The Cotton-Pickers (2 page)

“Siento mucho, señor,” he answered my question, “I’m awfully sorry to disappoint you, but despite my living here for the last five years I’ve never heard of that place. By all means it has a very uncommon name as far as our state is concerned. Now, señor, I don’t want to appear impolite, but if you don’t mind telling me what your business is at that village, if it is a village, that just might tickle my memory and give me a tip to that particular place among the many I know. You see, then I might be able to help you out in your trouble.”

“Now here we come perhaps closer to a solution. I’m interested in cotton, so, then, it must be a place where cotton is grown.”

He brightened up visibly, apparently relieved that he could help me. I had judged him from the first to be the good-neighbor type.

“Since you mention cotton, señor, I remember that about three years or so ago there arrived here one day a line of heavy trucks loaded to the top with bales of freshly harvested cotton, bringing it to this depot from where it would be taken by train to the nearest port. I understood it was to be loaded on ships and taken to Europe or one of those foreign countries with a crazy name. They all came from that direction.”

With this he waved an arm vaguely, much as a huge bird would flap its wing as it tried to lift itself into the air. The direction indicated by his waving, rolling arm could have been to the north as well as to the west or the east. However, it indicated at least one direction which positively should not be taken.

“How far do you think it might be to that place where these people came from?”

“Far as I can remember these gringos saying, because you should know that they are all gringos holding those lands, they had left by six in the morning and when they arrived here it was noon. So you can figure out for yourself the distance, considering that there’s no road and they surely had to cut their way through the bush with a machete — certainly not an easy way to travel. Not so unlikely a few traces of that road they cut might still be visible enough to follow.”

“Gracias mil veces, señor,” I broke out happily, “thank you a thousand times. You certainly did me a great favor at a moment when I felt as though the world were sinking under my feet.” I shook his hands vehemently and did so joyfully.

“Now we’re finally getting somewhere,” I told myself over and over again, walking back to where I had left the group of hungry job-seekers,  of whom I was the hungriest, to tell the truth.

We decided to leave right away and go as far as we could before sunset, after which it would be next to impossible to discover and follow the traces of the road that might still be there, as that good man in the poolroom had indicated.

2

So off we marched in good enough spirits. The six of us felt as happy in one another’s company as brothers who had unexpectedly met in some strange out-of-the-way place after a long separation.

Above us the scorching tropical sun, about us the dense impenetrable bush; the eternally virgin bush of the tropics with its indefinable mystique, its fantastic secret animal life, its dream-shaped, dream-colored plants, its unexplored treasure of stone and metal.

But we were not explorers, nor were we gold or diamond diggers. We were workers, and set more store on certain earnings than on the uncertain promise of the millions that may have been hidden in the bush around us, waiting to be discovered.

We hiked through the wild unbroken bushland, sweating under a tropical sun, without the faintest idea where and when we would locate Mr. Shine’s cotton plantation. It might be fifty miles away, perhaps sixty. What if it were eighty or a hundred miles? We simply had to find work.

We discovered a narrow path and marched forward in single file. Antonio, the Mestizo, went in front. Then came Gonzalo, the other Mexican. After him came the Chinaman, Sam Woe by name, who was the most elegant of our group, the only one with a whole shirt. He wore linen trousers, ankle-high heavy boots, dark cotton socks, and a fashionable straw hat. Sam carried two bundles, bulging and obviously heavy. He smiled constantly, was always in a good humor, and as we went on it became our most bitter grievance that no matter what we did or what bad luck we met with, nothing provoked him to anger. He told us that he had worked as a cook in an oil field but, so that we wouldn’t get the idea he was carrying money on him, he lost no time in informing us that his earnings were deposited in a Chinese bank in San Luis Potosi.

Cotton-picking was not Sam’s great passion (or mine), but it was a summer job and he thought he might as well add a few pesos to his capital, with which he hoped to open a small restaurant —Comida Corrida, 50 Centavos — in Tampico or thereabouts, in the autumn. He was practical. When we’d got well into the dense bush he cut himself a stick, hung one bundle over each end, balanced the stick across his shoulders, and trotted along in short rapid steps. He made the whole march in this maddening way, with no sign of fatigue and no variation in tempo, and expressed his astonishment that we stopped now and then for a short rest. We let fly at him, telling him that we were decent Christians while he was a low Chink hatched by a monstrous yellow dragon.

Next in line was the gigantic Negro, Charley, and he suited our company much better than the smart Chink, for Charley wore rags and had his bundle done up in old brown paper that, like ours, broke open on the march. Charley claimed to have come from Florida, but he couldn’t convince me of it because he couldn’t speak English fluently. His Spanish was also very limited, so I imagine that he either came from Brazil or had smuggled himself over from Africa. He obviously wanted to get to the States, and it would be easier for him as a Negro to get over the border, even if his English was not very good, than for a white man who spoke the language well. He was the only one who regarded cotton-picking as a welcome and profitable occupation.

Then there was Abraham, the little Negro from New Orleans, who wore a shirt as black as his skin, so that it wasn’t easy to distinguish between the shreds of his shirt and the skin it tried to cover. Abraham was the only one who wore a cap, oddly enough a blue-striped cap of the kind worn by railroad stokers and engineers. He had no bundle, but he carried a coffee pot and a frying pan, and some food in a small canvas bag. Abraham was wily, cunning, cheeky, and ever in good spirits. He had a mouth organ on which he played that silly tune “Yes, we have no bananas” so often that on the second day we let loose on him with our fists.

