The Cotton Queen Read Free Page B

senior prom he asked me to marry him. I agreed and we tied the knot that summer in a little ceremony at church, just his family and mine.
    “Both my older brothers are farmers,” he told me. “By the time they get my father’s land and split it up, there won’t be enough to support one family.”
    I listened and nodded as if I understood.
    “I’m good with my hands and with machines,” Tom said. “I thought about working on cars, but if I go into the Army, I can get training for free.”
    Ultimately he decided on Air Force and airplane engines. It was a very good plan.
    We didn’t plan on having Laney. But, as soon as I held her in my arms, I couldn’t imagine anything in the world that could have made me happier.

L ANEY
    T HE ONE THING that I know most about myself is that I am nothing like my mother. Nothing. Not anything. We’re completely different.
    What I suppose, since I’m pretty sure I wasn’t adopted or accidentally switched in the hospital, is that I’m like my dad.
    The first memory I have of him is olive drab fatigues and big, heavy boots. I remember running toward those boots, arms outstretched. I was scooped up into the air and twirled around as I giggled.
    Daddy was so tall and he had a deep voice. He smiled all the time and when he laughed, it came from somewhere deep inside him, somewhere that was full and content and extremely at peace with the world.
    I was certain then, as I am certain now, that Tom Hoffman, my daddy, loved me.
    His years in the Air Force, our years in the Air Force, were brief in retrospect. But at the time it seemed that it was everything. Mama, or Babs as I call her now, stayed home in McKinney for the first couple of years. My father was an infrequent visitor, dependent upon the head of his unit for leave. After he finished mechanics school he was promoted to Airman Second Class. We lived on base in California. I’m not sure where exactly. I have no memory of that, either. But there are lots of photographs, wonderful photographs. Babs in her pedal pushers with me in the stroller. Daddy on his hands and knees as I, apparently shrieking with delight, rode on his shoulders. Me playing in the sand on the beach as Daddy watched, a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. There is even a whole photo album devoted to what is described as “Our First Trip to Disneyland.” It turned out to be our only trip.
    It had been an idyllic childhood, I suppose. It ended too abruptly.
    I was playing in the yard. I had a brand-new red tricycle. I hadn’t figured out how to pedal it yet, so I just pushed it to the spot I wanted and then sat down on it. I suppose I’d been pushing when the car with the men drove up. I hadn’t noticed them until they were knocking on our front door. I was accustomed to seeing men in uniform. All my parents’ friends were in service. I didn’t think anything about it until Babs began screaming.
    To this day, I can hear that sound in my memory as clearly as I did then. It was a horrible, lost, almost inhuman sound. It frightened me. I jumped off my trike to run to my mother. When I realized that was where the terrible cry emanated I stopped short. I was just there a few feet away from her, frozen to the spot. Babs had nearly sunk to the ground, as if her legs would not hold her. It was the grasp of one of the men that kept her from actually falling. The other airman was closer to me. Somehow I must have mistaken his neatly pressed navy dress slacks for my own father’s leg. I ran up to him and clasped my arms around it, like I always did. And just like always, he bent down and pulled me up into his arms. I felt a moment of pure bliss and complete safety.
    Then I looked into his face. This man wasn’t Tom Hoffman at all.
    “Daddy?” I questioned him, hoping he was wrong.
    “I’m so sorry, little girl,” he said.
    That was all he said. That was all anybody said. Without further explanation, my mother began a hurried packing. Everyone we knew,