The Cotton-Pickers

1

The train that had brought me to this forlorn-looking little place had just left and I was standing on the station platform looking around in search of someone who might be able to tell me what I so very urgently needed to know.

Everyone looked so utterly depressing. There were some peasants in white cottons of many washings walking about on the platform and sitting on the ground alongside. The women had their arms full of children and were surrounded by a dozen more holding on to their mothers’ skirts, with expressions of fear and wonder written all over their young faces, which were covered with chalky dust.

While I was lost in examining the landscape, and trying to make up my mind whom to approach for the very much wanted information, I suddenly realized that someone had stopped abruptly close in front of me, his nose almost touching the point of mine. Instinctively I stepped back a few inches and saw it was a very tall and heavily built Negro, who was addressing me: “Mister, can you maybe tell me which direction to take to a nearby ranch owned by a farmer called Mr. Shine?”

“What do you want to see that Mr. Shine for?” I blurted out. In the same moment I regretted that explosion of mine. The sudden nearness of the fellow had caught me in the very midst of a hard thinking process intimately connected with the hopeless state of my present economic situation. And so as to have that giant black fellow thinking better of me and my character I added rapidly: “See here, friend, that Mr. Shine you mention is precisely the very same person I myself have come to this godforsaken village to see.”

“Also because of cotton, Mister?” he asked.

“Also because of cotton, which I want to help him harvest, or let’s more correctly call it, to pick.”

We were still looking at each other uncertainly, obviously not knowing what else to say or to do, when up trotted rather haltingly a little Chinaman with a friendly grin all over his face (even both his ears seemed to grin). “Good molning, caballelos, gentlemen,” he greeted us. “Can you pelhaps, kind paldon, tell me the way to—”

Here he stopped, fumbled in the breast pocket of his snow-white collarless shirt, pulled out a bit of notepaper, unfolded and handed it to us, and, never losing his bright grin, started to read the line scribbled on it: “Ixtli…”

“Stop,” I halted him. “You might get a knot in your tongue if you go on trying to pronounce the name of that place. The name is Ixtlixochicuauhtepec, am I right or am I?”

“Pelfectly collect, señol, it’s exactly the name.”

“Well then,” I said, “your problems will be solved now, because that’s exactly the very place we also are headed for. So, friend, welcome. You may join us.”

Ixtli… If only I had the faintest idea where that village, or ranchería, whatever it might be, could be found. To the north? To the south or west? Well now, let’s see, there must be somewhere around this railroad depot somebody who knows where to find that place with such a tongue-twisting Aztec name.

The people loitering on the platform were Indios and Mestizos, except for another Negro. He was as black as the giant one by my side but a foot shorter and very lightly built. How long he had been standing there calculating our threesome I don’t know, but when he caught my eye he approached us with a sure step.

“Mister,” he said, “could you by any chance tell me the whereabouts of a Mr. Shine, a cotton farmer? They tol’ me in Tampico he’s lookin’ for hands to help with his cotton crop and I’d find him near to this here railroad station.”

“Well! His whereabouts is exactly what we’d like to know. We’re also looking for that cotton farm. Come along with us.

“Thanks a lot, fellers. Glad to have company in this bush. Mighty happy to be accompanied in this part of the country, where you meet, I been tol’, all sorts of wil’ beasts, tigers, leopards.”

We were now sort of an organized group for the long or short trip — we didn’t know which. That was how matters stood when a man came up whom I judged to be a Mestizo from the way he was dressed. He had slung about his upper body a red, tattered, formless piece of coarse-wool blanket and he wore the customary white, sloppy wide-brimmed bast hat—or was it reed? His bronze-brown face was covered by a growth of beard. He was middle-aged, of medium build, slender but doubtless a man used to hard work. His beat-up dirty tennis shoes had once upon a time been white. I remembered I had seen this man on the train, traveling in the same car which I had chosen to come here.

Scrutinizing our little assembly, as if searching for someone among us whom he might perhaps know, he decided to put his question to me: “Buenos dias, señor, are you perhaps Mr. Shine?”

“No,” I said, “I’m not Mr. Shine, but I’m here to meet him somewhere in this neighborhood.”

“Is this the place?” So saying he produced a scrap of muddy paper torn from a newspaper, on which was scribbled: Ixtlixochicuauhtepec.

“Yes, that’s the place, amigo. We’re going, there; so if you wish to come along with us, bienvenido, you are invited.”

“Nothing better could have happened to me. Muchas gracias, mil, mil gracias. I’ll be only too grateful to be in your company. Again, many, many thanks.” He bowed with the innate courtesy of a Mexican.

Then he turned slightly around, fingering his beard, undecided as to what to do or say next. Seeing him turn aside like that gave me the idea that we had better start going now and right away, or a dozen more people in need of a job might try to join us.

Sure enough, another Mexican came leisurely walking up. He was not a Mestizo like the previous one; this was a Mexican of pure Indian stock, dressed in very clean white cotton, for shoes the local huaraches—no socks, of course—and carrying over his shoulder a beautiful blanket in bright colors, a so-called sarape, as well as a small bundle rolled inside a reed mat. He just stood there looking at us, not saying a word.

“Need any help?” I asked in Spanish.

“Si, señor. Do you know the way to Ixtlixochicuauhtepec?” A true son of the land, he had no difficulty pronouncing the name of the place.

“No,” I answered, “but I’m just about to find out. Keep close to us, if you wish; we’re all going cotton-picking at six centavos a kilo. As soon as we find out which way to go to Mr. Shine’s farm, we’ll get started.”

Get started! If only I knew which way to go.

The station meanwhile, ten minutes after the one train of the day had departed, had emptied and lay drowsy and deserted in the tropical heat, as only a station in this part of America can. The mail bag, which looked all bag and no mail, had already been carried off. The goods — a few cases of merchandise, two drums of kerosene, five rolls of barbed wire, a bag of sugar — were lying still unclaimed on the blistering hot platform.

The wooden shack where tickets were sold and luggage was weighed had been padlocked. The man responsible for the official duties had left the station before the last car had gone by. Even the little old Indian woman who, like her counterparts at all the village depots of the countryside, appeared at every train arrival with her reed basket containing tortillas and two bottles of cold coffee, even she was already a fair distance away, slipping through the tall grass toward home. She was always the last to leave the platform. Although she never sold anything, she came every day to meet the train. The coffee she brought to the station was probably the same for weeks on end. Evidently the travelers suspected this; otherwise they might have given the old woman a chance to earn something now and then, especially in that heat. But anyhow the ice water that was available on the trains free of charge put the old woman’s cold coffee right out of business.

My five companions had seated themselves happily on the ground near the wooden shack — in the shade; though it must be admitted that, as the sun was standing vertically above us, it took a man of some experience to discover where the shade actually was.

Time did not matter to them; and since they knew that I wanted to go where they wanted to go they left the reconnaissance to me. Without formal election I had become the leader of our little group. They would go when I went, and not before; and they would follow me even if I took them to Argentina.

There was not a house to be seen anywhere near the station. Looking off in the direction taken by the last group of departing natives, whom I could see still making their way through the grass, I suggested to my companions that we follow them, with the idea that they might lead us into the town or direct us to it.

It didn’t take us long to catch up with them. “Never heard of a farm or a place by that name, señor,” they answered when I approached them. “But come along with us. Surely in the town someone will know the way.”

We soon reached the village. The dwellings there were crude huts surrounded by banana plants and tall mango trees which, although never tended in these regions, bear great quantities of fruit. The little fields were sown with maize and beans well beyond the needs of the few people there.

It would have been quite pointless to go to one of these huts and ask the way to Ixtli…. If these people gave an answer at all, it would be an unreliable one. Not that they would deliberately mislead us, but out of sheer politeness they would want to give a pleasant answer and avoid the necessity of saying “I don’t know.”

Besides the huts, there were two wooden buildings in the village. In one of them, our friends pointed out, lived the stationmaster, of whom we should ask the way; the other was a poolroom.

I went to the stationmaster’s house, but he did not know where Ixtli… was. He added politely that he had never heard of the place but, then, he’d only recently been transferred to this town. So I walked over to the poolroom, where I found an intelligent-looking man inside idly leaning against a pool table. He greeted my entrance with an inviting smile.

“Siento mucho, señor,” he answered my question, “I’m awfully sorry to disappoint you, but despite my living here for the last five years I’ve never heard of that place. By all means it has a very uncommon name as far as our state is concerned. Now, señor, I don’t want to appear impolite, but if you don’t mind telling me what your business is at that village, if it is a village, that just might tickle my memory and give me a tip to that particular place among the many I know. You see, then I might be able to help you out in your trouble.”

“Now here we come perhaps closer to a solution. I’m interested in cotton, so, then, it must be a place where cotton is grown.”

He brightened up visibly, apparently relieved that he could help me. I had judged him from the first to be the good-neighbor type.

“Since you mention cotton, señor, I remember that about three years or so ago there arrived here one day a line of heavy trucks loaded to the top with bales of freshly harvested cotton, bringing it to this depot from where it would be taken by train to the nearest port. I understood it was to be loaded on ships and taken to Europe or one of those foreign countries with a crazy name. They all came from that direction.”

With this he waved an arm vaguely, much as a huge bird would flap its wing as it tried to lift itself into the air. The direction indicated by his waving, rolling arm could have been to the north as well as to the west or the east. However, it indicated at least one direction which positively should not be taken.

“How far do you think it might be to that place where these people came from?”

“Far as I can remember these gringos saying, because you should know that they are all gringos holding those lands, they had left by six in the morning and when they arrived here it was noon. So you can figure out for yourself the distance, considering that there’s no road and they surely had to cut their way through the bush with a machete — certainly not an easy way to travel. Not so unlikely a few traces of that road they cut might still be visible enough to follow.”

“Gracias mil veces, señor,” I broke out happily, “thank you a thousand times. You certainly did me a great favor at a moment when I felt as though the world were sinking under my feet.” I shook his hands vehemently and did so joyfully.

“Now we’re finally getting somewhere,” I told myself over and over again, walking back to where I had left the group of hungry job-seekers, of whom I was the hungriest, to tell the truth.

We decided to leave right away and go as far as we could before sunset, after which it would be next to impossible to discover and follow the traces of the road that might still be there, as that good man in the poolroom had indicated.

2

So off we marched in good enough spirits. The six of us felt as happy in one another’s company as brothers who had unexpectedly met in some strange out-of-the-way place after a long separation.

Above us the scorching tropical sun, about us the dense impenetrable bush; the eternally virgin bush of the tropics with its indefinable mystique, its fantastic secret animal life, its dream-shaped, dream-colored plants, its unexplored treasure of stone and metal.

But we were not explorers, nor were we gold or diamond diggers. We were workers, and set more store on certain earnings than on the uncertain promise of the millions that may have been hidden in the bush around us, waiting to be discovered.

We hiked through the wild unbroken bushland, sweating under a tropical sun, without the faintest idea where and when we would locate Mr. Shine’s cotton plantation. It might be fifty miles away, perhaps sixty. What if it were eighty or a hundred miles? We simply had to find work.

We discovered a narrow path and marched forward in single file. Antonio, the Mestizo, went in front. Then came Gonzalo, the other Mexican. After him came the Chinaman, Sam Woe by name, who was the most elegant of our group, the only one with a whole shirt. He wore linen trousers, ankle-high heavy boots, dark cotton socks, and a fashionable straw hat. Sam carried two bundles, bulging and obviously heavy. He smiled constantly, was always in a good humor, and as we went on it became our most bitter grievance that no matter what we did or what bad luck we met with, nothing provoked him to anger. He told us that he had worked as a cook in an oil field but, so that we wouldn’t get the idea he was carrying money on him, he lost no time in informing us that his earnings were deposited in a Chinese bank in San Luis Potosi.

Cotton-picking was not Sam’s great passion (or mine), but it was a summer job and he thought he might as well add a few pesos to his capital, with which he hoped to open a small restaurant — Comida Corrida, 50 Centavos — in Tampico or thereabouts, in the autumn. He was practical. When we’d got well into the dense bush he cut himself a stick, hung one bundle over each end, balanced the stick across his shoulders, and trotted along in short rapid steps. He made the whole march in this maddening way, with no sign of fatigue and no variation in tempo, and expressed his astonishment that we stopped now and then for a short rest. We let fly at him, telling him that we were decent Christians while he was a low Chink hatched by a monstrous yellow dragon.

