Mississippi Cotton

by Paul H. Yarbrough

  We pulled our t-shirts over our heads and soaked them in the pond. We then began to beat the edges of the fire with the water-soaked shirts. Driven by survival, as we could only imagine the whipping each would have gotten for his part in a county-wide disaster, we slapped the fire like professional smoke jumpers, finally putting it out. Each of us said a prayer that night that our t-shirts would somehow not be missed. I guess God gave us an extra present that year because my mother never asked; and that in a day when every dime was accounted for.

  There were open fields with ponds, and creeks and branches to fish in. Everything seemed fun in the Delta. And there was the windmill to climb. It stood next to the chicken house by the garage and was the first thing you’d see as you drove down the gravel road from Cousin Trek’s mailbox to the farm. For those who had the courage to climb it, you could see all the way to the highway and beyond.

  There was a porch swing where we sat sometimes after supper and listen to my cousin play, slightly off key, on his harmonica, Dixie and Loch Lohman and Swanee River. In the back of the house on one of the big oaks there was an old Firestone without any tread tied to a rope and hanging from a limb. We would swing and spin until we got so dizzy we could hardly walk. One of the games was to see who could walk the farthest without falling down, after the others had spun him into dizziness. If he didn’t fall, someone would trip him or give a gentle nudge, because no one was supposed to be standing following a spin.

  My grandmother had written about the family farm and our family in little notebooks and things. She had been a teacher, too, and had taught lots of things as best as I could tell. Music and painting and things like that. She had even taught at the Mississippi School for the Blind. I don’t think she sold her stories to anybody or anything like that. My mother gave me one of the notebooks to take with me for the family in Cotton City. My mother said they should have it for the home place. She also had given me instructions to not leave it on the bus or lose it.

  Cousin Trek was going to let me work this summer in the cotton fields, hoeing or chopping, or whatever else you did before it was picked. I was going to get twenty cents an hour, enough to go to the picture show twice a day, though that would never be allowed. I would be advised to save, save, save.

  This was my first trip to Cotton City alone. The Trailways was huge. It was fun riding on something as big as a bus. You could see farther than you could see in a car, and it seemed like all the other traffic was puny. The only bus trip, besides the city buses I had taken, was the year before on a school field trip. Our whole class had gone to Vicksburg, to spend a day at the Vicksburg Battlefield, visit the museum and learn about the courage of the Confederates and their battle against the invading Union Army.

  It was then and there that we learned that two battles a thousand miles apart, twenty-four hours apart—Vicksburg and Gettysburg—had determined the fate of the Confederacy. We got to stay out of school the whole day and take dinners our mothers had made for us. It was like a day-long picnic. The trip there and back was over a hundred miles. It was the only world travel I had had.

  The bus reached the city limits and moved northwest picking up speed. The huge red and silver cruiser was in its highest gear headed toward Cotton City, and to a strange adventure.

  I stuck my arm out of the window and let the air rush between my fingers. It felt good, the air flowing and blowing at high speed.

  Just then a gravel-garbled announcement came over the bus intercom: “Do not extend your arms out of the windows, please.”

  Of course everyone on the bus turned and looked at me. If the driver had known my name, he probably would have used the opportunity to yell it out, “Jake Conner, get your arm inside. Now!” I felt an early twinge of fear. Was the FBI on the phone to my mother and daddy? I tried to forget about it. Anyway, that was just something Farley had made up—about the FBI informing our parents.

  CHAPTER 2

  Flora, Mississippi was the first stop, but I didn’t count it as a real stop because no one actually got off. There were only a couple of passengers getting on at the bus stop, which was just a grocery store with a Trailways sign stuck on it.

  Some seedy-looking man got on and sat across the aisle. He wore a straw Stetson and a blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled up above his elbows. He wadded his sport coat up and put it behind his head for a pillow. The shirt was too small for his fat stomach, and you could see his undershirt between the buttons which were stretching his shirt open between them. He had a tattoo of an eagle on his arm and underneath it was written, YEAH BOY. It didn’t look like he had shaved in a while, and I would make a guess that he was about fifty or sixty. A pretty old guy anyway.

