In Tall Cotton

by Charles G. Hulse

  “Well, as long as you’ve got baseball, the rest don’t matter all that much,” Dad said, not quite convincingly. We knew he looked forward to Junior adding football to his other sports in his third year of high school, making him a real triple-threat. The light in his eye glowed a little less brightly.

  Mom had heard that she’d have to take a few education courses and a crash course in California history in order to get a teaching credential and she was already enrolled in Fresno State college for the summer semester which would begin in June when the current semester was over. All our futures were set.

  About a month before school was out, Miss Widmer, my teacher, let me know in no uncertain terms that I’d better pull my socks up in the mathematics department if I expected to have the grades to be valedictorian. She was a great joker and I hoped she was joking when she said that, but I could see she wasn’t. She was rooting for me, she made that clear, but there was a real kiss-ass in class—Jerry Papas—who was so studious it made you sick. He played the piano, he played the organ at church and he was playing hell with my chances at the prize I sought. I’d tried to be friendly with him when he arrived at mid-term, but there was a streak of cunning in him that I found repellant, and I secretly gloated when our class bully zeroed in on him as he had on me in the seventh grade. I know I should have felt pity and understanding for his plight, but his skin was so thick, his self-assurance so complete that he didn’t need anybody’s help. He was formidable competition.

  Junior helped me with my work as much as he could, but that seed of doubt Miss Widmer planted made me very unsure of myself. I kept trying to reassure myself that if I didn’t get valedictorian, I’d naturally be salutatorian, but that’s second best. It even looks and sounds second best. I wanted to be first.

  It is undoubtedly unfair to blame my poor showing—I came in third—in the final exams on the telegram we got during that last week of school but it had—has, still has—a profound effect on me: Ronnie had been killed in a car accident. That was all the wire said and it left me stunned. Literally stunned. I bumped into things, I didn’t hear people when they spoke to me, my concentration had huge holes in it—I found that I couldn’t remember what I was doing or why I had moved from one room to another. I was in a trance of loss. I didn’t know what grief was, as such, I just felt that something vital to my life in the future had been ripped away from me. That carpet that was unrolling wasn’t meant to be an empty one—there were supposed to be people, things, places on it and one of the people I saw there clearly, vividly alive, had been Ronnie.

  Miss Widmer knew something was wrong—she took me aside after the first day’s series of finals. “All right, Woods,” she said jauntily. “What’s the matter with you? You look as though you’ve been hit between the eyes with a blunt instrument.”

  She could always make me laugh and did then. “Just terrified, I guess.”

  “Well, stop being.” She jabbed me on the shoulder with her fist.

  The second day of tests she suddenly blurted out as we were all bent over our papers, “Hey, Woods! Do you know your eyebrows go straight up? You look like Fu Manchu bent over your desk.” The class laughed, squirmed around in their seats and shuffled papers. She’d done that to snap my concentration back but she’d also broken the tension of the room. We were all trying too hard, or as in my case, not hard enough. She was a legend in the school. She was a superb teacher and I’d never felt I’d learned so much from anybody as I did from her. She was gruff, tough seeming, but acute to the point of reading minds. There was a big yellowish spot on one wall of the room that she pointed out with pride on the first day of school saying, “That is where one of the biggest navel oranges I’ve ever seen—or thrown—hit and splattered.” She watched the bug-eyed class look up at the spot and then back at her. She grinned secretly to herself and I could swear that even that first day she sent me a sly wink. “It is probably best that I don’t explain just why I threw that orange.” She paused to great theatrical effect, “Or at whom.” I fell in love with her everlastingly.

  On the last day of tests, she roamed up and down the aisles like a lioness taking care of her cubs, willing us all to do well, sending out silent messages by just pausing over our shoulders and glancing down at our work. She snapped her fingers in a nervous rhythm when she got near my desk. It worked. I’d get the papers back in focus. Then, it would go. I didn’t know to what extent she was watching me until a felt blackboard eraser hit me on the side of the head. I’d glazed over again.

  “Woods!” she called. “Wake up!” She created a scene again to pull me up and relax the class. I looked up at her. She was sending me such waves of encouragement, egging me on, pleading to me with her eyes to work harder, harder, harder, telling me she knew I was better than I was being. There was an earnestness and unguarded concern for me in her eyes, an open look full of worry and consternation that bordered on love and reminded me so of Ronnie that I burst into silent tears and dropped my head on my desk, a collapse that was mercifully covered by the loud ringing of the end-of-class bell.

