All God's Dangers (83 page)

If I lived in the city I wouldn't have no spaces to look out on, no trees in my yard and maybe no yard; no garden and no small crops. But as I stand now in my age, I wouldn't miss it too bad because I can't do nothin with it now. They don't grow the stuff they consume in Philadelphia and many other northern cities, like they do here. But you can't even demand that here—you can't demand the very crops you grow. Get out there on a small farm right here in the state of Alabama, and you produce cotton, you produce corn, vegetables, sugar cane, many other things; that white man whose place you on goin to boss that cotton and everything else you produce—you produces it but you can't demand it, you aint got no political pull whatever under the sun, you got no political rights. And without your political rights you can't demand what you produce. What good for me to work myself to death and somebody else get the benefit of my labor? Then soon as I gets old to where I can't do nothin, don't no white man want to bother with me. Poor colored man, as long as he's a workin man and able to get up and do, and do do it, white folks holdin their hands out for him. But get to where he can't work no more, white folks pulls that hand back.

I've never been able to get out from under a poor man's yoke. I aint over, if that much, ten miles today from where I was born at. Now I'm eighty-five years old, I'm livin in my eighty-sixth year and I've never been out of the state of Alabama to stay over a week in my whole life. I don't love its ways, but Alabama is as good a state as there is in the world. The land will respond to your labor if you are given a chance to work it and a chance to learn
how
to work it. It's the people here is what my trouble is. This land and nothin on this land goin to get up and do me no harm but a person.

I'm a country-raised fellow, all of my born days, and I love the country. But I likes a get-up and a pleasure trip to other parts.
And the trip I was given, to go to Philadelphia and to go from there to the state of New York, that boy of mine up there in the northern states backed it up. Well, I'd a loved to been able to do that myself and I woulda been able if I hadn't been brutally treated in many ways. Today I'd a been able to go anywhere in reason I want to go.

I feel a certain loyalty to the state of Alabama: I was born and raised here and I have sowed my labor into the earth and lived to reap only a part of it, not all that was mine by human right. It's too late for me to realize it now, all that I put into this state. I stays on if it gives em satisfaction for me to leave and I stays on because it's mine.

One year there on the Jenks place I done away with three foxes. I started out to the barn one Sunday mornin and just as I stepped out the house, Josie's hens come a flutterin, tryin to walk on their toes and flyin, half-flyin out of the swamps, tryin to get back to the henhouse. I hurried to the lot and got to where I could see a durn fox runnin them chickens right up to the wire fence where the lot meets the pasture. And he runned one particular hen—he couldn't catch but one at a time and that hen gived him such a run he couldn't get none of em. And
she
got away. There stood the fox, lookin through the fence. He seed me and he runned back over cross the holler, got to the edge of the pine thickets and stopped, looked back. I went to the house to get my gun and that scoundrel, when I got back there, was gone.

Well, a fox will catch a chicken sometimes but he can't equal a dog. He kept messin around and I decided I'd trap him over on the little creek that run right below my house. I was trappin for possum regular—there's a bunch of six or seven persimmon trees stood by the creek and every summer they'd bear. Fox and dog and possum like simmons. I decided I'd go down there then; walked up to them simmon trees, the ground was covered with simmons. Said to myself, ‘If I set my traps here I might just catch that fox.'

So what I done, I got them traps and got me two pieces of wire enough to go around the bottom of them simmons trees and I run em through the rings on them traps. I figured the fox—and if it weren't a fox, maybe it'd be a possum, one, would piddle
around by them traps. I put simmons all out there around em, didn't put nary a one on the plate of them traps.

