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  I looked at that little shiny fence wire sticking up outa that red mound, and I looked at all that red dirt stretching out to forever, and I looked at that old red fire-ball of a sun, and there was just something about it. I said to myself, “Now, that’s a picture I’ll never forget.” And I never have. Ever’ time it come the first day of June, for near seventy-five years, I’ve thought on that sun.

  All of a sudden, it was like Eddie’s mule had kicked me in the head. I looked over at Pa. He was busy with his one row, humped over, his back to us. I leaned over to Eddie and dropped my voice: “I’m coming with you.”

  Eddie looked over at Pa. “Don’t know.”

  “C’mon. Let’s go,” I said. “Pa couldn’t chase down a slug if it was stuck on his big toe.”

  Eddie dropped his leg off the mule’s withers. He looked exactly like a bareback Injin now, long skinny legs dangling down. “Hop on, then!”

  THREE

  That was my first real getaway. On Eddie Munson’s slow old mule.

  We headed west, towards where the sun sets. Only it wasn’t long before I begun to wonder just what I was getting away from.

  On all sides, ever’where I looked, there was white, white, white.

  There was pickers in ever’ patch, sometimes as many as ten or fifteen. They was mostly farm families, kids and grandfolks, too, with sometimes neighbors helping out. Only the biggest farmers could afford to hire hands. Some of the pickers was stooped over as they moved on down the rows. That’s how us Newtons did it. Others of ’em was shuffling along on their knees. That’s how our neighbors, the McCutcheons, did it. Stoopers went faster, but their backs was more likely to ache. ’Course, if you picked on your knees, you had to pad ’em good with cotton over leather to keep your kneecaps from getting ground down to chalk.

  No matter which way the pickers was working, their heads was down, you can’t pick cotton without looking at it. But if they was close to the road, Eddie and me’d give out with a “hi-i-i-yaaaaa,” and they’d straighten up and look to see who was yelling, and when they seen us, they’d give a wave. You could tell they was glad somebody had give ’em a break from what they was doing, and we’d wave back, and I’d give that mule a kick, to show off a little.

  At first, before we’d covered much ground, I kept twisting around to make sure we wasn’t getting trailed.

  “Eddie,” I said. “My old man reads sign.”

  Eddie’s head spun around on his skinny neck. “I thought you wasn’t worried about your Pa.”

  I shrugged. “He can track a rabbit.”

  “Your Pa?”

  “He used to be a cowboy. He’s just pokey. But if he catches us, he’s gonna be hot.”

  “Oh, hell, Willis! You telling me that now?”

  “We can lose him. See that road, up yonder?” I pointed to a dirt road a hundred feet ahead of us. “Let’s hit on down that one. We’ll light a shuck over to Onion Creek, wade upstream, and get rid of our tracks. Then we can circle on back and head on out.”

  “Where’ll we go then?” Eddie asked.

  “Let’s go to Fort Worth.”

  Eddie’s head spun around again. “Fort Worth?”

  “Why not? Jess says it’s Sin City up there. He’s been.”

  “I’ve sinned already, Willis. I just want a job.”

  “You’re yeller.”

  “Look, if we go to Fort Worth, we couldn’t sin the way we’d wanta sin. It costs money, that kinda sinning. And the only jobs they got up there ’r slinging dung at the yards. You wanta sling dung?”

  “You done it in Abilene.”

  “Yeah, and look where it got me. I say we head on over to Stephenville.”

  “Stephenville?”

  “Pickers ’r getting six bits a hundred there. I heard it from four of ’em.”

  I groaned. “Goddammit Eddie, I ain’t going nowhere they’re picking cotton.”

  “Well, you see anything ’sides cotton, you lemme know.” He waved his hand around in a circle. “And you know any other kind o’ work this time o’ year, other’n slinging dung, lemme know that too.”

