All God's Dangers (89 page)

I learnt that if Vernon could get a thing goin his way when I was in prison—Eugene come here a few weeks ago to see me, come down from Middletown, Ohio, him and his baby boy. And he told me—he didn't tell me no more than I knowed. I didn't know just how the situation runned in my home after I left there, but I figured that some dissatisfaction come about there while I was away. Vernon kept the farm goin and couldn't nobody complain about the job he done. I'd left him with plenty to help hisself till I got back and when he saved my stock and tools from the mob crowd, he had em to work with—didn't have to start from zero. He took care of his family, his daddy's family, in a way that he was more than a brother to his sisters, a brother to his brothers, and a son to his mother and father. But his mother told me that he come home twice to my knowin full of whiskey. And she jacked him up about it. I never trained him up to drink whiskey; that's just a method he picked up. I don't say he was drunk but the whiskey loosened his tongue and he talked in a way he oughtn't a talked over his mother and the other children.

But he observed my rulins and held up for right more than he done wrong. One time, while they was livin on the Courteney place, my wife told Vernon, “If you'll go to Calusa, there's three washins down there—” She was a industrious woman and she wanted to do somethin to help herself. But I'd told her when we married, awhile after we married and commenced a raisin up little chaps, I said, “When you do your washin here at home, and our cookin and other things that's assigned to your hand, you done enough. I aint goin to have none of this here runnin around over the country
washin for white folks. You just cut that out from your thoughts.”

So, one day she told Vernon, “There's three washins at Calusa I wants to get. If you'll take the car and go down there and get them people's clothes and bring em back here, I'll wash em and carry em back and that'd be a help to us.”

Yeah, it'd help—help carry her down, too. She told me plain all about it; come there to prison and told me, “That scamp looked at me when I told him that and what you reckon he told me? He said, ‘Mama, Papa never would allow that and you know it. I aint goin to do it.' ” Turned her down right there. “ ‘I aint goin down there to get no clothes for you to wash.' ” She told me every word he told her. I was so glad of it I didn't know what to do.

So, Eugene got to talkin bout what I had and what I'd left em with and how they got along when I was gone. He said, “Papa, you just don't know what went on when you was in prison. Vernon runned everything his way.” And he commenced sheddin tears when he told me. Said, “When you left home, Vernon was the head of everything and he would take me and Garvan—he wouldn't carry us where we wanted to go no time without makin two trips. He'd carry us and put us off where we wanted to go, then he'd pick up his gals and carry them on to beer joints and around”—that stuck me up—“and promised to come back and pick us up where he left us, and we'd have to walk home most of the time. And when
he'd
come home, he wouldn't answer our mother to where he'd been. But we knowed, Papa, we knowed.”

That was against my will, that was against my desires: I didn't want to hear he'd treated em nothin like that. Travelin through the country with a frolickin crowd and nobody at home but his mother and her babies. Eugene just thinkin bout how they was treated—that's all he would tell—and he shed tears.

But I have to take his talk lightly to this extent: Vernon didn't mistreat em in a way that amounted to nothin. They had to work under him just like if I'd been over em and, after all, he is their brother. Children don't endure a brother like they do a father. That talk come out of Eugene to me and I'm satisfied it's true. But it aint the last word on the subject. I just figured that if Vernon's pedigree was to come out good and proper like it was, and him forced to be the head one, Eugene would take it for somethin nasty. But I'm just obliged to have two minds about it.

So, I swallowed all that boy told me. “Papa, you didn't know all that.”

Told him, “No, I didn't know it, but your mother told me he come in once or twice there with whiskey in him.”

Said, “Yes sir, he done that, and we had to do what he said do.”

It approaches my mind like this: what is labor? It's a trait of man. God put us all here to work. I know people who used to would work—always there was some of em wouldn't work at all—but since the government been givin em a hand-down, they wouldn't mind the flies off their faces. They'll tell you quick, “I'm drawin, I aint goin to hit a lick with a snake.”

