All God's Dangers (59 page)

They was all colored prisoners in there with me, but they had
a right smart whites in some of the other cells. Kept the races strictly to theirselves and O, good God, they had white prisoners some and it looked like a lot when I'd see em all together, but they had enough more colored prisoners than they had white. And at that time, they didn't work them whites out in the field—had the colored in the field and the whites at the cotton mill or stayin behind in the cells, superintendin and cleanin up for the whites that was out.

They had me choppin cotton under a field guard—white, white, white man. The state had him hired over we prisoners. And the cotton we raised went to the state and the state sold it. I stayed there long enough to see one crop ginned at the state gin right there on the premises. The prison yard was covered with cotton. I couldn't tell how many bales they made but they runned several plow squads and dozens of field hands. And they didn't leave a weed in the field, them fields was picked clean. Weren't no tractors then and I don't know that the prison department now got no tractors—they want you to labor there. But if they has changed their rulins and they usin tractors over there now, no one tractor could cultivate that field.

Every bit of the food we et come off of that farm. That farm was doin better, accordin to the yield, really, than the farms out here at home. And the prisoners was eatin better, in a way, than folks was on the outside. They gived us fried eggs, good biscuits, syrup, meat, cake, cheese, vegetables—you couldn't kick about the food.

But it was hell to anybody there that couldn't stand prison ways and wouldn't obey. I stayed twelve years in prison and there never was the weight of a pocket knife laid on me. I never did ask for no favors but they'd grant me many a privilege. But I don't give em no credit when it comes down to right and justice; in my deep thoughts I don't give the prison department and the state of Alabama no credit for the way I went through prison. I give credit to those people in the northern states that was standin up for me.

I always stood good under my boss man at Spignor—never did dog me. They had more boss men—field bosses—for that whole passel of different squads than you could shake a stick at. All them boss men at Spignor knowed what I was sent up for but they all pretended to like me. One of em
did
like me—called him Captain Evans. He ruled a squad of hoe hands and I heard him tell another white man, “These Tukabahchee boys is good hands, good hands.”

It weren't left with that boss man out in the field, it was up to
the deputy warden and the head warden, who he had in his squad. Them boss men couldn't get out there and change no men; they had to work with what the warden give em. And they had to produce. If a boss man got stuck with a squad of lazy hands, it looked bad for him. They all had their own ways to get a man to work: some of em made rough talk, rough acts—but the colored man was used to havin the white man lookin over his shoulder all the time; that was the main way of life in this country since slavery days. They never had to step on my tail to get me to work. I was my own man before they put me in prison; I didn't work under white men but four years and I got out. Worked for Mr. Curtis two years, worked for Mr. Ames two years, then I quit. Bossed my own business after that. I was just one of them colored fellows that worked like a slave to get out from under this workin on halves. And when I done it I commenced a drivin my own mules and wagons up and down the road, drivin automobiles in time. I knowed how to work. And I tried to be my own man in prison—I worked!

M
Y
name had rung so until the man that issued out mail every day at dinner, mail call—I walked up when he called my name one evenin. He looked at me, said, “Your name Nate Shaw?”

Told him, “Yes sir.”

“I'm goin to kill you.”

What he said that for, I couldn't definitely pick it out; it was a matter, probably, of him carryin somebody else's hatred for me. Surely
he
had no reason to hate me. He weren't the warden and he weren't the deputy; he stayed in that office and handed out mail. He was a free man, must have been. But he didn't stay there long after I got there. They transferred him away from there some way or other, and it was a kind of hush-mouthed thing. So I never learnt what he was all about.

I just decided they was tryin me, see what was in me, and I played a nice hand with em. One day Captain Evans was ridin his horse along with his squad in the field and I was in that squad. Had us choppin cotton. And I noticed him sittin on that horse with his pocket knife, whittlin on a stick, but I paid him no attention. After a while he called me: “Nate.”

“Yes sir, Captain.” Looked up in his face, on his horse.

He said, “I dropped my pocket knife out there—” let it be a
evil trick or let it be a accident, he said, “I dropped my pocket knife out there. Yonder it lay, right yonder.”

Well, he was as far from that knife as he was from me. I wondered to myself, how did he drop that pocket knife way out there and him sittin here on his horse? I believe he pitched it out there when I wasn't watchin. I was steady choppin cotton.

