All God's Dangers (41 page)

I was with my daddy-in-law the night he died. I was haulin lumber for the Graham-Pike Lumber Company and when night come I'd go over there and stay with him through his sickness. Well, my mother-in-law, soon as he died, she put all the business of their
little old place in my hands. They had a little piece of land that they quickly bought after they married, so they told me. It weren't too long after the surrender that they bought that land. I attended to it dutifully, payin tax on it and everything until I was put in prison. Then my wife and Vernon taken it over and kept up the taxes. And right after old man Waldo Ramsey died, several of these white people that knowed about the place wanted to buy it from me. They commenced a runnin at me quick. But I told em, “No, I won't sell. I'm the caretaker of the business part of the place and if anybody is goin to profit by it let it be the Ramsey children.”

Some of the Ramsey children jumped up and wanted to sell the place to get their part out of it. My wife kicked against it—she didn't want to sell her mammy and daddy's home place. So I studied a way to keep any of em from sellin. If they'd all consented I mighta sold it if I could have gotten what it was worth. Well, white people didn't offer me but four hundred dollars for it and my wife didn't want to sell her part of it. Still the other children kept a naggin and a naggin bout sellin it, dividin up the money. I said to myself, ‘I'm just goin to give it to em in equal parts.'

So, I had it counted off and every one of em got ten acres apiece—Hannah got ten acres, Mattie got ten acres, little Waldo got ten acres, Lena got ten acres, and Lily got ten acres. I had a deed drawed up for each of em for their ten acres. I knowed that would hitch a knot rope—didn't nobody want to buy just a piece of the property. When the white people come back to me tryin to buy it, I told em, “Well, the place is divided up in ten-acre plots. And if any of the children wants to sell theirs, if you want to buy ten acres of it, that's all you can get—ten acres from one child.”

“O, we don't want just ten acres, we want the whole place.”

I said, “Well, the place aint mine to sell. It's divided up and my wife won't sell her part at all. But if any of em wants to sell their part, why, that's all right.”

“No, we want the whole place, we don't want no ten acres.”

So that stopped em. The land is standin together today.

Four years after old man Waldo died, his wife married again, and she died. And before she died, the home house burnt up, the house that she married in the first time and raised up her children. And she asked me, “Nate, you got good mules and you know your way around saws and hammers and other tools. Will you build my house back?”

I told her, “Yes, I'll do it.”

She said, “I'll tell you what to do. You go to that sawmill where they're runnin that saw back on this place and reserve enough timber to put the house up.”

I reserved the lumber that was needed to build the house back and the balance that was cut brought seventy-five dollars. I taken that money and carried it to my mother-in-law. I'd told her after old man Waldo died—fact of the business, I taken my children and what children of hers, what girls come to help me and the boy, and gathered the crop he left that year. And I sold it off—every time I'd gin a bale of cotton and sell it, I'd bring her the money. I told her, “Ma, I'm goin to give you the receipts I got for this crop so there won't be no confusion bout how much it brought.”

She said, “Nate, child, I don't want no papers, I know you aint goin to beat me out of a nickel. I aint worried about it.”

I said, “Well, Ma, I'm goin to try to do straight so nobody can't come up and say that I took over here and consumed all my daddy-in-law's stuff.”

She said, “No, Nate, let em talk. I know you aint doin it; you too honest to do such a trick as that.”

I said, “Well, you just keep these papers. Let your children, they got a book learnin, let em look over em, see what the stuff brought.”

She took em, too, but I can't say that she ever looked at em or had anybody else to look at em neither.

I went on, and the timber that it taken to put the house up, I hauled it to Mr. Ed Pike's planin mill in Apafalya and had it dressed for construction. Mr. Levi Wheeler, carpenter, he come there and helped me lay the foundation and put up the studs. Then I cut all the plates, all the rafters, and boxed the house up, sealed the floor and the overhead. The stove room was a pretty good-sized room, twelve by sixteen. I never did put a partition in there, so you could use the stove and dinin room parts all together. And just before I finished the house, old lady Molly Ramsey died.

