The Curing Season

by Leslie Wells

  Sibby and I usually hired ourselves out to Man Murfree, since Father rented our house and land from him, and since he was kind to us. Then once we’d picked for him, we’d go to other farmers in our area. We worked alongside the colored people, because that was who mainly did the picking and handing, at least in Gower County.

  Out in the field, a boy would lead the farmer’s mule, hitched to a tall wooden crate called a slide, between the rows of tobacco. Sibby and I would walk barefoot behind the slide along with the Negro pickers, constantly bending to pull the leaves as fast as we could. You always pick tobacco from the bottom up, because that is how the leaves turn yellow—bottom ones first. And you pick several times in a season.

  Picking is hardest when you’re stooping down in the heat. It isn’t unusual for someone to keel over right as they reach for a leaf. Once or twice I’ve felt dizzy myself, and had to sit at the edge of the field until I overcame my lightheadedness. Most pickers hate to stop because they are docked for pay for every five minutes they aren’t working. Of course I was always the slowest picker due to my foot, and Sibby made a great effort to pace herself to stay back with me. She had a reputation as a good fast picker, but she wouldn’t hire on unless the farmer hired me too.

  Picking tobacco was suffocatingly hot work. To shield our faces from the sun, we wore broad straw hats that were tattered from years of use and stiff inside with dried sweat. The gum from the tobacco left your hands black and sticky. It was very hard to wash off; it stuck to your hands, even after many soapings. We used to go to the branch and try to scrape it off with sticks under the water, but usually that only made your palms raw; they’d still be tarred with gum.

  After the slide was full of leaves, the boy leading the mule would fling himself onto its back and ride it to the packing barn, pulling the slide behind it. There, the women would hand and string the tobacco on sticks under big shady trees. Sibby and I would pick as long as we could stand it, then we’d come in from the field and hand.

  Sibby would place a tobacco stick on top of the slide. We’d reach into the slide, grab three of the broad leaves, and hand them to the stringer, who’d wrap the end of a piece of twine around them, then wrap the twine around the tobacco stick. She’d move down the piece of twine a little, wrap three more leaves that one of us handed her, and loop that around the stick. You got into a nice rhythm with handing, and it was easy compared to picking—which was why it paid so much less. But it was good to be able to work where I didn’t have to struggle to keep up.

  The colored women were very friendly to us, and it was interesting to hear their conversations, which, like the white women I had listened to, focused mainly on problems with their men, their children, keeping a house clean, and money. Hattie and Marcelle were the oldest, in their mid-fifties probably, and they supervised the rest of us and made sure the stringing went quickly and smoothly. Hattie was heavy-set, her skin a pretty shade like the caramel creams I bought at Job’s store. Marcelle was string-thin, and one of her eyes constantly watered so that a lot of people called her Cryin Marcelle, but I never did.

  Hattie and Marcelle had the best singing voices, and we loved to hear them belt out Just a Closer Walk with Jesus or When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder in plangent tones. Sibby had a beautiful voice, and she’d join right in, but I never could carry much of a tune, so I’d just listen. The bare unadorned singing out there under the huge shade trees always sounded so much better than our prissier church choir with its piano accompaniment.

  —That’s some nice singin you done, Sibby, said Niecey, Marcelle’s oldest daughter.

  —You mean my caterwaulin? I sound like an old crow next to you all, Sibby laughed.

  —Lawsy, did you hear ’bout Mary and Johnell? Hattie asked Marcelle.

  —Naw, what they up to now? Marcelle responded.

  —You know they had their sixth in February. Now Mary’s set to have a seventh.

  —Sholy you’re kiddin.

  —I’m tellin you straight.

  —Where on earth they gonna put that new baby? They’s livin on top of each other now.

  —I don’t know. I went by to see Mary, and she said she wisht you could just sit on an egg and hatch a baby like a chick. And Johnell say, if they was eggs, I’da stepped on a few of mine befo’ they hatched!

  —Lawd, did you ever, Marcelle chortled, holding her sides, her eye watering down her cheek. She always cried more when she laughed.

