All God's Dangers (35 page)

I said, “Well, Mr. Birch, I aint ready to buy her right now but I'll see you again.”

But I was ready for Calley; I wanted to get her.

“What's wrong, Nate, don't you want the Calley mule? How come you in such a hurry to go?”

I said, “Yes, Mr. Birch, I want her and since I see that you want to sell her, and you'll sell her to me, I'll make you an offer.”

I made him an offer and he took it up and that was the whole crop to me. It weren't less than two hundred dollars, I told him that, but it weren't the two hundred in one piece.

I said, “Will you sell me that mule for a hundred cash dollars down and the other hundred next fall, clear of any interest?”

He studied it, said, “I'll do that. I'll sell her to you that way.”

I said, “All right, sir, if you'll do that and come out to Apafalya in the mornin, meet me at the bank, I'll give you a hundred dollars cash for her and let the other hundred run over till next fall, I'll buy her.”

“All right. She's yours.”

I runned down to the pasture side of the road where his mules was and caught Calley out. Tied my rope to her halter and led her on home behind my buggy that night. Next mornin I got up and loaded a couple of bales of cotton on my wagon, carried em in to Apafalya and sold em, paid Mr. Birch a hundred cash dollars. Had a note fixed up for another hundred dollars due at my next crop.

I went on back home and went to haulin lumber regularly. I knowed I could get that hundred dollars out of my crop and my lumber haul together. So, Mr. Grace held that note at the bank between me and Mr. Birch, somehow or other. He mighta held it on account of Mr. Birch owin him. I don't know; it weren't none of my business.

All right. One day in the summer I seed Mr. Grace walkin down there by the planer mill with his hands in his galluses, overlookin. Walked on by me where I was unloadin a load of lumber. I happened to think—he got about fifteen feet past me, I walked out and said, “Mr. Grace, let me speak to you a minute, sir, if you please.”

He stopped. I said, “Don't you hold a note against that Calley mule of mine for a hundred dollars?”

He said, “Yes, I do.”

I said, “Two weeks' time that note will be due—”

He said, “Well, Nate, don't let that worry you. If it runs a little over it'll be a hundred dollars; if it comes under it's a hundred, or if it comes today, it'll be a hundred. But don't you worry bout bein a little late on it, I guarantee you it won't bother you.”

I said, “All right, thank you, Mr. Grace”; but I didn't test him on his word. Two weeks' time I walked in that bank with that hundred dollars.

He said, “Nate, where did you get that much money in that time?”

I said, “My labor gets it.”

He said, “You don't mean to tell me that you made that money in two weeks' time?”

I said, “Yes sir, I did do it, I scuffled to get it.”

Paid him that hundred dollars and got my note. Bought that mule complete then from Mr. Birch by makin the second payment to Mr. Grace. How come it? White man's business throwed me from one of em's hands into the other's, but that hundred dollars was the same regardless to which one I gived it to.

O
NE
day I was haulin lumber right there close to home, off of Lemuel Tucker's place. Officers come to my house in my absence—Now Mr. George Pike, he loved whiskey and wine and everything else. He come to my house—at that particular time every year, my wife would make up three or four gallons of wine. Mr. George Pike found it out—she'd make it for me to drink; I liked good wine. Wine won't do you like whiskey if you takes it in small amounts.

Mr. George Pike was runnin one of the mills close to my house. And he caught on some way, askin me bout whiskey and wine and I told him, “Yes sir, I likes wine; my wife got a little wine over there now, she made it for me.”

O good God, what'd I tell him that for? You take public workmen, they go for such as that, most of em. He wanted a quart of that wine and I made him a present of it. That just ruined him. Got to where he'd drive to my house huntin wine, Mr. George Pike, Ed Pike's brother. So, he had a knack of comin there late in the evenin—it was good wine, blackberry wine, Hannah made it. They'd go off up the road there from my house and hit the Apafalya road there at Two Forks. They'd go out merryin, hoopin and hollerin—there was another one in the drove, he was related to them Pikes. All of em liked wine, whiskey too. But they never did get a drop of whiskey at my house. But they'd come there just hoggish for wine. And they'd get it and go off up the road, jollyin like drinkers will do. Somebody detected it—people between my house and Two Forks, I believe some of them done it—and they reported to the laws that I was sellin whiskey.

