Nelly'bell (Old Josh/1867-1879)

Nelly’ bell
1867-1879


Sponge, that’s what they called him, because no one ever knew his last name, he chewed tobacco, and everybody knew it was him when he came around without looking because he spit that tobacco out, and god knows where it would land, and the odor of alcohol was so strong on him, people just jumped out of the way when they heard him wind up that saliva and tobacco in his mouth ready to spit; his wife was called Nelly’ bell, cut as a sparrow, a small lovely, shapely black woman, with a tinge of white in her blood, and perhaps a little Indian, and they’d go down to Goose Creek often, go fishing, build a fire and catch some of those catfish, and eat them. Make sandwiches and drink that homemade Alabama Moonshine, whisky that would knock out a horse after several drinks. He’d pass out always before her, and she’d take off to god knows where, and return and wake her husband up, and they’d go back to shantytown where they had a little hut, her father left her when he died. She was a good wife, so everyone thought, even Josh.
Sponge lived up to his name, he drank like a Sponge, and it seemed he never got sick, just passed out, one might have called him a professional drinker in that he was quite proficient at it. He drank all through the 1860s and ‘70s, none stop, and it was his prime time you might say.
Sometimes folks saw young Nelly’ bell, who was in fifteen years old when Sponge married her, in ’65, he being at the time, forty-six years old, folks saw them on Sunday afternoon’s out by the saw-mill, where Sponge worked.
Sponge, He had a half-dozen kids it seemed, from other wives and girlfriends, I think even he lost track of them, but his Nelly’ bell never had any with him, not any of his or anybody’s else’s up to this time.

Well one day, at the sawmill, Sponge got his leg cut off at and the mill gave him $200-dollars, and instead of him paying for a doctor and care of his leg, he drank half that sum up, he and Nelly’ bell, but before he got to the second hundred dollars, his son, oldest boy, Bugs, robbed his house of one-hundred dollars, while he was sleeping off a binge, and raped his Nelly ‘bell right on their bed while he was on the floor asleep; Bugs was fifteen-years old at the time, in 1867 when this took place, and Nelly’ bell seventeen, and Sponge forty-eight, Sponge had been married two years.

Well, Bugs ran down to News Orleans, right after the rape, and there, outside of the city, he found a job, and worked for a man Dayton Buck (folks called him Buck for short), who owned a farm outside of the city, this all was back in 1867 remember, when he raped Sponge’s wife, and ran off to New Orleans, and got hired by Buck, outside of the city limits, and had that one hundred dollars in his pockets, and there he worked, played some poker with that money, down in New Orleans, and avoided any one who might be down visiting from Ozark, just incase they heard of he rape, but no one ever brought it up to him, therefore he felt safe, and considered going back to Ozark, and visiting his father, and perhaps going into business, maybe even ask for, forgiveness.

Bugs came back to Ozark, in 1875, had enough money on him, and bought himself a farm, that was seven years later, he was twenty-two years old, and Nelly’ bell was 24-years old, and his paw was fifty-six.
Bugs planted a cornfield, and he invited his pa to move on the farm with him, and bring his wife, and they did, old woes were now forgotten I guess, unless they were hidden. Old Josh, told Bugs, “Dont be no fool now, yous got away with foolin’ around with another mans wife, sometimes God gives you a second chance, dont go thinkin’ its luck, when its God tellin’ yaw watch your step, folks forgive yaw now and then, but when yous in another mans bed, its bad news, and no one really forgets, even if they forgive…!” and Bugs shook his head at the told timer, Josh, and didn’t say a word, he was a rich man now, rich in his eyes, or kind of rich, rich enough to impress a few of the black folks, cuz he was black, and sometimes when your poor black, and you become rich black, you like to push it a bit, get the attention you think you earned.
Fine, Bugs had bought the small farm, fifty-acres, with a small house, three bedroom mansion, and sold Nelly’ bell’s house to have enough to plant a cornfield. And they all moved on the farm, more like a farm than a plantation. And he became known as a well to do person of the area, especially a man who had no real skills, a Negro, who worked for seven-years down in New Orleans doing whatever he was doing on that man’s plantation, and then he started to take Nelly’ bell to Dothan, said to his father, said he wanted company, and left his aging father with a few bottles of Tennessee Mash Whiskey. Well it was that year, 1876, when the old man died, Sponge was found dead one day when Bugs and Nelly’ bell returned from a trip, he shed no tears, and gave only a few dollars to have a wooden coffin made for him, and placed it way in the back of his farm, behind a tree, a little stone that read Sponge, no dates on it. Nelly who now kept him company all the time when he went on his trips now, to New Orleans, Dothan, and Birmingham, and even up to Fayetteville, North Carolina, he was getting used to her companionship, used to her love making. She didn’t say a thing, like his father, she just went along with it. But Josh said once to him, “Jes’ because someone dont say a word, dont take it that they aint thinkin’, that will be your mistake if-in you do.”

