All God's Dangers (65 page)

He said, “Yes, I noticed that several days ago.”

I said, “I thought you might be goin around to test her out, see what sort of calf she goin to have, a heifer calf or a bull calf.”

He looked at me strange, “I don't know nothin bout such as that. I don't know what it's goin to be when it comes, and nobody else knows, nobody can tell.”

O, he was pickin in the right row then to get his hundred. I said, “Well, Captain Noyes, I can tell you what sort of calf she goin to have if you want to know.”

I done watched that cow, found out; it worked just like I told him, too. I said, “I thought that's what you was lookin for. I can tell you now what sort of calf she goin to have. It's goin to be a bull calf.”

He just stretched his eyes and repeated to me, “Aint nobody can tell about that.”

I told him, “I can.”

Off he went. I watched the cow close then to see when was the calf comin. I couldn't tell about the day it was goin to come but I seed it was a bull calf she was carryin. And he commenced a watchin definitely too. One mornin he beat me around there, and when he got to the lot, the cow'd come in. He told me hisself when I got up there, “Well, that cow done come in.”

I said, “She is?”

“Yes.”

“What sort of calf she got, Captain?”

“I don't know, I don't know.”

Now I knowed when he seed that cow had a calf he fooled around there long enough to tell what sort of calf it was. He had to get away from around there, go back and check out his squad, had his usual squad of colored women checked out to him. So he went on back around to the office and before he got out of sight good I seed it was a bull calf. I said to myself, ‘Um-hmm, you seed what that calf was but you didn't want to acknowledge it to me; you knowed that I was goin to find it out.' It deceived him so bad to believe that nobody couldn't tell nothin bout that—and I told him. And just like I told him, the calf come, a bull calf. I had helped my cows when I was at home free before I ever thought about a penitentiary—I have went and followed my cows up and I have watched and experienced and studied over the condition of a cow, and whatever side I seed that cow kickin, most of the time, if it's a bull calf, he lays to the right side in his mother; if it's a heifer calf she lays to the left. You watch that cow, when she gets far enough advanced for that calf to kick in her side, and he starts that, she starts, the calf gets far enough developed in its mammy's womb, it'll prove to you, if you watch, what side a bull calf kick on and what side a heifer calf kick on. Quite natural, when a cow breeds and gets a calf in her sack, some few times it lays in a way that you
can't exactly tell, but if it's layin to her side, either side, you can tell what it is: a heifer calf lays to the left and a bull calf lays to the right.

P
UT
Captain Oliver Cook there in Captain Malcolm Locke's place at Wetumpka. He was a older man than Captain Locke and his wife was a much younger woman than he was. He had been married before and this lady he had for a wife was his second wife; didn't have nary a child by her in the world. But he had a grandbaby there in the house and it was just a baby too, small enough to tote in your arms. That was his and his first wife's son's baby, and Captain Cook and his second wife was raisin the chap.

Fall of the year, first fall he was there, Captain Cook put me to makin syrup. I stood—and a pan was put in my possession on a furnace to boil down the cane. I'd produced many a gallon of sorghum syrup when I was raisin my children—growed sugar cane too. Made barrels of syrup, that old native sugar cane syrup, pure syrup; I was born and raised up eatin syrup. My daddy raised sugar cane every year he farmed—white men never did take his syrup. He didn't make no overproduction of syrup, he just made it for home use, and sometimes he'd make fifty and sixty gallons.

I runned off several pans of syrup at the prison department. And that pan was as long as a common wagon bottom. Fire that furnace under that pan and the syrup starts to cookin; your job, if you is over that pan and you is the maker, you just stand there and take them dippers—them dippers is several feet long and as wide as my two hands, holes in em to strain the skimmins, keep them skimmins floated to the back end of the pan to keep em from cookin and evaporatin in that syrup. Watch it, know when it's done, know when it aint done—that's your job. The most of your job, help out the syrup, keep it from scorchin, it boilin up there and blubberin all the time. Watch them skimmins, keep em raked back, float em back.

