Mississippi Cotton (17 page)

“Bet he’s got a girlfriend now, doncha reckon, Mr. Pete?” someone said.

“Maybe, but I don’t see why. Why would he want a girlfriend, jus’ because he’s got a driver’s license?”

The grownups laughed, while Casey peered straight at Mrs. Culpepper. Not at her face either. Right at her chest. And when he did, he sort of blinked both his eyes at me, so it was all I could do to keep from laughing. Taylor, too.

After we left the drugstore we walked down to the Majestic to check the marquee. We knew The Man from Planet X was on. But we wanted to see the posters behind the glass. It had these artists’ drawings of ‘The Man’ and a rocket ship headed to earth, and all these explosions going off on earth. And it listed the stars, and directors, and all that other stuff we didn’t care about.

“Look,” Casey said. “There’s Looty.” You could see him across the square, standing in front of the feed store.

“Let’s go see him,” Taylor said.

Looty was standing on the sidewalk like he was waiting for someone. I had never talked to him, but as we got closer he appeared like someone my mother and daddy might call simple. They didn’t mean anything bad, but mentally quiet, as my mother said.

Looty was dressed in khaki trousers and a plaid sport shirt with the top button buttoned and wore a Cardinals baseball cap. I felt sorry for him because he had to go to the county prison farm and all. Then yesterday, everybody questioning him at the sheriff’s office and everything.

“Hey, Looty, whadaya doin’?” Taylor asked.

Looty took his cap off to scratch his head. “Waitin’ on the Trailways bus.”

“Where’re you goin’?” Casey asked.

“Greenville.” He pointed south. “Down thar.”

“This is our cousin Jake from Jackson, Looty.”

“Hey, Jake.”

“Hey, Looty, nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you, too.”

Looty looked younger to me than what I expected. And he wasn’t shaved. Taylor said he thought he was about forty or so, although he wasn’t positive. He spoke sort of slow, and he really seemed like he wanted to be a friend.

“Y’all know I saved y’all’s fish?” Looty said.

“Oh yeah?” Taylor said. The three of us looked at each other.

“Thar was a water moccasin what was gonna get y’all’s fish y’all left on the stringer. But I shot him. Shot him twice-d. I saw y’all when y’all left ‘em to go home. He was crawlin’ on the ground t’ward the spot where y’all put ‘em, right whar y’all left ‘em. They’ll eat ‘em, ya know.”

“Well, we sure ‘preciate it, Looty,” Casey said.

“Whadaya goin’ to Greenville for, Looty?” Taylor asked.

Looty sat down on the curb. He pulled a beat up old suitcase up beside his leg. It didn’t seem like he heard Taylor’s question the way he just stared. At last, he said, “Jus’ goin’. I have some bi’ness to do.”

He seemed younger in the mind than Casey, and it made him seem pitiful. I wanted to ask him what he was being questioned about last night. And what he had done with his rifle. And most of all, I wanted to ask him why he had shot those chickens that time. But I don’t think I could ever ask him about the mayonnaise jar. I don’t think I wanted to know now, for sure. But I didn’t think I could ask him questions like Taylor and Casey. They had known him for a long time. I had just met him.

“And I have some friends thar, too,” he said after a long pause.

“My granddaddy, Big Trek, said he saw you up in Clarksdale this week,” Taylor said. “You’re gettin’ to travel lots, Looty. Mus’ be fun.”

Looty’s face curled a weak smile, but he didn’t reply.

“We went up to Clarksdale today. Went to Pete and Buger’s and everything. We rode up in the pickup though. Prob’ly more fun on the bus, I’ll bet,” Taylor said.

“It’s cool on the bus, if you open the winder. I don’t drive my truck very far. I drive it downtown to catch the bus when I go somewhere far, like Greenville or Clarksdale. Sometimes I hitchhike,” Looty said. His eyes seemed to wander.

I was sure Taylor and Casey were thinking the same thing I was—who had we seen in Looty’s house that night? But I didn’t think they were going to ask him. And I sure wasn’t going to.

“Thanks for shootin’ that snake,” Taylor said.

“I told Ben Samuels I’d shoot crows for him, but he said he could do it. Anyways, I don’t have my rifle now.”