  But the bad thing was, the thing that I had been most afraid of, was that some old lady with straw-looking hair got on, and stopped next to my seat. After staring at my sandwich bag for about five minutes, she said, “Anybody settin’ here, Hon’?”

  I started to say something smart like, “Oh yeah, a little bitty guy is in that sack.” I didn’t though. The FBI might find out that I had smarted off. There’d be a black mark on my conduct, plus the wrath of my mother and daddy if they found out.

  “No, ma’am.”

  She sat down. Fortunately, I was able to swoop up my bag before she made mush out of it.

  “Well now, that feels better,” she said. “I feel like I been on my feet forever and ever.” She plopped a big round-ish bag down in her lap.

  I couldn’t tell if it was a huge purse or a clothes bag of some kind, but it had a bunch of stuff in it, and it was really round and big, like she had her own toilet in it or something. She hugged it like it was a prize she had won. “Well, now I guess we’re gonna be fellow travelers for a while,” she said. She smiled yellow.

  “Yes, ma’am, I guess so.” I didn’t know what that meant for sure. I heard my daddy talk a lot about communists and their fellow travelers, so maybe she thought I was some kind of a communist or something.

  “And where’re you goin’ this fine day?”

  “Cotton City.”

  “You got family there?”

  “Hope you ain’t kin to that dead guy they found in the river,” blurted the man with the Yeah Boy tattoo.

  “Dead guy? In the river?” My lips almost quivered when I said it.

  Her glare brought him up without a word. “Now you just keep your mouth shut. This young gentleman don’t need your comments. Now go ahead, young man.” Yeah Boy frowned and slumped more in his seat.

  “Yes, ma’am. I have a bunch of cousins up there. None of my parents or grand people or regular family though. They’re mostly all in Jackson. Except for a’ uncle in Meridian.”

  I hated talking to grownups. I never knew the right thing to say to them. She was kind of beat-up looking, and her hair was scraggly, and she had on about a hundred pounds of rouge, like she’d been smacked with a ripe pomegranate on each cheek. It made her yellow teeth look more yellow. It was hard enough to talk to regular grownups like teachers or baseball coaches, or even Sunday School teachers, but old ones that were, as my daddy would say, ‘haggard -looking,’ were even harder to talk to for some reason.

  “Oh, why cousins are regular family, too,” she said. “Jus’ a bit more distant.”

  “Yes, ma’am, that’s right. They live way up in Cotton City.”

  “No, no,” she said. “I meant distant, like they don’t have as strong a blood tie as yo’ momma and daddy and such.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I guess.”

  She pulled out some little papers and some kind of little pouch from her bag. I didn’t know what she was doing until she started sprinkling tobacco onto some little papers. What they called ‘the makings’ was what she had. I had seen it in a Red Ryder picture show. This bad guy was always asking somebody for the makings so he could have a cigarette.

  She drew the length of the paper across her lips, rolled it into a cigarette, then poked it into her mouth. “Well, my young fellow traveler, I don’t suppos
e you have a match do you?” She smiled, as if she didn’t really expect me to have one.

  “No, ma’am.” It did sound kind of funny asking me, and I laughed a little. That brought on another yellow smile.

  She rooted around some more in her bag, pushing and twisting whatever was in there, so she could find some matches. She finally found a pack, pulled one out and struck it. She leaned against the headrest and sucked on the wrinkled-looking cigarette, then exhaled a cloud of smoke through her mouth and nostrils, her eyes closed. I waved my hand at the cloud of smoke.

  The bus moved up the two-lane highway, seldom passing anyone, except an occasional pickup truck driven by a farmer, who seemed in no particular hurry. Other than that, most of the cars passed the bus.