  To tell you the truth, I didn’t know. Them days, cotton was about the only crop in Texas a farmer could get cash money for, and cash money was what most ever’body wanted, and needed. I started to say maybe we could get a job at a gin stand, like Hank Tobin, but I stopped myself. Gin jobs didn’t pay a helluva lot more’n picking cotton, and, to my mind, the pay wasn’t worth the risk. Ever’ cotton town in Texas had at least two or three one-armed men in ’em from gin accidents. Poor old Griff Henson! He lost both of his arms. He was reaching in to clean out some lint one day, and he couldn’t see too well what he was doing, and the saws come over and sliced off both his arms. Right above the elbows. Griff figured out how to keep on working, though. He’d plow by throwing the reins of the mule around his neck, and then, with the stumps of his arms, he’d pull them reins to the right or to the left. When I was ten, Pa used to hire me out to help Griff, at twenty-five cents a day. Mostly I had to feed him at lunch-time and give him some water when he was thirsty. I liked Griff, I did. He was a good-natured old boy, in spite of what’d happened to him. What I hated most about that job was having to open Griff’s pants and pull out his pecker when he wanted to piss. Worse’n that, I had to wipe his ass with a corncob.

  “Look at it this way, Willis,” Eddie said to me. “It’s a helluva lot better picking cotton for somebody for six bits a hundred than picking it for your old man for nothing.”

  By the time we got to Stephenville, sweat had drained all the water outa us and our stomachs was flapping up against our backbones. When we went to the first gin in town, we seen cotton wagons lined up for near half a mile, and we figured it’d be no problem a’tall getting a job. We was wrong. Every farmer said nothing doing, they had plenty of pickers. Bad news, too, they was paying only four bits a hundred, even less’n Rising Star.

  I was so hacked at Eddie, I like to gutted him. “You ain’t no better’n a mud cat, boy,” I said. “Somebody throws you a line, you swallow it whole. We don’t get something to eat quick, I’m gonna drop dead.”

  But when we hit on over to the other gin in town, the farmers waiting in the wagons give us the same story. I went into the office of the gin and begged the owner for a job, any kind. I told him we hadn’t ate since yesterday morning.

  “Where you boys from?” the man asked, kinda suspicious-like.

  “Rising Star.”

  “Best advice I can give you is go back where you come from.”

  Well, we was standing around, my mind a-churning over what to do next, both our stomachs a-growling, when we had a change in our luck. Over come a big fat farmer the size of Jonah’s whale in the Bible. He asked if we wanted a job and I like to hugged him. Which woulda been a hard thing to do.

  “’Course,” the fat man said, tying Eddie’s mule to the back of his wagon, “I’m gonna expect you to stay with me ’til the end of the season. And your pay’s forty cents a hundred.”

  “Forty cents?” Eddie reached over to untie his mule. “Ever’body else’s paying four bits.”

  “Take it or leave it. Can’t pay no more.”

  Eddie give me a look and I give the farmer a look. That fella was so big and round that just climbing up onto his wagon made him huff and pant and grunt. Somebody at his place must be cooking good meals.

  I hooked my foot in the side of the wagon. “Git on in,” I said to Eddie.

  The farmer’s name was Jonathan Mallory. Of course, we called him “Mister Mallory” when we was talking to his face. Like Eddie said, working for somebody for something, no matter how little, is a lot better’n working for your old man for nothing. To give the boar his due, Old Man Mallory had good cotton, full and silky to the hand, and I figured if I worked hard I could have me a nice chunk of money by the end of the season.

  In fact, I couldn’t wait to get into the field at the first crack of day, when I’d hit them tall pretty green plants and the
dew’d get all over my face and hands and clothes until I was as wet as if I’d a-jumped into a mule trough. I woulda worked seven days a week if they’d let me. But the Mallorys was church people and they wouldn’t allow us to work on the Lord’s Day.

  “Us” means four men pickers and three girls. The men lived in the hay loft and was fed three a day by Missus Mallory. Beans, potatoes, eggs, hard bread, a little meat or chicken once a day—not the best-tasting stuff but plenty of it. No wonder Missus Mallory looked like her husband’s twin. Under her chin there was at least half a dozen layers of hog fat.

  The girl pickers come from neighbor farms and went home at night. I figured Old Man Mallory hired ’em because he could get ’em even cheaper’n the men. Two of the girls was thick-waisted and ugly as sin, with a lot of hair on their legs. But the other one was a looker, pretty and full and fresh as the Mallory’s cotton, big old breasts poking out in front like musk melons. Her name was Carrie Sikes. The way she walked and talked and looked at you was enough to make the Devil hisself turn somersaults. I couldn’t keep my eyes off a her.