The big Scenic Cruiser turned the corner and pulled up in front of the feed store. The doors opened with a rush of compressed air. Looty stepped up. He stopped and turned around. “I’ll see y’all. Nice ta seen ya, Jake.”

“Nice to’ve met you too, Looty,” I said again.

I finally got to meet Looty. He didn’t seem as scary as I thought he would, and I felt sorry for him. He was grown-up and everything, but he was like us. And he seemed kind of lonely. But I liked him.

He had taken the back seat and looked at us through the window. He waved as the bus drove away. We waved, too.

CHAPTER 13

We were going swimming. We didn’t want to go swimming in the public county lake because Taylor said everybody peed in it. He and Casey knew of a clean place. We took our fishing poles so it would look like we were going fishing. We planned to swim on private property. Whoever owned the land probably didn’t care, but we weren’t supposed to do something like that without permission.

Also, you didn’t need a swimming suit since there weren’t any girls around. If we brought home wet swimming suits, Cousin Carol would ask us where we had been swimming. Trespassing was like stealing. If we told her we had gone to the county lake, we would be lying. And if we got caught for lying, we really would be in trouble. If we told her we had trespassed we would be in as much trouble as for lying. So we took our fishing poles; this way we were only deceiving—which was lying without getting caught.

It was mid-morning. We didn’t have to go home for dinner, so we could just swim and eat at the pond. Cousin Carol had made us sandwiches. It would be a good day to relax before we had to go back to work tomorrow. Cousin Trek had said we’d probably have to work some on Saturday, because BB and Mr. Hightower would be busy and need us. But he said he would pay for the movie again tomorrow night to help make up for the loss of work today.

“Hey, look!” Casey shouted. He was on the dam standing on an extended log, useful as a diving board. He had stripped naked and stood proudly perched on the end of the log overlooking the water. With one arm extended upward, the other grasping, he peed in a perfect arc into our clean private lake.

“You little creep!” Taylor shouted. He pulled off his socks and slung them. “Now you ruined it for everybody.”

“Yeah, like you aren’t gonna do it when you get in.”

“I wouldn’t. I don’t wanna ruin it.”

“Oh, we’d be on the honor system, huh?”

I laughed at them. But Casey was right. Probably everybody did it in every lake from Atlanta to Dallas and in the oceans, too.

Casey splashed in while Taylor and I raced to undress. I beat him and ran in from the shallow end. The water was still cool because it was morning. Taylor and I were splashing around when Casey swam over to us. “Feels good. Kinda cold at first,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s great as soon as you get used to it.”

Casey was treading water, not splashing, saying nothing, looking at Taylor.

“What’s wrong with you?” Taylor asked.

Casey broke out with great effort. “Unnnngh, Ugnnnn, I gotta go! I can’t help it, unnnngh, it’s a number two!”

Taylor and I swam back to shore like Johnny Weismuller. Casey laughed. In the shallow water we stood naked, water just above our knees.

“I didn’t really,” Casey hollered.

“I’ll bet you did,” Taylor said.

I was laughing. It was funny whether he did or not.

Taylor was laughing, too. “C’mon, you did or didn’t? Tell the truth.”

“I was just playing,” Casey said.

“You’re crazy,” said Taylor. “I hope you drown.”

“I’ll bet people do it in the county lake,” I said. “You can do it and nobody would notice. In the city pools in Jackson, the water is clear and somebody would notice for sure. You prob’ly would get banned for life. Not to mention the whippin’ you would get at home.”

“Will y’all shut up about it? You’re gonna ruin my dinner,” Taylor said. “Already ruined my swim.”

We swam some more but stayed away from Casey’s spot.

It was almost noon, and we figured we had enough sun and fun for now. We got out, put on our underwear and lay on the soft Johnson grass beside the willow tree, waiting for the air to dry us. Lying in the grass with your shirt off made your back itch, but otherwise it was comfortable. Swimming made you almost as hungry as working. The sandwiches Cousin Carol had put in a large brown paper sack tasted great in our semi-exhausted condition. We drank out of a thermos filled with cherry Kool-Aid.

“Listen,” Taylor said. “Hear that?” He jerked his head up and rested on his elbows. The low sound of an engine approached, out of sight, past the dam.

