The Hatchling

Junior got into a fight every single day at school. It was not unusual for him to use a rock or knife to ensure victory. No amount of punishment or kindness from his teachers could alter the course.

Junior was the child of Eulea Parrot, an unmarried woman, at a time when that was unacceptable and the term "bastard" had real meaning. Born at home in 1933 with the assistance of a Negro midwife he was given the name Donald Henry Parrot, Jr. The family moved frequently as his mother struggled to keep her children in food and clothes. They lived in "the neck" an area located in the swamps of the Lynches River in Florence County, South Carolina. Yielding to her son's insistent queries about the identity and whereabouts of his father, Junior's mother eventually told him that his father was a wealthy landowner and storekeeper named Gaskins from an adjacent community. From that day forward Junior began to use the name Gaskins for his surname and insisted that all others adopt his new identity. So adamant was he, that he became known as Donald Henry Gaskins, Junior. His insistence was such that it became a de facto name change and his name began to be reflected in the public records, mainly those of the criminal courts, as Donald Henry Gaskins, Jr.

More than once the home of one of his mother's relatives was the family's only refuge. In those homes Pee Wee often caught the brunt of the patriarch's anger against any or all of the other children. They once lived with one brother or cousin of his mother, Pee Wee never knew what the relationship was for certain, but he was told that he was to call him Uncle Earl. Under his roof the anger turned to violence and then to brutality. When Earl's own children were admonished and sent to bed or in the worst of circumstances, spanked for their misdeeds, Pee Wee was whipped and beaten with a razor strop or belt until angry welts rose up over his tiny back and skinny legs. As the slight but inconceivably tough little boy learned to bear up under those onslaughts, the powerfully built farmhand switched to plow traces, the thin reins used to guide the mule or horse when plowing. These hemp lines the size of an index finger when doubled or tripled and used for flogging, added a ragged cutting surface that made the welts red and angry and often tinged with blood.

Arrested

Junior Parrot's mother became romantically involved with a sharecropper who worked on one of the big farms in what is known as the Pee Dee area of South Carolina. Cleburn Stallings was a good farmer respected for his hard work and mechanical knowledge around a farm. He had bought five acres for himself next to the big farm and lived on that property in a little four room clapboard cabin. The tiny unpainted cabin was situated between the main tobacco fields and the river. Junior's mother brought her young son with her to this new home.

The cabin didn't have a real room for the boy, but there was a small storage room that had been added on. The add-on shed was made of rough planks that came from the first cuts and side trim cuts from logs when they were cut into boards at sawmills. One whole side or one or both of the edges was still covered with the bark from the tree. Because of the differences in shape and size of these crude boards the fit was less than great and light shown through the many cracks. The roof was tin and the floor was dirt. When the small boy saw that the room was empty except for a few tools he begged to be allowed to sleep there.

"Why in the world would you want to sleep out there, boy?" asked Stallings.

"I ain't never had a room of my own," the tiny boy answered. He was inches shorter and pounds lighter than other boys his age.

"Won't hurt anything, I guess," said the man to the mother of the boy. "He'll get tired of it in no time."

The gentle farmer couldn't have been more wrong. The boy relished the privacy and was undaunted by the primitive aspects of the attached shed. It was bitter cold in the winter and Junior would heat rocks on the pot bellied stove before he ran outside and into the single door at night. He would pack the rocks between his quilts and lie against them. Spring and fall were comfortable except for the mosquitoes and other insects but in summer it was actually the coolest part of the house. The mosquitoes however were still there. Most important to the little boy was that he learned that he could go and come as he wished.

From early years the boy loved to go into the woods at night and just sit perfectly still and quiet and watch for animals moving about. After a few years he learned not only how to be absolutely quiet but also how to use different plants to rub on his skin to kill the smell of man. He also learned that some weeds and herbs when mashed together and rubbed on his skin would keep away the biting bugs. Another combination of herbs would seem to be a scent that animals didn't notice. As he spent more time in the wild he learned to walk up within just a very few feet of the most skittish deer. He learned from an old hunter that smearing dirt soaked with the urine of a deer, whether doe or buck, on his shoes and clothes could cover his own smell. He tried boar, possum and raccoon urine, which were all very strong and he found that while it would allow him to get close to that particular animal, it...