Lesson 23:No More Cotton Blues

A Change In the Air
The next morning I heard something so strident it
sounded like a squall of wild cats. I looked out the window and
saw a tractor chugging down the road, belching soot from a
skinny smoke stack. And there was Boone occupying the driver’s
seat. “Get a move on!” he yelled. “All you croppers got some
serious picking to do if you want to get the crop in on time.”
Then he gunned the engine and started driving toward our
place.
“This here tractor can do the work of 100 hands. Take it
from me, your days are numbered,” Boone called out to every
sharecropper within hearing distance.
I had seen pictures of tractors before. But seeing one up
close made me realize that our life as sharecroppers was about
to change in ways I couldn’t even begin to imagine. Like he did
every morning, my father walked over to my side of the bed and
gently put his hand on my shoulder. “Time to go, son,” he said.
That day was hotter than the day before. Boone was back
on his horse riding from field to field, trying to get the workers
to pick faster. Everybody knew how he had bad-mouthed
Ardell, and some of us decided to get even. We started picking
the cotton bolls lower on the stem, thorns and all. It took us less
time to fill our sacks, and when we weighed in, the sacks were
heavier than usual. Ardell and I finished picking by four o’clock.
Boone did the weighing. He looked warily at us, but he never
figured out that he’d been tricked.
8