All God's Dangers (55 page)

That boy Davey, he got scared and left here and made a bad record of life. He skipped the family—he had been gone before that come off, down in Jackson, Alabama, followin up the sawmill business with one of the Pike gentlemen. He'd frolic around down there until he got sick someway and sooner or later he'd come home. And another thing—I hated it but there was nothin I could do about it
after he got grown. Fellow by the name of Sam Jones was his daddy; he married my sister and I didn't like him when he married her; that was her first husband, father to this boy Davey. He was a whiskey-head; he just loved whiskey and would get drunk and neglect hisself,
least
of all hisself. And both of his boys do that trick today, that's livin. Davey's dead.

Davey come home one Sunday, all out of shape. He become disabled to work down there in Jackson, Alabama, and he lingered and lingered and lingered and never did write and let us know it. So when he got to where he could sort of travel, he got on a train and come to Apafalya. And he met up with some boys there that knowed him and he knowed them and he got em take him on a car and bring him out home that Sunday evenin. I was off in the pasture walkin around and when I come back to the house my wife told me who it was. She met me at the back door of the house, the kitchen door—the house I lived in on the Pollard place was built north and south, the main parts of it, and the kitchen door, as I come up to it from out of the pasture, looked to the north. Time I got close enough for her to speak to me she said, “Darlin, Davey's in the house.”

I said, “He is?”

She said, “Yes, and he's sick. You just ought to look at him. He look just like a skeleton.”

And he always had been fleshy, short and chunky-built. I hated to hear that. I just walked on in the door, turned and went into the room where he was. I looked at him. He was sittin down at the fireplace. It weren't cold enough for a fire and there weren't no fire in the fireplace, but he was sittin up there. I walked up to him; he jumped up, grabbed me by the hand, shook hands with me, looked at me and I looked in his face. I said, “Boy, what in the world is the matter with you? You done fell off to skin and bone. What happened to you?”

He said, “I don't know, Uncle.” Made me shed tears. “I don't know, Uncle, but I been down for several weeks, disabled to do anything.”

I said, “Um-hmm.”

My sister's child, oldest child, and I raised him up from twelve years old. My wife was just as good to him as she was to her own dear children; fed him out of the same spoon in every way.

I looked at him, said, “You been sick a long time, now you aint nothin but skin and bones. You knowed where me and your Aunt Hannah was, didn't you?”

“Yes sir, I knowed where you all was. And I wanted to come home before now but I couldn't.”

I said, “In other words, you knowed where home was too. Um-hmm. You knowed home. Boy, I'm sorry for you. And I'm goin to do somethin bout your condition if I can.”

That Sunday evenin, late, I said to Calvin—I had a good Ford car, T-model car—“Calvin, I aint got time to go. Monday mornin I want you to get in that car and take Davey to Dr. Thompson in Tuskegee and tell him that I say to examine Davey and fix him medicine accordin to his complaint that will do him good, please sir, for me.”

Calvin taken Davey on the car and carried him to Tuskegee and back. And when they come back, Calvin taken me out around the car shed and told me directly what Dr. Thompson said. “Papa, Dr. Thompson didn't tell me nothin to tell you about Davey bein serious with no certain complaint. He just examined him after I gived him your name and told him what you said and he told me, when this bottle of medicine that he gived Davey, when that's out, come back. And he said for you to come back with him.”

Well, I done by the doctor's orders. I carried Davey to Tuskegee next time myself. Dr. Thompson fixed him up some more medicine and I paid him for it; paid him for the first bottle that he fixed for him when Calvin carried him there. The doctor's practice done good; Davey commenced pickin right up. And I didn't allow the boy—that was fall of the year—I didn't allow him to do nothin in the field. I told him good and plain, “Boy, you stay in the house and do whatever your Aunt Hannah tell you to do. This field work, pickin cotton and so on that we got to do, it aint for you to do this time.” At that time we was usin a wood stove. I told him, “You'll find the stove wood already split up and ready to throw in; you bring stove wood in for her and draw water.” He had strength enough to do them jobs around the house, and if he didn't, the work would give him the strength.

