All God's Dangers (60 page)

So, Leroy told me he was goin to send for Mr. Watson. All right. I went on, had to go where they transferred me. And eventually they turned Leroy loose to Mr. Watson. Watson got him out and carried him home. Leroy was livin, at the time he was arrested, on his daddy's plantation, some eighty acres of land. And Mr. Watson had got wound up in his affairs someway. At the death of old man Booker Roberts, Leroy's daddy, the place become Leroy's for him to finish payin on it and it was his. But it didn't stay his long when he come out of prison. Watson took that land and runned him away from there. Let him keep a little old mule, young mule—Leroy had two little mules at that time; he never did have no big heavy mules—and he got to keep only one of em. Watson eased along with him and let him start a crop, then he pushed him off and hired somebody else to work the crop and gather it.

Now, Leroy had two or three boys and, quite naturally, when he called for Watson to come to the penitentiary and get him out, why, that throwed his whole family under Watson's administration. And they all suffered for it. Lost the old home place— Leroy allowed em to parole him to his enemy. And his enemy he was and that was proof, if he needed any more proof than he already had.

Ches Todd was pullin that way too, and Sam Todd—Ches and Sam was brothers; they put Sam in prison after they put me and Leroy and Ches and Wat Smith in there. But he didn't stay long, accordin to the news I heard, and when he left out from there Ches went with him. I was the only Tukabahchee man that stuck
out his sentence, and I was gived more time than any of em. I don't know definitely what they gived Wat Smith, but it was a short sentence. That didn't do him no good because he was killed before his time was up.

So they sent me to Wilcox County, road camp, and they classed me up there for a landscaper. Workin out in the swamps and woods and decoratin the roads and sharpenin axes for the squad—mostly I was a ax sharpener and a water toter. I never did go out on the grade. They had me doin all them other jobs but didn't have me to gradin the roads.

These road camps is rough places. One night, old Captain Castle, head warden—he was mean as a snake—he gived orders for that road gang to take over the cell that was lived in by the prisoners that done other work, like me. Well, that stuck me up: I didn't want to do it, I don't know why he said do it, but I never bucked him at all. So they taken over our cell and we went in their cell and before I knowed anything I was covered with lice, these old crab lice that gets all in your privates and searches all over your hairy parts. They aint bad about your head though, crab lice—I went in there just as clean as a baby and in just about a week's time, somethin was bitin me all over and I let into scratchin. I took showers every day but that wouldn't get em off. Them lice gets on you and hides in your bed clothes. You can wash yourself as good as you please and you go back to bed at night, them things gets on you again. Finally, I went up yonder at medicine call and the colored fellow up there fixed me some medicine that knocked them lice sky high off me.

Crab lice is as nasty a lice as ever gets on you. And they bigger than these little old body lice—I seed them body lice before I ever went to prison, when I was a boy comin up. They got in my daddy's home once. Some fellow way up yonder somewhere about ten miles from here, not more than that, right where I was born and raised—stayed right there in hollerin distance till I was twenty-one; my daddy lived there on the Todd place. So I learnt of them body lice—Mr. Lionel Clay, at the time I was a little boy, he had a well dug at his house. And he had two colored fellows to come from Opelika to dig his well—well diggers wasn't plentiful then, had to send out of the settlement to get em. And one of them fellows,
they called him a Milliken. He was a settle-aged man and he gived his name as Ike Milliken. And my mother and father lived right there close to the Clays, just the other side of the creek. Mr. Lionel Clay runned the big mill there, and my daddy lived up the road a little piece from the bridge over the creek, above the mill. Well, my people visited with the Clays and knowed em—all like that. And they wanted my daddy to board them fellows from Opelika. My daddy done it. Got lice in our house then, them there old body lice. Weren't no crab lice. My mother just taken out all the bed pieces and cleaned em up severely, and some of em, old things, she burnt em up and got rid of em. That destroyed the lice and the lice eggs. But it acquainted me with a terrible creature and it weren't the only creature I come to know that tried to eat the poor colored man up alive.