You used to could have a field full of hands, but now you can't hardly get one or two in there; it's just out of the question. Aint available no more—they quit it, you can't hire em. Some of em run off and get em a public job; some of em will sit right in the house on their tail or loaf the road, and aint goin to do nothin much nowhere. I've heard em say, my color talkin it: “I wouldn't tell a mule to get up if he was sittin in my lap.” But I never heard em say they wouldn't eat the fruits of the earth. He won't plow, he won't chop cotton, he won't pick cotton, but still he's goin to wear these clothes made out of cotton. Everything that's used to sustain life and nurture your well-bein, it comes off a farm of some kind—if it's a little farm if it aint no more than just for family use.

I hear em talk, who I know used to plow and seed em plow: because they has once in days past made crops under the white man's administration and didn't get nothin out of it, he don't want to farm today regardless to what he could make out there; he don't want to plow no mule—that was his bondage and he turnin away from it. He huntin him a public job, leavin the possession and use of the earth to the white man.

You take these public companies, they keeps em laid off these jobs to an extent; the ones that's got em hired turns em loose, out, until way after a while, maybe they call em back, mess em around that way. But a man needs regular work—if he wants to work, it's right, it's honorable for him to work and try to help hisself. But he
aint goin to want to work if they liable to turn him loose anytime they please. Work em to death or don't work em enough, that's how they do around here. Cut off that regular work. If I got you hired out there to work on any sort of a public job, I'd be figurin like this: I'm already makin—I'm the boss man, understand—I'm already makin money on that job, if I give you regular work to do and pay you, why, that'd cut me down some. I'm already gettin good anyhow and I'll just lay you off for a few days—they doin that right here, at the cotton mill. I don't know how the people gets along that's laid off thataway. It's like a farmer don't have no land to work or it aint his land he's workin, he just gettin paid by the day, and he don't get the benefit of the crop; just give him enough to keep him goin today till tomorrow.

I'
M
yet a laborin man, I makes baskets. White folks comes from all parts to get my baskets. One family come, by the name of Hooker, man and his wife, out of West Point, Georgia. Why, if it wasn't for makin baskets and sellin baskets, I wouldn't hardly have no business with white folks at all.

I know some of my color now that tries to dodge whites and shun em, have nothin to do with em. I don't see how they can do it because we're right here amongst em, we got to have some dealins with em. And if you growin cotton, you can't consume that cotton yourself, you got to deal it to the middle man, and there's no nigger cotton buyers. You got to sell it to a white man. And there aint no nigger stores plentiful—there's some about, here and yonder—and there aint a nigger bank that I know of. You just can't avoid white folks and I don't try.

I can't fool with what they want always. What they ask for is out of my line of business. One white gentleman wants me to make him some net hoops—I don't fool with that, I make straight baskets. I use young white oak and makes baskets of different kinds for the public—fish baskets, clothes baskets, baskets to gather corn and peas and so on like that. And I got three chairs with brand new bottoms in my shed. One of em belongs to a colored fellow that lives up by Pottstown Church. I bottomed that chair two weeks ago. He made out like he wanted it—his wife asked my wife if I'd bottom it for em, so I went right on and bottomed it. I bites off just enough to keep me goin, as old as I am. Right now there's a white gentleman
lives between here and Tuskegee, name of McClure, Mr. McClure. He got a call in here for a little above sixty dollars' worth of baskets. There's Mr. Lorne Ray, man that bought out my tools and kitchen material, he buys every basket he can get his hands on. I can't make em fast enough for the public. I got to keep it cleaned off around here to make it look like somebody lives here. And then, too, I got a garden needs hoein and a hog to look after. The Lord keeps me strong but if I take any more on me than I do, I wouldn't make it.

It works me, it works me, aint no fun in it, it works the stuffin out of me—goin and gettin white oak, huntin and ramblin all over the woods, here and yonder. Heat gets me. I get wet with my own sweat and I give out, hardly able to crawl out of the woods. One day I set there and after the children left me, I jumped up and jumped on the worst piece to split in the business. Here's my thoughts after they left me: I thought I'd just split all of it off and come on to the house, tote back as much as I needed to get a start on a basket and come back for the rest on somebody's truck or car. But before it was over with, I just was lucky to split it open and pick up one piece of it and come on back to the house.

