SMOKY'S STORY: The Payroll World
A man remembers how his father escaped the payroll world ...
You asked
Well, you asked what drew me here, right? You wanna know why I’m here, what brought me here, why I stayed. There’s lotsa stories behind those questions.
I’ll do my best. It’s been a long time. Lots of water down the creek. Moons and winters. My memory is real clear. See it like yesterday. No mystery there. Not to me.
It’s a mystery, I guess, from what you say, to you.
Mebbe some of it ain’t a mystery to you, since you know a bit about how I’m livin’, how anybody who comes along gets a welcome, a drink, food, a place to put their head down for a night.
If you’re gonna have a stray dog in the house, better to give it space. And keep space for yourself.
I wasn’t into having a partner, and I had to make that clear a few times. Just me and the cabin and everything all around. The whole place around me is home, and strays find some comfort when they pass through.
I don’t look for a lot of people to be here.
I’m alone but I’m not lonely.
Time Was
Time was, way back, all I wanted was people around. A town, kind of, a place where families live and share life. That all blew up with the wars.
Too many wars. Even for the people I lived with, who were plenty ready for fighting to protect themselves in their town; but they never met people whose way of life was war, who had warriors on payrolls.
The payroll warriors wasn’t like our warriors. They didn’t have anything else to do but go to war.
They had no families with them, no women and children. Just men and weapons. And the weapons were more than our weapons. Bigger. Stronger. Built for big killing, full-time killing.
And the payroll? That was part of their war.
Had to be, since the men with weapons wouldn’t fight without money. Money was their way of life. If they had families somewhere, the only way they could take care of them, protect them, was with money. Even if they had families and towns of their own somewhere, they couldn’t do anything there without money.
So that’s the way I see it now, based on everything I learned then and everything I’ve seen since.
A Big Leap
There’s a big leap in my story right here.
I was always open to life. That’s what I remember from my Mamaw. She said I was the friendliest boy she ever saw. I grew up around her and my other grannies, like all us kids did. Ma and Pa, like the other Mas and Pas, were taking care of everything else—meat, corn, the horses; you know, what living human beings need to do to stay alive. Mostly peaceful things, though hunting was sometimes tough and sometimes we had to fight to protect our hunting grounds. Weather sometimes was a bear.
Speaking of bear. You might know I have a special relation with Bear. My wife was She-Bear. Got the name at birth from her Mom and the Midwife. She’s the hardest and saddest part of the story. It’s a leap I have to tell you to answer your question.
But to get there, I gotta leap again.
Leap Again
Backward.
To my Daddy who walked a similar path to what brought me here.
He was from people across the ocean. They sent him here on a ship. Had the idea he had to leave home and his people to stay alive. Wasn’t room for him where they lived. Things too hard. The money thing already pushing all of them, some forward they thought, and others to the side or even back.
His Mommy and Daddy heard stories about a new land where everybody either had money or didn’t need money. The ones who had money wanted people like my Daddy, a boy who knew some things about shoes, to help them. They would pay money for his help.
But his Mommy and Daddy also heard that some people didn’t need money because they could just live on the land.
I don’t need to tell you about that part of the story. You already know about those new land stories. You live in that story. You already know how that story plays out. The payroll story.
You also know some of the stories of how the payroll people got bigger and bigger and stronger and stronger until there was only a big payroll with payroll warriors to protect it.
I’m telling you my story all tied together with the payroll story.
There’s more leaps to come but let me finish this one before we jump again.
My Daddy was all new to this new land he landed on and the first thing he learned was that the new land was already in the hands of the payroll and that he hadn’t come to a new place like his Mommy and Daddy thought he would. He was as hard up as ever his Mommy and Daddy had been back home.
He was smart, my Daddy. Smart not just with shoes, but just plain smart.
He saw the shoe money people and knew that was no life, not for him. Even if they gave him money.
He wanted a real life, in the wide world, with people around him to love face-to-face.
He left the shoe town and started walking, mostly west and south, where he heard about places where people lived outside payroll. Lots of stories about them. “Indians” they were called. Course he knew about “Indians” from stories back home. Lots of stories. Some made sense to him and others didn’t.
The stories all agreed the “Indians” lived different from payroll.
He didn’t have any land to live on. That story his Mommy and Daddy heard wasn’t true. All the land where he landed was payroll land.
So he started walking away from payroll land, figgerin he’d find some “Indians” and see for hisself what was going on.
He walked to what’s called West Virginia now. It was Shawnee Country then. And that suited him fine. The Shawnee were a free people, living an independent existence in their own lands, following a way of life that did not have payroll. 1
Can’t wait to hear more…
"...with people around him to love face-to-face." Of course what's needed nowadays, too.