Georgia Cracker

Georgia Cracker

Today is my birthday; I am one hundred and one years old. I am putting to paper my recollections about all of the ones that I can remember.
The year I turned eleven was not really a particularly good one. It was June 23, 1901 to be exact. All my short life had been lived right here in Dooly County, Georgia, where my Daddy owned forty acres of woods and sharecropped about fifty acres of cotton up on the North end of where the Americus Highway crosses over the Flint River. We lived in a one acre cleared out section of swamp woods on the banks of the Pennehatchee Creek in a big old three room Pine Log house my Grandpa built after he came back from the Yankee Prison Camp at Point Lookout, Maryland. He don`t talk a whole lot about much of nothing but he still teaches me and my brother Joe a lot of good stuff. It had been raining for almost four days when my birthday came and not a soul in my family had said a word about it all day long. Damn rain!
The Creek was swollen ugly and raging swift, it was still raining hard and the end was not in sight. Somebody had forgot to lock the gate and the cows had slipped out and wandered off in the rain. They might be dangerously close to the edge of the creek spillway, where the water fell almost ten feet down to the large granite rocks below. If the swirling, churning swift water didn`t drown them idiot cows then the fall to the rocky pool surely would. My Momma said it was my job to make “damn certain” that her two milk cows stayed out of “harms way” even if I had to stay out in this damn gully washer all day. Bessie was the biggest and the dumbest one of the two bovines but at least she always went towards the water when she was out so I had worked my way through the gall-berry bushes and cat tails as best I could to where I imagined she might be without busting my ass and sliding down towards the creek bank myself. After about fifty yards or so I could hear what sounded like a mad cow stomping and snorting. It was awfully hard to see exactly where she was at but I followed the constant bellowing noise on down into a patch of small pines close to the creek and right next to the rushing waterfall, where any minute now I expected to hear two stupid milk cows going in for a dip. That’s when I saw my first “honest to God real live” Injun. He had cut our small Jersey cow, Little Bit across the throat and she was down on the grassy slope close to the creek bank just kicking around and tearing at the ground, slowly dying. Bessie was standing there just calm as can be, chewing up a mouthful of wet grass, the bellowing had stopped, she was looking down at Little Bit. The Redskin Injun was squatted down waiting. It was pouring down rain hard as ever and all I could hear was the thunder rolling and my heavy breathing or else he would have heard me coming.
I could have spit on the back of his head I was that close. I slid to a stop and hunkered down low under a patch of Honeysuckle vines and made myself real small and prayed that Bessie didn`t get wind of me and want some more of those sweet plums I always fed her and Little Bit when it was milking time. I studied on the Injun some. He looked plum wild to me, half naked with long, stringy coal-black hair. He didn`t look no bigger than me but I could see that long-knife in his hand so I knew he meant business, the rain sliding off his skin looked like little rivers running, he never moved a muscle. Little Bit finally quit kicking and the Injun crab walked over and started cutting the hide off of her ass end. Bessie snorted and turned her head back my way, the Injun glanced up at Bessie and then slowly twisted his whole upper body around and I closed my eyes. I felt warmness all down my leg. I had pissed myself on my birthday, in the pouring rain.
I smelled him before I opened my eyes, kind of a wild musky smell, like a wet dog who had been too close to the fire . I cracked open one eye and he was right there next to me just staring at me real hard with this funny look on his face, with that bloody knife in one hand and a piece of Little Bit`s hide in the other. Up close I could see he was closer to my age than I had thought, maybe a year or two older than me cause I`m big for my age, according to my Grandpa who don`t talk much. Anyway, here I was, in the pouring rain, down under some small scrub oaks covered with honeysuckle vines, waiting for God knows what to happen, when all of a sudden this wild-ass Injun looks back at Bessie and then over at where Little Bit is laying dead, turns back to me and in a very soft voice said “My family is starving “. I was so shocked I almost wet myself again, hell; he spoke better English than me. I just sat there for a minute, to amazed to speak. He was down on his knees next to me so we was pretty much on the same eye level when I noticed that even though it was still raining pretty hard, I could see he was crying. Not like he was hurt or anything, just serious stuff crying, sort of like when my Mama got in those sad states when everybody pretended she wasn`t really crying. He kept staring into my face and I started back breathing again cause it seemed like he didn`t mean me no harm at all.
That was the day I turned eleven and also the day I met the best friend I would ever have in my whole life. His name was John David Cloud, a full-blooded Creek Indian. That was over eighty-five years and two World Wars ago. Today is my birthday once again and it`s not a particularly good one.