All God's Dangers (33 page)

I always ginned for cash money, so much a bale. A bale of cotton, it'd cost to put the baggin and ties on it, ginnin and all, anywhere from five to six or seven dollars a bale. Sometimes I'd sell the seeds to the ginner and the seed out of one bale of cotton would pay for ginnin two bales. But I always reserved enough seed for myself to have it for my next crop—very seldom did I buy cotton
seed. I tried to have as good a grade of cotton as anybody and I kept my seed as long as I got satisfaction with my cotton at the market.

Right there and then, and aint aimin to sell that cotton, you take that cotton back home and dump it off your wagon. It's used, startin at home—my mother, after the cotton come back from the gin, seed removed and leave the pure lint, I've seen her take a pair of cards, two cards each about as wide as my four fingers, and it's made in the resemblance and in the manner and in the style of a mule brush. And she'd take one in one hand and lay a handful of that cotton on it, take the other card and comb it—that's called cardin batts—then change cards and comb it the other way until she got a nice clear batt of cotton in them brushes. And she'd have a quilt linin stretched out in the house and she'd take that batt of cotton, nice wad of cotton, and lay them batts all over that quilt; she could lay em as thick or thin as she wanted, then spread the next layer of cloth over it and sew the top layer and the bottom layer together around the edge—sewin that cotton in there and pullin it just tight enough to make it flat like she wanted a quilt. And when she sewed as far as she could reach, then she'd roll that quilt, take it loose from the corners of her frames, pull out them nails or small spikes and roll that quilt under, roll it under, just get it far enough, close enough, far as she could reach with her hand sewin. She'd do all around that quilt thataway, from one corner to the other. Had a bed quilt then, warm quilt, plied through with cotton.

They don't do that now worth nothin—that proves how long I been in this world. Buy blankets in stores and they fall apart on your bed, just layin there. I've knowed my wife to make a quilt or two and sell it, one that we didn't need for home use. And she didn't labor noway but what she got the benefit of it and the profit. I always thought like this: if I couldn't make it out there in that field and on some of the other jobs I followed, I weren't goin to make it noway. What I want to follow up behind her and exact her money? Low-down, half-assed scalawag—I wouldn't never a been guilty of such a trick.

All women born and raised up the age of my wife, their mothers knowed about makin quilts and they taught their daughters. But that was the end of the line for quilt makin in this country.

I
F
you want to sell your cotton at once, you take it to the market, carry it to the Apafalya cotton market and they'll sample it. Cotton buyin man cuts a slug in the side of your bale, reaches in there and pulls the first of it out the way and get him a handful, just clawin in there. He'll look over that sample, grade that cotton—that's his job. What kind of grade do it make? You don't know until he tells you. If it's short staple, the devil, your price is cut on that cotton. Color matters too, and the way it was ginned—some gins cuts up the cotton, ruins the staple.

They had names for the cotton grades—grade this, or grade that or grade the other. Didn't do no good to argue with the man if you didn't agree with the grade. Thing for you to do if he graded your cotton, examined it and gived you a low bid, take it to the next man.

Much of it is a humbug just like everything else, this gradin business. Some of em don't pay you what that cotton's worth a pound. They want long staple, clean cotton: the cleaner and the prettier it is and the nearer it comes to the specification of the staple they lookin for, the more they'll offer you. Generally, it's a top limit to that price and that's what they call the price cotton is bringin that year. If it's forty-cent cotton or six-cent cotton, it don't depend much on
your
cotton. It's a market price and it's set before you ever try to sell your cotton, and it's set probably before you gin your cotton and before you gather it or grow it or even plant your seed.

You take that cotton and carry it around to the cotton buyers. You might walk in that market buildin to a certain cotton buyer and he'll take your sample and look it over, look it over, give it a pull or two and he just might if he's very anxious for cotton, offer you a good price for it. But if he's in no hurry to buy your cotton and he gives you a price you don't like you can go to another buyer.