Home, I always hired my syrup made; paid a toll in so much syrup. Had a furnace on the Pollard place down in the pasture, hauled my cane— One year, some old hogs was hangin around there where the man was makin my syrup—I stood by that pan when he was makin it and I caught on to where I could make it. But I never did own a syrup mill. I'd cut down the cane, strip it, haul
it to the man's mill out there close by the furnace. Well, got done makin syrup and throwed all the skimmins in a barrel, but I was so busy with my syrup I neglected them hogs, didn't keep em runned off like I oughta done. I got all my syrup out of there and hauled it to my house and a few days after that, I went back out there and seed that these old devilish hogs had upset my barrel and got drunk off them skimmins. Weren't my hogs, other folks' hogs. My hogs was up in the hog pasture. I'd toted a few skimmins up there and poured em out for them. But these wanderin hogs overfilled theirselves, took blind and staggered off. It didn't kill em, but it made em drunk as a cooter.

T
HEY
put me to makin syrup two seasons at Wetumpka. And at that time there come to be nobody over the men prisoners but Captain Oliver Cook and the head warden lady herself. How come that was all that was there? Who woulda guessed it would come to that?

It had risen up a disagreement amongst the officials and it was personalized. White men, officers, was comin there from them other prison departments and havin intercourse with them white women prisoners—they come from Kilby all the way to Wetumpka, and they was comin from Spignor. It went up to the governor's office in Montgomery, all such conditions as that. And they cleaned it up. Why, one white gentleman there—he was actin deputy warden at the time; Captain Evans was away for some cause—and his wife was watchin him close as the state was watchin and she caught him one night with a certain white woman, prisoner, and she had a pistol in her hand. And they say she would have killed him—he was sort of a raw-boned white man—if it hadn't a been for one of the other prisoner women anticipatin her before she could do it. So they scattered that mess out, got shed of the warden, Captain Henry Carter, and the deputy warden, Captain Homer Evans, and when they got through scatterin, weren't nobody there but Captain Oliver Cook and Miss Phoebe Burnside. Miss Phoebe Burnside was the head warden and Captain Oliver Cook was the boss man over the men.

T
HERE
was a white lady boarded with Miss Phoebe Burnside and worked in Montgomery. And them two white ladies would go off on joy trips and pleasure trips at night, usually on a Saturday. Miss
Phoebe Burnside would come after me—didn't make no difference what I was doin, she wanted me to stay at her house that night. Of course, she'd lock up the house but there was a nice servant house for me to stay in. And she had two servants, a cook and a butler boy. A woman by the name of Ella was her cook and Conrad Ball was her butler boy. They was trustees and the warden would let them off for a Saturday sometimes. And when she let em off, if her and that white lady was goin off on their pleasure trips—suppers and dances—she'd come to me: “Nate.”

“Yes, ma'am, missus.”

“I want you to stay at the house tonight.”

“Yes, ma'am, missus.”

I'd go up there and walk around that house some, overlook everything, go back to the servant house and set up in there. Sometimes I'd go up there and I'd be gettin in just as soon as they'd be goin off, first dark. They'd get in Miss Phoebe Burnside's Buick automobile and they'd get gone. Late that night they'd come in, I'd be there—that's the way I was used. The place was on the Wetumpka road on the route to Montgomery, below the prison department. I had all chances to run and get away from there but that never struck my head.

I safely could say, them white people at Wetumpka treated me better than any of their color have treated me on the outside. They didn't scorn me and cuss over me and provoke me; they didn't overpower me. I knowed they had the power but they had sense enough and heart enough to check it. But every landlord ever I had dealins with tried to euchre me, puttin unnecessary figures against me—Mr. Tucker made me pay up what I owed Mr. Reeve, and that debt was pulled over with ten percent on the dollar knocked off. He told me to my head, “The thing for you to do is pay me what you owed him.” Well, he got the whole figure from me, and all down the line—Mr. Watson, the last mite of dealins I had with him, it weren't over fifty dollars' worth and what did he tell me? “Bring me the cotton this fall, bring me the cotton.” I carried him three bales of cotton, more than what I owed him, surely, and did he give me a settlement? Did he give me a settlement? And before that he gived me a note to sign on that Pollard place and I wouldn't sign—callin for all my mules, hogs, cows, wagons, and all my personal property
—he strapped it on. This is a fact: I was travelin through the world, different places, when I was in prison; wherever they sent me I went, had to go. But I had no trouble, seriously. And didn't nobody try to dupe me: I was already in a trap, you might say, caught in a wire trap. Outside, they raised figures against me in place of wire.