And so, it picked him up clearly. He stayed at my house—his house, if he wanted it to be—he stayed until he got straightened up and could go. He went by my orders, stayed out of the field, just stayed at the house and helped his Aunt Hannah out there. He got
to be Davey again. He'd just been run down, wore out, might say from exposin hisself. He was in shape where he needed some help and I stuck it to him. All right. When the riot come up he got scared and hit it out from there, went on back to Jackson, Alabama. Well, Calvin gone, Davey gone—that left Vernon to bag the whole thing.

TJ, my half-brother—my daddy was daddy to him; I've worked for many a meal TJ have et, through my daddy—he weren't a member of that organization but he faced up to the riot crowd and helped my family out. He stuck to em like a man of heart. TJ and Ben Ramsey—that was my wife's first cousin; his daddy and my wife's daddy was brothers—TJ and Ben Ramsey and some more help got together and moved my wife and children away from the Pollard place. That turned the place over to Mr. Watson, but he didn't get my stuff, not a bit of it. TJ was livin at the time on Mr. Will Culpepper's place. And Mr. Culpepper let TJ move em all into the house with him. He was a good white man, went for a Christian man.

I had on the Pollard place, outside of my hogs, cows—had three or four milk cows. My wife had one cow there, a big Guernsey cow, one of the best milk types that people have. My oldest son, Calvin, he had a couple of head there that he'd bought with the money that I gived him out of the crop. But what
I
had there: my cows, my hogs—had eight or nine head of hogs, shoats—white people didn't get nary a cow, didn't get nary a hog. And saved my mules and wagon, saved my automobile. Even moved the stove out of there but left behind the chimney pipe. TJ got up there and carried my people down on his vehicles, then carried my stuff for them to have what they needed to make a livin.

The barn that I used on the Pollard place, it weren't no good when I moved there. I jumped up and done it the same way I done Tucker's barn. Old log barn and it was rottenin down. I cleared them logs out of there, sawed em out and put up my studs against the logs to hold the buildin where it was, then built a four-stable department in that barn. I taken that place in the name of buyin it from the federal land people in New Orleans. Then when Watson swung it over in his hands I discovered I was no longer buyin the place from the federal people but from him. So, I done built that barn for his benefit, in a way of speakin. When the showdown come and I was arrested on account of bein a member of this organization,
and my family was runned off of that place, that barn I counted amongst my losses.

And I had a cotton house there. It was built east and west and I put my cotton, till I'd haul it out to the gin, I'd put it in the east end of the house; put my cotton seed in the west end. You couldn't see in there; it was built tight as a barn—I mean a good barn too. And I had a lock on the door at all times. And I had, when I wound up sellin my cotton and carryin Mr. Watson three bales, I had three bales left in there, already ginned and baled. All right. When the riot crowd come to get what I had—I had my tools in there and they stole two things: my oat cradle—I reaped my oats myself—somebody got that, had a good cradle; and they took my horseshoe nippers, what I cut horse feet with. But that was all I missed from there in the way of tools. Didn't get my blacksmith shop; my family took that away. And that cotton seed house had a lot of seed in there and them three bales of cotton, my wife's bale, heavy bale, and my two bales.

What happened to that cotton when they made my people move out from up there? TJ had a little old pickup, little old T-model Ford and he'd made a pickup out of it; he went up there and loaded them three bales of cotton and brought em away from there, put em down where my wife and children was waitin. They held on to that cotton, hopin that the price would rise and they could get more for it than sellin it on the spot. My two bales and her bale—I always gived Hannah every penny that her bale brought, clear of fertilize and everything; I didn't charge her for fertilize, just fertilized it like I did my crop.

And durin of the time I was put in jail, after I done pooled that cotton for the government, the government sent me papers and she received em. And she come to me one day to jail and told me about my business. She said, “Darlin, the government has sent you a paper statin and showin that the cotton lacked thirteen dollars of payin your debt.” Government had that cotton pooled but the price didn't climb high enough for me to make the debt. And today, I still owe the government that thirteen dollars accordin to their papers.

