The Cotton Field

Who has ever actually seen one?

Seemingly as if two elements were engaged in a war to overwhelm the other, the roar of the automobile engine fought valiantly with the pounding delivery of the desired choice of music from the ever-straining sound system. With the top down on the vehicle, the trio inside were caught in the wind and the sun, journeying along at such a reckless rate on the deserted road outside of town. They were compelled along such a dangerous path by the reality of freedom all about them; from job, educator and parent. The engine revved more; anything to escape the orders and discipline they had heard all their lives. They hadn't a care in the world and better not anybody or anything get in their way. 

Then they rounded a clump of trees at such a breakneck speed. The land opened up to a sprawling location. They each saw the presence in their midst and the motorist thankfully opted to begin slowing down. They gazed at what was before them as if Bigfoot was standing there, watching them. 

The car actually came to a stop, but the motor remained running. One or two expletives were uttered at this sight. Then the driver just shut the engine off.

They stared at the sprawling sea of blankness beside the road. As blue as the empty sky was above, so was the ground seemingly covered with some visual aspect of what might be snow. 

But this was not snow. Far from it. 

It was a cotton field. 

The group sat in the car, saying nothing, with the car also silent. Finally one young man who was a passenger opened the door and stepped out. 

"Quintaine, where ya goin', man?" asked the driver. 

"I wanna see it up close." 

"Come on, man. Let's get out of here."

"You ever been in a cotton field, Jacrae?"

"I've been by here before. I don't want to see it."

Quintaine looked out over the field without moving, then said, "I want to set it all on fire and watch it burn."

"Man, don't do that." Making sure no automobiles were coming, Jacrae stepped out from the driver's side and walked around the car to Quintaine.

"This is somebody's livelihood. Their income. Nobody picks cotton by hand anymore. They use machines."

"I've never seen a cotton field," the third person, a girl, spoke up. 

"Well, there it is," Quintaine stated, stepping out of her way. "Better enjoy it while you can, because it is about to be charcoaled." 

"Quintaine, it might even be a black man who owns this field. Things have changed, man," said Jacrae. 

"Why'd you stop here, Jacrae?" asked the woman. 

"I . . . . . . I don't know why I stopped, Vernice. I've been by here before, I just . . . . "

"Jacrae, look," Vernice said, pointing out toward the field. 

Jacrae turned to look just in time to see Quintaine making his way over the very narrow, virtually non-existent ditch to be standing on the edge of the field. 

"Quintaine!"

"I'm gonna burn it," Quintaine said, looking back. "I'm gonna burn all of it!" 

And with that, he took off running down the narrow strip running between two rows of blooming cotton plants. 

"Man," Jacrae fumed, then took off to catch up with him. 

"Hey, wait for me," shouted Vernice. "I'm not waiting here by myself!"

"Then come on!" Jacrae said, running after Quintaine, down the same dirt path. 

She followed suit and Jacrae looked back to see her, all the while still venturing forth to catch Quintaine.

"It's hot out here," Vernice fussed. She winced at the branch of a cotton boll, hanging out and catching her trousers leg. She slapped at it, then carefully clamped it between two fingers and slowly, but gently guided it out of her way. 

"Hurry up, Vernice!" Jacrae yelled back to her. "I think I've lost Quintaine!" 

"I'm hurrying," she yelled back. Another cotton boll got in her way. The limbs were all virtually growing over the path were a person was supposed to walk. 

Vernice moved a bit, then had to guide another cotton branch out of her path. She was annoyed. 

"Jacrae!" she yelled. She looked disgustedly at the cotton plants. She was suddenly idly curious and she reached out to a branch close by and just felt the twig, dried and near brittle. As she brought her hand back, her palm moved over the soft white cotton boll. She hesitated, then touched it again. So soft. She chuckled to herself, finding the irony in perhaps what she was about to do; she plucked the boll of cotton. She held the substance and rolled it around in her hand. There was a pit, a rock. No, she thought, must be a seed. 

She reached for another boll, so she would be holding more cotton. She moved down a few plants, to find one where the boll seemed to be its whitest. She smiled as she plucked the cotton and brought it together with the cotton in her other hand. She rolled them together in one boll and looked at how pretty and soft it all was. She had never really seen cotton in such a natural state. It was almost like holding a flower. It was so beautiful. 

A gentle breeze blew through the field, along Vernice the chance to look up and out over the vast field. It was then she recalled how she got there. She softly spoke, "Jacrae," but he was nowhere to be seen. She was literally standing alone in the cotton. 

Vernice let the boll she was holding fall from her hands, where it landed in the nearest plant and lightly remained on the top. She began moving back toward the road, where the car was. The field was silent. All she could see was cotton, more cotton, white cotton. 

