Alan (the Lone Librarian rides again) Teder’s Reviews > Don't Forget Me, Little Bessie > Status Update

As I write these words, I am just short of one hundred and two years old. I hear Papa in the other room, believe it or not. He's calling now, and y'all know how Papa is, a dadburn mess. My son became a writer and wrote down a number of these stories. I think he's right good at it. I hope he gives me a credit or two. Anyway, I'd better go now.

"He'll get one between the eyes directly," he said.
"How do you know that!"
He rubbed at his forehead. "That man's got death painted all over him. He knows it's coming, and he's scared out of his britches. That's why he's cruel. That's why all of them are cruel."

"There's a detective from New York City in town. An Italian gangster named Anthony Vale got his brains splattered on a wall in Harlem. Guess what local person he's interested in."
"I wouldn't know, Sheriff. But it's so good of you to wake me up before seven a.m. and tell me these things. Thank you. Goodbye. And please never call here again, you ignorant peckerwood piece of trash."

Don't forget me, little Bessie. I call you "little" because you're always going to be like us. We'll never grow up. ...
Meyer and Frankie say hello.
Your friend forever,
Benny

[Fictional letter from an adolescent Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel to Bessie Holland, a fictionalized version of author James Lee Burke's mother]

Most human beings are not aware of the complexity of animals. Did you know a horse has two screens in his brain? A horse can meet another horse one time and remember that horse for twenty-five years. A Siamese cat will mourn the death of its owner. Isolate a buffalo and he'll break down a fence to join any kind of herd, even llamas.

I missed our farm and the spiritual moments you share with farm animals: the cold, grassy smell on their breaths when they've drunk from the stock tank in the early morning, the steam rising from their bodies, and the way they nuzzle you and try to take a treat from your pocket or play an innocent trick. When Traveler was a colt he pulled off my hat and ran across the pasture and threw it in a palm tree.

Cody jabbed him repeatedly in the throat and the carotids until the tall man was spurting blood all over his shirt, his knees caving.
Both men were on the floor now, the short man's face already turning blue, one hand gripped over the hole in his windpipe, as though he was trying to strangle himself. The tall man lay on his back, his expression like an air bladder ripped from a basketball.

I knew my father's capabilities. At fifteen he was flying hell-for-breakfast across the Cimarron, Indian arrows stuck in the mail bags tied to his cantle. As a Texas Ranger he dared Deacon Jim Miller to draw on him, and later complimented Miller as the most religious, well-dressed bucket of pig flop he ever knew. In 1897 he danced with Etta Place, the Sundance Kid's mistress, at the Brown Palace in Denver.