The Sun Knows My Name

Prologue

I first heard the name Peter Gunn while in a bar in the town of Cripple Creek, Colorado in 1992. Two men were having a violent argument over some trivial matter or other, and one of the men shouted that he would come down upon you with the vengeance of Peter Gunn!

I thought no more of it at the time, but as I spent more time there, researching an article on farming for the New York Times, I began to hear the name more often. It was always uttered with a fearsome look in the speaker’s eye and in hushed tones as though the very mention of the name would bring down great suffering from on high. Intrigued by local myths and legends, I resolved to find out more about this Peter Gunn character who brought so much fear and perverse respect to the inhabitants of Cripple Creek. I’m afraid the local townsfolk considered me something of an outsider, and a blank wall of silence always greeted my questions on the matter, as though Peter Gunn was their legend alone and no one else could question or share in its mythology. I resigned myself to the idea that Peter Gunn was indeed no more than a fanciful legend, a simple name with no real meaning or substance, which the colloquial tongue had adopted as its own bogeyman.

I returned to my article on farming and was granted an interview with the local minister, an aged man who was quite a successful and noted gardener. While running through a few preliminary questions, my eyes fell on his desk and I noticed a poster, curled at the edges and faded with age. I saw the words WANTED FOR MURDER printed at the top, and I cut short my gardening questions to ask about it. The man wanted for murder was none other than Peter Gunn himself, the local myth. I turned the minister’s attention to the poster, telling him of my love for local folk stories and legends. He carefully picked it up, and I’m sure he had a tear in his eye as he spoke. Mister Gunn was no myth, he sighed, but he wasn’t no saint neither.

The people of Cripple Creek seem very reluctant to talk of him, I remarked. They seem to use his name as a kind of threat. Was he a local outlaw or gunfighter or something? The man’s face cracked with a smile as he replied.

Your views on the old times have fallen victim to cheap dime novels and the moving pictures, he said. People weren’t as simple as they try to make out. The morals and times of our own modern age judge them. Theirs was a time far removed and different from ours, and we have no right to judge them by our standards. He lovingly put the poster down. Tell me, he continued, if a man takes a life, does that make him evil?

Of course, I replied, without thinking and quite shocked that a man of God should ask such a simple question.

What if the life he takes was an evil one itself and by doing so he creates only good? the minister asked again.

I don’t know, I replied in confusion, "I guess so."

So it’s okay to take a man’s life after all? he grinned. I stammered and stuttered, trying to think of an answer, but the minister held up his hand and saved my blushes. It’s okay. he said, You’re judging everything through modern eyes. To understand this Mister Gunn, you have to think with the mind of an historian. He rose to his feet.

How can I find out more about him? I asked, my thirst for knowledge of Peter Gunn thoroughly engaged.

There’s a man you can talk to, he replied. He lives in a little cottage about two miles from here. Follow the stream north and you’ll find it. Tell him I sent you and he’ll talk to you.

It’ll make a great article for the paper, I said enthusiastically, eagerly making notes from the old poster. The old minister put his wrinkled, arthritic hand on my shoulder.

If you must write about him, he said in earnest, remember to use the eyes and ears of an historian, not a twentieth-century cynic.

I drove the two miles along the bumpy road by the stream to where I found the old tumbledown cottage. It looked shabby and badly in need of repair, as though a gust of wind could easily rip the roof off and send the rest crashing to the ground. I knocked loudly on the door and was immediately covered in dust and cobwebs, which I hastily brushed away. I heard the sound of someone moving around inside, shuffling their tired feet towards the door until it finally creaked open to reveal an old man in old clothes, unwashed and unshaven. He said nothing but simply stared at me, as though he was not used to guests and I was something of an inconvenience to him.

Hello, I said, breaking the awkward silence. "My name’s Joe Roth. I write for the New York Times. Perhaps you’ve heard of me? I do articles on farming and gardening. He still gave no reply and continued his blank stare. The minister at Cripple Creek gave me your address and said I could talk to you regarding the legend of Peter Gunn. Perhaps I could do an article on him for my paper. The old-time western folk tales are very popular again," I continued hopefully.

Joe Roth? he said finally, with a weak voice barely above a whisper. Come in. I’m afraid I haven’t heard of you, but then I have very little time for gardening these days, and who needs to grow their own food anymore?

I followed him into the small cottage, which seemed like a zoo for the various insects of the county rather than a place for human habitation. He dragged a rickety old chair across the room for me to sit on and told me to wait where I was. He returned a few minutes later carrying a pile of musty yellow old papers wrapped in a frayed ribbon.