  After a while me and Carrie was working further and further away from all the others, ’til we was so far off we could flop down in that high cotton and start hugging and kissing. Even with all the sweat on her she tasted and smelled sweet as honeysuckle and she got me more worked up than I ever been in my life. And that’s when I first come down with the ailment. It’s what the cowboys call getting “skirt-tied.”

  All in all, I stayed around Stephenville more’n a year. That girl kept me guessing, but she knowed just what to do and just what to say to make me stick around and hope for more. So that’s what I done, stuck around, picking cotton and plowing cotton and planting cotton and thinning cotton and chopping cotton, and picking cotton again. Eddie stuck around too. For him, it was just for the hell of it. Between the cotton seasons, we got us bad jobs in Stephenville, mending picket fences, or washing dishes at the café. But always when Old Man Mallory called for us, we’d be back on his farm.

  Then something happened that changed ever’thing.

  One Saturday morning the Mallorys went to town and bought theirselves a automobile: a Franklin Light Roadster. I couldn’t take my eyes offa it. It didn’t look quite as much like a buggy as Mister Pike’s Oldsmobile. The engine was in the front, not in the back, and there was a big round steering wheel, not just a rod. The company that made them Roadsters said they was good at climbing hills and didn’t “puff or snort.”

  The fat man, of course, didn’t know much about operating a automobile. At first, to show it off and how proud he was of it, he tried to drive it ever’where around the place, out to the fields where we was working, and round the pastures where the cows and horses was. One time, when he was coming out to the field, he couldn’t stop and he went right into the cotton and mowed down two rows of plants before the runaway machine bumped and jerked to a stop.

  Later, to top things off, Old Man Mallory was tearing around the house, practicing turns, when his wife’s favorite laying hen come trotting right on across the yard, “cluck, cluck, cluck.” Well, that Franklin Light Roadster plowed right over that hen and stopped her clucking cold. Old Man Mallory started calling that dead chicken ever’ bad cuss-word he knowed, and Missus Mallory come rushing outside and started a-crying, more about her husband’s being a religious man and using them words than about the flat hen.

  But it wasn’t just the automobile that had me worked up. It was also the Mallorys’ old horse buggy. They’d put the buggy away in a far coiner of the barn and hung up the harness on nails like they never thought they was gonna use that stuff ever again. I’d never got very excited over the Mallorys’ buggy before. But thinking about that buggy as my buggy, well, that made all the diff’rence. Maybe, I thought to myself, they’d sell me the old buggy cheap, now that they didn’t need it no more.

  “You want it, huh?” Old Man Mallory said when I asked him. “Damn fine, that buggy. Chase and Smith, Baltimore. And I always kept it top-notch. But a buggy’s no good without a horse.”

  “Won’t need no horse. I’ll use Julep. Eddie don’t mind.”

  “Well, hundred dollars, then. Not a penny less. Twenty down, work off the rest.”

  Greedy son-of-a-bitch! He knowed how much I wanted that buggy. And he made me sign a paper saying I was legally binded to pay that hundred dollars. But I signed it. Then I spent some of my picking money for paint and varnish and oil, and when I got through with that buggy it was pretty and shiny as the carriage Mister Pike used to drive. Least, I thought so when I showed it finally to Carrie and asked her if she’d like to take a drive with me come Sunday.

  “Well, maybe.”

  It was enough to take the starch outa any man. All this time she’s been hugging and kissing me ever’ chance we got, and now she says, “Well, maybe.”

  I looked at Carrie like I didn’t know her.

  “Where’ll we go?” she asked.

  “Oh, around. Maybe take it down by Smokey Creek, have us a little picnic supper. Build a fire.”

  “Well, lemme think.” She kept running her tongue over the edge of her lips. I could hardly stand it, the suspense and all and me watching that mouth of hers twist and turn, them lips so wet and cherry ripe.

  “No, I don’t think I c’n do that,” she said finally.

  “Why not?”

