A Painted House [antikvár]

Chapter Ii !The hill people and the Mexicans arrived on the same day. It was a Wednesday, early in September 1952. The Cardinals were five games behind the Dodgers with i' three weeks to go, and the season looked hopeless. The cotton, however, was waist-high to my father, over my j^j head, and he and my grandfather could be heard before supper whispering words that were seldom heard. It could be a "good crop."They were farmers, hardworking men who embraced pessimism only when discussing the weather and the crops. There was too much sun, or too much rain, or the threat of floods in the lowlands, or the rising prices of seed and fertilizer, or the uncertainties of the markets. On the most perfect of days, my mother would quietly say to me, "Don't worry. The men wiU find something to worry about."' iPappy, my grandfather, was worried about the price i' -for labor when we went searching for the hill people. They were paid for every hundred pounds of cotton they picked. The previous year, according to him, it was $1.50 per hundred. He'd already heard rumors that a farmer over in Lake City was offering $1.60.This played heavily on his mind as we rode to town. He never talked when he drove, and this was because.l.'iif