In Tall Cotton

by Charles G. Hulse

  After the second or third bar-stop, I fell asleep. When I woke up, we were joggling along a rutted lane heading down an incline with a wide muddy river just ahead of us. He stopped the car and got out.

  “Well, here we are,” he called to me. “Let’s get this stuff unloaded.”

  We were about a hundred yards from the river bank and the rutted lane had just petered out into low scrub with no clearing or buildings. It didn’t look right. “Are you sure this is the place?” I asked as I took the pack he handed me off the back of the truck.

  “Dead sure. This right here’s the Boy Scout Camp. They told me so back up there. And this here’s it.” He shoved a pack off the end of the truck with his foot. That seemed to please him. “Heh, heh, that’s a helluva lot easier’n liftin’ them fuckin’ things.” He kicked off another.

  He had the truck-bed empty in no time. He stood, weaving slightly and grinning with self-satisfaction. “There. Done my duty. Done my duty to the Boy Scouts of America! And to Eleanor Roosevelt!” He jumped over the side of the truck and was back in the driver’s seat in a flash. “And now, to get the hell outta here!” He disappeared in a cloud of dust.

  By the time I’d arranged the packs in a neater pile, it was getting late and chilly. The sun was in my eyes and getting lower in the west.

  I walked back up the rutted track to where we’d turned off a country dirt road. To the right I saw a cluster of buildings. A farm. I took off, walking fast, watching the sun sink rapidly.

  Just before I got to the house, there was a big wooden gate set into the barbed wire fence on two huge posts. The whole place looked deserted except for the sudden appearance of a ferocious snarling dog that looked the size of a pony streaking toward me with fangs bared. I was up the gate in one leap and with another quick adjustment was sitting on the gate-post with my feet pulled up and under me as the wild beast jumped up the post growling, snapping and drooling like a maniac.

  He stalked the post, pacing around and around, growling deep back in his throat, glancing up at me with crazed golden eyes that showed bloodshot fiery red when he rolled them in a fury of frustration at my inaccessibility. I felt like a treed ’coon.

  After what seemed hours I heard a car. It was Mr. Watson. He tamed the beast with a quick word and helped me off the post. My bones felt frozen in a crouched position putting me eye to red-eye with what was now a cuddly puppy. I wanted to bite him. I did manage a quick kick at him as I got into the pickup truck.

  “What in the world happened to you?” Mr. Watson asked as we drove back to the unattended packs. “We’ve been worried sick.”

  I told him the story as he loaded the packs onto the truck. A numbing chill was fogging up from the river. I got a sweater out of our pack and at Mr. Watson’s urging, stretched out on the seat while he secured the packs.

  I was vaguely aware of my head being lifted onto something soft and the motor starting before I was dead asleep. The motion of wheels under me had its usual effect until I was slowly awakened by a different motion or movement. There was something burning my cheek, moving along from my chin up to my forehead, hot, like a fever, only hard and moving slowly against my face. I felt a hand holding the other side of my face, pressing the opposite side of my face against the hot object. Out of the corner of my eye I saw white flesh rubbing slowly, so close to my eye that it filled all my vision. The velvet smoothness was familiar. Oh, for God’s sake! I jerked my head up and away with a crash against the steering wheel. That, too, was familiar. I let out a yell, rolling forward over a leg and ducked around under the steering shaft to avoid the gearshift and covered my face with my hands muttering, “… been asleep … Oh, God. Banged my head.” I kept my face covered because I didn’t want to see what had been next to my face. “Wow! I can feel a goose egg. Oouuuweee … does that hurt!”

  “Oh, sorry, Carl …” I could feel him putting himself away, straightening to zip up his pants and talking fast to cover his actions, “… you sleeping … I know what a day you had … you must be dead. I thought it best just to let you … Ah, it’s right up there. The camp. See? What an ass Mr. Larson is to have left you down there … How’s the head? Not hurt too bad?” He reached over and took one of my hands down from my forehead where it had been rubbing what was a sizeable knot.

