Simple Jess

by Pamela Morsi

  "You'll spoil that boy for sure kissing on him and catering to him," he said. "You'll turn him frothy for sure."

  "He bumped his little head, Paisley. I can't just leave him to cry."

  "It ain't even bleeding," he pointed out. "Mama says if it don't require sopping or sewing, don't make a fuss about it. And if he continues to cry, then give him a wallop to cry about."

  "I'm not treating my child that way," she told him stubbornly.

  "You should listen to Mama," he said. "You are so determined to go your own way you discount everything she says."

  "Because I don't think she knows what she's talking about. This is my child and I'll raise him as I see fit," she declared.

  "She raised me and I didn't turn out so badly. You forget that I have a part in this, too."

  "And you want him raised like you were?"

  "Yes I do. There is nothing wrong with the way I was raised. I turned into a hard worker and a good provider. I want my son to turn out the same."

  "But there is so much more to life. There is so much more I want for him."

  "Lord Almighty, like what?"

  "Like love, Paisley. I want him to know love."

  "Love? Hell, is that what this is about?" His voice was raised to an angry pitch and he was sneering. "Every argument turns out the same with you. You want love. Well, it's the middle of the afternoon, but if you want me to show you some love, just pull up your skirts and let's get on with it. It takes less time than arguing about it and I got a field to plow this afternoon."

  "That's not love, Paisley Winsloe," she snarled right back at him. "Love is something entirely different. Apparently something that with your raising you can't understand at all. My boy is going to know that he's loved because I'm going to love him."

  "You'd go against your husband and his family?"

  "For my baby I would. We don't need you or your mother or the Winsloe clan."

  Paisley stomped out the door, but not before delivering the final shot. "Someday, Althea Winsloe, you're going to find out that you can't do things alone and that your way is not always the best. I can't wait to see that day. I'll be laughing my head off."

  She wondered if Paisley was laughing his head off now. Their son, her precious, precious son, might be there with his father right now. The thought offered no comfort for her.

  Circles, ever widening circles. Althea clutched her coat more tightly around her. She was cold from the inside. The kind of cold from which no coat could protect her.

  "Baby-Paisley!" she called out once more to the still, cold silence of the morning.

  Perhaps she hadn't been completely right in the way she'd raised her son. Maybe he was a bit spoiled and not always the best behaved. But he was a happy child. She wouldn't have him yelled at or struck in anger. There would be time enough when he was older to reason him out of his obstinate ways. At least, she prayed that there would be time.

  The sound of a barking dog caught her attention and she stopped still and raised her head.

  The dogs. Jesse had the dogs. They could help her find her baby. Dogs could follow a scent, a trail. She didn't know much about dogs, but she knew that. Jesse knew about dogs.

  She abandoned her ever widening circle and hurried toward the sound, tearing through the brush, heedless of its ripping at her skin and clothes. Jesse had the dogs and he would help her. Jesse would find her Baby-Paisley.

  "Jesse!" she cried out as she ran toward the sound. "Jesse, the baby's gone. You've got to help me find the baby."

  Heedless of the brush and briers, Althea was running through the woods. Rushing toward the happy sounds of dogs and laughter.

  "Jesse! Jesse!" she called.

  Her bonnet caught on a limb and was pulled away from her head to hang limply down her back. Her hair came loose and was wild and scraggly around her face. The hem of her skirts was alternately dragged and snagged. Her heavy cloth coat grazed the tines of an old toothache tree, rending a long deep gash in the sleeve. Althea hurried on, oblivious.

  "Jesse! Jesse!" she called out. "Baby-Paisley's missing. You've got to help me find him."

  It was in a small clearing that she spotted them. The dogs first came rushing toward her, yapping and sniffing. Over their heads she saw Jesse, gun in hand, a huge deer carcass poised upon his shoulders. Then her eyes widened as Baby-Paisley came into view.

  "You found him!" she cried with joy. Then her hand flew to her mouth in horror as she eyed her son. The child was covered in blood. There was blood on his coat, on his hands. He carried his hat. It was dripping and bloody.

