Dirty Work

  “Damn. Grade school stuff. High school stuff. You lose all these people.

  “He had a car, see. A brand new Mustang. He could pick up anybody he wanted to. This was in 1965 or some shit, way back there. Well. We were all down at the Kream Kup one night and saw Mary with this guy. And she was just latching onto him, man, oh it hurt me. I wanted to just kill his ass right there. But I guess you’re scared of money and power at first. Everybody hated his ass. We watched them when they left out. I stood out there for I don’t know how long, man, just thinking about Mary. About how that son of a bitch was probably going to take her off somewhere and fuck her.

  “And that’s what he did. Took her off out in the woods somewhere and fucked her. Monday morning he was telling everybody about it. Aw yeah. He told it so much it got back to Mary. I mean her friends were asking her, Did you really do that with him? Something like that, back then, for us, was big time. That was almost unbelievable. People we knew actually fucking. We just couldn’t hardly get over it.

  “Yeah. He had to spread it all over the whole school. What he’d done to Mary. I heard the first little rumor of it and it made me sick to my stomach. And I saw her going down the hall, crying, bent over, like she was toting some weight. She knew everybody was talking about her. I tried to talk to her and she wouldn’t talk. And I knew then that it was actually true, that he’d actually fucked her. I just couldn’t hardly believe it. Sweet little Mary Barry? Had actually opened her legs and let somebody put his dick in her? And of all people, that creep? It just liked to killed me.

  “He was blowing his shit in the lunchroom about two days later, about how he’d fucked her. And I guess I just went crazy. I was sitting right across the table from him. And he started talking about all the pussy he’d been getting lately. I remember what he had on his plate. Mashed potatoes and peas, and fried chicken. Son of a bitch. I pushed his face right down in those peas and mashed potatoes. Bastard knew better than to talk about her like that. And he thought he was gonna box when he got up. Had those mashed potatoes and peas all over his face. I just totally detested the son of a bitch. Because of Mary. What he’d done to her. God, she was so sweet.

  “They finally had to pull me off of him. They liked to kicked me out of school over it. That was two years before I enlisted, I think.

  “There’s some sorry motherfuckers in the world, Braiden. They’re just laying out there waiting. I ain’t no angel myself. But damn I don’t know why people don’t know how to act. I’m too much of a hothead anyway. I’ve always been bad about doing something before I thought about it.

  “But I didn’t get mad at Max for being in my room. Hell, it was okay. I knew he had a lot of stuff on his mind and didn’t know what to do. I mean about Mama and all. So we just left him in there. He never even knew we’d been there. We just left. Went riding around.

  “I started telling her about my mother and my brother, about how I couldn’t talk to them. I know they can’t stand the way I am, but they act like it’s worse on them than it is on me. Hell, that’s crazy. I mean, how do they think I feel? I’m the one that’s got to wear it around. That’s the main reason I started just staying in my room. They wanted me to go back to the hospital and have some more work done on my face. What they really wanted was for me to have that operation. But the doctors never could decide what they wanted to do. And I didn’t want to do it anyway. I never wanted to be in a hospital again. I know in a way I’m lucky. At least I can still see and hear, I’ve got my legs and arms, I can walk and talk and get around. You’d swap places with me, wouldn’t you? Right.