I hauled lumber until the mill shut down. They just cut this country out of wood, cut this country out of wood. I laid with em to the end, too. People come here from all parts of Alabama and people come out of Georgia too, durin of the operation of the mill. I've known
six mules and three two-horse wagons to come out of the state of Georgia, work for the Graham-Pike Lumber Company, haulin lumber, and stuck at it as much as a year. Fellow by the name of Ball, white man, brought two colored fellows over here and a pair of mules to each man, and put his son, one of his big boys, to a pair of mules. Put em all over here haulin lumber, three wagons, six mules—and talk about beatin mules and brutally treatin em, it was goin on regular with that crowd.

I was haulin lumber out from up close to a place they call Jerome, some folks used to call it Gem Stone, way out there between Apafalya and Crane's Ford, near Newcastle. One mornin I was later gettin to the yard than they was, and they had done got in there and loaded and left before I got loaded, and when I come on out cross Sitimachas and got in there between Sitimachas and Elam Church, goin to Apafalya, right there on top of a big hill stood two of old man Ball's wagons, and the third wagon bout halfway up. Them wagons was all loaded too heavy, long hauls to make, bout a ten-mile haul from the yard to the mill. I never would pull a load of lumber right from the mill into Apafalya with more—or less—than a thousand feet. My mules managed it like a top, a thousand feet of dry lumber. A little old triflin pair of mules could make it with that, and when I'd get on them long hills, I wouldn't say nothin to my mules until I did this: that brake lever there to them hind wheels, I kept it hooked right by my seat. I'd pull my mules bout halfway up them long hills then reach for the rope to that lever, snatch it, you'd hear the lever drop in its slot, Plop. I'd tell my mules, “Aaaaaaaaaaayyyyyuuuuuummmmmmm, rrrrrrrrmmmmmmmmmmmmm.”

Got them wheels locked, them mules stopped still, just layin in the collar, restin.

Well, when I drove up behind that Georgia crowd and caught em there on that hill, fightin and beatin them mules, that there white fellow—of course, it was his daddy's mules, he'd handle em any way he wanted; and handle them colored fellows' mules any way he wanted. Quite natural, he had dominion over all them mules. And when I got on that long hill, two of them wagons had made it to the top but one pair of mules had run backwards until they run the back wagon in a ditch and give up complete, wouldn't make a trial at it. That white fellow took him a club of some sort and he beat them mules that didn't make that hill, he beat em over
the head and nostrils. I stopped my wagon, got off and walked up there and looked at him. And he done beat one of them mules till it was bleedin at the mouth.

I said, “Don't do that. It's wrong to treat him thataway.”

I had feelin and sympathy for dumb brutes. I said, “Take em out, I'll pull your wagon out; take them mules loose.”

I knowed what I could do. I'd been doin folks—when they'd overload their mules, goin up steep grades and not lettin em rest. O, I couldn't stand to see it. I went on back down the road there to the foot of the hill where my team was standin, took em loose from my wagon, sidetracked em, took em loose and went up there and hitched em to that white man's wagon and pulled him out. My mules just walked up that hill like babies.

I been blessed in my life, I was sure-shod, sure-shod. In all the years I hauled lumber for the Graham-Pike Lumber Company I never did break even a wagon wheel down. Never had no wagon trouble but a wear-out. I wore out one wagon and bought a new one, kept a rollin. When a wagon come up condemned with me it just wore out.

M
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. E
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IKE
and Mr. Duncan Walls was the only men in Apafalya that sold that number one timothy hay—Mr. Ed kept it at the planin mill for his hands. And it was such a choice hay for stock to eat. Best hay ever I heard of or fed my stock on in the whole of my life, number one timothy hay. Stock loved that hay—them people out in the country where they was raisin that hay and shippin it about, they took care of it and made first class hay out of it by handlin it right and cuttin it just at the right time. You never found no rotten mess amongst that hay. Well, my mules dearly loved it. They'd eat it just as soon as they'd eat that high-grade sweet feed. And they got to where they wouldn't eat corn raised on my farm, so I bought it for em regular.

I went to Apafalya one day to buy a load of that hay. Mr. Pike didn't have none at the time and I wanted a ton too because I had my horses at home plowin and I wanted hay for them just like my mules et. As long as the Graham-Pike Lumber Company stayed in this country I kept a pair of good mules on the job and a pair of horses at home with my boys, plowin.

