Mississippi Cotton (15 page)

“I think we’re okay for now,” Cousin Trek said.

Taylor, Casey and I dug in. Pete and Buger’s did have good hamburgers, big, and with big French fries. We had just started—shaking napkins for our laps, passing the salt and stuff like that, when Big Trek bellowed over his shoulder, “Hey, Lucy! Gonna need some catsup, please, ma’am!”

“My word, Big Trek,” Cousin Carol said. “Why don’t you use a bullhorn?”

“Well, she couldn’t hear a bullhorn as noisy as it is in here,” said Big Trek.

“Casey, don’t eat so fast,” Cousin Trek said.

Casey was eating like he hadn’t been fed in three days. The burgers were good and he probably thought if he showed how hungry he was, he could get another.

“Jus’ take your time,” Cousin Trek said. “If you’re still hungry, you can have another when you’ve finished.” Cousin Trek was a mind reader, just like my daddy.

It was after twelve-thirty, and we would have finished sooner probably, but it seemed like every two minutes somebody who knew Big Trek or Cousin Trek would stop and talk. When we had finished and Lucy was clearing the table, Big Trek leaned back in his chair. He looked like he wanted to cut loose with a giant belch. Although that would have been the end of the world as far as Cousin Carol was concerned, it would have been funny.

“Oh, by the way. You know who I saw at the bus station when I got here?” said Big Trek. He paused, though nobody made a guess. “Looty Nash,” he finally said.

“Looty?” Cousin Trek asked.

“Yeah. Said he was just visitin’.”

“Visiting who? I didn’t know he had any family left. And I don’t think he has a lot of friends,” Cousin Carol said. “He hardly ever goes anywhere.”

“Beats me,” Big Trek said. “Just said he was visitin’. Said he just caught a ride over to the highway, then caught the bus and came up to visit. I thought it was a little odd myself. I mean, he doesn’t drive much. But then he doesn’t go anywhere much either.”

“Wonder what he was doing here?”

“Beats me,” said Big Trek.

We loaded up the pickup with Big Trek’s luggage, paint, nails and other stuff then drove over to the Lion Oil filling station. Taylor, Casey and I were in the bed of the truck, and sat up on the sides when we stopped. I heard Big Trek tell Cousin Trek, “I’m gonna get in the back with the boys.”

“Are you sure?” Cousin Carol said. “There’s plenty of room for the three of us in the cab.”

“You boys want a Co-Cola?” Big Trek asked us. He really didn’t have to ask. We did. “Gimme those empties and we’ll trade ‘em in for the deposit.” He pointed to the empty bottles that had been rattling in between the jack and the spare tire.

“Thank you, Big Trek,” I said. It had been a good day. Now an ice-cold Coca-Cola while we road back to Cotton City.

CHAPTER 11

I took a big slug, stifled a belch, and leaned back against the spare tire. “Big Trek, who were the University Grays?”

BB had said in the field yesterday that he was fighting for the University Grays. I hadn’t understood it when he said it, because I thought he was fighting against the Communists.

I had forgotten about it until now. I guess sitting here watching Trek cupping his hands to light his pipe in the wind, his old gray hair blowing, made me think of it for some reason. The War Between the States always made me think about old men. All the stories we had been told in school were about young Confederates going off and fighting like crazy for their homes and land. Because they were so outnumbered they came back battered, beaten and old. They had aged, my grandmother had said, because they lost the cause.

We stood when Dixie was played—anywhere, anytime, and all of us fifth graders sometimes thought that we could win the cause back one day. My daddy said he wasn’t sure that would ever happen. The way things were looking, we’d be lucky if we weren’t ordered by somebody to stop singing Dixie. Anyway, I wanted to know what the University Grays were. I had heard about the Mississippi Grays, but not the University Grays.

Big Trek finally got his pipe going. It didn’t blow out since we weren’t going that fast, just driving in town past stores and filling stations. Going about twenty-five, I guessed.

“The University Grays were a group of young men at Ole Miss.” He paused. “Actually it wasn’t called Ole Miss back then. It was just the University of Mississippi. I’m not even sure it was a university then.”

