All God's Dangers (72 page)

I told him, “My scrape is big enough. This here'n's all right; don't worry yourself about it.”

He spoke to me before about that; he believed I'd do better with a larger scrape, but I'd rather use the scrape I had than go borrow one. Weren't nothin my scrape couldn't do. I told him, “It's all right, Thomas—” but I hated to keep a turnin him down, so I said, “Well, if your scrape was out here I'd try it.”

He said, “I'll go right down to the house and get it and bring it down here.”

He went and brought me two of em, and I knocked my scrape off and tried one of his. Well, it was doin the same work, in a way, that my scrape done, but just to accommodate him and show him I appreciated his kindness, I kept a plowin with that scrape of his and he taken the other one and carried it over to the far end of the field so he would have it to go on home with.

When we got to the end I stopped my plow and he said, “Well, Pa Nate, Daddy's sick and I want to go down there and see how he is today.”

I said, “Yes, Thomas, go see about your daddy, how he's gettin along. Keep up with your daddy in his sickness.”

And he took his scrape and I took my plow and he left and went on home. I fell into my next row with his other scrape. I indulged him. So I went on and finished my corn rows, then I
picked up my other scrape that I'd brought out to the field and carried my horse, plow, and all across the swamp and on to home.

Thomas went on home—Mattie Jane said—and he went to visit his daddy that day and he died before he left from there. Had two brothers livin down there—I don't know definitely whether he ever got to his daddy's or not. And all three of them boys was grown—Thomas, Huck, and Walt, all. Well, Thomas died before his daddy died. He got down there and them boys, Huck and Walt both, liked whiskey and home-brew and all such a mess as that. And Thomas liked it hisself. He got down there and he taken sick. But before he died he talked to my wife—she thought a lot of Thomas; that was her daughter, my and her daughter he married. And when Thomas got down, Huck come a runnin up from State Street down there and notified Hannah. She fixed right up and went over to Thomas's and got Mattie Jane and they took off down there. When they got there, Thomas was low—his stomach done swelled up enough to bust. Hannah sent word to me about it. And someway, somehow, Huck and Walt took Thomas to Calusa Hospital and tried to get him in there, but they wouldn't hear to it, wouldn't let him in. All of us was aware that Thomas was in bad shape—stomach done swelled up like a cow bag. And he claimed he drinked a little home-brew down in State Street, after he got there. He owned to my wife, and to his wife, that he drinked just a little, but it didn't take but a little to get him in the shape he was. And it was supposed, by people talkin, that the stuff he drinked was poison. Them boys had been goin around there, Huck and Walt or Walt or Huck—I don't know whether both of em was in it or just one, but some fellow accused em of churnin out this home-brew there, been doin it. So they gived Thomas some and he just drinked a swallow, he said, but it messed him up. And he told Mattie Jane and Hannah that when he went down to Coalhouse hill—used to have a big coalhouse there, goin into Beanville—weren't no bad hill, just a long slope of a hill, and Thomas said a pain struck him durin him walkin down that hill before he ever got to State Street. He wasn't, accordin to his own words, he wasn't just right hisself. And he was goin to see his daddy when a pain struck him on route. Well, he just went on and he got down there and drinked some of that home-brew and it killed him.

Them Galloway boys didn't stand good enough for them people at the hospital to hear at their larceny and take Thomas in. And then, too, he was colored. They taken colored people in that hospital but
they didn't hurry none about it. So, late that evenin, quick as Vernon could get a chance, he took off down there and just picked Thomas right up and carried him to the hospital and weren't no words said. They took him in right there and he died. Died Sunday mornin—a while after sunup Thomas was dead.

Mattie Jane stayed on at Thomas's and her home and me and my wife visited her and looked after her. And she come to our home and stayed some, backwards and forwards until the crop was gathered that fall. I went right on over there and superintended, gathered what little crop Thomas died and left there, and soon as we got that done, I went over there with my wagon and moved Mattie Jane right back in the house with me and her mother, on the Leeds place. They had one little girl when he died, Eva Lu, and in six months' time after the death of her husband, Mattie Jane gived birth to a little boy and she named him Thomas, after the father.

