All God's Dangers (75 page)

This man Will Wiley would set and watch me, wouldn't say nothin. My wife would go in the church and take her seat with the children, and all the rest of the church that was outside in the yard would go in. Sometimes I'd go in and sometimes I'd stand out by the door—it was accordin to how the church was crowded. And, too, I'd think about how roguish some folks is that go to church, they go just for devilment, they don't go there to hear the service and I was well aware of that. I'd stand where I could keep my eyes on my wagon and that team of mules. I knowed how some of em was. They'd even take your feed out of your wagon, slip it out if they could and give it to their stock. So, sometimes I'd go in the church and sometimes I'd stand out by the door—and I wouldn't be standin alone; many a man would be out there checkin on his property.

Now, years later, I walked over to Will Wiley's house after service and walked in—he invited me in—set down, commenced a talkin on different subjects. He jumped up and poked it in my face that I worshipped what I used to have, I worshipped my property. That was as big a lie as he could have told—I worshipped my mules and wagon and what I had, I worshipped it all. God knows I never did worship what I had.

He said, “You worshipped them big mules and whatever all you had you worshipped—” declarin them mules and what I had was my God. Well, God says don't put no God ahead of Him and don't worship nothin you have before God.
But
, God requires me to feed my stock, He does; they're dumb brutes. Care for em and not mistreat em.

I got right out with Wiley bout that. I didn't insult him—he insulted me, but I never made better out of worse; when I got a chance I got up and bid him goodbye and walked out.

I didn't leave right off, I set there awhile. Looked at him and studied him, thought over what he said. I had had, in my younger days, a little more around me for workin and laborin hard for it, and I seed how he felt about that. I had owned in my past life as good a mules as walked the roads, and as big a farm mules that ever pulled a plow, and he hated me for it. Told me I worshipped em—just because I drove em right, kept em fat and pretty and put a good harness on em, never did race em. All my stock had to do was move when I'd say, “Come up.” Pull my lines—well, all my stock always obeyed me thataway. I had some of em move with me, when they'd move they'd run away like to kill me, too. But they wasn't accountable for that.

There's men that seed me drivin them mules and appreciated em for what they was worth. One man got so high, he told me—man that I met in the road one day haulin cross-ties; had two little old small mules and he haulin cross-ties at the Apafalya right-away to the railroad. He gived my mules a year or more before he just had to stop and question me about em. I noticed he'd watch them mules—he'd pass right by me till I got to where I'd turn around on the seat, I'd see him just steady lookin back. And he done thataway until one day he just stopped and asked me whose mules was I drivin. He said, “Well, I noticed, I been drivin and drivin on these roads longer than I can really tell you about. And every once in awhile, sometimes every day, I meet you drivin these mules. And I didn't know but what they was company mules. I noticed I don't never see nobody drivin that pair of mules but you. I wondered whose they was. Is they company mules or yours?”

I told him—I didn't jump up and boast about “they mine, they my mules”; here's what I said. I looked at him and smiled, said, “I reckon they're mine. They stays in my barn day and night whenever I aint workin em. Specially now they stay in there every night and I feed em. I reckon they're mine.” That's how I answered his question, told him in a nice way.

So, I was havin a social conversation with this fellow Will Wiley and when he spoke his slander against me, that ruint the talk, what he spoke and the way he spoke it. And I figured that if he had it in him enough to tell me somethin to my face against
me, why, he'd tell it to other people if he had a chance. First thing you know, he'd jump up off his nasty behind and go to runnin over the country dislikin you and findin a fault to you where there is no fault. Puttin other people against you off of his lies. And he speaks hard words about you, raises the devil, scandalous. But if he wasn't the devil hisself, he wouldn't be totin news on you. But he don't like you, maybe you got a little somethin more than he got, you in better shape, standin in a good position—and if you get that way in this world, you better be ready to defend yourself against words and bullets, bullets and words.