  “No.” I didn’t look at him. “It’s all right. Just a bump.” I wasn’t going to talk about it, it made me too sick. What in God’s name was he trying to do? My body remembered something in the way he’d touched it when he tickled me. He was like Uncle Roy. And he made me feel dirty in just the same way Unc … Roy had. Not only dirty, but ashamed. Defiled in some way. Why should I feel such shame when it was him—he, dammit. (Miss Widmer is always with me)—a grown man, a school teacher—who’d been using my … using me … my face, for God’s sake. He’d been fucking the side of my face!

  I was hailed as a hero by the troop when they were told how I’d been lost, my life threatened by a starving hound, and how I’d stuck by my responsibility. I made it sound just a simple mistake on the father’s part so the boy wouldn’t feel bad. The story of being treed by the bloodthirsty beast I tried to make as funny as possible. I wanted everybody to laugh a lot. I wanted everybody to like me. I wanted to forget… I wanted to pretend that I was just like all the rest of them. Why was I the one singled out for these obscene acts? What I’d felt up till now had been more or less natural and normal. But the fun with Miguel, Vic and Artur was taking on new dimensions. Was it really just innocent fun? I didn’t consider the thing with Ronnie along with the others. That had been special. It was the first time and had been tinged with … With what? It was Ronnie who’d used the word “love.” Where was the line to be drawn? So far, it had just been games. With boys and girls. Games with people my own age. Grown men weren’t supposed to play kids’ games.

  The camp in the bright morning light proved anything but primitive. There were clean toilets and a shower-room in a big central building. A boat house held a half-a-dozen boats of different sorts, there was a swimming platform with a ladder down to the water and a diving board. This was hardly roughing it. Even the tent sites were numbered and had cement paving with permanent metal rings to tie down the support ropes. The tents spread out in all directions, on different levels, making it like a little village.

  Junior and I were preparing our breakfast over a roaring campfire—started with everything but a flint stone—when we heard a low, long, attention-getting yawn, an exaggerated series of vowel sounds associated with morning stretching and flexing. We heard various boys call, “Mornin’, Mr. Watson.” Looking up we saw him outside his tent, stark naked, stretching elaborately, scratching his hairy chest and stomach, eyes squinting into the light as though he’d just found himself there in that spot unexpectedly and was just waking up. It was a palpably fake performance. He was so obviously showing off his nakedness that I averted my eyes in embarrassment for him but not before I caught a message to me in his eyes and an almost imperceptible command to “come here” with his head. Junior had caught it too and when our eyes met, Junior’s told me to ignore the message from the scout master.

  I went on cooking with my heart pounding and wondering how much Junior knew or suspected about Mr. Watson. Had he ever tried the sort of thing with Junior that he tried with me? Junior’s eyes had told me to steer clear of Mr. Watson so he must suspect something. Or was he just embarrassed by the blatant display of his naked body as we all were? Did all men become hairy? I glanced down at my own bare leg. There was no question about it, the hair was getting darker and thicker. Oh God.

  The day’s schedule was so full that it wasn’t difficult to avoid Mr. Watson, but it wasn’t so easy to ignore the pleading look in Art’s eyes.

  “Hey, Carl,” he said finally, “what’s the matter? You haven’t hardly spoken to me. I thought we were friends.”

  How could I tell him that the idea of touching myself, let alone him, filled me with such shame that I didn’t even want to think about
it. There it was. That was what had happened. A light dawned. Mr. Watson had poisoned our games. He’d turned them into something nasty. “I mean, somebody might tell the scout master. You know, if they saw us …”

  “They all do it,” he said reasonably.

  “Well, maybe. But if Mr. Watson …” How could I feel him out on the subject. “Hey, did you see him this morning? Mr. Watson? Naked up by his tent?”

  “Everybody did. He acted like he wanted us all to see him.” Art hadn’t been fooled by the performance either.

  “Well, what do you think? Do you think he does … oh, you know, masturbates or anything with the older boys?”

  “Men don’t do that,” he said with authority. “Just boys. Just good friends. Not men. Not unless they’re queers.”

  “Queers? What’s that?” I wanted to know what Art knew about queers.

  Art looked confused. “I’m not sure. My brother said he met one at the movies. He said the queer was trying to play with his thing.”

