Cash: The Autobiography (3 page)

long creepers that wrapped themselves around the cotton stalks and tried to choke them down. So we just worked and worked and worked. We'd get a break now and again when it rained too hard for us to get to the fields, but that was no bargain: the weeds kept growing without us, and they grew even faster after a good rain. Come August and its doldrum heat, we had what we called laying-by time when it seemed that God let up a lit- tle on making the grass, vines, and weeds grow, and for a two- or three-week period we'd work only three days a week in the cotton fields. That, though, was the time for digging potatoes, cutting hay and hauling it to the barn, and all that stuff. So there was never really any end to it; the work just went on and on. We did get those weeds chopped, though. We did get ahead with the cotton, and that was the thing: whatever else happened, you stayed ahead with the cotton. There were of course forces against which we were powerless. The Mississippi was foremost in that regard—my song “Five Feet High and Rising” came from my own experience, not some storybook—but other acts of nature could and did wipe out a whole year's worth of your work and income. For instance, although we didn't have boll weevils where we were— they were more of a problem in Texas—we did once get in the way of army worms. They moved in massive con- gregations, millions of them, and had an effect on the land in their path just like Sherman's boys had on Georgia. You'd hear about them coming, first from farm- ers miles away, then from those closer and closer until the worms were on the land right next door, and finally there they were, all over your own crops. They went from field to field, eating—eating fast—and then moving on, and there was nothing you could do about them. You could stomp them all you wanted, all day and all night too if it made you happy, but that wouldn't get you anywhere

even close to making a difference. They ate the leaves off the plants first, and then the blooms, and then the bolls, and then that was that. Army worms were the bane of every cotton farmer in Arkansas. Now, wouldn't you know, they barely cross any- one's mind; you just spray for them and forget about it. That's not to say that modern farmers don't have plenty to worry about. They sure do, and they always will. But I bet they also have some of the same great plea- sures that lit up my young life. When the cotton began to open in October, for instance, it was just beautiful. First there'd be lovely white blooms, and then, in about three days, they'd turn to pink, whole fields of them. What a picture that was. That wasn't all, either. Under those pink blooms there'd be tiny, tender little bolls, and they were such a sweet treat. I used to pull them off and eat them while they were still tender like that, before they began turning fibrous, and I loved them. My mother kept telling me, “Don't eat that cotton. It'll give you a bellyache.” But I don't remember any bellyache. I remember that taste. How sweet it was!

You know what a smokehouse is? Well, ours was a plain board building about twelve feet by twelve or maybe fourteen by fourteen—not a shack, a good, tight, solid structure—and that's where we smoked our meat. You had to smoke any meat you wanted to keep; without refrigeration, which of course we didn't have, it would spoil otherwise. Everyone who lived in the coun- try had a smokehouse if they weren't too poor. Apart from whatever meat we had hanging, there were only two things in our smokehouse: a salt box for salting down the meat that would be sugar-cured, as we called it—hams, pork shoulders, bacon—and, in the opposite corner, a little hot box Daddy had built. We'c keep strips of green hickory smoldering in there day anc night when we were smoking meat, and in summer we had it going all the time, keeping out the insects anc killing bacteria. The scent of hickory smoke always in the air around the homestead is another memory gone deep in my bones. And the smokehouse is where Daddy, grim anc strange to me in grief and shock, took me and showed me Jack's bloody clothes. Jack was my big brother and my hero: my best friend, my big buddy, my mentor, and my protector. We fit very well, Jack and I; we were very happy together. I loved him. I really admired him, too. I looked up to him and I respected him. He was a very mature person for his age, thoughtful and reliable and steady. There was such sub- stance to him—such seriousness, if you like, or even moral weight, such gravitas—that when he made it known that he'd felt a call from God to be a minister of the Gospel, nobody even thought to question either his

