All God's Dangers (54 page)

I couldn't move him. He wouldn't leave his brother-in-law and he wouldn't get shed of that gun.

So, Tuesday evenin, bout two o'clock, the white men come runnin there to my wife's cousin huntin me up where Vernon said they left me, him and my wife, his mother, left me. Folks' house I was hidin at—this woman was a cousin to my wife and also to little Waldo; she was a married woman but her husband weren't at home.

And so, when I heard the cars rollin up to the house—that boy coulda got away if he'd a done it. They didn't know definitely he'd been at Virgil Jones' house that mornin because he was off in the swamps and he could have stayed out of it after that. Now them Tukabahchee deputies
might
have knowed he was there, but them men that come after me from Tuskegee that evenin didn't know it.

I said, “Here they come.” I knowed it was them. “They rollin in here after me.”

Little Waldo jumped up and runned out the house on the far side—he was too game, he didn't use his sense. I begged him not to go, I begged him to leave his gun in the house but he run out and they killed him, good as killed him. I told him to stash hisself off in the woods and get away. He oughta knowed with them officers runnin down on him he'd be just like a rabbit, but he wouldn't consider that. And they weren't after him; they didn't know he was down there with me. And blessed God, when he went out of that house, he went out shootin and took off on a run. They just throwed their rifles on him—old Bert Calhoun, he'd been sheriff at Tuskegee for years. He was in there helpin shoot him down. And Cliff Soule, he was head man at that time; he done defeated Bert Calhoun for sheriff and I couldn't swear that he done the shootin—but Bert Calhoun and some other Tuskegee white men, they shot at little Waldo until—I heard the shots, I was in the house. Soon as the bullets ceased, the guns ceased shootin, here come Mr. Soule in the house to get me. Found me there sittin up in a chair. Mr. Cliff Soule—I had been a friend to him when he lived out here close to me in the country. He had his boy haulin lumber for the Graham-Pike
Lumber Company and many a day I helped his boy out with his daddy's mules. Harvey Soule was the boy and when I got into trouble his father wanted to kill me, Cliff Soule. Many a time I took my mules loose from my wagon—and it was known, good God, my mules never did fall back from a load—and I had Harvey Soule to take his mules loose and get em out the way and I'd bring my mules to his wagon and pull it out from where his mules done backed up and run it into a ditch with a load of lumber on it. Tell him, “Move your mules—” He had a nice lookin black-colored mule, she was blocky-built, heavy; and a old long-legged sorrel mule, good lookin mule, between a sorrel and a red. If he took a notion he wouldn't pull—he'd get out there in the road, stop and stall and he wouldn't pull the hat off your head. And I'd hitch my mules to Mr. Soule's wagon and call em. Doggone it, that mule would come out of that ditch. Done it every time. Now his daddy come to kill me. I knowed that regardless to what you done, some of these white folks would just receive your labor and your kind favors and soon as you stepped aside and done somethin they didn't like, they'd be ready to destroy you. Cliff Soule was one of them kind.

Come in there, “Uh-huh, here he is. Get up and get out of here.”

I got up and walked out. And I had to pick up little Waldo and lay him in the back of the sheriff's car on the floor. Carried him on to Tuskegee and put him in jail, and he shot up like he was. And where they shot him, I looked at it: one bullet hit the side of his head and just split the skin. Next place they shot a hole in him, just between the top of his shoulder and his heart. And the next place he was shot was through the wrist. They shot at him with rifles just like they was takin a walk, shot at him till they shot him down. I was listenin at the rifles cryin behind that boy.

When they come there to arrest me, they made Vernon get on the car with em and bring em directly to me. He was sittin in the sheriff's car when they loaded me and little Waldo in there. Vernon waited for his chance to talk with me and he said, “Papa, if I hadn't told em where you was they would have killed me. They said they would.”

I said, “You done right, son, you done right. Tell em where I'm at every time and save yourself. I'd rather go down than for them to harm any of my boys.”