He said, “Hand it to me,” and he pointed his finger at it.

I thought to myself, that was mighty queer. I tried to glean his meaning: he lettin me get that knife in my hand for some purpose he had in his mind. I might pick up the knife and try to use it on him, or grab it and run. But I weren't that kind of fool, I didn't have that kind of principle in me. I went and picked the knife up and it was wide open. Put the blade end in my hand and handed him the handle, in place of handin him the blade. I could have jugged him with it, just a little easy trick, but it'd been too bad for me to do that.

Captain Evans, Homer Evans was his name. I just turned the blade in my hand and gived him the handle. He thanked me kindly and I went right on back and picked up my hoe, went on choppin cotton. No evil acts in the matter.

A
LL
of them boss men at Spignor rode horses, kept their weapons up there with em, from a pocket knife to a shotgun layin across the horn of that saddle. And they weren't shy to use em.

They had a pick at a prisoner in my squad one day, some trouble come up against him. And the deputy warden come out to the field to talk over the trouble with the boss man. And after a while they called this fellow out from amongst the other men to come up and explain his side of the trouble and give over to em, the officials, the man that was carryin the squad and the deputy warden. They got to talkin at him and he listened a bit, then he just started walkin off from the field, leavin the squad—one of these block-headed contrary fellows; turned and walked away from em while they was talkin to him. Made out like they wasn't there. The boss man told him, “Stop!” But he just kept a walkin.

This man, he had stole a radio and they put him in prison for it and they called him Radio. Heap of times, you in prison for a certain thing and they mark you, they know you by what you done, throw it up at you.

“Stop, Radio, stop!”

He didn't stop. The boss man took up his shotgun and shot at Radio, but he shot in the air over his head. The nigger got scared then and he stopped. Next thing, they removed him from the squad.

That was the first shootin took place in the squad around me. I just stood still, I didn't move. But when this boss man over this hoe squad out there said, “Stop,” the fellows in the squad commenced a scatterin and the officials bid them all to stand still. “We aint goin to shoot you.” And didn't do it neither. Them prisoners huddled down then like partridges in a drove, the ones that they wasn't after. They caught their man when Radio give up to em and whatever they was after him for, they settled it.

They shot another fellow, sprinkled him good. He was a rude rascal, pretty heavy-built, dark complexioned. And he had been buckin their orders for some time. And the deputy warden come out to the field to investigate the matter. And if he couldn't cool down everything quiet, it would go before the head warden. So he called this prisoner to him to explain hisself. And
he
, too, just took off out of that field, walkin away, peaceable, cowlike. The boss man didn't wait long with him. “Stop—” and he shot, shot
at
him, sprinkled him good. He never did break to run, just walkin.

Well, they transferred him out of Spignor and he got killed, too, after he got transferred. He kept on with his disobedience till he went down. And also, before he got killed he lost one of his legs. Well, I don't know how come for him to lose his leg, from shootin or a accident someway. He just couldn't get by in prison: you must obey orders or you can't get by; you'll die before they'll set you free.

I had sympathy for him but I seed he was bringin it on hisself. You must first think and realize that you in a bad place, if you guilty of your crime or not guilty. The main thing to do in prison is be good, obey orders to get
out
of prison. If you don't, you aint treatin your own self right. You in a place that you got no way of helpin yourself, under the laws of the state of Alabama, where I was born and raised. You may be picked up and put in prison and you haven't committed no crime, but if a panel of jurors stand up in court and decide you guilty, you goin to suffer. If you aint guilty but they decide you is, you goin to suffer. I think of my daddy's words—he had a whole lot of good in him and good logic. He done wrong things—I don't say he committed no crimes, I never did know
him to commit a crime. And he had his own theories and he always said, “When you in Rome, you got to take Rome's fare.” Well, that's very truthful, because you got no way of helpin yourself when you land in prison. You got to obey orders if you think anything of yourself because you got your hands in the wolf's mouth then. You got to live the life they demand and work out of it. If you go by orders, you'll protect yourself. Care and think everything as you should for your own life.