sincerity or the legitimacy of his decision. Jack Cash would have made a fine minister; everybody in Dyess agreed on that. When I picture him at fourteen, the age at which he died, I see him as a grown-up, not a boy. Jack had a very clear and steady understanding of right and wrong, but he was fun, too. He was a great fish- ing buddy and all-around playmate, and he was very fit and strong, just about perfect physically, a powerful swimmer and fast runner. All we country boys climbed trees like squirrels, of course, but he was exceptional: he was strong enough to climb a rope without even using his feet. That impressed me, because I was the weak one, scrawny and skinny and not very strong at all, and by the time Jack was fourteen I'd decided I liked cigarettes. I started smoking regularly when I was twelve—stealing tobacco from my Daddy, bumming cigarettes from older kids, and very occasionally buying a package of Prince Albert, or sometimes Bull Durham or Golden Grain, and rolling my own. I was pretty adept at that; I was a tal- ented smoker. I knew it was wrong and self-destructive, both because the preacher said so and because it made sense. Even back then, no matter what older folks say now, everybody knew that smoking hurt you, but I've never been one to let such considerations stand in the way of my road to ruin. Jack knew I smoked and didn't approve one bit, but he didn't criticize me. Putting it in today's terms, he gave me unconditional love. The year he died, I'd even started smoking in front of him. It was May 12, 1944, a Saturday morning. My plan was to go fishing. Jack's was to work at the high-school agriculture shop, where he had a job cutting oak trees into fence posts on the table saw. He kept stalling. He took one of the living-room chairs, balanced it on one leg, and spun it around and around and around. I had my fishing pole leaned against

die porch. I started out the front door and said, “C'mon, Jack. Come fishing with me!” “No,” he said without much conviction. “I got to work. We need the money.” He'd make three dollars for working all day. I don't remember my father being in the house, just my mother saying, “Jack, you seem like you don't feel you should go,” and him saying, “I don't. I feel like something's going to happen.” “Please don't go,” she said, and I echoed her—“Go fishing with me, Jack. Come on, let's go fishing”—but he kept at it: “No, I've got to do it. I've got to go to work. We've got to have the money.” Finally he set the chair down and very sadly walked out the front door with me. I remember my mother standing there watching us go. Nobody said anything, but she was watching us. She didn't usually do that. The silence lasted until we got to the crossroads where one branch went into the town center and the other went off toward our fishing spot. Jack started fooling around, imitating Bugs Bunny, saying “What's up, Doc? What's up, Doc?” in that silly voice, which was very unlike him. I could see it was false fun. I kept trying: “Go fishing with me, Jack. Come on, let's go.” He wouldn't. “No, I've got to go to work,” he said again. That's what he did. He headed off toward the school, and I went on down toward our fishing hole. As long as I could hear him, he kept up with that goofy, unnatural “What's up, Doc? What's up, Doc?”

At the fishing hole I spent a long time just sitting there, not even putting my line in the water. Eventually I cast, but I just played, slapping my line in the water, not even trying for a fish. It was strange. It was as if I knew something was wrong, but I had no idea what. I wasn't even thinking about Jack; all I knew was that something wasn't right. After a while I took my line out of the water and lay down on the bank—just lay there. I stayed like that for a long time before I got up, picked up my fishing pole, and started back home. I remember walking very slowly, much slower than usual. I saw my father coming as soon as I got to the inter- section where I'd left Jack. He was in a car, a Model A I believe it was, the preacher's car. It stopped by me and Daddy said, “Throw your fishing pole in the ditch and get in, J.R. Let's go home.” I knew something was very wrong. I wanted to hold on to my fishing pole, but Daddy had such a desperate air that I obeyed. I just threw the pole in the ditch and got in the car. “What's the matter, Daddy?” I asked. “Jack's been hurt really bad,” he said. He didn't say anything else, and I didn't ask. When we got home, about a mile from the crossroads, he took a brown paper grocery sack from the back of the car. “Come out here to the smokehouse,” he said in a quiet, dead voice. “I've got something I want to show you.” The bag was all bloody. In the smokehouse he pulled Jack's clothes out of that grocery bag, laid them on the floor, and showed me where the table saw had cut Jack from his ribs down

through his belly, all the way to his groin: his belt and his khaki government shirt and pants, all of them slashed and bloody, drenched in blood. Daddy said, “Jack's been hurt on the saw, and I'm afraid we're going to lose him.” Then he cried. It was the first time I'd ever seen or heard him do that. He only cried for a little while. Then he said, “I came home to find you. Jack's in the hospital in the Center. Let's go back there and see him. We may never see him alive again.” We did see Jack alive. He was unconscious when we got to the hospital, knocked out with drugs for the pain, but he didn't go right ahead and die. On Wednesday, four days after he'd been hurt, all the church congregations in town held a special service for him, and the following morning he had an amazing revival. He said he felt good, and he looked good. There he was, fine as you please, lying in bed reading his mail—he'd gotten a letter from his girlfriend—and laughing happily. My mother and father and I thought we were seeing a miracle. Jack was going to live! Old Dr. Hollingsworth knew better. He'd operated on Jack when they brought him in, and he kept telling us, “Don't get too much hope, now. I had to take out too much of his insides, and . .. well, there's nothing left in there, really. You'd better get all the family home that wants to see him before he goes.” We did that—Roy was in Texas, I think, and my older sister, Louise, was in Osceola, Arkansas—but we still hoped. Not for long. On Friday Jack took a turn for the worse, and that night we stayed at the hospital in beds Dr. Hollingsworth had arranged for all eight of us: Daddy, the three girls, the three boys, and Moma. I woke up early on Saturday morning to the sound of

