All God's Dangers (80 page)

So, after the funeral, we got on route home. Come clean on out from Apafalya after leavin Henry off, down that road through Two
Forks and on down through Highgate goin through by Bear Butler's store. Well, comin right along there, just above Tukabahchee City, I looked out on Mr. Floyd Grafton's side. He was one of these cotton acre measurers and he worked a small plantation. Mr. Grafton had a nice patch of early corn and it looked good and tempting. I spoke to Vernon about it, him steady drivin—and when we got on top of a hill there, comin on down to a bridge close to Henry Gresham's house, we was talkin just like people would talk—our last talk was about Mr. Floyd Grafton, nice corn he had and so on—and it come like a shot—I was astonished after the words was spoke. I seed no cause for it in anything I had done that day, and when it happened, I named it to whiskey, whiskey loosenin him up. He raised up there and hollered, “You just aint got no sense!”

Ooooooo, Lord, I didn't look for that. I hadn't said nothin under God's sun that called for that. I was surprised—just like I'd fall out there dead, unexpected by anybody. I looked at him and I had a hundred thoughts. Why did he speak that word to me? I just set in that truck quiet after that. I studied it and studied it—what could he mean by that?

Durin the trip along, he picked up Sid Hardy's wife and her little girl and let her ride. They lived right down that road close to Henry Gresham's. And he picked em up between there and Tukabahchee City. And when we got to the place on the road as far she was goin, Vernon stopped to put her off. I was the first man jumped out the truck. I was hurt and I was mad, too. I couldn't remember nothin that had been spoke between us or nothin I had done to him to cause him to act that way; I couldn't imagine what it was all about. Just a fool act. I just considered he'd been drinkin whiskey and was out of his head. Well, I'm quick, I'll admit that; you mistreat me and it gets all over me like a passion. So, I got out the truck and maybe I mighta spoke somethin when I got out. I was aimin to walk from there on, I weren't goin to ride no further with him talkin that bad talk for no cause in the world. And he was angry at me, too— “You just aint got no sense, you just aint got no sense!”

Well, when I got out the truck—quite natural his wife would take up for him; she made it bad on my side when she come to Josie with it. She told Josie we both cussed at one another when I got off the truck. I mighta done it, but she took pains to let what I done be told. And I hadn't said a word till I jumped out the truck.
Told him he could go ahead—I showed I was mad, I couldn't help it to save my life—my feelins was hurt. Looked like there was more put on me than I was guilty of. First thing was the word he spoke so desperate to me and then, when I got out the truck, he appeared to have more complaints against me; but I was so hotheaded myself at that time, I didn't catch what he said. There was some bad words spoke between me and him and I was keepin up my end—I don't give up; you got to kill me and I'll stop, but I try my best not to start up against nobody without a point.

He offered to run the truck over me. I was around the front of the truck, talkin at him, and he got in a fit up there and threatened to run that truck over me and kill me. I got up a big rock or two, told him, “Run the truck over me”—standin right in front of it—“run it, crank it up and come on.”

And if he'd a cranked that truck up—he let that motor run right on and he didn't have a thing to do but turn that truck loose on me, but noway under God's sun that truck coulda hit me without—it mighta hit me and runned over me, but I'd a sure busted that windshield into his and his wife's faces both. So, I dared him—he offered and it looked like he were goin to do it. Eventually he backed up and turned from me. I walked home after that. And he told me when he left me, “You better not come up that road, you better not—” I was livin over there on Mosley's place at that time, right across the road from Vernon. That road divided our houses. Well, damn the road and him too!

I just failed to speak to him any way for a week after that. But I was his daddy, and I confess to be a Christian man. I just couldn't hold out walkin around people and not speakin to em. Wound it up, I was the first one spoke. Told him, “Good mornin.” From that on, the thing quieted down. I ain't said nothin to him about it from that day to this.

Colored man worked on Mosley's place several years before I come out of prison. Weren't nobody but him and his wife and he was sharecroppin. And that white man—Mosley—waited till he made a crop, good crop—I was told this and I talked with the fellow
got treated this way—and he had to get and get quick, forced out of the country. And when he left he was all beat up and thrashed like a dog.

