All God's Dangers (25 page)

He disappeared through that store door. I didn't know it, but goin through that store was the straightest way to the jail. I didn't know nothin bout no jailhouse—I'd never been in jail in the whole of my life.

I turned around after a thought or so and walked back to them courthouse steps; walked up, stood on top, and looked all over town; but I continued to watch the door where he went in. I stood there a good while lookin for him to come out and bring the boy, if that was the way he was supposed to get him. And in a few minutes' time, out come the jailer, the sheriff—I recognized him when he hopped out the door in that long overcoat. I kept a watchin that door, in preference to anything else, to see if that boy was comin, or how it was goin to work. And in just a jiffy or two after the sheriff come out the door to that store, here come the boy, right behind him. I looked and I was satisfied then. Time that boy got to me—he lagged behind the jailer all the way—sheriff got to the courthouse, he just come on up the steps, walked right by me and into his office. And when little Waldo started up the steps—I was standin on the top step lookin down at him—boy walked up there with his little bundle under his arm followin the jailer, that sheriff. I know the sheriff directed him if he had anything in that jail cell to get it out. He walked up there, come up to the next to last step. And he looked in my face. Talk about a boy jumpin and grabbin me—after he seed who I was he jumped up and grabbed me, he did, and howdyed with me and told me these words: “Nate, the sheriff come down there and got me out of jail. I don't know what they goin to do with me—”

I was feelin his sympathy. I said, “They aint goin to do nothin with you. I'm goin to carry you home”—if them weren't my exact words I aint a colored man— “They aint goin to do nothin. No use anticipatin what they goin to do; they aint goin to do nothin. I come at you this mornin—your mother was cryin at me, your father come down here yesterday and couldn't get you, didn't get
you and I went over there this mornin to find out about you. I didn't wait a day, I didn't wait a minute till I got in shape and come down here to get you. It was on my mind. All right. Come on in here to the clerk of the court. That's as far as you goin; I'm goin to carry you home.”

Walked in there to the clerk of the court; clerk said, “Well, you got your man. You ready to pay his claim off?”

I said, “Yes sir.” And I spanked his money down—thirty-six dollars and ten cents. I turned and told the boy, “Let's go, your mother's at home cryin for you this mornin.”

Got about ten steps from the clerk's door, he called me, said, “Say, come back. You aint got no papers on him. You can get papers on him and if you and him can't agree, if he don't treat you right about you gettin him out of jail, you aint got nothin to do but return him.”

I said, “I don't want that. I don't want no papers between me and the boy.”

He looked at me and said, “O, you must know your man.”

I said, “Yes sir, I do know him; he's my brother-in-law. Don't need no papers on him”—how if I got him out and he disobeyed my orders I could turn him back—“I trusts the boy; them papers won't improve him.”

Well, we walked out to the buggy and Clarence Reed, this boy's brother-in-law, who married his baby sister, was there. We crawled on that buggy, all three of us; I looked around at the boy and said, “Buddy, you had any breakfast?”

He said, “Yes, Nate, I've had breakfast but you aint never been in jail and know how jail fare is. Sometime you got a appetite to eat and sometime you aint. You aint never witnessed that. So, I aint hungry and don't worry me about it.”

I said, “That's all right. Is there anything you want to eat?”

He broke down then. Told me he wanted a sandwich, a hot dog. He said, “I drinked a little coffee this mornin but I aint et nothin.”

I said, “Get in the buggy and set right there till I come back. Don't move. Stay in the buggy with your brother-in-law. I'll get you somethin to eat if you aint et nothin.”

I went on across town to the hot dog department and got him two hot dogs. Carried em back and handed em up to him on the buggy. Went right on around and untied my mule, put my
tie halter in the back of the buggy, one of these big grass tie halters with snaps. Unsnapped it, got it clear from the mule's mouth, put it in the back of the buggy and—home bound!