I didn't stay at Spignor hardly thirteen months and my wife come to see me every month. She'd come right on to the prison department gate and by who she was they'd let her in. I'd come out of my cell—it'd be on a Sunday—I'd come out and talk with her, see her, touch her. Now there at Spignor, they had a settin room for us to meet; officer standin there with his eyes on us all the time. All right. When they sent me to Wetumpka, I could take my wife—she could come right in the cell and sit down and talk to me, if she had a mind to. I didn't stay but a little over a year at Spignor until they transferred me to Wilcox County, road camp, and I didn't stay there but eight months until they transferred me to Wetumpka prison. And there I made the rest of my sentence; stayed there ten years and that was less than twenty miles from my home.

Spignor weren't over twenty-five or thirty miles from my home. And just before they transferred me—they had made Leroy Roberts a cell attendant, took him out of the field. Had him workin as a hoe hand like me until he commenced a complainin—he had a old case of Parkinson's disease and they was shootin him up regular for it. His blood was bad, that's all I could tell. Leroy was a kind of sleepy-headed fellow; he'd set down anywhere and be sleepin in five minutes, in the raw daytime. He'd set up at the dinin room table many a time at Spignor and go to sleep. And so the officials got to noticin that—they didn't never accuse him of makin believe—and they took him out of the field and made him a cell attendant. There weren't no work to that at all. And by the time they transferred me, I was the last fellow out of Tukabahchee County to stay in the field. My job weren't nothin but a hoe job and a water toter. And when the crop was laid by they put me to openin up ditches and cuttin briars off of ditch banks—kept me workin every day at somethin that had to be done, or didn't have to be done, had me
doin it just the same. I didn't put up no mealy-mouth, they weren't workin my guts out. Somebody was standin at the barn door the way they handled me and I had sense enough to know it. I fell on my feet when they dropped me in prison and I stood straight, too, for twelve long years—

So Leroy Roberts come out of the field, and soon Ches Todd did too. I was born and raised up knowin them two. Leroy was fully as old as I was or a little older. And Ches weren't as old as ary one of us. They was first cousins, Ches and Leroy, sister and brother's children.

I'd go to the cell where Leroy was every evenin when we'd check out of the field and I'd say, “Well, Leroy, how you gettin along today? How you feelin?”

Here's what he told me one night—that hurt me, too. I didn't want to hear him talk that way but I couldn't help it.

“Leroy, how you feelin this evenin, old boy? How you comin along?”

He never did tell me he was feelin good. He'd always have his hand to his hip and half-hoppin.

“Don't feel good.”

Last time I asked him, just before they transferred me—“I don't feel good, Shaw, I want to get out of this damn place. I'm goin to send—” O, God, that hurt me—“I'm goin to send for Mr. Watson to come and get me.”

I didn't say a word because I knowed there weren't no help for it. I learnt his nature before we ever left home and was put in prison, and his nature was this: he always thought he was a little bigger than what he was. Leroy Roberts had cut my hair many a time—he was a pretty good barber and he'd been cuttin my hair and cuttin hair for lots of folks for years. All of a sudden he become too big for the job; he fell out with the hair-cuttin trade right then. He weren't no rich man and he weren't no big man, really, but he had at that time a brand new buggy and a young mule. And he was livin, at that particular time, with Mr. Lemuel Tucker right on Mr. Tucker's place. Leroy's house set right on the Pottstown road just below Mr. Tucker's house. And I was over there one Sunday wan tin a haircut. I set there and set there ever so long. He was Leroy Roberts, he weren't no more than that. But he wouldn't cut my hair. His wife knowed me as well as she knowed any other man in the settlement—he had a good wife; her name was Bella. She was
a Cole before Leroy married her. So I set there and set there and she asked Leroy after a while, said, “Lee”—she called him Lee—“how come you don't cut Mr. Shaw's hair? He's waitin on you.” He didn't give her much ground. “I aint cuttin his hair no more; I aint cuttin nobody's hair no more, that's all there is to it.” I never did go to him for no haircut again. It's nothin he knowed against me to keep him from cuttin my hair, nothin under God's sun. He just thought he had come to be more than what he was and took hisself to be a big man. And when this here trouble come up, he went over to Virgil Jones' house that mornin and when he seed what was brewin he hauled it back home. And the mob crowd found him on the road and they shot him up. And if it hadn't a been for Mr. Horace Tucker—there's no tellin where Mr. Horace was when he heard that shootin, but he come along on the road and seed Leroy, picked him up and carried him home.