Fall of the year and this colored man was said to be done paid Mosley all he owed him and his field was yet white with cotton. One day he got on the wagon with Mosley and went down to Beanville to the gin. And Mosley had done got his crowd together and told em where to meet him with this fellow on the wagon. So, when they come back and got right over here, not over a mile, they come to a bridge over a little creek and the white man had his crowd stashed there. Hung out till they come along, him and that colored fellow on the wagon, with a bale of cotton, fresh-ginned. Stopped right there at that bridge and Mosley stood there on the wagon and suffered that crowd to demand that colored fellow out. And they was said to be, most of em, the white man's own dear people—walked up to that wagon, got that colored fellow off and carried him down to the swamps and beat him nearly to death. That was notice to run him off of his crop, and it just white in the field and he done paid the man all he owed him. Beat him up; poor fellow got out of there after they left life enough in him to leave. Some of em said they cut part of his secrets off.

Mosley just drove on home—it was a fixed thing; I'm tellin it like it was laid to me—and he put hired hands in the cotton, picked it out, the balance of the crop. And that colored fellow stole away from here and got down in Montgomery County. And one day after I come home— Vernon and numbers of people right here in this settlement would go down there in Montgomery County and haul hay out off them big hay farms. Vernon particularly loaded up for his cows. So one day we went down there, deep on down in Montgomery County, on down even to Montgomery City, then east back into that hay country. We stopped at a certain big hay farm and the white man there told us he didn't own the place but it was owned by a man that this was the littlest plantation he owned; and good God, said there was twenty-seven hundred acres on that place and that was the least. Well, what man got any business ownin that much land and can't work it hisself? God don't give natural to one man more than to another. How did you come to own that much land? You might come in this world, your mother and father lie down and die, well, you come in possession of what they got, you
and the rest of the children, and if it aint but one child he come in possession of all that his father and mother died and left. But if they come by their wealth and their land by swindlin the workin people and they leaves it for you, what are you goin to do with it? I have studied that for many years and I don't know the answer today.

And so, we got a truckload of hay and drove out from down there. And Vernon stopped at a store along the way and that colored fellow happened to be in there. I wouldn't a never expected it. These people up here thought he drove off and died, but he just drove clean out of this county. And he told me out of his own mouth how Mosley had him beat up and nearly killed, runned off his crop and then the white man hired some hands to get in there and pick his cotton, sold it and put the money in his pocket. He was said to be a man of that kind and that was the worst trick he was known to do. The poor colored fellow was half interested in every bit that come out of the field, had done picked enough to pay the man all he owed him. And he was entitled to get what was left but that's the way they done him. And he got down there in Montgomery County and got over his troubles.

That's the way colored people met their lives in this country, livin on a white person's place. White man's money been comin from the colored race—this state, the bosses of it and the moneyed cats, as long as I ever knowed, has been takin the nigger's labor. And if the white man had any trouble with a nigger, or if he was just the type of man that didn't treat a nigger like flesh and blood, he just liable to have him bushwhacked—more liable than not to do it. Colored people has stood—I can't explain it all—far and near, colored people have had a desperate chance in this country.

I got along all right with Mosley, jam-up, because I knowed him. I didn't have no crop with him, not a bit in the world, just doin small jobs for him in the way of payin rent for the old house. That old buildin stood over in a grove where the sun couldn't keep it dried out.

Jerry Hatch, fellow that lived in that house before I did, his wife was afflicted someway and disabled to work. Well, I say she weren't able to work in the field but she'd have a baby every year. Jerry never did have nothin—Mosley gettin his labor, his wife settin
at the house doin nothin, him and his children makin the crops. And Jerry had a knack, and he done that several times, of movin away, stayin off a year or two and movin back. And he had a pretty good-sized boy, crazy-minded boy—Jerry Hatch has got a pretty thin mind hisself and got triflin acts about him, but he's a good worker and he stayed with Mr. Mosley, had been stayin with him, moved off and moved back at the time
this
happened.

