by Hardy Jones
“Those mules’ll pull a plow as long as a man’ll walk behind ‘em. I know, my daddy’s had me behind ‘em for plenty of acres, and my daddy wants two-hundred for ‘em,” Hampton said, filling the sweaty stranger’s silence.
The stranger fussed with his white straw hat, beating the stifling summer air in front of his face, not seeming to pay Hampton, a short dumpy boy of fifteen, any mind. “But since it’s Sunday and my daddy ain’t nowhere to be seen, I’ll let you have ‘em for one-fifty, and I’ll tell my daddy I ain’t the man he is.”
The hat stopped. The air between them cooled. Hampton had the stranger’s attention.
Hampton’s daddy, Sims – a ruddy faced barrel-chested second-generation Welsh immigrant who stood just four inches shy of seven-feet – only wanted fifty dollars for the mules as good faith money for the bank to make up for the last two months’ payments he’d missed. But Hampton had a plan for the other hundred dollars. He had two hundred dollars of his own, which he carried everywhere rolled in butcher paper stuffed in his sock. At night, he slept with the roll in his clenched fist. He switched hands each night, so as not to have a weak hand. Hampton always planned for times of weakness: when they hit, he planned on being prepared. First man on his feet was the first man to the dollar, and Hampton was after every dollar he could get.
His daddy hadn’t been able to adjust when a blight wiped out three straight years of cotton. Hampton, the oldest and best picker of the three Royal boys, found work picking all over east Texas and across the Red River into Oklahoma. And although his daddy demanded Hampton give him all of his money, the boy, never prone to giving anyone all of his money, had saved that two hundred dollars over the last five years. After traveling and picking through the season, Hampton was thankful to stand only five-four. His younger brothers, Cecil, twelve, and Bradley, ten, towered over Hampton. They’d be men, so their daddy believed, big strong men. But never Hampton.
Sims, cotton farmer and want to-be rancher he was, exacted strict obedience from his sons and bird of a wife, Ellen, who imposed Calvinistic doctrine on them all. But Hampton, hardheaded as his daddy and possessor of a sharper wit, bowed his neck on every occasion. Hampton’s mouth was the reason he was not in town that Sunday with the rest of the family. Sims, the day before, had put up a new hog pen made from scrap lumber. When finished, the proud papa called the family to behold his creation. General compliments, but positive reinforcement nonetheless was thrown about by Ellen and Cecil and Bradley. Hampton bid his time and waited until the others paid their insincere homage and a proud smile covered his daddy’s face.
“Looks nigger-rigged to me.”
Sims grabbed his diminutive son, lifting him off his feet. “You saying your daddy’s a nigger, boy?”
“No, sir. But you certainly did some work like one.”
The slap drew blood from the corner of Hampton’s mouth, but didn’t knock the smirk from it.
“The work of a nigger, you say. Well, you’re gonna tear it down, now, before you wash up and eat dinner. Then tomorrow, after services, while we’re in town enjoying ourselves, you’ll be here rebuilding this hog pen. And it better not look like a nigger built it, boy.”
Hampton, the hog pen unfinished, counted the crumpled bills and separated the money: his daddy’s fifty in the left pocket and his hundred in the right. Hampton walked to the well, pulled up the bucket and drank his fill, letting the water, icy and cold, run down the front of his shirt. Then he went and lay on the front porch, which was shaded by a massive oak, the coolest place to be on the farm. Hampton, bare-feet propped against a rough-hewed porch-post, fell asleep and couldn’t wait for his daddy to get home.
“Wake up, boy. Why the hell ain’t that hog pen built?”
“Because I no longer work for you,” Hampton said. He stood and straightened his shirt. “I work for me, and only me.”
“What the hell you talking about, boy?”
“Your language, Sims,” Ellen said. “It is Sunday.”
“What are you talking about, boy?”
“My freedom, from you and from being poor.”
Sims raised his fist, but saw his wife’s face light up in horror. “Boy, how do you propose to earn this freedom?”
“Buy it,” Hampton said.
“What kind of money does a cotton-picking runty teenager have?”
“A hundred and fifty dollars,” Hampton said. “And you can have all of it, if you let me be my own man.”
“Man?” Sims seemed amused by his son using this word. “You ain’t big enough.”
“Size don’t make a man,” Hampton said. “Wealth does. You think ‘em little skinny bankers you’re always cussing are scared of you because you’re bigger than ‘em? Well, they’re not because they know if you miss any more payments, they can walk in and take this land from you.”
Sims again clenched his fist.
“I’ve got enough money, Father, in my pockets to keep ‘em off your back for the next three months.”
“Hand it over, boy.”
“Money ain’t yours. Least, not all of it.”
“Quit talking riddles, boy.”
“I sold your mules. Got your fifty dollars.”
“Give it to me, every cent, right now.”
Sims’ huge hand lay open in front of Hampton, who reached in his left pocket, fished around as if he couldn’t find the money although it was in his hand the whole time, made his daddy cuss again, and then he produced the money. Hampton, with much theatrics, rolled the money out on his chest, pressing out all the wrinkles before handing it to his daddy.
Sims quickly counted it, and breathed hard as if he might expire at any moment. He balled the money up, shoved it deep in his pocket, and exhaled forcefully. “That’s not enough for three months, boy.”
“That’s not all the money I’ve got.”
“Holding out, huh. I always knew not to trust you, boy.”
