All God's Dangers (5 page)

So my daddy married Maggie Reed and him and her was the father and mother of thirteen children—my old daddy was a rooster, he was a humdinger. Well, she lingered along and I don't remember what year she died, I was married and gone. Done become twenty-one years old. Well, she died. Got too hot and taken a bath one night, clipped out just like that. The night she died she'd put part of a day's work in the field. Went to the house out of the field and taken a bath. That prostrated her and she died. Well, that was my daddy's third wife gone. TJ's mother was a mighty good kind woman to we, my mother's children. She was a poor woman as usual amongst the colored race, but she was as good to us as she could be. And she was the mother of thirteen children for my daddy, two sets of twins. And today there aint but four livin out of all that number of children. Five of em died when they was little; lost all them twins. I was at home when the first child died and she was a good-sized little girl: her name was Patsey. Typhoid fever killed her. One of the sets of twins come into this world before Patsey died and one come after. But they was all behind TJ and all behind Lorna and if I don't make no mistakes they was all behind Judy. But the twins all died little. Today, out of them thirteen children, every one of em is dead except TJ, Bob, and Willis—them's boys—and Tessie, the only girl livin. Bob is in Detroit, last I heard of him; Tessie's in Birmingham; Willis is in Birmingham; and TJ, he's here.

I didn't know what it was to suffer for nothin while my mother lived. So far as somethin to eat, I didn't know what it was to go hungry in her lifetime. We killed plenty of meat in the fall; my daddy'd raise from three to four big hogs every year—that's all he done, raise meat to eat and what he didn't raise he got in the woods—and killed game. He killed game goin and a comin too. But after
my mother died I knowed what it was to eat only dry bread or put it in water and mash it up. And just for a change in taste, I had a knack of mashin up a piece of old cornbread in water and sprinklin a little salt over it, and eat it. I knowed what it was to do that after my mother died. It really wasn't a change in my daddy; he was already providin only when it suited him. But my mother would take food from her own dinner and reserve it for her children. But after she died, if there was anything a little nourishin or tasty, I didn't get it and the rest of the children didn't get it—my daddy would eat it up. He'd sit down at the table with whatever he wanted to eat—fried eggs, fried ham, or anythin tasty like that. When my mother was livin, practically whatever my daddy et the whole family et. That was her way and she'd fight him to do it. But with my stepmother, TJ's mother, there come a new order. We had to eat what we could get then. We'd have enough to fill us but it wouldn't be nothin much but bread. If there was any fried ham or fried meat anyway it was strictly for my daddy. And she knowed, TJ's mother knowed how to feed him. He'd eat the best on the table and we children had to keep our hands out of the meat plate. After my daddy married TJ's mother I seed the change comin and I become used to all that. If there wasn't enough for the whole family to get some it was drawed up and set down to my daddy's plate.

Drink coffee? We didn't know what coffee was less'n we worked for Mr. So-and-so over yonder. Maybe Mr. So-and-so anywhere around that my daddy would put we children to chop cotton for, he'd give us a cup of coffee. TJ's mother have went and chopped cotton for white folks herself and usually she'd take me along. She'd cross the country sometime over a mile from home, carry Nate along with her. And some of the white people in them days was feedin you two meals, give you your breakfast and your dinner. And we had to put them full hours in the field at a low price. Give grown folks fifty cents a day to chop cotton; boy like me, anywhere from twenty-five to thirty-five cents, accordin to the size of you. Then you'd have to do good work and work regular. And my stepmother would carry me with her. My daddy wanted the few extra cents he could make off me and my stepmother wanted my company; but she also wanted to see me eat two good meals. Set down at the table at Mr. Curtis's place—that was Maynard Curtis's daddy, old man Jim Curtis, worked for him. Worked for Mr. Nelson Rivers, worked for a heap of different white people, and they'd feed us.
We'd go there and sit down at the table, eat breakfast; they'd be done et and got out to work. Mrs. Curtis or Mrs. Rivers would fix our breakfast, give us coffee to drink—there's so much I remember till I just can't breathe it.

