Courting Miss Hattie (45 page)
T
he bulging boils of cotton had burst into white puffs that filled the fields as Hattie and Reed awaited their turn for the pickers. The harvest was going to be exceptional and the price high. Low yields in the
Deep South
were added to bad luck in northern
Just before the cotton had been fair to pick, rains had stalled over the farms upstream, and much of that crop was rotting before the farmers' eyes. The ground was too wet to save the cotton that had survived.
Reed and Hattie, as well as most of the farmers in the county, shook their heads in sorrow at the bad luck of their neighbors, then offered a quick prayer to heaven asking that the same fate not befall them. And it seemed that it wouldn't. Rains threatened, but held off. If the river was running faster and higher than the old-timers had seen for quite a spell, at least it was taking its trouble downstream.
Pickers, unable to work in the soggy northern fields, surged into the community with their haggard wives and hungry children, eager for the backbreaking task of pulling the gauzy white fiber from the sharp sticky bolls.
Though the cotton now garnered attention, the rice had also grown tall. The stalks of cultivated grass bent low with the weight of the grain. Even before the picking crew finished up at Clive Tyler's and moved their camp to the Colfax meadow, Reed and Harmon had gone to work in the rice field.
As soon as Hattie could escape the kitchen, she hurried to join them. "It's beautiful," she said as she surveyed the abundance of grain the few acres had produced.
"It's looking good," Reed agreed, but his gaze strayed from the ripe field to the noisy water pump and the high, fast-moving river. "We can't drain it with the floodgates," he said. "The river's higher than the water in here. We're going to have to pump every drop of it out."
Harmon heard the worry in his partner's voice and offered his own optimistic appraisal. "It's just takes time and fuel," he said to Hattie. She smiled,
then
left the men to wander along the levee. "This pump's a good-'un," Harmon continued. "It's going to do the job, Reed. I'm real sure of that."
"I'm counting on that, Harm. I just hate the extra time it takes. My
uncle'll
be here by the end of the week, and we need this field not just drained but dry." He surveyed the area again skeptically. "That machinery is heavy. We can't have it bogging down in the mud."
Harm nodded his understanding, sliding his hands into his two back pockets. "All we need is a few good hot days, and it'll dry right out."
"But first we've got to get it drained, and I've got fifty pickers ready to go into the cotton."
Harmon shrugged. "I haven't got any pickers, Reed. I've got a stake in this, so let me worry about getting this field dried out. You go ahead and pick your cotton."
"No," Reed said. "You've got your own business to take care of, and I hear you've been working with Arthur Turpin at the store. You don't have any more time to nursemaid this field than I do."
"Reed," Harmon said with mock gravity, "I know you'll understand what I mean if I tell you something on the sly."
Turning to his friend, Reed offered his complete attention.
"If I had a choice of fighting alligators bare-handed or working with my father-in-law at the store, I'd choose the alligators five days out of seven."
Both men burst out laughing and managed to attract the attention of Hattie, who'd moseyed down the levee to survey the beauty of her first rice crop. "What kind of awful tales are you men a-telling?" she called out.
"You know that all men ever talk about is women, Hattie," Reed answered. "You best not be asking questions you don't want the answers to."
Hattie wasn't so easily placated. As she walked back to them, Reed, in a movement that seemed more natural than deliberate, wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her close. "Harmon's going to be keeping an eye on the rice for us while we're busy with the cotton."
Reaching out to the other man, Hattie grasped his hand in friendship. "I knew I was thinking right when I took you on as a partner."
* * *
The following days were busy ones for Reed and Hattie. He was
in
the fields with the pickers from dawn to dark, and Hattie sweltered in the kitchen providing food for every man, woman, and child working on Colfax Farm. At night they snuggled together, happy and hopeful as they talked about their dreams, their plans, their future, and rice.
The cotton crop was more than half picked when Harmon unexpectedly showed up at the house after supper one night.
"How's it going?" Reed asked, a nervousness stealing into his tone.
Harmon glanced at Hattie as if deciding whether to speak plainly in front of her. Concluding that the truth was best, he sighed and said, "I think we've got some troubles, Reed."
"Are you not going to be able to get it drained?" Reed asked.
"No, that's pretty near done. I expect to get the last of the water out tomorrow."
"Then it'll still have time to dry."
"Yep, I think so," Harm said. "But I think we've got worse worries than that."
Reed raised an eyebrow questioningly, and the younger man continued. "The river's not crested yet from all that rain upstream, and it's really high. It's a good five feet up the levee."
Reed's expression showed concern but not surprise. "I was thinking the other day that maybe we hadn't built it high enough."
Harmon nodded,
then
defended their decision. "It was as high as any we saw, Reed. All this rain upstream is just a fluke. Surely it'll crest by tomorrow."
Grabbing a lantern, Reed quickly lit it with a reed from the stove. "Let's go out and take a look," he said, then turned to give Hattie a hasty peck on the lips.
"Be careful," she said unnecessarily.
"Don't wait up," Reed told her as he headed out the door. But she did.
It was the middle of the night when he finally shucked his clothes and lay down beside her on the bed. "I won't lie to you, Hattie," he said. "It's bad. Who would have believed that water could come up that
high, that
fast?"
"Is there anything to do?"
He curled up close to her, resting his head on her breast, and she lightly stroked his hair. "If it hasn't crested by tomorrow, Harm and I are going
to
try to reinforce the levee. Make it higher if we can."