W
E
left out from Quitman's Flats goin to Tuskegee; got up the road a good ways, Cliff Soule looked around and said, “Nate, I wouldn't a thought that of you. We didn't know that there was such tricks in you. We always taken you to be the leadin darky for Tukabahchee County.”

Yeah, I was leadin. I preached many and many a time to my color: don't mess with these white folks in a way to keep trouble built up on your back.

I just listened at him. I knowed it wouldn't do me no good to call up any of my goodness and kindness. I asked him then, “Mr. Soule, what have I done wrong? If it's wrong, worse things than that have happened.”

“Well, just shut up; don't tell me nothin.”

That put my boots on still tighter and laced em up. I didn't have no voice—and soon as they heard of me bein in a thing like that, why, they was surprised; they thought I'd be a check to hold the other niggers out. But when I wouldn't stand under their whip they arrested me for
bad
crimes—that's the way they termed it,
bad
—fightin a crowd of sheriffs over what was mine and what was my friend's. O, that was terrible. Weren't it terrible?

Wednesday mornin, they called up Beaufort to come down there and get me. Old man Kurt Beall and Ward, his deputy, dropped down there quick and took me and Vernon both. But they didn't take little Waldo—Ooooooo, that boy was crazy about me as if I had been his own dear brother. When the sheriff come around and got me out of Tuskegee jail that boy let into hollerin, “Nate, Nate, Nate, is you goin to leave me? Is you goin to leave me?” It unnerved me and brought tears to my eyes. That was the only brother my wife had. I liked the boy, I loved him—he was the only boy old man Waldo Ramsey and old lady Molly Ramsey ever had, and four girls—Lily, she was married to Malcolm Todd; Lena, she had
been
married; my wife, Hannah; and Mattie, baby child of all, she was married to Clarence Reed.

And he just hollerin and chargin and callin me—but I had to go, you see, they was transportin me. And that was the last time I saw him. Next news I heard, he was dead. The talk got out that they gived him black-bottle—poison—there in jail. I don't know
that for a fact but I had just about decided they weren't too good to do it. Didn't no doctors lose no time with him while he was in jail. Left the bullets in him and caused him to die—if they didn't black-bottle him. They carried his body to Birmingham and had a funeral for him up there. The organization done that.

And Virgil Jones, white folks killed him after they done caught me. When I heard about the death of Virgil, Mr. Kurt Beall come around close to the jailhouse that mornin and told the crowd there, “Tell Nate that old Booker Jones—” he called him Booker—“Tell Nate old Booker Jones is dead.” Well, I couldn't help that. Virgil was there alive at the house when I left. They shot me and I had to go on then to try to get to a doctor. It was after they found me and put me in jail and carried me from Tuskegee to Beaufort that they killed Virgil. I never did learn how they got him. But Leroy Roberts—he'd been over there at Virgil Jones' house that mornin and when I counted who was there, Leroy done been there and gone. And they caught him on the road somewhere and shot him. Mr. Horace Tucker picked him up and carried him to Leroy's house and the white folks didn't like that at all.

All right. When they landed me and Vernon in Beaufort jail I begin to inquire about the situation and I heard pretty quick that my oldest son, Calvin, was in Wetumpka jail. Called it puttin him in there for safe-keepin. Well, they might have—I couldn't swear that they didn't put him in jail for safe-keepin. Them was my two grown boys at that present time, Calvin and Vernon, and the white folks got both of em.

In a day or two they gived orders to get Calvin out of Wetumpka jail and bring him to Beaufort and put him in jail with us. They was messin up men on account of them knowin that they belonged to that organization—my boys didn't belong to it, still they put em in jail. They didn't stay there but one night after Calvin got there. Mr. Kurt Beall, big man, he come around and questioned me. Was my boys in the organization? Was they at Virgil Jones' house the mornin I got shot? I told him, “No, my boys had nothin to do with it, no way, shape, form, or fashion.” Some of em runned around and told that Calvin, the mornin I left home and went over to Virgil Jones' place, he run up there to Two Forks, buyin shells, on my car—they put every lie to it they could. Shit! I didn't have no breech-loader that day that I wanted to be bothered with. I had my pistol, that 32 Smith and Wesson in my pocket, and that was all.