Across from the Smiley’s plantation was the Beck’s, white folks, and now to the other side of the Smiley’s was of course, Bugs’ place, Bugs Buck.

After Sponge died his wife, who really wasn’t that old still in her 20s started drinking a lot, like Sponge used to. She had loved Sponge in her own way, but did what Bugs wanted and Sponge didn’t really say much, and by the time he did it was really too late, he died of alcoholism. Other than Bugs, Nelly didn’t really fooled around after she married Sponge, and after her rape, she only allowed Bugs to lay with her, thinking almost Sponge didn’t care, or allowed it so he could drink and have a place to live. In all respects, she was still a woman of a good standing, and a fine shape, and her looks we not too bad at all, just a tinge pale. But things always change, and change was in the air.

Hank Ritt, who in 1877 was fifty-one years old, the city banker of Ozark, a short heavy man, thin hair, heavy looking face, came around now and then, to the farm, to see Nelly, and took a liking for the cut black woman, and so did Josh, that was perhaps about 1877 through ’78, both Josh and Ritt came around the farm like hungry dogs Bugs not liking it, but he was unable to stop it, without being hug by Ritt’s associates, and he knew it, plus he wasn’t married to Nelly, and Nelly liked the attention, and Silas and Jordon, would have liked to have stomped on Bugs, should he have tried to push Josh about, if indeed youth and age would have came face to face, and perhaps age might have dominated, because, although Bugs was shrewd, he was careless, and was only five foot six inches tall, and perhaps one-hundred and thirty pounds. No match for Josh, other than age being against Josh.
As it was, or ended up being, Josh and she, Nelly would go catch catfish, Ritt didn’t care for fishing, he just took Nelly one day and laid her on the grass and made love to her, and Ritt took good care of her thereafter, gave her money on the side, enough for her to start her own little bar down in Ozark, which was good, because most blacks had their saloon type halls in shantytown, and she would be set up proper in the city.

Bugs, perhaps like his pa, could never give Nelly a child, and Bugs was mad when she had a half white child nine months later, after that last encounter with Ritt, and she even named the child Hank, and when Bugs came back from Dothan one night, she was gone, child and all.
The few times Josh had went to Ozark, he’d stop into Nelly’s Place, and she never forgot his kindness, and those fishing days, and in 1879, Bugs no longer could take the humiliation, Ritt bestowed upon him, and he went to Ozark, in the back door of Nelly’s place, and found Nelly, and asked her, as she was among her friends, men and women alike, if they could go outside behind the bar and talk. And she did, and he raped her again, right there on in the ally-way on the ground, she didn’t fight, nor gave him all that much pleasure. And when it was over, she stood up, and she told him face to face, shoulder to shoulder, eye to eye, no fear in her whatsoever, as if she had plan B, ready to go,

“Do you remember when Josh told you, not to test your luck the second time under fire, to test it to see if it is luck or God’s hand, that you were given a second chance to take it…?” and Bugs lit up a bit, said, “Yaw, he said somthin’ like that so what?” and she said, “You’s a dead nigger, cuz I got more than you got, but I was willin’ to leave it as it is, but yous jes’ throws a gift in the face of God,” and having said that, she went over to a brink in the wall of her building, by the door she had come out of, part of the brick building she owned, twisted it, pulled out a small danger, and shot Bugs in the heart, and he fall down, and she put the gun back where it belonged behind the brick, twisted it back to its normal spot, and went back into the bar said, “Someone jes’’ shot Bugs Buck, in the alleyway back yonder,” and everyone kept drinking as if they never heard a word.

The following day, the sheriff found the body, and there was a little investigation, but everyone said they heard nothing, and it was put down as murder, but without a robbery, for his money was still in his pockets. His farm was sold, and there being no kin, other than Nelly being his step mother, she got the land and farm, and she sold it all except that little spot where her husband was buried, she took the money and built him a mausoleum and beside the mausoleum, she put on a stone, Bugs, no date, but with a question under his name, “Is this luck or providence?”



The Nelly’ bell Hymn”

Nelly’ bell, is you here,”
l say”what you goin’ to tells me—today?”
”Is it Josh or Mr. Ritt, Sponge,
or Bugs, come down to the creek?
all dressed up, kind of sleek, looin’ for Yaw—;
Nelly ’ bell”: they say,
cuz yous sho’s a fine lookin’ gal,
Yessum, the best looker, in all this
here city, I hear tell” And I says,
“You think so?” she says…I reckon so
cuz I loves them all!”

#1686 2-9-2007
(as they sang in the black bars of Ozark)