In Tall Cotton

by Charles G. Hulse

  In Tall Cotton tells the story of the Woods family, who are forced from their home in the Midwest by the Great Depression. Unlike the downtrodden characters in The Grapes of Wrath, this family is comprised of a school-teacher mother, a gifted mechanic father and two bright sons. Their odyssey and alienation however is no less poignant.

  The story is told through the eyes of the younger son, Totsy, a sexually precocious fifteen-year-old. He vividly describes the family’s long trek West in their old Model-A Ford; the stops along the way to visit relatives on Route 66; the jobs taken and refused; the sordid and unfamiliar living conditions; and the strange characters that the family befriends along the way.

  As a subplot we have Totsy’s growing curiosity about sex. His experimentation begins with harmless games with his 6 year old classmates, but when he is confronted with the dark desires of adults his life is thrown into confusion and violence.

  In his efforts to literally save his life, the boy uncovers the secret flaws hidden in those he loves: his brother’s physical frailty; his mother’s fatal blind spot; his father’s destructive cruelty; his beautiful cousin’s shocking secret life; and his uncle’s frightening demands.

  But what would his flaw be? And would it be worth growing up to find out?

  In Tall Cotton is a moving story of growing up and growing wise—two very different things. It merits comparison with Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory and John Knowles’s A Separate Peace.

  Charles G. Hulse, like the protagonist of In Tall Cotton, was a product of the Depression. His earliest ambition was to be a tap dancer, which he realized at the age of fourteen in the nightclubs of San Francisco. He served in the U.S. Air Force for three years during the Korean War, and afterward began a long engagement on Broadway, and a National Tour, with “The King and I.” He danced at the Lido in Paris for a year and then returned to San Francisco where he taught dancing to children.

  Happily retired from show business in order to write, Mr. Hulse lives in Sri Lanka and the South of France. In Tall Cotton is his first novel. For 32 years Charles Hulse was the partner of novelist Gordon Merrick.

  Lyle Stuart/A Mario Sartori Book 120 Enterprise Avenue Secaucus, New Jersey 07094

  Jacket illustration by Lisa Chapman Jacket typography by Richard Nebiolo

  In Tall Cotton

  A Mario Sartori Book

  Lyle Stuart Inc. Secaucus, New Jersey

  Copyright © 1987 by Charles G. Hulse

  All rights reserved. No part of this book

  may be reproduced in any form, except by

  a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes

  to quote brief passages in connection

  with a review.

  Published by Lyle Stuart Inc.

  120 Enterprise Ave., Secaucus, N.J. 07094

  In Canada: Musson Book Company

  A division of General Publishing Co. Limited

  Don Mills, Ontario

  Queries regarding rights and permissions should be

  addressed to: Lyle Stuart, 120 Enterprise Avenue,

  Secaucus, N.J. 07094

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hulse, Charles G.

  In tall cotton.

