Thompson Sharecropper Hell (Illustrated)

1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-0-9896714-1-5
Verlag: The Devault-Graves Agency
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 202 Seiten

Nineteen-year-old Tommy Carver desperately wants to make something of himself, but he's got some mighty tall odds stacked against him-a brutal sharecropper father, a secret love affair with his wealthy landowner's daughter, a step-mother devoid of maternal instincts, and even his own short-tempered, prideful ways. The odds only get worse when Tommy is fingered for murder in this shocking, twisting tale that explores sex, American Indian rituals, simmering race politics in mid-20th century Oklahoma and, of course, crime. 'Sharecropper Hell' was written and originally released as 'Cropper's Cabin' by gritty crime novelist Jim Thompson, who often spun his tales from the first-person perspective of the criminal. Stephen King has called Jim Thompson 'my favorite crime novelist-often imitated but never duplicated.' Chalk Line Books presents 'Sharecropper Hell' unedited, uncensored, and unexpurgated as it was meant to be read. The Chalk Line Books version of 'Sharecropper Hell' also features the evocative illustrations of artist Martha Kelly.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Thompson, Jim

Leseproben

Chapter Two Before I go any further, perhaps I’d better explain that names like Toolate and Ontime aren’t uncommon in Eastern Oklahoma. You see, most of this land over here used to be owned by the Five Civilized Tribes—I mean, the tribes themselves owned it, not individuals in the tribes. That system was all right during territorial days, but before Oklahoma could become a state the land had to be shared out; they had to do away with tribal ownership. So this is the way the government worked it. They set a certain date, right down to the hour, and any child born before that hour got a share of the tribe’s property. He got an allotment, as the saying is. But if he was born after that hour—even a minute after it—he didn’t get anything. He was just a plain hard-up Indian, unless his kinfolks chose to take care of him. That’s the story behind names like Toolate and Ontime, and a lot of others that have been switched around so much you can hardly recognize ’em for what they were. Abe Toolate had been born after the allotment hour, and his kin had soon learned better than to heir him anything. Matthew Ontime, Donna’s father, had been born into a good allotment, and he’d inherited from most of his family; and now he owned around five thousand acres. If he’d been willing to lease his land for oilwell drilling, he could have been one of the richest men in Oklahoma. And even without oil he was plenty well-off. In the back seat of the Cadillac, I looked down into Donna Ontime’s smoldering black eyes, and it struck me that I was right on top of, yes, and inside of, more money than you’ll find in a pretty big bank. But I’d have liked her just as well if her father hadn’t had a penny. I might even have liked her more, if that’d been possible. She smiled, her teeth white and even in the darkness, and cocked her head a little to one side. “Well, Tommy?” “Swell,” I said. “But now you have to go, isn’t that right? You have to go, and you think you’d better walk, despite the fact I have to drive right by your place.” “Don’t be like that, Donna,” I said. “You know I can’t help the way Pa feels.” “Never mind, Tommy.” “But what can I do?” I said. “I’m nineteen years old and I’m still in high school, and if I have to drop out for the spring chopping it may take me another year to finish. I have to get along with Pa, at least until I’m out of school.” “Just until, then? No longer, Tommy?” “Well”—I tried to hedge. “What about your father, Donna? I don’t think he’s very fond of us Carvers.” “I can handle my father.” “Well, but look! Look, honey,” I said. “It’s not the same way with me, Donna. I’ve tried to explain to you that if Pa was really my father—if he hadn’t done so much for me—I . . .” “I understand.” She held up a hand, one of the fingers bent down. “Item one: Mr. Carver adopted you back in Mississippi after your own parents were drowned in a flood. Item two: His wife died, and rather than abandon you to an orphanage, he adopted Mary to look after you. I might add that the law seems rather loose when a widower can adopt a fourteen-year-old girl, but. . .” “I’d rather you didn’t say it,” I said. “...but it was probably apparent to the authorities that lust, to Mr. Carver, was just a dirty word in the Bible. Let’s see, now, where were we? Oh, yes! Item three: the doctors thought you belonged in a higher, dryer climate, so Mr. Carver left Mississippi and brought you and Mary here. . . . That’s quite a lot for a man to do, isn’t it? All for the sake of helping an infant, who wasn’t even related to him, to become a man.” “I think it’s quite a bit, yes,” I said. “I haven’t overlooked anything?” I shrugged. “I guess not.” “But