All God's Dangers (87 page)

He said, “That don't make no difference; just price her to me. I don't care nothin bout the looks of her bag.”

He was intendin to put her on the market for beef purposes and that's what he done, right here in Montgomery.

I said, “Well, say what you think and do what you think, it'll take a smooth hundred dollars to get her.”

Runned his hand in his pocket and snatched out a hundred dollars, handed it to me. Rocked along there and carried her home and in a few days he come tearin back wantin to take the other. I said, “No sir, Mr. Bailey, I wouldn't sell her now on no grounds less'n I was forced to. Money won't buy her. She's a good cow, I know it; both of em was good cows up until the other one lost her bag. Now this here is the only one that's givin me any milk, I'm goin to keep her.”

He said, “Well, I want her. I'll give you all she's worth, let me make just a little. What'll it take for her?”

I said, “In that case, you can take her if you want to or leave her alone, but it'll take a smooth hundred and seventy-five dollars to get her.”

Reached in his pocket and gived me a hundred and seventy-five
dollars without battin his eyes. That was the last cow I had. Well, I was gettin up a little money, with what little I'd made on my patches that year. Looked around me and I had a little corn to sell, but I took pains not to sell it until I got rid of that mule.

I sold my blacksmith shop to Mr. Lorne Ray. That white man buys up all this old-timey stuff he can get his hands on, all through this country. The very tools I lived by, he sells em for antiques. He have told me hisself, he gets more for em than he gives me, and the people that buy em don't even use em exactly. He might not get no more out of some of it than he pays me, but take it all around and around, he gets enough more than I got out of him to put back in his pocket than he loses. He gets enough to keep him diggin at these things.

He come to my house one day, “Hello, Uncle Nate”—that's what he calls me—“you got any of this old country stuff people used to use way back yonder?”

Wanted to know about my wife's old dishes in the house and any kind of old style stuff. I said, “I got maybe a few things around here, Mr. Ray. Look around. Here's some old pots that's yet good, not no old broke up pots, but good pots, a good kettle, old things that aint tore up.”

He walked around my lot and found him some old pots and kettles that didn't leak. After I bought an electric stove, I just set them things out in my yard. Couldn't use nothin on that stove but these aluminum things; these old-timey pots was too heavy, electric heat wouldn't heat em as fast as wood fire. So, we done away with our old cookin instruments and set em outdoors. Lorne Ray bought it all. Took it away from here and took away my tools—sledge hammer, hand hammer, plow sharpener, anvil, blower. Gived me a frivolous price—but I let it go. Gived me bout half value, hardly half, bout a third value. I'd bought that blower second-handed from Preston Courteney after my blacksmith shop got burned up over on the Leeds place before I come out of prison. I didn't lose my vise but I lost my blower—Vernon was workin in the shop and he was supposed to be the head one, and he let Eugene go in there one day tamperin around and Eugene left the fire in the forge in place of puttin it out, and late that evenin, about night, the buildin caught afire. Burnt up these shop affairs and set a adjoinin outhouse afire
and burnt up a ton of natural soda, farm soda; burnt up a brand new wagon body settin round behind the house under a shed, crack brand new one; but it happened that the wagon itself didn't burn. They'd been usin the wagon out away from there and they'd left it out yonder, didn't bring it back to the shed, so it was saved from the fire. Burnt up a brand new cross-cut saw, Simon saw, one of the best grade of saws there was in them days; burnt up a heap of shop tools besides. Burnt up most of my hammers, ruint em; burnt the handles out and when the fire touched the hammers themselves that ruint the tempers—O, it just cleaned me up. Some of it was second-handed stuff but I could have used it all till my finish. Tools like that don't perish like men or beasts—unless you put em to the fire.

