THE BEAR IS TRYING TO HURT MY DADDY

Now, that old log house we lived in faced due west and the road in front of us ran north and south. The roads, in that part of the country, turned about every quarter mile as the forty acres farms unfolded. One couldn’t just go like the crow flies. Them ol’ dirt roads just kind of flowed along the fencerows so as not to use up too much farmland right in the middle of a feller’s property. If I came out the front of the house and made a left, I’d be going due south, if I turned right, I’d be going north. We sat right in the middle of that quarter mile strip on a twenty-acre plot.

Down at the south end of the road, it doubled back west for another quarter mile. Right there, at the bend, was a little one-room store, where Herbert and Thelma Webster sold a few things. There was a lane that branched off and led back east to a family by the name of Daily. Old Grandma Daily was the oldest woman in the neighborhood at that time. She’d had a stroke sometime earlier on, and had lost her ability to speak. Without the benefit of a speech therapist, her talk was almost unintelligible. She was also deaf, and would fairly holler out the little that she could say. We’d often see her up at Webster’s store, and she’d want to hug and kiss me. It would scare the living daylights out of me. I wasn’t accustomed to anything that wasn’t healthy and whole. I’d hang back and try to hide from her.

My Daddy would sometimes insist that I approach her, and at least allow her to talk to me, as he didn’t want to offend her. I’d been given the idea that my Granddaddy Messer and that Daily bunch had been hooked up in some kind of way. I didn’t know exactly how, but the indication was, it was something on the wrong side of the law. No one would talk about it to this day. I’ve no idea what that might’ve been. On one occasion, we had walked up to the Daily’s house and the old lady was out tending to her garden. I remember, I was impressed by its size. She grew a number of different kinds of gourds mixed in with all the vegetables. My Daddy said she dried them, cut them in half, and used them for dippers in the water bucket. He also told me Old Mrs. Daily was a Cherokee, just like my Grandma Lena and knew a lot of stuff white folks didn’t. I didn’t care. She scared me, and I was anxious to get away from there.

Now, everybody called her husband Ol’ Man Charley. He was old alright, and just about as profane as my Granddaddy Poe. They had five boys and three girls living in those parts. According to reports, Ol’ Man Charley would never let the youngest daughter leave home. The General would get a funny look on her face when they talked about that. I got the idea something was not quite right with them folks. She said the old man had never been saved or accepted Jesus. He wouldn’t even go to church when the good sisters made a special trip over to his house just to invite him. She, being in the Army of the Lord, and always looking for new recruits, took a dim view of that. She seemed pretty sure he was in for a bad time with the Lord later on.

Those ol’ boys of theirs were scattered around, here and there, up old roads, and down lanes, and all around. They did a lot of hunting and logging out of timber. They were a rough and ready bunch and were always a fighting amongst themselves when there was no one else to fight with. One of them carried a big ol’ red can of Prince Albert smoking tobacco in his back pocket. The bottom of the metal can had worn a hole in his old faded overalls and you could see it when he moved around. These fellers weren’t to be trifled with. It had been reported even the local law didn’t go around any of Ol' Charley’s boys. You can see a young lad of six, going on seven, trying to sort all that out.

My Daddy was a peaceful man, and he’d rather tell funny stories than have trouble with a feller. He was Irish, however, and had that old persecuted Cherokee in him. He weighed about 140 pounds in those days and claimed to be about 5 feet and 10 inches tall. I really think that must have been with them high-top shoes on that he plowed in while working in the field. Well, anyway, Arkansas men are very territorial, proud, and don’t take lightly to being insulted, or to being made look bad in front of their neighbors. After all, what else has a man got besides his pride? My Daddy wasn’t a man of fear about physical things. His family not being cared for, protected, and fed, was what he feared.

Now, up on the other end of the road going north lived Old Man Charley’s oldest son and everybody called him The Bear. That was because he was so big and burly looking. He had a long black beard and a raspy voice he’d got from smoking and chewing tobacco. I can remember, as I sit here, exactly how he smelled. He was one of them fellers that never went to school to study anything, but he was a natural fixer. The Bear could repair just about anything, I reckon. Put you in an ax handle, sharpen a plow, work on wagon wheels, just an all round fixer-upper. He also did a little fishing and always had a few catfish to sell.

