All God's Dangers (73 page)

I looks deeply through all this and it comes to my mind: this organization I joined in '32 was so stout, it was able to hold up in them times for conditions that the government is puttin on today.

The white man, when I first come free, he was tryin to keep the government hid from the colored man and the colored man hid from the government. I know; I'd go to them government talks and hear them riders talk. I didn't have no book learnin but I knowed from my life that them government men meant well for the farmin class of people. And they'd hold these meetins through this country, and right here at Calusa; and they'd ask sometimes when the meetins would meet—they called men workin on halves and every way into that, ones that knowed about the meetins would, but they'd leave the colored fellow out, try to keep him out of the
knowledge of them meetins, or tell him, “There aint no use in you goin; it aint for you.” And the government man would set there and ask em, “Where is the colored brethren?” They'd state, the white ones, farmers, about their business and so on, and they'd state enough about the colored man for the government rider to know that there was colored people in this business too, and sometimes he never could see em, wanted to know how come they didn't come around and so on. He knowed the nigger was held back—I went, TJ went, and some others, but the biggest part of the colored people done what the white man wanted em to do, and that was not to attend no government meetins with white folks. I don't say all the white folks wanted to keep the colored out, and I do believe, honestly, that some of the white people would have fell right in with the colored. But there was enough of em didn't want the colored there, and the poor colored man, quite natural, he didn't think it was his place to go.

They talked at them meetins bout how to farm and how to get the most out of your land. And they gived instructions and told you what you had to do to comply with the government's orders. Well, that was all very necessary to know if you was a man that wanted to handle your own affairs. And I always was a man of that type.

T
HE
year of '48 I worked, and Vernon helpin me, and Garvan a little bit, up on their place up yonder on Sitimachas Creek. That was my wife's daddy's place, in his lifetime, and when he died, I took it over as far as payin taxes on it and keepin it up, until I was put in prison. Then Vernon lingered with it—my wife had ten acres. Her sister Lena jumped up and decided she'd sell her part. And Hannah paid her a hundred dollars for it and that gived her twenty acres to her name. She had it paid for when I come out of prison, had the deeds and everything. And when she died in '50, that throwed my children twenty of the fifty acres. And that boy that was killed at Quitman's Flats in '32, his wife died and her part fell on Vernon—bypassed her boy because he didn't want it; he's livin in the northern states.

They aint farmin none of that land—just sellin timber off it. But they used to farm it before it become more profitable to leave it alone. Now, every time the timber grow up—Vernon have sold
the timber off that place twice since I been back home. And it come to twenty-two hundred dollars' worth of timber he's sold there since he been in charge. There's a white gentleman lives between here and Beaufort, out by Lavender's bridge—sawmill man. He runs a sawmill all through this country and works colored fellows. And told it down in here once, he did, he could live without it. He's a man that loant the state money—that's how much he has. Loant the state of Alabama some money. And he told it, said, “I can live without it. I'm just runnin this sawmill to give my boys a job.” Well, he's the man that bought all that timber from Vernon.

One of these days, if he can get justice, Vernon will own all fifty acres. And by hokus, what have I got? What have I got? Nothin! I took care of it just as long as I was able and when I was put off in prison Vernon had to take it over then or else lose the whole thing. Well, them last two parts—Lily made Vernon guardzine of her ten acres. That's the oldest girl in the business, Lily Ramsey. She married a cousin of mine, Malcolm Todd, and when he died she moved somewhere up in Georgia with her son. And she got old, had to go to the old folks' home and she died. And now, Hannah's baby sister, the last one in that entire family—Mattie—is layin a corpse in Birmingham. That's the last one of that set of Ramseys, Molly and Waldo Ramsey's children, the baby girl of the family I married in. She was my sister-in-law, my children's own dear auntie, the last of the children of their grandmother and grandfather.

Some years ago, when I first went to prison, her and her husband moved out from here. They got scared and shiked
^*
out—all the connections and kin people and all. Left this country and went to Birmingham, never did make another crop. Clarence Reed was her husband. He weren't at Virgil Jones' house that mornin in December and the mob crowd never did hunt him up as far as I knowed, but he was a member of that organization. And what did Clarence do? Me and him married two sisters, the two youngest girls in the bunch. My wife was older than his: he married the baby girl. And the day that I stood up at Virgil Jones' house, Clarence Reed got in the road and walked to Crane's Ford to the headquarters of this organization—
walked
, walked up there, so I was told. You could get a hearin there and call for help. I couldn't read and write but the ones that could read and write knowed right
where to go in Crane's Ford and get a message sent off to the people of New York behind this organization. Clarence Reed understood that part of the proposition.

I never did see him no more after the evenin that I got shot until I got out of prison. I went to Birmingham to see him and his wife, talk with em and visit, and that was the last I knowed of him until I heard he was dead. Didn't see him when I was in prison; he wouldn't come there, didn't come for the whole twelve years. But the evenin I got into it, Clarence was the man that got in the road somehow and went to Crane's Ford. Told about the trouble down here; notified the heads of this organization and they come down to investigate the matter. Clarence Reed was the man and he moved right on; durin the time I first landed in prison he left here.

