I’d say it’s been about ten years since I left the family. I was always a kind of burden to them, they never would’ve said so but I know I was. I knew they would be better off in California with one less person to worry about. I wonder how things are going for’em, hopefully they got nice jobs picking fruit. Maybe Ruthie and Winfield got to eat some every now and again. Shoot, those two are all grown up by now, and Rose of Sharon would have a little one maybe more by now too. Ma’s probably got herself one of those nice little white houses. Makes a fella kinda sad sometimes almost to the point that it’s unbearable thinking about his kin that he’ll never see again.

I was able to live by the river for almost a year; they’s these cops come close to catching me a few times but I just hid in the trees, I loved those trees and that river. I found this nice little cave type area in a hill with trees so thick you could hardly move through them. Was able to build me a fire when it was cold and kept my fishing lines in there too. I had about 5 or so that I made and caught real nice fish with’em too.

One day I decided that I needed to move on down the river and find something new to do maybe get some work or something. I finally found a job working for this really rich fella who loved to fish but hated cleaning them. So he hired me and I worked at that for a couple of years. Nice place, probably should’ve stayed there. My boss let me stay in little house with a stove and everything. I even had a suite to wear on Sundays at church cause Boss made everyone who worked for him go and said they needed to look nice. I’d head into town sometimes just to walk around and listen to people. Sometimes I’d ask someone if they’d heard of my folks. Most of them hadn’t, and then I’d hear them tell someone else “Yeah that fellow over there was inquiring about his kin that he hadn’t seen in five years, crazy kind of fellow.”

Well I got to be that about oh I’d say about eight or so years of working for the fella, I got to missing the murmur of the river and not having to do anything that you don’t feel like doing. So I went back to those trees and started living like I did that first year. I was living real nice, even nicer this time cause I had some money this time so if I wanted nicer food I could buy some. One day I was taking a nap and a cop woke me up, said he’d been watching me for a couple of days and that I was going to jail because you can’t stay there. So now I’ve been in jail for about two months and I still have two more to go. There’s a war going on now, so maybe when I’m out of here I’ll to join the war.