Next mornin, I goes back over there and had nothin bothered them traps—you take varmints, they don't travel back to the same place every night; they has more feedin grounds than one. So, weren't nothin in ary one of them traps, settin there just like I left em. I went back to the house. Next mornin, I goes over there—had the two traps settin close together where the simmons was most plentiful—somethin jumped up and made a racket, and I looked around and seed it was a great big old gray fox. He couldn't get loose and run, so he set down there just like a dog would on his hind legs. He looked at me and I looked at him—and I just loved to see him in it. I just stepped out there and got me a seasoned limb, long, thick limb, and I broke the small limbs off of it. I walked up there—he still lookin right in my face, watchin my moves. And before he knowed anything I hit him just as hard as I could right the side of his head. Knocked him out. I beat him over the head some—big as a fice dog and he was so fat it was a pity, really, in as good a shape as the hogs I raised. I killed him dead and brought him up to the house and let Josie see him, and she rejoiced over it for the sake of her chickens.

That's one killed.

I went back out there, looked around and seed a great big old possum caught in the other trap. I got him out of that trap and carried him to the house live. You can catch a possum and he'll never bite you if you clamp him in back of the head when he sulls down. If you hurt a possum the least bit he'll fall over and draw up—that's sullin. After awhile he'll get up—his feelins comes back to him and he'll get up but you already got him by the neck and he can't do nothin about it. He'll try to pull off, surely, but hit him with somethin, not enough to break his bones but just enough to make him sull again. Carried that possum to the house live, dressed him and et him.

Some folks say, “I won't eat a possum.” But when you cook a possum right, they're good; real meat, tasty enough for anybody to like em. The only reason people won't eat a possum is the idea of a possum—don't want to have nothin to do with em. Just don't tell em what it is and cook it; they'll beat you eatin it. You can't hardly find a person but what he loves hog meat. Practically the best part of the nation—if he don't eat every part of a hog, there's
a part about the hog he likes. Aint no difference in a hog and a possum when it comes to the meat. A hog's a thing that'll catch snakes and eat em. And if there's a dead mule or a dead cow drug out into the woods like people used to do with em, a hog will go there and eat until he nearly falls out. A possum will too. I been possum huntin ever since I was a little boy, huntin with my daddy. He used to drag me in the woods far from home at night—sometimes when we'd stop movin I'd stand there and go to noddin; sometimes I'd sit down if I thought my daddy was goin to stay there long enough listenin for his dogs to open up somewhere. One night my daddy heard his dogs strike a track. I had done set down and when I woke up my daddy was gone, and I just could discern a light tremblin way in the woods goin way away from me. I jumped up and took off. I'd run and fall down, jump up and go on. I been huntin ever since then, followin my daddy. He used to have some real dogs, too. He went in the woods with them dogs, weren't but one way he'd come out—overloaded with possums, big ones, too. I was born and raised up eatin wild things—wild turkeys, coons, possums, squirrels, beavers—my daddy trapped them out on Sitimachas—fish, wild ducks—

So, one day after I killed that gray fox and that possum both, I went huntin. I had a good dog, a great big hound I bought from a white man over here in Elmore County, across the river. I liked that dog how he looked. He had three—fellow by the name of Sadler—and I knew him before he brought them dogs to my house. Been raisin dogs several years and said he got tired bein worried with em and just decided he'd sell em out. Well, he brought two dogs there and one bitch, she-dog. That was easily the prettiest bitch that ever I laid my eyes on.

He said that big hound—all of em was big fine hounds, but that biggest of all of em—white man told me, “He aint been trained but he'll run rabbits and things.” I was born and raised up amongst dogs by my daddy and I knowed what a dog was when I seed him or what he'd come to be by his looks. So, he said, “He aint trained at all, I wouldn't tell you that he is. He aint nothin but a young fellow—I wouldn't tell you a lie. He'll cost you fifteen dollars if you want him. Them two there, that other dog and that black bitch—” looked like a dog's picture, prettiest thing ever I seed in my life for a dog—“that bitch there and that other dog, they'll cost you some money. I'll sell ary one to you that you want.”

I said, “I like this young fellow here you say is untrained.”

He said, “Yeah, he aint trained, I done told you bout that. He don't know nothin but runnin rabbits yet. But them other two will get anything practically you put em on.”

