All God's Dangers (56 page)

All right. Lawyer Stein stuck to me. And when he come there he'd ask me every time, “Shaw, is they been knockin you here?”

I'd tell him, “No, sir, they aint offered to hit me.”

He'd say, “They better not, they better not. If they hit you and I find out, I'll run em.”

A
FTER
the International Labor Defense come in there, four big white men from Apafalya come to see me. And they pulled at me to get my property in their hands before my trial. But I turned em flat as a griddlecake. Here come Mr. Watson, the main man that was goin to take what I had. He brought the banker with him, Mr. Grace, who had been furnishin me for several years; and when he seed that Mr. Watson was diggin to get me under his thumb, he helped push me under there. Mr. Watson, Mr. Grace, Mr. Maynard Curtis, Mr. Charley Flint—four of em, I knowed em every one, been used to em. I was born and raised up close to Mr. Flint. Charley Flint was a brother to Jim Flint, he was the baby boy of the family. And I used to work with Mr. Curtis, first two years after I come out from under my daddy's administration. Worked on halves with him 1907 and 1908. Now all them men come up there that mornin to see me, lookin me over; come in there with Mr. Watson, he led em in there.

I walked out—they unlocked the jail door for me to walk out and talk with em. All of em spoke plain to me.

“Hello, Nate.”

“Hello, Nate.”

“Hello, Nate.”

“Hello, Nate.”

I was mad as the devil. I told em all, “Good mornin.” “Good mornin, Mr. Watson, Mr. Grace, Mr. Flint, Mr. Curtis.”

They allowed to me—Mr. Watson said—“Nate, we sorry to see you here.”

I said, “Yes, but I'm here.”

Then he put in on me bout—“Nate, we come up here this mornin—I come up here to get you to sign this paper out here on the desk.”

I said, “What sort of note do you have for me to sign?”

“O, no note, it's just a paper.”

I said, “What good do it do to sign a paper? What is it for?”

“O, it don't amount to nothin, just a paper.”

See, I couldn't read and write.

“Don't amount to nothin, just a paper. You can just come out here to the desk and sign it.”

I said, “No sir. I aint signin no paper no way, shape, form, or fashion. I don't care how it's fixed. I ain't signin no paper.”

I was sharp enough to know it was a mortgage paper, that's what it was. And he didn't have no claim at all against nothin I had and I weren't signin nothin. He begged me, he begged me—Mr. Flint, Mr. Curtis, Mr. Grace wouldn't say a word.

I said, “I aint signin no paper, Mr. Watson, for nothin, noway, with nobody. And for nobody. I aint signin no paper.” And I kept askin, “What sort of paper is it? Won't you tell me what sort of paper it is?”

“O, it's just a paper, it don't amount to nothin.”

I said, “Well, I aint signin, I aint signin.”

I had sense enough to know what it was but I wanted him to say it.

“It don't amount to nothin.”

I said, “Well, you aint got no mortgage on nothin I got and you know it.”

“O, yes I has, Nate, yes I has.”

I said, “When did I give you a mortgage on anything that's mine? When did I do it?”

He wouldn't speak to me noway.

I said, “You got no mortgage on nothin I've got.”

And do you know, they wouldn't dispute my word, nobody said nothin. Mr. Grace knowed it was true and he wouldn't part his lips.

I said, “What did you do for me there one year, what did you do for me?” This was relatin to Mr. Grace then, what I was goin to speak. “What did you do for me? That's the only mortgage ever you had in your hand against me, and it weren't your mortgage. The last mortgage paper I gived anybody, it was gived to Mr. Grace there in the bank and you had nothin to do with it. When I paid that mortgage off—” O, if I didn't bellow like a poor little calf—“when I paid that mortgage off to Mr. Grace, you told him, you were standin there in the bank that day, you told Mr. Grace to give you that mortgage paper and he gived it to you, too. What good did it do you? It weren't made to you, and he gived it to you.”

Mr. Grace wouldn't have no words in it at all—I was just pokin it to em.

“What good did it do you? It weren't your mortgage paper, it weren't made in your name, it was made to Mr. Grace.”

He dropped his head when I shoveled that corn to him. I just told him to the last, “You got no mortgage on nothin I has and never has had.”

Well, he jumped up then and told me if I wouldn't sign no note, “How bout lettin me have that big pair of mules of yours and the wagon and enough corn to feed em?”

I knowed if he got that he'd take everything. I didn't give him a chance even to tell me what he'd give me for that stuff. I weren't goin to agree for him to take a nail. I said, “You got no mortgage on nothin I've got, Mr. Watson, and you know it. Stay out from there and let it alone. What's there I left it with my wife and children and it's mine. I aint there to control it, but—”

He said, “You just as well to let em go. That there pair of mules, that big pair of mules you drive, they goin to kill them boys.”

I said, “Let em kill em, let em kill em.”

He said, “You know you never would let nobody drive them mules but your own self.”

I said, “Well, they can drive em now. My boys has got as much strength—I got some boys there that's men as good as I am. If they fool around and let them mules kill em, it'll just be some more colored people killed.”

“Well, they goin to do it. You know them mules is dangerous.”

He knowed I had a pair of mules that didn't hesitate and was able to do whatever I put em to. They
was
dangerous, I knowed that, but my boys I considered grown and could handle em. If anything come up and they couldn't handle them mules, why, sell em to some other man that could and give the money to their mother as it was their duty to do.

