“There you are, fellers, now you can get eggs off me.” He grinned. “I’ll let you have ’em cheap ’cause you’re my workmates. Nine centavos each. Cost you ten and even twelve in town.”
We stared first at the bundle of hens and then at the grinning Abraham. Not one of us had thought of going into the egg business like this, and yet it was so obvious, so simple, and required no special intelligence, so that any of us could have done the same. Sam the Chink showed no envy or jealousy, but only admiration for the enterprising Abraham, and perhaps some shame at having allowed himself to be beaten in setting up a sideline.
Thus in the course of one afternoon the disinherited and exploited worker Abraham became an owner, a capitalist. He had acquired productive hens while we had bought only food to be consumed. We had wondered why he had ordered no food from the store and had been prepared to deal with the pilfering of our supplies, which we had expected of him. Instead he was offering us future supplies of eggs in exchange for rice and beans or money. He was in business. At the worst, in case the hens went on strike, he could eat them, and the rooster too.
On the following day Abraham had four eggs for sale.
4
We regarded eggs as a greater luxury than meat.
And now that they were so temptingly close at hand and could be prepared more easily than any other food, so that we could get something better into us for breakfast than the usual thin coffee and piece of dry bread, we felt we would not and could not do without eggs. It suddenly seemed to us that without eggs we would fold up from undernourishment before the end of the harvest, or if we survived the harvest we’d be too feeble to go on to other work.
The slaves, said Abraham, who had it from his granddad, were generally kept in good condition, like horses. But no one worried about the condition of the “free” worker. If he got ill through malnutrition due to substandard living conditions because of low wages, he got sacked.
Opportunistic arguments of this kind were advanced by Abraham so as to ensure a ready and regular market for eggs. Such observations on man’s condition were all the more acceptable to us since, generously enough, he supplied us with eggs on credit until the next pay day. Abraham did this purely out of the kindness of his heart because, as he explained it, he did not want to see us, his dear fellow workers, fail from malnutrition in later life, that is, after the harvest.
Within three days we couldn’t imagine how we had ever existed without eggs. We had eggs for breakfast, we took eggs along to the field for lunch, and of course we had eggs for supper. We were even baking eggs into our bread.
There was no doubt about it, Abraham understood chicken farming. Often he left the field as early as three to look after his hens. He gave them plenty of corn. Every other evening just at twilight he went off — he never said where — with a sack. He always returned with his sack full of corn long after we had turned in.
Those six hens and the rooster, apparently aware of our need, did their best to protect us from malnutrition, laying a generous supply of eggs in honest return for the abundant grain they received.
Well, the hens laid four eggs on the first day; on the second day, seven. On the third morning, lest we doubt his word, Abraham took us to the three old baskets he’d hung up for the laying hens and let us count. the eggs for ourselves. There they were, seventeen eggs now. Having counted these eggs at sunrise, we doubted Abraham’s word no more, not even when with beaming face one morning, as if he’d won in the national lottery, he informed us that the hens had laid twenty-eight eggs in one day! It was no concern of ours what Abraham did to his hens to get such results. The Chink said that the Chinese performed miracles in squeezing nutriment from a particle of earth or the last egg from a hen, but that Abraham outdid even them.
Abraham cut him short: “You’re all a lot of fools. You know as little about scientific chicken farming as the farmers around here, who are the biggest fools of all. In Louisiana we know how to handle hens. I learned it from my grandmother, who gave me some good clouts before I got the hang of it, but now even the smartest farmer wouldn’t stand a chance against me if I ran a chicken farm here. I’d show him how to make hens pay.”
We just went on eating eggs. But the eggs took their revenge: they devoured us. They devoured our wages to the extent that none of us would reach his set target, whether it was for a new shirt, new trousers, or simply a railroad ticket to a place with better prospects. Even Sam, whose countrymen are often unjustly charged with preferring to run around naked rather than spend a penny on a necessity, owed Abraham a neat sum for eggs.
Compared to our first week we were living like princes now, thanks to the eggs, and also to a night rainstorm that provided us with enough rain water to wallow in baths.
Yet the rain lost us half a day’s pay, turning the cotton field into a muddy swamp from which we could hardly lift our feet.
By the third pay day it was plain that we couldn’t get along on the miserable wages paid us. At the end of the harvest we’d have barely two weeks’ wages in hand, and all of that would be spent before we could march out of the bush and on to the next job, wherever it might be.
“It’s those damned eggs ! ” said Antonio, as we sat around the fire talking things over. “Those eggs are enslaving us miserably.”
“But we didn’t have to buy them,” I put in. “Abraham didn’t force them onto us. He could have saved them up and sold them to the store.”
“That’d be more work for him,” said Gonzalo.
At this moment Abraham came back with his evening’s corn and, overhearing us, threw his sack down. “So you’re talking about eggs! Haven’t I done right by you all? Every egg freshly laid! I’m entitled to my money, ain’t I, fellers?”
“Nobody talked about not paying. If you don’t know what we’re talking about, better keep quiet,” I told him. “Listen,” broke in Antonio, “we were saying that unless we give up the needless luxury of eggs we’ll have worked all these weeks for nothing.”
“Needless lux’ry, you call it?” Abraham yelled. “You want to walk aroun’ like skel’tons when the cotton-pickin’s over? Now I’m collectin’ my money! Antonio, you owe… ”
I didn’t care who owed for how many eggs. I paid my own bill and left for the shelter to turn in. On the way I could hear squabbling over the accounts, although it must be admitted that Abraham seemed absolutely honest in his business relations with us. But as I was dozing off that night I resolved to do without eggs the next week.
At dawn on Monday, as I was making my way to the fire, I heard Antonio shouting: “Where are the eggs this morning, you black-as-coal Yank? I want five eggs!”
Abraham was counting the eggs in his baskets and continued as if he hadn’t heard Antonio.
“Hey there, didn’t you hear me? I want five eggs. Or shall I lay them myself?”
“What’s this?” asked Abraham, all innocence. “I don’t want to force my eggs on you and rob you of your hard-earned wages. You’d better save the money. You can get along without eggs, like you did the first few days here.”
We rose up like one man against Abraham’s new tune, against his interference with our established way of life.
“Who do you think you are, you black nobody, telling me what I should and should not eat,” chimed in Gonzalo. “Give me six eggs at once or I’ll smash your woolly skull in.”
“All right,” Abraham agreed, “if that’s the way you want it I’ll supply you with eggs, as before.”
“Well, how else?” asked Sam Woe quietly. “Filst you tempt us into eating eggs, and when we get used to them you tly to withhold. Give me thlee eggs!”