Heap of em buyin that cotton to speculate; he got plenty of money, wants to make more money, he buyin that cotton for himself and he don't care what company buys it from him. Maybe he might be buyin for a speculatin company, a company what does business in speculation. Or he might be buyin for a company that uses that cotton. Or if he can handle the matter, he buys for two companies.

Niggers' cotton didn't class like a white man's cotton with a heap of em. Used to be, when I was dealin with them folks in Apafalya, some of em you could have called em crooks if you wanted to; they acted in a way to bear that name, definitely. Give a white man more for his cotton than they do you.

I've had white men to meet me on the streets with a cotton sample in my hand, say, “Hello, Nate, you sellin cotton today?” White men, farmers like myself, private men; some of em was poor white men.

I'd tell em, “Yes sir, I'm tryin. I can't look like get what my cotton's worth.”

“What you been offered?”

“Well, Mr. So-and-so—”

“O, I see here such-and-such a one offered you so-and-so-and-so—”

Heap of times the scaper that I offered to sell him my cotton had a knack of puttin his bid on the paper that the cotton was wrapped up in. I didn't want him to do that. The next man would see how much this one bid me and he wouldn't go above it.

And so, I'd have my cotton weighed and I'd go up and down the street with my sample. Meet a white man, farmin man like myself, on the street; he'd see what I been offered for my sample—the buyer's marks would be on the wrapper—or I'd tell him. And he'd take that sample, unwrap it, look at it; he'd say, “Nate, I can beat you with your own cotton, I can get more for it than that.”

Aint that enough to put your boots on! The same sample. He'd say, “Let me take your sample and go around in your place. I can beat what they offered you.”

Take that cotton and go right to the man that had his bid on it and he'd raise it; right behind where I was, had been, and get a better bid on it. I've gived a white man my sample right there on the streets of Apafalya; he'd go off and come back. Sometime he'd say, “Well, Nate, I helped you a little on it but I couldn't help you much.”

And sometime he'd get a good raise on it with another fellow out yonder. He'd bring my sample back to me with a bid on it. “Well, Nate, I knowed I could help you on that cotton.”

That was happenin all through my farmin years: from the time I stayed on the Curtis place, and when I moved to the Ames place, and when I lived with Mr. Reeve, and when I moved down on
Sitimachas Creek with Mr. Tucker, and when I lived up there at Two Forks on the Stark place, and when I moved down on the Pollard place and stayed there nine years. Colored man's cotton weren't worth as much as a white man's cotton less'n it come to the buyer in the white man's hands. But the colored man's labor—that was worth more to the white man than the labor of his own color because it cost him less and he got just as much for his money.

I wasn't raisin under five and six bales of cotton every year that I stayed on the Bannister place. Raised corn—I kept my corn to feed my stock, met all my expenses with cotton and what I was makin off my lumber haulin job. I didn't never want for no vegetable, what I had I growed em. Okra, anything from okra up and down—collards, tomatoes, red cabbages, hard-headed cabbages, squash, beans, turnips, sweet potatoes, ice potatoes, onions, radishes, cucumbers—anything for vegetables. And fruits, fruits for eatin purposes and cookin, pies, preserves—apples, peaches, plums, watermelons, cantaloupes, muskmelons. I quit growin muskmelons for one reason: they got to where some years the worms would take to em. They is a different melon to a watermelon. The inside of a muskmelon is yellow like the inside of a cantaloupe—they're good tastin, sweet. Cut em open and scrape the seed out of em, sprinkle if you like a little salt over em. Sometimes I've seen people sprinkle a little black pepper over em too.

