A^{Hand that Picked Cotton
by Peter Banks}

Rudy took a drag from the joint as he drove with an index finger curled around the steering wheel and then passed it to Jon, who sat in the passenger seat with an appearance of momentous calm. The jeep was filled with a volcanic haze of smoke from the weed that had passed between us. Plastic Coke bottles and crumpled receipts covered the floor in heaping waves of laziness.

We were headed down Highway 90 toward Biloxi and the casinos that infected the beach like sores. I nodded to a beat that I wished for over the Waylon Jennings, which Rudy had put on when he’d picked us up from Jon’s house. My senses were still trying to rationalize the smell of earth, the sounds of the country and the colorful Rebel Flags that danced around me, mocking me as a Carpetbagger. The beach stretched like a rubber band on our right, and in the distance through the fog of marijuana, I saw the casinos, shining like man-made stars against the black, coastal sky. I had been in New Orleans for New Year’s Eve, visiting friends I’d made while hitchhiking around the country, eating seafood and guzzling hurricanes, but had come to Mississippi to see my college roommate Jon, a white, classic Southern prep. He opened doors and said ma’am, wore a baseball cap over his shaggy blonde hair, and preferred button ups and jeans.

Jon had abandoned his allegiance to the Confederacy, momentarily, for a Union school that promoted tolerance and integration, to obtain a new outlook on life, to determine whether existence was more pleasant above the Mason-Dixon Line. He was my best friend, an unlikely one, however, for he was determined and old fashioned, though not in a Gone With the Wind sort of way. Jon was decidedly more open-minded than I had initially thought when I heard his accent and the state of his birth.

Maybe it was his love of Widespread Panic or the ease with which he took snags in the texture of his life that comforted me. I didn’t know, truly, and didn’t want to analyze our relationship. I was simply glad to be away from home for a week to avoid the lectures from my parents about how my future should now be etched in something other than resin and malt liquor.

I didn’t have any expectations for the evening, though Jon had warned me that time spent with Rudy could lead to formidable nightmares. I’d been told of the epithets, the pride that Rudy had in his heritage. But, I was certain that I could deal with any craven historical rambling. Rudy was a high school friend and I knew that he was Jon’s only link with his recent past, a fact that did not escape my attention as I sat in the back seat of the jeep.

While the casinos crept closer to us on our right, I took the joint from Jon and inhaled deeply. My muscles collapsed as overwhelming serenity grasped me in its supple hands.

"This is the best casino on the coast, Don," Rudy said. "I won five hundred bucks here the other day."

"Where are we going?" I coughed as I took another drag and handed the joint back to Rudy.

"Ahhh, you like that shit, huh city boy?" Rudy cackled, as he cradled the joint in his fingers and looked at me in the rearview mirror through blood-tinted green eyes. We weaved through the thickening traffic on our approach to the Biloxi strip, missing cars by mere inches.

"It’s okay," I said, unwilling to disparage free herb.

"Better than that nigger shit you get in D.C. I bet."

I felt my throat constrict, strangled by unseen hands. The word burned in the pit of my stomach like a drop of molten lava.

"Grand Casino," Jon said. "We’re going to the Grand Casino." He turned in his seat and locked my eyes with a stern gaze as though I shouldn’t consider speaking, as though the maintenance of the relationship that the three of us had developed over the previous moments was far too valuable to disturb with politically correct rhetoric.

I rolled down the window to end the hotbox and felt a cool, humid, salty breeze on my face. The smoke bled out the window in twirling poofs. Rudy turned his Ole Miss hat backwards and rolled down his window as well. The lights of Biloxi met us abruptly, like a heavy Southern downpour. Las Vegas it wasn’t, but I could tell from the traffic, the crassness of the casino architecture, and the unhappy faces on the sidewalk, that the town had stories to tell.

We pulled into a parking lot next to an enormously florid building. Electrically charged pink and lime green twisted my high like a Pink Floyd light show, and my eyes could not, for a moment, move from the monstrosity.

We got out of the car, lit cigarettes to cover up the pot smoke and stood looking at the gravel-covered parking lot as we gathered our collective heads around the idea of confronting the blackjack table. Rudy led the way through a maze of cars, toward the front door. Jon and I followed quietly, still smoking our cigarettes. My head weighed a thousand pounds as compounding thoughts battled for supremacy.

