by Darrel Bird
Rider On The Storm
By
Darrel Bird
Copyright 2010 by Darrel Bird
Rider on the Storm
Jessie Roads was from Calaveras County, south of the Mason Dixon line – I mean way down in Dixie. His family had been share croppers all his life. He was the second of five kids. In the fall he had to pick cotton to help feed the large family. School had to wait until the cotton crops were in. There was the cotton chopping in the spring and the picking in the fall, and he knew no other life. Because of that, his schooling was skimpy and money was hard to come by. His family got by, and fried chicken made its way to their table when the preacher made his visit. That is, until hell came to breakfast at the Roads' house.
One morning he got up and his dad was dead, killed by Ray Denton in a drunken brawl over at Nate’s Place, a road house a few miles out of town. His dad had gone out there to get Bobby, Jessie’s older brother. Bobby had gone out there to see his girlfriend who lived next door to the place. He had somehow gotten involved in an altercation, and Jessie’s dad had walked in just about the time Ray Denton busted a chair over Bobby’s head. Dad didn’t take too kindly to anybody hitting one of his boys, so he lit in there with both feet, and that’s when Ray Denton, who was the cause of it all, hit Jessie’s dad with a beer bottle, and laid his skull wide open.
Now Ray Denton was the brother of John Denton, who was the county sheriff, and John Denton went around town roaring that he was going to prosecute his brother to the fullest extent of the law, but Ray Denton was still not in John Denton’s jail as of the day of the funeral. So Jessie, burning with a rage fire that he couldn’t put out, shot Ray Denton with his old .22 right through the gizzard, and Ray Denton fell over with a heart attack and died on the spot.
The doctor said it wasn’t the .22 bullet that killed him; it was a weak heart from “eatin’ too many pork chops,” but the law went after Jessie, and Jessie, just 16 and scared, stole Willie Thrombow’s 750 Honda Motorcycle to get away on.
Well…the upshot of it was he took to riding that thing like a duck takes to water, and he rode it clean across the country and ended up in Seattle on the water front. Now we would like to end the story there, but you see, there’s more to it.
Jessie got into a fracas with a hobo under one of the bridges. The hobo tried to take Jessie’s can of Coke, and Jessie struck him with a left hook upside the head. That’s when the law stepped in, took him downtown, and booked him, and found out he was wanted down below the Mason Dixon line by Sheriff John Denton for “murder one.” They shipped him back to Calaveras County for trial, but the jury went against Denton, and Jessie was free.
However, Jessie went home to a family that was a mess. He was heartbroken because of his dad’s death, and he was bitter at Bobby for going out there in the first place. He placed blame on his older brother, who he felt should have known better and had more consideration for his father.
While Jessie was gone, his brother had taken to drinking heavily and his older sister had run off with a man twice her age. His mom had started driving the fifteen miles to town to work in a nursing home. Mainly, he blamed Bobby for his father’s death, and consequently, for everything that befell the family.
Bobby staggered in one night half drunk in the family pickup; he staggered through the door and slammed it shut. His mom was working night shift; his two sisters were in the bedroom. Jessie got up off the couch. “Bobby,” he shouted, “you got dad killed and here you come in drunk.” “Aw shut up, Jessie, what the hell do you know anyhow?”
Jessie hit him square in the eye. Bobby was stronger than Jessie, and Jessie thought Bobby was going to kill him before he let up and staggered off to bed. Jessie, bruised and bleeding, staggered outside, and leaned against the wall and cried. When he quit crying, he was done with it; he felt he had not only lost his dad, but his whole family as well.
He sat on the edge of the porch and remembered the hunting and the fishing trips his dad had taken him on in days gone by. He whimpered like a beaten animal for a while, and then all of that turned to anger and hatred for the world.