"Jacrae!" she yelled as loud as she could. She turned around to see where Jacrae or Quintaine might be and it was all cotton. 

"Jacrae!" she yelled again. She faced back toward the direction where she had originally come from, or was it? The plants were arranged so close together, it was difficult to tell where exactly she had entered the field. 

"Jacrae! Quintaine!" she called out to both of them, either of them. She hadn't wandered that far into the field to begin with, but she couldn't see the car or the road. 

"Jacrae! Quintaine!" she yelled once more, then upon speaking Quintaine's name, she thought she smelled burning cotton with smoke in the distance. He's set the field on fire, she deduced. 

Jacrae made his way through the plants of cotton, trying to spy Quintaine, hopefully before he set fire to anything. He looked back for Vernice, but saw no sign of her. He contemplated she must have returned to the car, since she was nowhere to be seen. He couldn't help but note he seemed to be much further out in the field, further away from the car and the road, since he couldn't see either one, the car, the road or Vernice; just cotton. Nothing but cotton. 

Jacrae turned back around and moved forward to find Quintaine in the direction going away from the road. Or was it? Quintaine ran in this direction. Jacrae was sure of it. Or was he? He turned again to see behind him, or was it now in front of him? He wasn't sure, so he contemplated heading back to the car, but of course that was a lost cause as well. He couldn't tell where he was. He'd left his phone in the car. He didn't think he'd have to call someone from a cotton field. He didn't know if there'd be any reception out this far either. 

Jacrae moved forward, but since all before him was white cotton on dried up branches, he couldn't see the ground had an indenture, which his foot promptly discovered. Jacrae went face down into the cotton, scratched by thorns and bristles, hitting the ground with a hand he barely managed to get up in the way. He still had the wind knocked out of him.

Slowly he moved about to try to rise to his feet once more and that was when he realized the sun was so hot and now he was concealed by the shade offered by the cotton. He could breathe cool air. He took a moment to breathe in and out, gain some composure and put his hands out to push himself upward through all the prickly plants and leaves. 

It was then he heard the heavy clomping of footsteps, coming down his very row. They were heavy steps as well. Jacrae stopped moving and in the shadowed cover up ahead, he could make out the dark appendages slowly moving through the plants as being rather large hooves.   

Quintaine had made his way through the field, trying to find a good place to set alight what he considered to be an atrocity on his heritage and let it all burn, but it seemed he must have run too far. If he started the plants burning, he was no longer certain how to get out of the field. He turned and looked around in the bright, blazing sun, trying to view which direction the car and the road were in, so he could use the lighter to ignite the plants here before him, and he'd run in the opposite direction. 

But he could see no road. He couldn't make out anything, but cotton; more and more cotton. He debated for a minute or so what he should do, then decided he came all the way out there to burn the cotton, so that's what he'd do. He pulled out the lighter and began clicking it toward some of the cotton. He'd just have to take off away from it and end up wherever it took him. 

Sparks flew from the lighter. There was orange glows, sizzling at some of the cotton. The cotton lit up a bit, with an orange swath of fire covering the boll. Quintaine moved to the next boll to get it burning as well. 

Then he became aware of a hand slapping at the burning cotton, leaving what had managed to burn still smoking, all black and scorched. 

Quintaine turned to look at who was beside him now. 

It was indeed, as Jacrae suggested might be the case, an elderly black man, aged beyond all comprehension, Quintaine thought. His face was weathered and worn, his hair as white as the cotton. Quintaine stepped back from him a bit, unsure of what he might do. 

"Why you wanna burn my cotton?" the old timer asked feebly, brushing his hand that had slapped at the starting flame. "Don't burn my cotton." 
"Is this your property?" Quintaine asked. 

"Why you wanna burn all this good cotton?" he asked pitifully. 

Quintaine wanted to find some nerve, some defiance. 

"Because we had to pick this cotton. We had to stay out here all day, week after week, year after year, picking cotton!" he boomed. 
"There's good money in cotton," the old man stuttered. "Need to just leave it alone and git on out of here." 

Quintaine looked at him some more. "We didn't get any of that money! The white man did!" 

"Don't wanna hear about no white man. White man don't bother me. Provides well for me. White man don't bother me. He leaves me alone. All I ask."

Quintaine stared at the little old man for a bit, then raised his voice once more. "We worked the field! We picked their cotton!" 

"You ain't never worked no field in your life," the old man said to Quintaine, looking at the youth in his fashionable attire. 

It was then Quintaine looked at the old man in his rumpled pants and shirt, the frail old figure nearly lost in the baggy clothes. 

"What's your name?" Quintaine asked. 

The old man looked at Quintaine for a moment, standing very still, then quietly yet sternly told him, "go home, child. This cotton field is none of your concern. Never has been." 