Gonzalo said that Abraham stole like a crow, and Antonio said that he lied like a Dominican friar. On the third evening out, we caught Abraham stealing a slice of Antonio’s dried beef, but we relieved him of it before he got it into his frying pan and solemnly explained to him that if we caught him stealing again we would deal with him according to the law of the bushland. We would try him, duly sentence him, then take a cord from one of our bundles and hang him on the nearest ebony tree, leaving a note pinned on his body to explain why he had been hanged. Whereupon Abraham told us that we would not dare to lay a finger on him, for he was an American citizen, “native-born,” and would report us to the government in Washington if we so much as touched him. They would then come with a gunboat flying the stars and stripes and work vengeance on us. He was a free citizen “of the United States,” could prove it with certificates, and so had the right to be tried before a proper court. When we told him that no gunboat flying the stars and stripes could sail into the bush, he said, “Well, Gentlemen, Sirs, just touch me with the tip of one finger and see what happens.”

What happened was that we caught him a few days later stealing a can of condensed milk from the Chink. He brazenly claimed he’d bought the milk at a store in Tampico, but we gave him such a beating that he couldn’t have held a pen to write to Washington. (Later, when he pilfered from others, that was, of course, none of our business.)

Then last in line there was Gerard Gales — that’s my name. There’s not much to say about me. In dress I was indistinguishable from the others, and I was going cotton-picking — laborious, underpaid work — because there was no other work to be had and I badly needed a shirt, a pair of shoes, and some trousers. Even so, they would have to come from a second-hand shop. Ten weeks’ work at cotton-picking would never earn enough to buy them new.

The sun was already low when we began to look around for a place to pitch camp.

Before long we found a spot where high grass extended into the bush; we pulled out as much of it as was necessary to clear a camping ground and set fire to the surrounding grass, thereby gaining some freedom from insects and creeping vermin for the night. A freshly-burned grass area is supposed to be the best protection you can have if you are obliged to journey in these parts without the equipment of the tropical traveler.

We had a campfire, but no water to cook with. At this point the Chink produced a bottle of cold coffee. We had had no idea that he was carrying such precious stuff with him. He heated the coffee and obligingly offered us all a drink. But what was a bottle of coffee among six men who had been plodding along in the tropical sun for half a day without a drop of water? Furthermore, it was probable that we’d find as little water during the next day as we had found on this first afternoon. The bush is green, yes, the whole year through, but water is to be found only during the rainy season and then only in those spots where ponds and basins form.

So, no one who has not himself wandered the tropical bush can possibly realize the extent of the Chink’s sacrifice. But none of us said “No, thank you.” Everyone seemed to take it quite for granted that the coffee should be shared. And we’d have taken it equally for granted had the Chink drunk all his coffee himself. Half a day’s march in waterless country isn’t enough to make you turn robber for the sake of a cup of coffee, but three days in the bush may find you thinking seriously of murder for the sake of even a small rusty can of stinking fluid called water only because it is wet.

Antonio and I had some dry bread to munch. Gonzalo had some tortillas and four mangos. Charley had a few bananas. Abraham ate something furtively; I couldn’t see what it was.

We made ready to sleep. The Chink put a piece of canvas on his sleeping place and then wrapped himself, head and all, in a large towel; Gonzalo rolled himself into his sarape; and I wrapped my head in a tattered rag as a protection against mosquitoes and promptly fell asleep. The others were talking and smoking around the fire and I’ve no idea when they turned in.

Before dawn, we were on our way. The trail through the bush was overgrown for long stretches. Saplings reached more than shoulder-high and the ground was so dense with cactus shrubs that they often covered the path. My bare calves were soon so scratched up that all sorts of insects were attracted to the blood.

Toward noon we arrived at a place where a barbed-wire fence ran along the right side of the trail and knew that we were near a farm. We kept the fence on our right, and after an hour or more arrived at a wide, open clearing overgrown with high grass. We searched the place and found a cistern — empty. A few rotten beams, some old cans, rusty corrugated iron sheets, and similar junk indicated an abandoned farm.

This was a disappointment, but we were not disheartened by it. In this part of the world farms are carved out of the bush, worked for ten or even twenty years, and then suddenly for one reason or another are abandoned. Within five years, often sooner, the bush has obliterated all signs of the men who once lived and worked there. The tropical bush devours more quickly than men can build. The bush has no memory; it knows only the living, growing present.

By four o’clock we got to another farm; an American family was living on it. I was well received, was given a good meal with the farmer, and was offered a place to sleep in the house. The others were fed on the patio and were allowed to sleep in a shed.

The farmer knew Mr. Shine, and told me that we had about another thirty miles to go. He said there was no water along the route and that the road was barely recognizable in some places, as it hadn’t been used since that time three years ago. Mr. Shine now took his cotton to the Pozos station, on the other side of Ixtli…. “That place isn’t quite so far from Shine’s as the one you fellows are hiking from,” he said. “The road’s good too. At first there was no road to Pozos either, but since the oil men came they’ve made one. Now all the farmers around there use that station, and I’d advise you to take that road when you go back. By the way,” he added, “I wonder why no, one told you to go to Pozos in the first place?”

Why? Because to the men out recruiting pickers for the cotton farmers, what did it matter how we got to the job? “Ixtlixochicuauhtepec” they wrote out, and that ended their part in the matter. What concern was it of theirs to check out the route?

Because to the stationmaster it hadn’t occurred that it might make a difference which station he made out the ticket for, or maybe he hadn’t even known there was a choice, 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.”