Audiobook, Narration
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North American (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
It's a peculiar thing about families. You'd think if you knew anybody it would be your own flesh and blood. Some of their stories you've heard so often, you know them by heart. But there are other stories you never hear. Perhaps you're not told because you were too young or maybe the story was too painful or just plain embarrassing. But the day may come when that untold story is the very one. You need to know. Stories are important to my mother's people. Stories explain everything from how the earth was made to how rabbit lost his tail. My grandmother used to tell them to me when she lived with us after mama died before daddy married mama Louise. I went to school until the war started and daddy joined up with stand weighty in the army of the confederacy before mama Louise came to live with us and gave daddy's sons. He took me hunting and fishing with him and taught me to run the trap lines and check the snares. When he left the boys being bare bottomed babies, I kept doing the trapping to feed us all. Daddy, having taken the rifle to war with him game had grown scarcer in the mountains near us and it was needful to go miles from the settlement to set the snares. I went further out. Every trip until the day came when. By the time I'd check the lines. Night was falling, so I climbed a hickory tree, found a sturdy branch and laid down on it just for a nap, even though panthers and bears can climb trees too. I felt safer up there and determined to remain until morning as soon as the sun was up, I picked up the rabbits I'd caught and trekked back to our cabin on the outskirts of patterson's ford. I smelled the smoke a mile away and started running. Our house was ablaze only it and no others and our goods laid heaped in the front yard while the neighbors picked through them and carry them off. My sunday school teacher rushed past me carrying our family bible which I knew from the quilted cover. My mama had sewn for it when I was small and a bolt of calico supposed to make dresses for mama Louise me and the babies mrs pure. It walked by me without saying a word or seeming to notice I was standing right there when the farrier came around the house carrying our acts, I grabbed at it and shamed him for being a thief, but he just glowered. He's a big strong man and ought to be out protecting us from the federals like Daddy not stealing our belongings, Mama Louise and the boys were nowhere to be seen, but I didn't even fear they were in the house. All the things on the ground were undamaged. So there had been time to get them out. The yard was full of voices and movement so it looked like demons were cavorting before the hellfires. What's with people picking through our clothes and grabbing everything, even the hooks and shelves that had been on the walls, the cabinets. Daddy had traded pelts and smoked fish for were being loaded in the wagon of the man who made them. I hooked my rabbits to my belt, Nodded my shawl across my chest and under one arm hitched up my skirts and wadded into the crowd of people. I thought I knew what's going on here. Where's my family? Hey, put that down. That was grandma's when people I had been taught to respect, ignored me and snatched our things away from me when I tried to take them back I yelled as loud as I can. You all get out, This is our yard. What's the matter with you run along little girl. The man who had built our cabinets growled at me as he jumped up onto his buckboard to drive away with them, brought and paid for though they were, Your family is gone now and if you don't run you won't catch up with them. Gone where? A pretty near screamed at him. Old Mrs McIlhenny, who my mom attended when she was sick cackled through her sunken mouth. The New lands girl. The old woman said just during down the road, the indian territory where you belong your mama and little brothers. The Mcmillan's, The browns and the Perrys to all you indians