Next in line was the gigantic Negro, Charley, and he suited our company much better than the smart Chink, for Charley wore rags and had his bundle done up in old brown paper that, like ours, broke open on the march. Charley claimed to have come from Florida, but he couldn’t convince me of it because he couldn’t speak English fluently. His Spanish was also very limited, so I imagine that he either came from Brazil or had smuggled himself over from Africa. He obviously wanted to get to the States, and it would be easier for him as a Negro to get over the border, even if his English was not very good, than for a white man who spoke the language well. He was the only one who regarded cotton-picking as a welcome and profitable occupation.

Then there was Abraham, the little Negro from New Orleans, who wore a shirt as black as his skin, so that it wasn’t easy to distinguish between the shreds of his shirt and the skin it tried to cover. Abraham was the only one who wore a cap, oddly enough a blue-striped cap of the kind worn by railroad stokers and engineers. He had no bundle, but he carried a coffee pot and a frying pan, and some food in a small canvas bag. Abraham was wily, cunning, cheeky, and ever in good spirits. He had a mouth organ on which he played that silly tune “Yes, we have no bananas” so often that on the second day we let loose on him with our fists.

Gonzalo said that Abraham stole like a crow, and Antonio said that he lied like a Dominican friar. On the third evening out, we caught Abraham stealing a slice of Antonio’s dried beef, but we relieved him of it before he got it into his frying pan and solemnly explained to him that if we caught him stealing again we would deal with him according to the law of the bushland. We would try him, duly sentence him, then take a cord from one of our bundles and hang him on the nearest ebony tree, leaving a note pinned on his body to explain why he had been hanged. Whereupon Abraham told us that we would not dare to lay a finger on him, for he was an American citizen, “native-born,” and would report us to the government in Washington if we so much as touched him. They would then come with a gunboat flying the stars and stripes and work vengeance on us. He was a free citizen “of the United States,” could prove it with certificates, and so had the right to be tried before a proper court. When we told him that no gunboat flying the stars and stripes could sail into the bush, he said, “Well, Gentlemen, Sirs, just touch me with the tip of one finger and see what happens.”

What happened was that we caught him a few days later stealing a can of condensed milk from the Chink. He brazenly claimed he’d bought the milk at a store in Tampico, but we gave him such a beating that he couldn’t have held a pen to write to Washington. (Later, when he pilfered from others, that was, of course, none of our business.)

Then last in line there was Gerard Gales — that’s my name. There’s not much to say about me. In dress I was indistinguishable from the others, and I was going cotton-picking — laborious, underpaid work — because there was no other work to be had and I badly needed a shirt, a pair of shoes, and some trousers. Even so, they would have to come from a second-hand shop. Ten weeks’ work at cotton-picking would never earn enough to buy them new.

The sun was already low when we began to look around for a place to pitch camp.

Before long we found a spot where high grass extended into the bush; we pulled out as much of it as was necessary to clear a camping ground and set fire to the surrounding grass, thereby gaining some freedom from insects and creeping vermin for the night. A freshly-burned grass area is supposed to be the best protection you can have if you are obliged to journey in these parts without the equipment of the tropical traveler.

We had a campfire, but no water to cook with. At this point the Chink produced a bottle of cold coffee. We had had no idea that he was carrying such precious stuff with him. He heated the coffee and obligingly offered us all a drink. But what was a bottle of coffee among six men who had been plodding along in the tropical sun for half a day without a drop of water? Furthermore, it was probable that we’d find as little water during the next day as we had found on this first afternoon. The bush is green, yes, the whole year through, but water is to be found only during the rainy season and then only in those spots where ponds and basins form.

So, no one who has not himself wandered the tropical bush can possibly realize the extent of the Chink’s sacrifice. But none of us said “No, thank you.” Everyone seemed to take it quite for granted that the coffee should be shared. And we’d have taken it equally for granted had the Chink drunk all his coffee himself. Half a day’s march in waterless country isn’t enough to make you turn robber for the sake of a cup of coffee, but three days in the bush may find you thinking seriously of murder for the sake of even a small rusty can of stinking fluid called water only because it is wet.

Antonio and I had some dry bread to munch. Gonzalo had some tortillas and four mangos. Charley had a few bananas. Abraham ate something furtively; I couldn’t see what it was.

We made ready to sleep. The Chink put a piece of canvas on his sleeping place and then wrapped himself, head and all, in a large towel; Gonzalo rolled himself into his sarape; and I wrapped my head in a tattered rag as a protection against mosquitoes and promptly fell asleep. The others were talking and smoking around the fire and I’ve no idea when they turned in.

Before dawn, we were on our way. The trail through the bush was overgrown for long stretches. Saplings reached more than shoulder-high and the ground was so dense with cactus shrubs that they often covered the path. My bare calves were soon so scratched up that all sorts of insects were attracted to the blood.

Toward noon we arrived at a place where a barbed-wire fence ran along the right side of the trail and knew that we were near a farm. We kept the fence on our right, and after an hour or more arrived at a wide, open clearing overgrown with high grass. We searched the place and found a cistern — empty. A few rotten beams, some old cans, rusty corrugated iron sheets, and similar junk indicated an abandoned farm.

This was a disappointment, but we were not disheartened by it. In this part of the world farms are carved out of the bush, worked for ten or even twenty years, and then suddenly for one reason or another are abandoned. Within five years, often sooner, the bush has obliterated all signs of the men who once lived and worked there. The tropical bush devours more quickly than men can build. The bush has no memory; it knows only the living, growing present.

By four o’clock we got to another farm; an American family was living on it. I was well received, was given a good meal with the farmer, and was offered a place to sleep in the house. The others were fed on the patio and were allowed to sleep in a shed.

The farmer knew Mr. Shine, and told me that we had about another thirty miles to go. He said there was no water along the route and that the road was barely recognizable in some places, as it hadn’t been used since that time three years ago. Mr. Shine now took his cotton to the Pozos station, on the other side of Ixtli…. “That place isn’t quite so far from Shine’s as the one you fellows are hiking from,” he said. “The road’s good too. At first there was no road to Pozos either, but since the oil men came they’ve made one. Now all the farmers around there use that station, and I’d advise you to take that road when you go back. By the way,” he added, “I wonder why no, one told you to go to Pozos in the first place?”

Why? Because to the men out recruiting pickers for the cotton farmers, what did it matter how we got to the job? “Ixtlixochicuauhtepec” they wrote out, and that ended their part in the matter. What concern was it of theirs to check out the route?

Because to the stationmaster it hadn’t occurred that it might make a difference which station he made out the ticket for, or maybe he hadn’t even known there was a choice, or, if he had, that the choice was between a three-day walk beating a path under a burning sun and a real road where we might even have been able to pick up a ride.

The next morning we were all given a generous breakfast, I once more eating at the family table. When we were getting ready to leave, the farmer rounded up enough bottles so that each of us could have a bottle of cold tea to take along, and we started out on those last thirty or so miles.

3

On the following day, about noon, we arrived at Mr. Shine’s. He received us with real satisfaction, for he was short of hands.

Calling me into the house, he cross-examined me. “What?” he asked. “You want to pick cotton, too?”

“Yes, I must. I’m flat broke, You can see that, by my rags. And there’s no work to be found in the towns. Every place is flooded with job-hunters from the States, where they’re having their postwar slump. But when workers are needed here, they prefer to take on natives, because they pay them wages they’d never dare offer a white man, even if this Revolution is supposed to change all that.”

“Have you picked before?” he interrupted me.

“Yes,” I answered, “in the States.”

“Ha, ha!” he laughed. “That’s a different proposition. There, you can make a good thing of it.”

“I did good enough.”

“I believe it. They pay much better, and they can afford to pay, for they get better prices than we do. If we could sell our cotton to the States we could pay better wages, too. But the States won’t let our cotton in; they want to keep the price up.

We have to depend on our home market, and that soon reaches the saturation point. Sometimes, when the States don’t interfere, we can sell to Europe, but that’s rare because they consider Europe their market.

“But now — what about you? I can’t feed you or put you up in my house. But I need every hand that comes along, so I’ll tell you what. I pay six centavos the kilo; suppose I pay you just two cents more than the others — otherwise you won’t make as much as the niggers. Only don’t tell this to the others, ’cause if they find out they’ll give me lots of trouble. So that’s how matters stand. I’m sorry.”

“No reason for you to feel sorry,” I said. “You pay me the same as the others. Don’t let my white skin and blue eyes bother you. I understand how you feel. By all means, thank you.”

“You and your friends can sleep over there in the old house. I built it and lived in it with my family until I could afford this new one here. Agreed? It’s settled then.”

The house to which the farmer referred was about five minutes’ walk from his new place. It was the usual farmhouse of the region — poles and boards — and was built on piles so that the air moving under the floor kept the interior cool. It had only one room, and each wall had a door that also served as a window.

We entered the house by climbing the few rungs of a crude ladder set up against one of the doors. The room was completely empty. We found four old boxes lying about in the yard and brought them in to use as chairs. We would sleep on the bare floor.

Close to the house was a dried-up water hole. There was also a tank full of rain water that was several months old and teeming with tadpoles. I calculated there were about twenty-five gallons of water in the tank and we six men would have to make do with this for six or eight weeks. With three of us using the same water, we might be able to wash once a week.

Mr. Shine had already told us that we could expect no water from him; he was short of water, and had to provide for six horses and four mules. But, as he said, at this time of year it might possibly rain for two or even four hours every two weeks, and if we repaired the rain troughs we could collect quite a bit of water. Furthermore, there was a creek about three hours’ walk away, where, if we chose, we could go to bathe.

On the slim chance that it might rain within the next two weeks, we all took a wash in an old gasoline can. We hadn’t washed for three days.

I shaved. However down and out I may be, I always carry a razor, comb, and toothbrush. The Chink also shaved. Then Antonio came and asked if he could borrow my razor. He hadn’t shaved for about two weeks, and looked like a pirate.

“No, my dear Antonio,” I said, “shaving kit, comb, and toothbrush I lend to no one.”

The Chink, encouraged by my refusal, said, smiling, that his poor razor would be blunted by such a strong beard, and there was no possibility of getting the razor sharpened here. He himself had only a fuzzy stubble. Antonio accepted these refusals without protest.

We got a campfire going in front of the house; the nearby bush supplied us with plenty of fuel. Then we sat around and cooked our. suppers. I had rice and chili; a couple of the men fixed black beans and chili; someone else had beans and dried meat; while another fried some potatoes with a little bacon.

As we had to be ready for work at four o’clock the following morning, we prepared our corn bread for the next day. Then we tied up our miserable supplies and hung them from a crossbeam in the house, so that the ants and mice wouldn’t relieve us of everything during the night.

A little after six, the sun went down. Within half an hour the night was pitch black. Glowworms, with lights the size of hazelnuts, flew about us. We crept into our house to sleep.

The Chink was the only one who had a mosquito net. We others had to endure the most frightful torment from hordes of insects, and we cursed and raged as if that could have made any difference. I decided that I’d have to stand this agony for one night but that I’d take steps the next morning to do something about it.

Before sunrise we were up and about. Each of us swallowed what food we had at hand, and made off for the cotton field — an hour’s walk. The farmer and his two sons were already there. They handed us an old sack apiece, which we slung from our necks. Tightening our belts around our ragged clothes, we started picking cotton, each to his own row.

Picking cotton is hard work, especially under a tropical sun. Sweat streamed from us, tiny flies crept into our ears, and mosquitoes stung us from every angle. It was an agony, and yet we kept on pulling cotton bolls from the plants, stuffing them into our sacks, while trying to breathe in the haze of cotton dust and fuzz that hung over each of our stooping bodies. No matter how hard we worked, we would earn little more than enough to buy food to keep alive. And that was what we wanted, just to keep alive; so we worked on.

If the cotton is well ripe and you’ve got the picker’s knack, you can pick each bloom at one grasp. However, if the pods are not equally ripe it’s necessary with more than half of them to give two or three good tugs to get the bloom off the plant and into the sack. With well-ripened cotton, and when the plants are well spaced, it’s possible after some practice to pick with both hands; but with a middling crop and badly spaced plants, you may have to use both hands to pick one bloom. And another thing, you have to keep stooping all the time, for not all the blooms are at a convenient height; and at times, the cotton is close to the ground, where a heavy rainfall has flattened it, and it has to be pulled up.