  The woman smoked two or three cigarettes within an hour and asked me about a million questions, often blowing smoke in my face. How old was I? How long was I going to be in Cotton City? How big was my family?

  I had been taught not to be nosey, but since she was asking me so many questions I decided it would be okay to ask her one or two, just to be friendly.

  “How much stuff do you have in your bag? Sure is big.” I kind of leaned over trying to peek in.

  She started rummaging around as if she were taking some kind of account for me.

  “Well, let’s see now. What all do I…” She paused while she pulled out an old scarf. “…well look a’ here. How many years have I had this? My late husband give me this. I can’t hardly believe I still have it.”

  It looked faded and I was sure I saw a cigarette hole.

  “What was he late for?” I asked.

  “No, no Hon, I mean he’s no longer with us. He’s dead, Hon’. Deceased.” She pointed her hands up and wiggled her fingers, trying to gesture some kind of ghostly shape going upward, I think.

  “Oh,” I said. So, that’s how I learned that being late meant the same thing as being dead. That’s why talking to grownups was so hard; you were always in danger of learning something that didn’t make sense.

  “Yes indeedy. I’ve had it for some time—some time. But let’s see what else we have. Looka here, a pack of bobbie pins. I thought I’d lost those.” She kept reaching and pulling different things out to show me. It was like a little treasure chest.

  It reminded me of one of those magic acts where the guy keeps pulling a string of scarves out of his mouth. You finally realize that there’ve been more pulled out than there should have been room for in the first place. Then I saw a little pistol, like one of those derringers.

  “Is that a gun?”

  She pushed it down under some of the other stuff in the bag. “Not a real one. Just a cigarette lighter—outta flint.”

  “Oh. Sure looks real.” Not that I had ever seen a real one. The ones in the picture show were the only ones I’d ever seen.

  “Oh I jus’ carry it mostly outta sentiment. My late husband give it to me one Christmas.”

  Just then she pulled up a Barq’s Root Beer bottle that had a wad of cloth wedged in the top.

  She pulled out the wadding and announced, “I’m jus’ gonna have a little medicine now.” She tilted her head back and took a big slug.

  I think I caught a sniff. It smelled like the lighter fluid my daddy used in his cigarette lighter.

  Yeah Boy stirred. He looked like a bloodhound that had picked up a scent in the wind.

  “Excoose me, ma’am.”

  It sounded funny the way he said ‘excuse.’

  He gently tipped the front of his hat. “I don’t mean to pry but is that a good cough medicine?” He put his hand over his mouth and coughed.

  The woman looked at him, then me, then back to him. “Well, it helps with gentle coughs. It won’t he’p if you got something big, like TB or somethin.”

  He took his hat off and leaned across the aisle a bit so he could lower his voice. “Oh, no ma’am. I got none of that consumption. Not me. But I got me this cough that wuz caused by a piece of shrapnel I got in the First War. Some German chunked a grenade at me and blew a hole in my lung. Been coughin’ gently ever since. Ever since, jus’ been coughin gently.” He covered his mouth and coughed again.

  “Well, I suppose I could spare a little for some gentleman that hep’ed defeat the dreaded Hun,” she said. She handed him the bottle and he took a big slug without wiping the mouth of the bottle.

  I thought that was pretty putrid—drinking out of the same bottle as someone else—someone you had just met; someone with tattoos and a fat exposed stomach. I wouldn’t even drink after my brother. I couldn’t stand the thought of someone’s cooties in my mouth. He could have had cooties from anywhere—Bombay, China, even Biloxi.

  She continued talking to him. “Well, my late husband offered to fight them but he was turned down for flat feet—also had a bad case of athlete’s foot. He always had feet problems.” She took a small drink then offered him the bottle again. “But he found work in the carnival. Flat feet don’t matter, I guess, if ya got sawdust in yo’ veins.”

