Trees
Hays, Agee
TREES By AGEE HAYS THE three gaunt cows lumbered into their bare corral of matted branches. Marguerita ran to pull up the greyed poles and waited eagerly. Carlos, coming behind, took off the tall...
...To pay for these things, he would have to-to sell more milk...
...Marguerita's mouth tightened...
...Marguerita nodded...
...Never, now-the new mozo was too young...
...It was not the first time he had failed when everything depended on his winning...
...Don Guillermo was walking down the row behind them, holding a card and fingering his moustache...
...The soft white cotton hung from the bursting bolls like puffs of spun sweets...
...When Don Guillermo strolled toward them, he still talked to the stranger...
...I don't sell half...
...Marguerita glanced up quickly...
...He rose and bowed fatly...
...Such a way...
...Juan breathed hoarsely a few feet ahead...
...The head mozo never works too much, himself, but he must know how...
...Wasn't it always our hope that I should some day be head mozo at Don Guillermo's big ranch...
...But we are hungry...
...Carlos left his blanket at the edge of the field...
...I shall watch...
...Carlos jerked his sack and grasped the white bunches...
...Tomorrow he would work for customers...
...He must hurry to tell Marguerita...
...Think I He brings milk in bottles...
...Juan Garcia was a good cotton-picker...
...Marguerita lifted her head and smiled...
...Just imagine, Marguerita, head mozo...
...Juan was still close, too close, swearing breathlessly, grunting, champing, picking, picking...
...Carlos grinned anxiously down at Don Guillermo...
...Dukes for the children...
...I'll let you know, then...
...In some countries, trees grew straight and high toward the sun, all their branches reaching straight like palm trunks...
...I'm not sure which of you is best...
...Yes, Carlos, at last I need a new head mozo...
...Carlos closed his eyes...
...Its blanket was bright...
...Why, we've waited all our livte for it, and you remember that Don Guillermo, long ago, almost promised it to me...
...Carlos shrugged lightly and the wrinkles in his lean face pulled up, "But, no...
...The slow sun had, at last, left the centre of the dull still orb above...
...Happily and painfully he straightened...
...Carlos wore his best red blanket draped across his shoulders...
...Slowly his shoulders straightened...
...A few white bits left in his rows...
...Dios" he prayed, "Santa Maria...
...The only chance...
...Carlos glanced hurriedly at his opponent...
...Juan shifted feverishly and glared out across the fields...
...He glared bitterly at his new trousers with the dusty knees...
...He slowed, then...
...You start in beside him and we'll see...
...So I've told Juan to pick cotton in the big field...
...Carlos had never liked Juan...
...You see he couldn't make caretakers of all of us...
...Tomorrow evening...
...He was too sullen and too determined to have what he wanted...
...Head mozo...
...We can always have milk," ventured Carlos...
...He'd filled one more sack, he thought, than Juan...
...Carlos nodded...
...So many were after the job," he explained slowly...
...Juan's eyes stabbed Carlos...
...Frijoles and meat...
...I'll get new pants and a new sombrero," he laughed, "so Don Guillermo will think I look already like head mozo...
...Maria...
...He had come on the pony...
...With a frenzied lunge, Carlos finished ahead of Juan...
...Carlos looked quickly over the field...
...What if...
...But, milking-that isn't what we want...
...Carlos drove his cows through the lazy quiet homeward...
...He bowed to Carlos arid Juan and reached into his pocket...
...And Pancho and Maria with dulces...
...She turned away...
...After siesta," he said, "come to the casa...
...Carlos, coming behind, took off the tall sombrero and pulled his fingers over its brown discolored streaks...
...He can write and keep accounts also...
...Assuncion told me...
...He saw Don Guillermo, in the shade, mark on a card...
...Tomorrow they would have it if-if Juan...
...In five minutes, siesta...
...I had thought to take Carlos, but this, my nephew, has asked...
...Carlos half-smiled at the dwarfed old mesquites beside the road...
...Surely tomorrow you will be the wife of the head mozo...
...Juan had gained...
...Oh, Dios...
...Why was it that their twisted branches seemed so foolishly to strain up and down, up and down-never growing tall ? and down, up and down-never growing tall...
...Under a grass-thatched roof, Don Guillermo sat with a young man who wore a red sash and a purple, light sarape thrown carelessly across his shoulders...
