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

I’d go and I’d sit around in the dark where she couldn’t find me until my daddy come in. Well, when he’d come in, he would indulge me to a great extent, enough for me to know it. I shoulda took my stepmother’s whippins, for her sake, but I didn’t do it. After all outs and ins, I realize today she was better to we children than my daddy was; she didn’t butcher up with children.
    He was just careless with us like a brute. One day he put meand my sister to cuttin cord wood for people to use in winter, cuttin mostly for the Clay family that lived down there close to us on Sitimachas Creek, run the big grist mill. My daddy had me and Sadie at that job. That was my tryin day. He kept us—he’d help us cut down the tree, maybe him and me and my sister, all three. And he’d always work me in a place in preference to my sister—she was about three years older than I was and I was past nine years old at that date—put us to helpin him cut cord wood for white people. Heavy job on kids, helpin pull a cross-cut saw. We practically sawed the most timber in wood lengths that my daddy cut up, me and Sadie did. And he had a ax—
    So, one mornin in the woods, cut this wood in the winter, in the cold. There was two or three of the Clay family that my daddy always obligated himself to cut wood for em: Mr. Shelton Clay and old Mr. John Clay, Mr. Shelton’s daddy. But not only for them; my daddy cut wood for anybody that wanted it. And he’d always tell we children, “When you get tired, stop and rest.” Well, he lost his kind talk and kind acts that mornin. Had a big old oak log, big around as a man’s waist, layin on the ground. We’d saw them big cuts, then split em up and stack em the cord-wood way. Sadie on one side and me on the other side, sawin. And he kept water there in the bucket where we could drink from when we wanted to. And if he figured in his way that one of us was gettin tired, whichever one of us it was, we both stopped then to rest, catch our wind. Sawin aint no easy job with a cross-cut saw; you must thoroughly have what it takes to pull that saw.
    So, that mornin, unexpected, I seemed to get weak. My sister was older than I was and it didn’t make no difference that she was a girl, she’d out-wind me sometimes. I got weak—and my daddy had a act, most of the time, he’d catch hold on my sister’s side and spell her. I don’t know what made him do it. I didn’t feel that he had a right to do it except that she bein a girl—but he oughta looked at it more ways than that. He oughta knowed that sometimes I’d get tired as well as my sister, and me younger. And he was workin me at that time at things he always kept my sister back, just because I was a boy. So he grabbed that saw on her side; him on one side then, me on the other. And he set me down; he set me afire when he done it. When he grabbed the saw handle out of her hand—I was already tired, I had almost started to quit, but he walked up and grabbed her handle and had her to stand aside. And hecommenced a snatchin that saw with all force that was needed to pull it and push it. He carried me a merry gait there a few minutes, and I’d already about lost my wind. I was fearful to stop after he grabbed the saw and I weakened down further when he hit a few licks with me. I slackened, I lost, I just about give out. He looked over that log at me, he seed plain somethin was goin to happen or had happened. He felt my pressure was weak, he felt it. But in place of stoppin, what did he do? Honest to my Savior, I held that against my daddy a long time, but finally I just outgrowed it and give it up. When he felt how that saw was goin and comin from my side, he raised up he did and squalled at me like I was a dog: “Saw on!”
    Told me to saw on. I looked across the log and in a jiffy, backwards I went with my heels flew up. After he hollered, “Saw