I Ain’t Killed Anyone For Years

 I ain’t killed anyone for years. I know how that sounds, so let me explain. Sit y’self down there an’ I’ll tell the tale. It were back in the winter of ’43. I was a young man then. Full head of blonde hair, made me look like an angel all the girls used to say. I worked out at the Gainsbro farm back then. Din’t have any land of my own, my father being a useless drunk who ran off before ah was five and mama dyin’ of fever before I even turned fifteen. So I’m working out there, aged seventeen, face of an angel, hair like golden thread, scythin’ down the corn an’ trying not to sneeze at the dust. It were a hot day, sun baking me, sweat pouring down my chest an’ back, the sky so blue it’s almost white. The skies are never like that anymore, but those skies of my youth, they went on forever into the heaven. So it must be ten, eleven in the mornin’ when I hears the scream. Not like a person screamin’. At firs’ I thought it were foxes fuckin’ or summat but then I hear the words no help no no no stop him no. So I runs toward the voices, toward the farmhouse an’ I smashes through the door and there’s the Widow Gainsbro on the floor an’ this tall red haired fella standing over her. He’s got one  hand at his belt an’ in the other he holds a bullwhip. He don’t see me so intent is he on his prize an’ just like that I realise I’m still holdin’ the scythe an’ I jus’ swings it at him. I don’t even feel it hit him but I swings and swings and for a moment he don’t seem touched, he’s even turnin’ toward me and then he jus’ crumple like a tent without a pole and there’s red everywhere more red than I ever seen before an’ I’m on the ground sayin’ sorry mister you ok sorry I din’t… and then Widow Gainsbro is helpin’ me up. 

Course after that the sheriff came and then the marshall, and they says he’s some bandit from Kentucky way and there’s a reward for me. And then of course Widow Gainsbro an’ I got mighty close that winter and married in the spring. She went to her Maker long ago, but not before she gave me a child, your papa.

David Shipley

2021