The Kentucky Kid

By Thomas 'DOC' Savage

Born in a falling-down shack in the wild backwoods mountains of Kentucky, the kid fled his tragic upbringing after witnessing and avenging the death of his sister. As he made his way across the country, the people he met, both good and bad, and the battles he had to fight, all shaped the kid into the man he was becoming. In that shaping he never, ever backed down from a fight. With fists or six-gun, he was ready to face any opponent.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J.C. Hulsey Books
• Release date: Mar 18, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224023455

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

The kid followed a plodding old ox as he broke up the soil on his pa’s small farm in the backwoods of Kentucky. He was seventeen-years-old. Or maybe eighteen. No one was quite sure about that. Nor did they seem to care all that much. All he really knew was that he’d been plowing this same patch of dirt for longer than he could remember, and all it seemed to grow in plenty was rocks.

With the sun standing straight overhead, he pulled Purty to a stop. Purty, the old ox, was easily as old as he was and was always eager to stop. Taking a ragged old bandana from his back pocket, he mopped at the sweat that poured in rivers from his brow.

The kid stood a shade over five and a half feet tall, and his neck and shoulders bulged with muscles from a lot of hard work. Lots of work, but precious little reward. He lifted a jug of water from where he’d hung it on the plow and drank deeply. At least the creek water was sweet and plentiful. He fetched a bucket from beside the garden patch and filled it for Purty to drink.

Looking back at the freshly turned earth, he decided it was big enough for the few rows of taters he would plant. That, along with some corn and beans and a mite of tobacco, would be the family’s sustenance for the year ahead. Along with whatever meat he could harvest from the hills. It was going to be another year of not enough to eat and too much work to do.

And just about all of that work he’d have to do by himself. His mother had died giving birth to his sister, some ten years ago. With the wife gone, the father just flat gave up. He had a still somewhere in the hills and drank up the ‘shine almost as fast as he could make it. If there was to be food on the table, the kid would have to put it there. 

He took another long pull from the water jug, unhooked Purty from the traces, and led her out to the pasture behind the house. She settled herself, with a lot of low groanings, to lay there on the cool earth as the hot sun beat down.

The kid’s name was Bobby Lee Gibbs. His ma had given him that name, but all he ever heard himself called was ‘Kid’. And that was only when his pa bothered to come around the old, falling-down shack he and his sister, Sally Jo, called home.

There would be no noon meal. There was never enough food for that. He stretched out the stiff muscles in his back before picking up the burlap tote sack where he’d saved a bunch of runty taters from last winter. Pulling his sheath knife from his waist, he began to cut each tater into several pieces before planting them in the newly turned soil. It took most of an hour of stooping and bending, making a hole for each chunk, and then covering it back over.

That accomplished, he crawled under the sagging shelf of a porch and pulled out a small bag of seed corn. It had once been a much bigger bag, but his pa had found it and taken it to his still to use in making more ‘shine.

Bobby Lee had come close to coming to blows with his pa when he found the seed corn gone. He’d run through the woods to where his pa was sleeping, leaning up against a stump. As Bobby Lee took the sack, the old man had awakened and made a grab for it. In the tussle, the bag tore, and better than half fell to the ground.

Bobby would have gone to his knees to retrieve as much as he could, but his pa threw himself down on the ground, covering the spilled corn. Bobby Lee cursed and, taking what little remained in the sack, returned to the shack and hid it under the stoop.

Now, carefully placing each seed so it would have the best chance of producing, he labored at his planting as the sun continued its relentless path across the sky.

Just before it set, the kid finished his labors and went back to the house to wash up for the meager supper Sally Jo had put together. Last night, he’d caught a fat ‘possum and dispatched it with a stout stick. That ‘possum, along with some grits and gravy, would be their meal for the day.

As they sat at the table and prayed over the skimpy fare, they were both hoping their drunken father would not show up. If he did, he’d likely eat everything in sight and complain that there wasn’t more.

After eating, and thankful the old man hadn’t shown up, Bobby Lee helped Sally Jo clean up the dishes and such. And then, also thankfully, he fell onto his bed. He was almost instantly asleep.

With sun-up tomorrow, there’d be another full day of hard work. Just before he fell asleep, in his brief prayers, he wondered again if this was all there was to life.

* * * * *

Sleep was the kid’s only refuge from the never-ending struggle to simply survive. Too much work, not enough food, and no joy ever.

So, why had he just awakened? The moon was still up. Its cold light beamed through the ragged curtains on his bedroom window. All was quiet. He laid still, listening. Something had awakened him.

Then it came again. The faint noise that had brought him out of his rest. What was it? It sounded like...

Suddenly, he knew! Throwing off his threadbare blanket, he rushed to Sally Jo’s room. Through the gloom of night, he saw two figures struggling on her bed. 

