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the extra pairs of bib overalls we possessed by the time we had reached the Louisiana line. These too were washed in due course.
    At least our faces and hands were clean when we sat down to a table covered with a variety of foods. Even sweet potato pie, my favorite. Lurie stood by until we had our first serving, then left the room, Ernest's eyes following her as she passed the dishes and until she left us. There can be so much food that some hunger is assuaged by merely looking at it. Ernest was to remark later, “You'd of thought they knew we were coming,” andCadillac, reading Ernest's thoughts, said, “That's some woman he's got. Who'd of figured on finding such a looker out here in the middle of nowhere?” Ernest had only grunted.
    At the table Anson stood beside me, and when he saw I tasted the glass of water and rejected it, even with lumps of ice, he poured a tumbler of buttermilk for me, the summertime drink of choice in Alabama. And noting my difficulty cutting a piece from the steak, he divided it into bite-sized pieces. He even took up a fork and poked a morsel into my mouth, with Cadillac and Rance taking note the whole while. I shunned the beans and potatoes, the beets and mustard greens. As nobody counseled me to make a better choice of foods, as they would have at home, I dined mostly on pie and pound cake and pear preserves. And drank buttermilk. My thirst seemed endless.
    It was no wonder that we were ready for a nap on the cool grass under the chinaberries after such a gorging. But not before the Knuckleheads got in their licks.
    â€œBoy, have you got it made,” said one.
    â€œGot him eating out of your hand,” said the other.
    â€œIf I was in your place I'd make it pay off.”
    Ernest added a halfhearted piece of advice. “Just watch yourself.” He saw that he was losing authority.
    Surfeited with food and drink as we were, we slept longer than intended. About four o'clock, Ernest waked us and said, “Let's get cracking. We're making no dough laying here.” Blunt brought cotton sacks for the three of them, and Anson led me into the house for a fitting of my own sack. It was already sewed, lacking only the strap, which needed merely stitching on. Though something of a toy sack, it would drag along the ground a full yard and a half behind me, as did sacks in Texas, where rows seemed endless. A body picked until the bag was half-full, then cut off a row and picked back toward the beginning.A wagon would be there with steelyard scales to weigh the harvest.
    Lurie sewed on the loop and hung it across my shoulder for measurement. Then she suddenly pressed my head against her bosom. My face tore up. I cried soundlessly, tears smearing my cheeks. I hardly knew why I cried. Because I was so far from home—from Alabama?
    â€œMy baby,” Lurie breathed.
    Through my tears I saw Anson's discomfort, a sudden jerking of his head so his own tears might not be seen and his leaving the room for a moment. A wound had been opened, as I was to learn. Anson and Lurie had been together three years and were childless, for whatever reason. Lurie was in her late twenties, Anson in his mid-thirties.
    Blunt was waiting at the door to lead me to the fields, along with Ernest and the Knuckleheads. When Anson brought me out he hesitated. “Maybe the boy ought to stay at the house. He's already had a long day,” he said.
    â€œNo longer than the rest of us,” Ernest said. He was not relinquishing his mandate readily. “Young fellows can take it better than us older ones. They bounce back quicker.”
    The walk sliced through the fields of barely opened cotton to a farther field a half mile distant where the plants had a week's advance growth. Ahead we saw the pickers, some dozen of them, snatching at the bolls. Most of them were part of Blunt's Indian-Mexican family, the rest, other hired hands. Their arms worked like pistons. The most adept could pick up to four