  I. Title.

  ISBN 0-8184-0047-1

  Lyle Stuart/A Mario Sartori Book

  120 Enterprise Avenue

  Secaucus, New Jersey 07094

  Jacket illustration by Lisa Chapman

  Jacket typography by Richard Nebiolo

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  For

  GORDON MERRICK

  for all the reasons

  he knows

  and

  for

  my brother Larry

  for reasons he may

  suspect …

  In Tall Cotton

  Chapter One

  THE RING SLIPPED OVER my swollen knuckle as if it had been soaped. My hands, although scratched and bruised from the battle for my life this afternoon, were small, even for a fourteen-year-old. A diagonal crack across the face of the turquoise stone was dirt-encrusted but somehow matched the natural black-veined patterns embedded deep in the blue-green stone. They call it blue-green, but that’s a limitation of language. There don’t seem to be any words to describe that color—the richness, the depth, the little flecks of brownish gold trapped just under the surface that held me spellbound. The heavy silver band needed polishing and one of the little rounded silver beads beside the stone was missing but wouldn’t be noticed if I wore it turned out toward the side of my hand. I had never wanted anything so much in my life. I knew that all the rest of Sister’s jewelry—the dangling earrings, rhinestone-studded curved combs she used to keep her hair pulled back from her face, the strands of pearls and beads—was pure dime store. Even damaged, the ring was real. Honest. The silver had been hammered by hand by Arizona Indians. The stone had been chiseled out of the rocky earth and polished and hand-fitted into the silver mounting. I’d seen this sort of thing in the tourist shops in Phoenix when we first came west from Missouri almost, four years ago, and at first sight that mysterious bluish stone had captivated me and I had longed for a ring. Not a big belt buckle like many of the men wore. I wanted a ring. And here one was, all but for the taking. Not that I contemplated stealing it. I’d never stolen anything in my life. It was difficult enough coping with the names we were called at school—Okie, Arkie, Missouri Mules or worse—without adding thief to the list. Sister would probably give it to me. She wasn’t my sister, she was my first cousin and I was her favorite, her baby. Her real name was Virginia—Ginny—but neither of us was called by our real names. After all, the ring was broken and she was so particular about what she wore that I doubted if she’d be caught dead wearing a cracked ring. What she did wear might be Woolworth’s, but it was in perfect condition and she wore everything with style.

  The ring kept flashing as my fingers rummaged through the dresser drawer and her suitcase. I knew she wouldn’t mind if she caught me prying but what was I looking for anyway? I needed a letter, a document, an incriminating secret, anything. Anything I could use to keep her on my side. The word blackmail kept coming to mind, but it surely couldn’t be blackmail where Sister was concerned.

  Sister hadn’t totally unpacked—the suitcase lay open on the floor with bras, stocking suspenders and what she called “halfslips” trimmed with lace frothing up over the edge of the smart case like frilled wrappers in a box of expensive chocolates. I tidied and folded as I held every piece up and examined it—the material often as sheer as the gossamer stockings. The garterbelts too, were lace-trimmed. All impeccably clean and new looking. But something was missing. What was it? I lifted the folded pieces out again. All there. All the elegant underwear necessary for a complete change for every day of the week. Except… That was it. No bloomers. No panties. Didn’t Sister wear panties? Could that have some special meaning? Something not quite nice? I wouldn’t have expected to find the heavy square cotton things that Mom wore, but surely she wore something. Suppose a gust of wind, like at the fun fair and the skirt flying up… Naw, it couldn’t be. She’d probably just washed them all.

  Hidden under the underwear was a layer of photographs. Sister was in all the photos—seated at different tables with different glasses and bottles in front of her and different men beside her but she was always smiling wi
th her perfect teeth flashing and her dark eyes glittering with the reflection of the camera’s flash, as glamorous as any movie star. Sometimes with bare bronzed shoulders, sometimes with furs—usually silver fox—draped over them. I’d always adored her. She was living proof that the epithets hurled at us refugees from the great Dust Bowl—lazy, ignorant, barefoot hillbillies, moonshine-swillin’ no-accounts—were lies. At twenty-three years of age, she was as sleek and sophisticated as anybody I’d come across. She was as beautiful and stylish as any of the women in the picture magazines. And since I gobbled up magazines, particularly movie magazines, I felt that I was a bit of an authority on the subject. It had taken her no time at all to stop teetering on unfamiliar spike heels, learn to order her steak rare and develop a taste for the most expensive whisky and wine. She’d made the leap from Ozark farm to the bright lights of Phoenix, Arizona, with consummate ease, seemingly transformed in flight.

