Chapter 9 - Missing Family and Old Friends
Back in my room, I began to think of the many things that had happened in my life since I left Texas. I started to miss my family, Sam and Mary. I decided it was time to write to them all and let them know where I was and that I was fine. I was really proud of myself and wanted them to know I had become a Deputy.
By 10PM I was all tuckered out and went to bed. The damn rooster next door woke me at 5AM. I managed another hour’s sleep and then got up in time to have breakfast with Polly. Another satisfying breakfast as always. Polly never let me go to work hungry.
I stopped at the Post Office and mailed my three letters and got to work before eight. Abe wasn’t in yet but had left me a note from the night before. Said he had to see the dentist in the morning and probably wouldn’t be in until noon. That seemed funny to me because Abe never mentioned having a sore tooth or anything. I gave Jeremiah his breakfast but didn’t bother to speak to him much. He hadn’t accepted the fact that he would be staying with us for a while and wasn’t really what you would have called friendly. I thought maybe of having Amos drop in and serve him his lunch later that day. Amos was one of the workers over at the sawmill, one of the black workers. I thought that would have been a judicial slap in Jeremiah’s face, so to speak.
In came Abe, just before lunch. I never had seen him cranky before but was he ever cranky that morning! It wasn’t a toothache at all. It was another fight over at Joe’s, a fight when nobody from the Deep South was even in the bar.
Two of the locals got arguing over an unpaid debt and were already rolling around on the floor when Abe got there. When he tried to pull them apart, he got an elbow in his jaw for his troubles. The result - a broken tooth which he had to have the dentist pull. The dentist was the person the people of Broken Hearts feared the most. It was no wonder he had been known as “The Bull“.