H
ANNAH
done her housework but she didn't never feel good after we moved over to Vernon's place in '48. Well, '49 she lingered along, still able to do her work. In the year of '50, her sickness set down on her and she taken to bed. Never did get up no more in the year of '50. She lingered—I was right there home with her every day. I'd run out to the field—the girls was there waitin on her—and about the middle of the mornin I'd dash back to see how she was. She'd still be on the bed, hadn't got up since I went out in the mornin. She done give it up then, I felt just like it. I seed she'd got down to where she couldn't help herself; needed one of the children right there with her all the time.

And so, she lingered along, lingered along, and there was no pickin up to her. Called out for the doctor—she went to the doctor a few times before she got down so bad, but not goin like she oughta been.

I weren't fooled when I lost her, because I had taken her ailment more serious than I ever let on. She complained of a hurt in her back, in the kidney, and when she got down, along in the fifth year I been free, she just lost her health completely.

We called Dr. Ginn on a Sunday evenin in August. And he dashed up there from Calusa right quick and examined her. Me and Vernon was out in the yard: Dr. Ginn come out of the house advisin us, “Rush her to the hospital at once, rush her to the hospital at once. She's got cancer at the lungs.”

That tore us all to pieces. Well, we rushed her right on into the hospital. It was very sad to me because that was my wife and had been a wife to me since 1906, in the Christmas. She was a lovin wife, absolutely, just as sure as you born. She and I was the mother
and father of ten children, and all along when she was birthin them children her health was good. Her mother told me when I married her, before I married her, that she had the hay fever every year, every summer. I went on and married her: I weren't after the fever, I was after the girl. She was eighteen years old when I married her, lackin from December till the twenty-second of February, 1907, of bein nineteen years old.

So, we rushed her to the hospital that Sunday evenin. I was right back there Monday mornin. I walked in her room and my daughter, my and her daughter, Leah Ann was there waitin on her; she come out from Chattanooga to see about her mother. And she went on to the hospital and stayed with her until she died. And so, I went down there Monday mornin just as quick as I could—we was livin on Vernon's place at that time, all of us that stayed at home; and we got a hearin that mornin that she was yet livin, hadn't died. So I dashed down there and I walked in the room where she was. She weren't payin much attention to anybody around her—just callin on the Lord all the time, talkin to her God. When I walked in there that mornin I looked at her and I seed verily she was upset some way. I called her—I walked up and spoke to her. She weren't on the bed, she was sittin on a chair back against the wall. She didn't want to lay down; she had laid down long enough to get wore out layin down, and when I walked up to her she just sittin up there and all I could hear, “Jesus … Jesus … Jesus … Jesus …” Me or the girl, one—Leah Ann, first girl child we had that ever left this country, went to live in Chattanooga with her husband—one, or both, walked up to her and walked away. She didn't recognize us.

Well, I come on back home when I was forced to come back. Next mornin, that girl got someone to bring her home on a car; hollerin, “Mama's dead, Mama's dead.”

I just felt like my very heart was gone. I'd stayed with her forty-odd years, and that was short, short—except bein pulled off and put in prison. I picked her out amongst the girls in this country and it was the easiest thing in the world to do. I loved that gal and she dearly proved she loved me. She stuck right to me every day of her life and done a woman's duty. Weren't a lazy bone in her body and she was strict to herself and truthful to me. Every step she took, to my knowledge, was in my favor. There's a old word that a man don't never miss his water until his well go dry. You got
a good husband or a good wife, you know about it when they gone. I'm praisin her now, I'm praisin her for what she was—she was a mother for her children, she was a mother for her children—and when they put me in prison, the whole twelve years, she stayed by her children, she didn't waver. I left em with plenty to carry on with and they worked to keep it while they made their livin. And she'd keep check on what come in and what went out and never did they lack for somethin to eat.

