Page 20 of Demon Copperhead

Farms or anything else in the big world, I’d not seen much of back then.

Or now either, to be honest. On TV I’d seen fields like great green oceans with men sailing through them on tractors and combines the size of the AT walkers in Star Wars.

I never knew those were real, I thought it was make-believe.

Because Lee County isn’t flat like those ocean farms, not anywhere, not even a little.

Here every place is steep, and everything rolls downhill.

If you plowed up all your land, the most of it would end up down in the creek by year’s end, and then you’re done growing anything.

What farmers can do with a mountainside is what Creaky did, let God grow grass on it, and run cattle on it to eat God’s grass.

Then send them out west to be finished, because feedlots for turning cattle into burgers and making money are all out there.

Not here. We just raise them big enough to sell for what Creaky called one kick in the ass per head. A few hundred dollars.

His only land flat enough for plowing was three acres, low in the valley.

That’s about average size for a tobacco bottom, lying alongside of the lane we walked out on to get the bus.

The first day I came to that farm, passing that field, maybe I thought, there’s some nice tobacco.

More likely I gave no notice at all. Never will that happen again, any more than I’d fail to notice an alligator by the side of the road, or a bear.

What a pretty sight, you’d say, if you’re an ignorant son of a bitch.

Instead of: There lies a field that eats men and children alive.

August they call the dog days, due to animals losing their minds in the heat.

But the real dog days if you are a kid on a farm are in September and October.

Tobacco work: suckering, topping, cutting, hanging, stripping.

All my life I’d heard farm kids talking about this, even in the lower grades, missing school at cutting time.

Some got to work on farms other than their own, and get paid for it.

I envied them. The boy version I guess of how little girls are jealous of their big sisters for getting pregnant, with all the attention.

I’d only ever known childish things, screwing around in the woods or Game Boy. Now I would be one of the working kids.

I had a list going in my head that fall, of what all I would tell my little brother one day.

But time passed and eventually my mind had only one thought in it as regards childhood.

For any kid that gets that as an option: take that sweet thing and run with it.

Hide. Love it so hard. Because it’s going to fucking leave you and not come back.

Topping starts in August. You have to break off the tops of all the thousands of plants that are head high or higher to a fifth grader.

Walk down the rows reaching up, snapping off the big stalk of pink flowers on top, freeing up the plant for its last growth spurt.

Those plants will be over all our heads before the season ends, and still yet we will have to be their masters.

My first day of topping was stinking hot.

Creaky told us to keep our shirts on and wear the big, nasty leather gloves he gave us, but we shed our shirts the minute he was out of sight.

I didn’t want to wear the gloves, but Tommy said do it or I’d be sorry.

Creaky set us all to topping our own rows, and moved faster than you’d think the old guy had in him.

He and Fast Forward got out ahead of us.

I worked hard and stayed close behind them, with Tommy and Swap-Out bringing up the rear.

The reaching up made your arms ache. The sap ran sticky all over everything, the sun was a fireball on your head, and pity to you if you tried to wipe the sweat off your face with that gummy glove.

I tried to use my left hand for topping, being a lefty, and right for sweat-wiping.

Then the one arm gave out so I had to use the other, and let the sweat go on and burn my eyes out.

All the while thinking, Man, tobacco is hard work. I’d seen nothing yet.

At some point I went back to look for Tommy and Swap-Out because they were nowhere.

Way back yonder I found them, and was like, Y’all, what the hell?

Tommy was gathering up all the pink flowers that you were supposed to throw on the ground and walk on.

Going back down his row, gathering up these flowers and carrying them in his arms like a freaking bride.

Jesus, Tommy, I said. Your ass will be grass.

He told me not to worry, he was almost done.

I followed him to the edge of the field, and out there by the lane were these two small dirt mounds, the size of bushel baskets dumped over.

Side by side. I’d never noticed them before.

Tommy put down his armload of flowers on the two little mounds, divided up between them.

Saying nothing about it. Then he went back to work. I didn’t ask.

But that night after we were in bed, he told me what it was for.

His parents were buried out in eastern Virginia someplace, so he’d never gotten to see the graves, just like I hadn’t ever seen my dad’s.

I would never have thought to do what Tommy did, though.

He just made them up. Eight different homes he’d been in so far, that he could remember.

In every one of them he’d left behind a little set of graves.