"I.D.s please," the security guard said as we approached the front door. A sour, pale face and a misaligned toupee graced the older man in troubling shades of depression. Rudy and Jon passed through with hardly a glance at their Mississippi I.D.s, but the guard’s eyes opened like a flower on a magnolia as he took my license in his hands. He bent the thin piece of plastic and held it up to the light hoping its translucency might give away the truth of its origins. The man’s eyes crossed as the analysis of my driver’s license forced him to put it between his teeth. His crusted lips sucked the wallet film from its surface. He seemed to believe that such an action might provide further proof that I was indeed a liar and under twenty-one. I looked at the man with what must have been a mix of disgust and fear, because his cheeks flushed as he handed the card back to me, without a word, and watched as I wiped it thoroughly on my jeans.

The slot machines rang with a glorious exuberance as we made our way into the heart of the gambling. Lights flashed, oxygen pumped, and the sudden newness and timelessness of the casino made me forget my companions. Smoke and alcohol surrounded my head like a halo of vice. I stumbled past the slot machines through the craps tables toward the cheap blackjack tables, which, I was sure were hidden in the farthest reaches of the casino.

"You wanna play five a hand, Yankee?" Rudy’s hand slapped my shoulder and the sound reverberated in my ears as though he had struck a tuning fork. His eyes were thin slits.

"You look high," I said offhandedly as I perused Rudy’s pudgy face. The gruff sadness that I had gathered earlier from his racially tinged comments had melted and revealed a startling normalcy. Rudy smiled and pointed at Jon who had already commanded a seat at a five-dollar table.

Rudy and I walked over and sat on either side of our mutual friend. I stared for a moment at the dealer, a short man, thirty-five to forty in years and waist size with a thin moustache and slight hair on his head. He had heavy, dark bags under his eyes. At the far corner of the table was a woman of about sixty. She had large framed glasses and wore a flowery housedress that brought out the silver in her thin blonde hair. She had five stacks of five-dollar chips in front of her, which she stared at with some amusement.

I threw two twenties on the table just as Rudy took out two hundred-dollar bills. The thought of finding an ATM flashed across my mind, and then vanished as I recalled the stack of bills on my dresser at home. The dealer changed my money without a word, and I quietly set a lone chip in the middle of the betting circle.

A ten of hearts and a six of clubs appeared before me. I waited for the dealer to take his final card. He had an eight of diamonds showing.

"Gimme a hit," I said as I tapped the table. A King. Busted. I shook my head and looked at Jon.

Rudy had nineteen and stayed. The dealer flipped his card over. Two eights. Hit, and a nine. Busted. Regrets abounded when I gambled, and I realized the paranoia had compounded with smoking the weed.

"Cocktails?" An older black woman, perhaps fifty, with wilted skin, bags under her eyes, and a truckload of makeup spoke with a heavy tongue.

"Yeah, I’ll take a scotch on the rocks," I said.

"Make that two," Jon nodded, causing his shaggy blonde hair to fall in his eyes.

"Gimme a Miller Lite," Rudy said without looking at the waitress.

I won a few hands after reminding myself to establish some rules to guide my gambling. The cards moved quickly and I felt that I knew, even before they had been flipped over, what they were. My high balanced itself perfectly on the edge of lunacy restrained only by my determination not to lose money.

The dealer put up his thick hands to show the cameras hidden above our heads that he had slipped no chips into his pocket as he left for a break. There was something upsetting about his departure. I hadn’t won significant money, but I felt my comfort dissolve as the new dealer approached. Through my stoned eyes, the woman appeared almost ghoulish, a monstrous omen of bad luck. She was young, several hundred pounds, and had curly black hair, which hung to her shoulders. Late-teenaged acne dotted her face, and she wore a wedding band with a small stone on her ring finger.

Rudy leaned over across Jon, and cupped his hand as though he wanted to speak. I bent over, an elbow on the table to hear what he said.

"With an ass like that I bet she’s married to a nigger." His breath smelled like rancid eggs as he chuckled. I tried to think of anyone I knew personally who was more of a troll. A list of near misses scrolled through my mind, but I simply shook them off as I stared at Rudy’s tobacco and coffee stained teeth that peered through his thin-lipped smile.

The waitress wandered into the corner of my eye, so I leaned back to get away from Rudy and his proclamations. I smiled broadly as she set the glass in front of me and stuffed a few dollar bills into the plastic cup that served as her tip jar.

The new dealer dealt and Jon sat out to smoke a cigarette, a superstition he claimed brought luck. I got a king of spades and a queen of hearts. The dealer had an ace showing.