I taken Josie's grandchaps with me—great-grandchaps, they stays with us and they wants to go everywhere I go as far as my travelin is concerned. They stand by me and watch me split the white oak up. But like chaps will do, they wanted to come back home before I got my work done. I told em, “Yeah, you all go on back to the house.”

There was three pieces of white oak layin on the ground and I told em to take two pieces, one take one and the other take one—that biggest boy can tote a piece as easy as I can. Well, they brought their two pieces back to the house and I told em I'd be on directly. And I was already sweaty when they left, workin out there in the hot sun in the middle of the day; and after they left I got worser. But still I tried to split that big piece of timber before I carried it out of the woods. I just plumb give out. By the time I got that biggest piece of white oak half open, good God I was near doubled over. I puffed and I panted—I backed off under the bushes and set down there a long time by myself. And after awhile I decided I'd get up and finish removin the timber. But after I got up that first time and went back to splittin, I give out again. I rested myself awhile longer, got back to it and time I got it split out, I just didn't feel like nothin. I had to sit down again over there in the woods by myself. The boys
knowed where I was. I kept thinkin that if I didn't get able to get out from them woods, they goin to come back to see about me, which they did. So, I lingered around and lingered around and after awhile my mind told me to get out from there and get right close to the asphalt road so somebody could see me. Well, I just picked up my timber and come staggerin out from there and I made it right close to the asphalt and I had to sit down again. Three or four cars passed and I was sittin right where they could see me, and I knowed some of em did see me—maybe some of em didn't if they didn't turn their heads, but I was sittin right where they could see me. But I couldn't stand up to hail nobody. T'weren't long and I said to myself, ‘I believe I'll get up now and try it again.' Stood up then and shouldered that white oak and come on across a fill and walked up a steep hill—it's a steep hill for walkin—and by the time I got up to that woman that lives right yonder in the second house from mine, old lady Fred Brewer's widow, I heard these little old boys hollerin. Well, I got up to this side of the house before I stopped and I just was able to pull that hill totin that piece of white oak. And I looked out in the road, here they come. I was just about to a bush on the left side of the road comin this way where I intended to get clean out from the edge of the road and set down under that bush and cool off—just as I got there these little old boys met me and commenced a hollerin, “Granddaddy, granddaddy.”

I said, “Yeah, I'm give out, boys; I'm give out and I aint able to make it to the house. I'm goin to sit down and rest under this bush here. Put my white oak down and rest.”

God almighty, when I told em that they hit the road. “We'll be back directly, granddaddy, we'll be back directly.”

They took off again and informed Josie where I was and Josie sent that gal that stays with us to my daughter's and she cranked up her car and come right on at me. All them chaps piled in the car with her, Josie in there. I looked up the road and I seed Rachel's car drivin right dead on to where I was settin and watchin—I heard them chaps hollerin in the car and I knowed it was them. Passed by me the first time and turned around in the yard of a house at the bottom of the hill I'd walked up. Come back up the road and parked the car next to where I was. I jumped up, picked up my white oak—it weren't no heavy piece. Rachel took my ax from me and that piece of white oak and stuck em in the trunk of the car and wired the lid down. All of us got in the car then and she brought me right
up to the pine tree in my front yard. She unfastened the lid of her trunk, took out my ax and that piece of white oak, and brought em on around back and laid em down. And she stood and cautioned me a whole lot, as a chap would, and she got on her car and left. She works down here at Tukabahchee City at a mop factory; and yesterday evenin after she come off her job she had to come after me.

That piece of white oak—and them two other pieces the little boys brought back, they layin here now under the eave of my shed. And the way I'm goin to run my business they goin to keep me for awhile. I got to put the brakes on myself. I might get caught in the woods cuttin down my white oak and fall down, disabled to make it out of there and nobody knowin exactly where I am. I can't stand the thought no longer.