  “Well, for one thing, Daddy wouldn’t want me doing that. Too much temptation, us being down there by ourselves.”

  “Temptation?” I couldn’t believe what she was telling me.

  “You know what I mean,” she said. “If you wanta take me some place come Sunday, why don’t you take me into Stephenville? They got revival meetings ever’ Sunday for the next month. Preaching and Bible at ten o’clock.”

  Goddamn Baptists!

  Sunday morning I took Carrie into Stephenville. I couldn’t stand not being with her that day. The revival meeting was in a tent they’d set up on a vacant lot in the middle of town, with benches and chairs for the people to set down on. The preacher was a skinny, horse-faced man and he pounded his fists and sang hymns and ever’ so often he’d holler: “Come on home to Jesus, sinners! Come on home to Jesus!” And that’d set the people to a-hollering back: “Jesus, I’m a-coming home! I’m a-coming home!” and some of ’em was going into fainting spells and falling down on the ground.

  I spent most of the meeting scraping dirt out from under my fingernails.

  Afterwards, we went to the depot to watch a train come in. Trains was the only things that made much noise in Stephenville, besides preachers and sinners. And back then, trains was the only exciting things that ever happened in them small towns. So when the Frisco passenger train come into Stephenville, tooting and huffing and puffing out steam, half the town was there to watch it.

  Later on, it was near two o’clock, me and Carrie went on back to Main Street to a café to eat their fifteen-cent Sunday dinner special. Carrie seemed to be having a good time and I was starting to feel some better about things.

  What I never coulda guessed while we was setting at that café, eating roast chicken and collards and grits and biscuits and white gravy and sour cherry pie, was that my life was just a hair away from turning ’round a whole new bend.

  It was after we’d ate the last bit of our pie and Carrie had took off to the toilet. I told her I’d be with the buggy, and that’s where I was, rubbing the mule on his rump to give him some company when I heard a voice behind me.

  “Nice rig you got here.”

  I turned around and a tall man was standing there, and I could tell right off he wasn’t nobody from Stephenville, he was too slicked-up. He was wearing a dudey suit covered from top to bottom with yellow and black checks. A brown derby was setting on his head, and he had a long mustache that was all oiled and pointed. And he was chewing one of them fat, eight-cent cigars.

  “What you do for a living, kid?” the man said to me.

  “What else? Cotton.”

  T
he man’s eyes moved up and down my rig like he was eye-balling a gal.

  “Doing okay for a cotton picker. How much you make?”

  I didn’t much like the man’s questions. Why’d he want to know so much about some skinny-kid cotton picker? Only I knowed it wasn’t gonna be no trouble for him to find out how much they was paying pickers around Stephenville, so I give him a answer. Except I told him a little lie.

  “Six bits a hundred. Why you asking?”

  “Jus’ come in from outa town. Frisco from Dallas, you mighta seen it. And I’m looking to find me a partner. Pays real good, my business. Only it’s a traveling affair, and I don’t have no hooves and I don’t have no wheels. What I need is somebody with a rig. You wanta talk?”

  “What’s your pay?”

  “Lemme put it to you this way. You’ll make more in one day in my business than you make all week long cracking your spine in them cotton fields.” He flicked some dry ashes offa his cigar and looked me straight in the eye. He had pale, marble-blue eyes, they was so pale it was like I could see right through ’em.

  “What kinda job is it?”

  “It ain’t a job, kid. What I got here is a business. And that’s a big diff’rence there. A big diff’rence.” Now the man was all smiles. I never seen anybody look so happy about his work. “I got what you’d call a ‘entertainment’ business. What I do is, I take games of chance out into the country, out to pickers and other farm hands like yourself that don’t have no opportunity for entertainment like they do in the city. Now let’s supposing you and me become partners. Daytime, while ever’body but us is out in that hot sun, working like the devil, you and me don’t have a thing in the world to do. We take it real easy, look over the newspaper, maybe take a few drinks o’ corn. Then, come evening, when the pickers are done in the fields, and they’re through with their suppers, that’s when we drive out to one of their camps and set up. Poker, faro, monte, keno, chuck-a-luck. And then, if what they want is something a little diff’rent, we roll a little craps.”