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 frequently seemed to arouse the jitteriness of other species. As his skills improved he actually spent one whole night under the light of a full moon watching a young black bear sow birthing a cub and then cleaning it and teaching it how to find her teats for milk. He wasn't more than twenty feet from them and remained so perfectly still that he went unnoticed. He slipped away at first light without disturbing mother and cub.

Most of the men that Eulea Parrot and her son, Junior, lived with and those that the young boy knew in his mother's family or from the surrounding farms were hunters and fishermen and he learned from each and every one of them. He learned everything available to him about the woods and the waters, as well as the fish and animals in them. He probably learned the most from Cleburn Stallings and from his step father. Each of those men enjoyed his enthusiasm for learning and took him with them frequently and taught him to shoot and to fish.

Young Gaskins spent any available time in the woods and swamps, if not with the adult men, then on his own. He loved building traps and trying different ways to set and bait them. He kept an abundance of rabbit, squirrel, coon and opossum on the table wherever he and his mother were living. From the time he was ten he was hunting every time someone would loan him a gun or take him hunting. He shot deer, turkey and wild hog to keep the smoke house full. He ran trotlines for catfish and caught some nearly as big as he was. He fished with cane poles for brim, redbreast and crappie and amazed other fishermen when he was able to land a big bass on a hand line. He never found trouble in the woods. It seemed that mixing with people was where he always went wrong.

Just after Junior turned ten, Cleburn Stallings found the door to the little shed unlatched and Junior nowhere to be found.

"Junior, I don't like the idea of you being locked in your room every night, but it's not safe for a youngster out there in the swamps at night. There's wildcats, bears, gators; even one or two panthers out there, boy. You'd just be a tidbit for one of those big cats. Bears don't hunt people, but you run up on one when it's eatin' or when it's with a cub and there's big trouble. So you need to keep to the house and you and me will spend plenty of time in them woods huntin'."

The man didn't understand that every day wasn't enough time in the woods for the boy and he had no way of knowing that the boy had seen every one of the animals he had cautioned the boy about from just a few feet away. Bored at night the diminutive boy soon discovered a loose board at the corner of his rudimentary shelter. The opening was much too small for the boy to fit through. It was only a little larger than his head. But as the youngster twisted and turned to squeeze through the tiny hole, his shoulder suddenly popped out of its socket. The pain was excruciating but he soon realized that he could now slither through the opening. Grabbing his upper arm he was able to snap the shoulder back into place with a similar amount of pain involved. He would use his newly found trick well throughout his life.

With his new freedom of movement Junior expanded his horizons beyond his fascination with the woods and swamps. Walking one night to find a familiar access to the river's edge, he passed a country store that had been closed for hours. He pried open a small window in the rear and pulled himself inside the store. He was frightened as he moved about in the dark store and he found the feeling exhilarating and addictive. Young Gaskins began to make the break-ins a part of his routine. He seldom took anything other than trinkets reasoning that it was too well known that he had so little, that showing up with a new shirt or shoes would probably result in a visit from the sheriff. The excitement for him came from finding a way in and spending time inside without being caught. He worked on ways to attempt to disguise his entry and his exit so thoroughly that no one would even realize that he had invaded their space. He took candy or moon pies or other popular sugar snacks. The fact that these were never available to him gave disproportionate value to the small prizes.

Gaskins grew closer to his mentor and father figure, Stallings. Stallings did well with his farming and sharecropping and built a more proper farmhouse on his small farm. Junior doted on the man. He stopped breaking into places, feeling that it was a personal betrayal of the kindness. He continued and increased his forays into the wilds spending long hours in the woods and swamps, watching the wildlife and setting and checking his homemade traps. Mr. Cleburn, as Gaskins called him, provided a look at a life Gaskins had never known nor dared to dream of. Mr. Cleburn took him fishing and hunting, but he also took him with him when he was just working on the farms. Many days the stunted boy was at the man's side from sun to sun in the summer. The rest of the year he was up at dawn to help him milk and feed before leaving for school and the boy was back to help with afternoon chores and milking after school.

