Mississippi Cotton Read Online Free PDF Page A

stalks, blanketing the ground for hundreds of acres all around. In a slow-motion explosion, day-by-day, week-by-week, the land revealed the white birth of cotton, the king crop of the Mississippi Delta. There were great vines of honeysuckle on one side of the house. The aroma seemed more noticeable in the open country, too. It occupied your nostrils like a natural perfume; a fragrance of home. Also, large, fifty-year-old sweet gums, magnolias and four giant oaks fortified the house and yard, forming a canopy of shade, from the hot dusty summers. There was no Bermuda grass or St. Augustine, just yard grass, crab grass, lush and green from the rich soil. We cut it with mower and sling blade.
    The house was apropos to the Mayfields and their lives. But it was almost home to all of us. And each of us was in many ways like the other.
    The rooms seemed bare, though wallpapered: browned by age and time and dust and humidity. Various prints of artwork: The Blue Boy; a ship sailing an unknown sea presenting dark sails against a moonlit night; a lake in the mountains somewhere, unknown but to the artist. A clock rested on the mantle in the living room, the hourly chime spilling throughout the house, somehow more wistful after bedtime.
    The ceilings were high, and the furniture was dark mahogany, firm and sturdy and had a look of dominance. Though it could be scarred, it would hold its ground when bumped by an elbow, or a toe without a slipper; though it shared its masculine power with a feminine gentleness: No drink touched its skin absent a coaster.
    The wall along the stairway was festooned with photographs of the Mayfield tree: great and grand uncles and fathers, many deceased; the depictions clearly etched, fading with age. One, a former Confederate soldier, an empty sleeve pinned to his chest.
    I got sleepy as I read. I closed my eyes for just a bit.

 
     
    CHAPTER 3
    The Trailways bus had taken us up Highway 49 into the Delta, winding around bends and curves, as the rivers and streams set the course for the highway. As we passed through towns I could see the reflection of the bus in the store windows, a distortion waving up and down like a silver and red ship. The ride from Yazoo City had taken over an hour. Riding the big bus became tiresome as we got closer to Greenville. I still had more than an hour before Cotton City.
    The straw-haired lady and Yeah Boy remained on the bus. He had been asleep since Yazoo City, and she slept on and off. She told me, in one of her awake moments, that she was going to Clarksdale. That wasn’t too far above Cotton City, so I knew she’d be with me until I got off.
    “Greenville, Misissippi,” the driver’s voice squawked over the intercom. “We’ll be here about thirty minutes. Get out if you want and stretch your legs.”
    “Have a couple of belches,” I said under my breath.
    “What’s that, hon?” asked the straw-haired lady.
    “Oh, nothin’,” I said. I didn’t realize she was awake. Her eyes were closed and her head had been on the headrest.
    Yeah Boy didn’t budge. I guessed the medicine bottle must have had some sleeping stuff in it.
    “Are you gonna get off, ma’am?” If she wasn’t, I was gonna have to crawl over her or get her to move.
    “Well, I believe I will. I think I’ll just giv’ this ol’ body some movement. Maybe get the circulation goin’. Whadayathink, Mister Jake?”
    I kind of wished I’d never told her my name, because every once in a while she called me Mister Jake. It would’ve been pretty hard not to tell her my name though, since she’d asked. My parents had always told me to be careful about giving information to strangers, but it was pretty hard not to when trapped on a bus with someone who kept asking.
    “Yes, ma’am. Circulation would be good, I guess.” I waited while she uprooted herself from her seat. She put the brown sack under her arm and shuffled down the aisle with me right behind her. A few others got off, too, but the