In Tall Cotton

by Charles G. Hulse

  “Haven’t you ever done it?” I guess I’d spend my life trying to find out something about his private life.

  “That’s a personal and private thing.” He laughed as he used his old self-protective line.

  “I mean, you’re sixteen. Surely you’ve had …”

  “When I do,” he said in the measured way we used when we recited, “God plants the seed …” “You’ll be the first to know. I’ll send you a telegram.”

  That meant the conversation was over. Deader’n a doornail. I buried my head in my pillow but sleep seemed far away after this talk. Lying quiet, hardly breathing, I tried to figure out exactly what Junior had said, was trying to say or intimate. Was it all some kind of warning? Did he have some suspicion about my future? Or was he just telling me that he was on my side, behind me and ready to understand me? That’s all he meant, I’m sure. What more could I ask? Or need?

  When I’d been still for some time, Junior spoke my name softly. “Tots?” I grunted. “I know that Ronnie was—well, he was somebody special. Special, particularly for you. I know that.” He too was still for a long moment. “You were something very special to him. He told me. He loved you in a special way. Maybe even a … strange way, who knows? He told me he wished you were his brother.”

  “I’m glad he’s not.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I kinda’ like the one I got.”

  “Thanks, pard.” He laughed.

  “Besides, who wants a dead brother?” I lifted myself up quickly. “I wasn’t trying to be funny. What I meant was that if he was my brother well, he’d be … I dropped my head back on my pillow. “It’s bad enough, just having a half-cousin. A dead half … well, a dead anything.” I choked but swallowed it. Was Ron’s love for me “special”? Strange? Something he couldn’t help. He’d said he was sorry and he couldn’t help what he’d done with me. Was that the sort of thing Junior was talking about?

  “I know. I understood what you meant. Don’t forget, I know you pretty well. And understand you better than … well, better than you think. Anyway, he loved you.” He chuckled again. “He always said, ‘Totsy’s crazy, but he makes me laugh and I love him.’ I guess he didn’t have very many people to love. He was always lonely, I felt.”

  I knew Junior was making an effort to tell me a lot of things— that he loved me too—most of which I understood. At least I understood enough to make a vow not to do anything he’d be ashamed of. That I’d be ashamed to talk to him about. If he was going to be willing to understand everything about me, the least I could do was to make all my actions understandable. And acceptable.

  After a pause, I said, “He was on his way to see us. I think he was running away from home. He didn’t much like being a hillbilly.” I sighed. “I’m not sure I’m going to like it much myself.”

  He leaned over the seat and put his hand on my hair and sort of patted it. “I’m sorry, Tots. Sorry about poor Ronnie. It doesn’t seem fair. It makes me sad. I liked him too, you know.” He took a fistful of hair and squeezed it lightly. “But I know that … I know that the accident really knocked you for a … loop.” He squeezed my hair again. “I’m sorry, Tots.”

  The Mojave Desert outside Bakersfield was an inferno in mid-June. By August you’d have to scrape your melted car off the blacktop with a spatula. But not even the oven-dry air dried up Junior’s draining sinuses. He tried everything, leaning out the window, letting the air blow directly in his face, or leaning his head back on the seat so the air could penetrate his nostrils, but everything seemed to cause him more discomfort.

  “If the air comes in too fast,” he explained, “it just seems to go right up here—right behind my eyes—and gets a firm grip on that steel band that goes around here,” he’d gesture around his entire head, “and tighten it until it feels as though my head’ll crack open.”

  “Do you want some more aspirin?” Mom said.

  “No. No thanks. They don’t seem to help all that much. It’ll be all right.”

  Having Becky in the back seat with us didn’t help the heat situation. She was bright red from the heat, cranky, cross and decidedly unlovely. Even to me. Mom and I kept shuttling her from the front seat to the back. It cooled off a bit in the San Bernardino Hills, but not much. By the time we got to Needles and the Arizona border in dark early evening, we were able to breathe but were limp with fatigue and heat. The car had hummed along beautifully, not even over-heating. You had to hand it to Dad, he could grind a mean valve.

  Over the border into Arizona we spent the night in a motor inn because of Becky. Her misery was contagious and we all wanted a bath and a comfortable sleep. We got to Phoenix the next day.

  “Back in mud-dauber land,” Junior said, pointing out the familiar air-conditioners. “But some are getting pretty fancy. Look at that one. And that.” They were sleekly designed metal boxes that fitted into the lower part of the windows, not disfiguring the houses like the make-shift ones do.

  We skirted downtown Phoenix and were headed south toward Gila Bend back on the familiar main road we’d taken to California. How long ago? Almost three years? We’d made a full circle, a three-year circle—picking up a baby sister along the way—and were purring down the same road as if we were going to do it all over again. We were in roughly the same position we’d been in the last time—jobless, all but penniless, uprooted, unsure of our future beyond the stay-over with the next relative. This time it was Aunt Dell we were headed for and—I’d better get used to it— Uncle Roy just after this next turn off toward Ajo at Gila Bend, down through the Ajo Desert.

