Approaching the boy from a steep and rocky incline, with all four hands on the ground, the thing stood in front of George- huffing and puffing for breath; its pink tongue dangling slightly from its catlike mouth. The Thomas Whacker pointed a hairy,dark finger at tne boy.
"What do you want, Thomas?" asked George.
"George, I need to discuss with you that girl you are visiting.She doesn't like you or want your company. Both her mother and her both say they'd rather have a monkey to visit than you. I've listened to them talk about you. You must stay away from those two, George. They are planning to try and cripple you. The black people here in the area are friends of yours- Shorty, Miss Lizzie, and Charlie, the man who sold you the milkcow. You'll do better to visit with them. I've heard them all say good things about you. They like you for reason that you're friendly with them."
"Thomas!" exclaimed the boy. "I can't help what I think or how I feel about the girl. I love every single bit of her, and I always will. She's the most beautiful girl in the whole world."
"Don't allow your chemical reactions to rule your mind and behavior, George." said the Thomas. "Those are your instincts- things that can take control of your mind and cause you to make poor judgements. You'll really be hurt badly if you continue trying to get into their social groups. You can't break though those obstacles they've placed. Their world is not even real. The girl, her
mother and other members of those restrictive groups would stop you from shitting if they could. They ruin everybody they touch, and I'm not letting them ruin you. I've got to stop you from visiting her house, Round Oak, and Gray, George. I've got to get you, your mother, and Father out of here. I will. Until then, George, I intend to place an icy wall between you and that girl. You will feel love no longer, and that will be better for you."
"Will you stop talking so loudly, Thomas?" said George."I'm not hard of hearing."
Entering into somewhat of a hideous and uncontrolable rage, Thomas three handsful
of dust and stones toward George. "Don't you ever talk back to me, George. I've come here to help you! You listen when you see me! You do as I say, and I'll save you and your family from the harm they'll do. They'll burn your house down with you in it. Those don't own this land here but don't want anyone on it."
Sure enough what the Thomas Whacker said to George became true. The following day of that summer, George peddled his bicycle down the the deeply-rutted, red-clay road toward the beautiful girl's house. What happened along the way was an amazing thing. No one would believe it unless they had witnessed it. Only a boy named George did; and a dustdevil, a hairy catlike creature, and things that hide and peek out of holes and crevasses.
Stopping abruptly at one-half the quarter mile of road leading to the girl's house, the boy George was shaken by a sudden and cold wind. Although the Earth was into July of that hot, Georgia summer, the boy shivered and wrapped his arms in an effort to gain warmth. Then a wind, seizing a baseball cap from George's head, began to whistle and roar briskly.
The air became hot again, and that wind assumed an onimous and visible form- a playful, mischievious, somewhat delerious dustdevil. Grabbing George's baseball cap, the dustdevil blew it over some trees and continued on until completely out of sight. That was the darndest thing for a third person to see.
It turned-out just as the Thomas Whacker had said. From that day on, George felt no love for the beautiful girl, and for a boy who lived there at Five Points and Firetower Road, his life was never the same. The love he had felt for the girl was no more.
What remained of July 1951 passed, and the whole summer of that year entered into what is now oblivion. There came an Autumn for that year. By some manner, the amazing Thomas had made a wall beyond which love could not be.
The wall that existed there was one of ice there in Georgia, a dry and humid land where the dirt was red, the woods were full of pine. It was a time when summer had parched the cornstalks. They stood wiltering and drying under a Georgia sun, and so would have a man. But there was an icy wall that never melted, and the feeling of love never showed its presence again.
The boy having turned his steps in another direction found that the girl would sometimes would try to follow. When she came near, George would run away; for her and not from her. The girl would call, and her voice would echo away into the deep woods. The echo never ended but hid within the cells of things there. repeating the name George until the sound became sufficiently faint to die. That voice may still be faintly heard during some nights.
Becoming friends with several black people living near, George would visit Miss Lizzie, Charlie, Early, Shorty and his daughter, Beatrice. Miss Lizzie was a woman who proclaimed proudly to have been born the day before the slaves were freed. Helping me to find gold was Charlie, and there was Shorty's daughter, Beatrice who introduced me to "the spirit of the deep woods."
As the Thomas had said to George:"I am a thing that can hide in the cells of anything I see. I'll always be near you when you need me. I will never leave you, George."
The Thomas Whacker kept the promise made to the Georgia boy named George. Concealed somewhere within the cells of something nearby, it was never very far away.
.......Epilogue.......Author: George Fulks (Dec 2007)
During the remainder of the summer of '51, the infamous George- a ten year old continued to fraternize and learn from members of the black settlement there near Five Points on Firetower road.
Those survived as among the best of people- courageously, wearing a sunmade face, and enduring the consequences of mortality.
So called Five Points for reason that in that vicinity of Jones County, Georgia were five junctions; each leading to a different destination.
During the heat and drought of the Georgia summers, lightning caused several forest fires on Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge. Consequently,Millard Jackson was stationed atop a one-hundred-feet-tall watchtower there at Five Points and near the home of Rummage Ira Fulks and his family from 1946-1951."Ay, Lordie-Lordie-Lordie!"(Millard Jackson's response to heat and sweat covering his face)
Transferred to Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge in Southeast Georgia during November of 1951, R.I. Fulks' son, George completed highschool at Charlton County High. Whatever happened to George after that, no-one knows. He may have deceased.