All God's Dangers (74 page)

I told Vernon, “Tell you what I'm goin to do. I'm goin to get in there and cut them corn stalks, cut em down with a hoe, and then I'm goin back, I'm just goin to pick up every corn stalk in reach of them ditches where the terraces is broke and the land washin away, I'm goin to fill up them ditches partly, as good as I can, and then I'm goin to pile em in on them terraces and stomp em down. And then I'm goin to take my scoop—” I had a scoop, that big mare to pull it—“I'm goin to take my scoop and scoop off dirt from where it can spare it, gradually, and I'm goin to dump it on them corn stalks in them terraces and in them washes, and I'm goin to weight it down. This fall, I'm goin to hitch the wagon and go out to the woods and pine forests and cut a whole lot of pine limbs and brush—this fall and winter—and I'm goin to haul them to the field by the load, as much as it takes. I'm goin to put the small stuff in them ditches and when I get to the terraces I'm goin to put in limbs and everything and stomp it down.”

He said, “Papa, you can't stop it with them corn stalks, especially in one year.”

I said, “Well, son, we'll see about that.”

I had a heap to work practically everywhere I went to try to save my crop from water washin across it, terraces breakin. I knowed what it took to fix em. Built terraces on the Pollard place; already had terraces but they had been upset and bummed up in a way until the waters had cut ditches through em. That Pollard place was bad on terraces; it was hilly, terraces wouldn't hold.

So, I cut them corn stalks and stomped em down in them washes, just stomped em and piled em up, kept a pilin until I made a hump there at them cut through places. And I went on a plowin. Never did a bit more water go down across that field. I cut it off right then.

Of course, them corn stalks begin to cave and give in some by the last of the year. So I piled more pine limbs and pine brush on the terraces and I'd always stick the growth part of the brush up the hill, and that'd hold em. That place don't wash today—Vernon got it in pasture now. I believe I saved that land, caught it when there was still land to save.

Then turned around and there was a new ground, just across the hollow from this land, and that field contained at least ten or twelve acres until it got down to a swamp. Some of the timber in that swamp woulda squared up six inches. Took my ax and cleared it out; took my gray mare and that mule I bought from Garvan, hitched em to my wagon and hauled them logs out from there and up to the house for wood. And just across that swamp was another new ground, four or five acres covered with sweet gum stumps—O, if I haven't worked since I been in this world and a heap of it since I been out of the penitentiary—I took my mattock and shovel and ax and went out in that new ground where you couldn't hardly see nothin but stumps. Couldn't drive a plow twenty feet without takin up the roots of them sweet gum stumps, then twenty feet more and hangin up again.

I told Vernon, “I'm goin to take them stumps up out of that field, goin to get em.”

One day he come from Calusa work and he looked over way across that field from the house, way back toward the backside of his plantation; he said, “Papa, what's all that shinin out yonder, all that dirt piled up; look like hogs been rootin it up?”

I said, “That's where I'm takin up them stumps.”

I'd gone to work and taken up eleven two-horse wagonloads of stumps. Now, takin up old sweet gum stumps, and loadin em, and haulin em out the field, they raggedy and rooty, tear up a heap of ground gettin em up—digged em up, had to dig em up, shovel back the dirt to get at them roots, take my ax down close, clean out around that hole, go down and cut em every one. Well, them stumps, it didn't take many of em to make a wagonload. Hauled em to the house and piled em on the woodpile and let em dry out there. And the next winter, I took my ax and cut the long roots off them stumps, took them pieces in the house and used em in the fire.

Some of them stumps, I'd turned em out in the woods, them that was too big to haul; but I hauled eleven two-horse wagonloads to the house. Talk about work—

Some of em predicted, some of my color who was weak, if I must say so, as goat shit—they figured I done the worst thing I could have ever done, joinin that organization. I had colored people to tell me to my face—and what was it but talkin in the white folks' favor—“You done wrong; you had no business doin what you done.” Some of these same people run their tongues against me: “O, Nate Shaw won't be no count when he comes out of prison; they goin to work him to death and he aint goin to be able to do a thing.” But I figured it this way: it wasn't a matter they cared so much for me—of course, they didn't care a lick—they didn't want to be chased around here theirselves. They jumped sky high away from that union and if I was punished, ruint, you might say, that'd turn a heap of good folks away from the very idea of the union.

