47 Read Online Free PDF

wasn't pulling cotton so it all seemed beautiful to me. I ran up to Albert all breathless and hopeful.
    "How's that shoulder?" Mud Albert asked me.
    "Hurts some," I said, "but that lard you put on it makes
    it bettah."
    "Good. Now tell me, how'd you like cotton pickin'?" The question stymied me for a moment. The first thing any Negro slave in the south ever learned was not to com plain about his lot to the boss. How you doin'f the boss asks you. Good, mastuh, you're supposed to shout.
    But I hated picking cotton. My hands were bleeding, my back hurt, and there was something in the cotton plant that made my eyes all red and itching. If I told the cabin boss that I liked pulling cotton he might believe me and give me that job until the end of time.
    What I didn't know, or what I didn't want to know, was that almost all slaves picked cotton or some other onerous job for their entire lives. There was no escape from that, no chance at some better life. Hoping that Albert would give me something better to do was a child's dream.
    As I've said, I was fourteen at that time but I was still a child in many ways. Living in the barn under Mama Flore's protection I hadn't lived much among the men and there fore had never faced many of the hard lessons of life. Because I was so spoiled I still had the dreams of a child.
    Children resist slavery better than grown men and women because children believe in dreams. I dreamed of lazy days in the barn and stolen spoonfuls of honey from the table where Mama Flore prepared meals in the big house. I dreamed of riding in Master's horse-drawn car riage and of going to the town where they had stores filled with candies and soft shirts with bone buttons. I dreamed of roasted chickens stuffed with sweet parsnips and onions. And, being a child, I thought that my dreams just might one day come true.
    The mature slave knows that dreams never come true. They know that they'll eat sour grain and sawdust every day except Christmas and that they'll always work from before sunrise until after dusk every day for all the days of their lives.
    If I were a full-grown slave I would have known that picking cotton was the only job for me on the Corinthian plantation. But being a child I was hoping for a loophole, like a job picking peaches that I could take a bite out of now and then.
    Mud Albert smiled because I couldn't answer his ques tion.
    "So you don't love Miss Eighty-four and all those long rows'a cotton balls?"
    "It's pretty hard, Mud Albert. My hands," I said holding out my bloody ringers and palms.
    The sight of my cuts took the grin from Albert's lips.
    "I sorry, boy," he said. "I know that it hurts pickin' that cotton. It hurts the back and the hands, the eyes and the
    heart too. Work can break your heart just as bad as a woman can. Every nigger out here works harder than any two white peoples. That's why I let you have the mornin' pickin' cotton with Miss Eighty-four.
    "You really too little to be workin' in the fields yet. I don't know what Master Tobias was thinkin' to put you out here like that. But as long as you here I need you to know what it is to chop cotton. And now that you know I'ma put you out chere as a runnah for the slaves. That means you gonna run heah and theah doin' things for me and the other peoples needs it. So if I have a message you gonna run deliver it. If somebody need watah you gonna fill up the pail and run it ovah to 'em. You understand me, boy?" "Yes suh, Mud Albert, suh," I said being as polite as I knew how to be.
    "An' don't you forget them bleedin' hands an' watery eyes, don't forget the hurt in your back and your chest. Be cause I cain't save you from pullin' cotton if'n you don't do the job I give ya."
    "I run so fast that my feet won't even touch the ground, Mud Albert," I swore.
    He laughed and nodded and handed me his water bottle. That was the first drink of water I had since we got to the cotton fields many hours before.
    I know how bad a thing it is to be a slave