"Insurance?" She pointed around the table. There were no takers. She put the edge of the cards in a contraption to determine whether she had Blackjack. Everyone at the table held their breaths expectantly. A tiny red light flashed. Collectively, we exhaled.

In the recesses of my polluted ears, I heard a glass fall with a dull thud. Liquid belched on to the felt top of the table and dripped on to the floor. An irate, undecipherable grunt burst from someone to my right.

A ten of hearts and a six of clubs appeared before me. I waited for the dealer to take his final card. He stared down as though it were on fire, burning his manhood with every passing second. Everyone within fifty-yards of our table turned their heads to stare at the unpolished scene, the gripe of the young man flinging curses. I felt myself shrink with each passed judgment.

"Get me some fucking napkins," Rudy said as he pointed his index fingers at the wet spot. His face was strawberry red, his eyes like a starving wolf that had been searching for prey, desperate and ready to unleash fury.

The waitress’ face scrunched up, her lips curled in a sneer. Her sad brown eyes hardened and a long breath held her lungs. She stood with her hands on her tilted hips for a moment, released expletives under her breath and then walked away in cloudy, thunderous anger.

I stared at the top of Rudy’s head as he looked down at his crotch, massaging it with his hands, as though such a futile exercise might have some impact upon its dryness. Above the nearby silence I heard the beat of my unhappy heart.

"Excuse me sir," a young man with greased, brown hair, and a thin mustache put his hand firmly on Rudy’s shoulder. A small nameplate was pinned on his cheap, white shirt that said Carl. I tried not to stare, but my eyes forced me to pass judgments that I didn’t want to make.

"What?"

"I’m sorry, but it’s our policy to not allow customers to remain in the casino if they use racial slurs against our employees." Carl’s hands were crossed in front of him. His back curved forward as though he were not certain that he believed in the veracity of his statement.

"What?" Rudy’s face rumbled with anger and his eyes swirled about their sockets.

"I’m going to have to ask you to leave, sir."

Recognition came to Rudy’s eyes, and he put a pudgy hand on his chin. "Aren’t you Ray Christian’s brother?"

Carl paused and licked his lips. "I am," he said.

"I fuckin’ know you dickwad. You fuckin’ flunky workin’ down here with the nigger trash. Jon you remember that guy, Ray Christian?"

Jon nodded his head, but kept his eyes on a spot that he’d found on his dark blue sweater.

"Please keep your voice down sir or I’m going to have to call security over here."

"Nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger," Rudy’s hands cupped around his mouth and the word echoed through the cavernous room as though he had never been more proud of saying anything else in his life.

Two portly white security guards with tight navy blue blazers that hugged their bellies appeared as though they had been brought in with a mist. Their eyes betrayed a deep annoyance as they grabbed Rudy’s arms, twisted them behind his back and dragged him toward the front entrance. Pain echoed in minor screeches across the casino floor. Declarations to call the police followed until finally the scene trailed away into nothingness.

Jon grabbed Rudy’s chips from the table and moved away from the scene, clearly afraid that if he stood around for too long, he would be identified. I followed out of an aching desire to leave the casino as quickly as possible. Eyes plucked at my skin as I walked to the window where we exchanged our worthless chips for cold, hard American currency. We didn’t speak to each other as we moved through the disorder of cigarettes, blinking lights, and elderly couples toward the singular exit.

The cool, humid air felt good in my lungs as I stepped outside and lit a cigarette to calm my nerves. Jon patted me on the back as he walked by, headed toward the car to check on his boy. I needed a moment to myself before I went over there, so I stood near the fence that separated the casino parking lot from the beach. Under the sound of rushing cars on Highway 90, and the distant slot machines, I heard the small crash of waves on the rocky coast. In the distance I could make out an oil tanker.

"You ready to leave?" Jon’s voice sounded burnt and crispy as though he had smoked ten thousand cigarettes without a sip of water.

"How is he?"

"Pissed. Stoned." Jon kicked at pieces of gravel.

"Anything else?"

"No, not really."

"Where does he want to go? Another casino?"

"He said if we want to, we could go back to his place. His parents’re still in Vail." He stopped to light a cigarette. "I’m not really ready to go home yet. My parents are probably still up watching reruns of Carol Burnett."

"Hey man, I’m just visiting, you’re calling the shots." I flicked my cigarette butt over the fence on to the beach.

"Cool. He’ll probably calm down. Drink a few beers. Probably have to crash at his place, though."

