Mississippi Cotton (6 page)

Suppertime was a big event at my cousins’, just like at our house in Jackson. It seemed like the biggest part of the day. Everybody was at the table, and there was plenty to eat. You had to keep track of your manners, all the knife and fork stuff. No talking with your mouth full, and absolutely no playing with your Jello, like at school. But you got to relax and listen to everybody’s stories from the day. We ate in the kitchen, one of the few rooms without a ceiling fan. It had one of those fans that swung back and forth and hummed like my mother’s sewing machine.

Cousin Carol was a good cook, just like my mother. She always had something you liked, and she didn’t overkill with stuff like squash and beets. At least she didn’t have them at the same time. That was thoughtful. That night we had fried chicken, mashed potatoes, crowder peas, turnip greens, a giant fruit salad and dessert.

Cousin Carol also made terrific pies. She had even won prizes at the fair. She and my mother often traded recipes and the two of them were co-champions of the world when it came to making pies, as far as I was concerned.

Cousin Carol’s best, no doubt, was her cherry pie while my mother’s was apple. Their only point of disagreement was coconut. My mother made them and loved them. Cousin Carol hated them. She called them hair pies. They were okay as far as I cared. I would eat any pie, any time. That night, we had cherry.

“Now I’ll pick you boys up in front of the picture show,” Cousin Trek said. “Y’all oughta be out by nine-thirty. The movie, news, cartoon and serial all last about two hours—maybe a little more—right?”

“Yes, sir,” Taylor said. “But can’t we go o’er to the square ‘til you get here?”

“Well, I don’t see why not, but be on the lookout for me.”

“Now, Trek, you tell them I don’t want them playing around in their good clothes,” Cousin Carol said.

No playing in our good clothes. I think she and my mother had some long distant mental communication or something, the way they always had the same things to say.

“Okay, I’ll pick you up, and you can go to the park. But you heard your mother. No rasslin’ or rollin’ around in your good clothes.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Casey, did you hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now who wants cherry pie?” Cousin Carol asked.

After dessert we helped clear the table. On my first night, Cousin Carol didn’t make us wash and dry the dishes. We also could have gone to town on our bikes since it wasn’t too far. Although I didn’t have my own, there were at least six bikes around the farm—old ones, new ones and Sally’s girl bike. But Cousin Trek was going to take us that night because I had just gotten there in the afternoon. Cousin Carol said she wanted us home as soon as possible since it was my first night, but Taylor and Casey had told me once that, really, she was a little nervous about crossing Highway 49 after dark.

Like most places in the South, summer time in Mississippi meant two things—baseball and swimming. If you lived in the country there was a third, fishing. City boys fished, too, but it took more planning, since you had to get past the city limits to find a creek or pond. In the country you could usually just walk out the back door.

“You wanna go fishin’ tomorrow?” Taylor asked. We were waiting on the bunk bed while Casey finished brushing his teeth following supper.

“Where to? The branch along ol’ Cottonseed Road?” I asked.

We had been there before. It was only about forty feet wide at the widest point but deep enough and had some pretty big catfish and some bream. There was a bridge over it that was a pretty good place to get underneath and fish. We sometimes walked up or down stream if they weren’t biting under the bridge.

“Yeah, might as well. Say, what’s Farley doin’ now that he’s got his driver’s license?”

“Aw, he’s always talking about driving all over the country. But he doesn’t even have his own car. Even if he did I don’t think Daddy would let him jus’ drive anywhere he wants to. But he talks about it all the time. You know, he’s got that teenager big-shot status.”

“Is he playin’ football still?”

“Yeah. That’s one reason he didn’t come. They have summer practice. But I think Daddy’ll make him come the weekend they pick me up. I think their first game is about the middle of September.”

“Is he gonna play in college?”

“Maybe. He wants to go to Ole Miss though. I don’t know if he could play there. You have to be very good to play there, what with all the good players they have. Daddy said he might be able to play at Mississippi College or Millsaps. Anyway, he’s got two years left in high school after this year.”