T
HE
only time in twelve years my wife missed comin to see me was when they kept me there at that road camp in Wilcox County. She begged me on her letters the whole eight months to let her come down there but I wouldn't never consent for her to do it because it was too crooked a roundabout route—that was ninety-six miles southwest of Montgomery and she way up here forty-somethin miles above Montgomery; time she'd get into Montgomery and get straightened out on the route to Wilcox County, strange country, white folks' country, she mighta got deadlocked along the way. And I thought to myself, ‘I know my Chevrolet car has done so much travelin for farm purposes and pleasure purposes, it ought to be gettin weak.' I just didn't want them to take that trip on that car thinkin it was in that condition. O, they drove that car, and Vernon he was the head man over it and him bein a young fellow, he was rough on drivin. I didn't put much trust—so I wouldn't let em come down to Wilcox County on that car, afraid it would give out and leave em in the road somewhere. I'd write her back and tell her—I'd get some one of the trustable boys to write a letter; that's the way I done, all through prison—I'd tell her, “Gettin along, gettin along all right.” And here was my theory, and I weren't fooled neither, though I didn't know, in truth, how the thing would work out. I'd write and tell her, “I don't think I'll be down here long.” And so, eight months, only eight months in the deal, eight months in the twelve years of prison that I didn't allow her to come. And
it was on account of I dreaded for her to take that trip, knowin that her and Vernon would come by theirselves and leave the balance of the family behind. It never does well for a whole family to leave home less'n they obliged to.

T
HERE
was a colored fellow there at Wilcox County sentenced up from Brantley, Alabama. He was a nice talkin young fellow—heavy, chunky-built—he looked about twenty-two or twenty-three years old. Called this colored boy Shakey. He liked me and he loved to talk with me—called me Uncle Nate. And he got to talkin with me one day about makin baskets and what sort of trades did I know. I told him, “I makes baskets and I runs a blacksmith shop and there's a few other things I know how to do, but basketmakin is a special labor with me. I can make any kind of basket, most you want to see—fish basket, feed basket, clothes basket, market basket, cotton basket, any sort of basket in reason.”

He said, “Uncle Nate, is that the truth you tellin me?”

I said, “Yes, I can make em.”

He went right on and didn't stop until he told Captain Springer, man that worked over us, told him about it. That was a pretty nice white man; he was a Springer, out of Montgomery. He was spare-built, small, and when he walked he sort of toted his head sideways. He come to me, said, “Nate, can you make baskets like I been hearin bout you?”

Told him, “Yes sir, Captain, make you any kind of basket you want.”

“Make fish baskets?”

“Yes sir, I make fish baskets; been makin fish baskets off and on every year, all my life, after I got big enough to work white oak.”

He said, “Nate, if you makes fish baskets, I want you to make me one. But don't let this old warden here know you makin it for me. He's hell—” old man Frank Castle, he was a cat, too; made them boss men jump—“I'll tell you how to do it”—I was a water boy then, mainly—“I'll put another fellow on your job till you make me a fish basket. You just go out”—the whole state premises was wired up there—“just anywhere on the inside of this wire you can find some white oak, cut yourself what you need and make me a fish basket. You know that great big old pine log down there on
the side of the road where you go out the big gate to the public road?”

I said, “Yes sir, I've seen that old pine log there.”

Old pine log was seven feet high, what was left of that tree. You could sit down behind it, couldn't nobody see you.

He said, “You get your white oak and sit down there; split it out, do like you want to do it and make me a fish basket. If you'll do that I'll give you all the fish you can eat.” Them was his words. And said, “You stay down there. I'll come down there to you once or twice and see how you doin. How long will it take you to make it?”

I said, “O, I can make it in a couple of days.”

It would take a couple of days if I wanted it to, or I could do it in one day. But let him put another fellow to totin water and I'll see how I feel settin off and workin white oak. I'd just be off—but I sure stayed where he sent me, I didn't ramble. When they gived me a break thataway or anything happen in my favor, then I'd be submissive—behave and go by orders that's profitable to me. And not let em know I'm enjoyin myself too much. Might order me that way again. They liked to give orders, a heap of times not for nothin but the givin of em.

