All God's Dangers (67 page)

My wife would come to prison and tell me bout every move they made. Vernon moved my family—he taken over that job from me. Him and his mother, they would consult each other about it and make the move. And whatever part of my native family was still with their mother, they'd move with em.

I had three children grown when I was arrested, their own men and woman, two boys—I don't count my sister's boy—Calvin and Vernon, and one girl, Rachel. Calvin was the oldest; Rachel was well past eighteen years old—girl considered grown at eighteen, she could walk off and marry if she wanted to. Vernon, the youngest one of them three children, he was just past twenty-one years old. And he was the boss of all the farmin; I turned it over in his hands when I was put in jail and looked into the future, seed I was headin to the penitentiary. Francis was the next boy grown after Vernon, and Vernon, Francis, Eugene, and Garvan was the four
boys left there with their mother. Garvan was too little to work; Eugene was just big enough to start off.

Calvin Thomas, my oldest boy, he married in a year or less time after they pulled me out of my family. I reckon that he was already engaged to marry when I was arrested; hadn't said a word about it to his mother or father but I could tell in the way he was correspondin a certain girl that he intended to marry her.

And so, I'd come home to the Leeds place on weekend parole—home was where my family was. I'd drop in there on a Saturday, bout the middle of the evenin—I seed they was makin heavy crops, good crops. The government weren't furnishin em no more; they fell back on white people that would help em. Rocked along and eventually Vernon got in business with Mr. Van Kirkland between here and Beanville. He runs a store there at a place they call Tukabahchee City; it aint a city, really, just a crossroads and a shoppin place. Mr. Van Kirkland took Vernon over as far as furnishin; Vernon bore a good recommendation as a workin boy—and his daddy was known to be a workin man.

So, when I'd come home, I'd bring my wife some money off of what I was allowed to make for myself in prison. I'd come home or she'd come to Wetumpka—I had just a little over ten years hung to me when I got to Wetumpka, out of twelve. I come home in '45, and before I come home a free man, I'd come home on visits; and whenever I'd come home I'd put some money in my wife's hands.

She asked me one day, said, “Darlin, where do you get this money to give me when I come to you or when you come home? You aint no gambler and no thief noway and no rogue. Where do you get it?”

I smiled and said, “Be honest with you and tell you. The Lord provides many things but He don't provide money. I'm on my old job, makin baskets and bottomin chairs. I realize you and the children is at home by yourselves. I'm not there to help do nothin. I just have to take your word for what you need and how you gettin along—”

But I could see for myself they weren't sufferin at home for nothin—only for their father, and my wife, her husband. She was worried at all times for me, but I weren't havin no hard way to go—just a matter of bein away from her and the children. That was hard on my mind but prison didn't touch my body. I grew older, that's all, by twelve years. And durin that time, Hannah's health
begin to go bad. She begin to complain bout her health when she'd come over there to see me and when I'd come home. Just enough for me to have a doubt that she was well.

H
ANNAH
come to prison one day and told me—she had three things she'd call me: she'd call me by my natural name sometimes if she wanted to ask me something, but her usual way of callin me was “darlin”—she called me “darlin” that day—or “boy.” Mighty seldom she called me Nate. And never called me Shaw. I called her “gal” or “darlin,” I seldom called her Hannah. She was a Ramsey girl when I married her, Hannah Ramsey. Me and her stayed husband and wife and would have stayed longer if the Lord hadn't taken her, forty long years—and that weren't enough for me.

So, she come to me in prison one day, told me, “Darlin, we lost Dela—”

That was the best mule I had; she weren't no better workin mule than the other one, but she was more agreeable. She didn't want you to hit her with the line, she didn't want you to squall at her. And she was the best quality mule—

Well, I blamed Vernon for that; it aint a woman's job to dictate on stock and outside stuff if there's a man to do it. I sure hated it but it couldn't be helped. My wife told me—I just dropped my head and thought over it, soon forgot about it; weren't no use for me to worry about it. She said, “We lost Dela the other day. Vernon put her and Mary in the field—” Now that mule had got attached to that stuff and took a bellyache once before—butterbean vines and them old butterbean hulls, and they frostbitten too. A mule will eat em and it'll kill him. A mule don't belch up nothin and chew it over like a cow. When that mule chews up and swallows, it's goin out the other end.

So, Vernon put that mule in the pasture—they lost Dela on the Jenks place. White man since bought the land from Warren Jenks, turned around and sold it to another set of white people, by the name of Bailey, Bailey people. One Bailey bought one side of the road and the other Bailey bought the other side. And this Bailey that bought the side my people used to live on, he died and left it in the hands of his wife and two boys. Both of them boys married out and one of em livin in that house now, the home house, house
that controls the place. So, when my wife and children was livin there, Vernon turned them mules out in the pasture, Mary and Dela; and there was a garden beside of that road at that time, from the house runnin down to the crossroads. And the fence along that road runned around the outgrounds of the pasture to the lot. That garden was separated from the pasture by a less substantious barb wire fence. Them mules of mine was good quality mules but that wouldn't keep em from tryin to get out of a pasture that got a fence around it—take away the fence and maybe they wouldn't want to leave the pasture. And so, Vernon put em in the pasture and that Dela mule, my wife told me, she went around there and she was hard to keep away from that garden regardless to the wire fence. Fooled around and she et them butterbean vines and them old frostbitten butterbean hulls. A butterbean hull has got a point to em and they'll clog a animal. She et all she wanted and it killed her dead as a nail.

