Paradise Sky

On our first night there, after Ruthie and Samson had disappeared inside the wagon, me and Luther sat around the campfire. We enjoyed doing that. I had come to look forward to it every night when we camped. First there would be di

“Cougar,” Luther said. “They ain’t much for bothering someone, but it happens now and then. When I was growing up, we used to lose chickens, hogs, and dogs to them from time to time.”

“East Texas has bobcats, a few cougars,” I said. “I’ve seen bobcats, but not cougars.”

“They are elusive critters,” Luther said. “And out like this, it’s best not to come up on one. They mostly won’t bother a person, but they don’t have a code against it if they’re hungry enough or we get in their way.”

Luther picked up a stick and stirred it around in the fire.

“What brought you to being a preacher, Luther?”

“Sin,” he said. “My own as well as that of others.”

“What could you have done?” I said. “You’re about as affable a fellow as I’ve ever met. You steal some apples?”

“It was more than that,” he said.

I waited to see if he was going to volunteer a reason. It was a long wait. I heard the distant cry of that cat again. It brought a chill to my bones that was worse than that brought to me by the wind.

Luther pulled the stick from the fire and dropped it on the ground. He looked at me, said: “It’s not a simple answer. I was a young man, twenty-five, and I wanted a pistol I saw in a store.”

“A pistol?” I asked.

“It’s kind of a long story,” Luther said.

“Not like I got a meeting to attend to,” I said.

“I guess you are pretty much trapped here. I lived in Missouri then. A small town, though actually it wasn’t much of town. That store wasn’t much of a store, either, a clapboard building with one room and some shelves with things on them, and there was a big potbellied stove. White men liked to go there and sit around the stove and swap stories, drink some, chew tobacco, and spit at a can. I was fresh from being a slave, but we weren’t treated a lot better afterward. You know about that, I’m sure. I seen that pistol on the shelf when I was ru

“Old Man Turner had a rule, and there was even a sign. It said: I DON’T SELL FIREARMS OR AMMUNITION TO NIGGERS. The resentment built up in me. I had been secretly educated by my pa, who was educated himself, at least to some degree. He had been stolen from the North and brought to the South as a slave when he was young. He had been a free man and could read and write and cipher, but he had to act like he couldn’t do any of those things. That wasn’t tolerated in a slave. After he was stolen, he tried to slip away a few times, but all that got him were terrible beatings. One time Master used pliers to pull out his back teeth as punishment. Pa finally gave up and accepted things. I had been there twenty-five years and accepting it myself. My mother had long died. There were brothers and sisters, but they had been sold off. I was kept because I was strong and Master needed someone sturdy to work the way he worked us. It never occurred to me that I was accepting things same as Pa. It only come to me that he was accepting it. I can’t explain that. Maybe because he was my pa I thought he was supposed to do something, and whatever he did was supposed to include me. I realize now that he was whipped down, body and soul. That pistol became more than a pistol. I wanted to defy that sign and have that gun. It was like a statement, I suppose. I am free and should be treated like I am.

“Well, one night I snuck out and crept over to the store, pried the back door with a claw hammer, and went inside. There was a safe there. It wasn’t any bigger than a shoe box and was about as secure. I was able to pry it open with the claw hammer and steal thirty-eight dollars that was in there, though I left a copper in it out of spite. I stole that pistol, too. I looked around for some shells but couldn’t figure out which ones went to it. I didn’t know a thing about guns then. I stuffed a bunch of shell boxes in my pocket and lit out. I decided I was going to make my way north through the Ozarks. I thought things might be better up north. The weather was good. I was strong as a bull. And I was spiting not only Old Man Turner, I was spiting my pa, who at that moment in time I saw as a coward.

“I hid out in the woods and tried to make my way north, but I hadn’t been anywhere much and couldn’t figure out which way to go. I tried to use the sun as my guide, and that way I could find north, but what I hadn’t thought about was that you couldn’t always take a straight route. The mountains, the trees, the creeks, the available paths didn’t always suit a straight direction.

“What happened is they sent my pa after me, along with a white man, and they had dogs with them. After a few days they run up on me. That white man wanted to let them dogs on me, but Pa kept begging him not to, saying he could talk me in.

“Well, he wouldn’t have had to talk too hard. I had stolen the wrong ammunition, hadn’t eaten anything but a few wild foods, and was so hungry and weak I wouldn’t have cared what they done to me.

“This white fellow, I think his name was E

“Pa came into the brush where I was at, the dogs having pretty well surrounded me. He asked me to toss out my pistol, and I did, saying it wasn’t loaded. He picked it up and gave it to E

“Pa offered to take a whipping for both of us, and that hurt me to hear it. All of a sudden I didn’t exactly know how I felt about him. I didn’t want him to take a whipping for me, and I didn’t want to take no whipping, either. E

“E