  It was really desert, reddish sandy earth supporting only the occasional cactus plant with odd rocky formations jutting up out of the flat terrain, creating lovely patterns of color and shapes. As we got nearer the town, we could see off to the right a huge hole cut into the side of a hill, miles wide at the mouth with roads or levels circling down into the earth like a giant corkscrew where the copper was being strip-mined. Hundreds of caterpillar earth movers far enough away to look like toys were scraping away at the red earth and then lifting it into dump trucks, which formed a constant moving line like a train curling back up the corkscrewed opening in the earth, filling the sky with dust and dirt.

  “Can’t leave well enough alone, can they?” Junior murmured. “Got to ruin everything. Maybe Aunt Dell was right. Ajo’s just a big asshole.”

  The town was a few miles on from the mine and laid out on a flat plateau cut into perfect sections as though it was a plate of fudge. Straight lines intersected straight lines in which almost identical houses were set, all shaded by dusty palms, tamarisks or eucalyptus. We followed Aunt Dell’s written instructions and found one of the main streets fairly easily—Caliente Road—but after that it was a lesson in frustration. The unpronounceable Mexican names had Dad swearing and cussing, doing U-turns where they were most definitely not allowed, backing up to trap some poor pedestrian who inevitably was deaf, dumb, blind and had just that minute arrived from Mexico and spoke no word of any known language. Fuming with frustration he ordered Junior out of the car with Aunt Dell’s letter and orders not to come back until he could direct us to her street without a hitch. Dad’s moods were unpredictable at best, but this display of impatience and anger had us all looking down at our hands with embarrassment. Even Becky seemed to understand the tension and sat quietly watching Junior go from one shop to another, stop people in the street, listen to gesticulated directions, nod vaguely and move on. He was obviously not going to risk coming back to the car until he was absolutely sure that he understood the way.

  He was smiling broadly when he did come back. “It’s just around the next corner,” he said laughing, trying to lighten the mood, “then the second on the left.” He gave me a I-hope-to-God-I’m-right look. He was. And we spilled out of the car to a loud and loving welcome from Aunt Dell who came running down the slanting cement walkway to the car.

  “For Christ’s sake, Dell,” Dad called, all good humor r
estored, “don’t fall down on your own property. That won’t do you a damn bit of good.”

  “Only rented, you knuckle-head,” she screamed as she threw her arms around Mom. “And I can’t wait to soak this damned landlord. God knows he’s soakin’ us enough for the rent.”

  Laughter, hugs, greetings, baby Becky the center of attention as we moved up the sloping walk, not noticing Uncle Roy standing on the porch until we neared the steps that led up to it. He was grinning down at us, pale blue eyes twinkling with pleasure—he was family now, welcoming family. I was eyeing him warily when behind him the screendoor flew open and out flew Sister. We were all dumbfounded—she was supposedly in Phoenix working. I let out a whoop of joy. We were all wrapped up in each others’ arms and talking at once.

  “Let’s git inside,” Aunt Dell yelled above the din, “before the neighbors know for sure that this house is occupied by a bunch of nuts. I know they’ve been suspicious ever since we moved in.” By the time Junior and I unpacked the car, Aunt Dell had the down-home Woods Pow-Wow in full cry. As usual, that meant everybody bunched together in the kitchen screaming and laughing. Dad and Roy at the table with whisky and mix bottles arranged in front of them, beer opened for Aunt Dell, cokes for me and Junior, and Sister sipping what she called a Scotch-on-the-rocks. Mom was feeding Becky her pablum and some Gerber’s goop while we caught up on Sister’s news first.

  She was more beautiful than ever and known all over Phoenix now as Dolores Del Ozarkio. “Totsy,” she laughed, “you remember that crazy bartender at the Tucson Hotel? Jim? Well, you can imagine it was him who gave me the name.” She pretended to make a joke of the reference to her resemblance to the magnificent Dolores Del Rio but she did everything she could to accentuate the similarity. She wore her dark hair pulled back in what she tried to describe as a chignon but after mangling the pronunciation a couple of times, smiled and patted her “bun.” In the evening, she often wore exotic Spanish combs, carved and bejewelled, not so much to secure the bun as insure long appreciative glances from men. She didn’t really need the combs for that. She’d also decided that black or white suited her dramatic looks best and rarely wore colors. She’d changed jobs—The Ship had sunk in a sea of financial troubles—and was now working in that bar at the Tucson Hotel with the crazy bartender. She was the only cocktail waitress. “I all but run the place.”

  “She was runnin’ it around the clock when we’as there,” Aunt Dell yelled over her shoulder from the stove where she was frying up hamburger patties, “and I figure she must be the cleanin’-up woman too since we never saw her for days on end.”

  Sister rolled her eyes. “Momma, like I’ve told you, there’s rooms up on the top floor for the staff and when the bar has a good lively bunch that don’t leave till… oh, sometimes till four or five in the mornin’, well, you can bet your life I’m so dead on my feet that I’d have to call an ambulance to get me home.”

  And Mavis? “Aaaahhh, my God!” Aunt Dell really screamed this time. “She done it! Mean-hearted girl. She went and made me a grandmother. And just when I’as gettin’ married! Made me feel kinda wicked standing there sayin’ ‘I do’ knowin’ I was a grandmother. Indecent is what it was.”