I trailed behind Jon back through the web of cars until we got to the jeep. Rudy sat on its dusty hood with a cigarette in one hand and a joint in the other. Smells mixed, tobacco and herb became as one

"I’m sorry about that there, Yankee," Rudy said before he took a prolonged drag off the joint. "Just got a little pissed is all. Cold drink. Heh." I nodded at him, as he raised his baseball cap, and his unkempt brown hair blew in the Gulf breeze.

"So, Don says he’s up for heading to your house to drink a few beers."

"Well, alright. Got plenty of this stuff too if we wanna toke it more." Rudy passed the joint to Jon before he pushed himself off the hood of the jeep. It was as though he hadn’t just been dragged out of the casino screaming and yelling. Jon took a pull from the joint and passed it to me before he got in the passenger’s side.

Before I got in, I inhaled twice, so deeply that the bottoms of my lungs felt like frying eggs. The night stretched out before me like a trembling hand that I realized was my own as I opened the door. A twangy guitar and lilting Southern drawl met my ears as I got into the jeep and settled into the seat, stoned and cold.

"Who is this, the Bee Gees?" I asked.

"Right," Jon said as he turned around and smiled.

As we pulled out of the parking lot, making a left to head back toward Gulfport, I heard memories of the past hour jingling around my head like pocket change. The strip of casinos and restaurants faded into the rearview mirror as Rudy flashed in and out of traffic. I opened the window and lit a cigarette, wishing that my heart would stop beating so loudly.

We drove just past Gulfport into the suburb of Diamond Beach, where Jon and Rudy had gone to high school. I thought I was familiar with the layout of the town, and tried to predict which way the car would turn. But each guess was wrong, and I was soon left with a feeling that my luck had been washed away with the tide.

At an unpredicted gravel road that seemed to lead into a mysterious abyss, we turned right. Rudy flicked on his high beams and pressed the gas, kicking gravel into the night, headed straight toward what appeared to be a dense mass of trees.

In the pale moonlight of the darkened cove, my eyes flickered uncertainly. Rudy clicked a button on what looked like a garage door opener on the visor above his head and a sudden eruption of light revealed a large, old Southern house with a wraparound porch and requisite swing, shaded by magnolias. Confused and blinded, I stared at the structure until Rudy pulled the jeep around the circular driveway and cut the engine.

"This is quite a place." I coughed and took a drag off my cigarette as I stepped into the light.

"Yep. Parents bought it a few years ago, just before I went to school."

"That’s too bad," I said, before I could realize that I offered a condolence for apparently nothing.

"Don’t feel too sorry for him, you should’ve seen his old house." Jon nodded behind Rudy as he took in the vastness of the structure.

"Yeah, but this is home since I got kicked out of school." Rudy shrugged and then jammed his hands in his pockets as he began to walk around the house. As he followed, Jon tripped over a decorative brick that lined the grass, but regained his balance and smiled back at me. I waited until I finished half of the cigarette, squeezed out the cherry, and put the rest of the cigarette back in the pack before I began to move.

I heard a splash as I walked blindly, having moved into the shadows of the house, following Jon and Rudy’s chatter. Several lights came on, and I saw the head of a golden retriever bobbing up and down in the teardrop shaped swimming pool.

"This guy’s crazy, he just threw his dog in the pool."

"What?"

"He likes it," Rudy said as he tossed me a beer from a red cooler at his feet. "Don’t you Skip? Don’t you like it?" The dog put its front paws on the edge of the pool and kicked its back legs until Rudy grabbed him by the collar and yanked him out.

"It’s nice back here," I said as I settled into one of the pink pool chairs arranged chaotically around the deck and took a long pull from the cold can of Pabst Blue Ribbon I’d just opened.

"Sure is," Jon said as he took off his shoes and began to roll his pants legs up.

"What the hell’re you doin’?" Rudy said as he dried Skip off with a thick green towel.

"Just wanna stick my feet in the pool. Is that okay?"

"Man, you’re a goddamn fuckin’ woman is what you are. You teach him how to roll his pants like that, Yankee?"

"Sure did. We walk around with our pants rolled up like that all the time at school."

"You know what would cure you of bein’ queer?" Rudy asked.

"Huh?"

"Shoot a gun." Rudy dropped the towel on Skip’s head and ran to a shadowed door. The dog moaned in confusion until the towel fell off his head.

"He really going to get a gun?" I asked.

"Probly."

I pulled out my half smoked cigarette and lit it. My stomach felt warm as if a tiny fire had been lit, and my eyes crackled. The door slammed, breaking my peace, and Skip started barking.