V
ERNON
and Eugene, when farm labor would cease down, cut logs for Mr. Jim Pike for several years. And in that, they carried down my '28 Chevrolet car. Drivin to the sawmill and rippin up and down the road huntin gals—Vernon married, Francis married; well, as long as the boys was runnin after their gals on my car, drivin to the sawmill and takin all them long trips to see me—drove that sedan car down. And when they done that, there was a white man come over there and wanted to buy—that motor never did give up, but the upholstery went bad—white man tried to buy that motor. But I told my wife when she come to see me, “No, don't sell the motor out of my car. I might could do somethin with it when I gets home.”

She told me the car run until the last, but it got so raggedy and other parts begin to fall out of it and break down.

I said, “Just keep that car. I be home and I might want to make me a wood saw, might hang me a wood saw to that motor.”

And when they come to see me after that, they was drivin on a different car—car that Vernon and my wife had bought. And
it
was a Chevrolet. This here car I left em with was a sedan but the one that they come to see me on was just a common two-door car at that. And they owned two different cars before I could come
home in the twelve years' time. They had a way to come, always, and nary a car never stopped along the road.

Got to where I begin goin home regular to the Pottstown beat, twice a month on weekends. Good God, what more could it take to satisfy me than that? Miss Phoebe Burnside told me, “Nate, you got a A first class record. You never have gived no trouble here in anybody's remembrance. When you want to go home, you aint got to ask me to let you go. Just tell me
where
you goin and hit the road and get gone.”

Well, in my comins home, weekends and Christmas, quite natural, I taken a interest in the farm business. I weren't there regular enough to dominate it, and I looked and I listened at more than I spoke up for. So, I come home one Christmas after Dela died eatin them things, and Vernon had sowed some oats up there in the field. I plowed Mary some, helped him plow them oats. Mary was thin then. But I couldn't exactly fall all the way out with the boys about her condition—I knowed the mule was gettin a little age on her, but I had sense enough to know a mule's age aint goin to make her fall off. But why I kept cool about that mule lookin like she was lookin when I come home that Christmas—she was just a grand rascal, she wouldn't try to take care of herself—I had kept her fat; she weighed a little over eleven hundred pounds once, and she was heavy enough to try and pull things her way with them boys. But she was rippin and a rarin at all times, as scared of a car as I'd be standin naked before a bear and nothin to hit him with. She'd drag you off if a car come along close to her.

Soon after I come back to prison off the Leeds place, Mary died, my poor Mary. That man Watson had told me to give him the mules—told me right there in Beaufort jail—give him the mules because them mules was goin to kill my boys. But my boys done killed my mules, they did, by the way they treated em. If I'd a been at home, that old mule woulda been fat, and that first mule, that Dela mule, she wouldn't a roamed out by no butterbean patch. If I'd a been at home and livin—I'm yet livin, and them mules' bones is somewhere layin on the dead hill white.

W
HEN
I went off to prison I was a able-bodied man, my wife was a able-bodied woman, and we lost nearly all our nature activity. I taken it pretty hard at the start; but after several years, I begin to
come home on parole, weekends. And that was every other week. And when I weren't comin home, she was comin to where I was. And I made a record that they allowed us to get together to do anything we wanted, nobody around us. Not in the cell—had special outhouses for just such purposes. Right there at Wetumpka, I stayed there a little over ten long years and durin most of those years wasn't a time she come to me but what we couldn't—we could even get out—of course, I never did make it a practice of carryin my wife out in the woods, but there was places, outhouses. They weren't no prepared houses for nature affairs but I could look after that. Every Sunday that I wanted to, I'd take my bed up, roll up my mattress and carry it to one of them houses. Hannah'd come visit me, why, we'd have a clean place to go—

With me, and I expect with them other prisoners, it had a great bearin on my married life. I had my pleasure, my wife had her pleasure, didn't have to seek our pleasure nowheres else. We was livin—whenever she come to see me, we had a privilege of actin like husband and wife. And they allowed others the privilege. But them that was sentenced up there from the far counties and their wives couldn't come regular, didn't have the means, they suffered.

Nature-privilege weren't gived to us, exactly, by the officers at the prison. These places was available, though, and they wouldn't try to keep the prisoners out of em. But nothin said, they left it up to you. Everybody understood what nature was and they didn't try to buck it. Only, you couldn't mess with them prisoner women; they bucked that like the devil. But the prisoner women could have their men folks come in there.

My wife told me many a time after I come out of prison, “Darlin, I believe that I'd a gived birth to another heir if you hadn't a been off like you was.” And she come close, no doubt, even with my bein off. But she changed lives while I was gone and it weren't possible after that.

I've told Josie, this woman I got for a wife now, I've said, “That is one of the greatest privileges God ever gived, for a man to have pleasure with a woman and a woman to have pleasure with a man.” You take me today, I done got on them borders, I don't worry my wife like I done before—I say
worry
, it weren't no worry, but I just can't handle myself like I could when I was young. And she'll get to where she'll pass it up, won't worry herself about it.

T
HERE
was nothin under God's sun, as far as earthly things, that suited me better in this world than gettin back to my wife. I was scared many a day that I was goin to hear talk of her bein serious sick someway and I knowed that woulda tore me all to pieces. I'd been away from home so long—I kept my wife and children on my mind at all times, practically. And my wife was comin to me and I could see that her health was leavin her for some cause, I didn't know.

And I was givin her so much money right along. She said, “I'm goin to save some of this money so you'll have some”—she'd a done it too—“when you come home.”