Drove right on back—crossed into Tukabahchee County and dropped Clarence Reed off at his house, carried little Waldo home with me. Got there and I told him, “Now, Buddy, me and Peter, my brother here, we goin down on Sitimachas Creek to work on a barn I'm buildin on the old Bannister place. We're due to be movin there soon and I got to get the barn done. You just carry yourself right straight home now to your mother and father and stay with em long as you please. Let em know that you're out of jail and clear. You got nobody to look back at but me. If you treat me right, that's all I ask.”

He went on his way, and me and my brother went another route down to the Bannister place on Sitimachas. And when we got back home that evenin, me and Peter, little Waldo was settin up in my house; done went over to his mother and father, showed hisself to em. I walked in there that night, I said, “Buddy, you didn't tarry with your mother and father this evenin. When we left here together you went on over there and we went on to work on the Bannister place, and here you is now sittin back here. You didn't stay over there long enough.”

He said, “Well, Nate”—he got up—“well, Nate, reason I didn't, I knew that Sweet and the children was here by theirselves and you down on the creek workin on your barn—and also, I thought my comin back here would give us a chance to talk over how I'm goin to pay you. I mean to satisfy you.”

I said, “Yeah, but you weren't obliged to come back that quick. You coulda waited till tomorrow. Although, like it is, there's no harm done. But I meant for you to stay over there and talk to your mother and father and stay all night if it was necessary to please em.”

He said, “Well, I decided weren't no use to that. I come back here to be with Sweet and the little children until you come. Now I want to consult with you about how you want to accept your payment. I can work at a public job somewhere and get it up and give it to you. Or, the thing I wants, let me stay with you a year and give me a crop on halves. I'll pay you that way.”

I told him, “That's all right, by your method. I'm not settlin
on you to get it no certain way. If that's what you want, I'll agree with you on it. You can pay me back that way.”

When we agreed how he was to work to pay me, I didn't know what his full mind was. He said he weren't intendin to go back with his wife. He knowed who put him in jail—her and her daddy. But they had a child at that time, a little old boy. And quite naturally, little Waldo wanted to see the boy some. He kept up with the chap, too, as a father, but he stayed away from his wife.

That boy went on—and I had that young mule there, that Mattie mule; I wanted to break her myself. So I put him to plowin my older mule, the one that was broke when I bought her. Doggone good mule too, that Lu mule. Had a little age on her but she got up and got in any place I wanted her. I put him to plowin Lu and I give him a crop on halves—I rented that plantation from Mr. Tucker, the old Bannister place, and I had plenty of land to give him a crop. Mr. Reeve continued to furnish me the first year I worked with Mr. Tucker; gived me cash money and out of that I gived the boy what he needed.

He didn't go back with his wife that year; he come on and stayed with me and his sister Hannah. I had another house rented there on Tucker's place—it come with the land—but I didn't let him move in there. He didn't need to because he done made up his mind to quit this woman and he didn't need a whole house for hisself. So we took him direct in the house with us. And he didn't move no house goods in there at all. He just come there and stayed. Here's the way we worked that: my wife had a pretty good education and she kept check on what he got. She washed for him, ironed for him, what was needed to be ironed. Fed him right at the table with us—and a reasonable price was figured down against him for all these washins, ironins, cookin for him. And when he called to me for a little money, I'd give him that—didn't hold back on him noway. And Hannah was keepin the books against him, her brother. She didn't definitely charge him—it was against my rulins to charge him for everything.

And when he got through the gap and satisfied us far as he could go—paid up his expenses, paid up gettin him out of jail, when he got that done out of the crop he made under my administration, he was yet owin me twelve dollars. I give it to him, that twelve dollars he couldn't pay.

