All God's Dangers (18 page)

I didn't tell him what kind of papers; he knowed, he knowed. He smiled and got up. “Well,” he said, “about how old is this girl you're wan tin papers for?”

I said, “Well, Judge, I'm twenty-one years old; I'm right near bout on the day of bein twenty-one. And as far as the girl's age, if that's anything to you, there stands her father right there—and there stands my father.”

My daddy didn't say a word; he didn't grunt. The girl's daddy said, “Well, Judge, she's old enough to marry. If she desires a married life, that's just her affair.”

That's all the judge wanted to know. My daddy was findin out for the first time what this was all about. Right there he learnt for sure I was goin to marry his wife's brother's daughter. He didn't reveal his feelins to nobody that mornin. I got the license I come to get, and me and the father of the girl I was goin to marry hit the road back to his house.

I married Hannah on a Sunday night in December, 1906. It weren't long until the preacher that married us got ready and left and the crowd broke. Well, we set around, laughin and talkin and at the usual time after the marriage, me and her went to bed in a room in her daddy's house right by ourselves. That night, that Sunday night I stood up and married her, I didn't know no more about bein with her in nature-course than I knowed about flying—it wouldn't have been no harm if I did. I meant to marry her and carry out the full obligation of my acts.

Next mornin we got up—she had a nice family of people and really, by all appearance, she had a shrewd woman for a mother. So she went in the dinin room to prepare breakfast, her mother did, and what did Hannah do? She got up out of the bed, bathed her face and hands and left me; went to help her mother cook breakfast.
I went into the dinin room after her—her and her mother cooked breakfast and set the table, poured out coffee and got everything ready for the balance of the family. Got ready to call em in to breakfast. The table was set with plenty of biscuits, butter, coffee—that was the breakfast they fixed that mornin: good biscuits, good butter, good coffee. Just before her father come into the room I set down to the table. And about the time he come in and set down, a subject had come up between me and her mother—no argument, just a little fun. Well, the blessin hadn't been asked; waitin for all the incomers to arrive. And I had discovered that the coffee was sweetened—I wasn't used to drinkin coffee at home noway. My daddy always claimed that coffee griped his stomach and he wouldn't buy it; but it weren't the gripin of his stomach that stopped him—I caught it all—it was a matter of buyin coffee at the store.

I set there at the breakfast table and I said somethin against drinkin the coffee—I tasted the coffee and it was sweet and strange to my taste.

Her mother said, “Drink that coffee, son. Drink it.”

So I let it out that I weren't used to settin at the table drinkin coffee.

She said, “Well, I know now that I have married my daughter to a poor boy that has hardly never had no coffee to drink at home. You just goin to have to be poor at the start of your marriage—but you goin to drink coffee. Drink it!”

She insisted on me to drink it. It wasn't a matter that I didn't want to drink the coffee, I just weren't used to it. I went on and drinked it.

I
went over to my daddy's home after we were married to get my gun and my trunk and a little old yearlin that I had over there. I couldn't bring my yearlin and my trunk both at the same time, but I got my gun and my daddy give me a small ham of meat and one hen. I took my gun and my meat and my hen and got on my way back to my daddy-in-law's where my wife was.

All right. I walked through Mr. Flint's yard—I knowed he always kept a bunch of chickens and I thought I'd get me a rooster. My wife didn't and her people didn't have a rooster but they gived her a bunch of hens for her marriage and I got one hen at my daddy's and that was all hens and no rooster.

So I stopped and asked him did he have a rooster that he'd sell. First he told me, “No, I aint got nary one I'd sell.”

I started on off and he says, “I might have one.”

I stopped and asked him where was the rooster. He said, “On the yard somewhere.”

I said, “Call him up and let me see him.”

So he went and got the rooster—and my wife needed a rooster for her hens, six or seven hens now with the one my daddy gived me; and the rooster was suitable, nice rooster.

I said, “Well, Mr. Flint, I'll take your rooster. How much do you want for him?”

He said, “Forty cents.”

I said, “I'll trade with you, Mr. Flint, but I can't afford to pay you right now. I'll take the rooster, if you'll agree to it, and pay you soon as I'm able.”

