said the owner of the name, and doubling his sack, hung it on the hook of the scale. He was bare to the waist: prompt young muscles bunching beneath a skin as glossy as an eggplant’s. Clyde found the name in his daybook. Was Junior Price the one? Junior, the record showed, had picked a lot of Clyde’s cotton. What else of Clyde’s, after hours, was Junior picking? Given the day off with pay in observance of Ma’s condition, with money of Clyde’s in the pockets of his impudent skin-tight jeans while he, Clyde, sat tied to his own shadow beneath the pear tree—where, how, with whom would Junior spend his day? “Fifty-four pounds,” Junior called out. One of the new breed coming up, Junior did not wait to be told by the boss what the scale registered. At his waist Junior wore a pin which proclaimed, “Black is beautiful.” Oh, how Clyde agreed! Or was Joe Franklin the one? Would Joe—picking grapes later on this fall in California, or up a ladder in an apple tree in New York’s Hudson Valley—say, “Talk about poontang, mmmmmmmmmmm, I know a little black gal down in east Texas …”