We chaps just had to catch it as we could get it. Heap of times in the summer time I slept on a quilt spread down on the floor. And if I got up on a bed in the winter time, it'd be stuffed full of corn shucks or what hay I pulled out of the field; weren't a real mattress, just an old home-fixed thing I come up on. My daddy slept—him and his wives slept on the best store-bought bed they had available. He always had that for himself. When my mother died, at the time she died, and when I was born, she had good feather mattresses—feathers is soft, you know. And we children slept on the feather mattresses when my daddy'd let us but that weren't very often. These feather mattresses, my mother got em at the death of Grandma Jane.

M
Y
daddy put me to plowin the first time at nine years old, right after my mother died. I remember the first plowin he put me to doin. She died in August and he put me to plowin in October, helpin him plow up sweet potatoes. He had two mules and he had me plowin one and him plowin the other. And the potatoes was very sorry that year—plowin em up for Mr. Shelton Clay, plowin up the white man's potatoes, hadn't been plowed up yet. And in them days the weather would be warm late on up until near Christmas. In October that year the weather was warm and the gnats was awful bad. And doggone it, the gnats looked like they would eat me up and I was just nine years old. So I would fight the gnats and my daddy got mad with me for that and he come to me and he picked me up by the arm and he held me up and he wore out a switch nearly on me, then dropped me back down. That was the first whippin he ever give me bout plowin. I just wasn't big enough for the job, that's the truth.

And that country where we was livin was rough and rocky. And he—my poor old daddy is dead and gone but I don't tell no lies on him—he put me to plowin a regular shift at twelve, thirteen years old. And I had to plow barefooted on that rocky country; anything liable to skin up my feet. And he'd go off, take his gun every mornin and hit the woods, practically every mornin, hit the woods
and the swamps, huntin. And he was a marksman if there ever has been one. He'd go off with his gun and come back just loaded with game—shootin a old double barrel muzzle-loader too. You'd pour your powder in it and put you some paper in there and pack that powder tight. And he kept little sacks full of shot in his huntin pocket. Put that powder in the gun barrel, pack it down in there, then put his shot in there, charge of shot, push it down to that powder, just tamp it in place. You couldn't pack the shot in there; you could pack the powder close as you please, but when you put the shot in, pack it light. Then he'd pull them hammers back, take out his cap box, and set a little old cap on there—that's muzzle-loader style. Then he'd shoulder that double barrel muzzle-loader up. It was a long gun, too, longer than the average breech-loader.

And so he'd hunt and some mornins he'd tell his wife, my stepmother, “Give Nate his breakfast—” and he'd get his gun and step out the door, bolt across the woods, across the swamps, and he was gone. “Give Nate his breakfast and let him get to plowin quick as he can.” And he'd go off and hunt until late time of day.

White people used to say—them Clays, we lived close to the Clay family: “Hayes sure is a hard worker,” and laugh about it. “Hayes is a hard worker. But he's workin to keep from work.” That was funny to me too, but it was all the truth.

I've known my daddy to kill more wild turkeys, wild ducks, and catch more fish in Sitimachas Creek up between Beaufort and Pottstown—we lived on the upper end of the creek close to Apafalya and Litabixee. And my daddy would catch fish, great God almighty. Catch em in baskets, two or three baskets; sometimes he'd catch more fish than the settlement could eat. And he'd get him some steel traps and go down to the creek—trap eels. Fish, eels, wild turkeys, wild ducks, possums, coons, beavers, squirrels, all such as that. But he wouldn't shoot a rabbit if it jumped up before him; just didn't fancy rabbits out of all the beasts of the forests and fields.

Sometimes he'd come back off his hunt and come across the field—he knowed where he said for me to plow. He'd expect to find me there and he'd find me there. I'd be plowin right along and the old mule I was plowin or old horse, whatever he had, he'd begin to throw up his head, turn around and look at me and kick at the plow—I knowed I was in for a whippin then. Because it didn't suit my daddy to have his mule actin up like that and his boy can't control
him, and me barefooted too, just a little old boy plowin in that rough land. I'd go on plowin and my daddy'd just stand off in a row until I plowed up pretty close to him. He'd say, “Nate.”

“Yes sir?”

“What sort of plowin is this you doin here? What sort of plowin is this you doin?”

He was like to blow me down. I'd tell him, “I's doin the best I can, Papa, I's doin the best I can.”