“Why does he want to go to Ole Miss—Johnny Vaught?”

“Dixie Daniels.”

“You mean our Dixie Daniels? From Cotton City?”

“Yeah, same one.”

“She’s already at Ole Miss. Has been for the last three years.”

“Yeah, I know. But there’s something about a guy when he starts gettin’ close to drivin’ and havin’ a driver’s license.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, they start payin’ close attention to girls for some reason. And two years ago, when we were here at Christmas, I noticed he was noticin’ her down at the park. And that was jus’ about the time Daddy started teachin’ him to drive. I’m tellin’ y’all—it’s weird.”

“Why good grief, she’s old enough to be his mother. She’s gotta be over nineteen or twenty. Besides, I notice girls,” Taylor said.

“Yeah, but not like guys that have drivers licenses do. I asked him what it was about them. I asked if was because they started using lipstick or something.”

“What’d he say?”

“He said that was part of it. But also when girls got older…well, their… you know…” I held my hands to the front of my chest, palms up and slightly curved, “…well, these get bigger. You know… their…their—”

“Their bosoms.” Taylor said the magic word.

“Yeah,” I said, “those. Now we’ve been comin’ up here since I was too little to remember, and Farley has been seeing Dixie Daniels since she was ten or eleven. So he’s watched them progress, you might say.”

Casey walked in. He was wiping the remaining spit and toothpaste from his mouth with his hand.

“What are y’all talkin’ ‘bout. I heard y’all say fishin’ and bosoms.”

“Not so loud, Casey. You wanna get us killed, talkin’ about stuff like that?”

“Talkin’ ‘bout fishin’?”

“No! ‘Bout bosoms.”

“I jus’ wanna know if y’all decided to go fishin’ tomorrow. Whada I care ‘bout bosoms?”

“Jus’ a minute, we’re talkin’ about something else right now.” Taylor turned back to me. “Well, ‘progress’ sounds funny.”

“Well, they have…progressed. I wonder why ours don’t progress,” I said.

“They jus’ don’t. It’s jus’ a law or something. Ours don’t change. I think they’re jus’ there for balance or something. I mean it’s not like they’re a couple of hamsters and you can feed ‘em and train ‘em to make ‘em bigger.”

We both laughed.

Casey didn’t laugh. He just looked at us like we were crazy. “When y’all get through with your bosom talk, will y’all tell me one thing?”

“What?” Taylor said.

“Are we gonna go fishin’ tomorrow?”

Taylor and I looked at one another. Then Taylor put his hand on his little brother’s shoulder for reassurance. “Definitely.”

CHAPTER 5

“Now I’m gonna give you boys twenty cents apiece. That’s a dime for the movie and a dime for popcorn.” We were parked in front of the Majestic, the pickup idling while Cousin Trek dropped us off. He dug into his pocket for change.

“Thank you, Cousin Trek, but Daddy gave me some money.” I knew my daddy would want me to try to pay for myself, and anyway I felt important saying I had my own money.

“That’s fine, Jake, but save your money. I’m treatin’ tonight. Y’all are gonna get a chance to earn a little hoeing cotton next week.”

I thought of that extra money and smiled. Taylor and Casey didn’t smile. The thought of doing anything with cotton wasn’t special to them—money or not.

“BB’s helpin’ work that hundred acres across the road for me and Big Trek, and he needs to get some of the weeds out. They been gettin’ ahead of him, and his daddy and the sharecroppers got more’n they can handle this year. Anyhow, the picture show’s gonna start in a minute or two, now git goin’.”

The three of us turned and bolted to the ticket window. Cousin Trek shouted a final instruction. “I’ll be back by nine-thirty. Don’t wander away from the square—y’all hear—I don’t wanna have to look around for y’all!”

There were few things in my life as exciting as a Friday night picture show. The marquee put the titles up in big block letters so they almost shouted. Every picture show, I thought of in these gigantic titles: ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE INVISIBLE MAN. On top of that they were showing a serial, RADAR MEN FROM THE MOON, starring Commando Cody. He had this great rocket suit and could fly all over the Earth just by turning on his power and jumping in the air, and flipping the up and down buttons.