Daddy crying and praying. I'd never seen him pray before, either. He saw me awake and said, “Come on in to his room. Let's say good-bye to him.” We went in there. Everyone was crying. My mother was at the head of Jack's bed with my brothers and sisters all around. Daddy took me up to the head opposite my mother, and there was Jack talking crazy—“The mules are out, don't let 'em get in the corn, catch the mules!” But suddenly he grew calm and lucid. He looked around and said, “I'm glad you're all here.” He closed his eyes. “It's a beautiful river,” he said. “It's going two ways.... No, I'm not going that way .... Yes, that's the way I'm going. . . . Aaaaw, Moma, can't you see it?” “No, son, I can't see it,” she said. “Well, can you hear the angels?” “No, son, I can't hear angels.” Tears came from his eyes. “I wish you could,” he said. “They're so beautiful. . . . It's so wonderful, and what a beautiful place that I'm going.” Then he went into a rigor. He had intestinal poison- ing, and that stuff came out of his mouth onto his chest, and he was gone. Losing Jack was terrible. It was awful at the time and it's still a big, cold, sad place in my heart and soul. There's no way around grief and loss: you can dodge all you want, but sooner or later you just have to go into it, through it, and, hopefully, come out the other side. The world you find there will never be the same as the world you left.

Some things in this world don't change, though. I look around me in Jamaica at the poverty, the harshness of life for many of the people, their endless toil for little reward and even less hope in their lives, just dreams and fantasies, and that puts me in mind of what still depresses me the most about Jack's death: the fact that his funeral took place on Sunday, May 2.1, 1944, and on the morn- ing of Monday, May 22., our whole family—everybody, including the mother who had just buried her son—was back in the fields chopping cotton, working their ten- hour day. I watched as my mother fell to her knees and let her head drop onto her chest. My poor daddy came up to her and took her arm, but she brushed him away. “I'll get up when God pushes me up!” she said, so angrily, so desperately. And soon she was on her feet, working with her hoe. Lest you get too romantic an impression of the good, natural, hardworking, character-building country life back then, back there, remember that picture of Carrie Cash down in the mud between the cotton rows on any mother's worst possible day. When they talk about how cotton was king in the rural South, they're right in more ways than one. After Jack's death I felt like I'd died, too. I just didn't feel alive. I was terribly lonely without him. I had no other friend. It got worse before it got better. I remember going on a bus to Boy Scout camp that summer of '44 and talking about nothing but Jack until a couple of the other kids shut me up: “Hey, man, we know your brother's dead and you liked him, so that's enough, okay?” I got the message. I quit talking about Jack alto- gether. Everybody knew how I felt and how my mother felt; they didn't need us telling them. So yes: terribly

lonely. That says it. It eased up a little when some of my classmates started making special efforts to befriend me, especially a boy called Harvey Clanton, who became my best friend all the way through school. His friendship began the process of pulling me out of my time in the deepest dark- ness I'd known. What really got me moving, of course, was sex. By about fifteen I'd discovered girls. They did a pretty good job with my loneliness. When the hormones started mov- ing, so did I. Jack isn't really gone, anyway, any more than anyone is. For one thing, his influence on me is profound. When we were kids he tried to turn me from the way of death to the way of life, to steer me toward the light, and since he died his words and his example have been like signposts for me. The most important question in many of the conundrums and crises of my life has been, “Which is Jack's way? Which direction would he have taken?” I haven't always gone that way, of course, but at least I've known where it was. In other words, my con- science has always functioned just fine—even through all my years of inflicting destruction on myself and pain on others, even with all my efforts to shut it up. The black dog in me went ahead and did what he wanted (and sometimes he still does), but he always had that clear little voice of conscience harassing him. Something else about Jack. When I was growing up, older people talked about how “this new generation is going all to hell,” just as modern grown-ups do about today's kids and my generation did about the kids of the '60s. I never believed it, now or then. I went by the evi- dence of my eyes and ears: Jack was right in front of me, and I knew there were a lot more boys like him. I don't