Burnt my anvil but it didn't heat it enough to ruin it. That and the rest of my blacksmith tools I bought em from a fellow by the name of Hinton Wheeler. I hired my mules shod awhile but after I begin to own as high as four head of mules I started shoein my stock myself. And eventually, that last pair of mules I bought, them big heifers, when I'd pick up their hind feet—I've never been nothin but a small-weighted man my whole life, I'd pick up them big mules' hind feet and they weighin a little over eleven hundred apiece, them heifers would lay down on me nearly. They didn't mean me no harm, just give over and lay down on me. Well, that broke me up from shoein em; there weren't enough of me for a big mule to lay down on and give over. I could go around and slap my hand on their hips, reach down and get them foots and begin to pull it backwards out from under em—they'd give it up and lay that shoe right across my thigh. I'd trim their foots, clean out their hoofs, and shoe em. But I quit shoein for myself when they begin to lay down on me and in a little while I quit shoein for anybody.

Lorne Ray gived me a pittance to what I'd paid out for my tools and things. All the iron that he could buy, he could sell that easy, and all that other old style stuff—there's people decorates their homes with things that belong to the past. I figured when I sold off this shop material I was gettin on the borders of disable. I didn't need it so I tried to get a little somethin out of it. I just lingered, lingered, lingered, sellin my little stuff off, until I sold the last cow I had and my mule was the last I sold.

I plumb dispossessed myself before I moved into this house. Had to do it, I needed the money to get in here. So I decided I'd
better sort of close out. I thinks over it and I know it handicapped me but how come I was to do that? I seed I was growin weaker and older and I couldn't keep up my stock, I couldn't plow a rough grade of land. If I'd a plowed on two or three years longer, I just might have fell out in the field, accordin to my feelins. So I just sold out to where I wouldn't have so much to do. But it don't worry me. As well as I can look through it and explain it—quite natural, it hurts a moneyed man to do away with what he's got and dispossess hisself worse than it do a little old fellow like me. It don't terrify a little fellow's mind: he aint got much, he can brush it off. But good God, what happened to Sam Tucker? He got shed of all his properties and it pulled his eyeballs to watch his stuff pass out of his hands. He just lost his mind completely and killed hisself. But me, I aint never had much but a livin. And I had to work like the devil to get that. So it don't worry me nothin to dispossess myself. I feel like, to an extent, it freed me someway. At that particular time I didn't have nothin but some work tools that I had worked with, and they had worked me. And when I got shed of em I ceased to be a tool myself.

My last bar plow, I let my cousin Zach Culver, up in the hills, I let Zach have it. He come down here and told me, bought him a mule and wanted to know, “Cousin Nate, has you got any plow stocks here you can spare?”

I just told him to take my plow up there and use it, and if I didn't call for it until he wore it out, don't worry. But if I called for it, I wanted the use of it back. He's farmin some, up there in them hills, he got a new mule—he aint farmin no cotton, truck patches and corn is what he's farmin. So, I let Zach have my plow stock and all my good points and I called on him like this: “Cousin Zach, I need some lumber here and it's goin to take a right smart for what I need it for. Has you got any loose lumber layin around your place?” He's on his own place—

He said, “Yeah, Cousin Nate, I had some work done recently and I got some old lumber tore down off of some of the buildins around there, layin there, that I can divide with you.”

Went right on home with that plow stock and everything he could load up here that I could spare and come right back with a load of lumber, on a Sunday mornin, too. He didn't wait a bit—that gived me a pretty good start on stuff to build my shed here.

I sold my two-horse wagon when I moved on the Jenks place. All the use that I had for a pair of mules, I had Vernon's mule to work with mine. Kept his mule the best of two years and I fed her and took care of her just like she was mine. She was a stinkin good mule but she was one of these wild rattlers; good God, you go to foolin with her, she'd just go crazy nearly. Whip her and she goin to carry you out of that field with her, or she goin to try. You had to be man enough to keep the lines off her; whippin stirred her up considerably bad. I could holler at her—she wouldn't pay much attention to that. She was quiet herself, quiet like a lamb if I'd be quiet with her. Work anywhere in the world I'd hitch her. And at last Vernon sold her to some colored fellow way up there between here and Beaufort. That put Vernon out of the mule business. And I didn't have but one, and I kept her just as plump as a apple at all times.

