All God's Dangers (78 page)

Anything that aint right, it's got to be awful bad for me to pay attention to it. Because I knowed that old rulin and I'd very often see it and I thinked to myself, well, that aint nothin, that's common, that's common—pay it no attention. When the white man would tie up a nigger in this country, why, it was so common I quit noticin it; I knowed it was the rulin and I wouldn't dote on it. I've even seed a Negro that would run and build up a fire on top of another one's back with a white man, by tellin that white man all that nigger's traits. So, if it weren't nothin too bad that happened, I'd pass it up. I've seed so much of that kind of stuff, from the least thing to the greatest, and I'd pass it up.

My daddy's case with Simon Travis—white people didn't care nothin bout my daddy, no more than they cared about Simon Travis—wanted my daddy to have Simon Travis arrested. My daddy told em he weren't goin to do it. It was all accidental. Well, if I get out there, me and my crowd—I'm talkin bout myself now, which is things I've never done—I go out there and lurk with em, and
gamblin and drinkin whiskey and keepin up a hoorah and half-feedin our families and me keepin a jug of whiskey or a bottle of whiskey around where I could drink it at all times and stay out of shape, and some of my friends happen to hurt me seriously, I got no business havin em arrested. I'm a fool, surely, for convulsin with em thataway, makin whiskey my hobby—and the white man just waitin for a chance to sunder us.

My daddy had confidence in Simon Travis; he had confidence in Hark Todd; they all had confidence in one another. What is the use of my daddy jumpin up and payin attention to a white man or anybody else and lettin em run him in trouble against his friends? Simon Travis hated that thing, he absolutely hated it. So, my daddy put me on that little gray horse, one day after that happened. He was sittin in the house, weren't workin, weren't doin nothin. And he told me to get on that horse and ride to Simon Travis's and tell him to send him a plug of tobacco. Simon Travis would send my daddy anything in reason—he didn't ask him for unreasonable things. He just sent me to him for a plug of tobacco—that was his way of lettin Simon Travis know he'd thought the thing over and considered it finished. That's all there was to it and all he was goin to make of it.

My daddy sat up in the house and nursed his leg for a long time. That bullet stayed in his leg for two or three years. And how did he git it out?—I'm talkin bout what I know— Sat down one day and pulled his britches leg up, got it out the way of that bullet and that bullet was right along on top of his leg, just under the skin. He caught his leg up and took his pocket knife and split the skin—got that bullet out of there and the wound cured up. And not a word against Simon Travis did he speak.

S
IMON
Travis and his family was livin down yonder below Apafalya—I was livin nearer to Apafalya in them days than I do now. And I had two first cousins, boys, used to court Josie before she married the first time; two brothers, Tom Shaw and Ronald Shaw, lived right above Apafalya on the Lee place. Their daddy was Lark Shaw, the one that Akers took all he had. I was stayin at Apafalya in the daytime or out in the country, either, workin for Mr. Jim Barbour in his lifetime. And when night'd come, I'd eat my supper there at Mr. Barbour's, then I'd go across the fields and go right over by
Simon Travis's, Josie's daddy's home. Josie was a missus-sized girl at that time and she was old enough to have boy company.

Cousin Lark lived just up the road from the Travises and I'd be goin up there to spend the night where Tom and Ronald was, my first cousins. My mother and their mother were sisters. They had the name Shaw, too, but Lark Shaw was from a different set of Shaws.

Well, these two first cousins of mine sort of disagreed over Josie. Ronald wanted to go with her and Tom wanted to go with her and the way they told it, she didn't care very much for nary one of em. In fact of the business, my wife here now was a kind of saynothin girl; she was a little shy of menfolks. I knowed it too, and I never did knock around there to see
her
, not before I married the first time. So, two or three nights, I'd eat supper at Mr. Barbour's, then I'd go across the fields and hit the road comin down from Mount Olive Church and headin to the Lee place where Cousin Lark lived; and on route down there I'd stop at where Lester Watson had a house built for Simon Travis.

I always was a young fellow like this: I'd stop and take up time with old people and I bore a good name amongst em. And one of the nights I stopped there, I hailed and he called me in. I walked in and set down and we commenced a talkin on this and that—his wife never would come around less'n she was bringin Simon somethin to eat. And Simon Travis loved whiskey like the devil—never did drink no whiskey with him and he never did drink no whiskey in my presence. So, his wife, of the Butterfield family, she come in there that night and brought a ladle, you might just say a waiter, with two nice custards on it—I don't know whether they was potato custards or egg custards or what. She come in and handed em to him. He took the custards and she turned and left the custards on the plate and left the plate with him, and she went back toward the dinin room. He offered me some. I told him, “No, thank you, Mr. Travis. Just help yourself. I just et supper, come from over by Mr. Barbour where I works at. Just had supper before I left. I'm not hungry a bit so just help yourself.” He set there and et up both of them custards, he was a big eater.