Cotton is expensive stuff. Anyone who goes to buy a suit, a shirt, a towel, a pair of socks, or just a handkerchief soon discovers this. But the cotton-picker who does the toughest part of the work gets the smallest share of the cost of the finished product. For picking a kilo (about two pounds) of cotton we got six centavos. A kilo of cotton is a little mountain; to pick this much you’ve got to pluck out hundreds of pods.

We did this on a diet that could well be regarded as the very lowest on which man can remain alive. One day it was black beans and hot peppers, the next day rice (with tomatoes, if we were lucky), the following day, beans again, and then rice again. With it there was the bread we made that was either soggy or burned to a cinder; our months-old stinking rain water; and coffee made from beans that we roasted in frying pans, ground on a metate stone, and sweetened with the crude brown piloncillo sugar. The salt we used was sea salt, which we ourselves had to clean. A pound of onions a week we considered a positive delicacy; a strip of dried meat now and then was a sinful luxury that cut deep into our earnings. For we were determined to save our pennies in order to have rail fare to the next big town, where when the cotton-picking was over we hoped to find a new job.

Toward eleven o’clock, after nearly seven hours of continuous work, we were at the end of our strength. We rested in the shade of a few trees that were more than a ten-minute walk away and ate our dry pan-baked bread, which — mine anyway — was burned. Then we lay down to sleep for a couple of hours.

We woke with a ghastly thirst, and I went over to the farmer to ask for some water.

“I’m sorry, I haven’t got any. I told you yesterday, didn’t I, that I was short of water? Oh well, I’ll let you have some today, but from tomorrow on bring your own water with you.”

He sent one of his sons back to the house on a horse, and the young man soon came back with a can of rain water.

At four in the afternoon we stopped work so that we could get “home” to cook our food while there was still daylight. That was when I moved out.

I had discovered a sort of shelter about two hundred yards away from the house. What purpose it served or might have served I had no idea. It had a palm-thatched roof but no walls. Because of this lack of walls the night breeze (when there was one) could freely circulate, keeping the place cool. In the center was a table, which I would use as my bed. The shelter lay higher than the house, had no shrubs close to it, and was a good distance away from the water tank and the dried-up water hole, so that I would be removed from the mosquito menace.

The giant Negro, Charley, wanted to share the shelter with me. He came over, looked around, and liked it. But suddenly he yelled out, “A snake! A snake!”

“Where?”

“There, right at your feet.”

Sure enough, there was a snake twisting along the floor, a fiery red one, two feet or so long.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “That snake won’t swallow me. The mosquitoes in the house up there are worse.”

Charley disappeared.

After a while Gonzalo came over. The snake had gone in the meantime. Gonzalo liked the look of my new quarters and asked if I’d have any objection to his sleeping there also.

I said, “You may bunk here if you like. It’s all the same to me.”

He was staring at the floor. I looked too. It was a snake again, this time a beautiful green one.

“On second thought,” he said, looking at the lively snake, “I’d better return to the house and sleep there. It’s less noisy there, you see.”

Snakes don’t bother me. And in any case they’d hardly want to get up onto the table. And even if they did, it wasn’t sure they’d bite me. And even if they did bite, they might not be poisonous. If all snakes were poisonous and all of them bit a sleeping man who had done them no harm, I would have been a goner long ago.

The following day twelve natives arrived to work with us. They came from a village in the bush, riding on mules, some without saddles or stirrups. Others had wooden saddles but no reins; instead of reins, the beasts had ropes looped around nose and jaw, for a kind of halter.

These men, of course, were more used to field labor in the tropics than we were because, with the exception of Gonzalo and Charley, all of us were townsfolk. But they picked cotton slower than we did, and on top of that they took a much longer siesta at noon. This, however, had nothing to do with us, and we hardly gave it a second thought.

Saturday was pay day, but we drew only enough to buy food for the coming week; to avoid carrying the germs of temptation in our pockets, we left the balance with Mr. Shine. On Sunday we knocked off at three so as to take our weekly bath, pull our sweaty clothes through the water, and send two of our gang to the nearest store for supplies — a four-hour trip. Sunday’s work earned us about a kilo of bacon or five kilos of potatoes.

This time the Chink and Antonio had gone to buy the supplies. We had written down our various needs on corn husks. The hieroglyphics inscribed on these corn husks could be deciphered by the shoppers only because we’d verbally explained each fantastic symbol. It was dark when the Chink and Antonio returned from the store.

“What a miserable hike,” grumbled Antonio.

“Oh, it wasn’t so bad!” Sam tried to soothe it over.

“Shut up, you yellow son of a heathen,” shouted Antonio. “How can you with your coolie past understand how I feel about packing goods like a burro?” He sank down onto a box which collapsed under his weight, and this further increased his rage.

“Listen, Antonio, why didn’t you ask Mr. Shine for a mule or a burro?” I asked.

“But I did. He refused. He said to me and Sam: ‘How can I lend you a mule or a burro? I know nothing about you, you’ve got no papers to identify you, and even if you did they would probably be fake. Besides, the papers wouldn’t help me to buy a new burro if you ran off with it.”

“Well, he’s quite right, from his point of view,” I said. “From our point of view, it’s downright mean. But what can we do about it?”

Just as we were getting under way on the favored topic of workers the world over, expounding with more loquacity than wisdom the unjust conditions that divide men into exploiters and exploited, drones and disinherited, Abraham appeared with half a dozen hens and a rooster suspended on a cord, their feet tied up, their heads dangling. He dropped the birds before us, where they struggled to get on their feet and flap free of the cord that tied them.

“There you are, fellers, now you can get eggs off me.” He grinned. “I’ll let you have ’em cheap ’cause you’re my workmates. Nine centavos each. Cost you ten and even twelve in town.”

We stared first at the bundle of hens and then at the grinning Abraham. Not one of us had thought of going into the egg business like this, and yet it was so obvious, so simple, and required no special intelligence, so that any of us could have done the same. Sam the Chink showed no envy or jealousy, but only admiration for the enterprising Abraham, and perhaps some shame at having allowed himself to be beaten in setting up a sideline.

Thus in the course of one afternoon the disinherited and exploited worker Abraham became an owner, a capitalist. He had acquired productive hens while we had bought only food to be consumed. We had wondered why he had ordered no food from the store and had been prepared to deal with the pilfering of our supplies, which we had expected of him. Instead he was offering us future supplies of eggs in exchange for rice and beans or money. He was in business. At the worst, in case the hens went on strike, he could eat them, and the rooster too.

On the following day Abraham had four eggs for sale.

4

We regarded eggs as a greater luxury than meat.

And now that they were so temptingly close at hand and could be prepared more easily than any other food, so that we could get something better into us for breakfast than the usual thin coffee and piece of dry bread, we felt we would not and could not do without eggs. It suddenly seemed to us that without eggs we would fold up from undernourishment before the end of the harvest, or if we survived the harvest we’d be too feeble to go on to other work.

The slaves, said Abraham, who had it from his granddad, were generally kept in good condition, like horses. But no one worried about the condition of the “free” worker. If he got ill through malnutrition due to substandard living conditions because of low wages, he got sacked.

Opportunistic arguments of this kind were advanced by Abraham so as to ensure a ready and regular market for eggs. Such observations on man’s condition were all the more acceptable to us since, generously enough, he supplied us with eggs on credit until the next pay day. Abraham did this purely out of the kindness of his heart because, as he explained it, he did not want to see us, his dear fellow workers, fail from malnutrition in later life, that is, after the harvest.

Within three days we couldn’t imagine how we had ever existed without eggs. We had eggs for breakfast, we took eggs along to the field for lunch, and of course we had eggs for supper. We were even baking eggs into our bread.

There was no doubt about it, Abraham understood chicken farming. Often he left the field as early as three to look after his hens. He gave them plenty of corn. Every other evening just at twilight he went off — he never said where — with a sack. He always returned with his sack full of corn long after we had turned in.

Those six hens and the rooster, apparently aware of our need, did their best to protect us from malnutrition, laying a generous supply of eggs in honest return for the abundant grain they received.

Well, the hens laid four eggs on the first day; on the second day, seven. On the third morning, lest we doubt his word, Abraham took us to the three old baskets he’d hung up for the laying hens and let us count. the eggs for ourselves. There they were, seventeen eggs now. Having counted these eggs at sunrise, we doubted Abraham’s word no more, not even when with beaming face one morning, as if he’d won in the national lottery, he informed us that the hens had laid twenty-eight eggs in one day! It was no concern of ours what Abraham did to his hens to get such results. The Chink said that the Chinese performed miracles in squeezing nutriment from a particle of earth or the last egg from a hen, but that Abraham outdid even them.

Abraham cut him short: “You’re all a lot of fools. You know as little about scientific chicken farming as the farmers around here, who are the biggest fools of all. In Louisiana we know how to handle hens. I learned it from my grandmother, who gave me some good clouts before I got the hang of it, but now even the smartest farmer wouldn’t stand a chance against me if I ran a chicken farm here. I’d show him how to make hens pay.”

We just went on eating eggs. But the eggs took their revenge: they devoured us. They devoured our wages to the extent that none of us would reach his set target, whether it was for a new shirt, new trousers, or simply a railroad ticket to a place with better prospects. Even Sam, whose countrymen are often unjustly charged with preferring to run around naked rather than spend a penny on a necessity, owed Abraham a neat sum for eggs.

Compared to our first week we were living like princes now, thanks to the eggs, and also to a night rainstorm that provided us with enough rain water to wallow in baths.

Yet the rain lost us half a day’s pay, turning the cotton field into a muddy swamp from which we could hardly lift our feet.

By the third pay day it was plain that we couldn’t get along on the miserable wages paid us. At the end of the harvest we’d have barely two weeks’ wages in hand, and all of that would be spent before we could march out of the bush and on to the next job, wherever it might be.

“It’s those damned eggs ! ” said Antonio, as we sat around the fire talking things over. “Those eggs are enslaving us miserably.”

“But we didn’t have to buy them,” I put in. “Abraham didn’t force them onto us. He could have saved them up and sold them to the store.”

“That’d be more work for him,” said Gonzalo.

At this moment Abraham came back with his evening’s corn and, overhearing us, threw his sack down. “So you’re talking about eggs! Haven’t I done right by you all? Every egg freshly laid! I’m entitled to my money, ain’t I, fellers?”

“Nobody talked about not paying. If you don’t know what we’re talking about, better keep quiet,” I told him. “Listen,” broke in Antonio, “we were saying that unless we give up the needless luxury of eggs we’ll have worked all these weeks for nothing.”

“Needless lux’ry, you call it?” Abraham yelled. “You want to walk aroun’ like skel’tons when the cotton-pickin’s over? Now I’m collectin’ my money! Antonio, you owe… ”

I didn’t care who owed for how many eggs. I paid my own bill and left for the shelter to turn in. On the way I could hear squabbling over the accounts, although it must be admitted that Abraham seemed absolutely honest in his business relations with us. But as I was dozing off that night I resolved to do without eggs the next week.

At dawn on Monday, as I was making my way to the fire, I heard Antonio shouting: “Where are the eggs this morning, you black-as-coal Yank? I want five eggs!”

Abraham was counting the eggs in his baskets and continued as if he hadn’t heard Antonio.

“Hey there, didn’t you hear me? I want five eggs. Or shall I lay them myself?”

“What’s this?” asked Abraham, all innocence. “I don’t want to force my eggs on you and rob you of your hard-earned wages. You’d better save the money. You can get along without eggs, like you did the first few days here.”

We rose up like one man against Abraham’s new tune, against his interference with our established way of life.

“Who do you think you are, you black nobody, telling me what I should and should not eat,” chimed in Gonzalo. “Give me six eggs at once or I’ll smash your woolly skull in.”

“All right,” Abraham agreed, “if that’s the way you want it I’ll supply you with eggs, as before.”

“Well, how else?” asked Sam Woe quietly. “Filst you tempt us into eating eggs, and when we get used to them you tly to withhold. Give me thlee eggs!”

The Chink was right. Just when we’d got used to the eggs, their high food value, easy availability, and simple cooking, were we suddenly to be denied them because of Abraham’s whim? Why should I deny my poor self, and torture my poor body with the sight of beautiful, fresh eggs sizzling merrily in the others’ frying pans? “Give me six!” I ordered. And once I had eaten three fried eggs and boiled the others to take for lunch, my spirit was subdued and penitent.

