THE 'LIL PUSS

  “Reader, these cats are made out of cat gut with a small knot made at the ends of them and wound around a small wire, then rubbed well with shoe maker’s wax and attached to a piece of rattan that has a pretty good spring to it, so when the officer strikes, it leaves a deep cut in the back, causing the tender skin to burst while the blood flows freely down the back from the cuts it leaves, leaving the back entirely stripped with red.”- Austin Reed, The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict

    The story continues— Two hours later, after stealing a row boat, chasing that deer across the lake in a snow storm, the wounded, terrified animal had doubled back and was heading right for a long line of parked pick-ups and group of hunters in florescent orange, watching the show. One of the hunters had spotted some “asshole” in the middle of the lake fishing in the storm. The eagle-eyed Ray Key noted, “That asshole’s Mike. And there’s a nice buck in front of him.” Daylight was fading fast and I was afraid to shoot the deer in the water, fearing he would sink. When the exhausted deer saw the other hunters, he panicked and turned again. Out of options, I fired. A giant spout of water shot up and the deer kept swimming. I pumped my last shell in the chamber of my shotgun, tried to steady myself in the rocking boat, settled the sights in the middle of the buck’s back and pulled the trigger. Another water spout erupted and I hung my head in shame, knowing I had missed…..to continued.

     At the same time Jack was “confessing” to Rev. Curtis and Rev. Eddy, Austin Reed’s account of the House of Refuge tells a very different story of incarceration and youthful detention. With illiterate William Freeman it’s others’ court testimony that gives him voice. With Jack, it’s Ansel Doane Eddy’s accounts. But the reflective and literate Austin Reed has no translator or champion. He writes down his entire life story in his own words. He’s not a diarist, nor even the subject of interviews, but a true literary voice, trapped, as Barthes would put it, “like a bottle imp,” in his “hell-desert.” He must tell you his story.

    Displaying empathic solidarity with his Irish immigrant, criminal kindred souls, Austin Reed writes: 

“Pat, methinks I see thousands of your race, like yourself once clothed in rags and shivering in shame, now holding high stations in life, and your little ones smiling under the roof of peace and contentment. Yes, me brave Irish boys, me loves you till the day I am laid cold under the sod, and I would let the last drop of this dark blood run and drain from these black veins of mine to rescue you from the hands of a full blooded Yankee.” 

    

    Reed identifies and articulates the mutual oppressor not as white or black, but as a type and class. The common enemy to the underclass? The “full bloodedYankee.”    

      After multiple escape attempts, only to be returned to The Refuge each time, Austin Reed decided to wait out the winter on the Bowery and not attempt another escape until spring. Meanwhile the scrubbed clean, delinquent children were trotted out to put on a play for visiting members of The Philadelphia Temperance Society, in town to talk reform and take in a children’s show at The Refuge. Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats.

    “I was to be the Indian, Mike was to be a young female laying in her bed with an infant, wrapped sweetly in the arms of his mother, in deep sleep…..There laid little Mike on a bed, dressed in the attire of a female, with his cheeks painted red, and the little infant boy wrapped in her arms in deep slumber and sleep, while I was dressed in a little red gown coming down to my knees and a pair of buckskin leggings on with little bell buttons attached to them, and my face painted red and black. A large scalping knife stuck in my belt. The little bell rung again, and then the piece began, which ended by my cutting the bladder that was full of red water representing blood and tied close up under the chin….In this way we passed the long winter night away.”

  A children’s play in the 1820’s reflected a reality that was only half a century removed from the New York countryside. Anna Osterhout had watched her parents and siblings be scalped and killed in 1757 and her husband and son kidnapped in 1779. Her son would never return. How many Indian mothers and children had the same experience? Now art (from child’s play to Hollywood) would take the story and make damn  sure you knew who the enemy was.