All God's Dangers (3 page)

But the decline of storytelling is more complicated than this. It has to do with the passing of craft activities, like basketmaking,
which generate the rhythms at which stories flow; with the appeal of competing voices of culture, such as television; and with the unfortunate popular assumption that history is something that takes place in books and books are to be read in school.

What happens to the history of a people not accustomed to writing things down? To whom poverty and illiteracy make wills, diaries, and letters superfluous? Birth and death certificates, tax receipts—these occasional records punctuate but do not describe everyday life. In this setting, Nate Shaw is a precious resource. For his stories are grounded in the ordinary occurrences of the tenant farmer's world. Furthermore, they display as few records could an awesome intellectual life.

Shaw's working years span approximately the same years as the Snopes family odyssey in William Faulkner's trilogy. Shaw's narrative complements the social history contained in the Mississippi writer's work. Faulkner writes about the white south; Shaw speaks about the black. Both focus on the impact of history on the family. Faulkner, heir to a line of southern statesmen, pursues the decay and decline of white landed families and the rise of their former tenants. Nate Shaw records the progress of a black tenant family through three generations.

Both are steeped in genealogies. With the rigor of an Old Testament scribe, Shaw names the parents and foreparents of many of his characters. In fact, he names over four hundred people. Shaw creates a human topography through which he travels with the assurance of a man who knows the forest because he witnessed the planting of the trees. The act of recalling names is also a demonstration of how long he has been living in one place. Thus, his family chronicles express both the bonds among people and a man's attachment to the land.

I
N
editing the transcripts of our recordings I sometimes had to choose among multiple versions of the same story; other times, I combined parts of one version with another for the sake of clarity and completeness. Stories that seemed remote from Shaw's personal development I left out entirely. By giving precedence to stories with historical interest or literary merit I trust I haven't misrepresented him.

Besides this hazardous selection process, my editing consisted of arranging Shaw's stories in a way that does justice both to their occurrence in time and his sequence of recollection. I tried, within the limits of a general chronology, to preserve the affinities between stories. For memory recalls kindred events and people and is not constrained by the calendar.

I have not reproduced a southern or black dialect because I did not hear it. I did hear the English language as I know it, spoken with regional inflection and grammar. In the case of present participles and other words ending in “ing,” the common idiom usually drops the “g,” such as in “meetin” for meeting, “haulin” for hauling, etc. Where the “g” is pronounced, often for exclamatory effect, I have kept it.

Shaw's vocabulary is remarkably broad and inventive, enriched here and there by words not found in the dictionary. The meanings of these words are usually clear from their contexts. In some cases I have offered definitions.

As a measure of protection and privacy I have had to change the names of all the people and most of the places in the narrative. In devising aliases I tried to be faithful to the sources, sounds, and meanings of the original names. Generally, where blacks and whites shared the same surnames or first names, they share aliases here.

There is something lost and something gained in the transformation of these oral stories to written literature. Their publication marks the end of a long process of creation and re-creation and removes them from the orbit of the storyteller. His gestures, mimicries, and intonations—all the devices of his performance—are lost. No exclamation point can take the place of a thunderous slap on the knee. The stories, however, are saved, and Nate Shaw's “life” will get a hearing beyond his settlement and century.

I
N
producing this book I have been assisted by many friends. Dale Rosen has worked closely with me at every stage of its composition. Her courage launched the project and her energies assured its fulfillment.

I am grateful to Alex Keyssar, Margaret Levi, Nancy Hopkin, Kaethe Worthen, and Maurianne Adams for reading the manuscript with profound attention and criticizing the preface; to Frank Freidel for urging me to do it and having faith; to John Beecher for leading
the way almost forty years ago; to John Oliver for giving me a home in Tukabahchee County; to Tom Sisson and Johnny Sisson for their financial support and good cheer; to the Ford Foundation for a grant that enabled me to work steadily toward completing the project; to Charles Adams for his technical aid and patience; and to my editor, Ashbel Green, for his sympathy and suggestions on form.