  Sister’s flight from the farm had been real enough. Six years ago, her mother, my Aunt Dell, simply took her two teen-aged daughters by the hand, told her husband, Jesse Slokum, to bese ma coula (the English equivalent) and started walking west. They’d hitched rides and made remarkably good time which is no surprise. Aunt Dell, even though she’s my dad’s older sister, is no slouch as a looker even now and Mavis, her older daughter, is pretty in a quiet way. The three of them standing beside a lonely road in 1935 must have created quite a temptation for any driver but I always believed that it was Sister’s sparkling eyes and smile— not to mention voluptuous figure—that brought the cars and trucks to screeching halts in front of them.

  In 1935 it was a fairly daring thing to do—even more so now, I guess—for a woman with two young girls to hitchhike halfway across the United States, but as Aunt Dell said, “It was either that or rot with Jesse. Hell, it wasn’t a question of choice, it was a question of survival.”

  They survived. Thrived, even. It was, after all, not unlike emigrating to a new country where a new language had to be learned, new customs to become aware of and new behavior patterns adopted.

  When our family first chugged into Phoenix in ’37, embarked on our own flight two years after theirs, they were able to receive us in a reasonably comfortable bungalow, surrounded with all the visible signs of prosperity. At any rate, in the middle of the Great Depression, it looked like prosperity to me. They had all worked hard those first two years and been rewarded. Mavis was engaged to a handsome young lawyer who was her first and last boss. She had him wrapped around her little finger and his impressive Buick was at her disposal. He was ambitious, determined to be the richest lawyer in Phoenix and as Aunt Dell hinted, not too particular how he reached his goal.

  Sister was a cocktail waitress—my brother Junior and I exchanged shocked looks at what could only be a dirty word the first time we heard cocktail mentioned—at a night club called The Ship. It was a ship. It was a huge wooden cutout painted to look like an ocean liner only I couldn’t imagine a ship being that big. There was an immense dance floor and all the big touring bands—the Dorsey Brothers, Benny Goodman, Charlie Barnett—played to packed houses while Sister sidled through the crowds carrying trays of drinks to the thirsty dancers. She’d sometimes make as much as twenty dollars in tips alone. Actually, tips were all the salary the waitresses got and somehow Sister managed to get the lion’s share. One night, a man slipped a hundred dollar bill down the front of her blouse as she leaned over to serve the drinks. “For that beautiful smile, honey,” he’d said.

  So the transplants adapted. They’d settled in and taken on the protective coloring of the city-dweller. Granted, Phoenix wasn’t exactly on a par with, say, New York or Boston, in terms of population or sophistication, but compared to Galena, Missouri, it was a big change and a challenge. All three ladies had made the transition and smoothed off the rough edges of the farm except perhaps for the give-away twangs and drawls left in their voices.

  But we—Mom, Dad, Junior, and I—hadn’t adapted. We hadn’t made the transition from Ozark farm to West Coast city life as gracefully as Aunt Dell and the girls. If we had, we’d still be in California. We’d had four years since our arrival in Phoenix to take on whatever protective coloring the civilized world required, but we hadn’t made it stick. Only four years and here we were back staying with Aunt Dell in Arizona—this time in a dusty little copper mining town called Ajo—a stopover in our retreat. Our retreat back to Galena, Missouri, from all the golden promises of the West. We were putting down solid roots there when Dad snapped his fingers, gave the order to pull up stakes and pile back into the Model-A Ford and hit the road. Dad’s decision. None of us others had a vote. Pure dictatorship, Junior said. Most dictatorships get toppled but Dad’s resisted dissent on every level and grew stronger with each inconceivable edict. The only thing we were taking with us from California was the baby, Becky, who’d been born there.

  After that first year in Phoenix, we had settled down in Clovis, California, Dad with a good job, Mom with prospects of re-establishing her school-teaching career and good schools offering both Junior and me endless opportunities, when all of a sudden the Ford was up on blocks in the garage with Junior underneath it and Dad grinding away at its valves. That could only mean trip. Travel. Back on the road. End of dream.

