Got to.
If they know you’re markin’, then they don’t cheat.
But God he’p ya if ya don’ keep your own weight.
This is good work.
Kids runnin’ aroun’.
Heard ’bout the cotton-pickin’ machine?
Yeah, I heard.
Think it’ll ever come?
Well, if it comes—fella says it’ll put han’ pickin’ out.
Come night.
All tired.
Good pickin’, though.
Got three dollars, me an’ the ol’ woman an’ the kids.
The cars move to the cotton fields.
The cotton camps set up.
The screened high trucks and trailers are piled high with white fluff.
Cotton clings to the fence wires, and cotton rolls in little balls along the road when the wind blows.
And clean white cotton, going to the gin.
And the big, lumpy bales standing, going to the compress.
And cotton clinging to your clothes and stuck to your whiskers.
Blow your nose, there’s cotton in your nose.
Hunch along now, fill up the bag ’fore dark.
Wise fingers seeking in the bolls.
Hips hunching along, dragging the bag.
Kids are tired, now in the evening.
They trip over their feet in the cultivated earth.
And the sun is going down.
Wisht it would last.
It ain’t much money, God knows, but I wisht it would last.
On the highway the old cars piling in, drawn by the handbills.
Got a cotton bag?
No.
Cost ya a dollar, then.
If they was on’y fifty of us, we could stay awhile, but they’s five hunderd.
She won’t last hardly at all.
I knowed a fella never did git his bag paid out.
Ever’ job he got a new bag, an’ ever’ fiel’ was done ’fore he got his weight.
Try for God’s sake ta save a little money!
Winter’s comin’ fast.
They ain’t no work at all in California in the winter.
Fill up the bag ’fore it’s dark.
I seen that fella put two clods in.
Well, hell. Why not?
I’m jus’ balancin’ the crooked scales.
Now here’s my book, three hunderd an’ twelve poun’s.
Right!
Jesus, he never argued!
His scales mus’ be crooked.
Well, that’s a nice day anyways.
They say a thousan’ men are on their way to this field.