Back on the turnrow after lunch he walked out ahead again. Boss Band had seen enough, “Ol’ Racehoss!”
“Oh Lawd!”
“You betta quit yore drag-assin an git ta carryin ‘at lead row!”
I stepped on out and regained the lead position, “Gitcha jive ass back in line, Cap Rock!”
He slacked back just a hair. Looking over my shoulder as we sped down the turnrow, I hollered, “Oh Lawd! Speakin ta you, Boss!”
“Whut?”
“Takin Ol’ Cap Rock a round or two when we ketch in!”
“Go ‘Head!” We’d been cleared to duel.
He pitched the 14-inch file he kept hanging from the horn of his saddle to Bad Eye, “Put a good edge on both uv them nigguhs’ hoes.”
This took a few minutes. When Bad Eye finished he returned the file and retook his place on the tail row. Cap Rock and I waited for Boss Band to give the signal.
“Go ‘Head!”
Neck and neck we left the blocks. We quickly pulled away from the squad. Boss Band hollered to us, “Y’all carry them rows on away frum heah!” which was cutting us loose from the herd.
It was go for what you know. The pace was brutal—a leg cramper, a shoulder acher, a back breaker until somebody dropped or quit. My race with Railhead Shorty the day before had made my body sore. We covered at least four feet each time we dragged our hoes down either side of our rows. One of the first things I learned, “When you choppin cotton, jes git the grass an don’t move no mo dirt than you hafta.”
This was a duel in the sun, requiring stamina and skill. I fell back a lick so I could take a better look at his drag and spotted the flaw. He was sinking his hoe too deep. I barely skimmed the ground’s crust with mine. Smelling blood in the water, I tightened my gait a notch. On the next set of rows, I took a slight lead and started fucking with him, “C’mon man, don’tcha lay that hammer down. Whut’s the matter? Can’t you hold ‘em? I thoughtcha said you wuz a bull.”
Cap Rock’s deep chopping and dragging were taking their toll. I knew what that did to the shoulders and arms because I used to chop like that all the time. He began to falter and was slowing down just a hair. Seeing this, my adrenalin went to pumping and I chopped faster. I pulled away and kept lengthening the distance. After about two hours into the race I lost count of the rows we’d chopped, but I was so far ahead it was as if I’d sprouted wings like Pegasus and flown away from him. He’d never catch me, not unless I fell dead.
Boss Band called me back, “Ol’ Racehoss! Cum on back ovah heah in the squad. This goat-smellin sonuvabitch dun laid the hammer down!” He herded Cap Rock back into the squad, trying his best to ride him down with Satan. “If I ketch anutha one uv you bastards in front a Ol’ Racehoss on ‘em rows, I’m gon kill you!” Adding, “An you nigguhs stop a-crowdin him when y’all out on ‘at turnrow. Next nigguh I see a-crowdin him, I’m gon blow th’ top uv his Gotdam head off! DO YOU HEAR ME NIGGUHS!!?” he bellowed.
“OH LAWD!!”
Cap Rock and the others wouldn’t dare push me anymore. They would work and walk where they were supposed to and let me set the pace. Boss Band would see to that.
Chapter 14
I was just any other “wild-assed nigguh” under Boss Deadeye. Under Boss Band, I grew into manhood. He got butter from a duck. The hungry years under the Band forged me a body “’thout a ounce uv fat on it.” My legs were lean and muscular like a distance runner’s, like a racehorse’s. My chest looked like I’d been pumping iron, with muscles sinewy as the village blacksmith. I’d been slow baked in the sun’s oven like the men of the desert, and blended in with the rest. Camouflaged by my desert bronze, I could have been mistaken for a Mexican. But up close, my eyes gave me away. I’d become as one of them, and my color wasn’t an issue.
I saw my transformation taking place, reminding me of when I was a kid and watched Lon Chaney, Jr. change into The Wolf Man at the picture show. Hands rough as sandpaper with layers of hard calluses lining the palms, they scarcely resembled the ones that used to cast dice. No more blisters from the brogans without socks, my feet had toughened by the miles and miles of turnrow they tread. My sculptured body was tight with nothing inside but guts. That’s all I was running on. I’d become the lone gray wolf that fought his way up through the pack, and was now leading it.