Well, durin the time he was eatin em, this here Tom Shaw and Ronald Shaw was hangin at his daughter in the back room. And she was shy of boys in them days, shy; she desired em maybe, but she was a kind of shame-faced girl. When a boy walked in she was
out in the other room and gone. So, that night, while Mr. Travis was settin there eatin them custards and I was in there talkin with him—me and him was in a room by ourselves—I seed one of them girls—it might have been Josie; he had three girls at that time and Josie here was the largest one and the oldest one he had. And a few minutes after his wife went back into the dinin room, I seed one of them gals come to the door, peek in at me and her daddy—got gone right quick.

I tells Josie right now, I say, “You used to be shy of men and boys.” She says, “Yeah, a heap of times boys come to our house and if I seed em before they seed me I'd run outdoors, go up under the house, keep hid as long as they was there.” I say, “That's the rabbit in you.” She laughs and says, “Must be, but that rabbit growed out of me.”

Tom and Ronald, they'd laugh and talk about her, and it was “who she would” and “who she wouldn't” bout which one had the best time with her. She begin to get used to boys and men and she'd chunk off time with em. And Ronald didn't like for Tom to have the best day with her; Tom didn't like for Ronald to have the best day with her. But I weren't studyin the girl. I was engaged to marry then to the girl I married, my children's mother, and I didn't lose no time with no other girl at all. So, it just lingered, lingered; Tom and Ronald, first one then the other, wanted the best pull at Josie. But she never proved she cared nothin bout ary one of em particularly. When Mr. Ruel Akers cleaned up my cousin Lark, he left from down there and went back up in the Newcastle settlement where he'd moved out from when he moved down here. That put Tom and Ronald out of the picture. Well, Simon Travis's family just extended on.

I come out from Apafalya one day when I was haulin lumber for the Graham-Pike Lumber Company, and I seed this with my own eyes. Josie was married to Johnny B Todd at the time and it was several years before I was put in prison. They was choppin cotton right beside the road. One of them big fields Johnny B Todd worked run right to the highway. And him and Josie was out there choppin cotton. I stopped to talk with Johnny B awhile and look over his crop. They chopped out to the end and was right at the road when I drove up. I stopped my mule and set there on my wagon—never
did get off my wagon. Johnny B standin there beside the road where he had done chopped out to—and we talked there several minutes and Josie never did break her gait. When she got to the end—she knowed me too, but I never had had no conversation with her in God's world—she just kept a choppin cotton and when me and Johnny got through talkin and I drove on, Josie done chopped back in that field halfway along a row.

I knew her, knew about her work qualities—she was steady on the job. I knowed nothin about nature ways with her, nothin of the kind. Never did go into the house after they married. I was married and had three children, livin up yonder on Miss Hattie Lu Reeve's place when Josie first married Johnny B. And that's where I was livin when Hannah's baby sister married, too. Mattie and Josie was right close along in age together. Both of em married bout the same year.

And so, after a while I drove on. My mules done stood there, rested a little. Of course, I was sittin in the hot sun. And they was choppin cotton. Josie never broke her gait.

And in the end, she done worked herself to death durin her life with Johnny B Todd. He was a farmer, that's all he knowed to do; and she worked in the field with him like a man so far as hoe work and pickin cotton. She's told me many a time: she used to get on the wagon with him and go two and three miles haulin sawmill slabs for stovewood, helpin him load, helpin him unload. And when she weren't workin with him, the white ladies of the settlement was always runnin around her: “I want you to wash for me today,” “I want you to iron,” “I want you to sweep my yard.” Good God, Josie would wash and iron for white folks all around Apafalya. Any community the colored women live in, the white folks want em to wait on em in different ways, pay em like they wanted to, never ask the colored woman what she charges, give her what they think is right. Josie come under them rulins. She have told me her own self—her mother done it and she used to go around and help her mother wash for white people, and she'd stick her arms in cold water just as deep as a woman had to stick em, washin for white people. And after she married she got down in one of her shoulders—rheumatism and every kind of thing. Well, that was all from exposure. Of course, quite natural, she mighta not wore the clothes that she oughta had and taken cold, but that wadin in cold water, runnin about the settlement washin white folks' clothes—nigger
couldn't turn, as they called him, or her, nigger woman couldn't turn without some white person wan tin some thin done. All kind of personal jobs that God put us each here to do for ourselves, white folks hire a nigger cheap to do it. Josie come up thataway.