In addition to all of the other things that Gaskins learned about the wilds, about farming and about hunting and fishing, he learned how to fix things. While most of the equipment Stallings used on his own farm was old and powered by horse or mule, there were still broken parts that had to be repaired or rebuilt. To the young boy the talents of Stallings seemed unlimited. When a plow shear or a metal fastener or brace was broken on one of the old pieces of equipment, the quiet man would take the pieces and with the boy in tow, head for the blacksmith shop. It was located in a little open shed with a roof and no sides. He would light his fire and bring it up to the desired heat using the bellows. The boy would be allowed to slowly turn the bellows to maintain the temperature while the metal was expertly heated. With tongs and hammer the glowing metal would be beaten into shape on the anvil. Stallings would alternate heating the metal and then dipping it into water watching for the color change that would indicate that he was obtaining the desired hardness without it becoming brittle.

On the big farm the sharecropper repaired the tractors, plows, mowers, planters and combines that were pulled by powerful tractors instead of mules and horses, again with the small boy at his side. If all of the field equipment was operating properly, the corn grinder or the tobacco barns and other stationary equipment would always need attention. This never ending work and the constant variety were fascinating to the boy and he was soon a reliable mechanic's helper. He soon knew all of the tools by name and recognized wrench sizes by sight.

The men who hunted and fished the Pee Dee and Lynches Rivers of South Carolina soon began to know about the small boy who outshot most of the men with rifle or shotgun and who knew the secret fishing spots and the currents of the streams and rivers. Most of the deer hunting was done with dogs or from stands and the majority of the shots were close in at one hundred yards or less. With dogs the hunters waited at chosen spots where the deer were likely to break from cover. On the other hand when hunting from their stands, they waited, solitary, quiet and motionless, in stands built in trees or on stilts with camouflage. They patiently watched areas where deer frequently crossed or where corn had been left to attract them.

Young Gaskins preferred to hunt by stalking the deer, shooting them at long range with the big rifles. His patience and determination were his greatest assets as he would trail a deer all day in order to take a shot, often as long as three hundred yards. His deadly aim became the only asset that mattered. When Stallings bragged about the boy's shots, the other men laughed at him for believing that the small boy could have made such a shot. Stallings backed up his belief with cash and placed a bet with the others. A corn pile was placed at the edge of the swamp and the men gathered four hundred yards out while the young boy half buried himself and disguised his location with brush at a distance of two hundred eighty yards from the spot. When the big 270 Remington rifle cracked sending echoes throughout the swamp, far across the wide field the unfortunate eight point buck jerked once, tried a step and went down from a perfect shot just above the shoulder. Stallings had admonished the boy not to attempt that difficult a shot but rather to go for a greater mass, but the brash youngster couldn't resist. The others paid and the story spread.

On a wild hog hunt a big boar tore at the ground and slobbered over huge tusks as it crashed out of the underbrush to charge at the diminutive target standing firm against a small gum tree in the rutted path. To the shock of his mentor and the others who could see the drama unfold, the boy raised his rifle and steadied himself against the tree. Barely able to steady the big gun, even braced against the tree, he aligned front and rear sights directly on the snout of the huge beast as it steadied its own gaze and charged. The boy took a long breath and let out half of it as he squeezed the trigger. This time it was a powerful thirty-aught-six Weatherby rifle that bucked knocking the boy off balance so badly that he sat down squarely on his butt. By the time the retort of the explosion could register, the heavy slug had slammed into the brain of the boar. The hog dropped to its front knees still slashing right and left with the big tusks. In the same instant Stallings who had stepped forward when he saw that the boy was not going to scramble up the tree and let the beast pass, bought some insurance with a thirty-thirty round from his old Winchester. It was clear, however that the big boar was down for good before Stallings shot.

"I thought I told you to get up in the tree," he said to the boy, his tone devoid of any anger and instead brimming with pride. He had cut the throat of the ugly hog to let it bleed out and the other men were tying the feet around a sturdy pole in order to carry it out.