  Chapter Twelve

  THERE WAS A GATHERING STORM AT HOME that had been gaining strength without my being aware of it so that when it hit, the devastation was so great, the reverberations so far-reaching, that I became even more the sleep-walking victim of shock. It’s amazing the destructive power of a sentence containing less than a dozen words. They weren’t even screamed. They were spoken in a voice icy with rage and indignation and they shattered our nice little world. “I don’t have to take that kinda’ shit off nobody.” We’d certainly heard it before, but it hadn’t quite the ramifications or finality as this time around. With just another declaration of I-don’t-have-to-take-that-kinda’-shit-off-nobody, Dad destroyed everything. Everything that even he himself had worked so hard to create. That we’d all worked and longed for. He crushed it. Left it in rubble and ashes. Wilfully and defiantly as though this small—this great— step forward we’d made in our lives was nothing. I never quite understood what Brad had meant when he said he wanted to go back to Virginia and live like a human being, but as far as I was concerned, this was the first time we’d lived like human beings. For one year. Out of fourteen. Sixteen, for Junior.

  Now it was back on the road. Back to bib overalls and back-woods tackiness. Ronnie had died trying to get out. Why were we going back? I knew we’d not saved any money. Dad’s job had been safe and secure—until he decided to throw it away. We’d go back to Grandpa in Oak Grove said the man of the house. It had taken us four years to get a decent life started and now we were going back to square one. It didn’t make sense.

  “What’s the matter with him?” I whispered to Junior in bed after the numbing news.

  “I don’t know. I just plain don’t know. It doesn’t figure. What have we been doing all this time? Why didn’t we just stay in Oak Grove?” He was as bewildered as I.

  “But Grandpa isn’t even in his own house now. He’s moved in with his new wife. We can’t all just … Well, it’s her house. We don’t even know her. Where will we live?” We could hear Dad’s raised voice coming from the living room. We lay and listened, not making out the words but chilled to the bone by the tone.

  Dad went at the Model-A with a fury—ripping at its innards, flinging parts all over the garage as though the car were responsible for the rage we knew was against himself. Junior helped after school and by the time my graduation exercises were over the car had its valves ground, new spark plugs, gaskets replaced, oil changed, a thorough grease job and two new tires. We could have it packed in less than an hour. We hadn’t been settled long enough to forget how things fitted in.

  It was parked in the front, in the driveway being packed when a beatup pickup clattered to a skidding halt in front of the house and Mrs. Hollings jumped out. Mom went out on the porch to greet her. I stood just inside the front door.

  “I’ve come to say goodbye, Mrs. Woods. Heard you folks was aleavin’ us. Can that be right?” She look
ed around her confusedly.

  “I’m afraid so, Mrs. Hollings,” Mom said and I heard the sadness in her voice. “You are very nice to come see us. Come in …”

  “Oh lord, no!” she cackled. “Much too messy to go into a nice house like that.” She looked down at her dirty old men’s work-shoes and the stained cotton dress. Her statement made me blink with recognition—Mrs. Hollings was echoing what Naomi had said some time ago when she’d stopped by to say goodbye—they were “movin’ on”—and had refused to come in.

  “Can’t shag in there,” she’d gurgled huskily in her throat, waved jauntily and disappeared down the dark street, the streetlight picking up her blond, matted and stringy hair, making it look like a white fright-wig. Mrs. Hollings was also pretty frightful in broad daylight.

  “No,” Mrs. Hollings went on. “Just wanted to tell you how much we thought of you. Of you all. Not like them Strouds.” Had our thoughts crossed? “Filthy folks. Left owin’ rent, can you beat it?” She caught sight of me at the door and I stepped out. “Oh, there you are Carl.” She rummaged around in a string bag she was carrying and pulled out a flat package wrapped in brown paper. “Could this be for you? It come … Oh, Lord, can’t call it now. Some time ago anyway and I couldn’t hardly make out the name so I just flung it on a pile of stuff on my desk and when I heard you’as goin’ it started naggin’ at me …” I’d walked down the steps and took the package. “I had to get Syl to try to find my glasses and then when I could see, I guessed it said Woods on it. But the first part …”

  “It’s a joke, Mrs. Hollings. Just a joke. Thank you for bringing it.”