  —Whew, I got to have a drink, said Hattie, wiping her face with a rag she pulled from her dress sleeve. She unscrewed a mason jar of water that she kept cool under a tree and took a few deep draughts.

  —Y’all hear what T.C. did over Memorial Day weekend? piped up Carol, Niecey’s cousin.

  —Naw, do tell, responded several voices.

  —Mr. Oliver sent him into town to fetch some nails he needed to fix his wagon. You know how he always sendin T.C. into town to fetch stuff for him, Carol added. —Lettin him drive his truck, and T.C. think he’s big as Ike doin that.

  —Mmmhmph.

  —Well, that blamefool got drunk as a skunk in town, clumb into Mr. Oliver’s car and drove back, weavin all over the road. Like to hit Judy and Ann walkin, they had to jump into the ditch when he come by. They say he got his head stuck out the window, and drivin in broad daylight with his headlights on. Well, Mr. Oliver is comin up the road in his car and he see T.C. comin. He stop and flag T.C. down. T.C., he say, What you doin drivin all over the road like that? Man, you gonna hit somebody! Don’t you think you oughter pull over and sleep awhile? T.C. say, Naw, Mr. Oliver, I’m fine. See, I’ve got my headlights on. Nothin’s gonna happen to yo’ truck. Onna count he’d heard on the radio you supposed to put yo’ lights on over Memorial Weekend, for safety.

  We all laughed appreciatively.

  —And you know Mr. Oliver like his taste of drink too, added Hattie. —He and T.C. gets drunk together lots of times. I’ve seen ’em sprawled out by Mr. Oliver’s barn.

  Suddenly in the midst of the hot sunshine a sprinkling of rain fell. Niecey went to stand close to the tree trunk, but the rest of us looked up gratefully at the cooling drops.

  —Whee, you know what that mean, cackled Hattie, lifting the front of her housedress with her fingertips. —Devil’s beatin his wife.

  —Lawd, here’s another stick finished, said Marcelle. —Junior! Come on over here, take this stick to the barn.

  And so the afternoon would pass companionably.

  Once the stringer had tied off, a young boy took the stick swaying with tobacco leaves into the barn. The men would place it high up in the rafters, where it would be cured. You cured tobacco for seven days, and had to constantly feed wood into the concrete firebox outside the barn and then check the temperature on the inside. You had to be careful not to scorch it, and not to let the fire go out, because the curing had to take place continuously, all day and all night. Since the farmers were paid according to the quality of their tobacco at the big warehouse auction in the fall, the curing was the most important part of the whole process.

  You could always tell when it was curing season because the farmers and their wives and children would walk around hollow-eyed from lack of sleep. It was like having a brand-new baby every summer, one farmer’s wife told me. I knew what she meant, because Sibby and I had to spend a lot of time taking care of Luke in the middle of the night when he was a baby and Mother was so exhausted.

  So Sibby and I would hire out to watch the fires, to give the farmers and their wives some rest. We’d sleep on cots right outside the barn door and take turns waking up every two hours, all night long, to check the fires that cured the tobacco leaves. I was a little afraid of sleeping outside in the dark, but as Sibby said, it was easy money compared to picking, especially when you took turns, as we did. And it was good to be away from Father, on our own. We’d bring black-eyed peas with us and cook them on the hot flue eyes that covered the pipe that went from the firebox into the barn.

  Those nig
hts were heaven, eating those tasty dried peas with the crickets and frogs singing out for all they were worth. Sibby would entertain me with ghost stories for hours on end as we sat by the light of the kerosene lamp, and I’d jump every time I heard an old hoot-owl, or a dog go panting by in the dark.

  Once the tobacco was cured, it was put into a cool, damp underground pit beneath the barn. The tobacco stayed there for two days until it got in order—until moisture got back into it so the leaves were flexible again, instead of crumbly and dry. Then it was taken out of the pit, and Sibby and I would help cut the twine and take the leaves off of the sticks.

