All God's Dangers (37 page)

He went back there and told that old woman, “Get em up!”

And when the clothes come out of there they come out in a little old sack about as big as a small pillow slip. I took em up, put em in the buggy, got the little children ready quick as I could—I taken the oldest one on the buggy with me, Davey. And Uncle Jim and Uncle Grant put the other two fellas, one of em in one buggy and the other in the other, and rolled away from there.

When we got down here, way out here this side of Apafalya, the road forks and my home was still continuin on the Pottstown road, and the branch-off goin toward Clay's mill down there was where my daddy lived. And I happened to be lucky to meet my daddy right at that fork that mornin. Met him, stopped and consulted the matter.

I said, “Papa, we went to the death of Sadie, me and Peter and Uncle Jim and Uncle Grant and their wives—was all that went. We seed her buried this mornin, a little after nine o'clock; buried her quick. I picked up her three little boys and brought em this far with me. I'm in route home with em now. Bein as you is the granddaddy and I am their uncle—” he didn't go to the death of his daughter at all. His wife was sick, he said, and he couldn't leave her, TJ's mother—I said, “Papa, you is the granddaddy for these little boys and I am their uncle. I'm goin to leave it up to you how we'll divide em, if you want em; if you don't want nary one of em or can't keep em, I'll keep all three of em.”

He considered and he said these words and that's the way we stood.

“Well, son, I'm perfectly willin to take some of em. I'll tell
you what I'll do. Bein'st that you got a house full of children and nobody to wait on them children but their mother, and none of em aint big enough to help her with the rest of em—I got three or four large girls in my house can wait on em. And bein'st as it's thataway, I'll take the two least ones, Tommy and Henry, and let you keep the oldest one, Davey. He's twelve years old and maybe he might be a little help to you. And that would keep a crowd off of your wife—if you aint got no children big enough to help her.”

I said, “That suits me, Papa, but remember one thing: these little boys aint got no mother and father. I'm only their uncle; me and my brother Peter over here is uncles for these three little boys”—we didn't put nary a one off at Peter's—“and you is their granddaddy. Let's handle em like this: don't get the two little boys, the youngest ones, off at your house and the oldest one be at my house and we hold these little boys apart and won't bring em to see one another. I'll bring the little boy that I keep, the oldest one, around to your home amongst the other two. And you forward the others to my house and let em grow up knowin that they are brothers. Don't keep em separated in a way that they'll forget about one another. Don't do that, Papa.”

He said, “I won't, son, I won't.”

Well, we went on and on thataway and them little boys stayed in remembrance of one another. I took Davey and he was just twelve years old. My wife and I treated him just like he was our own child. And my children and him got along just like one, just like one. I got along with Davey just like he was my chap and they got along with one another just like all of em was sisters and brothers.

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and Tucker fell out but there weren't no fuss. I just picked up and moved right into a house on Mr. Ben Stark's plantation up at a little place they call Two Forks. It was a better house than the house I moved out of on Mr. Tucker's place. It was a old house but it was a warm house, partly a board house built out of plank and partly a log house.

Four children come with me: Calvin, Rachel, Vernon, and Francis; them was my children. And Davey made five. Mattie Jane come next, and the balance of my children after her, all them children was born on the Pollard place. When I moved to the Stark place, Vernon was big enough to help me farm. He didn't plow but
he was big enough to help me other ways. He had plowed some before I moved up there at Two Forks, but he started to plowin a regular turn after I moved away from there. Moved up there in 1923 and moved off in 1924. Stayed to make one crop and then I bought into my own place, the Pollard place, where that I lived until the state of Alabama removed me to the penitentiary.

There's some of the places I used to move to, I didn't pick em as a man would do under free choice because I wasn't allowed, I couldn't live anywhere I wanted to—white people didn't want a nigger livin anywhere he could prosper too fast. Where I could get a place to my likin, that's where I moved.

I was living right on the highway front when I lived at Two Forks. And a white man there—I had some words and a cuss and frolic with him. He lived just above me on the same road and I passed by his house goin to my house. And he was livin on a place he had bought there joinin this place that I lived on. That was all smooth land country, better land than Tucker's land—you could work it, plow it anywhere. And I had a little less than a small three-horse farm rented there. I gived two hundred and fifty dollars rent—come out of my cotton and corn, but mostly out of my cotton.