  “Mrs. Woods.” There was great urgency in Mrs. Hollings’ voice as she took a step or two closer to Mom. “Come down here a bit. I’ve just got to tell you.” She looked around furtively as Mom moved cautiously down the three front steps. Mrs. Hollings suddenly leaned forward right in Mom’s face, causing her to tuck her chin in and flinch slightly. I thought Mrs. Hollings was going to kiss her but she hissed, “I don’t think I can go on without somebody knowin’. The game’s over. It ain’t much fun anymore. Suppose I die and don’t nobody know?” She looked intently in Mom’s face. “The B. V., Mrs. Woods. The B. V. Somebody has got to know my name. I thought you’d be the best one. You’ll be leavin’ so you won’t tell anybody else here.” She moved in closer yet and I could tell that Mom was holding her breath. “It’s Boshahwa Victoria. That’s the B. V. Ain’t that somethin’? Can you believe it?” She cackled with manic glee and relief. “Bosh-ah-wa. Ever heard that before? Heh, heh. My daddy was a corker. Bosh-ah-wa Vic-tor-ia.” She grinned up at Mom. “That’s me.” She turned and sort of skipped back to her truck, calling over her shoulder, “Don’t tell anybody! You hear? Not a soul. You’re the only one that’ll know. Heh, heh.” She started the motor and with her head barely higher than the steering wheel careened away from our curb and wove drunkenly down to the next corner and with horn blasting took a wheel-squealing right turn.

  Mom and I were both shaking our heads in disbelief. “As your father said, she’s looney as a bird dog. Boshahwa Victoria. Really!” She joined me on the porch. “Knowing her biggest secret may be too heavy a burden for me to bear.” She pointed at the package, “What was that?”

  “Oh, I only looked at the front. Somebody has written …” I looked at the package more carefully. “Oh, shit!” I’d never said that before in front of Mom. I turned and ran into the house, screaming “Sorry” over my shoulder. On our bed on the back porch I looked at the package addressed to “Major” Totsy Woods and knew who it was from. I couldn’t figure out why he’d used that address until I remembered I’d sent a Christmas card from the Hollings Ranch saying that I wasn’t becoming a tap-dancer but was learning how to be a drum-major.

  I ripped open the frayed twine with which it was tied. It felt like cardboard stuck down in a brown paper poke. I pulled it out. It was a color photograph of Ronnie, all dressed up in a suit and tie—his graduation picture—hideously tinted except they’d got the blueness of his eyes right. He’d turned into a handsome grown-up man. I dropped it on my chest and closed my eyes. Those dark blue eyes filled my mind and I could hear the words in my head of Aunt Ed’s follow-up letter to the wire: “… we don’t know where they were going or what they were doing … Dorothy Hale said they told her they were going to California … Ronald was driving but it wasn’t his car—that belonged to the other boy who wasn’t badly hurt…” I picked up the cheap cardboard picture frame that had been treated to look like leather but looked exactly like what it was. On the back was scrawled, “How about this for tacky, Tots? But ignore it. You’ll soon see the real thing. Am on my way!”

  I don’t know how long I lay there before I was able to get up, open my packed suitcase, find the shoe box and slip the picture into it. Not at the top. I didn’t want to see him smiling up at me everytime I opened the lid. I put him at the bottom. Buried him at the bottom, put everything back in place and continued with the chore of packing the car. I, myself, could have been packed with cotton or plaster of Paris or sand or … or … well, anything that fills up empty spaces. There was nothing inside me. I was as hollow as a birch bark canoe. It occurred to me to wonder just how much jolting the body can take before it stops functioning, before that emptiness becomes so great that there’s nothing inside to support the body. The expression, “Beat the stuffing out of somebody” came to mind. I understood that expression.

  Nobody was very talkative as we left Clovis. I was aware that Junior kept folding and unfolding a road map and kept his eyes down on his lap, not looking out. I stared out my side, but saw nothing. Our first stop was to be Bakersfield. Mom’s brother, Uncle Ralph, and family with whom we’d stayed in Oklahoma had finally made it to California. We found them after considerable searching, living in a suburb of Bakersfield in a cotton patch, having brought their style of living with them.