  "Oh, my God!" she screamed and dropped to her knees.

  The little boy, unconcerned with his mother's strange behavior, came running. He was smiling, smiling, covered in blood and smiling.

  "Mama, Mama, look what I got. Look, look."

  The child held out his hat, nearly shoving it in her face, and some bloody, horrible something lay inside. Althea eyed the contents of the hat in horror and grabbed her child.

  "Where are you hurt? Where, honey? Where?"

  Her tone was panicked and desperate as she ran her hands restlessly upon the child's body, touching, searching for his injury. Seeking the wound where the horrible thing in the hat had come from.

  Baby-Paisley pulled away from her, confused.

  "Mama, let me be," he insisted.

  “Tell me where you're hurt, precious," she pleaded. “Tell Mama where you're hurt."

  "I ain't hurt," he insisted. "Look, Mama, I kilt a deer."

  "A deer?"

  Althea repeated the word in a strangely vague tone as if unsure of the meaning of the word.

  "Yep. I kilt a deer and this is the deer's liver and Jesse says I can eat it for supper 'cause I hunted it."

  "Hunted it?"

  Baby-Paisley nodded eagerly.

  "Jesse took me huntin' and we kilt a deer."

  Althea's eyes widened as comprehension filtered into her brain.

  "He took you hunting."

  "Yep and we kilt a deer, see."

  Althea looked up to see Jesse Best standing there, right beside her son. The deer carcass slung over his shoulders now held new meaning. He was grinning as broadly as the little boy.

  It took a moment for Althea to put the strange pieces of the puzzle straight in her mind. Her little child, her baby boy, was not injured and bleeding. He had not been crying for his mama to protect him. He had been taken from her house without her permission to go on a deer hunt. She had been left to worry and fear while the child had been traipsing through the woods with a disgusting, bloody deer liver in his hat.

  The tears of terror that she had so valiantly held back now came rushing to her eyes. And with them a white hot anger that would not be controlled.

  In a flash, Althea came to her feet. Jesse's smile had faded somewhat and there was wariness in his look. It wasn't enough to halt her action. With all the force she could manage Althea slapped him across the face.

  The sound was inordinately loud in the clear, cold silence of the clearing. Only her son's startled intake of breath echoed it.

  "Don't you ever take my child from my home without permission!" she screamed. "Not ever. Do you understand me, you feebleminded fool!"

  The clearing was still and silent for a long moment. Then Jesse's answer came calm and quiet.

  "Yes, ma'am, I do."

  Althea faced him for one more long minute as a tiny trickle of blood escaped from the side of his mouth and coursed down the side of his chin like a bright red ribbon.

  There was something crashing in Althea's heart. Something crashing and crying, but she couldn't quite center upon it as the sharp fire of anger still surged through her veins. But as she watched the path of that bright red ribbon something pierced her heart as deeply and as surely as a skinning knife. Deliberately she turned from it.

  Baby-Paisley stood wide-eyed and stunned, still holding his hat before him. Althea jerked it from his hands and threw both it and its contents into the
brush. Then hastily she lifted the child into her arms and headed toward her cabin. By the time she'd left the clearing, she was almost running.

  * * *

  Jesse was busy skinning the deer, but it was hard for him to keep his mind on his task. He'd hung the carcass, head down, from the huge old red oak tree on the far side of Miss Althea's barnyard and he had managed to make the right cuts and proceed as he'd been taught, but he found it difficult to concentrate. He had to remember everything that he must do, but his brain kept crying out, "Stupid, stupid Jesse!" Drowning out all other words in his head.

  He stopped, the knife trembling in his hands. He bit down hard on his lip and closed his eyes as he tried to force the right instructions into his mind.

  Cut from the inside out.

  Peel the hide down and forward.

  Keep the knife clear of the hock.

  Stupid, stupid Jesse. Feebleminded fool.

  Jesse's bright blue eyes snapped open in fury.

  "Dadburn and blast!" he ground out under his breath, using his sister Meggie's most vivid curse, the only one that he really knew.