Asked me twice more to let him have them mules. I said, “Just stay out from there and let everything alone; you aint got no mortgage on nothin there. Furthermore, I carried you three bales of cotton on my debt; that overpaid you right there. But what did you tell me when I asked you for a settlement? What did you tell me?”

O, if I didn't kick like a Texas mule.

After awhile he seed he couldn't move me and he said these words, “Well, let's go. I can't do nothin with him.” And as they started out, the High Sheriff Kurt Beall jumped out from behind the office door. I didn't know he was there, didn't know he was listenin.
I didn't know who had unlocked the jail door for me to come out and talk with them white men because he vanished right quick. I reckon he done that for a point.

He run up to me and looked me right dead in the face, squallin like a panther, “Aint he got a mortgage on that stuff? Aint he got a mortgage on that stuff?”

I said, “No, he got no mortgage on it.”

“Well, you just as well to let him have it. I'm goin down there and get all you got and bring it up here and put it before the courthouse to sell.”

I said, “You go ahead and do it if you think you can come out of there, go on.”

O, he jumped just as high—he was a heavy-built man, kind of pot-bellied, he'd a weighed fully two hundred pounds—he jumped just as high as he could jump and stomped on the floor and hollered, “Get back in jail you sonofabitch.”

That was the end of it. Them white men cleared out of there. Mr. Grace, Mr. Curtis, Mr. Flint—never said “umph.” Mr. Watson runned right on down here on Mr. Will Culpepper's place and tried to con my wife out of them mules and wagon, corn and stuff.
She
weren't on no note with him, she'd never signed no notes with me, never signed her name next to my name—he didn't have no note anyhow.

She come to jail to see me and not knowin that Watson done been down there worryin her, I told her, “Mr. Watson come here and tried to get me to sign a note and I wouldn't do it. Then he wanted the mules and wagon and enough corn to feed em. And I wouldn't agree to that. What I got is there with you and our children—you all. Don't sign no notes noway against em.”

She told me, “Well, he already come to me, too, and he wanted me to let him have the mules and wagon and corn, but I turned him down. I told him what we had there was yours. And if he was of a mind to take it, he'd take it at his own risk.”

I said, “Yes, that's the best stuff you have. That's for your livin, for my boys to have somethin to plow and food to feed em on.”

She said, “He come there pleadin for em but I turned him down flat. Then he flew up from there and left.”

Just actin a rascal all the way though. Now he's layin in the grave.

I left my family in good shape to start on livin without me. TJ moved my people in the house with his people on Mr. Will Culpepper's place. Then what did Mr. Culpepper do? He seeked around and rented the old Courteney place for my people and put em down there time enough to make a crop. Mr. Grace owned the Courteney place at that time. How come it? One of the triflin boys, triflin and low-down, too, managed to lose that place and Mr. Grace soon latched on to it. I don't know how much it was, I wouldn't swear to it, but it was about sixty or eighty acres. Them people that had owned the place, old man Miles Courteney and old lady Sophia Courteney—they had a houseful of children. And soon as they died, one in the bunch called Preston, this Preston Courteney went over to the bank in Apafalya and borrowed money on the place and never asked them other children how they felt about it. Used that money to buy cars and trucks and fool it off. Naturally, Mr. Grace let him have it and eventually Preston couldn't meet his payment and Mr. Grace took the place over. And when he took the place over, the community tried to get Preston to redeem the place back. He done runned over his brothers and sisters and done as he pleased. And he never was able to make it up to em. And there weren't but one child that bought back a interest in that place and she lives today somewhere in the northern states. Her name is Tillie. And there's Ethan Courteney, Hoke Courteney, and another one, kind of a humpbacked one in the crowd, Ralph Courteney, and Preston Courteney makes four boys. And the girl in the northern states, she married one of the Kirkland boys, and Will Wiley married one, and Willy Floyd Todd married one—that was three girls to my knowin.

Anyway, soon as the parents died, this Preston—whiskey drinker, gambler, and everything that he oughtn't be, everything but what he ought to been—he jumped up and gived Mr. Grace a mortgage on that place and turned around and lost it. And could have redeemed the place—the word got out after he lost the place how much he would have had to pay; it weren't much, maybe fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen dollars.

First, my family come to TJ's, on Mr. Will Culpepper's place. Second, moved down on the Courteney place, Grace place. Stayed there two years before movin out. I never seed nary crop they made there; it was all out of my hands then.

I was put in a place that all the facts of my life come to me—in jail. And I was very miserable over it. But I never would give up; I didn't give up my thoughts and I didn't give up prayin. Well, in my past days from the time that I was big enough to consider and realize people callin theirselves Christians and seekin religion, long in my teens of years, from then up until I found salvation for my soul, I called myself prayin. But there's a certain attitude that you got to drop in before God will even hear your prayers. So I prayed and prayed and prayed, called myself prayin but my prayers weren't truly from my heart. I was lookin all along at the ways of this world and enjoyin the benefits of this world but I was just a rank sinner myself, hadn't become in the knowledge of God. I used to, when I was travelin through the world, God blessin me along the line all the time—I realize now that He were God even while I didn't acknowledge Him, and beside Him there aint no God. And He's a man that can open doors that no man can shut. He can close doors that no man can open. Any person that have never received the love of Jesus in his soul, he can't imagine it until it hits him. When it hits you, you'll know it. There's a great undiscussible change takes place with you, somethin that never had before. And on the twenty-eighth day of April, 1933—I was placed and bound down in Beaufort jail, couldn't help myself, couldn't do nothin but laugh and cry and talk and study over my troubles. O, I tell you, it was bluesy times. Right there I was converted; right there I received the love of Jesus.