Elin Gregory

More stream of conciousness Western just for the heck of it. Continuing from last week’s.

Do you think I should put all the entries in order on a page?

Feb 14th Saturday

Got word today that a family further upstream, the MacDonald’s got washed out completely while they were asleep. Ma, Pa, three little ones all gone. I hope it was quick. I hope they never knew.

Ma said that when people began to spread out over the range there were times when whole families died and no one know why. Sickness maybe, took the parents and the kids were left to starve. Or bad water or bad food would kill them all.

She said she remembered coming on a little overgrown shack and when they looked inside there was the bones of a woman and two kids laid out neat and tidy on a bed and a man on the floor. She wondered if maybe he’d taken his own life when his family died but her Pa said no, because he’d been covered by a blanket too. There was nothing to show their names. It’s sad to think that maybe they had folks back east wondering why the letters had stopped.

The O’Connells are building in a different spot now. We’re going to take it in turns to help. Such a pity about that good stone chimney.

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Continuing my – oh lor’ I don’t know what to call it! Probably “a YA historical Western written in diary form” would be most accurate. The last bit was here and the Skidmore family were facing some horrible weather.

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Feb 11th Wednesday

Looks like the storm blew out over night. Everything’s washed clean, even the hog pen, but the cows and ponies look sad and battered, poor things. The best of the saddle horses and the milk cows were in shelter, so they were luckier than the O’Connels.

The Aransa river rose high and backed up the creeks. There’s water everywhere this morning, though I suspect it’ll drain fast enough. But last night it rose far enough to undermine the bank and more water flooded across the O’Connels yard. The corner of their house got washed out and this morning the whole thing is leaning. It would have fallen right over if it wasn’t for their chimney. That’s solid river stone so at least they don’t have to build that again if they decide to build in the same place.

Pa says that’s the worst flood he’s seen since he’s been here so they might think it’s worth it. I wouldn’t because the rivers a different shape there now. Who knows what it’ll do next big storm?

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Time for another bit of Joe Skidmore’s diary – 1869, east Texas, small farmers under trying circumstances.

February 9th

I haven’t written for a few days because we’ve just been too damn busy. There’s been so much rain that everything’s waterlogged, and the roof began to leak right over Isaac’s bed. Isaac being Isaac said he needed to sleep in mine since he has to do a full days work whereas I can loaf around at home on account of my bum leg. I guess we got a bit loud because Pa came in and, for once, took my part. He hauled Isaac out by the ear and made him sleep on the rug by the fire. We put a bucket on the bed to catch the drips and the next day spent a lot of time trying to fix shingles over where the wet is getting in. It’s hard to work on a roof that’s slick with green, when the rain’s beating down and the wind’s like to blow you clear over the hog pen. But I only fell off once. Isaac fell off twice and the second time put a ding in his scalp that, Dad said, made him look like he’d been scalped.

The shingles are holding up, so far, but I fear it’s just a patch and when the good weather comes we’ll have to take off the leaky plank. It looks rotten to me. But right now there’s so much rain! We dug a little ditch to take the water away where it drips off the eves so it can run down to the creek, but the creek came to meet it. We’re high enough for it not to bother us too much but the O’Connells down stream have had to move out of the house because the creek was lapping at their step.

They had a bit of time and took their things up to the barn and put a tarp over it to keep the drips off. Pa says it’s their fault for being lazy and that they should have built higher and further away but I think it’s a pity. It can’t be nice to lose your home. Ma thinks so too and we cooked up some biscuits and a pot of beans to take over for them. Ma says that when they were new come to the area people shook their heads over where they built but nobody spoke up about it. Seems a bit unfair to laugh at them now.

The wind’s really howling tonight. Maybe if I’m not right for being a cowboy I could go to Corpus Christi and learn how to build boats. Things go on the way they are we might be needing an ark.

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I’ve been very bad about updating this blog and this serial so I’m going to do a whole batch in one go so there will be at least something on a Sunday for a few weeks to come.

This serial takes the form of the diary entries of a young man called Joe Skidmore who lives in the eastern part of Texas in 1869. Joe has some problems and feels that life is passing him by. Later lefe will come and grab him by the scruff of the neck and he’ll go on an adventure but it’s early days now. Last time he was talking about chickens and his late sister.

Feb 2nd
I asked Ma about my sister again last night but she just went quiet and told me that she’d been very sweet and had loved me. But after we went to bed Isaac told me a bit more.
Jess was three years older than him and he’s five years older than me which means she’d have been nine. Jacob, who was thirteen then, was out with Pa, and Jess and Isaac were helping Ma pick berries. They’d left me on a blanket and the snake must’ve crawled on there to warm itself. Jess grabbed it to get it away from me. Just grabbed it with her bare hands and it turned and bit her good, then she dropped it and it bit me. Isaac says he don’t remember much about it, just that Ma cried.
Jess is buried up the hill a way, by Granpa and that’s where we will all lie one day.

February 4th
I made biscuits again today and they were fine. Pa asked for seconds. Ma says leave it a week ’til we tell them. Then if they complain we can point out that nobody’s died.

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