  The farmer’s wife would sort it into three grades: excellent leaves were entirely golden, good had some brown and some gold, and poor was mostly brown. We’d help her sort it into big piles on plank tables and then tie it into twists. The twists went into large, flat baskets to be loaded onto a truck and driven to the warehouse for the auction. Sibby and I always felt a sense of accomplishment when the last load was sent off—as if the crop were partly ours.

  Tobacco is hard, hot work, but I always liked the summers best when I could get paid and feel useful. It was one of the only times I felt I was contributing to my upkeep. None of the colored workers ever commented on my foot; they were very kind to Sibby and me, maybe because we were often the only white children who were working alongside them. The women would invite us to share their lunches under the shade trees when it was time for our break.

  Some of the farmers’ wives fed all the workers their noontime meal. If lunch was provided, the colored people would eat outside on the back screened porch if there was one, or else under trees in the yard. They were never invited inside with the whites, who ate in the kitchen. Sibby and I always preferred to eat with the colored people. We hated when we had to eat with the farmer’s family because the other kids always looked down on us for hiring out to pick. I remember one particularly nasty boy who liked to come up behind me and say,

  —Y’all aint much better than the niggers, is you? Maybe y’all is part nigger. Lessee if you hidin nappy hair up under them braids.

  And he’d yank on my braid so hard my head would spin. I never let on to Sibby because I was worried he could best her in a fight. She got into enough battles on my behalf as it was. Our clothes were always more ragged than those of the farmers’ kids, and inevitably one of them would mock our threadbare shirts or my bad foot. When that happened, Sibby would wind up in a fistfight with the one who’d made the comment, and they’d meet in a gully after the meal and light into each other. I told her time and time again not to pick fights—just to ignore their comments, as I did—but she wouldn’t.

  —You think I’m going to stand by and let some cracker make fun of us? she’d say. —You’ve got another thought coming. I’m gonna tear him up!

  I’d be upset when she came back all scratched and torn, but she always said she made the other kid look worse than she did.

  Sibby was the one who got us the tobacco work, since she was determined to be independent of Father. The problem was, she always spent her money the minute she got it. I tried to save my earnings, since I assumed I’d be on the farm forever. I knew my marriage prospects were nil, and my imaginations about going off on my own seemed likely never to get off the ground. I dreamed of teaching or becoming an office worker in a city somewhere, but how to accomplish that with the pitiful amounts I was able to save?

  Mrs. Spender was encouraging; in fact, she told me over and over that it would be a shame if I didn’t go to college. That spring before I met Aaron, she had made me stay after class several times to talk to me about where I could go. She even said there were places that gave out scholarships to good students like me, and that she’d write letters on my behalf. But I never could figure out how I could afford to go, even if I got a handout; I’d still have to feed and board myself. Making thirty cents an hour picking tobacco wasn’t going to get me anywhere. And as Father had made clear, he certainly wasn’t about to help me.

  I tried to hoard my puny savings, but the movie magazines at Job’s store beckoned. I couldn’t take them into the house, but Sibby and I would hide them behind a loose plank in the barn wall and read them whenever we had a chance. Sibby didn’t even bother trying to save her earnings. What she didn’t give to Mother, she spent on candy, a hair ribbon, the movies. She always said if she had a quarter on the day she was going to die, she’d go out and buy herself an ice cream sundae and go see Gone with the Wind one more time.

  Occasionally we’d plot ways to make money so we could leave the farm, run away to California or somewhere exotic, but I had a feeling Sibby wasn’t going to have to rely on her savings to get out of the house. Half the boys in the county had already tried to come courting, and it would take just the right one who wasn’t scared off by Father to take her away.

  Chapter Six

  Sibby met Charlie at a barn dance the same summer that I met Aaron. She’d dragged me along as she often did, insisting that I could at least talk to people and enjoy the refreshments. On such occasions, my thoughts always pulled me in opposite directions. I knew I’d have no problem moving around to a slower reel, because Sibby and I had practiced dancing together many times in the barn when we knew no one would see us. Yet I disliked the humiliation I always felt at these socials; I knew that the other girls only came over to talk to me just to pass time until some boy asked them to dance. And no boys ever approached me at all, except to ask me if I knew where Sibby was. Yet I always kept the secret hope in my heart that someone would come along who’d overlook my foot and who’d take an interest in me—in the real me, not just my external attributes, or lack of them.

