A. “Sugar”

Transcript from Texas Rangers Interview with Carl Potts (1909-1981) –Date of Interview 11/18/1981-Galveston Texas—

•Rangers’ words have been redacted from this transcript•

I’ll never forget the first time I saw Sugar. I found’em and his momma out dragging through the desert one morn’in. I was gettin back with a mare that broke loose two days before. I was out two full days look’in for her. It was the 5th of July…

…I can still hear the fireworks off in the distance. While I sit here by this small fire, camping alone in the desert…

…

Mmm…

They were heading in a direction that would have put’em near to death or worse.

It was providence that had me find that mare where I did, when I did. To come back where they were, when they were there. They would have ended up in a gully that empties out into nothing. Just nothing for days. No water…just heat and cold.

Mmm…

…I’ve been out there with no water before.

It’s Hell on Earth.

My younger brother and I went out after our daddy one week. He had ran out after he and our momma got into it. She shot at him this time.

We knew he was out in that dessert…he had taught us how track and we tracked him. We only had about a gallon of water each and we were out there for 4 days and nights. That monsoon saved us…

…

…Oh my…

…I drifted.

I do that ever since Gracie passed. I’ll just…snap!..go back to a place and stand there…looking through my eyes of youth and at my younger self all at once…My memory is strong in these moments. Feel like visions. Y’all ever experienced visions?

Hmm.

…Sugar’s Mamma was a sight for any set of tired eyes. Even in the sad state she was in, her royalty hollered out from the desert, like a coyote breaking the quiet of night.

…Sugar…He couldn’t have been more than 12 years old by the look of his face but he was as stout as an ox. You could tell the boy was off, but he was just a boy.

Had a Quiet, methodical demeanor.

What I remember most about him though, are his eyes. Now I wager most men would say the boy had lost eyes, or some sort of retardation. Reeder Jr. called him all sorts of mean names.

Heh, he was made to regret that though wasn’t he?…

…I’m sorry I keep drifting.

His eyes…when I met his eyes, what I saw were eyes that done already seen all there is to see. They looked past what mine or your eyes can see. Eyes that see past you. Like his eyes and gaze were already in the far away future. Like he was there in front of you but also someplace beyond you.

Hmm…his momma had kind eyes. Her name was Rosie.

Reeder Senior took a liken to Sugar and Rosie. He let them stay on. He put both em to work…in different ways. Sugar outworked many men day in and day out gaining a closeness with the old man. The boy was off from get go as I said but Reeder being his own version of a savior, figured it was his calling to help these two “lost souls”, along their path. He even held small sessions where he’d read The Word to everyone at the ranch. I don’t want to get into all that but I will say this on the matter.

I am a believer and everything I witnessed from the Reeders was heretical and hypocritical.

I’d spit them out.

Anyways.

They stayed on for about 3 years before it all happened…

…

Oh! I remember a story I want to tell you. Before we get into the other stuff.

This was the first summer they were there. It’s what’s made me see how sometimes we are just along for the story. The big story. The one that holds all the smaller ones like fishermen’s net.

Now, Reeder Jr. was his own kind of trouble. A spoiled, wicked sort of man that saw himself as a true grit rodeo cowboy. He was cruel to animals. He had no sense of what these majestic beasts needed or wanted. How could he?

He never seemed truly curious about anything. He just knew his daddy used to rodeo and won some prestige in his day.

Well, he had some mean old bulls he bought and kept in a separate coral. He’d never get on’em though. Not even one time. He was “working up to it.”

Hehe.

He not only called Sugar many awful names but he also did him dirty a few times. I guess he hated him since his daddy was sweet on Rosie. Jr.‘s mamma wasn’t the most present of women so Senior sought his own pleasure when he saw fit.

Jr. once told the boy to go into the bull coral to pick up some horse tack that he purposefully left in there. Now I can’t get in the mind of a man that would let a bull, that’s in even a mild rage, into the same space as a boy. But he did.

He left that bull leave the pin and it took off for Sugar in a flash.

Sugar saw it coming…and just stood there looking at this mean hulk flying toward him.

Now y’all remember what I told you about his eyes.

See that bull was running as hard as any bull charge I have seen. Before he got any closer than 10 feet of that boy…it, in a dust storm, stopped dead in its tracks. Sugar didn’t move a hair. Wasn’t scared or at least didn’t show a snif of fear of he was. I believe he was already past the moment. It sent chills down my spine.

That bull acted as if it seen something. I don’t know what but I believe he sensed what we all learned about Sugar. The boy was evil.

He’d later see this bull put down by the bolt gun he used…

…Oh My Lord…

I’m sorry. I haven’t talked about this in a long while now. Gracie was the only person I could tell it to for a long long time.

After reading about all those horrible things that happened this year.

I just knew it was him…

Why did I find that mare when I did? If it had been even a few moments later or a few miles further away, maybe Rosie and her boy would have passed on in that wilderness…

…them dead in a gully is better than all the awful things he had done.

…Anyways. Sugar just walked out with the tact in his hands like he was in the coral alone the whole time.

I can see all the blood! Can I get a glass of water?

…

I’m just going to get to it.

…Ahh! I don’t want to go into details on this. Ok.

The day Sugar saw that bull put down must have inspired him in some way because he killed both Senior and Junior with that bolt gun. He killed the old man in his sleep but Junior, he wanted to make suffer a little. He beat the dirt out of him and drug him out into the middle of that coral. He didn’t say anything, he just held that bolt up to his head.

He shot George and Louis flat out as they ran for their trucks. I’m not sure where Rosie was during this time but I heard she was found in the dead a few weeks later. Strangled…

It all happened so fast but it felt like an eternity.

I drew on Sugar but he beat me to the pull. Bird shot. See all these pot marks on my face and neck.

He had me dead, if he wanted it. But he was in no rush.

He walked toward me as he loaded another shell into the single barrel shotgun…

…looking down at me. I was praying in my heart, screaming more like.

I saw my Gracie in those moments. I saw our son Steven. Just flash before my eyes…

Why me? Why in all things holy did he let me live? I was kind to the boy but so was most everyone else besides Junior.

…

As he closed the breach. I had an epiphany.

I knew Sugar liked games and I knew he had his own deep sense of how the world worked.

As he approached me I reached in my pocket pulled out a coin, propped it on my thumb and I said…

…“Let’s flip for it Anton.”

-end of interview-