Page:The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.djvu/98

CHAPTER 6. LIFE AT HARD LABOR—THE HOPI 85 as I have to go where we are not numbered and do not get The Mark of the Beast. I'm sure glad to find a fellow who only has two marks against him."

"You are a better man than I am," I answered.

Having a few free days after the winter lettuce season at the large vegetable ranch where I had worked I went early in the morning to Phoenix where the bonfires were burning, at Second and Madison. Here Mexicans, Indians and Anglos, most of the latter being "winos," were waiting to select the truck in which they would go to work. Just now there were only cotton trucks, there being a lull in citrus picking. Cotton pickers carry their own 8 to 12 ft. sacks, fastened with a strap around the shoulders and dragging behind them like a giant worm. There were eight trucks and several pickups. Most of them were shaped like the traditional covered wagon with canvas. There were benches on either side and in the middle. I walked around searching for someone I might know, but my friends of the lettuce fields were wary of cotton picking, considering this the hardest job to be had and one to be taken only as a last resort.

"Last call! Take you there and bring you back. Three dollars a hundred. All aboard gentlemen!" shouted a good-natured Negro in a bright mackinaw. The truck to which he pointed was box shape, of wood veneer, with a short ladder leaning inside from the rear. I entered and found a seat between a colored woman and a colored man. After a few more calls the doors were shut, and we could see each other only as one would light a cigarette. Later on the truck stopped, and we were joined by a large group of laughing Negroes of all ages. There were three whites besides myself, and one Indian. Our destination was nine miles beyond Buckeye, which is about thirty miles west of Phoenix. After several sharp turns, when all in the truck were thrown this way and that, we came to the field. The Indian and I did not have sacks, so we rented them from the boss for a quarter. This was tall cotton, and harder to pick than the small variety. The field was a quarter of a mile long and a mile wide. A young white man worked in one row, then the Indian, then myself. I had never picked cotton before. The Indian, a Navajo, said this was to be clean picking, he understood. Where the cotton was fluffy it was easy to grab, but where the boll was partly open it was difficult to extract and hurt your fingers.

As we worked along the row from the far end of the field toward the weighing scales and truck, my Navajo friend said that he was learning a lesson which he sadly needed. Now he had just enough money from day to day. Before this he had spent money freely and never had to count his pennies. He paid a dollar a night for a cot in a cheap hotel in Phoenix. He had an older brother who had been quite wealthy before the depression and was a big shot among his people because of his holdings in cattle. Now with the "plowing under" and rationing system of the government he was a poor Indian indeed.

In speaking of the Navajo he said that they had always been poor in these last years, but that the suffering was no greater than last year. If left to themselves,