We scrambled like crazy to get our clothes on. We didn’t want to get arrested and, for sure, not in our underwear. Casey got his tee shirt on backward.

The sound stopped. Maybe we were safe. We waited for what seemed like forever. Water was coming down my face, and I wasn’t sure whether it was because my face was still wet or if I was sweating. It was probably close to a hundred now.

“Why, hello, boys. Y’all watchin’ the pond to make sure nobody steals it?” BB walked up the slope of the dam.

We were relieved but still worried. What was BB doing here? Did he know we had been skinny dipping? Would he tell?

“Hey, BB,” Taylor said. “We were just wonderin’ if somebody would mind if we fished here—” He stammered some, “—but we ain’t been fishin’ here. Not without permission.” He turned to Casey and me. “Have we, y’all?”

BB walked up and stopped under the tree. He wore work gloves and pulled at the fingers; got one off, then the other. “Oh, I know you ain’t been fishin’. Whoever heard of skinny fishin’?”

We looked at each other. Even Casey knew what he meant.

“Now don’t you boys know that you can see three little white butts from prob’ly a mile away? They look like big marshmallows, they stand out so much.”

“You mean…you mean, you saw us? Are we in trouble?” asked Casey.

“Naw, Mr. Lipscomb owns this pond and the land around it for a long ways. He knows y’all been comin’ here all along. He don’t care as long as y’all don’t do any damage to anything.”

“So we aren’t in trouble?”

“Not as far as I’m concerned. Course if your momma finds out, that might be something else.” BB wiped the sweat from his brow. “But I’m not gonna be the one to tell. And I’m gonna guess Mr. Lipscomb never has, or y’all wouldn’t be here.”

Even if Mr. Lipscomb, whoever he was, didn’t mind us being there, the point was we hadn’t asked permission. That would be our crime with Cousin Carol and Cousin Trek. The skinny-dipping would be tacked on as a second count.

“What’re you doing o’er here, BB?”

BB took a red bandanna out of his back pocket and wiped his face. “I’m just gradin’ this old work road for Mr. Lipscomb with the tractor. It’s a private road. The county don’t keep it up. He pays me to keep it up, and since I use Mr. Hightower’s tractor, he lets Mr. Hightower use the road for a shortcut when he wants. Me and Daddy, too. Wait, and I’ll be right back.”

He left and walked over the dam.We stayed under the willow tree and opened our sandwich sacks. In a minute he came back, bringing his dinner. “I might jus’ as well have dinner with you boys. Nice shady tree here. ‘Bout noontime anyway.” He sat down beside the tree and took off his hat.

“Hey, BB,” Casey said. “Can you fix Mrs. Culpepper’s hair dryer? She has to send it all the way to New Orleans to get it fixed.”

“Hair dryer?” BB opened his sack. “I don’t know ‘bout fixin’ those things. I can fix a tractor. But I don’t know ‘bout a hair dryer.”

“You know what they are, don’t you?” Casey asked. “They’re those things the ladies stick their heads in to dry their heads or somethin’. I think they spin their heads around and around to get ‘em dry.”

“Say, BB,” I said, “Big Trek told us about the University Grays. ‘Member, you said you went to war for the University Grays.”

BB didn’t respond. He just rooted around in his sack like maybe he hadn’t heard me.

“But they’ve been dead for ‘bout a hundred years, BB,” Taylor said.

“Are you gonna tell us what you meant?” Casey asked.

BB found a hardboiled egg in his sack. He cracked it on a huge tree root crawling toward the pond. He still hadn’t said anything. We just watched him. Usually he was friendly and talkative, but he was slow now.

“Well, fellows, I prob’ly shouldn’t tell y’all a lot. Wouldn’t want to get in trouble for talkin’ too much of what they say is politics to young boys. Some folks don’t care for it. I mean for a colored fellow to be sayin’ too much.”

I didn’t know what he meant. From the looks on the faces of Taylor and Casey, they didn’t either. For the most part what we had been taught in school and what my mother and daddy had told Farley and me about the War Between the States was that we had lost. And it was a shame, because we were right, they said. But if BB was talking about the University Grays and wanting to be fighting for them, what did he mean?