All God's Dangers (77 page)

Well, when I seed what it was all about—Bob Leech tellin MacDougal weren't no way in the world to make him keep them mules goin. You halt a mule like that whenever you please—no tellin how long them mules was standin still—and you'll break that mule of his work habits. Vernon come in that evenin from Calusa, off his job—I taken a very special thought of Leech's act, and that weren't the first time he done that. He was just a sorry fellow and didn't want to work, and by him not workin he'd ruin Vernon's stock and squander Vernon's money—I told Vernon, “He aint doin nothin but beatin you. He's gettin them mules off in the field by hisself and he won't do a thing with em. You aint goin to get nothin out of him and you'll lose a crop if somebody don't watch at him and keep him goin.” He stood and listened at me. I said, “But don't you say nothin to him about it, he'd know it couldn't a been nobody but me told you; I was there in the field with him, him plowin off yonder somewhere and me plowin here.”

Vernon already knowed this fellow weren't much good and I had found it out myself. We had been cuttin down in the pasture—in addition to these words—it was cold weather still and we hadn't started to plowin. Vernon sent him off down in the swamps with me, cuttin. Cold and wet time—got down there one mornin, me and him, he had a ax and I had a ax, goin down in the swamp to cut. Well, we was cuttin right close together and every time I'd look around—when we got there I pulled off my coat and went to cuttin. It was cold, yes, but it was just nice for that sort of work. I pulled off my coat and went to slingin that ax. Every time he'd cut down a sapling or a small tree and trim it up, all between times,
I noticed him goin around humped over and hands between his legs, “It sure is cold; Ooooooo, it's cold.” And I had done pulled off my coat and cuttin. It weren't cold enough to stop work or even to complain about it bein cold. I was just as warm as I needed to be—I looked around at him carryin his hands between his legs, walkin along, shimmyin in a kind of drawed up way, “Sure is cold.”

I said, “Bob, how come you don't make up here a little fire if you all that cold?”

Good God, that was right down his alley. He made him a fire and he just had to lose too much time with that fire and me cuttin away at the rate the work required. I was cuttin saplings, trimmin em up, pilin the brush; and every time he'd get a tree trimmed up, if he hadn't a stopped all along, he sure stopped then. And that was his constant way about that wood.

Well, when we was plowin in the field that mornin, startin breakin the ground, I thought about how triflin he'd been that day in the swamp. I knowed him—he was a grown man. His daddy lived right there on one of Warren Jenks' places.

So, I told Vernon, “Don't you say nothin to him. I'm tellin you this for you to keep your eyes open. If you's to let him know that I told you these words, he might quit and you'd have a hard time findin somebody to work in his place. There's a way to check his ways. Now here's the settin and it just might work: when you go off to your job every mornin to Calusa, before you go, when you wants a certain piece of work done, tell me about it in place of Bob. When I go to the lot to catch my horse out to go to plowin, I'll tell Bob what to do for you and I'll quit my work even and do that too, with him.”

He agreed.

I kept up with my plowin; if I worked I worked, if I set down I set down. I didn't make out like I was workin and set down. If I has anything to do I must do all I can at it; I just feels terrible if I don't. That year I made eight bales of cotton and I cleared a little above six hundred dollars—and plenty of corn to feed a pair of mules and didn't nobody help me plow nary a furrow. Vernon'd tell me what he wanted done and he'd go on to his work at Calusa. I'd go to the lot to catch out, Bob would come and catch out too; I'd say, “Bob, I'm gettin along well enough with my plowin that I can help you today. And Vernon wants me to help you out. We goin to
do so-and-so-and-so in Vernon's field today, or if it takes two days. Let's get hitched up here; let's catch out and get hitched up.”

That was already cultivatin time. Bob would take one of Vernon's mules out and I'd take out my Kizzie mule, first season I ever walked behind her. Me and Bob both would get out there, plow all day many a day. I'd keep goin myself as much as necessary, look around for Bob and he had to do it, too. After I took hold thataway, it cut him down. He couldn't get off by hisself where he could do nothin, he had to roll on with me. That year Vernon made thirteen bales of cotton—me and Bob together, with my helpin him—and plenty of corn to feed that pair of stock.

