B. Traven - The Cotton-Pickers

The train that had brought me to this forlorn-looking little place had just left and I was standing on the station platform looking around in search of someone who might be able to tell me what I so very urgently needed to know.

Everyone looked so utterly depressing. There were some peasants in white cottons of many washings walking about on the platform and sitting on the ground alongside. The women had their arms full of children and were surrounded by a dozen more holding on to their mothers’ skirts, with expressions of fear and wonder written all over their young faces, which were covered with chalky dust.

While I was lost in examining the landscape, and trying to make up my mind whom to approach for the very much wanted information, I suddenly realized that someone had stopped abruptly close in front of me, his nose almost touching the point of mine. Instinctively I stepped back a few inches and saw it was a very tall and heavily built Negro, who was addressing me: “Mister, can you maybe tell me which direction to take to a nearby ranch owned by a farmer called Mr. Shine?”

“What do you want to see that Mr. Shine for?” I blurted out. In the same moment I regretted that explosion of mine. The sudden nearness of the fellow had caught me in the very midst of a hard thinking process intimately connected with the hopeless state of my present economic situation. And so as to have that giant black fellow thinking better of me and my character I added rapidly: “See here, friend, that Mr. Shine you mention is precisely the very same person I myself have come to this godforsaken village to see.”

“Also because of cotton, Mister?” he asked.

“Also because of cotton, which I want to help him harvest, or let’s more correctly call it, to pick.”

We were still looking at each other uncertainly, obviously not knowing what else to say or to do, when up trotted rather haltingly a little Chinaman with a friendly grin all over his face (even both his ears seemed to grin). “Good molning, caballelos, gentlemen,” he greeted us. “Can you pelhaps, kind paldon, tell me the way to—”

Here he stopped, fumbled in the breast pocket of his snow-white collarless shirt, pulled out a bit of notepaper, unfolded and handed it to us, and, never losing his bright grin, started to read the line scribbled on it: “Ixtli…”

“Stop,” I halted him. “You might get a knot in your tongue if you go on trying to pronounce the name of that place. The name is Ixtlixochicuauhtepec, am I right or am I?”

“Pelfectly collect, señol, it’s exactly the name.”

“Well then,” I said, “your problems will be solved now, because that’s exactly the very place we also are headed for. So, friend, welcome. You may join us.”

Ixtli… If only I had the faintest idea where that village, or ranchería, whatever it might be, could be found. To the north? To the south or west? Well now, let’s see, there must be somewhere around this railroad depot somebody who knows where to find that place with such a tongue-twisting Aztec name.

The people loitering on the platform were Indios and Mestizos, except for another Negro. He was as black as the giant one by my side but a foot shorter and very lightly built. How long he had been standing there calculating our threesome I don’t know, but when he caught my eye he approached us with a sure step.

“Mister,” he said, “could you by any chance tell me the whereabouts of a Mr. Shine, a cotton farmer? They tol’ me in Tampico he’s lookin’ for hands to help with his cotton crop and I’d find him near to this here railroad station.”

“Well! His whereabouts is exactly what we’d like to know. We’re also looking for that cotton farm. Come along with us.

“Thanks a lot, fellers. Glad to have company in this bush. Mighty happy to be accompanied in this part of the country, where you meet, I been tol’, all sorts of wil’ beasts, tigers, leopards.”

We were now sort of an organized group for the long or short trip — we didn’t know which. That was how matters stood when a man came up whom I judged to be a Mestizo from the way he was dressed. He had slung about his upper body a red, tattered, formless piece of coarse-wool blanket and he wore the customary white, sloppy wide-brimmed bast hat—or was it reed? His bronze-brown face was covered by a growth of beard. He was middle-aged, of medium build, slender but doubtless a man used to hard work. His beat-up dirty tennis shoes had once upon a time been white. I remembered I had seen this man on the train, traveling in the same car which I had chosen to come here.

Scrutinizing our little assembly, as if searching for someone among us whom he might perhaps know, he decided to put his question to me: “Buenos dias, señor, are you perhaps Mr. Shine?”

“No,” I said, “I’m not Mr. Shine, but I’m here to meet him somewhere in this neighborhood.”

“Is this the place?” So saying he produced a scrap of muddy paper torn from a newspaper, on which was scribbled: Ixtlixochicuauhtepec.

“Yes, that’s the place, amigo. We’re going, there; so if you wish to come along with us, bienvenido, you are invited.”

“Nothing better could have happened to me. Muchas gracias, mil, mil gracias. I’ll be only too grateful to be in your company. Again, many, many thanks.” He bowed with the innate courtesy of a Mexican.

Then he turned slightly around, fingering his beard, undecided as to what to do or say next. Seeing him turn aside like that gave me the idea that we had better start going now and right away, or a dozen more people in need of a job might try to join us.

Sure enough, another Mexican came leisurely walking up. He was not a Mestizo like the previous one; this was a Mexican of pure Indian stock, dressed in very clean white cotton, for shoes the local huaraches—no socks, of course—and carrying over his shoulder a beautiful blanket in bright colors, a so-called sarape, as well as a small bundle rolled inside a reed mat. He just stood there looking at us, not saying a word.