I thought to myself, ‘Well, I'll eventually do you just like you done me: I'll fail and refuse to pay you for the rooster just like you wouldn't pay me for bringin your watch home.'

Talked him out of the rooster and he followed me up several times and asked me for that forty cents. Wouldn't pay him nothin. So, fooled around there, kept a lingerin, and he asked me for that forty cents as much as three or four times. I never did have it to pay him.

So at last, one day, it worked out. I had stayed with Mr. Maynard Curtis two years and after that moved off down to Mr. Gus Ames toward Tuskegee and stayed with him two years. Last year I stayed down there I heard my grandmother was sick. Well, Uncle Frank Milliken, old lady Polly's half-brother, he was my wife's daddy's half-brother too, and he'd visit us down there. He called my wife “Hannie”—most people called her “Sweet,” white and colored. And I was goin to see about my grandmother bein sick, Grandma Cealy, my daddy's mammy. Uncle Frank was visitin at our house that day and I told him, “Uncle Frank, I'm fixin to go up to see my grandmother, I heard she was sick. It's too wet to plow and I'm goin up there this evenin to see her. There aint nobody to be here but my wife and the two little tots”—that was Rachel and Calvin.

He said, “Well, Nate, if you got to go see about your grandmother, or want to go, I'll be here with Hannie and the children. Don't you worry, I'll stay right here with em until you come back.”

He was her uncle and he done a uncle's duty.

So I went in the house that evenin, right after dinner, and I put me several shells in my pocket and reached and got my gun and unbreeched it and dropped it down in my buggy. I toted that gun all the way to Uncle Jim Culver's—that was my own dear mother's brother who married one of my outside sisters, Stella. Well, he was plowin in the field right beside the road and Grandma Cealy lived in the next house just below him. I set there and talked with him awhile, right beside the road. I got off my buggy and set down on a
big high stump and set my gun up beside the stump—unbreeched, old single barrel breech-loader, broke down.

After awhile, talkin to my uncle, I looked down the road and seed a man comin up the road on a buggy. Way far as I could tell, it was a man drivin one horse to a buggy. Me and Uncle Jim was there talkin. He was sit tin down against his plow and I was sittin on that stump. I said, “Who is that yonder comin up the road in that buggy, Uncle Jim?”

Said, “That's Jim Flint.”

Flew in me like this: if he come up the road and see me he's goin to dun me again; and his old rule, the way he'd do it, hold out his hand. At that period of time it'd been six or seven years since me and him first got into it about his cows destroyin my daddy's corn, and he marked his time on it too.

When he got there and seed who it was sittin on that stump, he throwed his hand out, wanted that forty cents for that rooster. Stopped his horse and held his hand out thataway; aint said a word, aint got off the buggy, just stopped his horse and held out his hand.

I looked at him, said, “What do you mean holdin your hand out there to me?”

“You know. You know.”

I said, “I don't owe you nothin”—I really owed him ten cents less than what he owed me, but I considered it equal. “I don't owe you nothin.”

He said, “You know what you done. You know what you done. You just lied.” Because I took his rooster, told him I'd pay him and didn't do it, that's what he was talkin about. “You just lied.”

I jumped up, flew hot; I said, “Well, if there's any lyin been done, you told the first lie—” That was recallin to him when I went to Stillwell and got his watch; he'd promised to pay half my fare and when I asked him for it—“Pay you nothin.”

So I told him, “I don't owe you nothin.”

He got mad and doggone it he was fallin out of that buggy, comin at me in a jiffy. Uncle Jim was settin there lookin, listenin, sayin nothin; he wouldn't say a word. God almighty, when I accused old man Flint of tellin the first lie he fell out of that buggy and was dashin to me, his knife wide open. I jumped off the stump and grabbed my gun—it was already broke down; I give it a shake or
two and dropped the barrel, changed ends and got the muzzle end in my hand and throwed that butt next to the stock back on my shoulder, runnin backwards while I was doin it, he steady comin on me. I commenced a cussin him and I said, “Come on. Come on.”

He stopped.

I cussed him to everything I could think of and said, “Come on, I'll bust your damn brains out.”