I said, “I want
him.
”

Well, I bought that dog and I'd a had him today but—Ben Ramsey up there right this side of me had some old dogs wouldn't do nothin but eat chickens and lay around. Well, my dog took up with them and got to where he wouldn't hear me when I called him, acted it. So I sold him. I thought a mess of that dog too.

Well, in about a day and a half after I bought him I turned him loose. He was just as friendly with me—he liked his home and he never did go off and try to go back to the man I got him from, never showed a mind to run off at all until he took up with them chicken eatin dogs. I called him Big Boy. That little old boy that stays here now with me and Josie, he thought a mess of that dog too. I noticed in a few days after they started playin together, that boy played a little too rough for the dog, but he wouldn't bite him, wouldn't bite a chap. And I noticed one day that chap started toward the dog, that dog got up and trotted off out the field and lay down somewhere. So I thought one while and I told Josie, that's the reason Big Boy won't stay at home, Alexander was always frolickin with him and he'd hit him with anything he could get his hands on—but he weren't big enough to hurt the dog and make him holler.

Several different white people and two or three colored people just hanked around me regular to get that dog. Told em, “No, he aint for sale, I won't sell him. He got to do somethin bad before I get rid of him. I need him. That's the only kind of dog I keep around me—a big nice hound. I like em; born and raised up—my daddy had em. No, I won't sell him.”

Well, before I
had
to sell him, I went off one day over on the little creek near my house, as usual, with my ax to cut some white oak. That big hound trotted right on with me, first ahead of me then off behind—sometime I couldn't see him. He was with me though. And just as I crossed the creek he runned off down a ways pickin up a track. He hit that track several licks, barkin, trailin—I hollered to him once or twice just to let him know I was there yet in the woods. He runned on awhile and his track got cold and he quit it and come trottin right up through the swamp right by me
and on up the creek. I popped my finger at him and urged him on, “Go ahead, boy.” He went up on the creek a piece and after a while I heard him bark up there. And he barked like he was pretty close on somethin and he commenced a pushin it back on down the creek towards me. He stayed on that track like a desperate man. By the time he come up close to me he got furious at whatever it was he was runnin; I knowed by his commotion that he had done tried to get somethin or had done got it. I just quit workin at my white oak then and broke off to get him. I runned through the briars and muscadine vines and when I got up to him he had done quieted down. Time I come up from below he was runnin around out in a little clear place and smellin all on the ground. I said to myself, ‘Doggone it, you done killed a thing or had a skirmish up here someway but now you hushed and I can't even tell where you was at when you made your last furious bark and done got away from the thing you killed, if you killed it.' He didn't act particular like he done caught the thing. But there was a spot where a company had cut logs and just piled em up crossways and every way in there and under that mess he done caught a fox. Hadn't killed the fox dead but he had just about killed him. I stood there and looked at the dog, couldn't see yet what he'd done; just makin hisself contented smellin around there. I said, “Git him!” Just like I'd talk to a man, squalled at him, “Git him! Git him!” He whirled and went over the top of them logs, the dog did, and fell down over in a hole. After a while he grabbed that fox and tussled with him and he come out of there backwards, draggin him over them treetops out of that hole. He pulled that fox up and I could see its tail whip over—I knowed it was a fox. I just kept it to him, “Git him! Git him! Git him!” Got that fox out of there and brought him to me and dropped him at my foot. I looked at the dog and I looked at the fox—after a while I seed the old fox blinkin his eyes, layin there pitiful lookin at me. Couldn't help hisself, he was too near killed, but he could blink his eyes. I jumped on him and hit him a lick with the back of my ax enough to kill him. Went on down through the woods a little piece and cut me a muscadine vine bout as long as one of my pieces of white oak. I gived it a twist or two and tied it around that old fox's neck and drawed it up. Weren't no way for it to come loose. Got my white oak on my shoulder and my ax, took that vine and drug him out from that swamp until I got to the lot gate. I dropped the fox's vine, went on up to the house and told
my wife where the old fox was layin—right in front of the lot gate where I turned my stock out into pasture. Josie come out and she was pleased, she was pleased. That old fox wouldn't fox no more.