My Jim Read Online Free PDF Page A

That Mississippi mud come up and choke them one by one. Only Tailor survive past his young days. And he a man hard like stone.
    I aint never feels no love for the river. River stretching tween me and my freedom. Jim say the river the road to freedom. I says the river the home of the spirits. Muddy with all them bodies trying to cross over.
    When the shaking and the rolling stop Mama see they all still there. She pick up her bowl and tie it to her head. It take them more than a week to make they way to Cape Girardeau. Most the time they walking in mud. They try to stay away from the wet sand. Got to step over trees all tangle together. Sometimes they walk on the trees. Fog hanging over them and people wandering round in a daze.
    They pass close to a Shawnee village ruin by the quake. Indian womens singing a mourning song. Cora say it put to mind a African song her grandmama sing when she a child. All the way to Cape Girardeau she sing that mourning song. We sings it again when Mama die.
    After Mama die Mas call on me to tend the sick. Babies burning with every kind of fever. Mens laying in they waste. Womens weak and heavy with what bout to be born. They work right up till they time come. Mas dont abide no womens sickness. Ones aint dying got to work. I works the fields cept when they need me in the cabins. I gets sick but I comes through.
    That time we loss so many. Nobody know what come over us. Children loss they parents and parents loss they children. Bout twenty of us fore the scourge. Time all the dying done we only twelve. Mas Watson cuss all up and down the farm. Miss Watson go to town with her mama and big sister.
    All us still standing works till we covered in tobacco syrup. Soon as Miss Watson gone Mas put Jim back in the fields. He bigger by then and his fingers aint so slow. It bring me comfort to see him. Say he dream bout spirits leaving they bodies but Mas Watson dont let him tell nobody. Say in his dream I stumbles but gets up again. He give me a string to wear round my ankle. Gonna tie me to the earth. He still my brother.
    I makes a friend of a new gal Mas buy on a trip to St. Louis. We works side by side every day. That gal got a good heart. I never knows another like her. She the kind of friend see you with a wasting illness and give you her only piece of fatback. She cry with me bout my mama. Her own mama die when she born. Hold me close to her like she my new mama. I never forgets that gal. She name Gwen.
    We together for the last of our childhood. I aint seen her leave. Mas sell her to pay a debt when the tobacco freeze. Sell her to Judge Durman. Meanest mas in the county. Gwen real pretty. Thats why he want her. Old Miss the one make Mas sell her.
    After Mas sell Gwen I weak with sorrow. Mama gone and I feels all lone in the world. Emma sing but I cant follows.
    Jim off working on Stone School. He work the quarry. Pick and shovel give him blisters. Bleeding hands. Heat like a furnace. River rock. Walls of huge limestone blocks. Niggers cant go to school but we helps build schools for the white children.
    In Hannibal I seen them white children running barefoot. They got shoes for church and school. Day I gets shoes I gonna wear them all the time.
    I keeps Mamas knife close in my pocket. And I hides the Congo bowl in Coras cabin where I sleeps. Mas give Mamas cabin to some mens he hire to get the crop in. I worries Mamas spirit gonna come looking for me and wont know where to find me.
    I the last of my family on Mas Watsons place. Mama the first and I the last. I remembers how she use to beg Mas for word of her peoples in Virginia. Every year theys less and less till its only us in Missouri. Now only me. After Mama leave I aint sleeps for a year. I works all day and cries all night.
    One day Mas Watson take me to town cause he got a friend been with the pox. She white as can be but pox aint know no color. Mas tell me to make a poultice to scare the marks away. I gathers the burr seed root and crushes it