I got my first cotton sack when I was about seven or eight. It was a big white flour sack. You prob’ly don’t know much about pickin cotton so I’m gon’ tell you how it was: hot. Lord-a-mighty, it was hot. Hot enough for the devil and his angels. Then there was the bugs and skeeters. Zoomin in off the bayou, seemed like they was big as gooses and twice as mean.
Ever day, we’d light out just about the time the sky at the edges of the fields turned a little pink with mornin, but you could still see some stars. I’d pick all the day long, pluckin me four or five pieces of cotton outta every boll I could find. When the bolls busted open, they was hard and kinda crackly. After a while, they turned my hands raw. The cotton was soft like a feather, but it got heavy mighty fast. Ever day, the Man say I had about twenty pounds in my sack. Seemed like no matter how long I picked or if my sack felt extra heavy that day, the Man say it was twenty pounds.
Sometimes he’d give us a token to spend at his store. I’d go in there and buy me a piece a’ candy or a hunk a’ cheese.
That’s how I met Bobby. The Man’s store was kinda on the front half of the plantation, and I had to walk by his house on my way back to Uncle James’s. It was a big white one with a black roof and a great big ole shade porch all the way around it. One day, I was walkin down the red dirt road that ran by it, when this white boy about my age wearin overalls like me come out and started walkin with me.
“Hey,” he says to me, traipsin along.
“Hey,” I said.
“Where you goin?”
“Home.”
“Where’s home?”
“Over yonder,” I said, jerkin my chin in the gen’l direction.
“Wanna go ride bikes?”
Well, that stopped me in my tracks. I turned and eyeballed this fella. He was kinda regular lookin, about my same size with some freckles on his nose and a curly mess of brown hair with some red in it like somebody’d dusted his head with cinnamon. While I was lookin at him, I was sizin him up, tryin to figure out what did he want, and why was he tryin to take up with somebody like me.
Finally, I gave him an answer: “I ain’t got no bike,” I said and started walkin again.
“You wanna go shoot BB guns then? You can use mine.”
Now, that was an invite. I didn’t have no BB gun, but I wanted one real bad so I could get out in the woods and bring me down some blackbirds or maybe a possum.
“Yeah, I’ll go shoot BB guns with you. You sure your mama won’t mind?”
“Nah, she don’t care long as I’m home ’fore dark. You stay here; I’ll run get my gun.”
From that day on, me and Bobby was partners in crime. Turned out he was the Man’s nephew come to visit. He didn’t know he wadn’t s’posed to be my friend.
When I wadn’t workin, I’d slide over to the back porch of the Man’s house and whistle. Bobby’d ease out the back door and we’d meet up. We was purty tight. If he had somethin to eat, I did, too. Sometimes at dinner, he’d eat some a’ his food and slip the rest in his pocket and sneak out the house. Then we’d walk down the road where the Man couldn’t see, and I’d eat me a chicken leg or a sandwich or somethin that he brung me.
Purty soon his people figured out we was friends, but they didn’t really try to keep us from associatin, ’specially since I was the only boy on the place right around his age and he needed somebody to play with and keep outta trouble. They detected he was givin me food, so they put a little wood table outside the back door for me to eat on. After a while, once Bobby’d get his food, he’d come right on out and me and him’d sit at that little table and eat together.
When I wadn’t workin, me and Bobby was in business, workin on bikes, swimmin, or makin slingshots outta tree twigs and inner tubes. Sometimes Thurman’d go with us, but mostly it was just me and Bobby.
We’d go huntin and kill us some birds with his Daisy Rider BB gun. I was a purty good shot and could drop em right out of the sky. I had a rope belt that I wore round my overalls, and ever time I killed me a blackbird, I’d tuck his feet up under the rope and let him hang there upside down. Once we’d shot a bunch, I’d take em home to Aunt Etha and she’d make a pie.
Now the next year that Bobby come to the plantation, I got up the courage to ask the Man if I could pick scrap cotton and earn me a bicycle. Up to then, I’d just been ridin old heaps me and Bobby built outta junk parts. Didn’t even have no tires on em, just rode em on the rims. I needed a real bicycle so me and Bobby could do some serious ridin.
Now scrap cotton is the little pieces danglin off the cotton bushes and also inside the dirty bolls that’s layin on the ground after the fields done been picked. Since Uncle James and Aunt Etha wadn’t makin no money, I had to scrap cotton if I was gon’ get me a bike.
I was ready to pick that scrap just as long it took, but Bobby had a plan. He’d come out and pick with me, scrapin the last wisps off the picked-over flowers, actin like he was gon’ keep some a’ that scrap for hisself. But all the cotton he picked, he put it in my sack. And when the Man wadn’t lookin, he’d go in the cotton shed and fill up his sack with the picked cotton, the good cotton, then come out and empty it into mine. We’d hide it under the scrap.
Ever summer, me and Bobby had a new project, but that scrappin went on for a long time. Ever year, we scrapped them fields and the Man weighed what we picked—and what Bobby stole!—and ever year, the Man put me off, tellin me I ain’t scrapped enough to get no bike. Went on like that for three years, till finally, right around Christmas, the Man come down to Uncle James’s and said for me to come up to his house, only he never did say why.
“Just come on up and you’ll see,” he said.
We hoofed it on back up there, and when we got close I could see it sittin up on the big wraparound porch, shinin just like a dream: a brand-new Schwinn, red and white with a rubber squeeze-horn on it.
I turned and looked at the Man. He was smilin just a little.
“Is that mine?” I asked him. I couldn’t believe it.
“It’s all yours, L’il Buddy,” he said. “You get up there and take it on home.”
“Thank you, sir! Thank you, sir!” I ran off whoopin like a wild boy, jumped on that fine machine, and burned off down the road to show my uncle and auntie. That Schwinn was the first new thing I ever had. I was eleven years old.