This Loving Land - Dorothy Garlock [97]
“It’s a long story. Maybe too long for one telling, but I want to tell you about it. I never told it before and I’m not sure I can make anyone understand how it was. You’d of had to lived like I did to know how it was.” He leaned over with his forearms on his spread thighs, her hand clasped in both of his, and began to talk.
“I’m from over around Nacogdoches. I never did know how I come to be dropped off with folks that worked on Ellen’s grandpa’s place. They were the white trash that worked alongside the slaves and had a whole houseful of kids. One more didn’t make no never mind.” He drew in a deep breath and leaned his head back against the house. “When I was real young, a woman used to come to see me. I can just barely remember. She was pretty and smelled nice and I’d sit on her lap. It was the bright thing in my life. It didn’t last. She stopped coming. I looked and waited for her until I started looking and waiting for Ellen. I can’t remember when I first saw Ellen. She lived with her grandpa in a great big fancy house. They were among the uppity-ups and didn’t have no truck with the likes of us, but Ellen took to coming down to the shanties. She would smile at me, pat my head, and soon her visits were all I lived for. She got to bringing me a treat once in a while, and I longed to think she was coming to that dirty place just to see me, but I knew she wasn’t. She was coming to see the older boys, and I think now some of the men. I was about ten years old, and doing a man’s work, when I found this out. I tried to beat the kid to death that told me and got a whipping from the old man that put me on my stomach for days. Ellen came storming into the shack when she heard I had got a beating for fighting for her, and threatened to tell her grandpa if I was beat again. It was the most wonderful thing that had happened to me. Ellen stood there protecting me, standing up to the old man, then washing and dressing my sore back. I loved her from that moment on.
“It wasn’t long after that that Ellen stopped coming to the shanties. I didn’t see her again until I was about fourteen. I’d left the shack where I was raised, but strings pulled me back to the only home I’d ever known. The old folks were gone, the kids scattered, and the shack was burned. Ellen’s grandpa was dead, and she was a rich lady and married. When I heard she had come back to sell the property I waited beside the house for two days just to get a glimpse of her. I couldn’t believe it when she walked up to me, remembered my name and talked to me. I thought she was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen. To me she was an angel, everything my heart desired. She filled my thoughts so completely, I would have died for her had she asked me. Well . . . she sold her property and went away again. I went to drifting. It’s a hard life, drifting, when you’re a kid. I had hell beat out of me so many times that it got to be a regular thing. I finally got big enough and tough enough, so I was able to fight for myself. But just being able to make my way wasn’t enough. It kept eating at me that I had nobody. Nobody, but Ellen.” He lit a smoke and Sadie wondered if he was finished, but he started talking again.
“I got mean. I got mean as hell. Got to where I’d fight at the drop of a hat. People kind of backed off from me, tried not to rile me. I kept to myself; driftin’, always driftin’. Looking for God knows what.
“It was about five years before I saw Ellen again. She was in a carriage and had a young boy with her. I’d just come into Nacogdoches after working on a riverboat, and I went charging down the road after her. The driver was going to use his whip on me, and if he had, I’d of killed him on the spot. Ellen knew me right away and asked me to come to the hotel to see her.” Jesse gave out what was a half-laugh and half-snort of disgust. “I was in heaven. I got myself all slicked up. Had a bath at the barber shop, spent my last dime on new clothes and boots. The room she was in was the fanciest room I’d ever