  The baby, Becky, had been a part of the dream. She seemed to round out and enhance our good fortune. Particularly for me. She was mine from the minute she was born—my anguished prayers and talks with God about her safe arrival had given me the right to claim her. She became my charge as Sister had always said I’d been hers. I crowed with delighted pride at school about my new little sister until Junior got me aside and tried to explain to me that it wasn’t necessarily something to boast about.

  “Why not?” I demanded.

  “Well…” He was blushing. “You know how babies are made?”

  “Of course. ‘God plants the seed in the belly of …’ ” I began to recite and he joined me in our old private joke. He cut it short.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” He shook his head with dismay. “You’re so dumb. Don’t you know they have to do it to make a baby?”

  “Who?”

  “Mom and Dad, silly.”

  “Do what?”

  “It, dummy.”

  “So?” Why was he so serious? “It wasn’t an immaculate conception.”

  “But … Don’t you see? You and I are so much older.” He blushed again. “Well, if they’d had the three of us, you know, one, two, three—sort of blam, blam, blam—OK. But now…” I was beginning to understand. He was embarrassed at the idea of Mom and Dad doing it. Having sex. I suppose the idea of anybody doing it embarrassed him, but I’d never thought of it one way or the other. I had been doing it with somebody myself ever since I could remember so I figured everybody else was too. Except, of course, Junior. And I have to admit that the knowledge that he took such a dim view of it often dampened my own enthusiasm. Indeed, I have such respect for him that on several occasions thoughts of his disapproval were enough to call a halt to activities before so much as a fly-button had been touched. He was my protective skin. Protecting me against myself, “it doesn’t matter. Forget it. I just wish you wouldn’t scream the news from the housetops. Does everybody have to know we have a new baby sister?”

  As far as I was concerned, yes. Here she was—thanks to considerable self-sacrifice on my part—whole, healthy, beautiful and mine. And she was at this very minute as I continued my fruitless search for something among Sister’s innocent belongings, safely asleep downstairs on a pallet on the floor out of direct range of the air-conditioner’s fan. It was Sister herself, stretched out on the couch, who was getting full benefit of whatever air was stirring. It would have been fairly difficult to catch pneumonia sitting stark naked and dripping wet in front of this primitive cooler. It was the sort found all over Arizona—a hand-made wooden frame holding chicken-wire that in turn held excelsior through which water dropped from a trough fed by a delapidated garden hose. A
fan then drew the hot desert air through the dampened excelsior and cool air filled the room. It even worked. These boxes were slapped over at least one window of every house, giving them a one-eyed pirate look. Some houses had them at every window, literally blinding the house, the ungainly attachments looking like goiters or giant mud-daubers’ nests. Those makeshift boxes underlined and expressed the transitory feeling of the times. People were on the move constantly—looking for work mostly—and the coolers were often empty packing crates superimposed on to the buildings. Junior said they reminded him of carapaces and wondered what sort of beast had left its shell at the window and crawled inside the house.

  Downstairs, the cooler managed to make the sitting room bearable, so long as you didn’t move. If you sat quietly, the sweat would eventually stop flowing but it never seemed to dry completely.

  Here in Sister’s airless upstairs room, I was covered in sweat with the simple exertion of putting away the photographs. I noticed that the men with Sister were all swarthy, beautifully if exaggeratedly dressed and usually sporting a diamond ring—they could be gangsters. Was this something I could use?

  I stared at the last photograph so long that it began to go out of focus, to swim, even tremble before my eyes. I blinked and ran a hand across my forehead. The photograph was suddenly spotted as though hit by a rain storm. It was covered in stains as dark as blood. I instinctively lifted my fingers to my swollen lip. Dry, except for a slick of sweat. Not bleeding onto the picture which I wiped on my hip. Now the stains were streaks. And my vision was still blurred—marred by sweat or tears. God knows I felt like crying. Crying and screaming for all that I’d lost. I rubbed my eyes with my shoulders and sat up straight, head up and back, rigid, keeping away from the suitcase to stop the splattering drops falling on the photos and the delicate fabric.