And after he got clear of me he decided to take that Hawkins girl back. At that period of time, her daddy and all of her relatives had left this country and moved to Middletown, Ohio. Her mother was dead and her father had remarried to a woman by the name of Irene Todd. Leola Hawkins, who was Leola Ramsey after little Waldo married her, she wanted to follow her father and sister and brother to the northern country—only one brother, called him Son Hawkins. And she plotted with some fellow that had a car, at Waldo's absence—little Waldo hadn't left us complete but he was trekkin back at her and she didn't want to be bothered with him—he believed he could convince her back with him. Well, her and this other fellow made a plot. And one day he carried her on his Ford car and slipped her to the train, her and that little old baby boy that her and Waldo had. She just cleaned up when she done that—hit it to Middletown, Ohio, and the balance of her family. Little Waldo never did see her no more.

He jumped up and married again; married a young woman that had never been married. She was a Goodrich, his second wife, she lived over close to Apafalya; Amon Goodrich was her father. She was a slender-built, tall, dark-skinned woman. Leola, his first wife, Hawkins' daughter, she was a ginger-cake colored woman.

This second woman he married, he got on better with her to a great extent. But after so long they separated and he fell right back on his people; and went ahead, after him and this woman parted, and he married another woman. She was a Fox, old man George Fox's daughter.

Three times he married, and him and his second wife, Amon Goodrich's girl, they didn't have nary a child livin when they separated; had one born but it died. And him and this Fox girl never did have nary a child together; she had a child already when they married, a little old girl. Little Waldo's son by his first wife, he recognized his daddy enough to come back here several times and visit with his daddy's people, includin Hannah, little Waldo's sister. And he fell heir to old man Waldo's old home place after the death of little Waldo. He aint been back to this country, to my knowin, since the death of his auntie, since Hannah died.

Little Waldo's first wife was a Hawkins; she's dead. His second wife was a Goodrich—I aint never heard talk about her bein dead or alive. His third wife was a Fox, and she was his wife when
he
died.

I wanted to stretch out where I could get more land to work, and Miss Hattie Lu and Mr. Reeve—they had a little girl child but he weren't the father of it. Miss Hattie Lu had the chap before they married. And this girl had married and moved up there on the place with her husband. So I couldn't get more land than I had. They wanted to keep me there but on the amount of land they wanted, and it was too little for me. Then, too, me and Mrs. Reeve's son-in-law didn't agree much with each other. When he moved up on the place he wanted to take it over and boss me too. Well, you know blood's thicker than water, and Miss Hattie Lu was goin to let him have his way. I decided I'd pull out and I was pullin out in time, too.

I looked ahead and figured my best route. Moved down on Sitimachas Creek on the old Bannister place. And there, regardless to my dealins with Mr. Tucker, I begin to prosper good and heavy. I had learned a rule for my life workin with Mr. Reeve—I could make it anywhere by workin and tendin my own business. I was able to advance myself because I never made under five bales of cotton—made five bales the first year I rented from the Reeves; next year I made six; next year I made eight—with one mule and no help to speak of. Cotton picked up the second and third years to between fifteen and twenty cents, along in there. It was a big difference in the price since I started farmin for myself. I was under the impression that the government was takin hold of the market—1912, 1913. The second year I quit workin halves and took my business in my own hands, cotton floated up to a higher level.

But things went bad the year I moved down on the creek. Cotton fell to a nickel a pound, 1914. A man couldn't pay nothin much on his old debts and nothin at all on his new ones. I disremember just exactly what I paid Mr. Reeve on the money he furnished me that year—he stuck by me, furnished me cash money the first year I dealt with Mr. Tucker—but I didn't pay him off. And I owed him a little over two hundred dollars after I sold my cotton and paid him what I could. And in addition to that, I owed Mr. Harry Black a hundred and thirty dollars for fertilize that I'd
used the last year I worked on Mrs. Reeve's place. He was a guano salesman, lived out in the country above Tuskegee; and every year I lived with Mr. Reeve I bought my guano from him. 1913, I carried my guano debt over to my next crop; it weren't unusual to do that in this country and he agreed. But when cotton fell to a nickel I couldn't pay nothin hardly. And, to tell the truth, I didn't make the cotton I had been makin on the Reeve place. So I owed money for fertilize that applied to a bigger crop than I was makin now.