The Salvation of
Miss Lucretia
Ted M. Dunagan
NewSouth Books
Montgomery
Also by Ted M. Dunagan
A Yellow Watermelon
Secret of the Satilfa
Trouble on the Tombigbee
NewSouth Books
105 S. Court Street
Montgomery, AL 36104
Copyright © 2014 by Ted M. Dunagan. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by NewSouth Books, a division of NewSouth, Inc., Montgomery, Alabama.
ISBN: 978-1-58838-293-1
eBook ISBN: 978-1-60306-255-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014933021
Visit www.newsouthbooks.com
To middle school English
teachers everywhere,
especially Annell and Renea.
Contents
Chapter 4: Shackles and Chains
Chapter 6: Butterbeans and Okra
Chapter 1
The Forest
The seductive forest had stands of thick, tall hickory and oak trees for as far back as you could see. I wagered the ground was littered with hickory nuts and acorns, and that would mean that up high in those giant trees there would be nests full of squirrels.
Off to the east I spotted a huge grove of loblolly pines with thick trunks and big stubby limbs and I knew that was the preferred range of the red fox squirrel.
My dog, Old Bill, the most renowned squirrel dog in Clarke County, Alabama, was trembling and whimpering at my side and I knew he was chomping at the bit to find the scent of one of the furry creatures. I patted his head and told him to be patient.
The grand forest of four hundred acres of virgin timber belonged to Mister Leon Autrey, the largest land owner in the county who was a colored man. There were all kinds of stories and rumors of how he had accumulated such a large tract of land, but the plain truth was that part of it had been handed down through the generations of his family and he had accumulated the rest by hard work.
Folks had schemed for years to deprive him of it, but the love of the land had inspired him to find ways to keep it as his own. The latest way he had been able to pay his taxes and maintain ownership of his property was by abandoning cotton and switching his crops to the production of peanuts.
He had gone up to Tuskegee to the institute and been taught the way to grow peanuts from the teachings of George Washington Carver, and now, in the summer of 1949, he was teaching my Uncle Curvin how to switch his crop from cotton to peanuts.
That’s how Poudlum and I had ended up with the opportunity to hunt on Mister Autrey’s land. While he and my uncle were discussing the advantages of peanut farming, they had agreed to give us boys the run of Mister Autrey’s woods for as long as we wanted.
The time to harvest squirrels was on toward the fall when the weather got cool. Now was the time to train Poudlum’s
