CHAPTER 1: BILLS BIRTH

 

Art by Powell? And taken from a issue of nature boy comics

Now our story here starts a long time ago, not too far ago but just far enough, and at this time, on this stormy day, a child was born after hours upon hours of labor, a man nay a legend came into this world with a full set of steel teeth that could bite like a gator, a full head of red hair that no one say for himself or his Mee-Ma could cut, and overall a rowdy disposition.

Pa or Pee-Pa Bill as he was sometimes called was a no nonsense tough as nails former bar brawler, who was also a bit of a chuckle nut and prankster, he fathered 19 children with his wife, Ma or Mee-Ma Bill, a kind hearted but strong as a buffalo, giant of a woman who dwarfed most men she met, including her husband, and with the new baby Bill this make the kid count a even 20, 20 rampaging rugrats that the two parents would have to deal with.

So Bill was just a newborn baby, a newborn that was soon up and walking around on two legs, quickly after that he was getting into all kinds of trouble, with baby bill snooping around were he really shouldn't have been, all of this before he even got a proper name beyond just Baby Bill.

So one day, little Baby Bill ended up sneakily wandering down into the cellar while pa and ma were preoccupied with his siblings, walking about when he stumbled upon his old feller's panther piss, a set of at least 30 home made bottles of hard as diamonds and as poor as a hobo alcohol, some of the ingredients of this hellish concoction include but aren't limited to, rattlesnake heads, gunpowder and of course water from the Pecos River which gave his father's alcohol its name, that of course being PECOS DELIGHT.

Baby Bill being the wild and curious child he was of course sat down and drank a bottle, quite liking the taste he then drank another, and another, and another and soon enough, every single last bottle of the stuff was poured directly into the new borns gullet.

Eventually, feeling a mighty thirst himself, given how all day he was wrangling 19 other kids, Bill's Pee-Pa went down to the cellar in search for some of his booze, but instead of his 30 bottles neatly tucked into a corner, he found Bill, lying down for a nap and snoozing peacefully, in the middle of the room, 29 empty bottles strewn all about and around him, with the 30th bottle still clutched in the new borns tiny but still strong grip.

Now the logical or sensible response to finding your newborn asleep after drinking 30 bottles of quite honestly anything would be worry or panic, or some mix of the two, but Bill's Pee-Pa being a wild man himself instead felt something else, he felt unbridled pride in his boy, seeing that the kid was already so strong like his Mee-Ma, tough as nails like his Pee-Pa, and had a curiosity all his own when only the day before last he was still in his Mama's belly, so Pee-Pa picked little Bill up waking him in the process and told em.

Pee-Pa: Son, from this day on, ay think ay'm gonna call you Pecos, Pecos Bill, on account of them thirty bottles ya done drank up, and I can feel it in ma gut that yr destined fer bigger things, yr a wild child and a miracle o the Lord who ain't gonna let anythin hold him back cuz a just how ornery and curious ya are, yr gonna go far, I can feel it in me gut I tell ya what.

And so, that's how Baby Bill got his name, Pecos Bill, and from that day onward his goal was certain without him really comprehending it quite yet, he'd become the rootinest tootinst, toughest most curious and strong cowboy of the old west, who would time and time again prove the impossible possible and not be held back by nothin, ultimately this all being done for the betterment of all, detriment to none and to the highest good, whether again, he realized it or not.

Hell he'd even end up fighting against all sorts of things in this pursuit, even Destiny herself, but that's a story for later.

(Note: not a lot to talk about with this story, it's my family's version of the birth of bill, of course it's been told to me various different ways over the years and this is a mixture of the composite memory of all those retellings aswell as a little input from my mom about how the story went, notably there is a variant of this story where Pecos as a baby almost drinks the Pecos River dry and that's how he got his name, but I preferred the Pecos Delight story so that's the one I told here)