Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 86160 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86160 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
The story started floating around about how poor Carter had been done wrong. How his fancy fiancée had up and ran off with her beau. Now the thing is, most believed that, because to them I’m about the sorriest sight this side a Texas. I tend to like it that way.
I have a face full of hair, and the one on my head grows down past my shoulders. I could hardly remember what I looked like before the age of sixteen. That’s because it was about then that I’d started growing that beard a mine and covering half my face with a bandana and my eyes with some cheap Dollar General shades.
Well, the men might say all manner of things, but if they only knew what some of their women offer me with their eyes, they’d grow a beard too. But it’s none of my business, and I’m all about minding my own.
Now some might say I could afford not to give a fuck because of the money, but that ain’t true. I was just wired that way somehow and through life and circumstance it had only grown worse over time. Money didn’t have spit to do with it. A man’s mettle should never be measured by such a thing. No real man’s anyhow.
I guess you’ll be wanting to know how a scruffy scalawag like me came by so much money as to be able to thumb my nose at convention. Well now, that’s a story in itself.
My daddy was the meanest so and so this side a Texas, come to think of it on either side. Word around town is he’d worked my mama into the ground with backbreaking work and pure old cussedness and had started in on me as soon as I could pick my head up. Word ain’t worth shit.
I was all of six or seven when my mama up and died, and daddy took me out of school to help around the farm, which wasn’t much of one to begin with.
We had a few head of cattle, some hogs, and maybe a sheep or two. Not much when you think about it. What we did have; was a stud bull that bred just about every heifer in a thousand mile radius. He was mean too.
The town folk’s tongues got to wagging early on-on account of how pitiful we looked whenever we were out and about. Folks tend to judge a man by his clothes or what kinda truck he drove, more so than what he had on the inside.
I used to follow my old man to town in a pair of old pants that were held up by rope because they were too big around the middle, with my ankles showing because they were too short in the legs. An old ratty shirt with the sleeves gnawed off by a hound dog and an old straw hat that was more straw than hat.
Some folks use to say that the old man used to be a right good looking feller in his younger days. How my daddy used to get to hooting and hollering, and raising hell.
That was before the cares of the world beat him down and he just about gave up on life, except for his wife and son. Folks used to whisper that I was shaping up to be just like ‘im.
I didn’t talk much, not then and not now, so folks got to minding our business. Once they’d even got the county to send a social worker out to our place.
In the end them folks couldn’t figure how the old man was such an abuser since there was never a scratch on me and I looked up to him something fierce.
Sure he’d taken me outta school to help out, but I’d taken myself down to the schooling place and signed me up for homeschooling. The busybodies in town didn’t know that. Then again there was a lot they didn’t know.
My daddy, he wasn’t much for talking either. He spoke in spit, grunts and ‘git it boy.’ That last was to a mean old dog he had around the place that he’d sic on anything with two feet and a heartbeat.
He used to sic ‘im on me too. That dog would run my poor ass up a tree every time, until I turned him to my side. I’d feed him scraps when daddy wasn’t looking and after that there was no more fun for the old man.
Then one day the old bull up and kicked daddy in the balls. He probably decided there was only room for one stud on the farm and he was it. The two of them sure did have an ornery relationship.
So now daddy from that day was always just fair to middling and I was the one left to keep the place up. It was back breaking work to be sure, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I got to enjoy the outdoors as much as I like, and do as I please even down to swimming bare assed naked down by the creek.