"That sounds like it might work."
Reed sighed, rubbing his cheek against her bosom. "I don't know how much we can do, working at night, but I'll just have to try."
"'Working
at night'?" she repeated in surprise. "Why in the world would you have to work at night?"
"I can't be over there until the cotton is in. And I'm not about to let Harmon do all that himself. He came in as a partner, not a slave."
"Why can't you be there to help him? It's not like you're taking off to go fishing. It's still work, Reed, even when you enjoy it."
He laughed at her little joke, hugging her,
then
spoke seriously. "The cotton's got to come in, Hattie. It's our cash crop—we depend on it. If we lose the rice, that's a shame. But to lose the cotton would be a disaster."
Knowing he was right, Hattie still searched for an alternative. "Couldn't somebody else handle the rice? One of your brothers or
…
I can do a lot, Reed. You remember that first crop we brought in. You didn't do that by yourself, you know."
He rolled on top of her, bracing himself on his elbows. "Hattie, nobody knows your value more than me," he said, smiling down at her moon-shadowed face. "But somebody has got to cook, or the pickers will drop in the field."
With a deep sigh that admitted the truth of his statement, she reached up to
ran
her hands along his strong arms and shoulders. "Let me help you, Reed," she whispered.
"Oh, Hattie, just having you in my life is more help to me than you can ever imagine."
He kissed her, and she responded lovingly. They made the slow, lazy love of two people who were too tired for sex and too enamored for abstinence.
* * *
Having thought the matter settled, Reed was surprised to look up from the huge cotton-laden hampers and see his wife striding across the field, determination in every step.
"I
know what you're going to say," she told him before he'd opened his
mouth.
"But the
truth is
,
I'm not needed
at the
house. Bessie Jane is doing the cooking, and I'm free as a bird today."
"Bessie Jane? Bessie Jane can't cook, and why in the world would she even want to?"
"She showed up with Harmon this morning and wanted to know what she could do to help, so I told her. She wants to do it, Reed. It's important to her to be a help to Harmon."
"Hattie—" he began, but she interrupted him.
"I'm here to work, Reed," she said flatly. "Now you can let me take over here at the weigh-in, where I am vaguely familiar with what to do. Or I can go over to the rice field, where I haven't the faintest idea of how to reinforce a levee, and Harmon and I can muddle through the best we know how."
Reed gazed at her long and hard, before handing her the scales. "Don't wear
yourself
out," he warned. Then with more of a peach than a peck, he added in a lusty whisper, "See you at suppertime."
* * *
It was past suppertime when he came in. It was past bedtime.
Hattie awakened with a start to hear him washing up on the back porch. She hadn't meant to fall asleep, but the unusual physical labor in the cotton fields added to her lack of sleep the
night before had conspired against her. Slipping out of bed, she hurried to the back porch. "Reed? Are you all right?"
"You shouldn't still be up, Hattie. I'm fine, just tired."
"Let me fix you some supper," she said through the screen.
"If you've got some leftover corn bread and milk, that'll be fine."
She only half listened to his request as she retrieved the ample portion of the evening's meal that she'd saved for him in a pie plate in the oven. It wasn't hot, but it was at least somewhat warm. Adding to it a big hunk of leftover corn bread and a jug of milk, Hattie set her husband's meal on the table.
He came in, bare-chested, with a towel draped around his neck. He glanced at the meal on the table,
then
looked at her, sighing with appreciation. "It looks so good, Hattie, I swear I could eat it tablecloth and all."
She laughed "You best not eat my mama's tablecloth, Plowboy, or you'll be taking your meals in the barn from now on."
He answered her teasing with a warm but weary smile. "Let me get a shirt," he said, turning away.
"Don't waste your time. Sit down here and eat."
Raising an eyebrow, he said, "A man doesn't eat his dinner in front of a lady without his shirt."
"There is special exception to that rule made for wives," she said primly. "Besides, the sight of your chest doesn't ruin
my
appetite."
When he smiled, she added, "I've already eaten."
"Oh, Hattie," he said as he dug into his meal. "You do make me laugh."
Deciding that a bit of laughter might do him some
good,
she set out to entertain him. "If you think I am normally a caution, you should have seen me in the fields today. I thought I would remember all about bringing in the cotton, but I must have forgotten more than I ever knew. Thank heavens for the pickers. I explained what was going on, and they all pitched in to help me do it right."
She rambled on about her foibles and foolishness until he'd consumed most of what was on his plate. Then, with an arm around his waist, ostensibly as an embrace but actually because she feared he might fall over in exhaustion, she helped him to bed.
"I love you, Hattie," he whispered as he drifted off to sleep.
"Of course you do," she replied, stroking his hair as tears stung the back of her eyes and she wished with all her heart that it was true.
Wishing, however, did not get the cotton in, she told herself the next morning as she walked with the pickers to the fields. Reed had been up before her, laughing and joking as if everything were fine. The dark circles under his eyes were plain, however, and she'd wondered if she looked as worn out as he did.
As the pickers moved through the fields with their sacks, pulling the cotton from its prickly holdings, Hattie waited with the scales at the end of the rows. The pickers would bring her their full sacks, and she would weigh them to determine if they merited a marker. Most of the pickers were experienced enough to know when the sack was heavy enough to exchange for a marker. Only the children were frequently weighed short and sent scurrying back for more cotton.