Number 1 hoe became a motorized squad, and we proved it to any nonbelievers by out working the corn combines. There wasn’t much difference in us and the other squads, except we had to do it four times faster with the same quality. Before Boss Band, I was a shadow among shadows, a robot among robots. He brought me from obscurity and placed me at the helm of the ship.
Two years after becoming lead row, I had that “drag,” that lick, that rhythm in my shoulders when chopping cotton. I could pluck the small grass shoots growing against the tender cotton stalks and never bruise the stalks. The relentless pressure struck a chord—what mattered most became confusing. A different set of priorities, values, thoughts emerged.
Boss Band pushed me beyond any limits I dreamed I had. He forced the word can’t out of my vocabulary. He gave no alternatives, it was do or die. At times I felt like throwing up both my hands and screaming “Kill me! Kill meeee!!” because the killer boss made death a welcomed escape. Something within forbade it, and I kept on going. I became the silent king snake in a den of rattlers, earning the status of “stone-down gorilla” from my peers.
The way he drove us beyond reason evoked either mental toughness or stark raving madness. The work was the key to survival. The better I became, the better chance I had of getting out of the fields alive. I concentrated my efforts on the work, on going faster. Working under the Band brought out the best and the worst in me. He was the catalyst, forcing me to think, compelling me to recognize, to look, to become aware of where I was and what was going on all about me.
Every smallest thing I learned to appreciate. He drove me into the arms of a friend who later became a lover. As my friend she cooled me off. As my lover she gave me rest. In the free world she’d always been an adversary, a dreaded nuisance. But he opened my eyes to her, and I’ll never forget the day I fell in love with the rain.
That day, it had been so hot I saw little heat devils jumping on the glistening turnrow. The only dry spot on my body was my throat. That day, the blistering heat made me dizzy and I began to imagine things. I thought I saw a hawk light upon a cloud in the endless blue sky which held the glaring sun diamond in its navel. Two or three cons had already collapsed in the heat.
We started hollering for rain like a bunch of croaking frogs. In less than two hours a light shower came from the Gulf and cooled us off. With mouths gapped open like hungry baby birds, we held our faces skyward and stuck out our tongues to catch the succulent drops as they went flickering by. The rain cloud wept her tears and left. We moved to a drier cut across the turnrow and worked on. Ol’ Hannah must have laughed while drying and sucking the sap from my bones. At least a dozen men had fallen, were dazed and lying under the water wagon. I was near collapse, I just hadn’t dropped. Then, I smelled her in the distance. She blew her cool, soothing breath across my face just before she came again.
I glad-watered, but nobody noticed; I was wet all over, thanks to her. Her persistence forced Cap’n Smooth to wave his hat.
Another day Hannah hung high and bore down, asking for it every step we took. All day we’d kept up a hellish pace. As if possessed, the Band drove us with unrelenting fury, and we’d made three revolutions around the other squads. Drag-stepping in our heelless brogans, we glided down the turnrow, enveloped in our own cloud of dust, a shivering mirage. The turnrow was the killer, and we proved it to Ol’ Satan that day. Flying down it, we threw so much dust back at him and Boss Band that he was having hell breathing.
Suddenly, he started snorting violently and let out a loud, eerie neigh, coughed a few times and fell over dead, pinning Boss Band underneath. We finally drove the big black bastard down and jobbed him to the man. He w
ouldn’t be biting us in the ass any more when we got too far behind.
Jack Hammer, Thirty-Five, and Mule rushed back and grabbed Satan by the legs, hoisting him off Boss Band. Like the Pony Express, the livestock supervisor delivered a fresh steed. Looking more evil than ever, he unsaddled the carcass and quickly saddled his replacement. And the Band played on, “Go ‘Head!”
That evening at the backgate Boss Band cut the three rescuers out to be punished. The next day in the squad he called them back, “I’m tellin y’all heah an now, ain’ nary one uv you nigguhs heavy wit me. I oughta kilt y’all fer doin sump’n I didn’ tell ya to do. Gitcha Gotdam asses back to wek!” He fired in the ground behind them as they ran back to catch their rows.
At night in the tank we sat around and joked about who jumped the highest and how long he stayed in midair after Boss Band shot behind us. Tonight, it was Jack Hammer, Mule, and Thirty-Five on the butt end. When Boss Band shot behind them, Mule remained running in flight a good eighteen seconds, according to our “stop watches.” He was declared the top “air walker” in the Number 1 hoe squad.