He stopped talking for a moment and sucked hard on his pipe. I took a big slug of Coca-Cola.

“Well, back during the War of Independence—Southern independence,” he began, “when we had one final chance to win, General Lee took his Army of Northern Virginia to a little town in Pennsylvania called Gettysburg. The battle took place over three days. And it came to be decided on the third day. You see, our boys had fought hard as anybody could fight those first two days, but it was the third day—and what came to be known as Pickett’s Charge—when our Confederacy made its highest stand. The ‘high water mark’ they called it.”

“What happened, Big Trek? We know about Pickett’s charge, but what about the University Grays?”

Big Trek banged his pipe against the side of the truck, emptying it, the ashes blowing off to the cotton fields. “Well, General Lee and General Longstreet sent our boys charging right up the middle of Cemetery Ridge. But they were slow getting started and the artillery didn’t work near ‘bout as well as it should’ve. Anyway, our boys set out across that field, knowing they had to reach and hold the high ground at the top—to take Cemetery Ridge—and the War could’ve ended right there. They started trudging across that field and up that hill…” Big Trek spread his arms, making like he was showing a long line of men, “…and headed right for the middle…” he pointed straight ahead then paused, his eyes widened “…then the Yankees began firing everything they had—rifle shot, cannon balls, canister fire. They blew holes in our lines and the boys… the men, crumpled up shot, or were blown to bits and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds fell. They were bleedin’ and busted and arms and legs were ripped away.”

He paused and looked at each of us as if he was talking to each one of us alone. “And then, you know what?”

“What?” I said.

“When almost nine out of ten had been shot down, when there were only a handful left, they kept on charging. They wouldn’t give up. And General Armistead from Virginia and a handful of what was left of our Mississippi boys crossed that stone wall and took that hill. Up and over that wall, General Armistead was leading our boys, his hat held high on the tip of his sword.” Big Trek paused again and eyed each of us.

“What then, Big Trek?” I said.

He took out his pocket knife and began digging into the bowl of his pipe, cleaning out the charred innards. “There were too few left to hold the hill, and they were pushed off. Armistead was killed and every one of our Mississippians was shot or killed. And those boys were the University Grays. They had made the greatest advance into the North out of the whole War—our boys. Our University Grays.”

Cousin Trek had turned onto the highway now and we picked up speed. Big Trek again banged his pipe on the side of the truck, emptying it. He wasn’t going to fight a sixty mile an hour wind huffing and puffing.

“What made you ask about them?” he said.

“Sir?” The wind seemed like it gobbled his words.

“I said, what made you ask that?”

Well, BB said he was fightin’ for the University Grays—said that’s why he went to Korea.”

Big Trek scratched his ear with his pipe, grabbed his hat as the wind almost ripped it off. “BB is a fine young man. And I can tell you this—he’s loves Mississippi. A lot of the young colored folks have gone off to Chicago and Detroit and New York. They think they’ll like it better up there. But not BB. He is gonna be a Mississippi boy no matter what. He would love to play football at Ole Miss ‘cause of the way Johnny Vaught’s always talking about trying to get Mississippi boys to play up there.”

He paused for a moment, drawing on his pipe. “But he can’t play up there ‘cause coloreds can’t play at white schools. And to tell you the truth, not playin’ football don’t bother him as much, I don’t believe, as not being thought of as a Mississippi boy.”

“But what’s it got to do with the University Grays, Big Trek?”

Big Trek stretched his legs out into the bed, crossed his feet and put his hands behind his head. “I think he sees himself as a fellow who’s just as capable of sacrificin’ as much as any man in Mississippi. And the Grays were about as fightin’ and sacrificin’ a bunch as you’d find. I think he believes he could’ve been one of ‘em. But his time is now, 1951. Not 1861. So he went to Korea to fight for what all men fight for in a war.”

“What’s that?”

“For their family. And for the men next to ‘em. Men don’t go off to war for their freedom or their rights or any of that. That’s what the government tries to tell you. Men go so they don’t let their friends and family down. And to show them they are willing to sacrifice for those things and people around them. And that’s what BB did. He was as willing to sacrifice for his Mississippi blood, whether at Gettysburg or Korea. Just like those University Grays and those five thousand colored Confederates at Gettysburg did.”

