Free Mississippi Cotton by Paul H. Yarbrough

other spot before we go home for dinner.”
    We reached a big cottonwood tree and an old weeping willow, both about ten feet back from the bank. They were old and full and gave shade; as much as the bridge had, anyway. It was over ninety degrees by then. There was plenty of room for all three of us to sit and throw our lines.
    At first they didn’t bite, but just as we were about to move, they did. I caught three bream and Taylor and Casey each caught a cat and a bream.
    Taylor looked at the sun, almost directly overhead. “We better go eat,” he said. “Prob’ly gettin’ close to noon. We’ll come back after dinner.”
    I started pulling the fish stringer out of the water.
    “Aww, jus’ leave ‘em there. Nobody’s likely to come by here anyway. Let’s take our poles, though,” Taylor said.
    Taylor had a good sense of sun time. It was just before noon when we parked our bikes and walked in the back door.
    “Catch any?” Cousin Carol was looking in the refrigerator, her chin cradled between her thumb and forefinger. She spent a lot of time looking in the refrigerator. Like my mother, she had to engineer a food plan for meals, making sure all the leftovers got used, and the diet was all balanced and everything.
    “I caught a bunch,” Casey blurted. “Maybe four, I think.”
    “Well put them in the sink on the back porch, and I’ll clean them for y’all later. Maybe y’all can eat them for supper. Or maybe I’ll freeze them. We’ll see.”
    Taylor sat down at the kitchen table. ”We jus’ left them in the water, ‘cause we’re goin’ back after we eat.”
    “Okay.” She took a bowl of something out, then closed the refrigerator door. She looked at Taylor, sitting at the table. I was about to sit, myself.
    “Now y’all don’t sit down until you wash your hands.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” Taylor said.
    “I washed mine in the branch,” Casey said. His attempt to dodge a rule flopped. Cousin Carol pointed the way. We went to the backdoor sink and washed.
    Cousin Trek walked in the back door. He rubbed each of our heads while we were washing. “Catch any? Don’t forget the soap, Casey.” He kept walking into the kitchen. “Hi Hon’,” he said to Cousin Carol.
    I was pretty sure that it would be hard for me to ever get married if I had to use names like “Hon” and “Sugar” and “Dear.” I guess they sounded okay on the radio programs or in the picture show, but if you had to say them yourself it sounded terrible. One time I told my mother that if I got married I’d call my wife Jake Jr. She gave me the look she sometimes gave Daddy.
    We dried our hands and walked into the kitchen. I said, “We caught seven or eight, I guess, Cousin Trek.”
    “Let me see…” Taylor started counting on his fingers, and mumbled some numbers. “You know what? I think twelve.”
    “Good for you. You got ‘em in a bucket? Lemme see.”
    Cousin Carol put some bread on the table and answered for us. “They left them in the branch. Said they’re going back.”
    “Well, they’ll be okay I imagine, as long as they are in the water so they keep fresh. And there ain’ a lot of fish thieves in the county.” He smiled. “I’m hungry. Let’s eat.”
    Some leftover chicken and ham and some butter beans and tomatoes made up most of our dinner. Cousin Carol even gave us a piece of pie for dessert, a treat at dinnertime. I’m sure she did it just because I was there. Company was king in our whole family.
    After eating we went upstairs for a few minutes to rest our stomachs, and just sit around and talk about nothing special. Casey kept counting to himself how many fish he had caught. One count he would remember four, one count five, another count back to four. And he kept saying, “All on squashed roaches.”
    “Whaday’all wanna do when we get back from fishin’ this afternoon?” Taylor asked, ignoring Casey’s squashed roaches comments.
    “Maybe we can go to the picture show again,” Casey