  This particular night, I’d stood before our half-fogged-over wall mirror, trying to see myself between the patches of rust that had eaten away at the peeling silver paint. Sibby forced me to hold still as she tied a pink ribbon in my hair, which I thought looked ridiculous. I took the opportunity to compare our mirrored reflections. My hair was dark brown, like Sibby’s, but didn’t have the wave in it that hers did, although she always claimed if I didn’t wear it in a single tight braid all the time, it would have more curl. My eye color was a curious blue, one I thought washed-out, but that she always claimed was the color of cornflowers. Whereas she had nice ruddy coloring, my face was pale, and I thought my nose was too long. I’d always admired the way hers turned up pertly. Sibby told me I was pretty, but I’d take her looks any day over mine.

  —Done, she said, fluffing out the ribbon on either side. —Now just take that apron off, and you’ll be beautiful.

  —I think I’ll leave it on, I replied. —My dress has a tear in the seam.

  I hated wearing a dress without an apron because I thought it made my limp more pronounced, but Sibby knew all of my tricks.

  —You’ll look silly in an apron at a dance, Cora. Come on, you look just fine in that dress. The ribbon perks you up right nice. You’ll have fun, don’t be a stick-in-the-mud.

  I could do nothing but go along with her. When Sibby made up her mind to something, she was as stubborn as a mule. She used to call me Caspar Milquetoast when I didn’t want to accompany her in one of her schemes.

  So, off we trudged to the social. At this point it had been three weeks since I’d last seen Aaron, and a week since I’d stopped waiting for him on the road, but I still hoped there was just a miscommunication and I’d run into him and things would be like the way they were the day he met me after church. One reason I agreed to go to the dance was that Aaron might be there. Of course, he might be there with another girl, as I well knew, but I told myself at least then I’d be able to forget about him.

  The dance was being held in Jonas Smith’s barn, two miles off, and I dreaded the walk because I knew Sibby would be in a hurry to get there and it would be hard going for me to keep up. Luckily, every once in a while I’d spy a big black walnut and point it out to her, and she’d have to stop to find two rocks to crack it. Sibby had a weakness for black walnuts.
So while she was searching for the rocks, I’d have a chance to rest up a little and catch my breath.

  —Land sakes, Cora, I know you’re just finding walnuts to slow us down, she laughed, but she stopped to crack them anyway. —Now I bet I’ve got pieces of nut all in my teeth.

  She bared her teeth for me to check.

  —Only a little on the bottom, I said.

  She broke off a straw and poked furiously at her teeth. —Now?

  —All gone, I said. I knew she couldn’t stand to face a boy with nuts in her teeth.

  —Now, when we get there, you go around and socialize, she said as we walked. —Don’t stick up in a corner with Ann Hodges. She’s only holding you back. Come on out of your shell and talk to people. You’re really interesting, Cora, with all the books you’ve read. It’s just that people don’t know it.

  I sighed. Sibby had been giving me pep talks since we were little. She always made it sound so easy, until I entered the room and saw all those blank faces looking at me. I imagined them sneering at my foot, or worse, pitying me. It got to where I couldn’t talk to anyone without picturing what they were thinking about my foot. It seemed like it just wasn’t much use.

  —I’ll try. But you know what’ll happen. People will be polite, then when it comes time to dance, I’ll be left behind. Nobody wants to drag around the floor with someone with a limp.

  —Maybe not this time. You wait and see, Sibby replied.

  I looked at her profile. How could boys not like Sibby? Her nose turned up perfectly, her black eyes sparkled, and her mouth was naturally rosy, unlike girls like Mary Jane Markley who had to paint themselves. Any boy would be thrilled to be looked at by Sibby. And she was a good dancer, to boot.

  I could hear the first strains of the fiddle, floating over the rustling ears of corn in the field next to the road. The barn was just around the bend, but I was in no hurry to get there.