I went down there in the fall after I rented the place, not thinkin nothin, and you or no other person wouldn't have thought nothin about that. Before I moved there, but after I rented it, I went over and sowed me a few bushels of oats and bought me some brand new barbed wire and wired them oats up, not thinkin they was goin to be destroyed. Sowed my oats and wired em up out on some of the cultivatable land. And this white man that was livin joinin me, just a wire fence between his plantation and mine, he had a devilish yearlin—that's where the trouble come. He had more cows than that yearlin but he couldn't keep that yearlin from rovin out of his pasture or he didn't try, I don't know which. But I know that yearlin got in my oats and grazed em when he got ready and he ruint em too. He's in there every day he wanted to go. Got through the wire, got in some way. I kept a warnin the man—his name was Toby Culpepper. I kept a tellin Mr. Culpepper, I said, “Mr. Culpepper, your yearlin is just ruinin my oats.”

But it didn't do no good. I kept a tellin him that and his yearlin kept a grazin my oats when he got ready. And at last, one day, my boys was in the field plowin and they looked yonder and seed that yearlin in my oats; they was plowin down below and kind of south
of the oat patch. I was at the house and the boys come up there and told me, “Papa, that yearlin is over there in your oats again.”

All my talkin to the man didn't amount to nothin. That yearlin just throwed my oats back—eatin up a good grazin pasture before them oats ever started to head, just cleaned my oats up. Well, I just went on to the barn and got a rope, went on over to where the boys was plowin after they notified me, went right on back to their plowin. And there was another fellow there that I had sub-rented part of this place to, colored fellow by the name of Hamp Rowe, just had a wife and one child, and I rented Hamp a small plot of land to have him some corn. The place was in my hands complete and I could do with it what I pleased that year as far as right, if I didn't hurt the place no way. So, Hamp was down there at his house plowin. I went by and told him I wanted him to help me catch a yearlin in my oats. I called his attention to it—he was plowin, had a nice horse and he was plowin his horse there on the ground I had rented to him. He just took that horse loose; he said, “All right, Mr. Nate—” and he come up with me and my boys and we surrounded that yearlin and caught him. That was a crowd enough to do it—Hamp Rowe and me and my two boys, Vernon and Calvin, and my sister's boy Davey.

I went on up then to the wire fence between the two plantations and the white man was plowin right there—we was all plowin there pretty close together. I got up to the fence and said, “Mr. Culpepper, I caught your yearlin a while ago—” He might have been way on the other end of his row next to his house, reason he didn't know it; or he could have just knowed it and weren't sayin nothin. I said, “Mr. Culpepper, I caught your yearlin in my oats again.”

He done declared to me he was goin to keep her out—never did keep her out till that yearlin ruint my oats. She was a half-grown yearlin, or maybe over half-grown. She was a heifer—hadn't never had nary a calf. And he had a chain on her that mornin and she was draggin that chain on her head.

I said, “Your yearlin got in my oats and I caught her this mornin.”

He said, “Where is she?”

I said, “You see—” I looked back toward the road—“You see them boys with that yearlin goin up the road to my lot now? Yonder go the boys.”

He looked and seed. Here's what he told me—hadn't never paid
a nickel for his yearlin ruinin my oats. Just lingered along till she ruint em. He told me when I showed him the boys carryin her to the lot—I put a rope on her head and told the boys to lead her—said, “Well, I'll just go on over there and get her, that's all.”

I didn't object. And he hadn't paid me nothin and he promised to keep her out of my oats and didn't do it. I was satisfied he was just goin to try to bull me over. He hitched his mules to one of the wire fence posts with the bridle rein and untied one of the lines and drawed it out of the traces and folded it up. Then he jumped over that wire fence and he was goin to get her. He took straight off cross my field. I just went on with him, never said a word, just let him go on over there and get her like he said. But there was a little somethin else that I considered was goin to take place—

He went on around my house to the back yard, went straight to the lot. He never said nothin to me except he was goin to my lot to fetch his yearlin. And he unchained my gate and walked in and chained it behind him as if to say he didn't want her to run out of the lot, he was goin to stay there till he caught her. I didn't tell him I'd help him; I didn't tell him I wouldn't. I was just watchin his motions. In fact of the business, I kind of followed in behind him, unchained that gate and walked in there and sat down on the roots of a big old hickory tree. I set there and looked at him. He chased that yearlin around the lot a little bit and he got a rope on her; then he stood behind her and started comin toward the gate.