My Daddy liked to eat fish when it rained. He’d buy up a big ol’ mess, and the General would make cornbread and hot black coffee and strain off the grounds, or at least most of them. She’d clean green onions, if it was summertime, or cut up some big white ones in the off season. Provided we had potatoes, she’d fry them up too. At those times My Daddy would open the door, take off his shirt, sit there at the table and look out at the rain. “Folks don’t need a lot of fixings when they’ve got good fish,” he’d say.

One rainy day in the spring, after Jeaner Jackson was born, My Daddy was coming around that north corner riding Ol’ Gray, she was one of the white mares you could ride. He decided, by golly, he'd just stop and buy some fish from the Ol’ Bear. Well, there were several men folk gathered around getting the Ol’ Bear to do some of their fixing stuff. The Ol’ Bear must’ve not been feeling too good that day. My Daddy came in a singing a very funny song about the Blackjack David. The Ol’ Bear just reached over to my 140 pound, 5 feet 10 inch daddy, grabbed him by the shirt-collar, and shook him real good. Told My Daddy to get off his place and never come back.

My Daddy being shocked, and on the Ol’ Bear’s property, just left, feeling like an old cur dog with his tail tucked between his legs. He got to, what My Daddy called, a studying on it, and he could see that he had been stripped plumb clean of his rightful place as a man. Them fellers, that had been there, would be telling that story all over the county.

What happened next is still with me today. My Daddy, when he got mad, had this red thing on the side of his nose that would stand up. If you started to see that, you needed to tread lightly. When he got home, I watched him put Ol’ Gray away. Not much to that, just took off the bridle. He never owned a saddle. Then he came into the house. I’d already learned to be careful with him when I saw that red thing on his nose. There it was, and it was redder than I’d ever seen it. I did a quick check to see if he was going to be looking for The Protector or me. He paid us no mind, and went on into the kitchen. He started whispering to the General and she got real excited. I wasn’t able to figure out what it was as she ran me outside.

Along about 5:00 P.M. in the evening, it started to get dark and the rain had turned into a slow drizzle. Suddenly, I heard the General start to cry. Now, she was prone to giving orders, and not carrying on like that. When I heard her, I came running from the barn where I’d been playing with Ol’ Tom. Then I saw this old ugly wagon, being pulled by two ol” bony black horses, coming past our house. The Ol’ Bear was a driving and two of his boys were sitting on the floor in the back. My Daddy went out and stopped them and told Ol’ Bear to get hisself down out of there as he was gonna give him a good whooping.

The General had followed My Daddy out to the road and was doing her best to get the Lord’s attention. She was a crying and talking about the Blood of Jesus cleansing, and forgiving us of our sins and a whole bunch of stuff, I had never heard tell of before. The Ol’ Bear said, “Fine, just come on down the road a ways.” He didn’t want to be on, or near, our property. He drove his wagon a few yards up the road and stopped. My Daddy reached over and grabbed the double-edged chopping ax and followed him. My blood turned as cold as you please, and this funny feeling went up my back. The same one I’d get when old Granny Daily was a talking. I knew someone was going to die that day. I started crying and jumping up and down.

The image of that gray, cold, and drizzly day, almost dark, with The Bear standing up holding them check lines, and My Daddy standing on the ground with that ax, is still etched in my mind. “Get on down here on the ground and us just settle this right now,” I heard My Daddy say in a voice I hardly recognized. The General, she had climbed up in the wagon, and was holding on to Ol’ Bear, and a begging him not to do it. She knew My Daddy would kill him for sure. Ol’ Bear had been growling pretty loud up to that point. With a General of the Lord in the wagon calling on the Holy Ghost and a very mad, half-breed Cherokee, Irishman on the ground, a funny thing happened. Suddenly, the Spirit of the Lord must have moved on Ol’ Bear, because he began to see the error of his ways. He commenced to declare how he didn’t know what had come over him that morning. The General had her eyes closed and her arms in the air. She was making a strange sound, crying out to the Lord. My fears began to diminish as My Daddy relaxed the ax and started to regain his dignity.

Two things happened that day the way I see it. One, the General kept My Daddy from killing Ol’ Bear. Second, was that sometimes a man has got to stand up for himself, even if it’s to a big Ol’ Mean Bear.