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.
2
Carter
Now how we come by all this money. The Paynes, that’s our last name, were land rich and dirt poor for as long as anyone could remember. Old Silas, my daddy, had inherited the land from his daddy and his daddy from his and so on and so forth going back a couple hundred years.
There wasn’t never much of nothing good coming from it, until that day I went to walking to get away from daddy’s misery. I’d just turned eighteen and my days were spent taking care of the animals and him. Scared that I was gonna lose him just like I’d lost mama and be all-alone.
I didn’t mind being alone so much it’s what I was used to. But if daddy died then I wouldn’t have nobody on this earth, nary a soul. I hadn’t given it much thought until now and that’s what got me to walking the land lost in my own head.
I could go into town and make me a few friends I guess. There was always somebody trying to talk to me wherever I went. But I wasn’t too fond of city ways and wasn’t much interested in them coming out here neither.
So there I was walking the land and thinking about what was to become of me. I was throwing a stick for that old dog to catch not really paying too much mind when it happened. The stick landed in the brush somewheres and that poor dog got to whining something awful until I went and got it out.
That’s when I found it. Texas gold. The darkest purest oil anyone had seen in these parts in some time. I knew what it was right then and there but it didn’t mean much to me. Like all the men of my family before me, I was very content with my life as it was.
Not that money wouldn’t be nice. But it wasn’t as good as having daddy back on his feet and healthy. Well, the money started coming in after that, and anyone who thought they could get over on me had another think coming. I was smarter than most folks gave me credit for.
I’d taken to that schooling well enough on my own and knew what was what. No accountants and lawyers for me. I figured the old timers didn’t need one and neither did I.
I took to reading anything I could get my hands on to help me wade through the muck and mire of the money grubbers who all came calling with their hands out. Thing is, I mostly read the stuff one of my great grandfathers had left behind. It worked then I don’t see why it can’t work now. Far as I know nobody changed them laws in over two hundred years.
Well after the oil made us rich as Croesus, daddy up and died from his swollen ball predicament leaving me a very rich but lonely man. That’s where the fiancée came in.
Now most folks thought I was simple minded on account of I never had more than my home schooling and stayed mostly to myself not really having any friends or anyone to talk to.
So some shyster with a little less money than me but what he considered better pedigree decided he could keep his family coffers full by marrying off his daughter to the redneck simpleton. People ought not to judge a book by its cover.
I hadn’t been in love with the trollop, not that she wasn’t pretty enough, she was. But I’d gone along with it even though I knew what the man was up to.
I figured it was about time at twenty-six to settle down and have me a kid or two to help run the place anyway. She was pretty enough to look at so it wouldn’t be a chore to bed her, and I’d have me a body to share the nights with at least.
But I don’t cotton to being betrayed. It’s one thing that she was after my money, but to bring her lover in my home, the home that has been in my family for generations, was a slight I cannot and will not forgive.
After I’d shot her and the adulterer and fed them to my hogs, I’d gone off and bought all the surrounding land because I was plum tired of people. I was mad as spit to tell the truth and anyone who’d come nosing around my place back then wouldn’t have made it off.
So to keep the peace and leave the population alive a little longer than they deserved, I’d bought out everyone around. I tore down homes, buildings and whatever else was in my way, until there was nothing left but the old log cabin that had been sitting on the land for well nigh two hundred years. My home.
The gal that was supposed to be my wife hadn’t been too pleased with the living arrangements but she’d convinced herself that she could talk me into building her the biggest mansion in the state on account of she was so pretty and all.
There was never any chance in hell of that happening. I was born and raised in that cabin and I aim to die the same. I see now that she never would’ve fit in around here and truth is I don’t think anyone would.
Now I have four hundred thousand acres of wide-open space all to myself. I wasn’t lonely so much as I was tired of my own damn company. All that was left for me to do of an evening after the work was done was to walk or ride that land.
Then one day, I was off walking by my lonesome and I got a feeling. I went to digging on account of that feeling and wouldn’t you know it, there was oil right there where the Piggly Wiggly once stood.
The money kept rolling in but I was starting to get lonesome. I’d hired some hotshot to come out and teach me how to use the computer so I could do my business more efficiently and now it took me less than an hour in the mornings to look over everything.
Now that was a story in itself. That feller was just like everybody else. He took one look at me and saw a redneck with nary a lick a sense and figured he could take advantage. I played along like I was empty between the ears, all the while learning all I needed, or all he knew anyways.
Then one day, I caught him trying to get into my personal files and the night before I’d found the doohickey he’d put on my computer so he could track everything I did and I got to shooting again. Yes sir, I hauled off and shot him in the ass.
After he had ran screaming to his car and hightailed it outta here, I took myself down to the bookstore and bought out every book they had on the subject of computers and taught myself what I needed to know. Now I can take one of them fool things apart and put it back together.