  “Your brother’s thing?” Maybe we were getting somewhere.

  “Yeah. I guess so.” He looked thoughtful for a moment and then brightened. “I know. Cocksuckers are queers.” Captain J had already pointed out that fact to me.

  Where did it all leave me? At least I wasn’t the only one men tried funny things with. Art’s brother had had an experience.

  Junior kept everybody entertained later in the afternoon by repeatedly turning over in a kyak. He’d take about four strokes with the double-ended oar and then lose his balance and over he’d go. He’d keep coming back up, spluttering and spewing water, but laughing and trying it again and again until I started getting worried. He was staying under too long. I called to him, making some excuse for him to come in. I knew he wouldn’t on his own until he’d conquered the unwieldy craft. By dinner time, his nose was running as fast as the river. He was blowing it every few minutes and sniffling constantly. The old trouble again.

  “You OK?,” I asked, trying not to let the sniffling get on my nerves.

  “Yeah, sure. Just a bit of a headache. Stayed in the water too long, I guess.”

  “Did you bring those nose drops?”

  “Naw. It’ll be OK.” He went on sniffling, but he also went on doing everything on the schedule with full energy and enthusiasm.

  School started the week after our camping trip. I’d managed to get the fourteen-mile hike credit, plus a map-reading badge, a cooking badge, a huge blister on my heel from the walk back and a new set of guilts, thanks to Mr. Watson. The blister healed before school started, but the guilts festered and spread like a cancer. I slowly eased myself out of the Boy Scouts of America movement and blamed a heavy workload of eighth-grade homework for not seeing much of Art. My own necessities in that direction I took care of furtively in the locked bathroom, getting it over as quickly as possible, not caressing and watching but causing orgasm roughly, almost painfully so that the feelings of guilt afterward might perhaps fade more quickly. They didn’t.

  I threw myself at school work determined to be the valedictorian of my graduating class, a thing Junior missed by going to a Junior High School in Ventura. We certainly weren’t in competition in chalking up honors, but I wanted as much recognition as I could get—God knows Junior was getting plenty. He was now playing shortstop—a much more important position than center field—on the varsity baseball team. He was also trying out for the basketball team, he was still in the band of course, and was voted president of the sophomore class almost on his birthday in October. At sixteen, he was a big gun, but didn’t seem to know it. The coach had come up to Dad after a game and shook his hand proudly.

  “It’s good to know the father of such a fine boy, Mr. Woods,” the coach beamed and pumped Dad’s hand. “He’s one of the finest athletes I’ve ever had the privilege of coaching. He’s a born one. They don’t come along very often. I watched him last year and I knew then. That boy’s got it.”

  “I’m proud to hear it,” Dad said, beaming even more than the coach.

  “I can tell you right here, Mr. Woods, that if that boy works the way I know he will, why, they’ll all be up here after him in another year—Berkeley, UCLA, USC—all of ’em. Word gets around, you know, and when there’s real talent, those college coaches are out sniffing around. He’ll have scholarships dangling under his nose by the dozen.” He chuckled. “Don’t let him know I told you all that, Mr. Woods. Don’t want him to get a big head. But then, he’s not like that. He won’t get a big head. He’s just …” he stopped and thought. “He’s just well-rounded. All-around good boy. What more can you say than that?” He grinned and slapped Dad on the shoulder and walked away, bouncing self-satisfiedly on his heels. Dad did some bouncing too after that little conversation. That look was rekindled in his eyes again. Not that it had been extinguished, just banked, and was now glowing. My boy’s a star! He was more sure of it now than ever.

  Becky had her first birthday party on November twenty-second. It was just family, but Mom had hired a photographer to come take her picture with her cake and one candle. She was round, sweet and the apple of everybody’s eye, but continued to be my special property. I posed her for the pictures and then the photographer suggested one of all of us. He’d already taken the four Mom had contracted for, another would cost extra. We all looked foolish and shy but Mom said, “Come on. Let’s do it. Lord knows when we’ll have a chance to be together and all clean at the same time.” The flash-bulb caught us grouped around the dining table with the one candle in the cake relighted to make it look festive. It’s the only picture we have of the five of us.