“Sims!” Ellen said. “Of all the things to tell your oldest child.”
“It’s true,” Sims said. “He’s holding money out on us.”
“Where did you get the other money, son?” Ellen asked.
“From the mules.”
“How the hell did you do that?” Sims was too irate to heed his wife’s warnings about his language and keeping the Sabbath holy. “You lying on top of holding out money from your family? You’re a disgrace, and stop talking in those damn riddles.”
“You wanted fifty dollars for the mules. Is that not correct, Father?”
“You know damn well it is.”
“Well, that man from outside Beaumont with the white straw hat, he didn’t know that.”
“You sold my mules for one-hundred and fifty dollars!”
“Very keen, Father. Very keen.”
“Give me my money then,” Sims said.
“I did.”
“You only gave me part of it.”
“I gave you what you was asking,” Hampton said.
“I only asked for fifty cause I didn’t know anyone would give a hundred dollars more for those broke down jack-asses.”
“They would and did, once I made the deal sound better than it was,” Hampton said.
“It’s all about salesmanship and perception.”
“No. It’s all about you giving me my money.”
“Like I just told you, Father: I gave you your money. The rest, this hundred dollars, which is double what you made off your own mules, is mine.”
Sims’ face turned a deeper hue of red, and Hampton couldn’t help but chuckle, thinking his daddy might explode right in front of him. His mama and brothers, however, didn’t see the humor in the situation, and Ellen, like a protective hen, pushed her younger boys to safety inside the house. But Ellen, knowing her husband’s violent temper and savage strength, stayed on the porch to intervene between Sims and Hampton.
“I’m gonna say this one more time: Give me my money, boy!”
“No,” Ellen said. “You took that boy’s cotton earnings, but I won’t let you take this from him. You wanted fifty dollars for your mules and you got it. You can’t go reaching for money you didn’t ask for.”
“Hush up, woman.”
“No. Right is right, fair is fair, and Sims Crawford Royal, you are being neither, and if you beat that boy you’ll have to beat me too.” Ellen, with ferocity in her eyes that came from believing and knowing she was morally right, stepped between father and son.
Hampton, his face all a grin, rested his chin on his mama’s shoulder.
“Now, Father, you can have this one-hundred dollars under one condition: you no longer have any say about my life. You’ve got to let me be my own man. Is getting rid of me, your first-born embarrassment, worth a hundred dollars to you?”
“Your own man?” Sims said. “You’re not a man now, and never will be.”
“I’m more man than you are, Father. A man provides for his family, and it’s been my cotton money putting food on the table, and me out in the fields plowing behind those ornery mules while you’re at the bank getting further in debt.”
Hampton stepped off the porch and away from his mama and daddy.
“Seeing as how I’ve been doing all that, I figure I’m already a man. I just want to make it official with you.”
“Don’t do this, Hamp,” his mama said. “I need you; your brothers need you. Sims, talk sense into your son.”
“He is talking sense,” Sims said. “But you think a hundred dollars is enough for me to let you go?”
“More than enough,” Hampton said. “Seeing as how you always said I’d never be a man anyhow, a hundred dollars is a good haul for you. If I do become a man, you will have been compensated; and if I don’t become a man, you’ll have a hundred dollars, plus the satisfaction of telling me and everyone else that you was right.”
Ellen saw the gleam in her husband’s eyes and heard the conviction in her son’s voice and she feared there was no stopping what had begun.
“But, son, where will you stay?” she asked.
“Here,” Hampton said.
“It don’t seem right for an independent man to remain living with his parents,” Sims said. “You sure you’re not wanting to only be half a man?”
“I’ll stay here and pay you fifty cents a week for my room,” Hampton said. “That’s two dollars a month, two dollars more than you make right now. And I’ll pay for my meals, when I eat here.”
Hampton pulled his thumbs through his suspenders and rocked back contentedly on his heels.
“See, Father, me being a man is already making you money.”
“A dollar a week.”
Ellen cried: “How can you think of charging your son to stay in the house where he was born?”
“He wants to be a man, so I’m showing him the choices a man faces,” Sims said.
“Everything just ain’t handed to you, and you don’t always get to make the rules, like Hamp seems to think.”
Hampton, never losing his smile, rubbed his thumbs up and down his suspenders.
“That’s fair, Father. Mighty fair indeed. But if I pay a dollar a week, I get two meals a day thrown in the agreement.”
“No meals.”
“Father, as hard a bargainer as you are, I don’t see how those bankers ever got you into debt. And it’s too bad your next payment at the bank is due Friday, and what’s even worse is that you’ve missed the last two months’ payments. So, I guess I won’t stay here, but, after next week, Mama, Cecil, Bradley, and you, Father, won’t be staying here neither.”
Hampton turned and began to walk away; after he’d walked twenty feet, he turned around and said: “But at least I have this hundred dollars to begin my hobo life with.”
He smiled, bowed his head, and started walking again; this time also whistling.
“One meal,” Sims shouted. “Breakfast.”
“Two meals,” Hampton said, his back still to his daddy, “and I get to choose which ones they are.”
Silence. Hampton resumed walking. Before he took five more steps, he heard:
“Agreed.”
A lilt to his short-legged cadence, Hampton strode past his mama and daddy, straight into the house and sat at the head of the kitchen table, where he counted out, bill by bill, the hundred dollars that allowed him to be his own man.