T
HEY
arrested me in December, 1932; put me in jail in Beaufort. And in three days' time, here come the International Labor Defense people, two of em, white people—I disremember their names. I
don't know where they come from but I knowed they come out of the northern states; I was well apprised they was northern men. They was concerned for this union, but I can't say definitely how they was connected. They come in to talk with me and they didn't ask none of them other fellows no questions—there was several other members of that organization in jail at that time—I noticed it, they just laid all their questions to me. They was friends to me—I could tell that by the way the sheriff treated em; he didn't like em at all, tried to hamper em from talkin to me. I told em what they wanted to know and they left there and said they'd be back, but they never did come back. I reckon they was obligated somewhere else.

And the next day or two, in come Lawyer Stein. First time I ever seed him. He was a well-built white man, pretty heavy, but not so tall. I don't know whether Mr. Stein was a member of the organization, but he was in the work of it. And he come to that jail there in Beaufort and he wanted to see Nate Shaw. The jailer turned me out in the hall for him to talk with me. We talked, we talked, we talked—he told me, “Shaw, I been all around the country here. I been where the riot taken place, I been to Tuskegee, found out all about you goin to the hospital and everything after that, I been to your wife's cousin's house in Macon County—”

And he begin to ask me questions then: was all these things that he done already learnt about the situation true facts? He been pretty well posted and seed everything for hisself before he come to Beaufort to talk to me. But there was somethin yet he didn't know.

“How many men was there at Virgil Jones' house when the carload of sheriffs arrived?”

I told him, “There was about six or seven, along there thataway.”

White folks wanted to get that thing proved—Lawyer Stein led me into the lights enough to let me know that the sheriffs wanted to make out it was a straight-out mob crowd of niggers that run over em. Of course, weren't nobody there but me at the time all that shootin took place.

He said, “Shaw, that big oak tree standin in front of that door, it's full of bullets. Who done that?”

“I done it.” Weren't tellin him no lie neither.

He said, “What was you shootin at?”

I said, “I was shootin at one of them officers by the name of
Platt. The reason that tree is full of bullets as you say it is, when he shot me three times, I got in the door and I shot back at him. First time I shot, he jumped behind that tree. I just kept a shootin—”

He said, “Just keep that to yourself. Don't mention that to nobody.”

I understood him, I reckon I did. That man Platt tried to kill me and if I'd a got a chance I'd a returned the favor.

“Keep that to yourself.”

I gave Lawyer Stein all the particulars. Every time he come there—he come to the jail every three weeks from then on for five months, until my trial. Come there, I'd look out, somebody comin there to see me. The jailer would tell me, “Here's Mr. So-and-so to see you.” They didn't have a bit more use for him than they did a dog. “Here's that man that comes to see you, he's out here again.” I knowed who it was. Walked out to Mr. Stein and I answered every question he'd ask me. He come there and told me one time, “Shaw—” he didn't call me Nate, called me Shaw—“Shaw, you the best man we got, we goin to stick with you. We may can't pull you out of it though; their laws down here is
their
laws—we got that throwed up against us. We may can't pull you out of it but we goin to stick with you.”

O, they hated his guts. One day Mr. Stein walked in and called for me. The old jailer unlocked the door for me to walk out and he thought he'd try Mr. Stein a bit. In place of goin on about his business he stood there and wouldn't leave us alone. Mr. Stein didn't pay no attention to him definitely till he looked up, got ready to talk to me and there the jailer standin—weren't goin to move less'n he was told to move. Lawyer Stein told him, “You can go ahead. I come here to talk to Shaw. You aint Shaw. This here's Shaw. You can go ahead.” He lit away from there with them words. Then Mr. Stein could talk to me like he wanted to. And he'd always praise me and boost my spirits: “We goin to stick with you Shaw, got to. You the best man we have.”

I'd call some of the rest of em's names. He'd say, “Well, they aint with us no more.” Talkin bout Leroy Roberts and such as that. They defeated it, see; they what you might call defeated their union. While they was in jail there with me they abused the organization. The officers of the state of Alabama up there at Beaufort, they listened at em, too. Them niggers just abominated theirselves for ever joinin the organization—they ditched it right there.