The Legend of Hungry Jess
Hungry Jess Thimbleton was born on a farm in the wilds of western Kentucky. One week after he was born, he kicked a hole clean through the side of his oak crib. By the time he was three, he could out-eat grown men five at a time. When he turned eight, his impoverished parents decided they could no longer afford to feed him, so they gave him one last meat pasty and sent him out into the world to seek his fortune. Not a mile from home, he was attacked by a bear, who ate his pasty right out of his hand. So Jess wrestled that bear, cooked it and ate it, just to show it who was boss.
Now, by the time he was ten, Jess had traveled up and down the east coast and was easily winning prize fights and eating contests against men twice his size. As his reputation grew, he fought more and more challengers and won quite a few large purses. But winning all the time was boring, so he retired from the ring at age 15, built himself a little cabin on the mighty Ohio, and settled down to enjoy a long neglected hobby: napping.
One morning not too long after that, Jess woke up from his post-breakfast nap with a live trout in his pants. He leapt up, tripped over his bootlaces, which someone had tied together, and tumbled down the bank into the river.
When he climbed out of the water, there was a boy in a wide-brimmed hat sitting in a tree, laughing at him. Jess punched that tree so hard its roots came up, and it fell right over. When the dust cleared, the boy was standing calmly in front of him, smirking.
“Huh,” said the boy, “Maybe y’are Hungry Jess, after all. But I betchya ain’t as good as they say.”
“Oh yeah?” Jess said, “Fight me right now, and we’ll just see how good I am.”
The boy grinned. “Well, I thought you’d never ask,” he said.
Their fight lasted the rest of the afternoon and long into the night. Neither boy could get the upper hand for long. They fought so hard they broke every tree in the forest before the moon rose, and they called a time out.
The next morning, Jess was up early, and the boy arrived right at sunrise. They fought the whole day, until they turned all the fallen trees into matchsticks. As the sun started to set again, the boy called another time out.
“You ain’t a bad fighter,” he said, “But I bet I can run much faster than you.”
“Oh yeah?” Jess said, “Well, you come back here tomorrow and we’ll just see who’s the fastest.”
For almost a month, the two boys held as many competitions as they could think of. They had shooting contests, eating contests, climbing and wood-chopping and riding and spitting contests. But none of these proved which of the boys was best. If Jess won one day, he was sure to lose the next. And if the boy won, Jess was sure to demand a rematch.
But then, one morning, the boy didn’t come knocking at Jess’s cabin door. When he wasn’t there by mid-morning Jess grinned to himself. If the other boy was too chicken to show up, that meant Jess had finally won. But by noon, he was fidgeting, and soon he decided to walk into town and see if he could find him. Jess was still sore that he’d lost their ax-throwing match the day before but he was sure he could beat that boy at wrestling, if he could only find him.
No one in town seemed to know what he was talking about when he asked around for the rude kid with the big straw hat. He ended up sitting at the train station, watching the crowd.
A familiar hat being waved out the window of a train caught his eye. It was the boy, and his train was pulling away!
“Hey!” Jess yelled, leaping up and running toward him, “Heeeey! Y’ can’t leave! I ain’t won yet! COME BACK HERE!”
The boy grinned and saluted him jauntily, his long blond hair whipping in the increasing wind. “Bet I can beatcha to California!” he called.
“OH YEAH?” Jess cried, heels pounding after the departing train, “WE’LL JUST SEE ABOUT THAT!”