That wasn’t the end I was watching, however, and I will admit to a bit of true curiosity as to how that backside of hers was far more attractive than the front, but I wasn’t about no mischief of any kind. I just turned my head and seen she was reaching into her basket, pressing some serious butt up against her thin gingham dress.

It was in that brief and fateful moment that her husband, the aforementioned Sam Ruggert, come out of the back door and seen me looking. My having sight of what anyone that might have walked by could have seen just crawled up his ass like a wounded animal and died, and he couldn’t stand the stink.

There he stood, eyeing me hard with his piggy eyes, wearing only a pair of pants and his boots, his big white belly hanging over his belt like a bag of potatoes, his mouth twisting around in his beard like a couple of red worms trying to get out of a tangle of grass.

Next thing I know the fly was in the buttermilk. He’s bellowing at me, accusing me of being bold with a white woman, like maybe I had broke into their yard and jammed my arm up her ass. But I hadn’t done nothing except what was natural, which was to admire a nice butt when it was available to me.

By this time his wife had turned around and seen me, ruining any joy I might have had in her backside with the sight of her face. She started calling me this and that, and you can bet the word nigger come up two or three times. Coon was tossed in there for good measure, and the kindest thing I was called by the both of them was a goddamn darky. Of course they made mention of my ears, which stood out like the open front and back doors on a shack.

So there they was, yelling at me and carrying on, and Ruggert started looking around, hoping for an ax or a hoe, maybe even a rock to throw. None of that was on hand, so he rushed into the house. I knew he’d be coming out with a gun. Most likely a big one.

If he didn’t shoot me dead, I could already in my mind’s eye see a bunch of white folks loping up with a rope and a snarl on their lips, ready to string me to a tree or a porch overhang without so much as a questioning or a trial. I had seen it happen once. An old man, who the white folks called Uncle Bob, said something that went sour with some white person, and it was a thing so minor no one remembers what it was anymore. In the next instant Uncle Bob was dangling by a rope from a tree and had been set on fire by lighting his pants legs with a kitchen match. That was done after a nice churchgoing lady had opened his fly, sawed off his manhood with a pocketknife, and tossed it to a dog.

I was ten years old when I seen it happen. My mama was alive then and home, as it was after the war and her having been sold off became unlawful, and she had made her way back to us. By then Pa was free himself. I had only been a little slave boy for a few years and was fortunate enough not to remember it too good. We had been owned by a pretty nice fellow, if you want to consider it that way. I mean, he didn’t beat us or anything, but we was certainly his property. Had we run off we would have been hunted down with dogs and men with rifles. And he had sold Mama, hadn’t he? So to say he wasn’t bad as some is a relief, but not a smooth satisfaction.

Mama got to come home, and things was better, but it didn’t last. Didn’t seem it was no time at all until she got the sickness and died. But this time concerning Uncle Bob was before her dying. Me and Mama had come to town to buy something or another with our small bit of trade goods, and next thing we knew here come old Uncle Bob running like a dog that had stole a ham.

A mob was right behind him, and then they was on him. It was like watching a mass of big ole horseflies settling down on a dog turd. Mama tried to put her hand over my eyes so I wouldn’t see it happen, but a white man seen us standing there, said to Ma, “Get your fingers off his face. You people take a good look and know your place around here.” It happened so fast and so furious that by the time you could have picked your nose only slightly, and without much in the way of a comfortable reward, it was over. Uncle Bob was cut and hanged, and a dead bird found beside the road was stuck in his mouth. I don’t think there was any reason to that, other than it was something mean.

That day got branded firm in my mind, and that’s why I run away from that place after seeing Mrs. Ruggert’s ass. I ended up at the livery and stole a horse right in front of the colored livery boy, who said, “Oh, shit, you gonna be in some hot water now.”

In a moment I had gone from being in trouble over a misunderstanding to being in trouble over an actual theft.

I didn’t have time to saddle the horse, and I didn’t pick too wise. That mare was old and near lame. Therefore I don’t know I can say I rode out of town so much as my horse limped away with me on its back.

It wasn’t clear to me what I should do, so I decided to ride out to our place to see Pa and explain to him what had happened. When I was about a half mile out, for some reason I abandoned the horse, thinking I might be forgiven for taking it. This was, of course, unclear thinking, as I was going to be killed for something that was a matter of accident and of no consequence. Had that horse gone back to the livery, and had it had the ability to talk, and had it explained the situation, given them a solid and true bill of events, about how I was in a frightened whirl and had only borrowed her, it wouldn’t have mattered. Had the horse spoke up in my defense, she would have been hanged first and then me alongside her, the both of us with dead birds in our mouths.

I ran like a deer the rest of the way to our place and hadn’t no more got there when I realized pretty soon there would be a rabble on my tail. By this time the story of what I had done would have been built on so a foot would become a yard. It would be determined that I had not only molested that hatchet-faced wife of Ruggert’s and stole a horse but also assaulted every woman in town in some fashion or another, and of course that would be an insult to white manhood, which was a thing that couldn’t be tolerated.

It also occurred to me that I might be bringing the whole bad business down on Pa. But by the time I had thought this through, I was at our place and had caught Pa out in the field plowing.

He stopped to listen to my story, and I explained the whole bad business to him. Unhitching the old horse from the plow, we both rode it back to the house. When we got there, he tied the horse up, and we went inside. He peeled back some floorboards. Underneath them was a tow sack, and inside it, wrapped in oil paper, was a pistol. It was a .44, Pa explained, and it was converted from cap and ball to a cartridge shooter. When he gave it to me, I damn near went through the floor it was so heavy.

“You had better run,” he said. “I ain’t gonna say I seen you. You ought not take the plow horse, cause it would be dead in an afternoon if you had to really ride it, and they’d know for a fact you come here and took it, which would put them directly on your path. You’d make out best if you run across the field and down into the draw, where them trees along it can hide you. Do that and keep moving down it until you get to the pine break. Go into them pines, head west, and keep traveling on in that direction. And son, it might be best you never come back, cause if you do, they’ll be waiting. A white man has a long memory for unimportant things involving colored folks. And that Ruggert fella, he’s one of the worst.”

I nodded at him, feeling so weak I could hardly stand, not quite wrapping my thoughts around the fact I was leaving forever.

“You take that gun. It’s loaded, and try not to use it, but they come down on you, you take it in both hands and aim at the biggest part of them you can see, and if they are going to swarm you, you ought to save a bullet for yourself, put it to your head, and let go, cause things is going to get a lot worse if you’re alive when they lay hands on you.”