The truth of it, I done less work in prison than I ever done outside. I didn't do a hard year's labor in twelve, not a year. I done more work in pullin out them stumps than I done all the years I was in prison. I'd a been sittin on top of the world if I hadn't had no more work to do after I come back home than I had in prison. But how come I had such a easy time in prison? How come? It was what was behind me, I put it all to that; it was them that was standin for me and God above.

T
HERE
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a secret in this union somewhere and I aint never understood it. They talked to me about it, that this union come from across the waters, and they called it a “soviet” union. It was said to me by some of the white folks at my trial. I don't know what that means—they didn't say and I'm not a readin man, I been kept back from the knowledge of a heap of things. This colored man that was workin in this field, who started out this union in this country, he never did tell where he come from, he never gived it in my presence. But wherever he come from, and wherever the union come from, if it started up in the United States or started up across the water, he never did tell what native he was. But I realize that a poor little cat like me is handicapped from findin out all the secrets of this world. Little cats like me will never know who started it and how it started and where it started—

It was a thing that I never did thoroughly understand and get the backgrounds of it, but I was man enough to favor its methods.
My head and heart had been well loaded about the condition and the welfare of the poor—I couldn't stand it no more. I jumped in that organization and my name rings in it today. I haven't apologized to my Savior for joinin; it was workin for right. A man had to do it.

Time passed off me in prison, it just passed off. I come out—I was fifty-nine years old when I come out—and in three years' time I built a house, and the next year I cleaned up a pasture for Vernon, filled in his terraces and saved the land, cut out them old sweet gum stumps so you could drive a plow steady and not hang yourself up every way you stepped and tumble over the plow handles. And some of em looked at me in the field and didn't want to believe what they seed. “He'll kill hisself if he keeps that up; it aint goin to come to nothin noway.” Well, part of Vernon's sixty-one acres is in pasture today and he farms the balance hisself. And it was Nate Shaw saved that land, and it was Nate Shaw joined the organization, and it was Nate Shaw went to prison, stayed twelve long years—I'll tell that—and he come out fit for hard work, lookin for it, just like he went in.

I didn't have nobody to help me plow and that big mare that my wife reserved for me when I come home, she was all I needed and all I could afford to keep. I could work the mule and the mare all right breakin land and plowin double, but after that I'd have to stand em in the lot and feed em. That mare was able, so I just sold that mule I'd bought from Garvan to a colored fellow named James Butler. And just what I gived Garvan for that mule, I sold it to him—one hundred cash dollars. And him and the woman he stayed with—he weren't married to her—and her mother, the Byrd family from over on the Calusa road, jumped on a car one day and went to Beaufort. And there was a white lady up there furnishin em and she gived em the money for James to buy that mule. James didn't give it to me, but that woman did, the mother of the woman he was livin with.

So all I had was that mare to work—she'd belonged to my wife and when I come home my wife just told me that mare was her'n and she just turned that mare over to me and I took her over. As good a plow animal as ever I plowed. She'd pull a Oliver Goober just as easy as I'd eat a buttered biscuit. She weighed about eleven
hundred, that mare did; she was blocky-built, had great big feet. She just didn't want to work to a two-horse wagon.

Vernon had got a hold of that mare after I commenced a losin my stock—I couldn't help that though, I weren't there to see it. My wife told me when she come to see me in prison, “Darlin, that old mare gived Vernon a pretty little mule.”

I told her to tell Vernon—he could work like the devil but he had no experience of a young mule—and told him to his own face, “Take care of your little old mule, your colt; whatever you do, don't start to workin her too young.”

Went right on and put her to my two-horse wagon, too young, and strain-halted her. She commenced a draggin one of her hind legs. I told my wife, “I told him and cautioned him: he never had nothin to do with a young mule in his life. All the stock he ever worked I bought em able to work or else I broke em. He don't know nothin bout breakin a young mule and workin her to keep from hurtin her.”