Well, Eva Lu growed along, growed along, and Thomas was a good big boy when Eva Lu finished her schoolin over at State Street and located herself up there in Brooklyn, New York, where Vernon's daughters was. Then this boy got big enough, Eva Lu's brother, and Mattie Jane let him go up there where the girl was. And in about a year or less time, Mattie Jane went up there—followed in her children's footsteps, and she's livin with her daughter today. Eva Lu married a man from across the water somewhere—he weren't a native of the northern states. Colored fellow, and I taken him for a foreigner. I seed him myself, the year I went to Philadelphia and stayed a week with Francis; then, the next week, I landed on over in Brooklyn, New York.

I was down to a one-horse farm. Vernon worked a big field right in front of the house, and then there was another field to the north, and then a field back here west—well, I worked them two fields. Vernon didn't stay up the road but two years, and he moved right back down on Mr. Leeds' place where I was.

Mr. Leeds was a white fellow that lived in Phenix City, close to the river dividin Phenix City and Columbus, Georgia. I got on
the car with Vernon one day, drove there and Vernon consulted with him bout their business. I met Mr. Leeds and far as I ever knowed of him, he seemed to be a right fair and clever man.

So, Mr. Leeds built Vernon a house on the same plantation that I was livin on. Vernon moved in there and me and his mother stayed on in the old house. And he was workin at Calusa at that time and he hired a hand to work his part of the place and I worked the rest. I was controllin my own affairs but I had to come strictly under the government's orders.

When I come out of prison, I went under the allotment. The government allowed you to plant so much acreage in cotton. And all over that—they kept you checked after you planted; they gived you orders to plant so much and after you planted your crop, regardless to what condition it was—how pretty it was didn't help—if you had over the amount they allowed you to have, you had to plow it under. I had to plow—sometimes I'd plow up a little corner. The government rider made it convenient for me, plowed up the sorriest, down to specification.

They left it to you to plant whatever you wanted to on the rest of your land. I looked at it this way: it might be a discrimination on the poor farmer to cut down on
his
crop, but the government was helpin the poor colored people more than anybody else. It was the best thing ever was done until then—to allow the government to rule over this crop business. Let the government fix the acres and control the prices, let em set the interest rates. It's just a better deal for the colored race all the way through than to let these people here preside, the Watsons and the Graces and the other moneyed men.

The government done stepped in and forbidded these white people of sellin the cotton off their place if a nigger made it. Good God that skunked em—allowin folks to sell their own crop. And the government rulin was this: it matters not whose place you workin on and how you workin—jumped in there and slapped that seal on—if you make that cotton on a white man's place, you sell that cotton too; white man couldn't sell it, even if you workin on down to halves. Used to be in this country, if a colored man was farmin on a white man's place the white man would sell it, specially if he was workin on halves, specially. The government stopped that thing, cut it off smack. They didn't like that here, these white folks, but they had to bear it.

Negro workin on halves with the white man, the government was issuin checks to both of em, a check to the white man and a check to the Negro, both of em receivin checks for takin the white man's land
out
of cultivation. Under government rulins. But it started off, they'd send both of them checks to the white man, and the white man was takin it all and puttin it in his pocket. The government found it out and called the thing in question and after bonin the white man about it someway, they just finally quit and sent the nigger his check and the white man his. Made a division then. White man didn't like for the government to pay the nigger for either farmin on his land or
not
farmin. O, good God, they swore and kicked against that like a mule kickin in a stable. There's one white lady in this settlement said, “The very idea of a Negro drawin money on our land!” She didn't like it at all. But I never did learn what white woman that was. Nigger tell you a thing, heap of times he won't tell you who it come from cause he's scared.

The government started these issues while I was in prison and they was makin a separate division in the checks when I come out. And there's white people tried to defeat the new rulins by pasturin their land for cattle, prohibitin the poor nigger from workin that land in crops. Just drivin the Negro back, let him root pig and die poor. Pasturin this land and the Negro and poor white man ought to be workin it for their support, but the big white man cuddled up over it just because he got a deed.

