The cotton bolls are full again, meaning they need to be picked, today, tomorrow, forever.
Curl these eight year old fingers down, to pull with all the might, and string it back, and leave the boll empty .
To fill that cotton sack, held with one hand, the picking hand plunging that boll or bolls, depending on what you can pull, as far down as you could in that canvas sack, about seven feet pulled behind, on the old dry dirt.
That cotton looks so soft, that work, so hard, it’s about more than you can stand.
That boll all split with summertimes heat, has formed a hidden shredder, as each spline is curled back, and is as solid as a mother’s knife, cutting you, and peeling your hand, beyond the day.
No school as long as the harvest is due, but the ones who have quit school, fifteen, sixteen, all cotton boys (and girls), who have plowed, planted, weeded and harvested, for the small portion of dollar it will bring, are struggling to find the money buried there in the soil.
The field is hot, and dry, and Oklahoma red in color, long sleeves to avoid the cotton bowls, long pants or overalls, torn and cut and ravaged down and tears falling down. Gloves were no help, in the mornings first hour, they would be wrecked apart. The hands were pulled, cut, dirty, and shredded with nature, to bleed then act like they healed, then bleed again and again.
The brothers sacks were full, the weight was light , pulled to the end of the row in due course, this eight year olds was wanting, and grandpa stood at the end. Cotton plant pulled up from the ground, and wrapped across his hand, to inflict that awful swing for not enough being pulled.
Three of us stopped, and big brother filled my sack, at least enough to keep grandpa away, for now, for today.
Days and days of it, thirty to forty, that seemed like ninety, tasting the dirt of the ground between your teeth, feeling it in your hair, stubbing your bare footed toes against the ground.
Getting your supper and breakfast as a days pay, keep your mouth closed, do the chores, crawl in bed, cover yourself with with a sheet on the front porch, and sleep til the morning wakes, and pulls those bones again.
by Ralph Peck
Photography by Connie Estes (Western Oklahoma)
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