I was livin up on Vernon's place. This boy was stayin up there with his daddy, Jerry Hatch; he was big enough to work and could work very well. So one day, Mrs. Mosley goes out—as regular as the days come she had to milk her cows herself, cold or hot, rain or shine. She milked from one to two cows all the time, Mrs. Mosley did, from Christmas to Christmas. I'd be around there many a time after I moved on Mr. Mosley's place, doin little jobs for him he wanted done, and Mrs. Mosley would be about the lot, soon of the mornin, just as soon as she'd cook breakfast, she'd take her milk buckets, go out to the lot to milk. Mr. Mosley and Jason, her husband and son, they didn't have nothin to do but go in and eat breakfast, Mrs. Mosley at the lot milkin.

So, one mornin or evenin, whichever, she went to the lot to milk and it was said she found a note stickin up by the lot somewhere, looked like it was put there on purpose right handy for her to see it. She took the note—I heard several say that the note weren't actively wrote; accordin to the quotation of people that read the note, looked like a chicken stepped in some ink and walked on the paper. Just a plumb nothin. So, she carried it to the house—I reckon she read it first—and she gived it to Mr. Mosley. He looked over the note, and in the windup of it, he called Jerry Hatch's boy—that boy comes along here sometime, walkin the road just this way: hand hangin out of control and he just hashin along, just hashin along. You put him in the cotton patch to pick cotton—talkin bout what I know now, talkin what I've seed—he's got sense enough to know how to work a little, but if you put him in a big field of cotton and it just white as snow, he'll pick all over that field, first one place then another. He just aint got a good mind.

So, Mr. Mosley called that boy in question about that note. The note read, so they told me—Mr. Mosley let several people read that note, and this here Preston Courteney, he let him read the note, let a Negro into it to try to get all the provation he could against the boy. Well, a heap of folks said the old note didn't amount to nothin,
never did believe the boy wrote the note. They say it read, “Meet me down in the woods and I'll give you five dollars.”

It was well known Jerry's boy couldn't write but Mr. Mosley settled it right down on him anyway. And Mosley hopped on this boy—I was out there in Vernon's field and I couldn't see it for the trees, but he beat the boy unmerciful, Mosley did. I heard the licks—Bam Bam Bam—I didn't know at the time what was goin on. Jerry Hatch aint hit his boy a lick, Mosley done it. And when he wound up with the boy, he sent him off to reformatory school. And the boy stayed away for so long and so long. The white folks got to talkin about it and one white man told me to my head he didn't no more believe that boy wrote that note than he believed he could fly. He told me if he had the power he'd just go on down there and get that boy, if he knowed anything about it more than he did know, he'd just go on and get him.

All right. Jerry Hatch flew up and got gone again and he never has lived close to Mosley since.

One day up there at Vernon's, I got to talkin with a white fellow about it. Vernon didn't like me to tell it—Vernon's a good fellow but he jumps back when anything happens that way. So, I was in his yard when I told this fellow I heard that white man beatin that boy. Vernon told me when that fellow went away, “Papa, you told that fellow more than you oughta told him. You don't know nothin bout what happened.”

I said, “No, I don't know nothin about it but the licks I heard; I heard that.”

The niggers all begin to throw this man Mosley up, wouldn't nobody work on his place, wouldn't fool with him. That hurt him; he had to take who he could get. Well, there was a white man by the name of Praise Carter, young man, had a wife and one or two little old kids. Praise Carter went up there and made a deal with Mosley—he told me this hisself; he moved up there and Mosley commenced a bossin over him in the field, ordered him to change his plow and set it like he wanted. That was a workin white man too, Praise Carter. He proved it right there on that place. I was stayin there in Mosley's old house at the time.

So, Mosley went out in the field one day and he meddled this fellow Praise Carter. Good God they had a cussin frolic then. Mosley eventually dropped his head and walked away. Praise Carter told me—he hired me to help him pick cotton and I picked for him
several days. Praise Carter made eleven heavy bales of cotton on a one-horse farm. Didn't plant no corn— And so, he told me how Mosley done talked to him out in the field, wanted him to change his plow and geehawse like he wanted. Praise Carter wouldn't do it and he forced that man to leave the field to boot. Well, that brought up a great discrimination toward him. Mosley got raw and told him to leave. He seed he couldn't do this white man like he could do a nigger. Praise Carter gathered that crop and got his part of it and moved away from there.