And he was a man this way: he was a good fellow and he knowed how to work in the field but he had ways like a woman. Him and Mattie never did have nary a child. They married when I was livin up on Miss Reeve's place, and directly after I come home free from prison he died up there in Birmingham. And they brought him from up there down here and buried him. Now his wife's dead. And my children, three of em, Vernon and Rachel and Garvan, and their uncle TJ, went up there—but there's no understandin yet where they goin to bury her. This girl was the baby of all, girls and boys, she was the baby of all. They said she died durin the night; didn't nobody know when she died, just went away—that's the statement that reached here. Died quiet as a lamb. There was some talk amongst the neighbors, people of the community that knowed her from when she lived in these parts, that they goin to bring her body here but you can't count on that. I told Josie, my wife—Josie knowed Mattie well—“It's my best opinion they goin to put her up there somewhere.” Little Waldo is buried up there, her brother, only boy in the family of children. Mattie ought to have knowed, as long as she been in Birmingham, where he's buried at. If she didn't tell nobody and leave no record of it, they just might bring her back here.

V
ERNON
bought his own plantation, sixty-one acres, in 1948. That was as good a place as you can find anywhere around here—smooth land, productive land. He agreed to give Mr. Harmon Silver, a white man, three thousand dollars for it.

Fall of the year, and all durin of the year, I was busy runnin backwards and forwards from the Leeds place to Vernon's place, buildin a six-room house up there. Vernon moved into the home house that was on that property when he bought it—he stayed just one year down on the Leeds place in that house Mr. Leeds had built for him—and I built right out on the edge of the field south of him. Vernon and Garvan, and also Eugene helped before he left from here goin to Ohio. All three of them boys lent in and went up yonder on their mother's daddy's old place and cut logs. Trucked them logs into Beanville and sawed em for so much of the lumber. And we hired Preston Courteney, a makeshift carpenter, the boy that squandered the Courteney place after his parents died, and lost it to Mr. Grace—he come over there and laid the foundation. And I come from the Leeds place that fall just about every day, except gatherin my little corn crop; had a little cotton too, but didn't none of it work and upset me enough that I couldn't hustle from pillar to post, hustle over there in the mornin and hustle home at night. Drove my two-horse wagon—my boys turned that loose back to me—I left em with more than that. And I drove that big gray mare to it that my wife had gived me when I got back, and the mule I bought from Garvan after he quit his crop.

After Preston Courteney got that foundation down, I boxed that house up all around, just stack-boxed it. Then took sealin and sealed up the overheads, all but one room out of six, sealed em up. Garvan due to be there helpin but he was at Calusa at work. And when we got ready to Sheetrock it, I done the biggest part of that by myself. Preston Courteney had promised to help every day on his off time—nigger worked at Calusa too, and when he come off his job he'd jump on his car and just loll all over the country; had a new car and he'd ride every whichaway. And me there knockin every day by myself, boxin up, sealin the overheads and all. And at the windup, Preston come there and him and Vernon climbed on the house and I handed up tin and they covered it. I never did like it havin as flat a roof as it had, but I just went on. After so long a time, we wired up the house and put lights in there—that was the first electricity we used. They'd had them big lectric lights at prison, on every buildin—on the cells, on the barn, on the blacksmith shop—so by the time we put lights in our house, it weren't somethin new to me. Didn't worry about it; it was just somethin to pacify the country, the people in the country. But I'd lived with it for years.

M
ATTIE
J
ANE
stayed in the new house with me and her mother. We had put our arms around her when her husband died and moved her in the house with us, her and her little girl—over yonder on the Leeds place. And when we moved over here on Vernon's place, she had a little old boy baby and he was the very spirit of his daddy, just as much like him as two peas out of one hull.

So, Mattie Jane had a finger in that house; Garvan had a finger in it; I had a finger in it; my wife had a finger in it before she died—of course, my wife's was the same as mine. And Lord God, if I didn't lose corn—comin over here and neglectin my crop that fall puttin up that house. I pulled my corn and dropped it on the ground, and workin on that house so regular, my corn laid on the ground and sprouted in the pile; lost it. And when I moved into the house I built, I didn't have no more than enough corn to get by with, to feed my stock and make a crop with that first year.

I jumped in after I moved down there and right about the middle of the place I cleared up a big swamp for Vernon's pasture. He had some cows, milkers of his own when he moved there, but he commenced a messin around with beef cattle then, Black Angus. He had a Hereford or two amongst em but he was dotin on them Black Angus.

The piece I farmed I was rentin from Vernon, but he wouldn't be heavy on me; he about halfway gived the house to me. I just took a hold on the land while he was workin at Calusa. But there was a flaw in the deal—that place was washin away, that cultivatable land was washin away. I went on down there and picked me out a part that I wanted—he told me, just any part that I wanted, go to it—and doggone it, when the rains washed across that field the water rose knee-deep. I jumped up, I did, and Vernon workin at Calusa, and evenins a heap of times he'd come out to the field where I was when he come off his job and he'd look over the situation. I told him, “Well, son, this land here is washin away; it got to be somethin done about it.”

He looked at it and said, “Yeah, Papa, but I'm workin at Calusa, got to go to Calusa every day.”

I said, “Well, son, you got to do somethin about it. You'd be done bought a desert soon.” That was a fact. I said, “Son, hit or miss, I'm goin to stop it, and I'm goin to stop it this year, too.”

He was drawin rent on the place the first year he bought it. TJ and Ben Ramsey rented several acres apiece from him and the most they planted on it was corn. And they planted peas between the corn, scandalous. Had the best of the place, and they even rented some they didn't work and that part just laid out. They was already havin to work their land at home and they wanted a heavy crop that year so they jumped up and planted a gang of corn in there and filled it up with peas. Made peas there to walk on, so many peas. And that corn growed close as my toes. Biggest lot of corn stalks I ever seed in my life less'n it was on bottom land.