So, Mr. Kurt Beall turned them boys out of jail way after dark that night. And told em when he released em, “Go on back home and go to work—” I listened at him—“Go on back home and go to work.” And them boys had to foot it clean on down here cross Sitimachas Creek, fifteen miles or more, home to their mother and their small sisters and brothers.

Calvin sloped away from home to get out of danger. My sister's son, Davey, who I raised up,
he
left. And when they got done leavin, that left four boys there—Vernon, Francis, Eugene, and Garvan, the knee baby, youngest boy I had.

It didn't surprise me a bit how that worked out. I'd caught Calvin's weakness before this trouble ever come off. I called Calvin to me one day. I said, “Calvin, I want you to hitch Mary and Dela to the wagon—” Vernon was there but Calvin was the oldest boy and I was tellin him to do the job. I said, “Catch Mary and Dela out and hitch em to the wagon—” I knowed he was a little shy of them mules but I thought he could manage em. I said, “Hitch Mary and Dela to the wagon, go out to Apafalya, and tell Mr. Tucker—” Mr. Richard Tucker, uncle of Lemuel Tucker, he runned a store there and I was familiar with him, traded with him cash and credit—“tell Mr. Tucker to send the such-and-such I told him I wanted. Hitch Mary and Dela to the wagon, go out there and get it.”

Tryin to learn my boys, as long as they were stayin in the house with me; when they got big enough to do these things I'd put em at it.

He looked at me just this way. Said, “Papa, I'd rather you let Vern—” he called Vernon “Vern”—“I'd rather you let Vern do that.”

Right there my feathers fell. How did they fall? This way: oldest boy I had and scared to take them mules to the wagon and go to Apafalya to a store there and tell a man a thing. He was as much able as Vernon was but he backed off it with them words.

I called, “Vernon.”

“Sir.”

“Come here.”

I didn't mention Calvin to him. Calvin was standin where he could hear me; I didn't mention his name. I seed he dreaded them
mules. In fact of the business, he was with me when them mules run away with me haulin a load of hay home from Apafalya; he was up there on top of that hay. It struck my mind that he got chicken-hearted from that affair. So I called Vernon over after I couldn't get him. He didn't say he was scared, just said, “Papa, you let Vern do that.” He'd been in that wreck with me, but he didn't happen to get hurt. Still, he come out of it scared of them mules.

I called Vernon. Vernon knowed exactly how them mules was, much as I did. But I never had trusted em off with him on the road because I didn't want em to act up with him. I knowed my boys didn't understand thoroughly how to handle mules. After all, a mule in the field is not a mule on the road. When you put em out on the road they takes liberties with you. But I knowed that Vernon seed enough of em and knowed enough of em that he could handle em if I gived him a chance. Vernon was stouter than Calvin was anyhow. He growed up fast and was a good man all of his life until this sugar struck him—

And so, I told him, “Can you take Mary and Dela—” I
asked
him—“can you take them mules and hitch em to the wagon, go to Apafalya and get such-and-such from Mr. Tucker?”

Soon as I put the question to him he shot back, “Yes sir!”

That was the difference in my boys. Caught them mules out, hitched em to the wagon, and went on, too. He got excited when I gived him the privilege; but Calvin, he got scared. He was a good boy though, he always done what I told him if he weren't too scared to do it.

So he left home and went on over to the Little Texas beat—way back out there somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty miles the other side of Tuskegee. And he aint been back here since except to visit his people. He got scared, but I won't say he didn't have good reason to be scared. After they let him and Vernon out of jail he told his mother he was leavin and he left. It weren't no easy life to be Nate Shaw's oldest boy, and that's how he was known.