you’ve overlooked something. You were out in the fields doing a man’s work when you were six years old, and you’ve never known anything but work since then. All you’ve got out of life is enough food to keep you working and enough beatings to kill two mules.” “I’ve got more than that,” I said. “And Pa isn’t really mean. He’s just kind of old-fashioned and strict.” “I see. Well, that makes everything all right, then.” “No,” I said, “you don’t see, Donna. But I guess I won't be able to talk any more about it now. I would like to have you drive me home, though, if . . .” “I know. If it wasn’t for Pa.” “That wasn’t what I was going to say. I was going to say that I could scoot down in the seat and you could drive on past our place and . . .” She got up abruptly, not speaking, and slid over into the front seat. She started the motor with a roar, slammed in the gears, and sent the car leaping out of the willows and onto the road. I climbed over into the front seat and scooted down, holding on for dear life. The car was doing eighty by this time, sailing and bouncing over the red-clay ruts. But there wasn’t a thing I could do. She was all-out Indian-mad; and when they get that way, you can’t reason with ’em. I’d seen her this way just once before; spring a year ago it was, right after she’d finished at the state university. She had a big Chrysler then, and she’d got a flat two-three miles out of the village; and I offered to fix it for her. I knew her, of course, since we share-crop forty acres for Matthew Ontime in addition to our own ten. But it was only in a nodding, good-morning-miss way. Well, I went to work on the tire, and I don’t know as I said anything—rather, it was what I didn’t say. The way I acted, sort of too-casual, and indifferent. Because when you’ve been raised by a man like Pa, you’re bound to absorb some of his ideas even when you know they’re completely unreasonable. Pa was always telling about how the Five Tribes had been forced out of Georgia and Mississippi and Florida, back in the early 1800’s; and how they should have been crowded right on out into the Pacific Ocean, instead of being allowed to hog onto good land that the white folks needed. He was always saying that they were all streaked with the tar-brush—that they were part nigger. He claimed they were lazy and thieving, loaded with all kinds of dirty diseases. And I’d soon learned better than to argue with him. I’d had to listen and listen, never saying anything back, until his way of thinking had almost become mine. So, I guess I was pretty off-hand with Donna; insulting without saying or doing anything. Anyway, she took it up to a point, not seeming to notice. And then—and I don’t know how else to put it—she just went crazy. I was hunkered down, sliding the hub-cap into place, when it happened. I heard a moan, the kind you might hear from a hurt-crazy bobcat. Then she had thrown herself at me, knocking me backwards to the road; and she went down on top of me, kicking and pounding and scratching and biting. And I realized, vaguely, that she was actually trying to kill me. But what I was thinking mostly was that even with her black hair tangled and her face smeared with the dirt of the road, she must be the prettiest girl in the world. I was thinking about what she’d be like, what she was bound to be like, under her clothes. It stopped as suddenly as it had started. There wasn’t any lead-up to it. It was just gone, like a grass fire hit by a flash flood. She went completely motionless, looking at me wide-eyed like she couldn’t believe what had happened. Then she buried her head against my chest and began to cry. I picked her up and set her in the car, and . . . Well, that’s the way it started. That’s the way she was. I hope she snapped out of this mad before she wrapped us around a cottonwood. We went up a rise in the road, I could feel the car shoot upward. Then the brakes went on so hard that I almost slid under the dashboard, and we swung to the left, horn blaring, clear into the ditch. And there was a blinding flash of light and someone yelled, and another horn blared—and I knew we’d almost run down another car. Then, we were back on the road again, still traveling fast but a lot slower than we had been; and Donna laughed softly. She reached over and pulled my head down into her lap. She scooted forward a little, and I knew she wanted me to put my arms around her hips, so I did. We rode on in silence until we made the turn into Ontime plantation, which was also the turn into our place. “Perhaps it’s best this way,” she said, thoughtfully, as if she’d been arguing with herself. “I know I wouldn’t like it if you were like the others—kow-towing and falling all over your feet because of the money.” She’d told me about that, how she’d felt about the university crowd; and I liked her enough—so much—that I’d tried to talk her out of it. I wanted her to have the breaks that she deserved; so I told her again that she might be a little hard on...