WE BEGAN THAT SAME MORNING.
We hitched up the big wagon. Even with all four of us, we could barely lift the baling box up into the back of it. But we managed it, then drove the wagon to the field closest to the house, where I figured would be the best place to start. We parked the wagon and unhitched the horses and took them back to the house. It would take us several days, maybe a week—I didn’t know—to get the wagon full. We got the smaller buckboard fixed up with blankets and water and shade for a comfortable place for William to lie and sleep and for Emma to sit with him when he needed her, but so she could help us some of the time.
Once we had everything ready, we went out into the fields with satchels slung over our shoulders and widebrimmed hats on our heads to keep us from the sun, and I showed Katie and Emma and Aleta how to do it.
“You gotta circle the fingers of your right hand around the ball of cotton from the top—see … like this,” I said, stooping down to one and showing them, “while your left hand keeps hold of the stem. Then you squeeze the fingers of both hands together at the stem and the base of the cotton and pluck it out with your right so it comes off at the bottom … like this.” I squeezed and pulled the ball of cotton off the stem and stuck it into my satchel.
They each tried it a couple of times. It was a little awkward at first. It was something they’d have to learn by doing.
“The main thing is to not get leaves mixed in with the cotton,” I said. “Once you know how to do it, we gotta try to work fast. Cotton doesn’t weigh much, and we’ll get paid by how many pounds we bring in. So stuff your satchels as full as you can, then go dump them in the wagon and go back and fill them again. And you gotta drink lots of water, ’cause the sun can tire you out more than the work if you don’t.”
Then we started. We each took a row side by side and started out together. At first we were talking and having fun. But within just a few minutes I was moving ahead of Katie, and then Katie started moving ahead of Aleta in her row and Emma in hers. Within fifteen minutes the four of us were scattered apart in the field, and it was hard to do much talking after that.
We picked all day in the hot sun, taking time out for eating and drinking plenty of water and taking a break every now and then. I’ve got to hand it to Emma, she worked harder than I ever thought she could. She’d stop to check on William, or sometimes feed him, every ten or fifteen minutes. But when she worked she worked pretty fast and after a while was picking twice as much cotton as Aleta could. I dumped about two satchels for every one of Katie’s, and Aleta was even slower than that, and pretty soon Emma was keeping up with Katie, even having to stop like she did. They all learned fast. I was mighty pleased and thought we did real good for our first day.
By late afternoon, Katie, Emma, and Aleta were exhausted. And after a whole day, the wagon wasn’t even half full. I didn’t know how much it would make when we pressed it down and made it into bales. I hoped what we had picked would make a whole bale. I knew a slave doing real good could pick three or four hundred pounds in a day. Master McSimmons used to give his man-slaves a dollar for every day they picked over four hundred fifty pounds. I figured if the three of us together could get so we could even pick a hundred pounds a day, then we would get a lot of hundred-pound bales picked in a month. Maybe we could make the money Katie needed, although I had no idea how much you got paid for cotton. Maybe we wouldn’t be able to get it all picked. Rosewood probably had forty or fifty acres in cultivated cotton, from what Katie had shown me. But we’d pick as much as we could, and it seemed it oughta help.
The next morning we were all sore and tired. We went out again, but we couldn’t put in as long a day. We only worked till early afternoon. Then we went back to the house and slept.
By the third day we started to get used to it, though it was also getting tedious. And we were barely starting on the field. We still had miles of rows to go!
Five days later the wagon was almost up to the top. We had four packed bales of picked cotton. We were all pretty excited to see the full wagon sitting beside the field.
“Shall we take it in to Mr. Watson’s?” asked Katie excitedly.
“Let’s try to get one more bale,” I said. “We’ll roll one of the bales on top of the others. That will give us room to pack one more and tie it, and dump it out of the baling box and take the box off the wagon. Then tomorrow or the next day you can take the five bales into town.”
“This time I won’t even be nervous to take it in to Mr. Watson’s,” said Katie.
“Do you want me to go with you?” I asked, “… or if you want to go in alone, I can stay and keep picking.”
“I think I can take it alone,” Katie said. “And I’m nervous about you being seen now, after what happened. What if any of those McSimmons men were there? I’d rather take it alone.”
Two days later she was on her way into town while Aleta, Emma, and I got started on filling up a second wagon.
A few stares followed her along the streets of Greens Crossing, seeing as she hadn’t been to town since the incident with Jeremiah. But she didn’t return the stares, and purposefully avoided the livery stable as she made her way through town.
Katie pulled up to Watson’s mill two and a half hours after leaving Rosewood, got down, and went inside to tell Mr. Watson she had a delivery. He came out and looked over the load.
“Hundred-pound bales, I see,” he said. “Your mama should know I can’t pay as much since I have to repack them into quarter tons before shipping them out.”
“That’s all right, Mr. Watson,” said Katie. “She knows.”
He jumped up onto the wagon and lifted one of the bales by the straps we’d tied.
“Those aren’t a hundred pounds either,” he said. “Your hired darkies aren’t pressing them none too tight. This feels barely eighty-five.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, it’ll all be weighed.—Does your mama want me to credit her account?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I haven’t seen her in months, maybe a year or more. She doing okay?”
“Yes, sir. But we’re shorthanded, and she needs me to bring you the cotton.”
“All right, then. I’ll get this unloaded so you can get the wagon back to her.”