It was July; the cotton was growing its ass off. Soon, we would start picking. After we chopped it for the last time, we headed to the woods. Acres of bottom land could be cleared before the cotton blossomed. In the pre-dawn mornings, a prehistoric-looking mist hung over the area and I expected to see dinosaurs come lumbering by us any minute. The only good part about working in the woods around the snakes, scorpions, and leeches was that it provided us with a source of meat. Since it was seldom served in the messhall, we were allowed to take any critter we could catch to the building to get it cooked. All we had to do was holler “gittin it over heah, Boss!” and take out after it.
Boss Band loaned out his pocketknife to clean the catch. One of the feet was left unskinned so the cooks could tell what it was and how it should be cooked. Possums, coons, rabbits, squirrels, armadillos, and any other edibles were run down and caught. Nothing was safe near Number 1 hoe. When somebody in the squad hollered “dere it go,” “it” was dead meat.
Some cons were so fast they could catch a running rabbit in a matter of seconds. Each man in the chase got a share of the kill. It was taken in that evening after work and served at supper the next night. Terrible fights broke out when the cook got the meat mixed up and gave it to the wrong cons.
I wasn’t allowed to run critters, I had to keep the lick going. Because of this, I got cut in on whatever was caught. Runnin Time caught an owl once and had it prepared in the kitchen. I was going through the chow line right behind him to ensure my piece of the fowl.
The cook came from behind the steam table and handed him a tin pan containing the cooked bird with the shortest drumsticks I’d ever seen. Runnin Time had a pan in each hand, but wasn’t passing up a thing on the steam table. Owl or no owl. When we got to the chocolate pudding, he held the pan of owl forward.
The flunky looked confused as he waved the ladle over the pan for a place to pour it. They were holding up the line. “Say man, where you wont me ta po dis shit?”
“Dumb-ass nigguh, if dis wuzza turkey an dem wuz cranberries, you’d know where to put it. Po it over dis fuckin owl!”
That night I ate my first and last piece of chocolate covered owl.
Due to the density of vast underbrush, the woods afforded the best possibilities for escape. With such limited visibility, there was no way the bosses could see all of us all the time. In the woods, we were the closest to the “Big Brazie” river, which was the main escape route. Boss Band counted constantly.
Tarzan was in his finest element in the woods. He loved it, and if anything, the woods weren’t wild enough for him. He was a husky, barrel-chested, gorilla-looking con with long hair growing on his burly arms. He didn’t have any top or bottom front teeth, which made him look as if he had fangs. When he opened his mouth, it looked like a huge python’s.
Whenever Tarzan caught a critter, he didn’t waste time waiting for the cooks. He used his fangs to snap its neck. Then he’d bite the head off and spit it on the ground. He didn’t want to eat “no brains,” but ate everything else, blood, guts, hair, and all! Usually, whatever he ate was still kicking as he chewed.
Always, after he finished a meal Tarzan let out a loud, jungle-like holler that caused Boss Band’s horse to rear in fright. All the birds in the trees would fly away and small animals scurried to safety. I would have loved for Tarzan to walk up on Bloody Bones out in the woods. That oozie bastard wouldn’t have lasted five minutes around him and would have been gobbled up, without the salt.
Nobody liked to sit next to him in the messhall because he ate so damn nasty. We always tried to leave an empty seat between him and us. He slobbered and spat food all over the table as he chewed ravenously. When he said, “Pass de salt,” we all leaned back to let his foul breath pass on by. We certainly didn’t want to get breath poisoned by the “funky breathed muthafucka,” as he was referred to under our breaths.
Going to the woods was like going to the Big Top, a circus without the tent. It wasn’t unusual to see cons pulling brush or axing trees with live baby snakes dangling from their ear lobes. They applied pressure on the snakes just below the head, forcing them to open their mouths, then clamped them on. Looking at those Medusa-eared jokers, I knew the classification committee had really blown it … again. Tarzan wasn’t the only crazy one out there and the woods seemed to bring out our wilder sides.