So one day, I was haulin lumber. I weren't over a mile from home. But I never did, even when I was that close, go home between
hauls. I'd stay on my job all day, kept feed with me. Feed my mules, kept em eatin. Every time I went to load I'd drop em down somethin to eat and unbreast em, slackin their traces; they'd stand there, eat, while I was loadin my lumber. Heap of times if they wasn't quite done by the time I finished loadin my lumber I'd give em a few more minutes to eat. My mules stayed fat all the time—and when I'd get home at night I'd pour it in to em.

First thing I knowed, two officers come to my house—I weren't there. They wanted to examine around for whiskey. After some of em up that road seed them fellows comin there so regular and goin out merryin, they just figured I was sellin whiskey. But I weren't sellin no whiskey. Come home that evenin and my wife told me about it. Said the officers come there and wanted to search for whiskey. But she convinced em so and got em clean out the notion that they'd find any whiskey. Told em, “Yes sirs, you're welcome. My husband aint here but you welcome to look around, see what you can find. But I assure you, you won't find no whiskey here.”

She berated em on the evils of whiskey and she professed to be a Christian woman. They listened at her and as long as they listened she talked. Come to the end of it, they said, “Auntie, we believe you, we believe you.”

They called her “Auntie,” that was their rulin then. If it was a man, they'd call you “Uncle,” “Uncle So-and-so.” A young fellow, they'd call him by his name if they knowed it. I didn't worry bout what they called me because I knowed they weren't goin to call me nothin but what they wanted to anyhow. We took that—there's colored people all through this country now, white folks still callin em uncle, auntie. A good crowd of em comes here and calls me “Mister.” They can call me “Mister” as much as they please; I know that they don't want to do it and they aint of it, they just passin the time.

So, she thoroughly convinced em away from there. And she kept a beggin em, told em, “I have a smokehouse around here in the back. Go around there and I'll give you the key. Unlock the door and see what you can find.”

One of em went on around the house and went to the smokehouse at the south end of the house, in the back yard. And the other one walked through the dwellin house, come in the front, walked clean on through the dinin room and out the back, didn't stop. By
that time his friend was unlockin the smokehouse door. Went in there and looked around, come out and locked the door and come to her there on the back step and gived her the key and left out from there. Aint been back there no more long as I stayed there.

W
HEN
I first went down on Sitimachas Creek where I was livin when I was doin most of that lumber haulin, I had three head of stock. And right down there before I moved away from there I lost one of the best mules in the whole country, that Mattie mule. White man come up to me, said, “Well, Nate, I'm sorry for you. You hit it hard, lost one of the nicer mules that the country could afford. What you goin to do now?”

Fellow by the name of Max Meade, little Max Meade's daddy's brother, asked me that question. He was a pretty heavy-built white man and, O, he played like he was sorry for me. I was just a poor colored man, I told him, “I don't know what I'll do. May just stop; may just cut me out from this lumber haulin.” Didn't give him no satisfaction bout what I was aimin to do.

I lost that Mattie mule in March, round about the last of the month. I had had her clipped and right soon I got caught in a hail storm and a cold blusty rain. That drawed her up considerable. Some mules wouldn't stand for you to clip em and some of em would. Just ease them clippers over em and clip em all over clean. Shorten their hair and they'd look like—that Mattie mule I had clipped looked like a peeled onion. If it's a long-haired mule, keep her clipped for the summer—don't clip her but once and that's in the spring of the year. But you shouldn't do that and let a cold snap catch em. That's what I done and how come I lost her.

Had my sister's boy, Davey, he was older than any of my boys, and my oldest boy, Calvin, on a second wagon that day. Hitched my plow horses to that borrowed wagon and them boys carried between seven and eight hundred feet of lumber behind them horses. And I was along with em with a thousand feet of lumber—that was my regular haul, a thousand feet. Drove in there at the planer mill in Apafalya and unloaded them two wagons, me and the boys, and got on the road back home. And out from Apafalya about a mile, right there at Jerusalem Cemetery, that bad weather hit us. That Mattie mule drawed up and turned one-sided, no hair on her hardly, fresh-clipped; well, we drove right regular on in home.
Never hurt that Calley mule of mine because she was a short-haired mule and I didn't have her clipped, didn't need it. And them horses, weather didn't hurt em at all. Drove em on home and I took that Mattie mule and throwed a heavy blanket over her back and fastened it under her neck and I led her in the warm stable. But in spite of the world that mule got chilled through.

