Thursday, September 11, 2014

Slim, part 1


On the first day of the tobacco harvest, Chuck and I walked the mile from his parents’ new house to Slim’s shack. I don’t know what else to call the place. It was technically a house, but that was giving the place a lot of undeserved credit. The area in front had been beaten flat and bare by the constant traffic of feet, hooves and paws. Where grass normally would be, only hard, yellow Maryland hardpan was visible. The left side of Slim’s porch had collapsed and the tin roof slumped like the back of a horse soon destined for the glue factory. The unpainted exterior was gray, dried and splitting in many places. In a pen next to the house was a large hog. A cow was tethered one hundred yards to the side of the house, munching the only grass in the area. Chickens roamed about the yard, nesting in odd, ad-hoc places: the inside of a discarded tire or on top of the firewood pile. We parted a sea of fowl and small children as we approached Slim’s front steps.

Inside, a woman in her late thirties or early forties - much younger than Slim - cooked ham and eggs for all of us. She eyed us suspiciously and said nothing. We weren’t expecting to be fed as part of the job, but Slim insisted, "You cain't work a decent day without you don't eat nothin’. Dig in!"

The woman in the kitchen stood in front of the stove and did not join us at the table, even after the cooking was finished. Her hard stare made clear that she was not happy to have two middle-class white boys suddenly in her midst. I wondered whether they had argued about whether to hire us. Chuck and I could not have looked like particularly reliable types.. What we looked like were a couple of slackers with long hair and bad posture. Even I did not think that we would prove to be very industrious. There was no doubt that we were not used to farm work. Perhaps hiring us was done as a neighborly offer to Chuck’s family. Perhaps Slim hoped that in return, he would be hired when work was needed around the Hurd place, seeing as they had twenty acres and no tractor to cut the grass or pull stumps and nothing to plow the long, steep driveway when it snowed. There were certainly many ways that city slickers like the Hurds could use a good man like Slim.

Chuck's family moved from the DC area to the small Southern Maryland town of LaPlata to get away from all the bad influences in the city. Soon, they found that Chuck and his older brother Bob still managed to find plenty of trouble. The truth was that the Hurd brothers were the main source of crime in that town, but their parents were too close to the problem to realize it. Chuck Hurd was that one friend that everyone has had – the one who was full of bad ideas that were sure to get you in trouble, but who somehow managed to talk you into doing them anyway. So, to escape the mean streets of LaPlata, the Hurds built a big house on twenty wooded acres in the center of Charles County, right in the middle of tobacco country and right next to Slim’s farm.

I guess technically, it wasn't Slim's farm, as he was a sharecropper. I had no idea that sharecroppers still existed, but then, I was only fifteen. The standard agreement with landlords was that the sharecropper paid for the seed, plowed the fields, harvested and auctioned off the crop. Fifty percent of the profits went to the landowner. The remaining cash had to last Slim and his family until the next harvest a year later.

Slim had been around Chuck's house a few times, stopping by to drop off some fresh corn on the cob or offering the use of his tractor to pull stumps. I was shocked the first time I heard Slim call Chuck’s father “Mr. Charley,” as that name evoked Jim Crow and the enforced deference of black men to white. Only a little twinkle in Slim’s eye betrayed his tongue-in-cheek use of the term.

Slim was as weather-beaten and broken down as his house. His black leathery skin was stretched tightly over his ribs, forearms and cheekbones. His eyes and forehead were deeply creased and his hands were gnarled tree roots, bumpy and crooked. His limp must have been painful, judging by the way he pulled his elbows up as he moved, like someone trying to walk barefoot over broken glass. Though he usually smiled, his eyes were large and pained, jaundiced from years of hard drinking and dotted with brown spots from burst blood vessels.

Slim had visited many times since the Hurds moved in at the beginning of the summer, as had I. At some point during one of his visits, Slim mentioned that he needed help with the tobacco harvest and asked if he could he borrow ‘the boys’. Chuck’s parents laughed and readily agreed and before we knew it, Chuck and I had jobs that we really didn’t want. Harvest took place during the month of August, and I arranged with my parents to stay at Chuck’s for the month. I knew it would be a hard job and had been dreading it. Now the time had come.

After breakfast, Slim hooked up a flat bed trailer to his 1950's era John Deere and hauled us out to the field. Already waiting there were half a dozen black men and women, all related to Slim in some way. We were not introduced but they seemed to know who we were. We must have been talked about beforehand.

14 comments:

Molly said...

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.
Sir Winston Churchill

Anonymous said...

The scene is beautifully set here, Bug.

Very fine descriptive writing. I look forward to the coming installments.

I particularly liked the description of Slim.

"His limp must have been painful, judging by the way he pulled his elbows up as he moved, like someone trying to walk barefoot over broken glass."

Bravo, my friend.

~d said...

I cannot wait for more. You tell a wonderful story! Like, I have good stories, but I dont tell them well.
(??)

Bugwit said...

Molly: Well, if old Winston was correct, then I didn't have much of a life at that time!

Winters: Thank you, sir! There's two more parts coming. Yep, slim was interesting, and that was a unique look into another world, from the inside.

Tildy: Not true! You tell them very well!

MarmiteToasty said...

Can I be your agent :) xxxx

Bugwit said...

Marmy: 10% of nothin' is still nothin'!

MarmiteToasty said...

ok....... I'll take ya hiking boots, and ya PJs lol

x

Bugwit said...

Hah! I need new boots, and I don't have any pj's. You can have a pair of my boxer-briefs and a t-shirt!

As my manager, I expect you to get me new boots and briefs!

Spilling Ink said...

I don't know, Bug, this ringing a bell. Have I dated Chuck?

:-)

Good stuff as always. Eloquently written. I'll be back.

Bugwit said...

Lynn: God, I hope not, for your sake! I'll have to tell you all my stories of double dates with Chuck. Bad news, all of them.

ChickyBabe said...

Once again, I am taken on a trip through your mind... very graphic and descriptive Bug. Well done :).

M said...

great imagery, as always bug. :D

missy said...

Did you take that photo? You should really flickr your stuff, too!

missy x

Bugwit said...

SuperCB: Thank you. I was just a boy, didn't know right from wrong...

Thanks M!

Missy: No, I didn't take that, and I really should have credited it.

I have promised to Flickr, but haven't followed through, huh? Well, maybe today.