I sold that Kizzie mule just before Christmas last year. I held her for a hundred dollars but people commenced a kickin at me, didn't want to give me that—mules has been cheap here in this country for a long time now. She had a little age on her but she had that get up and go in her too. And regardless to her age, I weren't goin to give her away. Stock's a long life liver—you physic your mules and your horses and feed em a plenty, they won't hardly wear out.

When I was in prison over here at Wetumpka, there was a old fellow there by the name of Shug Armstrong—he had once been the warden there. And they had a old mule, called her Dan, old mare mule. And Mr. Armstrong would come by there to visit old Dan. And he'd say, “Old Dan, I bought Dan when I was head warden here, for the state. Dan's thirty-five years old. I know her age.” Still alive and just as fat as a pig. But she had old mules' acts and ways. You could plow old Dan out there, plow off a piece and stop and leave her, she'd turn her head around and look at you, watch you clean till you got out of sight, and stand right there till you come back, too. And she had her own gait to the plow. She'd walk right on off but she weren't fast. She showed a disposition to bein old. Mr. Shug Armstrong would say, “You can't tell me nothin bout old Dan, I bought her out of the drove myself. Old Dan's thirty-five years old. I know, I bought her out of the drove thirty-five years
ago.” She was a black mule and she'd a weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of nine hundred pounds. She weren't no great big mule.

That Kizzie mule of mine was seven years old when I bought her—recommended to be seven years old. She was fat when I got her and she stayed that way. I plowed her every year for sixteen years until I sold her. I asked a hundred dollars for that mule and if I'd a got it I wouldn't a lost but twenty-five dollars and got the best of her labor. I had three or four different white men come to see that mule, turn her down and walk away. Wouldn't meet my price. Colored fellow bought her. One of em had been my half-brother-in-law and TJ's full brother-in-law, fellow by the name of Jesse McCaffrey, lived with his brother Henry McCaffrey on their mother's and father's old home place, the McCaffrey boys. Jesse McCaffrey married my half-sister, which was TJ's whole sister, Judy. So, fooled around and all the white men turned me down and the McCaffrey boys come up and wanted the mule. They told me that they had had a pair of mules but they lost one of em the year before and that left em with just one. And they was glad to buy my mule to match their other'n. I just pulled the bridle off her and give her over to em—cut five dollars on the price. Them boys, colored fellows, both grown men, lived on their mother's and father's old home place, gived me ninety-five dollars for that mule, and she was pretty and slick and fat when I sold her. Then I went and gived em her plow gear, good set—leather collar, good out-haines, a pad for under the collar that I'd just used a year and it didn't have a hole through it noway, good traces—the lines wasn't so hot but I'd plowed with them lines several years.

I didn't work my stock with any sort of old things. Because my mules was more than slaves to me. Mule used to be a thing, before tractors ever come in style, that you couldn't make it without her. She'd make you a livin if you treated her right. That Kizzie mule in particular, you had to be careful with her. Treat her right and you could plow with a string. But she didn't want you to holler at her and go to whippin her with them lines—she'd drag you out of that field, she weren't goin to stand you beatin on her.

I let em have her for ninety-five dollars. Soon as she got gone, several of them white men backtracked and come willin to give me my price. I just told em, “She's gone now. You too late for her, too late.”

One white man I had to turn down, I hated to do it. Mr. Claude Wilcox, lives right there now in Pottstown. Durin the time I was in prison, or just before I was sentenced out from jail, there was a great talk against my family by some of the white people right through this country. Mr. Claude Wilcox got wind of it—you won't find no man today that'll run up against Mr. Claude Wilcox, they dread him, they stand off him. He don't take no foolishness. And so, they was heavily talkin against my family— That lawyer Stein, may God bless him wherever he's at; I hope his soul's restin in Jesus if he's dead. He stopped this thing, got it bated down; they feared him for some cause— And Mr. Claude Wilcox told em, “You just better let Nate Shaw's family alone and have nothin to do with em.” And he was a man they knowed didn't take no shit. He was game enough to get up and tell em, “Let Nate Shaw's family alone.” I heard it through my wife. She found it out and she come told me in prison.