The Cotton-Pickers Read Free Page B

or, if he had, that the choice was between a three-day walk beating a path under a burning sun and a real road where we might even have been able to pick up a ride.
    The next morning we were all given a generous breakfast, I once more eating at the family table. When we were getting ready to leave, the farmer rounded up enough bottles so that each of us could have a bottle of cold tea to take along, and we started out on those last thirty or so miles.
     

3
    On the following day, about noon, we arrived at Mr. Shine’s. He received us with real satisfaction, for he was short of hands.
    Calling me into the house, he cross-examined me. “What?” he asked. “You want to pick cotton, too?”
    “Yes, I must. I’m flat broke, You can see that, by my rags. And there’s no work to be found in the towns. Every place is flooded with job-hunters from the States, where they’re having their postwar slump. But when workers are needed here, they prefer to take on natives, because they pay them wages they’d never dare offer a white man, even if this Revolution is supposed to change all that.”
    “Have you picked before?” he interrupted me.
    “Yes,” I answered, “in the States.”
    “Ha, ha!” he laughed. “That’s a different proposition. There, you can make a good thing of it.”
    “I did good enough.”
    “I believe it. They pay much better, and they can afford to pay, for they get better prices than we do. If we could sell our cotton to the States we could pay better wages, too. But the States won’t let our cotton in; they want to keep the price up.
    We have to depend on our home market, and that soon reaches the saturation point. Sometimes, when the States don’t interfere, we can sell to Europe, but that’s rare because they consider Europe their market.
    “But now — what about you? I can’t feed you or put you up in my house. But I need every hand that comes along, so I’ll tell you what. I pay six centavos the kilo; suppose I pay you just two cents more than the others — otherwise you won’t make as much as the niggers. Only don’t tell this to the others, ‘cause if they find out they’ll give me lots of trouble. So that’s how matters stand. I’m sorry.”
    “No reason for you to feel sorry,” I said. “You pay me the same as the others. Don’t let my white skin and blue eyes bother you. I understand how you feel. By all means, thank you.”
    “You and your friends can sleep over there in the old house. I built it and lived in it with my family until I could afford this new one here. Agreed? It’s settled then.”
    The house to which the farmer referred was about five minutes’ walk from his new place. It was the usual farmhouse of the region — poles and boards — and was built on piles so that the air moving under the floor kept the interior cool. It had only one room, and each wall had a door that also served as a window.
    We entered the house by climbing the few rungs of a crude ladder set up against one of the doors. The room was completely empty. We found four old boxes lying about in the yard and brought them in to use as chairs. We would sleep on the bare floor.
    Close to the house was a dried-up water hole. There was also a tank full of rain water that was several months old and teeming with tadpoles. I calculated there were about twenty-five gallons of water in the tank and we six men would have to make do with this for six or eight weeks. With three of us using the same water, we might be able to wash once a week.
    Mr. Shine had already told us that we could expect no water from him; he was short of water, and had to provide for six horses and four mules. But, as he said, at this time of year it might possibly rain for two or even four hours every two weeks, and if we repaired the rain troughs we could collect quite a bit of water. Furthermore, there was a creek about three hours’ walk away, where, if we chose, we could go to bathe.
    On the slim chance that it might rain