  He hated making mistakes, even little unimportant ones, and this mistake was very big and very bad. Not just because he'd looked stupid to Miss Althea, but because he had scared her. She had been really scared. Jesse could tell that. Pale and wide-eyed and near tears, she'd been really scared. She'd never have slapped him otherwise.

  He should have known that Baby-Paisley wasn't supposed to wander all over the mountain. He was just a baby and of course he wouldn't be allowed. Jesse hadn't been allowed out himself without Pa or Meggie until he was nearly grown. But he just didn't think. He just couldn't think!

  Jesse clenched his teeth in frustration and forced himself to continue his task. But he couldn't force away the thoughts that plagued him.

  Other men would have just known right away that the boy had gone off without permission. Other men would have realized immediately that his mama would be worried and that he should rush the boy back home. But Jesse wasn't like that. He couldn't know things if nobody had told him, if he hadn't learned them.

  Sometimes he could sense things. He remembered, now that it was too late, that he had sensed something. When he'd seen the little boy in the woods he'd known that it was not quite right. But he'd ignored that feeling.

  Solemnly he used his right index finger to cross his heart, silently vowing to listen to those feelings from now on. The world was too complicated just to rely on what folks could tell you. Sometimes a man just had to go with his feelings on things even if he didn't understand the why of it.

  Determinedly he used his knife once more to separate the fine gray hide from the dark red meat.

  Cut from the inside out.

  Peel the hide down and forward.

  Keep the knife clear of the hock

  Don't soil the meat.

  He'd skinned more meat in his lifetime than a scholar could total up on a school slate. His father had him out dressing and preparing hides long before he was allowed to hunt. It was a job that required minimum dexterity and strength; there were only a few rules to remember, and except for the blade side of the knife, there was little chance of injury. Still, it was a very responsible task. Meat that was badly dressed would taste gamey and be dark and tough. Jesse had learned his lessons well. If the meat that graced his family's table tasted poorly, the blame was invariably his sister Meggie's cooking skills.

  As Jesse rolled the hide down the animal's back and over its shoulders, he felt some pride. It was a good one. Winter gray, unscarred, and downright pretty. He wasn't about to ruin it. He intended to give it to Miss Althea. Maybe she wasn't too happy about the deer right now. But she would be grateful for the meat this winter, and the hide would make a fine soft winter vest for her with enough left over for a pair of heavy-duty work gloves.

  Feebleminded fool.

  He heard her words again and they stabbed his heart as certainly as if he'd used his knife. He pushed the hurt away. She had been scared. And she had been angry. It wasn't that she had meant to hurt him, he reminded himself. Miss Althea wasn't like that. She was warm and sweet, just like she smelled. It was Jesse who had been in the wrong. She had cause to be angry at him. She'd called him feebleminded. But that wasn't like a mean thing. It was, after all, very true.

  Jesse remembered when Tom McNees had called him the same thing. He was just a boy at the time; his sister Meggie had been little older than Baby-Paisley was now. Granny Piggott had always called him Simple Jess, but he'd just thought that was his name. He knew he was a little different than the other children. They played with him, but he never could quite understand the games, so they gave him special duties. For troublemaking with the boys, he was always the lookout. For house with the girls, he was always the baby. And when they played hide-and-seek, if Jesse got to be It, somehow everybody managed to come home free.

  But that warm spring day at the church picnic, Tom McNees had called Jesse feebleminded. Jesse had committed the word to memory and that evening when they were back home he'd asked his father what it meant.

  "Well, son," Onery Best said, sitting Jesse down beside him on the wash bench that sat in front of the barn. "Feeble is just another word for crippled or sickly."

  "I ain't crippled or sickly, Pa," Jesse protested. "I'm big and strong, everybody says so."

  His father nodded in agreement. His expression was soulful but his words were matter-of-fact. "You are strong in your body, son, mighty strong, and ye got a right to be proud of that. I am, for sure."

  Jesse smiled. It was good having his father proud of him. He wanted it to always be that way.

  "But yer mind, Jesse," Pa continued. "Yer mind ain't so."