“There were Negroes in the Confederate army?” I asked.

“Quite a few, yes. But you don’t hear ‘bout that much. History books don’t put it in. They want it to…well, never mind that. There’s things you boys don’t need to know right now. Just enough to tell you that the Yankees weren’t fightin’ to free anyone. And old Abe Lincoln sure wasn’t neither.”

I scooted closer to Big Trek so I could hear better.

“I once gave BB a book written by Booker T. Washington,
Up From Slavery
. Like I said, BB’s a readin’ boy. The Lord put a lot of talent in that boy—reader, worker and a pretty dang good tailback. Booker T. was a former slave, but a real Southerner, too. That’s what I hoped BB would learn. Some Negroes, mostly up North, said Booker T. was a white man’s you-know-what. But I think he was a pretty decent fellow.”

“We’ve talked ‘bout him in school,” I said.

“I remember one time when BB was about ten-years old—just after Pearl Harbor as a matter of fact—he said he would like to go off and fight. Said he and Mr. Looty would go because Mr. Looty was such a good shot and all. Said he could hit anything—man or beast. Said Mr. Looty could teach him. They’d be just like Silas and Andrew.”

“Looty and BB are good friends, huh Big Trek,” said Casey.

“Yeah. BB just always tried to watch out for Looty. At least since he was a boy. Maybe just felt sorry for him. Anyway, I do know this about BB. He’s a hard worker. He attacks that cotton like a rabbit after cabbage.”

Cousin Trek sped up as we passed a Trailways bus. The smell of diesel blew up my nose, and the wind noise roared. I looked up at the windows and thought about the straw-haired woman, and wondered if she was on it. Cousin Trek passed it at about seventy I figured, though I never got my hand up to be sure.

“Who were Silas and Andrew, Big Trek?” I asked. Looking at Casey and Taylor, I could tell they didn’t know either.

I settled back and absorbed the story about Andrew and Silas Chandler that Big Trek told us. I pulled down my baseball cap hard, so the wind wouldn’t blow it off.

Pretty soon Big Trek stopped talking and just sat there. I didn’t know if he’d run out of things to say or if he just was tired of talking. But the wind felt good, and we were on our way back to Cotton City. No work again tomorrow. Taylor had asked him if we could have the afternoon off so we could go swimming. Big Trek said we might as well take the whole day off since I wasn’t going to be here but a couple more weeks. He said we’d have to work this Saturday though, and all next week, too, if we were going to make any money.

“What are you boys gonna do when you get home?” Big Trek asked us.

“I don’t know. Maybe we’ll go downtown,” Taylor said

“Gonna spend all that money y’all made?”

“Just look around,” Taylor said.

“My mother and daddy don’t like me to spend money much,” I said. “They’re always tellin’ me to save it.”

Big Trek smiled. “Well, sounds like good advice to me. Just don’t get in a big domino game down at the café. You boys gonna work tomorrow?”

“Sir?” Taylor said, pretending he didn’t hear.

“There’s plenty y’all can do to make you some more money.” He knew we heard.

“Well, we were gonna work with Mr. Hightower and BB again, maybe Friday. Thought we’d go fishin,’ maybe swimmin,’ tomorrow.”

“Hey!” Casey said. “Mr. Hightower said he would take us fishin’ over at the river Sunday afternoon. We forgot about that. Don’t forget, we gotta ask him.”

Big Trek scraped the bowl of his pipe again. He banged it on the side of the truck. “You boys sure get off easy when you get company. Fishin’, swimmin’, picture shows. It’s like Christmas in the summertime.”

Casey spit as hard as he could out to the highway, and it blew back and almost hit Taylor.

“Will ya stop that, you little sh—” Taylor almost got the word out before Big Trek smacked his head. “Well make him stop, Big Trek. He’s crazy!”

“You aren’t supposed to be cussin’. And Casey, if you gotta spit, move to the other side.”