Excerpt from the Book

Grampa had been sitting under the huge walnut tree near the corral since sundown, watching his three field hands steadily plodding along behind their mules. They had been plowing since daybreak, trying to get ahead of the rain. The wind had carried the suggestion of rain the day before, of this Grampa was sure, and now it was only a matter of time before the deluge. He had over forty years of experience in trying to second-guess nature, and prided himself on his weather forecasts.

They had to get the cotton plowed before the rains came. By the time the fields were dry enough to plow again, it would be too late. The cotton would be so tall by then, the mules wouldn’t be able to walk between the rows without tearing down the stalks. And the grass and weeds would choke the cotton so badly, there wouldn’t be enough cotton to even pay the planting costs.

As the figures of the men and the mules reached the crest of the hill across the field and were silhouetted against the horizon, they seemed to rise up out of the ground. Then they slowly disappeared into the dim light made even dimmer by the far timberline as it rose to meet the hill.

Grampa watched them fade out of sight, his brow wrinkling as he tried to visualize their approximate positions as they continued toward the bottomland to the combination terrace and turnrow. He began to count silently, figuring that it would take no more than ten seconds for the first of them to come back into view. Sure enough, before he reached the count of three, he could see the first mule’s head appear above the hill. A smile passed over his face.

Grampa was finally reaping the reward he had coming from putting up with these men for the previous couple of months. They had worked steadily enough through the planting season. But they had also kept the family awake way too many nights, thanks to their drinking bouts and the bickering that seemed to erupt every time they opened a new bottle. The loud arguments that accompanied their drinking sessions almost invariably had to be settled by Grampa before he and the rest of the family could get any sleep.

The thought had crossed Grampa’s mind more than once that maybe he ought to give Ervin Laird and Bo Pardue their walking papers. But the reality was, the third man he had working deserved the lion’s share of the blame, and that man was Floyd Franklin. He was the one who set up the whiskey still in the wooded area to the rear of the house, completely ignoring Grampa’s objections. Floyd was also the one who fueled the fires of dissension that flared up any time the men had idle time on their hands and whiskey in their bellies.

Considering that Floyd happened to be married to Edra, Grampa and Gramma’s only daughter, Grampa could hardly afford to fire him. Floyd could not have supported the family without Grampa putting him to work.

Hearing the jangle of the harness coming closer, Grampa placed his hands against the tree and pulled himself to a standing position. He stretched to loosen his arthritis-stiffened joints before he made his way to the gate near the barn, meeting up with the men as they led their mules in from the field in the near total darkness.

“Y’all go on in the house and get supper,” Grampa told his men. “I’ll take the harness off these mules and feed ‘n water ‘em. You three have done enough for one day.”

Exhausted, Ervin Laird stretched and exhaled loudly. “I do believe today is the hardest I ever worked in my life!”

Floyd was agreeing with Laird when something caught his eye. “Did y’all see that lightning way over yonder just now?”

“Yeah,” agreed Bo and Ervin.

At nineteen, Bo was the youngest of the bunch, but that didn’t seem to have given him any advantage; he was just as tired as either of the other men, including fifty-year-old Laird. With a crippled left arm, plowing was a real challenge and doubly tiring for Bo. He had broken his shoulder in a fall from the porch of his home when he was about five years old and the wound, left unattended, had rendered his arm virtually useless.