So we kept on eating eggs.

One afternoon a few days later Mr. Shine stopped me on my way back from the field and talked about his farm, how he had started with sixty dollars of hard-earned money, how he had hacked the bush out with his own hands, and how he had widened a narrow, overgrown twelve-mile mule track into a road fit for his truck.

“It took me twenty years of hard, very hard work to build up this place. And yet we gringos, who helped make this part of the country what it is today, feel that we must be ready to get out on short notice and leave everything behind. These people — with some reason, I admit — hate us like poison because they fear for their political and economic freedom and independence, which means everything to them.”

Mr. Shine wasn’t the first North-American farmer to tell me this.

“Some years are very good. I’ve had as many as four crops of corn in the same year, something I’d never get back in the States. And I must say the cotton’s very good this year, first-class fiber, if only I can get a decent offer for it. The trick is in knowing just how long to wait, just when to sell. But I can’t understand what’s happened to my hens. We’ve never had so few eggs as in these last weeks. My neighbors are also complaining about their hens, and they’re wondering what’s going on in their corn bins that they fill up in the evening and find a little lower in the morning. Same happens to me. Must be rats, I’d say.”

That evening I told the gang what Mr. Shine had said about his hens.

“There you are, fellers, there’s the true American farmer for you!” said Abraham. “They’d eat their own fingernails, they’re so mean, and they begrudge the po’r hens a handful of grain — then complain that they’re not layin’. How kin they if they’re not rightly fed? Look at my hens! I don’t spare the corn, so I get what I want from them. They only have to be well fed and properly treated, and then they do their duty. My good grandmother Susanne taught me that, and she was a clever woman, you can take it from me, fellers. And that’s a fact! Another thing,” he went on, “it’s not the rats that get into the bins of those greedy farmers, it is the po’r starvin’ hens which at night instead of sleeping prowl around to pick up a few kernels of corn lest they starve to death, po’r little animals.”

And we listened to him. After all, Abraham had the proof of his chicken knowledge in eggs.

5

That same evening we came unanimously to the conclusion that we had to eat properly to keep up our work power, but that at the same time we had to see to it that a certain sum was left over at the end of the harvest so that we shouldn’t have worked for nothing, like slaves just for our keep — that therefore, in a nutshell, we weren’t being paid enough. If we got eight instead of six centavos a kilo, we could just about scrape through.

With this thought in our minds we went to sleep.

The next morning as soon as the other workers arrived in the field, Antonio and Gonzalo went up to them and explained that we intended to ask for eight centavos a kilo from now on, plus two centavos a kilo retroactively. These people, natives and more independent than we were, especially since they all had their own parcels of land, readily agreed.

Then Antonio and Gonzalo and two of the other men went up to the scales and told Mr. Shine how matters stood.

“No,” answered Mr. Shine, “I’m not going to pay that, and that’s that! I’m not crazy! I’ve never paid that much. I don’t make that much on the cotton.”

“All right,” said Antonio, “then we’re packing up. We’ll be off today.”

One of the local men intervened: “Listen, señor, we’ll wait another two hours. Think it over. If you say no, we’ll saddle our mules. And we’ll take good care that you don’t get any more men.”

With that the conference came to an end. The four returned to the field and reported Shine’s answer. The men left the rows they were picking, went over to the trees, and lay down to sleep. While I was also making my way toward the trees, Mr. Shine called, “Hey, Gales! Come over here a moment!”

“Now,” I said while approaching him, “if you think I’m going to act as a go-between you’re quite mistaken, Mr. Shine. If I were a farmer I’d be on your side and I’d go with you through thick and thin. But I’m not a farmer. I’m a farm hand, and I stick with my fellow workers. You understand, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course, Gales. In any case I’m not trying to win you over to my side. You couldn’t get the cotton in alone. But let’s have a quiet talk about it.”

Mr. Shine lit a pipe. His elder son, who was about twenty-six, lit a cigar, and the other son, a fellow of twenty-two or so, peeled some filthy-looking paper from a piece of chewing gum and popped the gum into his mouth.

“You’re the only white man among the pickers here, and as I’m already paying you eight you are really neutral and can talk with us. I take it you haven’t told the other fellows that you’re getting eight?” asked Mr. Shine, taking his pipe from his mouth.

“No,” I said, “I haven’t had the slightest reason for doing so.”

The fact is I hadn’t. But I knew that had the subject come up, not one of the men would have felt wronged at my taking that extra two centavos. It wasn’t any skin off their backs. And not one even now would accuse me of not having brought the subject up. What good would it have done them to know? Some things we didn’t find it necessary to talk about. Our common lot was something else again.

Dick, the older boy, climbed into the back of the truck, propped himself against a bale of cotton, and dangled his legs over the side. Pete, the younger one, seated himself at the steering wheel and dozed off, still chewing his gum.

The old man leaned against the truck and, swearing the while, fiddled with his pipe that now went out, now got choked, now needed refilling although the tobacco in it hadn’t yet burned through. Only by the way he was handling his pipe did the farmer give any outward indication of the excitement that was fuming within him.

When about five minutes had passed without a word being spoken, Pete sat up and suddenly burst out: “You know what I’d do if I were in your shoes, Dad? I’d pay up and say no more about it.”

“You’d pay up, would you?” Mr. Shine was furious. “The money doesn’t come out of your pocket. That makes ‘I’d pay up’ very easy. All right then, I’ll take it out of your money.”

“You won’t do any such thing, Dad! Or, if you do, you’ll have to give me the money for the cotton sold. Otherwise it wouldn’t be fair.”

“Oh, don’t make me laugh! The money for the cotton sold? Have I sold even a dime’s worth yet? I tell you, Gales, no one’s offered me a penny yet. And what prime cotton it is this year! It’d put the whitest snowflake in all Alaska to shame. And just look here" — he tore off a pod nearby and holding it close to my nose squeezed it between his fingers — “the softest down is like barbed wire compared with this. Well, Gales, say some.. thing! Don’t stand there as if you’d lost your tongue!”

“But don’t forget I’m neutral,” I protested.

“All right, you’re neutral. But you can still open your mouth.”

All he wanted was someone with whom to argue.

Dick settled himself more comfortably in the truck and said slowly and deliberately, drawling out his words: “I’ll tell you something, Dad—”

“You? You’re the right one to tell me something!”

“All right then, I won’t. I’ve got time. It isn’t my cotton, you know, it’s yours.”

Dick withdrew into sulky silence. The old man flew into a rage. “Well, damn it all, speak up! Or must I stand here until the cotton rots?”

“You see, Dad, that’s exactly what I mean: until the cotton rots. If the men leave, we won’t get any more help from around here. And if we recruit men from the towns we’ll have to pay more in fares than the whole thing’s worth.”

“Well, talk faster, can’t you?”

“I must think what I’m going to say. Look here, Dad, it’s rained once already. And it looks as if we’re going to get a very early rainy season or maybe a whole week of strip rain. If we do, it’ll be good-bye to the cotton for good. It’ll all be beaten into the mud, and you’ll have to look for someone who’ll buy sand, let alone cotton. The quicker we get the cotton ginned and marketed, the better chance we’ll have on the price. Once the market is saturated we’ll be glad if we get rid of it at a loss of twenty or twenty-five centavos the bale; that is, if we can sell it at all. So far we’ve made very good time in picking, and should be among the first on the market.”

“Damn it all, boy, you’re damned well right! Four years ago I had to sell at thirty centavos below the starting price and stood there like a beggar bumming for a bit of bread. But I’m not so mad that I’ll pay eight centavos! I used to pay only three, and when the cotton stood badly, four. No! I’d ten times rather leave it to rot than give in!”

So saying he hit out at a shrub as though he wanted to raze the entire field with one swat. Then in his anger, another idea occurred to him.

“It’s the foreigners who are to blame for this. They come here and incite our people. They can never get enough to stuff into their big mouths. Our people around here aren’t dissatisfied. Yes, and you too, Gales, you’re one of the agitators. You’re one of those bolshies who want to turn everything upside down and take our land away from us, and even pull our beds out from under our backsides. But you got the wrong man in me. I’ve been in that racket too. I know my way about and I know how it’s done. Only we didn’t have any IWW or any of that nonsense.”

“As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Shine, you’re quite at liberty to speak your mind. But, by the way, what makes you think I’m a Wobbly? I haven’t given you any indications.”

“I know your kind. You’re trying to bring in your ideas here before this Revolution is over. It won’t be long, though, before it’ll have failed completely. Well, I didn’t mean you exactly. But I won’t pay eight and that’s that!”

“Now listen, Dad" — Pete spoke without turning toward his father — “you’re wrong about the foreigners, absolutely wrong. The four foreigners are picking more than the natives, The Indians only pick a bit because they see the foreigners at work, but they don’t care about earning more. If they make one peso they’re quite content. They prefer to have a five-hour siesta — that’s much more important to them. You can bet your boots that without the foreigners we wouldn’t be able to get the cotton in before Christmas.”

“But I’m not paying, and that’s the end of it.”

“In that case I’ll start the engine and we can drive home,” Dick said dryly, and slowly came down from the truck.

The two hours agreed on were far from over, but the “locals” were getting restless. They caught their mules and

began to saddle them. Just as some of them were about to mount, Antonio and Gonzalo jumped up, threw their wide-brimmed sombreros high into the air, and began to sing the song of the cotton-pickers, which I had taught them during our evenings around the campfire.

“Cotton is worn by king and prince,

Millionaire and president,

But the lowly cotton-picker

Sweats to earn each bloody cent…”

The men immediately ceased handling their animals and stood as still as soldiers under orders. They had never heard the song before but with the instinct of the burdened they felt that this was their song, and that it was as closely allied to their strike, the first strike of their experience, as a hymn is allied to religion. They didn’t know what the IWW was, what a labor organization meant, what class distinctions were. But the singing they heard went straight to their hearts. The words were as the breath of life to them, and the song welded them together as into a block of steel. A first dim awareness of the immense power and strength of the working people united in a common purpose was awakened in them.

By the time the first refrain was repeated, the whole field was singing. I knew what was likely to happen if the last refrain were reached without the desired answer having been received. I knew it from experience.

The song, so simple and monotonous in its melody, but in its resounding rhythm as springy as fine steel, infected me. I couldn’t help it. I began to hum it too.

“Of course, you would!” said Mr. Shine, half sarcastically, half matter-of-factly. “I knew it!”

At the second refrain the men, who had been standing around near their mules in a loosely formed group, turned toward Mr. Shine; they stood as one man, their song taking on a provocative, direct significance.

Mr. Shine fumbled nervously at his belt to unfasten his revolver holster, only to fasten it again with a look of embarrassment, in which could be detected also shame, and even resignation.

“Confound it all!” he exclaimed. “They look as if they mean business.”

“So they do,” Pete said, still chewing. “And once they’ve gone, we’ll have the devil’s own job to get them to come back again.”

“Right,” said Mr. Shine. “I’ll pay eight, but only from today. What’s paid is paid and there’s going to be no back pay. Gales,” he turned to me, “would you be good enough to call the men?”

I ran over and called them together.

“Well, what about it?” the men asked Mr. Shine as they approached the scales.

“It’s all right, it’s settled,” he said, half irate and half condescending. “I pay eight per kilo, but—”

Antonio didn’t let him finish: “And what about the kilos we’ve already picked?”

“I’ll pay the difference of two centavos. But now get to work so we can get the cotton in before the rains come.”

“Hurrah fo’ Mister Shine ! ” shouted Abraham.

“Keep your mouth shut, damn you. Nobody’s asked you to shout!” roared the farmer in a fury.

“But what am I going to do with you, Gales?” he asked, keeping me back as the men were leaving. “You’re already getting eight.”

“Yes,” I said, “so that evens things up.”

“No. One man’s pay won’t make much difference to me. After all, you’re the only white in the gang. I’ll give you ten.”

“With back pay?” I laughed.

“With back pay. I’m a fair businessman. Now, why are you hanging around? Hurry up, get along with the work. We’ve wasted, God knows, practically an hour talking. And any hour the rain might come.

Then, turning to his two sons, who were just in the act of hanging up the scales, he said: “I’m going to make you pay, you two; take my word for it!”