She took bronchial pneumonia and I lost her. It was awful. Dr. Crabtree from Apafalya, he come out and looked at her. I called for him on a Wednesday mornin—I was livin five miles out from town. He came out on his car, said, “Where is that sick mule you got here, Shaw?”

“Doctor, she's down there in the barn.”

We went down there together and he examined her.

“Shaw,” he said, “that's a mighty nice mule to be in that condition.”

I said, “What's the matter with her, Doc?”

“She got bronchial pneumonia.”

That was the second mule I ever bought and the first one I bought that had never had a bridle on her—I broke her myself. And when I lost that mule I had had her for eleven long years. Was as good a mule as ever I owned and I've owned some good mules.

Mr. Hoyt Thompson, man that run a mill for the Graham-Pike Lumber Company, off down here in a scope of pine thickets and swamps near my house, he furnished me his mule to hitch with my Calley mule and I drug that Mattie mule off one day, bout a quarter mile from my house over a hill right at Sitimachas Creek to what they called the old Thompson Ford, and put her down under that hill where she'd roll into the creek. I hated that. I said to myself, ‘If it just hadn't been rainin when I drug that mule off, I'd a went over there and labored and dug a hole beside of her in a way that in diggin she'd a rolled in there and I'd a buried that mule.' But it was rainin and I didn't do it.

I went right on then and bought another mule from Mr. Duncan Walls in Apafalya. At that time Mr. Grimes weren't there no more, man that I'd bought that Mattie mule from. He'd done went to live in Opelika and Mr. Duncan Walls was runnin the mule pen.

That Calley mule of mine made a dandy mate to Mattie. Had a pair of good mules then, nice a mules as you wanted to see for
farm purposes; that's what I bought em for, farm purposes. Calley woulda weighed thoroughly a thousand pounds or a little more; but it weren't the size of the mule that impressed me, it was the
vim
of the mules I had. That Mattie mule didn't even weigh a thousand pounds fully. But she'd drag her part of a thousand feet of lumber out from under any reasonable hill.

Huntin a new mate for Calley.

“Hello, Mr. Walls.”

“Hello, Nate.”

“Am I correct, sir, in thinkin that you are in the mule business?”

“Yes, Nate, I have been but I sold out; I aint got a mule here for sale. I got one, but I reserved her for my own self. She'll weigh about a thousand fifty, somethin along like that, maybe she might weigh eleven hundred. Big mule. But I reserved her. I got one of Noah Root's boys hired here to work a little crop for me and I reserved this mule for him to plow. I don't expect you'd want her nohow. First, she'd cost you two hundred and fifty dollars and next, I don't expect you'd want her because Noah Root's boy let her run away twice since he been a workin her here. He let her run away with a guano distributor, tore that up; then she run away with a one-horse wagon and wrecked it. I don't expect you'd want a mule like that.”

I said, “Good God, Mr. Walls—”

“You wouldn't want her nohow, Nate.”

I had employment for the mule and I was makin money—“She'll cost you two hundred and fifty dollars.” I said, “Two hundred and fifty?”

He said, “Yes, yes, I got to keep her; I need her and she's the only one I got.”

“And you wouldn't sell her?”

“O, no, yes, I'd sell her if a man would pay me what she's worth.”

I said, “Is she a mare mule?” I didn't never buy a horse mule—I didn't have nothin for a horse mule to do. All the mules ever I bought was mare mules.

“Yes, she's a mare mule but I don't expect she'd suit you since she's runned away twice with Noah Root's boy.”

I wanted to see the mule regardless to the price and regardless to her temper he was tellin me about. I said, “Well, I got to have a
mule someway, Mr. Walls, if I can get one. Where is this mule of yours we talkin about? You got her here anywhere close?”