Because the thick brush and foliage obscured Boss Band’s view, it provided cover for Cowfucker. He was always on the prowl for any loose cow unlucky enough to stray into our work area. That sentence he got for “cattle theft” hadn’t curbed his lust one bit. I don’t know how he could catch one of those half-wild cows without a horse and a real rope, but he kept right on trying. He seemed intelligent enough and had even attended college, but his thinking was definitely screwed up. It’s hard to imagine preferring cows over a campus full of coeds, but he said many times that “if a cow could cook I’d marry one.”
It had been raining recently and the forest was steaming. The thick swarms of mosquitoes were having a field day, and the spiders, bugs, worms, and other creeping, crawling brigades were stirring about on the forest floor totally unhampered by our presence. Boss Band split us into three work groups: the cutters, the trimmers, and the brush pullers. We all loaded the heavy logs, except Whitefolks. Boss Band didn’t know he had a bad back, but we did. Nobody wanted to lift logs with him as a partner, so when we split up into our regular three-man loading teams, Whitefolks kept pulling brush. Boss Band had a policy about loading logs, “Thar ain’ no four nigguh-sized logs out heah. Three’s high as they go.”
The cutting teams felled quite a few of the tall timbers. It was time for us to pull back to help the trimmers catch up. Then we’d load. Enormous piles of trimmings and underbrush hissed and crackled in the flames no more than fifty feet from our backs. What little wind there was blew all the fiery heat in our direction. The brush pullers were catching the most hell. They had to get close enough to heave the limbs into the flames, and the more they piled on, the hotter it got.
After we helped the trimmers and loaded, my four-man cutting team went back to axing. We worked at a furious speed to get farther into the woods away from the fires. Two men cut at the same time on opposite sides of the tree. Each pair struck our blows in time with our grunts to avoid hitting the other pair’s swinging axes.
When I heard Boss Band holler “Ol’ Glodine!” I glanced back at the brush pullers. I saw that Glodine’s ass was really dragging. Boss Band seemed to take offense to any cons in the squad with girl monikers, and had been driving him all day. “Don’tcha be a-draggin no more uv them damn lil’ ol’ twigs up heah ta this far. Go back yonder way an grab sum more uv them limbs. You Gotdam rotten-assed ol’ whore! I oughta blow a Gotdam hole thru you! Go to wek!!”
Glodine had a strange look on his face when he hurried over to my tree to gather limbs. He walked up so close that Bad Eye
had to stop cutting.
“Whut’s the matter with you, man?!” I asked.
“Will one a y’all chop off my han if I lay it on dis tree?”
“Man, you crazy? Hell naw! I ain’ gon chop off yo fuckin hand,” I said.
Bad Eye, a mean bastard doing life, said, “Put it up dere, I’ll chop th’ muthafucka off.”
I stood stunned as Glodine laid his right hand against the tree mumbling, “I can’t take it no mo, Race. I got ta git ‘way frum Boss Band an dis place.”
Big Louzanna and Cryin Shame, the other pair, stopped when Bad Eye asked, “You sho you wonts yo han chopped off? Ain’ gon be no uh-oh. When I hits, it’s gone.”
Gritting his teeth, Glodine muttered, “Do it, man,” and turned his face away.
Bad Eye WHACKED it off, right across the knuckles, leaving his fingers still dangling and stuck to the tree. Glodine never made a sound, cradled what was left of his hand, and dropped to his knees.
I hollered out, “Oh Lawd! Got one with his hand hurt over here, Boss!”
Boss Band rode over, “Whut happen ta that nigguh’s hand?”
Bad Eye blurted out, “Oh Lawd! Boss, it wuzza axident. I couldn’ hep it. Th’ nigguh walked up heah rat in th’ way.”
Boss Band stared at each of us a moment, then rode away. He radioed back to the building with his walkie-talkie for a pickup truck to “Cum take one in.” We were still standing around after the excitement until Boss Band shouted, “You nigguhs git y’all’s asses back to wek! That ain’ th’ first time y’all seen nigguh blood. Git back to wek! Go ‘Head!”
As our foursome started our lick back up, Big Louzanna kicked off a song. I was sure glad they took Glodine’s fingers with him—I wouldn’t want to “axidentally” step on them. As the truck hauled him down the turnrow, Big Lou sang “Black Betty’s in th’ Bottoms” whilst our axes spoke our grief and misery.
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