6

Nothing much happened during the following three weeks. One day was like the next — picking cotton, cooking, eating, sleeping, picking cotton…

Then one afternoon, when I got back from the cotton field, I went over to the big house to see if Mrs. Shine could sell me some bacon, or loan it to me until Sunday, as I’d forgotten to ask the fellows to get me some when they went shopping.

“Certainly, Gales, you can have it for cash or on loan, just as you like.”

“All right. I’ll buy it. The boss can charge it to me on pay day.”

As she was weighing the bacon, Mr. Shine returned from town with the mail and a few purchases.

“You’ve come just at the right moment, Gales,” he said. “I’ve got some news for you.”

“For me? Where from?”

“Direct from town. While I was at the store I met Mr. Beales, the crew manager from Oil Camp 97, an acquaintance of mine. He was sitting there drinking one bottle of beer after another, with a grim face. He’s in a fix. They’ve had some trouble at the derrick. It seems they were changing the drills — eights for tens — when one of the pipes kicked out and injured a driller’s right arm. One of the native laborers had been careless — nothing new, the same kind of thing has happened before — and didn’t secure the pipe in time. The driller’s an experienced man, a reliable fellow, and they don’t want to lose him. So they’re looking for a good temporary man to take his place until he can come back. It’ll be three or four weeks before he’s fit for work again. It’s a ticklish time for them just now. They’re drilled to seven hundred feet and are on clay, so if they don’t get a good driller they might get a bend in the bore pipe. You’ve worked in the oil fields and know what this would mean — expense and a loss of time. The drillers and tool dressers would have to be laid off — maybe the whole camp.”

“You’re telling me,” I replied. “But it’s the sort of thing that can happen in the best-managed field, no matter how careful the men are.”

“Could be. I don’t understand anything about drilling,” Mr. Shine said, anxious to go on. “Now the manager’s wondering what to do next. He’s already worked one shift himself, but he can’t carry on like that. If he telegraphs his company in the States it’ll take another three to four days before he gets a new man here, and then it’s not certain that he’ll get a good relief man. You know a good man normally won’t take on a job for three weeks and maybe risk missing out on a good, six-month job. So I said to the manager, ‘Mr. Beales, I’ve got just the man you’re looking for.’”

“But I still don’t see where I come in,” I said. “Why do you do this for me? Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“Now, wait a minute, Gales. I’m on the level with you. In three, or at most four days we’ll have the cotton picked. What are you going to do then?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll wait and see. I may go north or south, or I may go east or west. Actually I was thinking of tramping down to Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Panama — maybe to Colombia. I’ve heard there’s a good deal of oil being pumped down there.”

“Fine!” said Mr. Shine. “That’s just what I thought. It’s all the same to you where you go. There’ll be time enough, later on, to visit Guatemala and all the other beauty spots waiting just for you. So I said to the manager: ‘Well, I’ve got a fellow at the farm, helping me with my crop, a white man, honest all through, a very reliable fellow, with experience in drilling, tool dressing, and all that goes with it.’ I had to lay it on a bit thick, you know, Gales, to get results. ‘Well, Mr. Beales,’ I said, ‘I’m going to send the man down to you!’ Now what do you say, old chap, eh?” Mr. Shine asked me, grinning all over his face. “So down you go to the store tomorrow morning. The storekeeper knows the way to the camp; he’ll direct you. You’ll be at the camp in time to sit right down to a full-sized meal.”

The part about the meal was tempting.

“If you find you can’t manage the job, you won’t have lost much. Whatever happens, you’ll get a day’s pay and on top of that you’ll have some good eats, for one day,” Mr. Shine added.

I really didn’t have to waste much thought on the offer. There was only three or four days’ work left here, hard and ill-paid work. At the oil field you also had to work a twelve-hour day as there were only two shifts, but at least you were not working in that blistering sun. Moreover, you got ice water to drink, and as much of it as you wanted. But above all you got, as Mr. Shine had rightly said, decent food, with plate, knife, fork, spoon, cup, and glass on a table that might have been crudely knocked together but was a table all the same, and there was a real bench on which to sit. Black beans, hard as pebbles, would cease to be a major part of every meal. And they didn’t sleep without bedding on the bare floor, but in clean camp beds with soft mattresses and well protected by thin veils of mosquito netting. There would be a toilet. You could shower every day. I had quite forgotten that there were such things in the world. These workers lived in good houses, and had a hospital and all conveniences in their camps.

So I thanked Mrs. Shine but changed my mind about the bacon. When I got back to the campfire the most important thing as far as I was concerned was to settle my egg account with Abraham. If I’d remained even ten centavos in his debt he’d have pursued me in my dreams right down to Cape Horn.

I arrived at the oil camp and reported to the manager. He was an American. All the managers, high employees, and even specialized workers in the oil fields were mostly foreigners, as practically all the companies exploiting the oil in this country were either American, English, or Dutch and they preferred to give employment to their own compatriots. Mr. Beales didn’t look a bit surprised to see his new driller in such rags and tatters as no man in his own country would ever have dared walk around in. He obviously didn’t care what I wore; he needed a reliable driller.

The workers at the camp were glad that Dick, the sick driller, had a substitute and would be coming back. He was a likable guy who had worked in the camp ever since the first planks went up. They fixed me up, one man bringing me a shirt, another pants, another socks, another working gloves and shoes.

When I’d finished my first shift, Mr. Beales said: “You can stay on until Dick comes back, at full driller’s pay.”

This certainly was very good news. But Dick recovered faster than anybody had expected, so at the end of a week’s work I had to be on my way again. When I left, Dick gave me twenty dollars extra out of his own pocket, for traveling expenses, and, as he said, to treat myself to something good.

When the manager paid me off he said, “Listen, Gales, couldn’t you hang around in the vicinity for another week or so?”

“Yes,” I replied. “Easily. I could go to Mr. Shine’s and stay there for a while. Why?”

“There’s a fellow in one of the fields here who wants to take a two-week vacation to go up to the States to see his folks. You could fill in as his substitute — beginning of the month.”

“Agreed,” said I. “You can leave a message at the store for me, care of Mr. Shine, when you need me.”

“Right, that’s settled!” said Mr. Beales.

So I went back to Mr. Shine’s the next day and asked him if I could put up for a while in the shelter.

“Certainly, Gales,” he said. “Stay as long as you like.”

I told him about my oil field chance, and then asked about the other pickers, my former companions.

“Oh, them. Well, the tall nigger went the day after you — up to Florida, I think. The short one, the one called Abraham, turned out to be a scoundrel—”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, he sold me some hens — good layers, he swore — that he’d bought from some peasants, I found out later, for one peso apiece. Sold them to me for two and a half pesos each. The hens were well fed, heavy, good to look at, so I paid the price. But that black devil, he got me on the part about layers. They’re not laying one egg among them. Oh, well — I s’pose they’re worth the price for meat.”

“And what about the Chink and the two Mexicans?”

“They walked by here — early — on Monday. I saw them from the window. As far as I know, they went to the Pozos station. By the way, why do you want to live in that shelter? You could stay in the house.”

I laughed. “No, Mr. Shine, I had enough of that house. I wouldn’t stick the tip of my boot inside it. It’s a real mosquito hell.”

“Well, suit yourself. I lived in it with my family for ten years and we weren’t troubled by mosquitoes. But you may be right. If a house like that hasn’t been used for some time, and isn’t properly aired, all sorts of vermin gather. Now and again I have the horses and mules driven up that way because of the good grass and the water hole. But I haven’t been up there for months and I’ve no idea what the place is like now. Anyhow, it doesn’t matter to me where you set up house. You’re no worry to me.”

So once again I rigged myself up in my shelter. This time I made my fire right in front of it. There was no point in making it near the little house where we’d had our campfire discussions; no one was there to talk with now.

7

I lived in wonderful solitude, my sole companions the lizards. After I’d been there about three days, two lizards got so used to me they forgot their innate timidity and went after the flies that hovered around my feet in search of crumbs.

I spent my days puttering around in the near bush, observing animals and their behavior; and the animals of the bush came and went through my open shelter, as was their right. I had brought back some old magazines from the oil camp and now had time for reading.

I could wallow in water. There had been several good downpours and the water tank was a third full, for we’d mended the rain troughs, of course. I could wash; I could even afford the luxury of washing twice a day.

Now I was able to buy what I wanted in the store; I had plenty of money and I treated myself well. I was neither thirsty nor hungry. I hadn’t a care in the world. I was a free man in the free bush, taking my nap when I pleased, roaming about when and where and as long as I liked. It was a good life and I enjoyed it to the full.

I drew the water I needed from the tank that lay by the old house. It had been lively there while my companions lived in the house; there were arguments around the campfire, words over a pinch of salt that one had taken without asking the owner, endless wrangles about whose turn it was to bring firewood, and the like. As I thought back on those vivid scenes, the house seemed eerily lonely and still. Every time I went over there to get water I had the urge to look inside to see if anyone had left anything behind. But then again, I liked the spooky silence that brooded over the place, and I hesitated to disturb it. It fitted in with the solitariness of the surrounding bush, as well as with the seclusion of my own life. So I suppressed the desire to go up the ladder and peep in. Of course I knew that the house would be empty, absolutely empty. No one would have left anything behind, not even the rags of an old shirt; for, to fellows like us, everything has its value. I even began to grow used to the air of mystery that hung over the place. I liked to think that perhaps the ghost of an old Aztec priest, unable to rest, had now fled from the bush into the house to find some repose from his restless wanderings.

One day when I went to get water, I noticed a blue-black spider with a shiny green head hunting her prey along a wall of the house. She’d run like lightning for a few inches, stop, lie in wait awhile, and then run again a short distance and wait again. Zigzagging in this way, she completely covered three feet on one plank of the wall. Not a single spot had been left uncrossed. Here and there she left a fine thread behind her, not to trap and ensnare any insects that might climb up the plank, but to slow their progress so that after searching and returning from neighboring planks she could spring at her prey and take it in one leap. This spider takes her prey in leaps. She springs at the insect from behind and seizes it by the neck so that whatever weapons of self-defense it may have, whether they are spikes, claws, or jaws, it has no chance to use them.

I’d been observing this type of spider for days and weeks on end during my frequent spells out of work, and this one immediately attracted my attention. I wanted to test her field of vision and discover what she’d do if she herself were attacked and pursued. I put my can of water on the ground and forgot that I’d been intending to cook myself some rice.

I moved my hand to and fro a fair distance above the spider. She reacted immediately. She became uneasy and her zigzag runs began to get irregular as she tried to escape from the great Something that might have been a bird. But the smooth plank offered no hiding place. She waited a while, ducked slowly and carefully, and then suddenly and quite unexpectedly leaped half an arm’s length to another board on the wall. The leap was as sure as if it had been executed on the level. The other board had a crack in it, so that it offered some refuge.

However, I allowed the spider no time to find the best spot. I took a thin twig and touched her lightly, forcing her to choose another route. She rushed away at frantic speed, but wherever she fled she always ran into the offensive twig which touched her head or her back. So she ran in all directions, always pursued by the twig which gave her no chance to get set for a leap. Suddenly, however, just as I was twigging her on the back, she turned around and, in a frantic rage and with impressive courage, attacked the twig. To a creature of her size — she was about an inch and a half long — the twig must have seemed an object of massive proportions and supernatural powers. Every time I withdrew the twig, which evidently made her think she had beaten back or at any rate intimidated her enemy, she tried to reach the protecting crack. Finally she did defeat me and found refuge there, but it wasn’t enough to hide her completely; half of her was still exposed.

I now slapped my hand flat against the wall. The spider promptly reappeared and hurried off, higher up, where she found a more favorable cavity in which she was now almost completely concealed.

To chase her out of there too, and see what she’d do in the last extremity, I slapped the wall with such force that the whole house shook.

The spider didn’t re-emerge. I waited a few seconds. When I was just about to hit the wall another time, something inside the house fell over with a thump.

Whatever could it be? I knew the inside of the house. There was nothing, absolutely nothing in there that could fall with such a strange sound. It could only have been a board or a chunk of wood; and yet, to judge from the noise, it was neither of these. It sounded more like a sackful of maize. But when I recalled the noise, I realized there had been something strangely hard about it too. So it couldn’t have been a sackful of maize.

It would have been simple enough to climb the few rungs of the ladder, push open the door, and look inside. But some inexplicable feeling held me back. It was as if I were afraid I’d discover something unspeakably horrible.