...You with three dresses...
...Only once comes such a chance...
...Juan Garcia...
...He must get it...
...Then, they told him goodby...
...At the gate a frothing pony drooped a tired head...
...Carlos dropped to his blanket under a gnarled old mesquite tree, and looked up at the smooth blue heat...
...Pancho...
...But he smiled...
...The Don was round and dark with a big moustache...
...And who knows how fresh it is...
...Tiredness slipped off like an old blanket...
...Juan was picking madly, with both hands, dragging his knees slowly and steadily down the row...
...Anxiously, madly impatient, Carlos rolled brown cigarettes and threw them away half smoked...
...Carlos hurried the cows and beat on his pan at each door impatiently, until some of his customers complained that their cups held too much froth...
...On his knees Carlos picked wildly...
...Juan Garcia is already here asking for the place...
...Harder...
...He must...
...Its bridle was made of many-colored rings...
...then milking a little and going on...
...He lifted little Pancho and absently patted his soft tanned cheek...
...So close, now...
...Now, you two pick until the siesta...
...The gleam of new aspiration in his eyes drew up the corners of his mouth...
...No time to count, now...
...I'm going to see him as soon as I finish milking in the morning...
...Marguerita sank to the step of the adobe and looked out at the empty clay oven...
...And the new milk man is making things worse...
...He took the big sack and kneeled between his two rows...
...Juan was walking toward the house...
...To be head mozo...
...The warm sun pressed down harder...
...He sped for them and stuffed them into the sack...
...In weary dejection, he poked the nearest cow...
...So he is my new head mozo...
...Carlos looked over the space they had covered...
...Carlos's knees ached...
...I must think...
...A good picker, Juan...
...In his new trousers and clean sombrero, Carlos folded the blanket grandly about him and walked to Don Guillermo...
...He can't get far...
...He must show Don Guillermo...
...Beneath it, his ragged trousers bagged...
...How do people know his milk is good when they can't see him milk it...
...Carlos rose quickly, hating to go beside him, not wanting to stay behind...
...growled Juan...
...Don Guillermo is having him quit, and still giving him money enough to live...
...Maria wrapped thin arms like snakes around her father's knee...
...At his side, he felt the sneering frown of Juan...
...Carlos walked with Don Guillermo out through the palms and yuccas, past the rows of dwarf banana trees whose wide leaves hid the great flat fields...
...For years he had known of Carlos's desire...
...In the morning, Marguerita and Pancho and Maria followed Carlos behind the bony, long-horned cows...
...His flat sombrero fastened under his chin like a young don's...
...Today old Assuncion who has always been head mozo, says he is too old...
...Surely you, driving your cows to milk them at the door as a man should, will win...
...Now, the great hope...
...They walked through the dust of the narrow camino to the place where the many-headed cactus trees hunched like a thorny wall at the corner of the village...
...He looked suspiciously and nervously at Carlos...
...When will he hire this new mozo...
...I'll leave the cows eating grass by the river...
...Santa Maria...
...He looked across the dotted fields and thought of the barren cactus-covered desert beyond...
...Across the fields were the blues and reds and whites of many peones who sang and picked indolently, little ragged children helping...
...He would tell her about the big one...
...It was always this way: milking a little and going on...
...Old Asuncion at the hacienda was ringing the campanilla...
...The Don looked at the two piles of sacks...
...And, now again, they would have tortillas and bad coffee, and Marguerita's thin face would be sad, until another hopeAnother hope...
...Black and white spots the shape of cotton bolls flickered before him...
...A peseta, hombres, for your work," he said graciously, handing them each a coin...
...Blindly he picked...
...Carramba...
...It would come but once, for the man that got it held it until he was feeble and that would be too long for Carlos to wait...
...His blue shirt was already wet where the sun had warmed his broad back...
...No work, of course, during siesta...
...He would beat that queer new milk man...
...What else mattered...
...beating on a pan and waiting until women and children and old men came out with cups...
...Why had he not thought of it before...
...Was it that the ranchero liked having it done clean, or had he marked it a waste of time...
...Sweets the duke men sold...
...Do you think Juan Garcia will get the job ? He has always wanted it, too...
Vol. 11 • February 1930 • No. 15