So I asked Mr. Walls, “Mr. Walls, you got any hay on hand? I want a ton for my stock.”

He said, “Nate, I aint got a bit, but I got a carload comin.”

I said, “If I can get a ton of it, Mr. Walls, just take my name down and your money's ready when the hay come.”

His hay come and he dropped me a card. I hitched my mules to my wagon and taken that oldest boy of mine with me to pick up that hay. He was big enough to help me considerably at that time. Had a good two-horse wagon with a new bed on it and that dandy pair of mules. Mr. Ed Pike weighed them mules, I went to his gin one day and he put em on the scale together. Mr. Pike was runnin a gin there at Apafalya too. When the woods was all cut out and the lumber operation begin to cease off, he bought a gin house out and opened up his own gin there in town. And when he quit ginnin he stayed on there awhile. I had to crawl off that lumber haulin by it gettin lighter and I decided I'd better ease and put my best attention back to the farm.

So I loaded the hay that mornin, just stacked it pretty right there in town and roped it down good to where it wouldn't have fell if my mules hadn't run away with me.

I drove out with that ton of hay and got to the graveyard on the west side of Apafalya—the white people has a church there they call Jerusalem Church, Primitive Baptist denomination. And just as I got there even with the front end of the graveyard I met up with a colored fellow on a Ford car. I knowed him well; his name was Hiram Frond. And I looked up the road there at Jerusalem cemetery and I seed Hiram Frond drivin toward me, eatin up the road. My mules stopped still, I couldn't budge em. One of em was a black mule and the other was a bay-colored mule. And that black mule pitched a fit there. She just stretched out on the ground and I was settin so high on top of them twenty-six bales of hay, ton of hay, until I didn't have no purchase to hold them mules like I should have. And that Mary mule just squatted down, stretched out her front feet and buried her head between em. That fool mule—she was a big mule, fat and round, she just patted the ground. I'd been handlin them mules and I thought I could manage em in any situation but I was mistaken. I ought to have considered I was in a devil of a place to hold em. If I'd a swung down on em, my force would have pushed that hay out from under me.

I told Hiram Frond—he sidetracked his car. I was in the road and he pulled over next to the ditch and the ditch was just deep enough to shake up a wagon whenever a wagon wheel dropped in there. He stopped sharp and when he stopped I tried to quiet the mule down and get her up. She had done squatted, stretched out in the middle of the road. Well, that other mule, that unnerved her. But I got em quiet and I thought I'd make it. I beckoned for Hiram Frond to come on. He started to move off and my black mule just stayed flat out on the road. And he drove on with a wheel in the ditch, tryin to ease by. That doggone Mary mule kept her eye on the nose of that Ford and I just kept beckonin to him to go on by, and he drove on by just as easy as he could. Soon as he done that, that mule jumped up and when she first moved off she moved off jumpin. Well, the other mule couldn't do a thing; both mules weighed about the same and it seemed like nary one of em had a advantage over the other. And it frustrated that Dela mule and she got to stampedin too. They put out to runnin and when they runned off, Hiram Frond stopped to look back at me. Them mules run a piece, then whirled around to the left and when they done that, the wagon dipped down in that little sink and bounced and bounced and just the time they pulled the wagon out of there they was headin, looked like, right for that cemetery gate. I couldn't hold em and the hay commenced a givin way. It was roped but it weren't roped substantious to be up as high as it was.

I raised up and jumped off and when I jumped off I fell right against one of them blackjack trees—big blackjack grove of trees there—I fell clear against the roots of it. I was so high on that hay, when I hit the ground I couldn't handle myself, couldn't hold up myself. Down I went, my right shoulder hard against the roots of the blackjack tree. I held them lines and they drug me away from that tree and when I looked and knowed anything I was just rollin and wallowin right up under that front wheel. I flung them lines away. Them mules draggin me and pullin that wagon too, just like a sand-sifter runnin. And when I turned em loose they got right sure enough. Looked like they was headed straight for the cemetery gate and they gradually turned. And when they turned, makin it back to the road that I just come up along, I looked up on the wagon and Calvin was sittin up there. I commenced a beckonin him to jump off, beckonin him to jump off. And he raised up and jumped.