She was a Christian girl when I married her. And she was a woman that wanted to keep as far as her hands and arms could reach, all the surroundins, she wanted to keep it clean. And I kept myself clean as I possibly could. But in past days, I've sneaked about in places, I did, I own to my part of wrongness. Maybe I've had contact with other women, but not many, not many, and I handled the proposition quiet. I liked women, but it was just certain women that I liked. I didn't pitch out there and run at every old woman or gal in the country after I married her—didn't do it before that. And I desperately kept clean of runnin too much to a extreme at other women when I had her. Regardless to all circumstances, I weren't a man to slip around at women and no matter what I said to another woman or what I done, I let my wife come first.

W
E
quickly picked Hannah up and carried her to the undertakers at Tuskegee. From there we carried her to Pottstown and buried her at Pottstown Baptist Church; that was her membership, had been. I don't know what caused her to do it, but before she died she moved her membership over between here and Apafalya, to a church was a Holiness Church. She never did—I never did hear her say definitely, but it was sung that she wanted me to join over there too. I had done joined Pottstown where she was a member, just before I come out of prison, and she was still at Pottstown when I come out; then she changed. But how come she changed she didn't tell me.

Now to me, a Christian person is but a Christian person, I don't care who it is and I don't care what denomination. If he been newly generated and born by the holy spirit of God, which is the high power, who is the man that rules the heaven and earth, and what He don't rule, it don't exist—that's the mercy man of the world.

It's just a different performance from one church to another. Same God, but they serves Him different; different enough for you to set and look it through, and hear the difference in the sermons that's preached and the songs that's sung. These Holiness people baptizes you just like the Missionary Baptists do, but they calls for rebaptizin. You join their church, you just got to go in there like you never been a member of no church. As far as I'm able to see, that means they don't recognize nobody to be a Christian but theirselves. Well, I think that's wrong. I think you should be allowed to just go and give in to the church that you want to live with in their denomination, give over to em, explain yourself and take your seat. But the Holiness don't allow it. You got to be baptized over again.

They worships there with a whole lot of music. I've had em tell me, “God loves music.” Well, God don't care nothin bout your music; it's just your soul. Open it rock bottom to Him, feel His love in your soul—that's sufficient. And then love the light. You can run around here, go from church to church, join every church, just as many different ones as there is trees in the woods; if you aint been newly generated and born again you aint gettin nowhere. If you aint been changed by the high authority above, changed in your soul and changed in the life you live, you a long way from the will of God. It's just like I told Mr. Miller Wilcox, white man; spoke the word in his store one day. I just politely come out and told him: “I love everybody, for God's sake. I don't love em for my purposes and my sake. I love em for God's sake. I love my race, men and women, colored I love em. I love white men, white women, and everybody under God's sun, to please God. That's my whole heart. Treat em right if they treat me right. Try to treat em right if they don't treat me right. But if you don't want to treat me right, don't treat me noway. Because I won't back off from the trouble you give me.”

She died in August and I had a crop to take care of that year. I made six bales of cotton by myself; I just hired some choppin done. A white gentleman and his wife and his wife's sister come to me—poor people—and they wanted to work. And all in that family called me Mr. Shaw. It was “Mr. Shaw this” and “Mr. Shaw
that”—I felt a little embarrassed about it. They come from this country and still they called me “Mister.” I felt that if their color, their race, heard em call me Mr. Shaw, they'd hate
me
for it. The wife's sister was a little girl and she was big enough to chop cotton but she practically stayed at the house tendin to her sister's children while her sister and her sister's husband would work for me. And that girl would call me Mr. Shaw in spite of the world. I told her one day, “Girl, you be careful bout callin me ‘Mister.' You'll lose friends by that. Call me Nate, my name is Nate Shaw, you call me that—Nate.”

Wouldn't do it. She called me Mr. Shaw till the last day she worked for me. And she come over there and told me one day, “Mr. Shaw, Sister says to send her a watermelon.” Me and her went out to the watermelon patch and I pulled her a nice watermelon from the vine and gived it to her. She taken it home to her sister and her sister's husband. And right there I tried—but I couldn't break that child from callin me Mr. Shaw. And she was just about a missus-sized girl.