So I said, “I know where's some white oak right now. I seed it the other day, over there at the mule lot.”

He said, “Well, you go on to where it's at and cut yourself some and make me a fish basket. I'll give you all the fish you can eat.”

I went right on off that mornin—mule lot was about a half a mile from the camp—took me a ax and went on. Cut that white oak down, took it on my shoulder and went on down into the swamp until I got to that big pine log. I stayed there two days foolin with that white oak and I made Captain Springer a fish basket about as wide around as my waist or a little wider. I don't do this, usually, but it's easier if it's done: cut a hole in the side of the basket and fix a way to have a little door. He wanted me to put a door to it. My baskets would always catch fish but I never preferred havin a door to empty em. But Lord, I've caught them baskets full of fish up to the muzzle, many a time. I'm a fisherman—

So, he didn't want old Frank Castle to know about it. And I kept it out of his sight. One time durin them two days Captain Springer visited me—never did come there but once and he seed I
was gettin along, made hisself satisfied and went on his way. And he told me, “When you finish it, just leave it layin behind that log.” Place was wired up, couldn't nobody get in there without climbin over that high wire fence.

The evenin I got it done I went and told him. He said, “All right Nate, I'll go by and get it.”

And the next evenin, he got a call from Montgomery to come home at once—his wife was sick. He told us, “Well, boys, I got a call to come home tomorrow”—that was on a Thursday—“my wife is sick and I got to get off. You all be good fellows till I get back.”

And he told me, alone, “Nate—” There's a fellow that drove a big state truck with a squad of hands every mornin; went over to a place they called Balkins' bridge. The driver's name was Vargas, white man, and he carried a colored squad there at Wilcox County camp. There was a creek by that bridge and what happened? Mr. Springer said, “Nate, I'm fixin to get off home now. That basket you made me—” I'd finished that basket on Wednesday evenin. Down below the camp and out from the tool house, you could ease through a big pecan orchard and go down there to that old pine log, where that basket was. And Thursday evenin, Captain Springer said, “You go down there and get that basket, bring it up here, and put it in the tool house out there by the water tank.”

I went down there and got that basket and brought it out—wouldn't shoulder it, just toted it along by the cuff and put it in that tool house. Friday mornin, Captain Springer come to me, said, “Nate, you get that basket out of the tool house and put it on Mr. Vargas's truck. He goin to carry it to Balkins' bridge and put it in the creek for me. I got to go home—”

I went on out to the tool house and got that basket, put it on Captain Vargas's truck. The old warden hadn't seen me, didn't know nothin about it. And this little man Captain Springer, he took off for Montgomery. Captain Vargas's truck went right on to Balkins' bridge. And Captain Vargas put that basket in the water that day for Captain Springer. Sunday evenin, early, Captain Springer come back from Montgomery. And Monday—always a long trailer truck would leave the camp every day of the week and carry them hands of Captain Vargas dinner to Balkins' bridge. I don't know what the devil they was doin down there, less'n they was repairin the bridge with prisoners. So, just about one o'clock, Captain Springer's squad turned off the road to go to work, landscapin, and I went on
further down the roadway, goin to a spring. And just as I fixed to turn off, that dinner truck come tearin up the road, headin back to camp, carryin the dinner vessels. That was on a Monday; the basket had been put in the creek on Friday mornin—I've put baskets in Sitimachas Creek, like today, and go back the day after tomorrow, they just be full of catfish. I've never caught, in all of my days, as much as fifty pounds of fish with hook and line; my hold was a basket.

So, I was a water boy. Met the dinner truck comin in, deliverin the dishes and things. Truck passed by I seed a crocus sack sittin up there on the bed. I didn't think at all about what it was. And I looked down the road and I seed that truck stopped where Captain Springer's squad was workin, and didn't tarry long to put that crocus sack off. Captain Springer called me, called me twice. I stopped and looked around—I hadn't got into the swamp yet off the road.

“Nate, Nate, come here. Come here, Nate.”