Read these before you write anything, they can tell you more then I can, he wheezed. I carefully took the bundle from his old hands and untied the ribbon, which crumbled away to dust under my fingers. I read the first line, As winter turned to early spring in 1865, my mother and I were living in Pottsville County, Georgia. I continued reading, and my enthusiasm made me forget the time. As the sun began to go down and the lack of light was causing me to squint and hold the papers nearer my eyes, the old man stood beside me and coughed. Startled, I looked up.

Sorry, I said, handing the fragile papers back to him. I didn’t realize how late it was."

Take the papers with you, he said. You’ll need them for your article.

I can’t, they’re too valuable, I replied, secretly hoping he wouldn’t change his mind. He tapped his old head with his gnarled finger.

They’re all up here when I want to look at them, he replied. I thanked him and left that night for New York to continue my research.

The bundle of papers consisted of more than I could have hoped. As well as a kind of confessional autobiography, they also contained letters addressed to his mother and someone he always referred to as Uncle Dunkard.

I sat in my office and began to read the whole thing again.

Chapter One

As winter turned to early spring in 1865, my mother and I were living in Pottsville County, Georgia. I was fifteen years old and so fully aware of the appalling situation the South found itself in, yet I was frustratingly unable to do anything about it. My eldest brother Thomas had been killed at Shiloh some three years earlier and my other two brothers, John and Henry, had died of a dysentery condition while in a camp near Gettysburg. Although all three of my brothers fought proudly for the South and her beliefs, we owned no slaves and to be quite honest didn’t really feel that we could survive independently of the North. But the adventure and romance of the war soon swayed any doubts my brothers had of joining up and they bravely donned their uniforms with the rest of the young men from the country to fight against Those Damn Yankees. It’s amazing the effect a waving flag and the promise of a kiss from a pretty girl can have on a boy. Put the two together and you can convince anyone to do virtually anything. I know because I witnessed it. Had the recruiting office carried photographs of the carnage at Manassas or Shiloh, no one would have signed up and we wouldn’t have had a war.

Of all the boys who marched through the county all those years ago, I knew of no one who owned any slaves or stood to gain anything out of secession. If a Yankee soldier asked a Southerner why he was fighting, his answer wouldn’t contain anything about the noble causes that a Northerner’s might. He would simply answer, Because you’re down here. It was Confederate pride that caused the damn war and our nation’s inability to compromise with itself.

My father had been a farmer in Georgia all his life, as had my grandfather, and I had fully expected to inherit the family tradition of poverty. My father had left for California in search of gold when I was eight years old. After a few letters describing the monotony of the journey and how desperate the land was, we never heard from him again. My mother said that he had probably fallen afoul of bandits or Indians and cursed him as a fool, though I know of many nights when I would lie awake and listen to her sobbing for him.

As my brothers were called away to fight, the workload on the farm became too much for just my mother and me. The same was true for most of the families in Pottsville so, as people do in time of hardship, we united together and helped each other out as best we could. But as the Confederate cause became increasingly hopeless, so did that of the poor farmers. The money we received for our crops was almost worthless as the Confederate dollar had long since lost any real value and in the last few months of the war we were lucky to get even that as defeated, starving soldiers simply took whatever they could lay their hands on to eat.

As the terrible news of sons lost forever came back to the people of Pottsville, many families simply gave up on the situation and abandoned their farms to head west into the new lands beyond the Mississippi. I asked my mother why we shouldn’t do the same but she refused, saying that she was waiting for her sons to come home so she could give them a mother’s hug.

Atlanta had fallen to the Yankees the year before and from my bedroom late at night I could hear the booming guns of General Sherman’s army battering our state’s capital to ruins. As the year wore on, scores of ragged and defeated Confederate soldiers passed by our farm. My mother and some of the other women fed and clothed them as best they could but we were so poor and they were so many that pity was all we could afford to give.

I loved Pottsville County. I had been born there and fully expected to live and die there. Before the dark days of the war, few citizens of Pottsville had been outside of the county, let alone traveled hundreds of miles to the northern states. I knew every man, woman and child. I knew every tree and house and could not imagine a time when I would ever have to leave. But as 1865 rolled on, the Yankees were plunging further and further south, destroying everything of value or usefulness to the Confederacy in their path.

I can well recall the day we finally left Pottsville. The day had started much like any other, with no warning or sign that this very day would change our lives forever. I was working the field with my mother when we saw a wagon pull up by the cottage. I recognized the family as the Plummers, farmers just like us who worked land not far from our own. They were waving to attract our attention so we walked over to them. As I neared their cart, I could see that it was loaded up with just about everything they owned.

Union’s coming this way! shouted Mister Plummer as we neared them. You’d best load and git out while you still can! My mother wiped her muddy hands on her apron.

They surely won’t bother folk like us, will they? she said

You know my hogs? Mister Plummer replied, "They’ve been used by the army for targets and my chickens