PRISONER EXPRESS

Childhood is a montage made from snippets of memory surrounded by nothing. It seems strange the memories that became seared in my brain cells. There's joy and pain, embarrassments and fears, but mostly there is violence.

My first and oldest memory is of my Uncle Joe taking me swimming. He held me high and dipped me in and out of the water as I laughed and squealed and his dog, Missy, swam worried circles around us. If only all my memories brought such joy.

When I was a preschooler and old hunting dog took to living under our house. She was more than half wild and had a belly full of pups. My dad asked if I could catch her because I had a way with animals and of course I said yes. Dad gave me a noose of rope, he held the loose end, and I crawled beneath the house with some bread. She was eating out of my hand when I put the rope around her neck. Dad pulled her out, but didn't take her to the pen where he kept his other hunting dogs. Instead he tied her to the willow tree in the back yard. Then he got his shotgun off the rack and went out and killed her. Dad was proud of me for catching her, but I wished I hadn't.

Mom was mad and fixing to whip me, I ran out the door and circled the house. Afraid I'd lap her and get caught I bent over to look for her feet to see where she was. Couldn't figure out why there were no feet in sight. Then she grabbed my arm and tanned my tail. After that incident I'd climb an oak and sit swaying in the breeze until she cooled off her temper yelling and threatening me. Once she sent my brother, Jody, up to get me, but he was nine years older and too heavy for the end branches where I sat chattering like a squirrel. Jody had always hated me and tried to hurt me at every opportunity. Mom sent him to get a switch to use on me and he brought back a whole tree. It was so big Mom just gave up and didn't whip me.

Sundays Mom would send me to church with my sisters. More often than not I'd refuse to go. I might have gone if Mom was taking us all, but if she didn't have to go it didn't seem fair if I had to. That got me a weekly beating most of one summer until Mom wore down and gave up. After every beating she'd come back in the bedroom and cry about how she hated to have to whip me. She couldn't have hated it more than I did. It's no wonder I'm so anti-religion as an adult.

Jody was hogging the Sunday paper as he always did. Instead of fighting or arguing I sat on the floor and read the back of the comic as he held them out reading the other side. He slapped me in the face and I backed crying to the closet to reach the baseball bat without his noticing. He came charging me and I knocked his legs out from under him and ran screaming for help to Mama Claudie's trailer, my maternal grandmother, with Jody in hot pursuit. He'd have caught me if I hadn't hurt his leg and slowed him down. Dad beat Jody with his belt buckle for that one so badly I felt sorry for him.

When I was thirteen they hospitalized me with a kidney infection. The doctor had trouble understanding until I told him about my twenty-two year old brother kidney punching me on his weekly visits. Yeah, Mom and Dad knew he hit me. Mom had seen me lying on the ground hurt so bad I couldn't get up and cussing him every time I could catch my breath while Jody stood over me laughing. They didn't want to hurt his feelings. Guess my body being hurt didn't matter much. After the expense of the hospital stay the kidney punching stopped, but he didn't stop hurting me until I was fifteen. That was when I got fed up and took him outside, not wanting Mom to fuss all week about fighting in the house, and broke a few ribs for him. Why I never took a gun down and shot him I don't know. He deserved it.

There are good memories, too; going with dad to work in the garden on Saturdays and busting a big watermelon to eat for breakfast; riding horses with my mom; watching my oldest sister, Claudia, challenge Dad to a race with his having to take us swimming if she won, she never did, but he'd take us anyway; fishing trips with Mom and dad; hunting with Dad; staying weekends with Dorothy, my youngest sister, after she got married, yet the violence and pain seem more vivid and I'm sure was more of an influence on the man I became.

Why should my family be surprised when I hit people who made me angry? It's what they taught me when they hit me. That was when I was too small to fight back. All I could do was swallow the pain until I was big enough to give it back to others.

Knowing where my violence comes from isn't an excuse. It isn't a cure either, but it helps. It's up to me to break the cycle of violence. This is not about blame because playing the blame game changes nothing. What I have to do is dig up what was planted in my childhood and plant a more pleasant swelling flower in its place, PEACE.