I commenced inchin toward him. God almighty, when he seed that he whirled and runned around the back of the buggy, gettin in on the far side. I wouldn't run after him. He jumped up in the buggy, grabbed them lines and started off. As he drove off he told me, “I'm goin to get you, I'm goin to get you if it takes ten years.”

Well, it done been a seven-year period of time already, but he wanted to carry it on, he was goin to get me.

I said, “You won't have a damn bit better time to get me than you got right now. Now's the best damn time you'll ever have.”

And I walked on out in the road, told him, “Stop! We'll settle it right now; just stop.”

He just put that horse to trottin and down the road he had business. But before he runned off, when he jumped in the buggy he asked Uncle Jim, said, “Jim, you got a gun in the house? You got a gun in the house?”

Uncle Jim told him, “Yes, I got a gun in the house but you aint goin to get it.”

He seed where Uncle Jim stood—well, he got gone, said he'd get me if it took him ten years.

That was in spring of the year. After crops was laid by I took a notion that I'd go down to my daddy down near the creek. So one day I rode my mule to Uncle Jim's—I was livin on Mr. Ames' place at the time—got up there and walked back down on the creek. And there's some crooked roads runs from where Uncle Jim was livin up in them hills to my daddy. And I walkin along in the road, didn't have nothin on my mind, and I got about halfway to my daddy's from Uncle Jim's and the road where I was walkin come to a place it curved to the left, and right there, at that point, that mornin, all at once I looked down the road ahead of me and who was comin around that curve? Old man Jim Flint! He looked and seed me; I looked and seed him. I just stuck to the road, never swayed from my course. Flint sort of dropped his head, never would look at me once he found out who I was. And right at that particular
place there was some old blackjack trees standin beside the road and the big limbs wavin out over the road. And he got clean out to the edge of that road and got under them blackjack trees walkin, he had to tuck his head to go under. I stayed in the road where I was and he walked by to the left of me, his head stooped under them blackjack limbs. I kept my eyes sighted on him. I got about fifty feet from him, turned my head and looked back good at him—still walkin with his head down; couldn't hardly see his head rise above his shoulders. I just kept a walkin.

Went on, next news I heard he'd moved to his brother-in-law's, Billy Barr's, out there in Apafalya. Billy Barr had married his sister, one of the Flint girls, and old man Jim Flint moved out there and got in the house with them. Two years to the month after me and him got into it in front of my uncle, on my way to Grandma Cealy, he was dead.

M
AYNARD
C
URTIS
was old man Jim Curtis's son. And durin of my correspondin Waldo Ramsey's daughter I had to go right by Mr. Maynard Curtis's house any time I went to her house. Waldo Ramsey and Mr. Curtis owned land joinin—houses didn't set over two hundred yards apart. Mr. Curtis had known of me through I used to work for his daddy—choppin cotton, pullin fodder, strictly day labor. I was well known by Maynard Curtis. So he knowed who it was correspondin this girl that lived up the road from him.

Of course, quite naturally, Mr. Curtis owned both sides of the road there, right and left; that road come along and divided his plantation. Public road; and right up above his house a piece I'd turn to my right and go out to Hannah's house.

And so he caught on to me goin over there regular and he figured I was liable to marry over there and I believe he might have heard something about it. So, me and Mr. Curtis agreed—he got at me bout buildin me a house, before we married, and I traded with him and he went on and built it. But at the time we married, in the Christmas, he didn't have the house completed. My wife's daddy told me, “Nate, go ahead and make yourself at home until Mr. Curtis gets your house finished. Stay right here in the house with us; it won't cost you a thing.”

We stayed there a month and a half, until some time in February. Old man Waldo Ramsey forbid me of buyin any groceries at
all. He said, “We got plenty. Just make yourself at home, you and your wife, until your house gets done.”

They had two underage children, a boy and a girl, called em little Waldo and Mattie, only boy they had and the baby girl—they was in the house with us, they wasn't grown. But the rest of em—her parents didn't have but five children—the two older girls was grown and married and out of the house at that time. Old man Waldo and old lady Molly Ramsey treated me as they did their own dear children. I called the old man “Pa” and I called his wife “Ma”; Ma and Pa and not for no hearsay, but to recognize em.