The Hidden Wound by Wendell Berry

WHEN I WAS three years old Nick Watkins, a black man, came to work for my Grandfather Berry. I don't remember when he came, which is to say that I don't remember not knowing him. When I was older and Nick and I would reminisce about the beginnings of our friendship, he used to laugh and tell me that when he first came I would follow him around calling him Tommy. Tommy was the hand who had lived there just before Nick. It was one of those conversations that are repeated ritually between friends. I would ask Nick to tell how it had been when he first came, and he would always tell about me calling him Tommy, and he would laugh. When I was eight or nine the story was important to me because it meant that Nick and I had known each other since way back, and were old buddies.

I have no idea of Nick's age when I first knew him. He must have been in his late fifties, and he worked for us until his death in, I believe, 1945-a period of about eight years. During that time one of my two or three chief ambitions was to be with him. With my brother or by myself, I dogged his steps. So faithful a follower, and so young and self-important and venturesome as I was, I must have been a trial to him. But he never ran out of patience.