Excerpt
From "White Man's Burden, White Man's Pain":




August 11
Year of Our Lord 1858


Dear Aunt Charlotte,

Don’t think I’m going to get the chance to mail this off, but I’m hopin you or somebody else will be abel to find it when you get here so you can know what hapened to us. My writin and spellin might not be so good, cause Im scriblin this in a mitey big hurry. Don’t really know how long fore whatever is out there desides to come inside for a visit. I just know there ain’t a blessed thing I can do to stop it. I peek out the front window ever now and then, but its as dark as Foley’s Swamp out there. All I can see is the edge of the forrist and the growin fog. Finally stopped rainin at least.


I ain’t never been this scart in all my thirteen years, Auntie C. I thought about runnin, but somethin ain’t lettin me. Like my feet are stuck in kwik sand or somethin. Papa would have forced me to go, I think, but Papa ain’t around no more to do so.

**
The whole blamed mess started a week ago today, when Uncle Cyrus came by to help Papa find a new wellspring. The old one had dried up a few days earlier, so Papa was havin to make trips into town and load up the wagon with water pulled from Uncle Cy’s well.


I was with them when they found the natural spring on the east edge of Kane’s woods. I heard Uncle Cy telling Papa to pass it up and keep headin back west for a closer source. Uncle Cyrus is a big man, and probly the strongist I’ve ever knowd. Stronger than Papa even. But that partickular day, Uncle Cy was shakin like a pup dipped in freezin creek water. He was tellin Papa that the land was damn land, or doomed land. Something like that. He said that the well was to close to an old Cherokee buriel bureal burial ground, and that any water pulled from such a well would be poison to a mans soul. Papa laughed at Uncle Cy and called him yellow, saying that those old injun stories were nothin more than cow chip tales made up by old women with nothing better to do than flap there gums after Sunday prayer meetin.


They dug out the well that very day, and I recall Uncle Cy’s face turnin a scary shade of white. Kinda like a dreid up dog turd in the summer sun. Two or three days passed before Mama got real sick, doublin over at the kitchen table like somebody socked her in the guts. Papa said her head was sizziling hot with a terrible fever, and rode into town to get Doc Campbell. While Papa was gone, I heard Mama screamin and carryin on like a bobcat with its paw caught in a bear trap. Auntie C, I ain’t never heard a human bein make noises like that before. It had the hair on my head standin on end like a lightnin strike had peeled my hide.