The news come to me right out of Tuskegee and I'm satisfied it's true. White man had been hirin colored folks to keep his land shrubbed off so it'd grow grass for his cattle. And he was so eager to make money he quit hirin the niggers to keep that land clean; went out there and throwed poison on every livin plant but the grass. By God, they tell me he killed his cattle by that act. Quit hirin the nigger, wanted to keep the nigger down, freeze him out any way he could.

One white man, fellow by the name of Levi Wheeler, I knowed him like I know the fingers on my hand, he told a cousin of mine one day— Now, this was pretty soon after I got grown and married, but the history of it carries into today. My daddy lived on the old Wheeler place, old man Frank Wheeler; there was several of them old Wheeler boys—Doc Wheeler, Henry Wheeler, Cyrus Wheeler, Frank Wheeler—all them was old man Judge Wheeler's sons. And
this Cyrus Wheeler had two girls and two boys—Mitchell Wheeler and Levi Wheeler, them was the boys; Iris Wheeler and Blanche Wheeler was the girls. I knowed em all, knowed em after they got grown. Them girls married and went away from here south, I don't know where they went. And Mitchell Wheeler married old man Tom Ward's daughter, and Levi married old man Hamp Lovelace's daughter. Now Levi Wheeler is dead, Mitchell Wheeler is dead, and the girls maybe is dead; them girls never did stay about in this country after they got grown, but Mitchell and Levi did. Mitchell never did own no land after his daddy died and left him a home. He fooled around and sold that out and moved to town, him and his wife, this Ward girl. Levi lived on in the country with the Lovelaces, who Levi married in the family of. Hamp Lovelace lived on a road out from Apafalya goin into Crane's Ford and Newcastle. And after so many years, Levi bought him a pretty large place right there at Zion Church, between here and Apafalya, and he built him a nice home and he died. One of his boys is livin right there today and farmin.

And Levi told a cousin of mine one day—Malcolm Todd was the man he told—he was a mighty big talker; I knowed him well as I knowed any white man. Got to talkin bout first one thing then another—northern people, the government; and told him, “Well, if the north sends down any money or anything usable here, the white people gets all they want and if there's anything left, then the niggers can get some.” And it carried on just like he said until recent days. That was a ugly act.

Got to where one white man was accused about it, caught him—the government had started sendin groceries out to certain places for em to be handed out. Caught one white man around here sellin his niggers that stuff. They was workin on halves with him and the colored was talkin bout it: didn't let his niggers go get the groceries—he had that thing fixed. Anything that was handed out, why, nigger go to the field, go to plowin, white man go to Tuskegee or anywhere they was givin it out and get it for his niggers, bring it home and sell em the groceries they was supposed to be gettin free, accordin to the government's rulins. They never did jail this one white man about it or arrest him, but he had to dance up to it. Some of em, even up here at Pottstown, they'll resack that stuff, resack it and sell it to the niggers.

O
NE
white man—the government's orders and rulins was to quit workin these colored children on their farms when they oughta been in school. Government sent a man around the country watchin for colored children workin in the white man's field. And one day, there in the neighborhood of Tuskegee, one of the watchmen passed and he seed a squad pickin cotton across the field and he noticed there was several colored in it—he was sharp, he knew it, accordin to the way I heard it. He got out of his vehicle and walked off across the field goin to this crowd of colored pickin cotton—a few whites in it, but mostly it was colored. And he watchin, travelin toward em, he seed all them colored chaps quit pickin and hit it for the swamps. He smelt a rat—but he went right on till he got to the white man that was out there bossin that crowd. Questioned him bout seein that squad of children runnin to the swamps and the woods. Asked him who was they? He seed who it was, a lot of colored. The white man cried it was his children, but this man knew he didn't have that many children and them colored, too; he just lyin to him. So he gived him a good talk—that's the way the news come to me; I was very eager to find out anything I could and when I found out things like that it gived me pleasure. He warned that white man against such as that. He gived him enough to let him know he didn't believe they was his children—he knowed a gang of em was colored children. Said he told him, when he got done talkin with him, “Don't let that happen no more; you'll catch it if you do.” That put a scare on him and he ceased at it.