  “They didn’t know what to say when they first saw me. I don’t know but that it might have been harder on Daddy than anybody. He knew there wasn’t anything he could say that would make me feel better. So he didn’t say anything. He just started drinking worse. And he was already drinking bad enough. I was no teetotaler either. But we never drank together. We never swapped any war stories. You’d think we would have, but we didn’t. Most of the stuff I heard him tell was long ago. He didn’t want to talk about his shit, and I didn’t want to talk about mine. I never even saw the guys I was with the day I got hit again. I wrote letters to some of them. There was one black guy I knew from Detroit. Tommy Joiner. Little bitty guy. Could box like a motherfucker. He’d been boxing all his life and got drafted. Don’t think the marines can’t draft you. They can. In wartime they can. He was out of the Kronk gym, where Hearns came from. And all he thought about was getting out and turning pro. He’d won over sixty amateur bouts, a lightweight. They put a little more weight on him at Parris Island. I think he could have made it as a pro. He had a hell of a left hook. And fast, God he was fast. I remember the first time I saw him. He was straight, now, he was all God and country. Tried to keep his brass shined and his boots clean. He was standing in line in front of me one day, one morning, they were frying eggs for us. We hadn’t had a fried egg in a while. This guy behind him was telling him to hurry up, hurry up, like Tommy was holding the line up. Hell, Tommy was just waiting on his eggs like everybody else. We had our little mess kits and everything. This sumbitch kept on talking his shit. And the cooks were going as fast as they could, had about fifty eggs going at one time. They were hollering out what did you want, sunny-side-up or over-easy or what. Tommy hollered out he wanted him three over-easy. This guy told him to hurry up again, he was holding the whole line up. Old Tommy just turned around and looked at him. But the guy just kept on. Finally he said something about goddamn choicey niggers. Tommy didn’t even know me. He just leaned around the guy and said, How about holding this for me? Handed me his mess kit and his fork. He hit that son of a bitch and dropped him like he was shot. I stepped out of the way and let him fall. He knocked over about three tables, a bunch of hash browns fell on the ground and all. Anyway they busted Tommy down to private because the guy he hit was a corporal. He was just a PFC. And he wouldn’t start any shit with anybody. He could damn sure finish it, though.

  “He was the one they usually sent down in the tunnels. I was lucky. I was too big to get down in them. Whenever we’d find one, we’d stop and they’d get Tommy to go down. The lieutenant would let him have his pistol. Most of the time there was nobody home. But they’d leave little greetings and stuff for whoever went down. They’d wire a grenade to go off in your face or something like that. Or if they were going to leave it, dig a punji pit and cover it up. Shit on them sticks. It gave me nightmares thinking about going down in one. He wasn’t scared, though. He wouldn’t say anything about it. He’d just strip off his gear and take the forty-five and head on down. Lots of days nothing happened. You couldn’t ever tell where the other openings were for sure and you had to watch in case somebody popped up shooting. Just like that one you were talking about. Some would come up in a hootch, some would be out in the edge of a field. Some days we’d hear that forty-five pop down there in the ground. Tommy’d finally come up and the lieutenant would say, Anybody home? Tommy’d just grin. Give him his pistol back. They was home but they wasn’t expecting company, he’d say.

  “I was telling her all this stuff while we were riding around. We were drinking beer. It was nice. But she asked me whatever happened to Tommy and I had to tell her. He got killed in a tunnel, finally. That’s what I heard back when I wrote. A guy named Miller answered my letter. He said they’d been out on a patrol while I was in the hospital and found a tunnel. They stopped and Tommy went down. And something blew in just a second. They waited a while and let the smoke clear and then sent somebody else in. He’d crawled over a wire just inside the entrance that was rigged to a grenade. They had to gather him up and ship him home to his mama. He’s in the picture. Putting me on the helicopter. Tommy.

  “You about to go to sleep? Oh. You were so quiet I thought maybe you were asleep. Hell, I’m just talking. Just about drunk.

  “I didn’t want to bore you. I know I’m talking too much. I talked to Beth for a long time. I told her everything.

  “We didn’t want t
o run Max out, he looked like he was having a good time. He has to put up with Mama so much. And she wanted to go park somewhere, so hell, I told her Let’s pull off down in Moore Creek. So we got back in the car and drove down there, pulled off in there and stopped. It was dark as hell. Just barely could see her next to me. We kissed a little was all. Nothing heavy. We were still talking. Hell, I figured we had all night.

  “She wanted to know some more about my daddy. And I didn’t know how much to tell her. He was the kind of person who wouldn’t take any shit off anybody. I mean none. If you said something smart to him you’d better be ready to whip his ass or have yours whipped one. Cause that’s all there was to it. If you popped off to him you were fixing to fight. His temper got him into trouble. That and his drinking.