I picked up my can of water and went back to my shelter. I persuaded myself that it wasn’t a fear of seeing something horrible that was stopping me from going into the house. I said to myself: “You have no business in the house; you have no right to go in there, and in any case whatever is in there is no concern of yours.” That’s how I excused myself.

But when I was sitting by my fire, wondering what thing it could have been, a strange idea came to me: Someone had hanged himself in the house, some time ago; the rope had rotted or the neck had putrefied, and my striking at the wall had shaken the body, so that the corpse had fallen. It had sounded as if a human body had toppled over and the head had struck the floor.

But of course this idea was ridiculous. It only showed where

your imagination could lead you if you shied away from looking at the facts. When you’re in this state of mind, a tree trunk in the field could be a bandit waiting in ambush. Besides, in the tropics nobody would hang himself. In this part of the world suicide is rare; no day is gray enough for it. And if someone really did want to do it, why, he’d go into the bush where within three days the only part of him that would still be recognizable would be the buckle of his belt.

Whenever I went to get water I made a point of not looking into the house; I even avoided looking for any chink through which I could peep. The vague, the mysterious meant more to me than a possibly prosaic explanation. But when I sat by the fire in the evening or lay awake at night, my thoughts would turn to what might be inside the house.

On Saturday I went to Mr. Shine and asked if there’d been any message from the oil camp. But Mr. Shine hadn’t gone to the store all week, and wouldn’t be going the following week either. As Monday was the first of the month and the driller whose place I was to take could be starting his vacation then, I decided to go down to the store myself on Sunday morning. I would take my bundle with me and be ready to start off at once if word had come through. That way I could be in the camp on Sunday afternoon. If there was no message I’d know that the driller was either not going on vacation or that he’d made some other arrangement. In that case I’d continue on to the station and simply carry out my plan of going to Guatemala.

Early Sunday morning I went to get water for my coffee. I’d got the water and was already past the house when I decided that, after all, I’d go inside and see what there was to see. If I didn’t, the thought of it would probably plague me for months to come.

I climbed the few rungs of the ladder and pushed open the door. Something was lying by the wall to my right — a large bundle. I couldn’t see what it was right away, in the dawn light.

I stepped over to it. It was a man. Dead!

It was Gonzalo.

Gonzalo, dead.

Murdered!

His ragged shirt was black with dried blood. A ball of cotton, crumpled in his right hand, was likewise caked with blood. He had a stab in the back, and further stabs in the chest, the right shoulder, and the left arm.

Obviously the body had been propped up against the wall; when I had struck, it had fallen sideways and the head had hit the floor.

I searched his pockets — five pesos and eighty-five centavos. He should have had at least twenty-five to thirty pesos.

So it had been for the money.

A little canvas tobacco pouch lay open beside him. There were a few corn husks on the floor. He had been attacked while rolling himself a cigarette right there where he now lay.

The Chink and Antonio had been the last to leave the house. The Chink wasn’t the murderer. He wouldn’t so much as touch anyone for the sake of twenty pesos; he was far too clever for that. Those twenty pesos would have cost too dear for the Chink.

Antonio then.

I’d never have thought it of him.

I put the money back into Gonzalo’s pocket and left him where he lay.

Then I wedged the door into position as I’d found it and left the house.

I gave up the idea of making coffee and set off at once. I went to Mr. Shine and told him that I was going to the store, and that if there was nothing doing at the oil camp I’d continue on my way.

“Didn’t you feel lonely in your airy apartment, Gales?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “There was so much to see and so many things to watch that the time passed very quickly.”

“I thought you might have moved into the house. After all, it is a house.”

“I told you when I came back from the oil field that it was swarming with mosquitoes.”

“My two nephews are coming on a visit at New Year’s. It’ll be a holiday for them. I’ll put them in there, and they can do as they like. They can make a start by smoking out the mosquitoes. Well, Gales, good luck to you!”

We shook hands and off I went.

Why should I have said anything? No one would think that I was the murderer, for hadn’t I left before all the other fellows and been working at the oil camp all the time? If I had said something about it, there would have been endless questions and comings and goings and who knows what else, and I should never have been able to get to the oil field in time.

8

I was paid off when the driller returned from his vacation. One of the trucks took me to the station and from there I traveled on to a small town on the coast. I didn’t stop long but went straight on to the next sizable town so that, provided I didn’t change my plans again, I could get to Guatemala within a few days.

While I was in town I wanted to keep my ear to the ground and find out how things were in the south, whether there was anything behind the rumors of new oil fields, what the chances of employment were or whether I wouldn’t do better to make tracks for the Argentine. But I heard too much about the mass unemployment down there. Ghastly stories I heard. Eighty thousand in the gutter in Buenos Aires alone, just looking for a chance to get out of there. Anyhow, it couldn’t be worse than it was in Mexico.

I went over to the park and sat around on a bench. I had a shoe shine, drank a glass of ice water, and, feeling at peace with myself and all the world, was just about to take a siesta when I noticed that an acquaintance was sitting on a bench opposite me.

I went over to him. “Hello, Antonio,” I said. “How are you? What are you doing here?”

We shook hands. He was very pleased to see me. I sat down beside him and told him that I was looking for a job.

“That’s fine. I’ve been working in a bakery here for two weeks, baking bread and cakes. You could start in right away; they’re looking for an assistant. You ever worked as a baker?”

“No. I’ve had a hundred different jobs, I’ve even been a camel drover — and what a goddamned job that is — but I’ve never been a baker.”

“Fine!” said Antonio. “In that case you’ll be all right. If you really were a baker or knew anything about baking, it’d be no good. The owner’s a Frenchman; he knows nothing about baking. If you tell him that pepper’ll improve the loaf, he’ll believe you. Of course he’ll ask you if you’re a baker and you must tell him without batting an eyelash that you’ve been in the trade ever since you were a boy. The master baker is a Dane, a ship’s cook who jumped ship. He knows nothing about baking, either. His worry is that some day someone who really knows something about baking will get a job there. That would be the end of the Dane and his master-baking. Yes, a real baker would size him up in less than ten minutes. So if the master asks you anything, you say the very opposite of what you say to the owner. Get the idea? You must tell the master baker that it’s the first time in all your life you’ve seen the inside of a bakery. Then he’ll take you on at once and be quite chummy with you.”

“I can play that game,” I said. “What’s the pay?”

“One twenty-five a day.”

“Bare?”

“Don’t make me laugh. With room and board. Soap is free, too. By all means it’s better than cotton-picking, I can tell you.”

“What’s the food like? Any good?”

“Well, it’s not too bad.”

“Mmmmm…”

“But you always get enough.”

“I know the stomach fillers only too well.”

Antonio laughed and nodded. He rolled himself a cigarette, offered me one which I didn’t take, and after a few puffs, he said: “Between ourselves, the food’s all right. The bakers and pastry cooks use eggs and sugar; it’s a real pleasure to handle the food. Understand, a dozen eggs here or there aren’t missed, and three eggs quickly broken into an odd cup and beaten up with some sugar helps the diet along. If you do this three or four times during the night, you feel fine.”

“What are the hours then?”

“They vary. Sometimes we start at ten at night and work until one, two, or three in the afternoon — sometimes until five.”

“That makes fifteen to nineteen hours a day then?”

“About that, but not always. Sometimes, generally on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we don’t start until twelve.”

“It’s not exactly tempting,” I said.

“But we might as well work there until we can find something better.”

“Of course,” I said. “If there were thirty-six hours in the day there’d be plenty of time to look around for something better. Ah well, I’ll give it a try.”

The thought that from now on I would be working with a murderer day and night, eating from the same pot, perhaps sleeping in the same room, this thought didn’t occur to me at once. Either I’d sunk so low morally that I’d lost all feeling for such niceties of civilization, or I’d moved so far ahead of my time and so far above the moral standards of the day that I understood every human action, and neither took upon myself

the right to condemn nor indulged in the cheap sentimentality of pity. For pity is also a condemnation, even if not so recognized, even if it is unconscious. Should I have felt a horror of Antonio, a revulsion against shaking his hand? There are so many thieves and murderers on the loose with diamonds on their fingers and big pearls in their neckties or gold stars on their epaulettes, and decent people think nothing of shaking hands with them, but even regard it an honor to do so. Every class has its thieves and murderers. Those of my class are hanged; others are invited to the president’s ball and complain about the crimes and immorality of workmen like me.

When you have to struggle hard to get a crust of bread, you find yourself down in the mire, floundering among the scum of humanity.

I felt the blood rushing to my head as these thoughts went round in my mind. Antonio suddenly brought me back to earth with the question: “Do you know who else is in town?”

“How should I know? I just got here last evening.”

“Sam Woe, the Chink.”

“What’s he doing here in Tampico?”

“You know he was always talking about the eating house he was going to open ―”

“You mean he opened one?”

“You bet he did. When a Chink like Sam Woe makes up his mind to do something, he does it. He runs his business with a fellow countryman.”

“You know, Antonio, you and I haven’t the flair for such things. I’m quite sure that if I were to open a restaurant, people would start being born without stomachs, just to make sure I didn’t get a break.”

Antonio laughed. “That’s my luck too. I’ve had a cigarette stall, a confectionery booth; I’ve lugged ice water around, and tried God knows what else. I hardly ever sold anything, and I went broke every time.”

“I think, Antonio, it’s because we can’t bring ourselves to downright swindling. And you have to know how to swindle if you want to be a success in business.”

“I suppose we should go and look up the Chink. He’d be pleased to see you too. I like to eat out now and then, for a change, you know. You can get sick of the same old grub where you work.”

So, we went off to the Yellow Quarter where the Chinese lived and had their shops and restaurants. Very few of them had businesses in other parts of the town. They liked to crowd together.

Sam was genuinely pleased to see me. He kept pressing my hand, laughing and prattling. He invited us to sit down, and we ordered a comida corrida.

Chinese eating houses are all much alike in this country. They have simple, square wooden tables, frequently not more than three of them, with three or four chairs to each. In view of the number of dishes you get, not more than three very good-natured customers can sit at one table at the same time. You can usually see what’s going on in the kitchen from where you sit. The nature and number of dishes is the same in all the Chinese places in town. That’s how they rule out unfair competition among themselves.

Sam had five tables. On each table stood a big-bellied, reddish-brown clay water jug of an ancient Aztec pattern. Then there was a glass bottle containing oil and another one with vinegar. In addition, there were a big bowl of sugar and several small bowls, one with salt, one with a reddish powdered pepper, and one with chile sauce. Half a teaspoon of the hot chile sauce in your soup is enough to make it absolutely unfit to eat.

Sam served the customers while his partner, with the help of a Mexican girl, looked after the cooking. First we were given a chunk of ice in a glass which we filled with water. Next, we got a large roll, there called a bolillo, and the soup followed. It’s always one variety of noodle soup or another. Antonio scattered a large soup-spoonful of green chile sauce into his soup, and I took two heaping ones. I’ve already said that half a teaspoon of this fiery sauce seasons the soup so highly that it’s impossible for a normal person to eat. But then, I’m not normal. While we were still dipping into our soup, the meat arrived, with fried potatoes, a dish of rice, a dish of beans. Now came a dish of stew. All the courses were put on the table at the same time.

Then, as usual, the swapping began. Antonio swapped his beans for tomato salad, which he prepared himself at the table, and I swapped my stew for an omelette.

Now Antonio put his rice into his soup; if he’d kept his beans he’d have put them in as well. Apparently he got enough beans at the bakery, but tomato salad was a treat.

I shook a layer of pepper onto my meat and another layer onto the fried potatoes. Then I seasoned the rice with chile sauce and sweetened the beans with sugar.

At the end of the meal we were each served a dulce — a sweet — and I had café con leche, that is, coffee with hot milk, but Antonio took only the hot milk.

Antonio and I exchanged small talk while eating. We didn’t want to spoil our digestion by taxing our brains with profundities.

For our meal we paid fifty centavos each, all included. It was the usual price in a Chinese restaurant, a café de chinos.

And now we sailed along to the bakery. I went into the pastry shop and asked a clerk if I could see the boss.

“Are you a baker?” the owner asked me.

“Yes, baker and pastry cook.”

“Where were you working last?”

“In Monterrey.”

“Good. You can start tonight. Free room, board, laundry, and I pay you one peso twenty-five a day. Wait a moment,” he added suddenly. “Are you good on cakes, cakes with fancy icing?”

