A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton - Michael R. Phillips [87]
“All right, you win,” I said. “I’ll show you how to do it, and we’ll pick it together.”
“What about Aleta?” asked Katie. “Do you think she could help us too? Is it work she could do?”
“I was picking cotton when I was younger than her,” I said. “It’s hard work, but I reckon if you’re going to do it, she could help too.”
“Then maybe it’s time we told her what we were doing, Mayme. Maybe it’s time to make her part of our plan. If she’s going to help us save Rosewood, she’s got a right to know.”
“You should be the one to talk to her,” I said.
“I’ll do it tomorrow.”
We both sat quietly thinking as everything we’d been talking about gradually sank in.
“When can we start picking the cotton?” Katie asked eagerly. “There’s no time to lose.”
“Any day,” I said. “I’ll go out and check the fields again just to make sure. Then we’ll start getting things ready this afternoon.”
MORNING IN THE FIELD
45
THE DAY AFTER OUR TALK, BOTH KATIE AND I got up with a sense of anticipation.
We knew we were facing a crossroads. If we didn’t do something, and soon, our little game of trying to make this plantation work by ourselves would be over. People would take us away and all four of us would go our separate ways.
We looked at each other with serious expressions, sort of saying, Well, I guess this is it. Then we both went about our business of getting ready for the day.
There was just about nothing in the world I hated more than picking cotton. But for some reason now I was almost looking forward to it. Having it be our own cotton, and knowing we had to do it to survive and keep going and eat and take care of ourselves and to protect Emma and William and save Rosewood for Katie—all that made it seem completely different. Of course, it wasn’t really mine, it was Katie’s. But it felt like it was part mine, because in a way it was all of ours. It was our plantation now, just like Katie had tried to tell me a while back.
I went out to the biggest field to look over the crop again. It was full of weeds growing as high as the cotton, but the field was full of white too. The bolls had opened and the white fluffy balls were exploding out everywhere. It was the white that mattered, not the weeds.
The field was ready!
Could we do it? Could four girls trying to fend for themselves really harvest enough cotton to sell for real cash money?
How much could we pick? I didn’t know. For a field this size a year ago, there might have been twenty or thirty colored men and women. But then the field might all be picked in three or four days. If it didn’t rain, maybe it’d take me and Katie two or three weeks, maybe more. I had no idea. If Aleta and Emma could help us, it would go faster. But would that be in time?
I reckon we’d find out. And maybe the whole future of Katie Clairborne’s and Mayme Jukes’s crazy scheme would depend on whether we could.
I walked slowly through the field, white puffs of cotton all around me. I stopped, then reached down and picked off one of the little white balls from a nearby plant.
I held it in my fingers and looked at it for a few seconds, then again around at the field surrounding me.
Well, you old cotton field, I said, here I am again. But I don’t hate you no more, ’cause I reckon the day’s come when you’re my own cotton now too, just like Katie said, or something like it anyhow. And I’m gonna pick as much of you as I can!
I tossed the ball of cotton up in the air, watched it float to the ground, then turned and walked back the way I had come. Slowly I began humming the tune we’d sung on my birthday, then started softly singing