  “See, he killed a guy when I was little. And he stayed in the pen five or six years for that. And he was on probation for several years after that. He didn’t have enough money to start back farming full time. He’d just get little jobs wherever he could. People don’t forget it when you kill somebody. So things were kind of rough for us. I mean one thing just leads to another. We were poor as hell, man, I’m not lying to you. We had to work at whatever we could. And one thing he was good at was picking cotton. He’d been picking it all his life. They picked it every year down at Parchman. He was one of the top field hands down there. And he’d hire out every fall to pick for folks around home. That was one job he could get because he was so fast.

  “So we were working for this man one year. Daddy’d been out of the pen for a few years, I guess. And I could pick a pretty good bit myself so I went with him.

  “There’d been a few times when he’d been in jail for fighting. They’d done told him if he didn’t straighten his ass up they were going to send him back to Parchman for a while. And hell, he’d try. Mama would sit him down and talk to him. And he’d go along good for a while. Then he’d get ahold of a little money. He’d go buy groceries and then he’d buy a bottle with what was left. Then the law would drive out to the house and tell Mama they had him in jail again. That was the way things were going then.

  “This guy we were working for, Daddy didn’t much like him. I don’t know what there was between them. It rubbed him the wrong way to have to work for him, but we needed the money so he went on and did it. And you just didn’t see many white people picking cotton. Most of them were black. People moved around then, picked cotton wherever they needed them.

  “So we were working for this guy. His name was Norris. I guess he was about the same age as Daddy. Maybe a little older. He’s dead now. Turned a tractor over on him snaking logs out a couple of years ago. He’s the one who got Daddy sent back to the pen.

  “We had a crew come in there one day, a whole family, had sideplanks on their truck and all their stuff in there, little black kids all piled up in the back. There were some other people in the field, too, but it was about thirty acres. With a picker now that’s nothing. But back then most of it was picked by hand.

  “Anyway they drove up and asked old Norris if he needed any help. He said he did and the guy asked him what he was paying. So Norris told him and asked him reckon when they could start. This guy says Wellsuh we figgered we’d start in right now. So, hell, they all piled out, it was seven or eight of them, some little bitty kids, too. Cutest little kids. Some of them had their hair fixed up like Buckwheat when he was little, you know. That guy I guess was in his early forties, middle forties. His wife got out and helped. Every one of them helped except for a little baby they had. They let it sleep in the truck. And they started in around two o’clock that evening. That guy’s name was Louis Champion. He got on a row beside Daddy and they went to picking some cotton. Daddy was pretty good, but this guy could pick more, and cleaner, than anybody I ever saw. He didn’t pull any trash and he didn’t leave anything behind, either. They even had their own sacks. It was what they did every fall. They went wherever there was cotton, didn’t matter where it was.

  “Wasn’t but about an hour before Champion came out with his sack full and laid it down and got another one, squatted down and smoked a cigarette, and then hit it again. Hell, Norris knew how hard he was working. Daddy came over to me one time and said Damn, that guy beats anything I’ve ever seen. Said he couldn’t keep up with him. He had a fourteen-year-old girl who could pick almost as much as Daddy could. I guess they’d done it all their lives. Or maybe there wasn’t much other way for them to make money the other parts of the year, and they had to make all they could in a season. Anyway they worked harder than any people I’ve ever seen. Him and Daddy talked just about all evening, I mean when they could. Champion had been in the war, too. I guess they were talking about that.

  “Long about dark they were still picking, and Norris hollered out That’s enough, let’s quit for the day. And hell, I was ready to. Most times we’d get paid by the day. You got paid when the sun went down. But we still had a bunch to pick. And I don’t know what all was said exactly but it turned out they didn’t have any money for supper and wanted to spend the night and just stay till it was all picked. Till the whole field was picked. And which that suited old Norris fine, he wanted to get it out and get it to the gin before it rained. Go on and get it baled. Get his money.