“In my last job in Monterrey I did nothing but cakes with fancy icing.”

“Fine. But I’d better have a word with my master baker and hear what he says. He’s a first-class man. You can learn a lot from him.”

He took me into a dormitory, where the master was in the act of putting on his shoes, getting ready to go out.

“Here’s a baker from Monterrey who’s looking for work. See if he’s any use to you.” The boss went back to his office and left the two of us alone.

The master, a short, fat fellow with freckles, didn’t hurry himself. He finished putting on his shoes and then seated himself on the edge of his bed and lit a cigar. When he’d taken a few puffs he looked at me suspiciously, looked me up and down and said: “Are you a baker?”

“No,” I said. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know much about baking.”

“Really?” he said, still suspicious. “Do you know anything about cakes?”

“I’ve eaten them,” I said, “but I’ve no idea how they’re made. That’s just what I want to learn.”

“Well, have a cigar. You can start tonight at ten s Would you like something to eat?”

“Not just now, thank you just the same.”

“All right. I’ll have a word with the old man. Now I’ll show you your bed.” It seemed he’d lost all his mistrust of me, and was very friendly.

“I’ll make a good baker and pastry cook out of you if you pay attention to what I have to tell you and don’t try bringing in new-fangled ideas of your own. That would never do you any good around here.”

“I’ll be most grateful to you, señor. I’ve always wanted to become a baker and pastry cook of the first order.”

“You can have a nap now if you want one, or you can have a look around the town — just as you like.”

“All right,” I said, “I’ll take a walk in the town.”

“Well, ten o’clock, don’t forget.”

9

I met Antonio, as agreed, in the park.

“Well?” he greeted me from the bench where he sat.

“I’m starting tonight.”

“That’s fine. Maybe later on I might hike down to Colombia with you.”

I sat down beside him.

I couldn’t think of anything to talk about and, searching in my mind for some subject of conversation, it occurred to me that this might be a good moment to mention Gonzalo. Actually I wasn’t so much interested in talking about it as in observing his reaction and seeing how a man with murder on his conscience would behave when someone surprised him by disclosing that he knew all about the crime.

There was, no doubt, a certain risk involved. If Antonio discovered I knew he was a murderer, he’d make it his business to do away with me at the first chance. But I was prepared to run the risk; the very danger made me itch to throw my card on the table face up. I wouldn’t be taken by surprise and was quite able to defend myself, although I would certainly avoid tramping through the bush, or going to Colombia, with him as my only companion.

“Do you know, Antonio,” I said suddenly, out of nowhere, “that you’re wanted by the police?”

“Me?” He seemed quite astonished.

“Yes, you!”

“What for? I don’t know of anything I’ve done wrong.”

It sounded very genuine, a bit too genuine to be on the level, I thought.

“For murder! Murder and robbery!”

“You’re nuts, Gales. Me wanted for murder? You’re badly mistaken. True, I was mixed up with Emiliano Zapata, but no murder. It must be someone else with the same name.”

“Not a matter of mistaken identity,” I said, getting tired of that cat and mouse play. I let loose, almost shouting: “Did know that Gonzalo is dead?”

“What?” he shouted, even louder than I had.

“Yes,” I said, very quietly now, yet watching him intently, “Gonzalo is dead; murdered and robbed.”

“Poor devil. He was certainly a good guy,” Antonio said sympathetically.

“Yes,” I agreed, “he was a decent fellow. It’s a pity. Where did you see him last, Antonio?”

“In the house, where we all had been sleeping during the harvest.”

“Mr. Shine told me that the three of you — you, Gonzalo, and Sam — left his place together.”

“If Mr. Shine says that, he’s mistaken. Gonzalo stayed behind. Only the two of us, Sam and I, went to the station to catch the train.”

“I don’t understand,” I put in. “Mr. Shine was standing at the window and definitely saw the three of you.”

At this, Antonio gave a short laugh and said: “Mr. Shine is right, and I’m right too. The third man with us wasn’t Gonzalo but a man from nearby, a native who came to buy the hens from Abraham because he thought he’d get them cheap. But Abraham left two days before and had already sold them, to Mr. Shine I think.”

“In the house where you last saw Gonzalo,” I said, slowly now, “I found him murdered and robbed. That is to say, he hadn’t been robbed of everything; the murderer had left him a little over five pesos.”

“I wish I could be serious about this tragic story,” said Antonio, smiling slightly to himself, “but I can’t help laughing. The rest of Gonzalo’s money is in my pocket.”

“There you are! That’s just what I’ve been talking about.”

“You may have been talking about it your way, Gales,” replied Antonio, “but I won the money from him. Sam knows all about it; he was there at the time. Sam lost five pesos himself. He would have a stake in it.”

This was a strange story indeed.

“Sam, myself, and the Indian neighbor, we left the house together. Gonzalo wanted to stay behind and have a good sleep. I went with Sam by train to Celaya. Sam went on by train, and I did the rest of the way here partly on foot and by riding freights for a few stretches.”

What Antonio said rang true. What was more, he had Sam for a witness. That Antonio should have traveled back the long distance from Celaya to murder Gonzalo seemed highly improbable. He had already won Gonzalo’s money, honestly, as Sam could testify. Gonzalo had no valuables of any kind. Each of us knew the entire possessions of the others, and none of us could have secreted anything on his person, for we were all going around half naked. There remained no grounds for suspicion. Antonio was innocent.

“Well, my dear Antonio, you must accept my sincere apologies for thinking that you’d be guilty of Gonzalo’s murder or responsible for his death.”

“That’s okay, Gales. No offense taken. But all the same, I wouldn’t have thought that you’d have been so quick to suspect me. I’ve never given anyone cause to think badly of me, have I?”

“True, you haven’t. But you know it was remarkable how all the circumstances pointed against you. You and Sam were the last with Gonzalo in the house. If, as you say, Gonzalo didn’t go with you, he never left the house; he was murdered there. Mr. Shine told me that no one else had been around since you left. There’s nothing to steal there, and there’s no trail nearby that could lead anyone there by chance. I was up that way again because I had to wait for a message from the oil field. It was sheer curiosity that made me look inside the house, where I found Gonzalo dead. He had several knife wounds, the most serious of which was a stab in the chest from which he’d evidently bled to death.”

As I went on describing the wounds, a terrible change came over Antonio. He turned as white as a sheet, stared at me with horrified eyes, moved his lips, and gulped again and again. But no words came. With his left hand he worked at his face and about his throat as though he wanted to tear the flesh away, while with his right hand he groped toward my shoulder and my chest as if he were trying to discover if there really were someone sitting beside him or if it were only a figment of his imagination, a dream from which he would awake.

I was at a loss to know what to make of it. It just didn’t make sense. Antonio had suddenly taken on the appearance of a guilty man who had just begun to realize the full implications of his dark deed. And only a few moments before he’d been laughing at the thought that I suspected him of Gonzalo’s murder. How was I to figure out his behavior? And yet I must; otherwise I’d get lost in my own confused thoughts. I might even begin to imagine that I’d killed Gonzalo myself! The park lights came on. Night had suddenly closed in around us. Darkness had fallen within the moments since the start of Antonio’s inner battle, for I’d last seen his face, open and guileless, in clear sunset light. Then the coming of night had obscured what I’d glimpsed of the true, the undisguised Antonio. What should have been for me the unforgettable experience of studying the features of a man assailed by the powers of darkness, shaken, moved, his every hair and every pore electrified, was now distorted by the harsh lights. They lied, throwing lines and shadows into Antonio’s face that were in truth not there.

But his warm breath was truth, his groping, clawing fingers were truth. All the rest was footlights.

An Indian laborer was sitting on a bench near us, ragged like tens of thousands of others of his class because their wages are barely sufficient to pay for their food. It often happened that such a laborer had nothing left over for a thirty-centavo bunk in one of the many flophouses — dormitorios, they’re called — where in the morning fifty or eighty or a hundred bedfellows of every race and every nation, afflicted with every disease in the medical dictionary as well as others that no doctor had heard about as yet, all washed in the same bowl, all dried themselves on the same towel, and combed themselves with the same comb.

The Indian had fallen asleep on the bench. His limbs sagged and his overworked, exhausted body was crumpled into a heap of rags.

At this moment a policeman came sneaking up. He circled the bench, his eyes glued on the man sleeping there. Then, when he was again behind the bench, he raised his leather whip and brought it down hard and pitilessly on the shoulder of the sleeping man, at the same time yelling at him: “You bum, you, get up, out of here or I’ll turn you in! The law prohibits sleeping in the park and you know it. Get going before I get seriously rough with you.”

With a suppressed groan the Indian plunged forward as if a sword had slashed into him. Then his body jerked upward again and, writhing and moaning, he felt for his tortured shoulder. The policeman now stepped in front of him and grinned maliciously. Great tears of pain streamed down the Indian’s face. But he said nothing. He didn’t get up. He remained sitting where he was, for he like any other citizen was entitled to his park seat. No one could deny his right to sit on the bench, however ragged he might be and however many elegant caballeros and señoritas might be strolling about to enjoy the cool of the evening and listen to the bandstand music.

Yes, the Indian knew that he was a citizen of a free country, where a millionaire had no more right to occupy a park bench than a penniless native. The Indian could have sat there for twenty-four hours if he’d wanted to, but sleeping on a park bench wasn’t permitted. Freedom didn’t go that far, though the bench was in Freedom Square. Locally, it was the sort of freedom in which anyone in authority could whip anyone not in authority: the age-old antagonism between two worlds, almost as old as the story of the expulsion from Paradise; the age-old antagonism between the police and the weary, burdened ones, the tired and hungry. The Indian had been in the wrong and he knew it; that was why he said nothing but only moaned. Satan or Gabriel — this policeman regarded himself as the latter — was in the right.

No! He wasn’t in the right! No! No! The blood rushed to my head. In England, Germany, the USA, everywhere it is the police who do the whipping and the one in rags who gets whipped. And then the people who sit smugly at their well-laden tables are surprised when someone rocks the table, overturns it, and shatters everything to fragments. A bullet wound heals. A cut with a whip never heals. It eats ever more deeply into the flesh, reaches the heart and finally the brain, releasing a cry to make the very earth tremble, a cry of “Revenge!” Why is Russia in the hands of the bolshies? Because the Russians were a people most whipped before the rise of the new era. The policeman’s whip or club prepares the way for an offensive that makes continents quiver and political systems explode.

Woe to the complacent and smug when the whipped cry “Revenge!” Woe to the satiated when the welts of lashes eat into the hearts of the hungry and turn the minds of the long-suffering! I was forced to become a rebel and a revolutionary, a revolutionary out of love of justice, out of a desire to help the wretched and the ragged. The sight of injustice and cruelty makes as many revolutionaries as do privation and hunger.

I leaped to my feet and got over to the bench where the policeman was still standing, drawing his whip through his hand, slashing it through the air, grinning bright-eyed at his writhing victim. He took no notice of me. Obviously he thought that I was just going to sit down on the bench.

But I went right up to him and said: “Take me to the police station at once. I’m going to report you. Your instructions only give you the right to use the whip if you are attacked, or in a street riot after you’ve given warning. You must know that.”

“But the dog was asleep on the bench here.” The little devil of a cop scarcely taller than five feet, was trying to defend himself.

"You could have awakened him and told him that he shouldn’t sleep here, and if he fell asleep again you could then have turned him off the bench, but under no circumstances should you strike him. So come along with me to the station. By tomorrow you won’t have a chance to whip anyone.”

The little cop eyed me for a moment, took note that I was a white man, and realized that I was in earnest. He hung his whip onto the hook of his belt, and with one lightning leap disappeared as if the earth had swallowed him.

The Indian, without a word, disappeared into the night. I walked slowly back to where I had left Antonio. What now, when I see him again?

What is murder? I thought. It all comes to the same thing, the law of the jungle. The whole world is a jungle. Eat or be eaten! The fly by the spider, the spider by the bird, the bird by the snake — so it went, round and round. Until there came a world disaster, or a revolution; and the whole circle would begin again, only the other way around.

Antonio, you were right! You are right! The living are always right! It is the dead who are guilty. If you hadn’t murdered Gonzalo, he’d have murdered you. Perhaps. No, certainly. It’s the law of the jungle. You pick it up so quickly in the bush. It’s all around you and, after all, is only the natural result of an outstanding capacity for imitation.