And I venture to say this: them prison officials just knew what was behind me and who was watchin me all the time and they just as well to back their legs and be milked. They took my word, they trusted me; asked em for anythin, they granted it—I was recognized more in prison than I was recognized out here, sure as you born to die. Some of em thought I didn't have sense enough to realize what it was all about, I know they did, but I had my cap on every day I stayed in prison. I knowed the meanin of their acts, I knowed the causes for the way I was treated. I knowed that the penny had always kept the wedge hid. I become to have friends in foreign countries and I knowed that they was workin for me, and what I was of and what I stood for. I rared like a mule in a stable; but what crazy person wouldn't rear when he seed the man fixin to take everything he had and he knowed he didn't owe him nothin? Who is it that wouldn't rear?

I didn't have a thing on my mind but workin to get back home to my wife and children. They offered me a parole as much as three times and it sorely tempted me but I turned em down. That Montgomery crowd would come up to talk with me from the parole department, tell me they'd give me a parole if I'd accept their offer—leave the country and move to Birmingham. And asked me all about the very work of the organization: What did I expect when I joined? How did I feel about it now? One white woman tried—it tickled me in a way; there was two white women and two white men—that was the parole board—come up there and labored with me one day. O, I was a hard nut to crack; they couldn't do it.

They walked in the main administration buildin there at Wetumpka, taken their seats and they commenced a questionin me. I was settin there right across from em. They first set in on me about this affair—that woke em up, every one of em. What did it mean? And how come I joined? And what was it goin to do? Told em I didn't know nothin bout none of that at all, no way, shape, form, or fashion; wouldn't comment on it. One of them white
women got mad. She questioned me backwards and forwards, couldn't get nothin out of me. And had done let me know that they come up there to parole me if I'd cooperate with em and give em a lot of talk. Wanted to parole me but didn't want me to come back home—go on over to Birmingham. Told me, “Them folks over there in that settlement in Tukabahchee County, they don't want to see you again.” They branched off on that, and then they come back to the mainline questions. They wanted to find out everything about my experience in the organization in order that they'd know, if I'd accepted a parole and taken their word and went on off in some other country in place of comin home, would I start somethin up over there. They looked at all that. Well, they couldn't do nothin with me no way, couldn't get the answers out of me they wanted, couldn't get me to accept their parole, leave my country and go to the city.

And just before they broke it up, this white lady got mad. I'd fooled around there until I cross-talked her down. I didn't care for her kind of parole; I weren't goin nowhere but back home—that was my thorough intention. She seed all through the subject that she couldn't move me—and them white men was sittin up there laughin at her. She got hot with me then. They was takin notice to the way she was talkin with me and weren't gettin nothin. She told me, “You one of these smart Negroes. Go ahead and make your maximum sentence.”

I told her, “Yes'm, missus, that's what I'm goin to do anyhow, make my maximum sentence and be a clear man when I get out. I wants to go home to my wife and children and back to the country I come from. If you can't do that for me, you can keep me bound down in prison. I wants to live and abide by a way that I can be free like folks is free. And I don't mean nobody no trouble—if they don't give me no trouble.”

Wooooooo, she got hot, hot, hot. I'd tied her up, gone backwards on her, made a game of her questions. Goin into all the details—they knowed I was in it, probably knowed most everything I knowed, only wanted to hear it from me. Mighta got some literatures out of my house in the roundup—if I'd a been there somebody woulda got more than literatures. I just got mad all over and I couldn't help myself, just to see how hard I was pulled at and approached about my leanins. They wanted me to fall on my knees, cry out and spill my guts. Well, I just soured on em. I held back my feelins and cross-talked em, turned em against one another—
had them white men laughin at that white lady. Had the lady dig at me for what the men couldn't get. And I kept em
all
down. “Go ahead and make your maximum sentence; you're one of these smart Negroes.” She couldn't draw me up to what she wanted. Never did tell em what they wanted to hear. I just abided by the consequences; went right back down the road to my cellhouse and didn't let em catch me at no bad acts noway. I made a record there—never was nothin laid on me with a threat to whip me. I went through prison just as quiet as a plank of wood.