"Shut up!" Rudy grabbed the dog by its collar and yanked hard. The dog lay down and licked its paws, looking at his master innocently. Rudy walked around the pool, pretended to push Jon in and sidled up to where I sat. He reached into his back waistband and pulled out a large, black pistol.

"You ever fired one of those motherfuckers, Donnie?" I hated being called Donnie. It made me sound like I was in a boy band.

Rudy smiled down at me proudly and stuck out the gun, grip forward. The weight surprised me as I took it in my hands. Power flowed through me in terrifying waves. I’d never held a gun before.

"Nine millimeter," Rudy said, as the grin of pride stretched further across his face.

"Nice." I didn’t know what else to say.

"Wanna shoot it?"

"Nah."

"Scared?"

"Nah, just stoned."

"You’re probly right. We’re too fucked up right now. Might accidentally shoot you in the back of the head." He snorted like a sick man. I could only think of the last moments of my life as my body twitched helplessly on the damp ground far from home.

"Shit, man, I’ve got something else to show you guys. Jonny, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it." Rudy grabbed the gun from my hand, turned around, and ran back toward the house. His long strides slapped the ground in perceptible excitement.

"What’s he getting? His great granddaddy’s Civil War uniform?"

Jon shrugged as he kicked his legs in the pool, watching the tiny splashes he made ripple through the water. Skip got up and trotted over to Jon, laid down, and looked around forlornly.

My fingers clenched the denim that covered my legs, and my jaw felt as though it was about to snap my teeth. The door slammed and Rudy walked at a precocious clip as though he were going to the front of the class to share his most prized possession. He came out of the darkness into the glaring floodlights carrying a brown sack. When he was just a few feet away from me, Rudy stopped, put the sack on the ground by his feet and pulled a pack of smokes from his pocket.

I stared for a moment at the burlap tied at the top with a worn piece of rope. Rudy picked up the sack after he lit his cigarette and walked toward me. My head became clear as I watched him approach.

"Check this shit out," he said as he dropped the sack in my lap.

I couldn’t tell what was inside from the weight.

"You want me to . . ."

"Yeah, just open it." Rudy grinned and raised his eyebrows as he took a drag from his smoke.

The rope was barely tied in any sort of knot, and fell to the ground when I pulled on it. A strong breeze blew just then, and I had to hold on to the sack to keep it from falling to the ground. The burlap was stiff, as though it had not been opened in some years.

I pulled the burlap apart and a dry, stale smell arose from the bottom. As my right hand reached into its depths, and felt the hard, leathery contents my heart jumped. From the darkness and into the light, I pulled humiliation. Spots formed before my eyes as I held it, wondering whether the herb was getting to me, whether the past had hiccupped its way into my lap. A human hand, curled in desperate pain, was before me.

The black skin was desiccated, almost to the point of being scaly. It had been severed at the wrist, stuffed and sealed tightly. The fingers were long and covered with thick calluses. But the palm in its ageless state smacked me. A large letter S had been burned into it.

"My great, great, great granddaddy got that from one of his niggers just before the end of the war." Rudy’s eyes betrayed no solemn regret or embarrassment as I looked at him. Only certainty.

I tried to melt into the fabric of the earth, pulling everything just with me. Voices screamed, giving me their advice, pleading with me that their opinions were the most valuable. But I couldn’t distinguish what they said, and didn’t for a moment wish the past to be present as I flung the hand, end over end. I watched the parabolic path, as the hand passed through the air, floating toward the stars.

The hand landed with a muted splash in the pool that cast but a few drops of water into the air. Only the cacophony of voices filled my ears. Maybe Rudy’s screams were included in the jumble, but I didn’t care. My body tried to move, but felt heavy with awareness, because I knew that I couldn’t run any longer.

I watched as Skip stood up from Jon’s side, his tail wagging in happiness, and jumped into the pool. The dog swam with strong strokes to the hand and grabbed its now saturated fingers in his teeth. I felt my chair tip on its side as Rudy pushed me over, his curses boomed in a language that I couldn’t decipher. My face pulled along the concrete in one grating motion, and my shoulder twisted as I landed on it.

My eyes closed. The voices stopped, and all I could hear was the monophony of my breathing. I braced for another assault, a kick, a punch. But nothing came. A few moments passed and I opened my eyes just to see what was in front of me. There was Skip, his yellow fur matted and dripping. His tail wagged, as his brown eyes pleaded for a pat on the head for his good deed. In between his teeth, hanging by a hundred and forty year old finger, was the hand.