The old man pulled the pair of burnt bolls off the plant, shoved them in his pocket and began walking away. Quintaine watched him leave, moving further and further into the sea of cotton, unable to ask him the direction back to the main road. He just seemed transfixed at the figure, moving with the knowledge of where to go amongst all this cotton, and Quintaine was lost in this arena. 

Seemingly unable to say anything, he finally raised his head to call out, but it was too late. The old man appeared to be gone. Quintaine inhaled, and stepped back a bit, deducing he'd head in the opposite direction of the old man and maybe that would take him back to the road and he could just get out of here. 

He turned around and came face-to-face with a young woman. 

Crawling through the dry, dusty ground, Jacrae had managed to veer off into the adjacent row of plants and out of the way of the slowly approaching hooves. He hugged the ground as best he could, trying hard to hold his breath as the feet came by. 

He thought of the tales told him as a child by his grandmother, and these must be the hooves of the devil. This cotton field was truly a place of sinfulness and sadness. He clenched his teeth as the black hooves passed him. He speculated a clawed hand reaching down between the leaves and limbs of the plants and seizing him by the scruff of his neck, but that never happened. Instead, a second pair of hooved feet walked by. 

Jacrae pondered who that was then. The devil's wife? A cousin? 

Slowly he raised his head to peak out from among the cotton bolls. the figure that had just passed was tall, very tall. Jacrae recognized it as a man on a horse. The smell of the animal was unmistakable. 

Jacrae observed the man on the horse a bit more, as he made his journey away. Jacrae slowly came out of the cotton more the further away the animal carried the person. 

It was a white man, and for whatever reason, Jacrae felt it best not to speak to him as he was trespassing in this cotton field. 

The horse stopped. The man seemed to turn to look from one side to the other. 

This was when Jacrae noticed the whip on his side. A long, coiled-up, leathery whip, dark in color. 

Must be for cattle, Jacrae thought. What else could he possibly use it for? And with that thought, Jacrae grasped they were not among livestock, but were in a field. 

A field of cotton. 

Jacrae just watched the man leave, slowly making his way on down the unseen path running between these unforsaken rows of plants. Casting his head about, as if to find something. Or someone. 

The further he moved away, the more Jacrae appeared from the cotton. He decided it was best to find Quintaine and Vernice and get out of there, so he took off moving in the way the man on the horse had started, so he'd be putting distance between himself and this stranger. He hoped he found the other two before this guy did. He just wanted to get out of this cotton field. That was when he received a truly big surprise. 

"Jacrae!" Vernice shouted! She grabbed him by the shoulders and held him. 

"Vernice!' Jacrae said, then put his hand on Quintaine's shoulder as well. "Quintaine! Guys, we gotta be quiet and get out of here now!"

"Man, there is something out here," Quintaine started. 

"More than cotton," Jacrae said softly. He sought to look in the direction of the man on the horse, but once again, had no perception of which direction he had rode off. 

"Let's just move," Jacrae said. 

"Let's get out of here before anyone finds us," Quintaine said. "I don't care to ever see this cotton field again for as long as I live!" 

The three of them bolted in a seemingly random direction. They didn't stop moving, didn't bother looking around. Jacrae led, holding Vernice by one hand, and she in turn holding onto Quintaine's hand. 

Jacrae seemed to be managing his way through a fairly accurate path among the plants, with the low branches dividing for him as he made his way. His main focus was getting out of the plants, so he stayed steadfast to that intention. 

He stepped right upon the low, narrow ditch beside the road. Vernice and Quintaine were still with him. They didn't let go yet and walked upon the road so they were out of dirt, plants, grass, everything and back on a manmade surface of some kind. 

Jacrae looked up one way, then the other, unsure of how far they might be from the car, then spied it. 

"There it is," Vernice said, but they were already moving in a hurry, but again, they kept each other in sight this time. No one was getting lost again. 

They piled into the car, Jacrae took out the keys, and they waited until they caught their breath. 

"Jacrae?" Vernice asked. 

"Yea?' 

"Why did you stop?" 

Jacrae thought a moment and didn't look back into the field. "I don't know. I thought I wanted to see . . . . something."

"Quintaine?" she asked again. 

"Yea?" he said from the back seat. 

"Why did you take off into that field like that, just running into it?"

Quintaine didn't answer either, but he slowly turned to look out into the field and saw a figure standing amongst all the cotton. Far, far away. 

Jacrae and Vernice both turned to see the distant form as well. Was it the old black man, or could it be the white man with the whip on the horse? 

Or was it someone else? 

Jacrae cranked the car up, threw it into drive and sped away. As he did so, Quintaine and Vernice saw the figure raise up his hand. Was he waving? Or did he have a gun and was anticipating shooting at them? No shots were ever fired. 

Either way, the trio felt they could definitely do without ever knowing the answer.