Tonight they had a Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam cartoon. You got all this with popcorn, and you could yell and holler as much as you wanted since no grownups were in the way. It was hard for me to believe Farley was no longer interested in watching Commando Cody falling from the sky, unable to get his up-down buttons fixed. Now all he cared about was watching girls and their progression. I guessed that when you got older, life had less meaning for you—although you did get a driver’s license.

The show ran a second time starting at nine-fifteen. And though we wanted to watch it again—Farley and I had watched Red River five times one weekend a couple of years ago—we had to get outside to meet Cousin Trek at the park.

We raced across the street right in front of Mr. Siler, the slowest driver in the entire State of Mississippi. I don’t think he could hurt you, even if he hit you. He never drove more than two miles an hour probably, but if you ran across the street before he passed you, he would honk and yell, “You boys are gonna get killed!” Then he always turned to look at you, nearly running up on the sidewalk in the process.

About twenty other kids had gotten out of the picture show and there was already a roughhouse football game going on in the square. Nobody had brought any kind of a ball to the show, but a bunch of wadded up popcorn boxes were shaped into something you could throw. It worked fine. Most of the kids were in their good clothes, and probably had been told to not get their clothes dirty. If they had, they were just hoping they didn’t fall down and leave evidence of grass stains or ripped knees.

“There’s Mr. Hightower.” Casey pointed.

“Don’t point, Casey,” Taylor told him.

“Cousin Trek and Cousin Carol don’t go for that pointin’ stuff neither, huh?” I asked, knowing the answer. It was funny the way every set of grownups had the same bunch of rules.

“Oh yeah. Pointin’ at people or scratchin’ your behind in public is a major crime,” Taylor said. Casey started scratching his behind like he had lice. We both laughed at him.

“Okay, somebody’s gonna tell on you and you’ll get a switchin’. Wait and see,” Taylor said.

“What’s a’ matter, Casey? Got ants in ya pants?” Earl Hightower, a man who rented from Cousin Trek had been watching from across the street, and walked over.

Renters were men who rented certain pieces of land from farmers, planted their own seed, then kept the difference between what they owed in rent and what the cotton brought at the gin. Mr. Hightower was one of these. He also worked for some of the farmers by the hour or by the pound during picking season. I always heard Cousin Trek say Earl was a hard working fellow. Calling a man hard working was a compliment.

Mr. Hightower didn’t look much older than Farley, but I had been told he was at Guadalcanal in the War, so he had to be a lot older than he looked. In any event we didn’t call him Earl. He was Mister Hightower to us.

“Hope they ain’t them fire ants. You’ll really be in trouble then.” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Well, boys, was the movie good?” He stood with us at the gazebo where we were watching the ball game.

“Yes, sir. Did you see it?” Taylor knew he probably hadn’t but asked anyway. Taylor had told me that only once in a while did the Majestic have a picture show that anyone older than us liked. If there was a real special picture show, like the ones I had heard Mother and Daddy talk about, like Gone With the Wind or All the King’s Men, the grownups would go to Clarksdale where they didn’t allow hollering.

“Naa, I been over at the café, havin’ Friday-night coffee.”

Once I heard Cousin Carol speak to my mother about the café in what my mother called dark tones. She said on Friday and Saturday night there was a high-stakes domino game going on in the back room. She said she had it on good authority that some of those men played for a penny a point. She couldn’t understand as hard as a dollar was to earn, how some men could gamble it away. Whenever we went to that café, we had instructions from my mother never to go into the famous back room. Mr. Hightower was a nice man, but I’ll bet he’d seen that back room.

I was sure that the gazebo checker games, played right out in front of everybody, were not played for money—at least not so we knew about it. Dr. Henry and the others played for the pride of being best. I figured that no amount of money in the world could have helped that old dentist from Shelby. His pride had been taken.