Cut that young mule down. She come on and growed and made a good heavy mule before she got done—she weighed about a thousand pounds—but she never did get quiet like a mule.

I went down with my wife to the Holiness Church one Sunday to hear the preachin. And after the main part of the meetin was over, they standin around talkin, church crowd, I told Hannah, “I believe I'll walk over to Will Wiley's awhile—” not knowin his thoughts and what he had in him—“walk over there awhile and talk with him. I been knowin him a long time and it's so many years since I've seen him. He goes for a Christian man—I believe I'll go over and talk with him some. He lives close by and convenient.”

So I just got out in the road and walked on over there—old acquaintance, weren't goin over there to talk on no special thing, just showin myself to him and talk easy talk. So many of em said I never would get back home; or if I did, I wouldn't be no account. Undoubtedly, they looked for me to go down in prison.

I didn't think that Will Wiley was my enemy in my young days or he was my friend, but I found out that Sunday that he had hated to see me have anythin like I did have once in life. I scuffled to try and take care of what I had, too, in the defense of my family. Put me in prison because I wouldn't fall over and just let
a man sweep the ground where I stood— And Will Wiley, he was glad for a man like me to get in trouble, glad for it.

Used to, when I was a younger man, carry my family to Elam Church, to meetin, every first Sunday. And I'd always drive in past Will Wiley, put my mules in the shade. Come in there on my two-horse wagon—he'd be sometime walkin about there amongst the crowd. He was a caretaker for the church, lookin out to keep everythin quiet. And I'd drive up there and he pointin out and givin orders where to drive to and park your wagon or your buggy. And I thought a heap of my mules, a heap of my buggies and wagons—I had all that at that time. Never did have a double buggy to run my folks on; I run from a single buggy, just carry one or two or three, to a two-horse wagon. Carry my wife and children to church and stop along the road and pick up people, or even carry folks from my settlement, my neighbors, to church on my wagon. I had somethin that was able to pull em; my mules didn't have to hump up their backs and get in a knot to pull. They was good mules, strong mules, and they listened to me. So, I'd drive in there and Will Wiley sometimes be settin in a chair on the outside, in the grove round the north side of the church. My mules would trot along jovially if I called on em but I didn't trot my mules in a runnin race. I took care of em—God knows I did, too, thankful to God. I kept leather halters for both of them mules in the back end of that wagon where they couldn't fall out, and the mules' dinner would be in there too. Oats—oats a heap of times that I raised on my farm and cut em myself. Be layin in the back end of that wagon bottled up. Corn layin in there for em; whatever it took to keep em up, I fed em. Pull in the yard there and slip the bridle off, put it under my wagon in the shade. I didn't allow my leather harness to lay out in the sun. Careful bout everything. Put them halters on them mules, grass tie halters, strap em across the back of their necks and around to the ring underneath, lead em off to a swingin limb where I could reach it and pull it down and tie them tie halters behind that limb sufficient to hold em. Go on about my business—

My mules was used to eatin at dinner times, used to eatin every feedin time—mornin, dinner, and night. And they was used to bein kept from their ribs shinin—you couldn't see their ribs. If they wasn't as fat as they could be, they had plenty of good heavy flesh on em. Bout twelve o'clock them mules would ask for this feed. They'd look around anywhere they was; they knowed me—
any animal knows his master; he may not know the name of him and what he go for, but he knows that's the man that feed him. They know, they got sense just like people; they got their kind of sense and people got theirs. Them mules looked to see me, bout twelve o'clock and I hadn't fed em—“agh-agh-agh-agh-agh-agh-agh-agh-agh—” I'd look around and they standin lookin right at me with their heads up—“agh-agh-agh-agh-agh-agh-agh-agh—” Sometimes they'd bray, squall out, “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaawwwww, hagh-ah-hagh-ah-hagh-ah-hagh-ah-hagh-ah—” That animal needs feedin. There's two causes for a animal squallin—he needs feedin or he's missin his mate. Them animals knowed me and they was askin for their dinner or breakfast or supper. Anywhere, at home in the lot, or if you have em out on duties, they know when feedin time come.