E
VERYBODY
knowed Josie was a workin woman. And she's a woman likes sports—especially fishin. And she was fishin right there. They was livin close to Sitimachas Creek when they stayed up there by Apafalya; the creek was just back up north of their home. And her and another colored woman, they
stayed
on the creek; soon as she'd be got done with her work, she'd take up her fishin pole and hit it to the creek. Josie would rather go fishin today than eat when she's hungry. She goes fishin now every chance she gets. Somebody come along and goin fishin that she knows, well, she gone. Fishin on the backwaters between here and Beaufort.

I never did care nothin much bout fishin with a hook and line. I always when I stayed close to Sitimachas Creek, soon as I got big enough to have me a basket in the creek—I was born just across Sitimachas on top of a hill. Not no more than a quarter mile from the creek. And I fished the creek with baskets all durin of my boyhood life. And after I married, good God—there's a cotton mill up there at Opelika, they just poured dye in the creek, poison, and killed out the catfish in Sitimachas. You could see the signs of it way down in here, the color of the water—killed them catfish a goin and a comin. It's a pity to kill what people love, it's a pity to kill it out. Well, the government, I think, made a racket behind em. That didn't help, they bummed the creek on the sly. People goin up and down Sitimachas to fish and just find the top of the water covered with nice catfish, poisoned. They ought to put em in the penitentiary about poisonin the earth and the air and the waters, killin the fish in the rivers and the water coasts and all like that. The devil is just loose on earth and the laws is not hard enough on em.

R
IGHT
after Josie's first husband died, my wife come to see me in prison, one Sunday. She told me, “Darlin, Josie Travis and Johnny B Todd, Cousin Johnny B who died, the only child they had”—she's in Boston now, Mary Beth—“Spencer Ramsey married her.”

Spencer's daddy and Hannah was first cousins, but they didn't
look like it. She was a yaller woman, direct the color of Josie—the difference in em, in size and looks, Josie's just a heavier-built woman than my first wife was—and Ben Ramsey was dark and his son, Spencer, was dark.

Tell the truth to it, Spencer Ramsey was just a sorry fellow. His first wife had just died over there in that house where TJ livin now; jumped up and went to correspondin Johnny B's wife's daughter. She was young and she married the scoundrel—he used to be a pretty good worker, farmer, but he got jaded and fell off with work.

My wife kept me informed about all that was goin on over there as far as she knowed. So, after Johnny B Todd died, Spencer Ramsey moved into the house with Josie and her daughter, Mary Beth—only child she got in the world livin, the other two dead. Josie had three children, she says, and I reckon she's very truthful about it. Had two little boys; lost em. This here gal was the last child birthed and she's livin today. She got a pretty good book learnin—

Well, Spencer ham-scammed there and run through everything he could get his hands on that Johnny B died and left. That kept Josie all upset—she's told me about it since me and her been married. He'd slip out all of Johnny B's tools and lose em or break em or sell em. Slipped a brand new cross-cut saw out and sold it. Josie found out where the saw was and made the fellow that had it bring it back to her. And he runned through Johnny B's seed cane, that old-fashioned sugar cane. Johnny B raised that, made syrup out of it—there aint ten people out of a hundred but what dearly loves to chew that old-fashioned sugar cane. Well, he stayed there in that house one year, just long enough to run through everything Johnny B had left; then he moved back down here with his wife, and Josie come too. She was followin her child, girl child, the only one livin out of the three. One died, accordin to her quotation, before it ever got old enough to work. And one, the oldest child, a little boy, he was as big as that least little old boy that stays here with us now, and he died. And after that Mary Beth was born and they managed to raise her. All right. When Spencer Ramsey moved into Johnny B Todd's old house he had his first wife's children with him too. And a year later they all moved out of there and come back down here. Spencer didn't own no land, but his daddy, Ben Ramsey, owned forty acres. They was livin there when my wife died in '50 and they was livin there when me and Josie begin correspondin in '52. I was
a little slow about marryin again, I had some lonely thoughts about it. And of course, if it'd been left with me, I would never have parted from my first wife.