The kid grabbed the dark-clad figure that had been on top of Sally Jo and threw him across the room. With muscles grown from years of hard labor, and with strength born of the urgent need to protect Sally Jo - the only good thing in his life - Bobby Lee grabbed the struggling figure. He threw him so hard he landed in the other room.

The dark figure was slow in getting back to his feet but had nearly managed that when the kid was on him, swinging his rock-hard fists at the head of the attacker. The man was hammered to his knees but still the blows kept coming. Right hand, left hand, right and left again; Bobby pummeled the man.

Finally, he laid still. Bobby Lee stood and turned back to Sally Jo. She was still on her bed - and unmoving.

Sally Jo, you aw’right? the kid asked. 

No answer. He put his hand under her head and lifted her to a sitting position, but when he removed his hand, she flopped back onto the bed.

"Sally Jo, are you aw’right?" he asked, lifting her up again. She was as limp as a rag.

Answer me! Are you okay? Bobby Lee scratched a match to light the candle beside her bed. In that flickering light, he could see the ugly, dark bruises on her throat. The bruises where her life had been crushed out of her.

A strangled sob burst from his lips as he gathered his little sister in an embrace. He hugged her to him, hugged her hard. As if he could force life back into her. He held her still, small body and rocked and wept. 

You can’t be gone. You can’t be! She was the only source of light in his otherwise dark existence. 

He held her like that until he heard sounds from the other room. The figure on the floor was trying to get back to his feet. The kid gently laid Sally Jo back down on the bed and stepped deliberately through the door to where whoever it was had almost regained his feet. 

He waited until the man was erect, and then took a half step forward and swung his right fist at the man’s head. That fist was as hard as stone. The knuckles as big as hickory nuts. And all the rage of his short but miserable existence was behind it. That fist crashed into the man’s face. The kid heard the nose break. He followed that fist with his left. As hard and as strong as the right.

The man fell backwards, and Bobby Lee followed him down. He kept pouring his rage into his fists and his fists into the head of the man on the floor. The reek of cheap alcohol came off the man in waves. Bobby Lee kept raining those blows until his rage was once more overridden by his grief. 

Rising and delivering a final withering kick into the prone body on the floor, the kid turned back to Sally Jo’s room. She still laid there as silent as...as silent as death. Tears erupted from his eyes as he straightened her body on the bed. He pulled her rumpled nightgown down to cover her body. He sat there beside her and stroked her hair, sobbing until there were no more tears to cry.

All of a sudden, he rose and pushed open the window. He vomited as if his insides were about to come up. The spasms continued long after his meager supper had been ejected.

Finally, the spasms stopped. He turned back to the bed, fell to his knees, and gathered his sister’s slight body into his arms. He held her and sobbed until the sun at last crept over the mountaintop to light up the sorry little room in the sorry little house. And the sorry young kid stood to his feet.

As gently as he could, the kid wrapped his sister’s cooling body in the tattered old sheet that had covered her bed. Turning, he stepped out of the room to stare down at the body on the floor. The face was almost unrecognizable. Almost. But the kid was still able to make out the face of his pa. His father. His drunken, useless, good-for-nothing father.

Bobby Lee kicked the still figure: again and again, until his bare feet began to hurt. With one final stomp, he went into his own room to dress. And then outside to dig a hole. His sister was dead. Sally Jo, a beautiful young girl who never did a mean thing in her too-short life, was laying cold and dead where her miserable, drunken father had tried to have his way with her. His own daughter!

Bobby Lee spent several hours digging deep and straight. The grave would have to be clean and neat. It was the last thing he’d ever be able to do for her. Finally, it was deep enough. Good enough. Climbing out of the hole he’d made, he slowly went into the house.

Ignoring his pa’s body, he lifted Sally Jo tenderly into his arms and carried her outside. He laid her body down beside the grave he’d dug for her and climbed back into the hole. Lifting her again, he knelt with her body and carefully laid her on the cold dirt. For several minutes he knelt there, wishing someone would come along and shovel the dirt down on both of them.

But nobody was likely to do that. Eventually he got to his feet. Climbing out of the grave, he carefully began filling the hole back in. His anguished tears continued to fall. When the hole was refilled, he tenderly smoothed the dirt with his hands and returned to the house.

The kid examined the boards that made up the walls of the house. Selecting one that was the smoothest and cleanest of them all, he kicked it free from the wall. He sawed the end to what he figured was the right length. Then he went outside and sat on a rock next to his sister’s new grave. He spent the next couple of hours carving her name into that length of board.

Finished, he examined his work. Sally Jo Gibbs, it read. Satisfied, he took another length of the board and hammered them together to form a cross. Bobby Lee Gibbs didn’t rightly know what that cross was supposed to signify, but he knew that’s what folks put on the graves of their loved ones.

With the cross in place, he returned to the house once again.