If it was choppin cotton, me and Millie, Vernon's wife, and Bob Leech, we all got out there and chopped cotton. Millie was one of these kind: in them days she could work, but she just worked herself until she worked down. A woman can do just so much in the field, work herself to death. Now a man can do too much too, but a woman has children to bear and care for at the house, which the man don't have on him so much, because he got to look after the affairs in the field.

Vernon and Millie had two girls, only children they have in the world, and at that time one of them girls was goin to school in Tuskegee. And Millie'd get out there, Vernon would let her do it—well, that was my son and his wife, I didn't have nothin to do with the way they runned their business. Millie'd work her heart out, looked like almost. Been a wife of mine she wouldn't a done it. On down in the years to come, they'll put out more on her for doctor bills than her help was workin in the fields. Let her run the business at the house and him tend to things in the field, and if he needs any help, hire him somebody. Get that woman out the field!

V
ERNON
had a good pair of mules there of his own that he had accumulated through the condition that I left my folks in. When I got back, every mule I had was dead—I left two mules—and what they had got—mine was gone—was theirs. And after Vernon made that thirteen bales of cotton he bought him a tractor; went out there and sold one of his mules to some of them colored folks up in the hills, some of them Marshes. What come of Vernon's mules but a tractor?

Mules was gettin scarce then. Man get shed of his mule and buy a tractor. Well, how come that? Tractors was in style, you know, and a mule just can't cover the ground a tractor can. The government was holdin the price of cotton up above twenty cents every year. But, you might say it was holdin the price of cotton
down
under thirty cents. And it just become hard to make a livin on a one-horse farm if cotton was your crop. Of course, it weren't never easy to make a livin at it, but now it become plumb impossible. Your fertilize was high then, and your poisons and your labor if you hired anybody to help you chop or pick. So the ones that stayed in farmin—my boy Vernon over here, and TJ—they commenced a buyin tractors so they could work more land and make a bigger crop to meet their expenses.

But I was a mule farmin man to the last; never did make a crop with a tractor. I did manage to own as much as two cars at once, good stock—I've owned some of the prettiest mules that ever walked the roads. Now there aint none of my children, nary one by name, got a mule.

The year that Vernon started to work in his field with his tractor, he paid off the last nickel he owed on his place. He quit workin at Calusa and took up with his farm again, full time, by hisself. And he had put many a dollar in that land that he'd worked at Calusa for. As low as they was payin in wages at Calusa mill at that time, he saved some of it, in spite of redemption, and got stout enough to accomplish a place. Also, he got some out of his crop above the rent—he made good crops durin the years I was away from there.

W
HEN
Hannah laid down and shut her eyes in death I was the first man had to get out. They didn't drive me out but I weren't goin to stay there and carry Josie in the house, put her in there with my children. She wasn't their mother and it might have come up a discrimination about me livin in the house just like it was mine and puttin another woman in there. So when I married Josie, in '53, out I went over on Mr. Mosley's place in a hole.

I had built that house I moved out of but it was the family house: me and Hannah and Mattie Jane and Garvan—we was all in that house, family house. Not only that house, I put up a nice smokehouse there. I had to bear all that expense and I come out of
there just as naked as my hand. Then after I built that smokehouse—I had to buy every piece of tin that went to cover it—I built a shelter for my wagon, two-horse wagon I had possession of. Then, to make my garden, I went over to Mr. Joe Thompson, man that sold me the tin, and I bought garden wire and put it around there. When I moved over on Mosley's place I still gardened at Vernon's and I farmed there two years after I married Josie. But I lost the benefit of every house I built—the dwellin house, I gived that up when I married this outside woman; the smokehouse and the shed.

It was two years after Hannah died before I ever offered to have a conversation with Josie. But I knowed her well; I knowed her first husband, Johnny B Todd. He was always said to be kin to me and he called me Cousin Nate and I called him Cousin Johnny, but we never did visit one another. Never had my foot in Johnny B's house from the time he married Josie—only goin to meet em at church. I didn't have Josie on my mind at all. I just lingered along, lingered along, married to my first wife and raisin a family. I never did correspond Josie, never did say nothin to her but “Good mornin.”

But I knowed a heap about her background. Her grandmother and grandfather on her mother's side was Butterfields, Aunt Molly Butterfield and Uncle Amos Butterfield. They lived northwest of Apafalya, born and raised there, from slavery time up. And their daughter was Josie's mother, Mary Butterfield. And Josie's daddy was a Travis, Simon Travis. He weren't no great big man, but he was pretty heavy-built. Not so terrible high, neither, ordinary in height. And he married Mary Butterfield.