Next word, “Drop them britches. Drop them britches.”

He run around then to the old horse mule and begin to untie one of the lines from the bits.

“Drop them britches.”

I'd be a little slow about it. He'd get that line out loose and sling it off the handle so I'd drop the loop; run it out the traces and swing it full loose and go to doublin it—double it once or twice, enough so it wouldn't worry him to beat me with. Then he'd walk up to me and if I weren't gettin out of my britches fast enough to suit him he'd grab me and snap my little old galluses down and drop my britches, stick my head between his legs—and when he got done with me that plow line was hot.

But I had to like him, had to like him. If he thought I got a little miffed about somethin or other, any way, if he thought my mind was runnin against what he wanted to do, right there was a beatin up. O, children when I come along come along the hard way. But I say after all that: a child aint got no business buckin his parents; parents aint got no business beatin a child.

One day my daddy had me plowin to a old steer, old oxen. He was off splittin rails for Mr. Jack Knowland and he had me in the field doin a man's work and I was a little old boy. And in them days, they didn't know what cuttin cotton stalks was. You'd take a stick and flail them cotton stalks down. Or else plow along and that single-tree would strip them old cotton stalks down, that averaged from three foot high to higher. My daddy was farmin, what little farmin he was havin carried on, by me. He put me out there to plowin in them cotton stalks and that single-tree flailin em down as that animal walked along. All of a sudden a stalk broke and flew back in my eye and knocked me out from between them plow handles—plowin under my daddy's administration. Knocked me down and when I got up I got up with my hands over that eye. It
just even hit that eye hard enough to bloodshot it through and through. I lost my sight in that eye and I suffered seein a watery gray for a week.

Well, soon as that happened, I had to go to the house and carry that old steer out the field and put him up and carry my daddy's dinner to him over on Mr. Knowland's place, which was over a mile. I had to take my daddy's dinner to him and that eye was just a lump of blood, just to look at it. I lingered with that bad bloodshot eye—just nearly knocked it out. My stepmother bathed it in salt water and cut me out a flap to wear over it, but I had to go right along just the same; didn't stop work enough to tell it. I felt that my daddy should have had more care and respect for me than he did have. He oughta carried me to the doctor at the start. He couldn't tell what damage was done to that eye. If I'd a lost it,
he'd
a went on through life with his two eyes. He didn't see with my eyes—and he never did carry me to no doctor. I had to linger through my wound. It didn't stop me but it slowed me down some on account of I was worried about it; didn't think about nothin else but would I be a healthy boy with my own two eyes again. O, he talked in a way that showed he had sympathy for me, but doin the right thing, he never did do that.

She was really better to us than our daddy was, TJ's mother, and there was four of us on her at the start. My daddy brought her in over us as a stepmother and she was absolutely better to us than our daddy was. But if my daddy was gone anywhere and anything went disagreeable to her and she got up to whip us, I was up and gone; didn't allow her to punish me. I was old enough to know that she weren't my mother and I didn't recognize her as my mother. You know, a child never recognizes a stepmother like he do a mother. And that's why I showed her my heels; if I could get out of her way and keep her from hittin me a lick, that's what I done. I went out, my daddy'd be off somewhere at night, I done things I know I shouldn't a done and she'd get at me to whip me—outdoors I'd go and I'd sit around in the dark where she couldn't find me until my daddy come in. Well, when he'd come in, he would indulge me to a great extent, enough for me to know it. I shoulda took my stepmother's whippins, for her sake, but I didn't do it. After all outs and ins, I realize today she was better to we children than my daddy was; she didn't butcher up with children.

He was just careless with us like a brute. One day he put me
and my sister to cuttin cord wood for people to use in winter, cuttin mostly for the Clay family that lived down there close to us on Sitimachas Creek, run the big grist mill. My daddy had me and Sadie at that job. That was my tryin day. He kept us—he'd help us cut down the tree, maybe him and me and my sister, all three. And he'd always work me in a place in preference to my sister—she was about three years older than I was and I was past nine years old at that date—put us to helpin him cut cord wood for white people. Heavy job on kids, helpin pull a cross-cut saw. We practically sawed the most timber in wood lengths that my daddy cut up, me and Sadie did. And he had a ax—