Nineteen
Y ears later, Papa was bursting with pride as he recounted that episode to friends sitting round the kitchen table after a hearty supper prepared by Mamma. He puffed out his chest like a turkey c**k and became at least five inches taller.
‘I fired at him, yes sir. He was a bully that Jim Kniff. A big, fat thug. He frightened everybody. When Kniff went by everyone shut up. Right or not, son?’
‘Yes, Papa.’
‘What was I saying? It went like this. He’d caught Sammy and his wife Sarah, y’know Sarah don’t you? Her over there, she’s the one. He’d caught and locked ‘em up in prison down there in that city - what’s it called again? It’ll come to me. Anyway, no hope for them. It’d all to end badly, that’s for sure. You know as well as I do what happened to runaway slaves. So I say to Joe