This thing's mixed up but it aint mixed up to where you can't look through it. Peter's wife—my brother Peter—and my wife now, Josie, is first cousins, own dear first cousins. Josie's mother was a Butterfield and Peter's wife's daddy was a Butterfield. Peter's wife's daddy was Josie's mother's brother. Little Amos Butterfield, named for
his
daddy, and Mary Butterfield was brother and sister. And Mary Butterfield was a Mary Travis after she married Simon Travis. And Mary was Josie's mother. And Mary Beth, Josie's daughter by her first husband, is named for Josie's mother.

Every time I'd go to Apafalya I'd see some of them Butterfields and some of them Travises. Josie's daddy used to shoe my mules before I done it myself. He was a noted blacksmith and he worked for a white gentleman by the name of Shep Meredith right there in Mr. Meredith's shop. Heap of times I'd go to Apafalya and throw off
a load of lumber down at the planin mill, drive my mules right up there in town and Josie's daddy would shy them for me.

Simon Travis and my daddy knowed one another well, and they didn't live over two miles apart—if it was it wasn't enough to talk about—when this happened: fellow by the name of Hark Todd, he was a friend of my daddy's too, and them three fellows always practically got along good together—Simon Travis, Hark Todd, and Hayes Shaw. They'd visit one another, hunt and talk. Well, one Sunday, my daddy took a notion he'd go down to Hark Todd's. And when he got there Simon Travis was there. So all three of em run up together.

Hark Todd didn't have no wife at all. His wife had died. But my daddy was married to TJ's mother at that period of time and Simon Travis was married to Mary Butterfield. So, settin there at the house and Hark Todd was superintendin around, cookin dinner for his children. No doubt if he'd a cooked a meal they'd a all et, no doubt. They was all old friends, used to travelin together. And Hark Todd had a pistol layin up in the house there, and Simon Travis—let the truth roll; accordin to the circumstances, how the thing went, all of em had been drinkin a little—I don't drink whiskey now, never did do it. My daddy raised me up—I knowed him to buy whiskey and give we children a toddy; he'd pour out a little in a glass, add water to it and put in sugar to sweeten it— Well, no doubt that Sunday they'd been drinkin. And while Hark Todd was cookin dinner, Simon Travis and my daddy was settin by the fireplace—it was in winter, too—talkin, laughin, jawin, you know, and somehow or other Simon Travis got a hold of that pistol, and like men would be that weren't careful about theirselves—I don't know what position my daddy was sittin in, he could have been sittin crosslegged. And Simon Travis got to meddlin with that old pistol and it went off and a bullet hit my daddy's leg right up in his thigh; and it worked around and come up on top of his leg. But the wound was down below—that bullet stretched on through and come up on top of his leg and stopped. Well, that was a great surprise. My daddy said—I think he had a right to say it; they was old friends and nothin between em that I'd ever heard—my daddy called it a accident. And this little old gray horse my daddy used to have—his last workin of that horse was with them Akers, and they cleaned him up and took that horse. My daddy had that little old gray horse at that time. And I could do more with that horse than my daddy
could. I could take that horse and work him quiet to a one-horse wagon—my daddy had a brand new one-horse wagon at that time and he lost
it.
I could take that horse, hitch him to that wagon and go anywhere in these woods or any other woods or on the road; that horse never did give me a minute's trouble.

And when that horse come in home late that evenin, who brought him? My daddy was sittin straddled on that horse, in the saddle, and Simon Travis had that horse by the rein, leadin him, bringin my daddy home.

Well, some of the white people wanted my daddy to have Simon Travis arrested. If it woulda come up a lawsuit, why, Simon Travis could have just been out of some money or either prosecuted and sent to the penitentiary. It always appeared like this: if a nigger done anything to another nigger in them days when I was a boy comin along, white man didn't care how it went just so he's gettin the niggers against one another. But if he done anything to a white man, uh-oh, he done wrong then. But if a white man—if they could get niggers scattered and apart, they'd enjoy the results of that. Let niggers keep up a uproar between em and then, if one of em was a good nigger, obedient and do what the white man wanted done, they'd help him out or stand up for him. O, it was a mess. White man rejoicin if he could get the niggers tied up against one another. And old fools, they'd do it, too.