  Jesse's happiness dimmed somewhat as he nodded acceptance.

  "Yer thinkin' works kind of like this gimp leg of mine," his father said, rubbing the thin, emaciated limb that had once been broken and badly set. It had grown together incorrectly and left him permanently lamed. "Yer mind works about like this leg. Half the time you just have to drag it along with ya, most of the time it slows ya down."

  Jesse was thoughtful at his father's words. "Did I bust my mind like you busted your leg, Pa?"

  Onery Best chuckled lightly and ruffled his son's hair with affection.

  "Well, yer sorter did," he explained. "When you's born, I wasn't here, you know that."

  Jesse nodded.

  "But what they that was there told me—and that included yer mama and Granny Piggott—was that ye came into the world with the cord wrapped 'round yer neck."

  "A cord wrapped 'round my neck?"

  "The cord betwixt yer mama and yerself. It got all snarled around yer neck somehow and Granny says that you practically hanged yerself just getting born."

  Jesse wasn't sure he understood that, but he nodded just the same.

  "It's a wonder that you lived at all. Lots of younguns born that way don't."

  "But I did."

  "Yep, you lived, but yer mind was injured. Like my leg, it just couldn't be set right, and so you are like you are, and you won't never be nothing else."

  Jesse considered his words thoughtfully. "So I'm feeble minded."

  "Feebleminded, simple, slow witted, unsound. Those are all just words folks use to describe the kind of affliction you got."

  "I ain't never going to be no better." Jesse didn't phrase it like a question. Somehow he already knew the answer.

  "It ain't fixable, son," his father told him. "But it ain't a dying wound neither. My leg ain't never gonna be no better, but I cain't just sit around with it and say, 'Ain't it a shame I'm a cripple.' I get up and do my life my own way. I walk where I got to go, plow when they's no help for it, and if I get a little too worse for drink, I'll be dancing 'til I fall on my face. I suspect it don't look like other folkses' walking or plowing or dancing, but it does for me."

  Pa looked down into Jesse's face and ran a brown, work-callused hand across the softness of his cheek.

>   "Ye'll just have to do with yer mind the best that ye can," he said. "If it looks a sight for humor to some folks, well, son, just don't give that no mind."

  "Don't give it no mind," Jesse repeated, committing the admonition to memory.

  Onery pulled the little boy into his arms and hugged him tight. "God put this thing, this gimp of yer mind, on ye for a reason of His own. What He's thinkin' is not for us to question."

  Jesse saw that his father's eyes were bright with unshed tears.

  "I ain't about to be questioning God," Jesse assured him quickly.

  One tear did escape from his father's eye and he hastily wiped it away with his sleeve. "I want ye to always remember how proud I am that ye ere my son. And if ye just do the best that ye can with what ye got, then you'll be as good a man as any."

  "Do the best that you can with what you got," Jesse whispered to himself once more as he finished stripping the hide from the deer's back. That's what he'd always tried to do. And if he envied other men for the limberness of their minds, he didn't believe them any better than himself.

  Jesse carefully rolled the hide, tail to head, and set it aside. He didn't bother to salt it. He'd be making it into buckskin and that meant soaking it in wood ashes and water instead. He temporarily stowed it in the crux of the old oak so the dogs or other animals couldn't get at it.

  He commenced butchering the deer. The good sized animal would provide a lot of lean winter meat. Jesse quietly recited the steps to himself. He could not allow himself to make foolish mistakes. Meat could mean the difference between life and death in a bad Ozark winter.

  He removed the shoulders first. They would be salted and smoked. Not as good eating as the hams, but plenty nourishing. Jesse laid the meat carefully in the barrow skid. It was fine venison. Miss Althea might be mad now, but she'd come around when she got a good look at this meat.

  Moving to the back of the carcass, Jesse carefully removed the back-strap portions on either side of the backbone. This was the best eating on the deer. Roasted, fried, or just cut into slabs and grilled over the fire, this part of the venison was so naturally tasty, even his sister Maggie couldn't ruin it.