I raised many a crop of ice potatoes but you had to keep them ice potatoes sprinkled for bugs, anointed. Just planted enough for family use as long as they'd last. Same with sweet potatoes—I'd store em, put em in a bank. Sometimes I'd have four banks of sweet potatoes, and the seed ones in a kiln to theirselves and the eatin ones to theirselves. Clean out a wide space for whatever number of potatoes I had to bank, accordin to the amount I raised. Cut me out a big circle, made it flatter in the center than at the outer edges, and put me a layer of pine straw in there, then salt my potatoes and pour em in there until I had a big pile. Then I'd cover em sufficient with pine straw and if I thought they needed it, I'd use somethin like pasteboard, apply it around that bank to keep the dirt from runnin on the potatoes, take my shovel and ditch all around them banks, pile the dirt up to the top—just leave a hole
enough at the top of the bank for the potatoes to get air. Sometimes I'd even put a tin top, bought tin, over it to keep out the rain. I'd have potatoes then for table purposes way up in the spring of the year. Eventually they'd lose their sweetness and get pethy. Chop em up then and feed em to my stock, mules if it was necessary; but I always had plenty of corn without havin to feed my mules sweet potatoes. But hogs, I'd feed my hogs on em a plenty.

I had my own cows to milk—my children started to milkin on the Bannister place, my oldest boy and oldest daughter and still their mother wasn't milkin. They milked when I couldn't milk. After them children got to be nine years old they helped me regular. I went to the lot and showed em how to milk and they was glad to learn. My wife didn't have to milk no cow; she didn't have to go to the field, I'd drive her out the field.

And I killed all the meat we could use until I killed meat again—from winter to winter. I had a white man walk through my yard—two of em, Mr. Albert Clay and Mr. Craven. I don't know Mr. Craven's given name but that was Mr. Clay's brother-in-law. Come through my yard one Saturday evenin and I had killed three big hogs, me and my little boys, and had em stretched out over the yard after I cut em up.

They walked up to my back yard on the north side of the house—that old house I was livin in was built east and west—and they come up from towards my barn. I was surprised in a way but I didn't let it worry me, people go where they want to and walk anywhere they want to. Mr. Albert Clay and Mr. Craven come up from towards my barn. My barn set west of the house and back behind the barn was my pasture. Well, they come right up cross the back yard—that yard was covered with meat from three big hogs I'd just killed and had the meat put out; it was all of nine hundred pounds of meat. They looked there in that yard and stools, boxes, tables, benches, and everything had planks across em and them planks was lined with meat, just killed and cut out. Dressed, gutted, and cut open but not fully cut up, layin out, ready for salt.

Mr. Craven made a big moderation. “Where'd you get all this meat, Shaw? What are you goin to do with all this meat?”

It was all over the yard, coverin everything in sight. Three great big hogs weighed over three hundred pounds apiece. Had more meat there than you could shake a stick at.

“That's more meat than ever I seed any nigger—” that's the way he said it—“I aint never seed that much meat that no one nigger owned it.”

They looked hard, didn't stop lookin. After a while they crept on out of there, still stretchin their eyes at that meat. They didn't like to see a nigger with too much; they didn't like it one bit and it caused em to throw a slang word about a “nigger” havin all this, that, and the other. I didn't make no noise about it. I didn't like that word, but then that word didn't hurt me; it was some action had to be taken to hurt me. I just rested quiet and went on preparin that meat.

So, I begin to insist on the boys—I had a brand new rubber tire buggy, I bought it from Mr. Henry Chase in Apafalya, had him to order it special for me. I told the boys to catch one of the mules out of the barn and hitch him to that rubber tire buggy. I was right ready, I was rushin to get off to town and get me a sack of salt. Told em, “Go to the lot and catch Mattie, brush her off and hitch her to that buggy.” Brand new harness at that time, brand new buggy.

I jumped in that buggy and went straight to Apafalya quick as I could without runnin my mule to death. I didn't never call her for nothin but a ordinary trot. She was a good mule, she answered me—I've owned some mules as good as this country ever seed; I've owned as high as four head of stock at once in my barn—that's where my trouble come. Many a year I didn't ask nobody to furnish me nothin. I've seed the time when I was haulin—I got too high, I reckon, and it made a damnation on me. Some of the white folks wanted my hide.