  Money continued to be a very scarce item, but our Christmas was considerably more festive than the last one if only because of the surroundings. Our tree was tiny, no giant from B. V. Hollings and Son’s ranch in Visalia, and had one string of electric lights that twinkled through our living room window out onto the front porch and looked just like the others along the street. More and more, we were fitting in. We’d been in the same house for almost a year. A record. What’s more, a nice house, one none of us was ashamed of. Clovis, California had become home, even though all the end-of-year cards and letters we got were from what we continued to call “back home”. Our lives were here now. We were settled down and in. Work on Friant Dam was assured for at least another five years and Mom had been in contact with the California State Department of Education in Sacramento to see what she’d have to do to qualify for a teaching position here. I’d never felt so secure. Not even at the Joneses. The Depression was still firmly with us but Roosevelt’s New Deal was finally showing results.

  “Back home’s” biggest news was that Grandpa Woods had remarried—for the third time—a widow who had a house in Oak Grove. One of the more stalwart of the Population 30. A Mrs. Gardiner and their Christmas card was signed “Grandpa and Aunt Lilly.” Aunt Ed wrote to say that the lady was one of the most respected women in the county, and if not well-off, at least owned her house into which Grandpa immediately moved, having sold the place where Aunt Idy had died and had then sewn the money into his long-johns, according to Dad, never to be seen again.

  “He’s the tightest man alive. That poor widow won’t see a penny of that money. He’ll be living off her, you can mark my words.” He laughed fondly and shook his head. “And, she’ll be cuttin’ the wood for Mr. Woods’ stove in the winter, you can bet your bottom dollar on that, too.”

  Aunt Ed’s letter went on to say that Ronnie was doing very well in school—graduating this spring and it was hoped he’d enroll in the Theological Seminary in Springfield.

  I snorted with laughter and Mom said, “There’s about as much likelihood of Ronnie’s becoming a preacher as there is in my becoming a nun.”

  “Why in hell do folks try to live their lives through their kids, anyway?” Dad asked. I turned slowly toward him, expecting to see a twinkle in his eye. There wasn’t one. He wasn’t joking.

  Aunt Dell’s letter was briefer than usual: I’m Mrs. Roy
Blake. Legal. We in the A-hole of anywhere. Ajo, Arizona. Ah-ho-hole, Ari-hon-a. Ha ha. Love, Mr. and Mrs.

  “That place sounds familiar,” Junior said. “We passed a sign outside Phoenix … Oh, yes. I remember now. On the map there’s even an Ajo Desert. Smaller than the Gila Desert. On the map it looked pretty bleak.”

  “Well,” I said, “Aunt Dell sure doesn’t seem to like it.”

  “That’s because an asshole ain’t big enough for Dell to fall down in,” Dad said.

  “Really, Woody,” Mom said and giggled.

  March came and a few days before it left, I became fourteen. I found it an extraordinary experience, like nothing that had happened before. It wasn’t even a happening, nothing had happened. Yet. It was just the simple accumulation of years. I’d racked up fourteen! In four more years I’d be eighteen and graduating from high school like Ronnie would be doing in Missouri in May, a month before I’d graduate from grade school here. Then in two more years, I’d be twenty and then twenty-one. A man. All of a sudden I could feel my future inside me. It was there, ready to unroll like a carpet down which I could walk. Or perhaps even run. It was an exhilarating prospect. Dreams of dancing were still in there someplace, but slightly out of focus.

  Junior was forced to cut down on his sports activities. He dropped out of basketball practice and spent more time on his music and poetry. He was sophomore editor of the year book and that took time away from the sports he loved but was finding more difficult to cope with. What we called a chronic cold continued accompanied by serious headaches. He seldom complained but when Mom asked him, he’d have to admit, that, yes, his head ached. Visits to the doctor were inconclusive—a touch of sinus, perhaps, but basically a strong healthy specimen. Baseball remained his great love and he worked doubly hard on that. He confessed to me that basketball was fun and he liked it, but all the running up and down the court somehow loosened up everything in his head and made breathing difficult.