<hr/><div class="floatleft">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/2/21/JacksonJackson.png)</div><br/><strong>Name:</strong>Jackson P. Jackson<br/><strong>Faction:</strong>None<br/><strong>Date:</strong>5 June, 1870<br/><strong>Time of Day:</strong>Afternoon<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Soddom<br/><strong>Tagged:</strong>Lilah, Closed<br/><hr/><br/>He looked up from the work of darning her shirt with a smile, pausing when she offered him her real name.  “Lilah,” he repeated.  “It’s from the Bible,” he nodded.  “Delilah.”  He gave a small smile, and then a thought crossed his mind, and he burst out laughing.  “And there’s a - Coleman just took a Samson off to jail.  If that ain’t the Lord working in mysterious ways, I don’t know what is.”  He grew a little more sober when she said her pa didn’t want nothing to do with her.  “Probably cause he woulda been stoned or lynched by some fool mob if they found out he was carrying on with a white woman.”  He sighed heavily.  “They still do that, from time to time, on both sides of the Mason-Dixie.  String a fellow up for loving a woman with pale skin.”  He frowned and shook his head, then chuckled at the sight of her in his shirt, swimming inside the loose fabric.  He moved on his knees over towards her, and pulled one arm towards him, pulling back the sleeves and rolling it up where it kept swallowing up her hand.  He rolled it back once, then a second time, then a third and fourth before her hand emerged, before moving over to the other side.<br/><br/>“My daddy and momma had their own troubles.  Daddy cared to drink too much, and didn’t care much to have momma tell him to stop.  He used to slap her around some, and when I stood up to him, he slapped me around some, too.  I used to have to head down to the docks and work all evenin’ to make money so we could buy dinner.  Had to sneak it to momma, or else he’d take it and spend it on drink.  One day he found all that money she’d saved, and… when I got home he’d shot her dead.  So I shot him dead, and joined the Army.  Got out after a few years, and came out west to start over.”  He smiled wryly.  “My momma was a smart woman.  Smart about everythin’, except what her heart told her.  Taught me to read, and write.  We were from Pennsylvania.  First state that outlawed slavery - but she was still always writing letters to Senators and making a bother of herself.”  He smiled fondly.  “We were poor as dirt and she still worried for them folks as had it worse than us.”  He began to work on the other sleeve, wrapping it up til her hand emerged, and then sinking back on his heels, and picking up the shirt again.<br/><br/>“Well, he deserves a lot more’n a punch to the face.  People are damn fools sometimes.  Some people are born lucky - big homes and more money than they’d ever need, while some people got to work night and day just to have enough to eat.  I think most times when people go spouting off about how a Negro’s just a beast that walks on two legs, or a Chinaman’s some kind of savage, they doing it just to justify something they know ain’t right.  They say a Chinaman ain’t like a real person so they can work ‘em to death building a railroad, and they say an Indian ain’t no kind of person so they can kick ‘em out of where they been living for centuries, and they say a Negro just like a donkey on two legs so they can work him day and night in a field.  They say those things so then they can feel alright about making their fortunes by tyrannizing other men, or raping their women, or whatever savagery they got in them that people’d be horrified of if it was done to a white man.”  He stroked his hand over his beard.  “So I punched him cause he deserved it, and cause I got sick of hearin’ him spew his mouth, and I punched him cause he thought he could make you into a whore cause he stole coin from a dead man’s pocket and wanted to feel big.”  He frowned and touched her hair, stroking it back behind her ear.<br/><br/>Then he chuckled, and looked around the darkening tent.  “Look at me, yammerin’ on like I got all the daylight in the world.”  He sighed, and shook his head.  “I’m gonna have to finish fixing that shirt in the morning.  How about you borrow a belt so you don’t get turned into a kite if the wind blows, and we go get ourselves a reward and have some real vittles?  I gotta eat one more bowl of pork and beans I think I might lose my mind.”  He offered her a belt from a small pile of clothes, letting her loop it around her waist.<br/><br/>“Oughta get some new buttons for that shirt while we’re out,” he added with a smile.  “Didn’t rightly find all of ‘em,” he admitted, a little sheepishly.