  I thought the two of them were pretty funny the way they told stories. I’m not sure my mother would’ve approved though. She and my daddy had always told me to respect grownups but to be careful of strangers. Some would tell exaggerated stories to impress young children; stories about who they knew or where they’d been or what they’d done. It was, my mother had said, just a function of poor conduct to begin with. My daddy said they were sorry trash.

  “How’d he die?” He held the bottle up to the light as if he were looking for life forms in it. “Is that what ya said, he’s dead? Fall off the high-wire or summin’? A lion kill him?”

  She had begun rolling another cigarette and was concentrating on her makings. “He was hit by lightning. Sad. Not only killed him but knocked one of his eyeballs out. Never did find it, so we couldn’t stick it back in. We wanted an open casket, so we put a patch on his eye. And he did look natural except for the patch. And one of his ears was almost burnt off.” She licked the papers and put the cigarette in her mouth.

  He took another drink and handed her the Barq’s bottle. He tucked his chin down close to his chest, then lifted it back up a bit and let out with a belch louder than Farley had ever made after drinking a hot Coca-Cola. I think half the people on the bus must’ve turned and stared at him. I noticed the driver gave a long look into his mirror and glared.

  The woman turned and whispered in my ear as if she were my mother, “Prob’ly from Arkansas.”

  “Well, golly. I guess that cough of mine got busted some.” He looked around as if he expected everyone to laugh or something. None did. He reached behind his head and pulled his wadded coat down. He pulled out a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes and lit one. He inhaled deeply then exhaled a stream of smoke. He coughed gently once or twice.

  The bus pulled into Yazoo City. My daddy always said that Yazoo City was the ‘Gateway to the Delta.’ Once when I was little I asked him where the gate was, but he said that it was just an expression. I hated things like that, the way grownups said the gateway or other expressions that I later learned weren’t really that at all. I guess I didn’t really hate them. I was just disappointed not to find them. I was always on the lookout for things like that, like a giant gate, things that I thought were real. There were bumper stickers on cars that said, ‘Rock City, Tennessee: See Seven States.’ I later found out that all you could really see was a long way off. How were you supposed to know what you were looking at? There weren’t any state lines in colors or anything, like on our maps in school. As it turned out, I wasted a lot of time looking for things that were never there.

  “Yazoo City, Ladies and Gentlemen. We’ll be here about fifteen minutes, if you want to stretch your legs or get something to drink,” the intercom squawked.

  Yazoo City was about fifty miles from Jackson. It had taken us over an hour to get here, and though I didn’t really need to stretch my legs, I wanted to see if there were any pinball machines for me not to play. I figured I’d at least watch som
ebody else play. Watching somebody play pinball is like watching somebody fish, it’s not a spectator sport. But every once in a while you’d run across a world-class player that could really rack up some points. It gave you something to tell your friends about when you got back home.

  I didn’t get full use of the fifteen minute layover because I had to wait on the straw-haired lady to get out. Then the fat-stomached belcher squeezed in behind her. He waddled down the aisle, winding like a fat trout in a stream, bumping a seat on one side then the other. She was carrying her giant bag. It seemed like it took almost five minutes for them to get off. I left my sandwich bag on my seat to save my window space.

  Sure enough there were two pinball machines backed up against the wall which reminded me of something else my daddy had told Farley. “Son, anything that can back up against the wall and take on the world can’t be beat.”

  Farley knew Daddy made sense, but he still wanted to play them. I think a lot of things are like that. You hear things from your parents that make sense, but you want to see for yourself why they are bad.

  I decided to get a Coca-Cola, so when I got back on the bus I could have it with my sandwich. The waitress at the counter was about as old as my mother and very pretty. She was wearing a white dress kind of like a nurse’s.

  “And what’ll you have, Darlin’?”

  “May I have a Co-Cola please, ma’am?”

  “Why, you surely may.” She had a pretty smile.

  “And will you put it in a cup for me, please. I’m gonna take it with me on the bus, and I don’t want to pay the deposit on the bottle.”

  “I surely will. Anything for a nice little gentleman like yourself. Would you like some ice in it, too?”