  “So he told em yeah, they could stay on the place. Champion wanted his money for that day, though. Me and Daddy were going to wait on ours. We were going to stay till it was all picked anyway. Norris was writing it down every time we weighed our sacks. We didn’t know he was weighing us light. Maybe Daddy knew. Maybe that was why he didn’t like to work for him. I don’t know. But anyway they stood around talking for a while and Norris talked Champion into just waiting till they got through before he paid him out. Told him he’d give him whatever he needed by the day. Acted real nice about it, of course. He pulled out thirty dollars and gave it to him and said, Just go on and take this, get whatever you need, I’ll take it out of whatever I owe you when we get through. Hell, his eyes lit up when he saw that money. He’d probably never been given any advance money his whole life. Norris was watching them weigh the sacks when they brought them out, but this is how he fucked him. How he fucked all of us. He had the cotton scale shaved down to where it didn’t show what it ought to. He had some regular scales and then he had these. You couldn’t tell it if you didn’t know what to look for. He’d milled the damn thing down some way to where it took more weight to bring it down to where it ought to read. Then, I don’t know, I guess he left it laying out in the pasture for about a year so it would rust and look like it had always been like that. The first evening they worked, old Champion looked at that scale a little funny. Norris showed him what he had written down in his little book and he kind of turned his head up on the side and said, Sure thought I picked more’n that. Then Norris gave him that money. So, hell, everything was slick. Right then, anyway.

  “Daddy told him where the store was and then we left. Our house was just down the road a little ways. They had them a little tent they were setting up when we took off. I thought it was pretty neat. They just lived sort of a nomadic lifestyle, I guess. They had that tent and pots and pans and all. A big Dutch oven, lanterns. Had some cots and a bunch of quilts. They’d just camp out wherever they were working.

  “So we went on to the house and ate supper. Mama had fixed a big blackberry pie in a dishpan and there was a bunch of it left over. We were just sitting around the table after supper talking. Mama got up to start washing dishes and she saw those lights down in the field there and asked Daddy what that was. We told her about those people staying down there. Daddy was sitting there smoking a cigarette and he looked at that pie and then looked at me and said, Hell, Walter, let’s go down there and carry them kids the rest of that pie. Said they’d probably like some dessert. So we went back down there. Carried some spoons. Tried to get Max to go but he was watching ‘Gunsmoke.’

  “You should have seen those kids. They all started grinning when they saw that pie. They were all real nice an
d everything. Champion was sitting in a folding chair smoking a pipe and reading a newspaper when we got there. They had some coffee made and he got us some chairs, fixed me and Daddy some coffee. Had his shoes off. They had a nice little camp there. The kids started eating that pie. Even got that little baby up and fed him some of it. Boy he liked it, too. He was smacking his lips.

  “I was raised not to talk when grown people were talking, so I just listened. Him and Daddy talked about the cotton for a while, about what a good crop it looked like. And after a while he said something else about being light on the scales but I didn’t know it then, see. It was a long time later when I found out what happened. I went and got the scales one night. While they still had Norris in the hospital and Daddy in jail. I weighed a bag of Portland cement that was certified at ninety-four pounds and the scales said eighty-one. He was cheating us out of about fifteen pounds on every hundred. Which adds up to a hell of a lot on thirty acres. But Champion didn’t know for sure. He didn’t make any big deal out of it. They got to talking about where all they’d gone in the war. They’d been in a lot of the same places. He had six kids and another one coming. They picked cotton everywhere, all over Mississippi, even went over in north Alabama and picked. They just moved around in the fall, but they lived in Alligator. He said down there they wouldn’t pay much for picking, there were so many people needing work, so he’d come up north.

  “I don’t know. He didn’t seem bitter. He knew a better day was coming sometime. He just wished it was here now. Then. He wanted his kids to go to college. Get educations. Not have to pick cotton the rest of their lives. I’d never heard a black man talk like that. I’d never heard one with hopes like that. But finally he yawned once and we got the hint and got up to go. He stood up and his wife brought the pan over, she’d done washed it and all the spoons, and they thanked us for bringing it to the kids. They were good people. They didn’t seem like they were unhappy. But I felt sorry for them. Hauling their kids all over the country. Camping out in a tent. I guess it was just the times we lived in. I guess it wasn’t just Mississippi. It was the way everything was back then. But you could find people like that right now I know.