  “Oh, was it now?” Uncle Roy winked at Dad.

  “Weeeelll,” she actually blushed. “You know what I mean.” She flipped a patty over. “Anyway her and George’s doing real well. Hell, they got them a place out there where you was. Out North Twelfth Street. It’s a new development. For young couples on the go. And that George is so much on the go, he’s almost gone!” Junior’s phenomenal size at sixteen was discussed at length along with his sports’ career. He and Roy stood back-to-back to check heights, and Junior looked a smidge taller.

  “And Roy’s got on cowboy boots. With heels,” Sister pointed out. “Listen Big Boy,” she said running a finger along Junior’s still relatively beardless cheek, “you can have a free drink in my bar any ole time.” Junior blushed. “But Totsy,” Sister frowned and smiled at me at the same time. “Just look at that one. He’s filling out pretty good, but not gettin’ all that much taller.”

  “Might be goin’ to root,” Aunt Dell called and laughed her most raucous. I seemed to be the only one who hadn’t got the joke.

  Mom went into the living room where she and Dad and Becky were to sleep. The couch let down into a double bed, hard as sleeping on the floor, but Mom said she could sleep anywhere after the days on the road.

  By the time Mom got back to the kitchen, having got Becky tucked in, we were all stuffing ourselves on hamburgers with all the trimmings. The booze bottles had been replaced with the familiar mustard, Heilman’s Mayonnaise, pickalilli, sliced onions, lettuce, tomatoes and slices of Kraft cheese and a contest was on to see who could make the tallest sandwich. The construction wasn’t the main point; you had to be able to get it into your mouth and take a neat bite. We were anything but neat. We were all covered with meat juice, sauces, tomatoes, all running down our arms, messier than a Fourth of July picnic.

  “I think I’d better go jump into the bathtub,” Junior said, holding his arms up in front of him like a doctor who’d just performed a rather bloody operation. “I’m beyond napkins.” He excused himself and went to the door. “Tots, come here and open the door. I don’t dare touch anything.”

  “Real pigs, both of ’em,” Aunt Dell said proudly.

  At the door Junior whispered, “Come up with me,” in an urgent voice. I opened the door and flung an “Excuse me, too” over my shoulder. I followed Junior up the stairs to the bathroom and opened the door for him. He headed for the sink and put his hands into it and I went up beside him and turned on the water. I glanced up at us in the mirror and he was as white as a sheet.

  “Good heavens! What’s the matter with you? You going to be sick?”

  He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “I don’t know. I just feel funny all over.” He reeled slightly and had to support himself on the edge of the sink. I took hold of his waist, thinking he might need to be steadied if he were going throw up. He took a deep breath and straightened up and opened his eyes. “Wow! I never felt like that before. I thought I was going to faint there for a minute.”

  “Are you all right now?”

  “I guess so. Mostly it’s my damned head.” He rubbed his temples and shut his eyes again. “Back up in here. Behind my eyes. It hurts so much I think I’m going to keel over.”

  “Should I call Mom?”

  “Lord no. I may be just a bit tired. If I could just lie down.”

  “Look. You clean up. I’ll get your p-jays out of your suitcase and bring ’em to you. Get ready for bed and then just … well, go to bed. Our pallet is in the dining room there across the hall from where Mom and Dad’s sleeping. I’ll be right back.” I flew down the stairs and into the dining room that looked as though it were used more for an office than a place to eat. Aunt Dell had an old mattress on the floor up against one wall, neatly made up with clean sheets for us. I found the p-jays and dashed back up the stairs to the bathroom. Junior was standing up in the tub, drying himself, with his back to me. He’d have to be dying before he’d face me naked. “Here, put these on. I’ll just tell them that you were feeling funny and thought you’d better lie down. Just tiptoe down the stairs and go in there. Nobody’ll really know. Least of all Dad and Roy—Uncle Roy—they seem to be getting quite a buzz on.”

  “Yeah, I noticed. Aunt Dell isn’t doing too badly, and that’s not just beer in her glass. The Pow-Wow’s heating up.” He tried to laugh, but a flash of pain creased his face. “OK. I’ve got my stuff bundled up. Let’s go.”

  He crawled into the pallet and eased himself back with a sigh. “Do you want me to turn off the light? Or are you going to read?”

  “Nah,” he said frowning up into the single light hanging down over the table with an old-fashioned fluted glass shade which diffused the light around the room. “Turn it off, I guess. It’s right for reading only if you’re sitting at the table.”


  “OK. ’Night.” He just wasn’t himself. Well, nobody had made much sense for the last couple of weeks. Dad erratic. Mom stoic. Junior feeling rotten and looking it, but giving into it wasn’t like him.

  “Where the hell ya’ been, Tots,” Dad roared when I got back to the kitchen. The food had been removed from the table and the bottles were back in place and from the looks of it, a good drinking session was in the works.

  “Putting my baby brother to bed. He says to excuse him, but if he didn’t lay down, he’d fall down.” Noises of commiseration came from all directions but Mom came up to my side.

  “Is he all right?” She looked worried. “Is it the headache again?” I nodded.