Finally, only the gracious cooperation of Nate Shaw, his wife, his brothers and their wives, and all of their children makes this book possible. What follows is Nate Shaw's narrative alone. As a subsequent volume I hope to present the complementary statements of the other Shaws.

Theodore Rosengarten

Somerville, Massachusetts

October 1, 1973

M
Y
daddy had three brothers—Hubert, Bob, and Nate—and I'm named after one of em. Now, that Hubert, he was a over-average man. It didn't do no man no good to take a hold of him, so my daddy said. Uncle Hubert didn't take shit from nobody, colored or white. After my daddy got up to be a big boy he claimed to remember his brother Hubert's transactions and he even told how his brother talked: he talked in a dry, high-pitched voice. But Uncle Hubert was a grown man, he was much of a man.

So one day, Uncle Hubert went up to a white man's house. I reckon that was after the surrender; my daddy didn't tell me how old
he
was when Uncle Hubert done that. And that white man had a bad bulldog and Uncle Hubert knowed—my daddy said his brother Hubert knowed that that was a bad dog. God knows I aint tellin no part of a lie,
he
said it. But used to in them days, I think a heap of this old back yonder stuff was lies, a heap of it. The old folks told so many stories and they told so many funny stories. All of it couldn't have been true, the way I estimates it. They'd tell stories to have fun and folly and cause a big laugh. But they told a heap that was definite and proved out to be true. If I tell any kind of story that I think was just something told to entertain, I'll say,
“That's what I heard So-and-so say,” and so on. But my daddy told this for the truth.

Uncle Hubert went up to a white man's house one day. The white man had a bad dog and Uncle Hubert knowed it. And the white man knew he had a bad dog. My daddy said the white man told him, “Come on in. The dog's wired up, I fenced him.”

It wasn't a matter definitely understood if Uncle Hubert was askin the white man or the white man was askin him to come in his house. Told him, “Just unlock the latch to the gate and come in the yard,” that's all.

Uncle Hubert looked at the dog and said, “You goin to keep that damn dog off me, aint ya?”

Told him, “O, yes, the dog aint goin to bother you. Just come on in, come on in.”

Hubert unlatched the gate and walked in the yard. And soon as he done that, the dog run up to grab him. The white man had done walked out there to guard the dog off of him. And when the dog runned up to grab Uncle Hubert, he just jumped behind that white man, picked him up by his waist and commenced a slingin him at the dog, fightin the dog with the man. And said, he beat that dog so with that man, one of the man's shoes flew off. Uncle Hubert just knocked that dog down goin and a comin until he knocked one of the white man's shoes off—and hurt the white man a little someway. He whipped that dog down, cleaned that dog up with his master's legs and feet. Then he put the white man down, the white man told him, “I'm goin to have you arrested, I'm goin to have you arrested.”

Uncle Hubert said, “Have me arrested. I told you to keep that damn dog off me. You knowed he'd eat me up. I told you to keep him off me.”

He just stepped on out the gate, he was a over-average man. And they never did meet up no crowd that'd whip up on Uncle Hubert. He left this country before I was born. I heard my daddy say many a time, “I don't know what become of my brother Hubert and my brother Nate.” They left this country and gone; Uncle Bob left too, but he come back and died. When I got big enough to know anything he was livin out between here and Apafalya in the neighborhood of Litabixee. When Uncle Bob taken sick, got down on his bed, my daddy went over there several times and let me go with him—I was my daddy's first son—and eventually Uncle Bob died.
He had a wife, I've seen her people a number of times. She was a Millsaps, Eva Millsaps. And while Uncle Bob was alive and layin there sick, my daddy said Aunt Eva would tell Uncle Bob, “If you goin to die, die! Die! I can do better
d'rout
a man.” She meant she could do better without a man, it was just her way of talkin: “I can do better
d'rout
a man.”

Every child they had was older than I was, all Uncle Bob's children was older than me. Sim Shaw was the oldest boy he had to my knowin. Dill was the other one—them was the only two boys Uncle Bob had by Aunt Eva Millsaps. And the girls was named Hetty and Priscilla, but they called her Chick—that's two boys and two girls.

