#81 A Boll of Roses- Henry Dumas
Layton Fields is a young man splitting his time between
school and working the cotton fields, although the cotton fields are getting to
become a full time. “He felt ashamed of staying out of school just to pick
cotton.” But he wants money. Despite his mother telling him:
“Money ain’t worth losing your soul over.”
The time’s are a-changin’ and the freedom riders have been
coming around to register people to vote, and help people get back to school.
The old folk are all about the changes: “You young-uns oughta get out of this
field and get with them rights people. They got the Lord on their side.”
Layton is young, cares mostly about money to buy fancy
cloths like the cats from the city have. His interest in the voting people is
only about the pretty girls he sees. Themes of change, complacency, and the power of knowledge run throughout this story. What I like most about Dumas, is that no
matter where we are, what is going on, at some point he stops and takes note
of something beautiful:
Notable Passage: “Suddenly he became conscious of the dying
and falling of things. He could hear in his head an echo and he could see where
the echo was going without even taking his eyes off the axe and the echo was
soft and pretty like a human voice and it flew like a bird flies across the
sky, slow and fast but never too fast, and up and down in the wind and all he
knew suddenly is that he felt real good and nobody could tell him different.”
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