I said, “What you goin to do, Mr. Culpepper? You just goin to carry on anyhow and not say anything bout payin me for the destruction? Just goin to drive her out and carry on? And she done ruint my oats; been grazin on em ever since she got big enough to graze.” I flew hot. I said, “You can't bring her out here, you aint offered me a penny. I will release the yearlin if you give me a dollar for catchin her—takin time and losin time to catch her. If you give me a dollar you can have her. If you don't you can't.”

He stopped and looked at me. He got mad then. Said, “You don't aim to let me have her then without I pay you?”

I said, “No sir, you got to pay me a dollar for catchin her out of my oats.”

He said, “Well, I'm comin—” There was a little old grist mill—I was livin right at the fork in the road and Mr. Rivers was runnin a little old grist mill out below me—and Mr. Culpepper said, “I got to come back to the mill this evenin, after dinner, and I'll just bring
one of my boys here with me, as I got to come to the mill. And I'll bring you a dollar then.”

I said, “I'll appreciate it. Your yearlin done ruint my oats, et em up and tramped em to where they won't never do me no good; they won't be worth cuttin. Turned my crop to a grazin patch.”

He got mad but he pulled his rope off that yearlin and walked to the gate and unfastened it, went on just like he come there, straight back through my yard and around the house, then walked on across the field. I walked along behind him goin back down to the field where my boys was plowin. And he turned around to me and here's the words he said, and I made a curse over em when he said that—you take white folks in them days and way further back as I had learnt, never did want colored folks to five up on the front in the public view. He said to me, “That's the way it goes with fellas like you. You don't have no business livin up here on the highway.”

Got mad because I wouldn't let him have his yearlin. “That's the way it goes with fellas like you. You don't have no business up here on the highway, livin where you livin.”

I just told him to his face, “You aint got a damn thing to do with where I live.”

He didn't say no more. Went on back to his plowin. At dinner he come up there and walked into my lot and done the same thing. I walked in behind him and set down on that old hickory root and waited patient until he gived me that dollar. Then I opened the gate and let him carry his yearlin on home. He gived me that dollar—he roped the yearlin first, but I was waitin on him. If he hadn't gived me the dollar I wouldn't have let that yearlin out of my lot; it'd taken wings to move her.

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children weren't goin to school worth nothin then. It weren't their fault, they wanted to go, and it weren't my fault, I wouldn't have stopped em from goin. That school for colored children up yonder, it'd run two or three weeks, maybe a month and a half on the outside, and word would come down from Beaufort, “Cut the school out; money's gone.”

I have been in school business amongst the trustees and the school officials and the patrons, I've been in it. Durin the time that I was haulin lumber for the Graham-Pike Lumber Company, we had a school meetin one night. And all the patrons was to attend—that
was the parents of all the children that went to school. We had to run around here and supplement what money come down to us from Beaufort to start our schools. Mighty little we got from the state government. That money was comin here through white hands and they was half-concerned with keepin colored children
out
of school. I don't know how it was in other states but it was this way in the state of Alabama: the white people's schools would start on due time. And just before they'd allow the niggers to start up their schools, there'd be a delay for some cause that the nigger couldn't affect; they'd wait along and the niggers' schools would open way after. And if we did manage to open our schools, they weren't touchin no white schools, weren't touchin em. Government weak, aint got the money, and they'd give out orders strictly for the colored people to start their schools up—white folks' schools been runnin, no shakes about it. Some way, some how, it was plain; and the nigger couldn't understand how come it runned that way, and if he did understand he couldn't do nothin about it. It hurt the nigger more that way, to come into the knowledge of his fortune and couldn't do nothin about it.