them the night before, and Ernest had torn a strip from a clean handkerchief and anchored the unshed toenail anew. My rusty heels and ankles shamed me.
“We'll do something about that toe tonight,” she said, more to herself than to me, and finishing the task, she pressed my head against her breast and sighed. “Put your clothes on and come to breakfast.”
She sashayed out of the room, leaving her scent behind her. She smelled of violets. How often had I gone with my sisters to pick violets in our pasture along Hootlacka Creek. The source of this fragrance, which pervaded her presence, was a bottle of perfume, Violet Spring, on her dressing table. And the smell that clung to Anson was from a beaker of Lilac Vegetal aftershave lotion on the shelf where his shaving mug and long razor were kept.
Then I saw on a chair at the foot of the bed my bib overalls and shirt, freshly laundered and ironed. I wore no underclothes, a lack soon remedied. And there was a pair of moccasins for me, a perfect fit, made overnight by Blunt from a single piece of leather, not single-tack-driven but bound together by thongs.
At the table I discovered cornflakes. A bowl of them sat on my plate, floating in milk and sweetened. My first taste. I added three more spoons of sugar. I ate a second bowl of cereal when it was offered and would have downed a third had I not been ashamed. The scrambled eggs and bacon I hardly nibbled. I did eat a biscuit in sampling the three varieties of jam—fig, blackberry, and pear. This kind of diet would have been commented on by Anson, yet Lurie said not a word.
In the kitchen behind us, Angelica and Rosetta were laughing. Anson often said they were probably born laughing. Their voices were a mixture of Spanish and English, although both could speak English almost without accent. Their families were the only Mexicans I was to see, and I was never to see a black person there. There was a black cowpuncher on Big Jack's ranch, but I never saw him. In Alabama, the black folk were everywhere, and there was one, Aunt Fanny, who had helped my mother care for the ten children as they arrived. Diapering, and diaper washing, seemed to be her chief employment, along with quieting whines and rocking infants to sleep. When my mother, with her many housekeeping chores, had no time to cure a hurt or answer a question, Aunt Fanny did.
As for Rosetta's and Angelica's amusement, Anson was to say, “Don't ask what's so funny. They don't know themselves.” Once these young women had cleaned up the kitchen, Rosetta was off to change the sheets and pillowcases on the beds, which was done every day, sweep the floors, and dust; and Angelica had the gasoline-powered washing machine going to launder everything. From day to day, I never wore a garment twice if it was unwashed. After these chores, Angelica and Rosetta were off to do their own tasks at their homes, and they were back again at four to cook supper. The kitchen stove was not fired again until supper, to spare the house the heat. At noon Lurie and I snacked, the two of us, on pimento sandwiches, cold chicken or ham, and I drank buttermilk while she drank iced tea.
That second day seemed short, as I had some exploring to do. I looked into all of the nine rooms except the one that was kept locked. The bathroom was two rooms down from Lurie and Anson's bedroom. The tub was huge and rested on four clawlike legs. Until adjustments were employed, I couldn't reach the chain that released the water into the commode or sit on the commode without my feet dangling, and sitting presented some danger of falling in. This was to be remedied soon. I used the shower in the washhouse, an act required of me morning and mid-afternoon in hot weather.
That first free day at Chinaberry, I saw most of what there was to see. Anson's saddle horse, Blue, had a companion, Red, the horse Lurie rode. Red was red, a matching roan. I climbed up the ladder in the barn and looked; I peered into the cotton house, where a mountain of it was stored, awaiting the gin. There was the garden where grew the vegetables now beginning to wither in the heat. I discovered the flowers that Lurie could not grow in the yard or on the porch. They were in the garden. When she tried to have them on the porch or yard, they were only destroyed. Once, a pony had climbed the steps and eaten those in pots.
All during my exploration, Blunt followed me.
I tried out the hammock under the cool shade of the chinaberries and then sat in the two-seated wooden swing. It required someone sitting opposite to balance the weight. Blunt came and sat down across from me, and we rocked back and forth awhile. I didn't know what to say, and he said nothing. Lastly, I revisited the cotton fields, near enough to the pickers to hear the drone of their voices.
When Anson returned from his work that afternoon and asked for a report on my day, I couldn't get my mouth open. He was as yet too much a stranger to speak with freely. That too was soon to be remedied.
Lurie had something to report. She had been sewing up two summer shirts with sleeves ending above the elbow, and no tails. There were buttons, yet to fasten only one or none at all was accounted sufficient in hot weather. A shirt without sleeves or tails! And a pair of short underpants. They had me go into another room and put them on. Anson took one look and told Lurie, “They're too tight. They're pinching his little fixing.” They were let out by sewing in a blue strip on either side. As I seemed to approve the adornment, subsequent pairs of my underpants had either blue or green piping, and Anson's as well thereafter. What he wore, I wore in a smaller version.