  “Dryer’n a popcorn fart,” Junior mumbled to me as we got out of the car to greet our uncle and aunt and cousins, all spilling out onto a dilapidated porch identical to the one they’d left in Oklahoma. Four years later and a couple of thousand miles to the west and what did they have? Just what they’d left behind. Or perhaps they’d brought it with them. It seemed inconceivable to me that they’d be content with so little progress. But then, look at us. What were we doing? We had flushed our progress down the only indoor toilet we had ever been able to call our own and were heading back to the same old uncertainties. Which was better? Bringing your poverty, the lowest possible living standard with you, or going back to it of your own free will. It was a toss-up.

  “The only way I can sleep—if I can sleep—in this car now,” Junior said as we both squirmed around trying to get comfortable for this endless night in what Junior had dubbed Calihoma, “is just sit up. But even sitting up, I can’t straighten my legs out on this back seat.”

  “That’s what you get for growing so tall. Ouch! I seem to have done some growing myself. You’ll be interested to learn that I’m being—darn, what’s that word? Brad’s word?—oh, yeah, cornholed by the gear shift.”

  This didn’t get the expected laugh. As a matter of fact, he was silent so long I pulled myself up and looked over into the back. He was sprawled out, one leg stretched out on my side of the back with the other foot on the seat and the knee bent. He was leaning against his knee with his elbow. He looked into my eyes a long time before he spoke. “Do you know why I didn’t want you to go to Mr. Watson’s tent that time? You know, when he motioned with his head for you to come over?” I nodded and thanked God for the dark that covered my blush and the inadvertent dip and dart that my eyes did. “Well … it sounds kind of silly now. It seems years ago now, doesn’t it?” He chuckled. “Years. Wasn’t even a year. But already I feel that Clovis never existed. Know what I mean?”

  “Oh Lord …”

  “Anyway, that night at scout meeting—you were playing a drowned or drowning victim or something. Anyhow, he was giving you artificial r
espiration? Remember?” I nodded. “Well, for some reason, I don’t know what it was … some way he had when he was straddling you … it wasn’t something actual, it just gave me a creepy feeling, that’s all.” He moved around on the seat, switching positions before he went on. “I guess we know what cornholing is. God knows the guys at high school joke about it enough. But he—Mr. Watson—looked like he was doing it to you.”

  “Doing it?”

  “Cornholing you. I know that’s the position you have to get into for artificial respiration and all that, but there was just something about the way he looked down at you and then when he touched you … Oh, damn. I don’t know. It just gave me the creeps, that’s all.”

  Junior had noticed. It wasn’t just my imagination. He’d been there protecting me. I made a noise in my throat and kept looking at him with my chin propped on the back of the front seat.

  “I’ve heard that some people are like that … you know, men who like boys or … or even other men. I guess it’s just something they can’t help. Something went or goes wrong—maybe you can be born that way, I don’t know. I don’t think anybody wants to be like that. Would choose it. Would you? I mean, would you … could you imagine? Well, doing something with a man?” I was riveted, bug-eyed, staring at him. He was finally talking to me. Really talking and about sex. Having sex. I couldn’t have interrupted even if I could have thought of something to say. I just shook my head dazedly. “Me either. It’s just not natural. But then, it’s not natural to lose your … to get sick like Brad. It wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t to blame.” He snorted a rueful laugh. “Well, hell, it’s not natural for me to have sinus or asthma or whatever. It’s just a sickness like any other. Like maybe men liking boys is a sickness. Not anybody’s fault. And say, well, just for argument that you’d—that when you got older, I mean when you got grown up and maybe you’d like men or boys …” I sat up straight with a great gasping intake of breath. “Hold it! I’m just saying that anything’s a possibility—anybody can have a sickness, that’s all I’m saying. Look at me, sniffling all the time. I know it drives you nuts. Me too, but I can’t help it. Any more than Brad could help it. Or you, if it turns out that you … What I’m trying to say is that my sniffling doesn’t make you hate me, you just hate the sniffling. I can’t hate Brad be cause he turned out like he did. I couldn’t hate you—I couldn’t possibly hate you, no matter what you did. Or how you turn out.” He threw his head back and laughed. “For God’s sake, Tots, you were doing something pretty hot-diggedy-dang with Mary Ann when you were only six year old! God only knows what you’ve been up to since then. After all, Captain J recognized you as a sensual type—and don’t think I didn’t look that word up quick as a flash. I was even jealous that I wasn’t sensual and sexy. He said you were sexy. I guess you are. Maybe you just can’t help doing it when you get the chance.”