My daddy had a outside chap by one of Aunt Eva's daughters. Aunt Eva had this daughter before her and Uncle Bob married. So that was my daddy's half-niece—weren't no blood kin at all—that my daddy had a child by. His name was George and course, he went for a Shaw, George Shaw. And
he
lingered around and left this country. He traveled every whichaway some but he come back and he did little jobs for my daddy around our house. I've seed him many a time, talked with him. He was a darker shade boy than my wife, he weren't a real dark fellow. And he stayed near Uncle Bob's girls and boys just like a brother. Uncle Bob's wife, Aunt Eva, she kept George there with her children because that was her daughter's child.

H
AYES
S
HAW
was my daddy. He was just about my color or maybe a shade darker; he was dark. He was a kind of rawboned, slender man like I am. I never did know
his
daddy—he knowed who his daddy was, he claimed him but he died when my daddy was a young man, before I was born. But I knew his mother well. Her name was Cealy, that's what they called her; he called her Mammy. I've seed Grandma Cealy many a time. When I was a little old boy—I say little old boy, I was in my teens and had got big enough to travel on my own, I'd go up to Grandma Cealy's home way up yonder at a place they called Chapel Ridge beat, drivin a little old gray horse to a one-horse wagon, get her and bring her down to my daddy's home. She was about my color, his mother, Grandma Cealy. I was with her and around her from a chap up. Her second husband after my daddy's daddy—she had him after I got big enough to know anything
and she had had him before then—was a old man by the name of Abner Todd. Old man Abner Todd was her husband when I come in this world.

My daddy trusted me to ride up in them hills after his mammy and I never had a wreck and hurt her. That horse never did show me no tricks with my grandmother. My daddy'd always tell me, “Nate, be careful now with your grandma, don't get her hurt.” But the way it worked out there weren't no hurt to come; hauled her through them hills every time safe and sound.

At that time my daddy had bought a one-horse wagon from the Akers in Apafalya, iron-axle, nice little wagon. Hitch it to that little gray mare. His name was Silas and he was fractious. You had to treat him right, you didn't he'd play a trick on you. Played more tricks with my daddy than he ever played with me. My stepmother, TJ's mother, that was my daddy's wife at that time, she'd say, “Mr. Shaw”—she called him Mr. Shaw; his name was Hayes Shaw—“Mr. Shaw, why don't you let Nate handle that horse? He can get along with that horse better than you can. Every time you have anything to do with that horse you has a frolic with him and Nate never does have no frolic with him. He minds Nate just like a top. Let Nate drive that horse—”

My daddy didn't like for her to say that. He would holler at the horse and holler at my stepmother—that was his third wife, the first woman he married after he married my mother—and he'd be rough with that horse. If the horse looked like he didn't want to act to suit him, he'd strike him with the lines; Silas would show him another trick, give my daddy more trouble. Sometime he'd come to me in the field where I was plowin that horse, he'd catch hold of my plow and he wouldn't have that horse in charge ten minutes till that horse was tryin to get away from him, raisin the devil and would out-kick a dray mule if my daddy pushed on him. Silas was ill; it didn't do to play with him, just treat him nice like you treat a person. Silas had some sense somewhere someway, he didn't want you to mistreat him. Soon as my daddy would get him there was a frolic; soon as I'd go and take him over—quiet as a lamb. My stepmother looked into that, she talked to my daddy about it. But he was bull-headed: he wanted to boss and bulldoze his way through. Get mad sometime he go to squallin at that horse till it was a pity. Silas would resist him like the devil, too, but never did give me no trouble.

I hauled my grandmother more days than I can number. Drivin in them hills, from my daddy on this side of Sitimachas Creek clean on up in there, four, five miles all up in around Chapel Ridge. Silas never did break the gait I run him in.

And in her comins and spendin time with my daddy and her grandchildren, Grandma Cealy said many a time, tellin people who come in there while she was there, “Why, Hayes, that's my baby, that's my baby. He was fifteen years old when it surrendered.”