“We ought to do something about the boy's toe,” Anson said that evening as we sat on the porch with Ernest and Lurie.
The three of them seated me in a chair. The big toe on my right foot was doused in camphor. Lurie, exercising her skill as a nurse apprentice, cut loose the hanging nail with a pair of embroidery scissors. Underneath the nail, tender to the touch, a new one was beginning to form.
I had scrubbed my feet as clean as could be, yet the heels and ankles still looked dirty. Anson said these were grass and mineral stains that would wear off. Did I know the earth we walked on was chock-full of minerals? I told him I did.
I didn't know much, except what I had overheard and what I had read in the four books that lived in my home back in Alabama. I was mostly a student of The Cyclopedia of Universal Knowledge. The other three books were the Holy Bible, The Anatomy of the Horse, and a book bought from a colporteur, The Palaces of Sin, or The Devil in Society.
The Bible was held in such reverence that nobody ever opened it.
The Anatomy served my father in his horse doctoring and was way too technical for me.
I had learned all I needed to know about evil from The Palaces of Sin. Was there not a drawing in there of a dinner party at which Jenny Manly of Alabama was standing and berating her fellow diners for drinking wine at the table? Also mentioned in this book was the drinking of gin. And the gambling with cards. And more sins.
So, The Cyclopedia of Universal Knowledge was my chief instrument. What did a child know of the world in those days? Only what he could hear, or observe in the fields and at the barn, and the meager knowledge gained from schoolbooks. What I knew of the world came from The Cyclopedia. When I had first smelled Lurie's perfume, I had known what violets signified, as well as Anson's aftershave lotion, fragrant of lilacs. “The Language of Flowers” was a chapter in my family's beloved book.
That evening I was ashamed of my dirty-looking feet. But Anson and Lurie would cure this. They had remedies for stained heels and ankles, mainly cloverine salve. Daily administrations would be applied, with my knees and elbows added to the undertaking. It worked. Gradually, with the salve at night and the wearing of moccasins by day, my feet whitened to the point that Anson picked up my foot one morning and nibbled on my toes to wake me.
That night my trundle bed was placed in the room adjoining Anson and Lurie's. Anson came in to tuck me in, and before taking the light away, he raised me for a moment to learn, he said, if I'd gained any weight since yesterday. Lurie floated in behind him, and standing with me in his arms, he drew her to us, giving me a light kiss on the chin and Lurie a fuller one
on the cheek. He lowered me onto the trundle bed and said what I was to hear night after night: “Sleep good so you'll be happy in the morning. Sleepy sleep.”
It seems that I cried out in the night, which I might well have done, or made disturbing sounds, for he had come with the lamp to assure me with his presence.
A routine evolved. Lurie and I were both as fresh as soap and water and clean garments could make us as we awaited Anson's return. During August, he came before sunset. As the shipping season arrived, he came later, and by October, he didn't get home until after dark.
Instead of driving to the common parking ground, he would stop in the yard, leave the motor running, jump out, and rush up the steps and embrace Lurie. Next, he would pick me up, give me a smack on the chin, then close us both in his arms, and make a groan of relief. Unused to being picked up, I felt both awkward and embarrassed, even though no fellow Alabamians were there to watch. Every time I said “I'm heavy,” he would reply, “As chicken feathers.” Still carrying me, he took me back to the car, and once having parked, he asked, “How was the day?” Whatever the hour, we did not have supper until he was with us.
That same second night at Chinaberry, the tick hunt was initiated, an event that would happen every night after that. In Alabama it was the red bug that was likely to burrow into the skin and fester, particularly in spots unreachable to scratch. Turpentine and kerosene and vinegar were the recommended remedies to unseat the almost-invisible insect. Usually, you scratched it free. But in Texas the tick was the problem. If allowed to hang on long enough, the tick would bloat itself with your blood and likely infect you with Rocky Mountain fever. Looking for ticks was a job for more eyes than your own. You had to be scanned top to bottom, front and back. Every day.
Here was a problem. By age twelve, boys have been imbued with the inviolability of their bodies and will not undress before anyone except their peers. Anson and Lurie worked together on this daily search, usually before bedtime. With all my clothes removed save my shorts, Lurie turned me about, looking me over carefully. She left the room, and Anson would pull my shorts down for a moment, look front and back, and jerk them up again. He'd call to Lurie, “The road's clear.”