All God's Dangers by Theodore Rosengarten Read Free Book Online

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    â€œDrop them britches.”
    I’d be a little slow about it. He’d get that line out loose and sling it off the handle so I’d drop the loop; run it out the traces and swing it full loose and go to doublin it—double it once or twice, enough so it wouldn’t worry him to beat me with. Then he’d walk up to me and if I weren’t gettin out of my britches fast enough to suit him he’d grab me and snap my little old galluses down and drop my britches, stick my head between his legs—and when he got done with me that plow line was hot.
    But I had to like him, had to like him. If he thought I got a little miffed about somethin or other, any way, if he thought my mind was runnin against what he wanted to do, right there was a beatin up. O, children when I come along come along the hard way. But I say after all that: a child aint got no business buckin his parents; parents aint got no business beatin a child.
    One day my daddy had me plowin to a old steer, old oxen. He was off splittin rails for Mr. Jack Knowland and he had me in the field doin a man’s work and I was a little old boy. And in them days, they didn’t know what cuttin cotton stalks was. You’d take a stick and flail them cotton stalks down. Or else plow along and that single-tree would strip them old cotton stalks down, that averaged from three foot high to higher. My daddy was farmin, what little farmin he was havin carried on, by me. He put me out there to plowin in them cotton stalks and that single-tree flailin em down as that animal walked along. All of a sudden a stalk broke and flew back in my eye and knocked me out from between them plow handles—plowin under my daddy’s administration. Knocked me down and when I got up I got up with my hands over that eye. Itjust even hit that eye hard enough to bloodshot it through and through. I lost my sight in that eye and I suffered seein a watery gray for a week.
    Well, soon as that happened, I had to go to the house and carry that old steer out the field and put him up and carry my daddy’s dinner to him over on Mr. Knowland’s place, which was over a mile. I had to take my daddy’s dinner to him and that eye was just a lump of blood, just to look at it. I lingered with that bad bloodshot eye—just nearly knocked it out. My stepmother bathed it in salt water and cut me out a flap to wear over it, but I had to go right along just the same; didn’t stop work enough to tell it. I felt that my daddy should have had more care and respect for me than he did have. He oughta carried me to the doctor at the start. He couldn’t tell what damage was done to that eye. If I’d a lost it,
he’d
a went on through life with his two eyes. He didn’t see with my eyes—and he never did carry me to no doctor. I had to linger through my wound. It didn’t stop me but it slowed me down some on account of I was worried about it; didn’t think about nothin else but would I be a healthy boy with my own two eyes again. O, he talked in a way that showed he had sympathy for me, but doin the right thing, he never did do that.
    She was really better to us than our daddy was, TJ’s mother, and there was four of us on her at the start. My daddy brought her in over us as a stepmother and she was absolutely better to us than our daddy was. But if my daddy was gone anywhere and anything went disagreeable to her and she got up to whip us, I was up and gone; didn’t allow her to punish me. I was old enough to know that she weren’t my mother and I didn’t recognize her as my mother. You know, a child never recognizes a stepmother like he do a mother. And that’s why I showed her my heels; if I could get out of her way and keep her from hittin me a lick, that’s what I done. I went out, my daddy’d be off somewhere at night, I done things I know I shouldn’t a done and she’d get at me to whip me—outdoors