10

“No,” said Antonio, calmer now, “I certainly didn’t mean to kill Gonzalo. It might just as well have been me. Believe me, amigo mio! I’m not to blame for his death.”

“I know, Antonio. It might just as well have been you. It’s the bush that grabs us all by the scruff of the neck and has us at its mercy.”

“Yes! You’re right, Gales, it’s the bush. Here in town we’d never have hit on such a crazy idea. But the bush talks to you the whole night through: a jungle pheasant giving his death cry as he’s attacked, a cougar howling as he goes to the kill; nothing but blood and strife. In the bush it’s teeth; with us it was knives. But, honestly, it was only a game! We did it for fun — really, only fun, nothing more.

“We used knives, but it might just as well have been dice, or cards, or a roulette wheel. The point was that after seven weeks’ work we didn’t have enough money left to get away from that godforsaken place to look for something better. We had just about the same amount. Gonzalo had a little over twenty pesos. I had twenty-five.

“It was Sunday night. We wanted to be on our way on Monday morning. Charley had left a few days before; Abraham had gone too. That left the three of us, Gonzalo, Sam, and me.

“We counted out our money on the floor. Each of us had some gold pieces, and the small change in silver. And as the money lay there before us, hardly visible in the light of the fire, Gonzalo let fly.

“‘What can I do with these few lousy coppers?’ he asked. ‘Here we’ve been, slaving away like mad for seven long weeks, seven days a week, from dawn to sundown, all through the blazing heat. We limped home so done in we could hardly move our fingers to cook our miserable grub that we were too tired to swallow. We slept on the floor. No Sunday, no pleasure, no music, no dancing, no girls, no drinking — only some stinking tobacco rolled in corn husks. And now look — what’s the use of these lousy coppers?’

“He shoved the money away with his foot.

“‘My shirt is in rags,’ he grumbled on. ‘My pants are rags. My sandals — take a look at them, Antonio — no soles, no nothing. In the end, after sweating like a work horse, there’s nothing left. If only it were forty pesos!’

“Saying this, his face lit up.

“‘With forty pesos I could manage. I could go to Mexico City, buy myself some decent clothes so that if I wanted to say buenas tardes to a girl she’d see me as a human being. And I’d still have a few pesos to tide me over for a few days.’

“‘You’re right, Gonzalo,’ I said, ‘forty pesos is just the sum I need to buy the absolute necessities.’

“‘Do you know what I’m thinking?’ Gonzalo went on. ‘Let’s play for the money. Neither of us can get anywhere with the few sickly coppers we’ve got. If you get my money or I get yours, then at least one of us can do something. As it is, we’re both bums. I’d drink away these few coppers at one sitting, just out of rage at having worked for nothing.’

“Gonzalo’s idea wasn’t bad,” Antonio went on with his tale. “I too would have drunk up the little I had left. Once you get started on that goddamned tequila, you don’t stop until the last centavo’s gone. You go on drinking, drunk or sober; and what you don’t get down your gullet, your fellow boozers will swig for you. The café and flophouse keepers will cheat a drunk, and the miserable coins that are left are pinched from your pocket. You know all about it, Gales.”

Didn’t I, though. I knew cheap tequila. You shudder after each copita and have to gulp down something for a chaser. The barkeeper, or cantinero, is always wise enough to keep a supply of pickled botanas on sticks, but they burn your throat. So you keep on guzzling tequila, drenching your gizzard with the stuff as if bewitched or as if the damned throat-stripper were some magic elixir which, for some mysterious reason, had to be shot down without touching the tongue. And when at last you think you’ve had enough, you’ve ceased to exist. Everything is wiped away — trouble, sorrow, anger, passion. Only absolute nothingness remains. World and ego are dispersed.

Antonio brooded for a while, as though searching his memory. Then he went on: “We had no cards and no dice. We drew sticks. But the same stake of one peso kept passing from one to the other. It was never more than five pesos that changed hands. Then we played heads or tails. Strange, it still was never more than a few pesos that passed from one pocket to the other. Sam played too, and his money didn’t change much either. Meanwhile it had got late — ten or eleven o’clock by my judgment.

“Then Gonzalo got wild and cursed like a madman. He’d had enough of this kid’s game, he said, and wanted to know for sure how he’d stand in the morning.

“‘Well, Gonzalo, what do you say we ought to do?’

“‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘That’s just what makes me so mad.

Here we are fooling around like half-witted kids and not getting anywhere-back and forth all the time. It’s enough to drive you up the pole.’

"Then, after squatting by the fire for a while, staring into the embers, rolling himself one cigarette after another and throwing them into the fire half smoked, he jumped up suddenly and said, ‘I know what we’ll do. We’ll have an Aztec duel for the whole stake.’

“‘An Aztec duel?’ I asked. ‘What’s that?’

“‘What? You don’t know the Aztec duel?’ Gonzalo was, genuinely surprised.

“‘No. How should I, Gonzalo? My family is of Spanish descent, even if we have been here for more than a hundred years. I’ve never heard of an Aztec duel.’

“‘It’s quite simple, Antonio. We take two young, straight saplings, trim them clean, tie our knives securely to the tips, and then hurl them at each other, until one or the other of us gives up from exhaustion. One of us will tire before the other; the one who stays on his feet wins, and gets the money. That will decide the money.’

“I thought it over for a few moments. It seemed a crazy idea to me.

“‘You’re not scared by any chance, are you, Spaniard?’ laughed Gonzalo.

“There was a funny sort of sneer in his voice and this made me flare up: ‘Scared of you? Of an Indian? A Spaniard is never scared! I’ll show you! Come on, let’s have your Aztec duel!’

“We took a flaming stick from the fire and stumbled around in the bush until we’d found two suitable saplings. Sam had been directed to bring plenty of fuel and build up a good fire so that we could see where we were aiming. We stripped the saplings and tied our opened pocketknives firmly to their tips.

“‘We don’t let the whole blade stick out,’ said Gonzalo. ‘We don’t want to murder each other. It’s only a game. The blade needn’t stick out more than an inch. There, that’s right!’ he said, looking at my spear.

’Now we must bind a piece of heavy wood near the blade end to give the spear its proper shaft weight; otherwise it’ll wobble and won’t fly straight.’

“Then we padded our left arms with grass and wrapped them round with a coarse convas sack. ‘This is important,’ Gonzalo explained. ‘That’s where the fun comes in, catching and parrying the spear. The well-padded arm serves as a shield did in ancient times. You know, the old Aztec warriors also used shields. You must understand, in this duel we are fighting, that we don’t want to kill one another, only exhaust the other partner. Keep all this in mind; it is supposed to be only a game;

“When we’d got everything ready, Sam said: ‘What about me? Am I supposed to stand by and watch? I want to be in on it too.’

“The Chink was right. He had to have something for his trouble as stakeholder and witness. You know what devils the Chinese are for gambling, don’t you, Gales? They’d gamble away the price of their own funeral if given the chance.

“‘Now see here, Sam,’ Gonzalo said to the Chink, ‘you can bet on one of us.’

“‘Good,’ Sam said. ‘I’ll bet on you, Gonzalo, five pesos. You give me five pesos if you win. If you lose, you get five pesos flom me. It’s not in youl intelest to lose, because that would mean good-bye to youl twenty pesos.’

“We each deposited our twenty pesos, which Sam placed before him on a stone; then he added his own stake of five pesos. Sam paced off twenty-five steps from either side of the fire, and we each placed a wooden pole on the marks. If either duelist overstepped his mark he would forfeit five pesos to the other.

"Then we started throwing the spears at each other, parrying each spear with our grass-girded arm as it came to us, and then returning it. With the fire flickering and smoking as it was I could see Gonzalo only in uncertain outline. I could hardly see the spear as it flew toward me, the night was so pitch dark. At the second throw I got a stab in my right shoulder. You can still see the wound, Gales.”

He pulled his shirt from his shoulder and I saw the stab wound, still not healed.

“Gradually, we got into our stride, or, rather, we got worked up. After a few more exchanges I got another stab which went through my trousers and into my leg. But I was a long way from finished.

“How long we kept on throwing, I don’t know. As neither of us would give in, the tempo became more and more wild.

An element of savagery entered into the match, and anybody watching us then never would have believed that it was only a game.

"Perhaps we threw for half an hour, perhaps for an hour; I don’t know. Neither did I know if I’d hit Gonzalo at all seri ously. But I knew that I was beginning to tire. The spear began to feel as if it weighed twenty pounds, and my throwing slowed down. Before long I found myself hardly able to bend down to pick up the spear, and once when I was bending I almost collapsed. But I knew that I mustn’t allow myself to sink to the ground; if I did I would certainly be unable to get on my feet again.

“I couldn’t see Gonzalo now. I couldn’t see anything at all. I kept throwing the spears in the direction where I figured he must be. I no longer cared whether I hit him or not. All that worried me was that I shouldn’t be the first to stop. So, as the spears kept coming from the other side, I kept throwing them back.

“Suddenly, as the fire flared up for an instant, I saw Gonzalo turning around to look for the spear, which evidently had missed him widely. He went back a few steps, found it, picked it up, and then, as he turned toward me to throw it, fell on his knees as heavily as if someone had knocked him down with a terrific blow.

“I didn’t throw the spear which I had in my hand because I was only too glad to stand it upright and lean on it; otherwise I’d have dropped to the ground. If Gonzalo had gotten to his feet and thrown his spear, I couldn’t have lifted my arm to ward it off or to throw it back.

“But Gonzalo remained on his knees. Sam ran to him and called out: ‘Thel’, now, I’ve lost my five pesos. Antonio, you’ve won. Gonzalo’s given up.’

“I dragged myself to a box near the fire, but hadn’t the strength to sit down on it. I dropped to the ground by the side of it. Sam dragged Gonzalo to the fire and gave him some water, which he gulped down.

“I now saw that his chest was covered with blood. But I was past being interested in anything around me. My head dropped, and as I opened my eyes I saw that my chest was as streaked with blood as Gonzalo’s. But I didn’t care. Nothing seemed to matter.

“Sam brought me the forty pesos and stuffed them into my pocket. I saw him also put five pesos into Gonzalo’s pocket. I had the feeling that all this was happening a long way off.

“We stayed like this for a good half hour, maybe a whole hour. The fire died down.

“Then Sam said, ‘I’m going to lie down and get some lest.’

“I echoed these words, as they were my own: ‘Yes, I’m going to lie down and get some rest.’

“I saw Gonzalo get up, too, and staggering and clutching like me, he clambered up the ladder and into the house.

“When I’d dropped to the floor and just as I was dozing off, I heard Gonzalo say: ‘If you leave early in the morning and I’m not up, don’t bother to wake me. I want to get a good long sleep. I’m beat. Anyway, I can’t travel with you on the train; I haven’t got the fare.’

“Before dawn, Sam gave me a nudge. It was time to be off. We had to be at the station by eight o’clock that evening; otherwise we’d lose two days. It was still pitch dark. I could see nothing in the hut, not even Gonzalo. We didn’t wake him but let him sleep undisturbed, and, picking up our bundles, were off just as dawn was breaking.

“A short distance from the house we met the Indian who wanted to buy Abraham’s chickens.

“Well, there you are, Gales, that’s the story, the true story.”

“Antonio, you’d never have gotten Gonzalo to wake up that morning,” I said.

“I’ve told you the true story, Gales. We can go and check it with Sam right now. He knows the truth.”

“It’s not necessary to check it, Antonio. Let’s leave it at that. I believe you. I know the truth when I hear it.”

The music in the band-shell started up.

I closed my eyes. I wanted to shut out the harsh electric lights. I saw Gonzalo lying on the floor, banished from the world of the living and the hopeful, his hand clasping to his breast a ball of raw, blood-blackened cotton.

Cotton.

Antonio evidently had been watching me without my being aware of it.

“Why are you weeping, Gales?”

“Shut up! You… you must be seeing things. You do get some crazy ideas into your head.”

He was silent.

“This damned funeral music, Antonio! Why can’t they play ‘The Merry Widow’ or ‘Yes, we have no bananas’! Life is fun! Funeral marches are for corpses, comic opera for the living. Come on, Antonio. It’s nearly ten. What did that son-of-a-bitch say? ‘Be to work on time,’ he said, for one peso twenty-five the day!”