dolly

my life and other unfinished business

pages 13/14

as i flailed like an unwanted necktie against the cow`s neck, bessie dragged me through briars, into rocks and stumps, and under low-hanging limbs. those bushes that had only seemed scary were now a real threat. as they slowly flayed my skin away, i began to think how shocked mama would be to see bessie coming home with a kid skeleton hanging on to her bell strap.

what blood i had not left on the hackberry bushes in the holler rushed to my heart as i caught the first glimpse of the kerosene lantern mama was holding as she called bessie, "sook, sook!" when i was finally dragged into the yard, i thought mama would be thrilled beyond words to see my bruised and bloodied carcass. she must have been, because she didn`t use any words as she administered a few extra bruises to my butt with a hickory switch.

i have to admit that switch actually felt good. as soon as the licks had been dealt out, mama held me tight as i cried. i could see tears in the corners of her eyes too. if you had asked her why she whipped me, she would have said it was because i hadn`t come home when she called me. any parent knows that what she was really saying with that switch was, "you scared me half to death. you have to feel pain now so that you`ll remember this in the future." at that moment, we were both just thanking god that i had a future.


pages 16/17/18

the floorboards in our cabin were so far apart, a kid could feed the chickens bits of bread or crackers through the cracks - and one kid did.

that in itself should have been fun enough. but then up steps that youthfull meanness that adults make tolerable by calling it mischief. i figured that if the chickens could be lured into pecking up through the cracks, a little girl with quick fingers could grab them by the beaks and hold them above the ground for a few seconds, causing them to thrash about and beat their wings as if they had been set upon by the devil himself.

the plan was successfully carried out enough times to give every chicken in the yard a sore beak and a wisdom about sticking her nose into cracks. i used to tell myself it somehow made them better prepared for the future. it is that same kind of childlike innocence that creates such an excuse for devilment that also chooses to believe a chicken has much of a future in the first place.

of course if my daddy ever caught me at it, many a sore chicken beak would be avenged on my backside in short order. i don`t mean, as some celebrities have, to claim that i was abused. none of us kids were. we were not beaten. we got plain old tennessee butt whippin`s. and in truth, we deserved them.

when one of us had done something wrong, the rest would rather die than tell on the guilty party. i don`t know if that was out of loyalty to brothers and sisters or some unspoken code of the mischievious that made us keep silent knowing the same service would be afforded us when we were the one who "done it." whatever the reason, our failure to cooperate with the party of the second party (the one holding the belt) usually meant we would all end up getting spanked. if we had taken a minute to think about that, we would have figured out that the loyalty we were drawing interest on in that unspoken kid bank was not really doing us any good if it was intended to be insurance against getting our butt beaten for some future offense. this way, we were bound to get whipped not only for that future one but for every present one as well. still, the code was followed, and i supposed there was some kind of integrity in it, if not the clearest of logic.

i would always want to be the last in line. my plan was to run around to be first in line before daddy got to me, but that never worked. you`d think a man with that many kids would lose count just once in his life. being in last place, and being a sensitive kid, i ended up feeling every blow to every other kid just as if it had landed on my butt.

daddy used to spank us with a leather strap. but when mama whipped us, she would send us out to pick out a switch. we would try a crude form of mountain-urchin psychology by choosing a big, dangerous-looking stick that mama wouldn`t have the heart to hit us with. we`d go out to fetch a switch but come back with a limb that would be better used as a fence post. our psychology usually backfired when mama would only get madder and go out herself and pick out one of those reedy little sting-your-butt-bad switches.


pages 29/30

after school that day, i went to the hollow tree to get the crayons and found the teacher, glaring at me, razor strop in one hand and my pitifull stolen colours in the other.

i closed my eyes and waited for the thick piece of leather to come down on me, but it didn`t. i would have preferred being beaton to what happened next. the teacher called all of the other kids together, and they watched as he took hold of my shoulders and shook me. "do you all see what dolly has done? she has stolen!" he railed. i was terrified and embarrassed. the teacher made such a big thing out of it. i felt completely worthless and vile.

i got in trouble again when i got home. we had always been taught not to steal (that was one bit of the bible teaching daddy agreed with mama on), and i was harshly punished for what i had done. that whole expirience gave me a negative feeling toward school that i never really got over.


page 43

for a few moments, i allowed myself to think that my brother had actually come to my rescue in a tight spot, but then his fist grinding into my back told me i was living in a dream world. not only did he beat me on the way home, he also told mama and daddy that i had lied at school, causing me to get a whipping when i got home.


page 48

our favourite thing was a sugar daddy because it lasted so long. you could suck on it and pull it into a point and make the sweetness stay with you untill bedtime,even beyond. my mother will attest to this, having found many a kid with one glued to his or her hair with no choice but to cut it out with the scissors.

the peddlar would take eggs or even live chickens in trade if you had no money. i can remember the chickens, tied by their feet to the outside of the old bus, looking quizzical but seeming to accept their overall part in the sceme of things. we were not above stealing our own chickens to trade to the peddler for something sweet in our mouths, even if it meant a board across our butts. like the chickens, we had learned to accept life`s trade-offs.

i guess i always had a streak of devilment in me. i think it was more due to curiosity than anything else. the problem was that curiosity included finding out just how far i could go without getting my butt beat.


pages 71/72

there was also a great catchall commandment that could make just about anything a sin: "honor thy father and thy mother." anything you did or said that went against what your father or mother wanted you to do or say could be construed as dishonoring them, and there-fore a sin. this was the one situation when i used to turn the literal translation of the bible around to work for me. "it says honor," i would say, "not obey." this of course did not stop me from getting my butt beat, but it did allow me to sniff back my tears with a healthy sense of righteousness.


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