Daddy King Read online

  Papa never backed up an inch, and when he spoke he was looking “Settle Up” right in his face. “Only thing I’m sayin,’ Mr. Graves, is nobody puts a hand on my boy. If there’s some reason you need to know that, then I s’pose it’s you I’m tellin.’”

  Some of the other men moved over and formed a little circle around Papa and “Settle Up.”

  Now Graves was a big, beefy fellow whose fists looked like a couple of hams hanging down from his wrists. But I could see that Papa wasn’t about to back off from him, and it looked like there’d be some trouble. I’d heard men say that my father could handle himself awfully well in a fair fight. He didn’t have a lot of size going for him, but he was quick, and those lean arms were like steel rods. He could hit hard. Graves had been cheating everybody for years; the white farmers around Stockbridge had bad dealing with him, too, and as they gathered around Papa and the old cotton trader, it seemed as though they all had the scent of blood pushing them forward. They wanted to see a fight, this was clear enough. Whoever won it didn’t matter, they’d have some satisfaction either way. “Settle Up” could see right away that nobody was really on his side, and a few of his so-called friends among those whites who formed a circle around him and Papa would have liked nothing better than to see the man, white as he was, put right down on his rump by a Negro smaller than he.

  I was getting scared. I could feel my heart pounding harder and harder in me. Papa motioned for me to go over by the wagon with the mules, and I knew he meant for me to stay there no matter what happened. So I started off, but turned back after a few steps and called back to him: “Papa, don’ forget that ain’ nothin’ been said yet ’bout the cotton seed!”

  Well, this broke some of that tension, because the next thing I knew the whites were just laughing away about me, saying I was nothing but “a crazy little nigger don’ know how to keep his mouth shut!” But I think, too, that some of them had sons, and they wanted to believe that their own boys would speak up by their sides when they needed them to.

  “Gon’ pay that nigger fer ’is seeds, ‘Settle Up,’” I heard someone yell as I was walking to the wagon. “Quit cheatin’ on what you owe!”

  This started a roar from the rest of the men standing around. “Pay the nigger!” they shouted. “Pay ’im, pay ’im!”

  Well, “Settle Up” turned beet-red. He looked around. Papa hadn’t moved an inch. I looked over there from my place by the wagon and all of a sudden here was “Settle Up” with a big grin on his face.

  “Aw, hell, I wasn’t ’bout to cheat nobody. Them seeds just slipped my mind is all. I’m gonna pay this boy, pay him everything I owe him!”

  Well, of course, hearing this just made my heart leap I was so happy. And my joy just rose further when “Settle Up”’s men weighed all our bales of cotton seed. Altogether we’d brought in eighteen bales to the Cotton Trade. I saw “Settle Up” go in his little office and come back out with a huge handful of cash. “Boy,” he said to Papa, “ya seed is worth ninety dollars a bale. Here’s ya money.”

  And he stuffed all that cash down into my father’s hand. Lord, I just couldn’t believe it, that much money. This made me so happy I could hardly stand still. Papa was very quiet. He just took the money and thanked “Settle Up,” then turned and started to our wagon. “Come on, son,” he said to me.

  As we rode home, I got a strange feeling. Papa looked so angry, his fists all tightened up, his mouth set mighty hard in his face.

  “Papa,” I said to him . . .

  But he interrupted me right away. “Shut up, boy!” Before I realized just how angry he was I started to say something else, and he reached over the seat of the wagon and cuffed me so hard on the head I nearly fell off.

  “I told you, damn it! I told you to keep ya mouth shut.”

  Well, of course, I wasn’t able to understand. It just didn’t make any kind of sense to me. All that money Papa’d gotten, that “Settle Up” was trying to cheat him out of. But maybe I hadn’t really listened carefully enough. If I had, the memory of “Settle Up”’s words to my father as we pulled away from the Cotton Trade on our wagon would have stuck clearly in my mind.

  “Boy,” he said to Papa, “I’m gon’ see from now on that you get everything you got comin.’ I’m gon’ see to it personally. . . .”

  As the sun was coming up the next morning, I heard voices outside in our front yard. My youngest sister, Lucille, was tugging at my arm, trying to wake me and saying that there were men near our cabin “fussin’ with Papa.”

  I peeked through the doorway and saw Papa. Beyond where he was standing, toward the road to town, “Settle Up” and some of his men from the Cotton Trade had taken the mule and some tools Papa had been paying on at the commissary. “You got till tonight, nigger,” “Settle Up” yelled at Papa, “to get you and the rest of your people off my land!”

  Papa tried to talk him out of it, but “Settle Up” wasn’t listening. The bottomland Papa had been promised was going to be worked by somebody, “Settle Up” said, “who won’t give me so much damn trouble.”

  Now I understood why Papa hadn’t been so pleased about the seed money. It came with a heavy price. By later in the afternoon we were packed up and off those acres that “Settle Up” owned. We put everything that would fit into the wagon. But the mule belonged to him. He had taken it with him when he and his men left. All we could do was push on down toward town and wait. The look on Papa’s face told me we were in trouble. He was in pain. For getting only what was right, what was due him, he now had to get off the shares he’d been working. His family was without a home. What did being “right” mean, I wondered, if you had to suffer so much for it?

  While we camped out there along the road for the next few days, Papa went around in town, seeing if another one of the landlords would give him some cotton shares to work. They all refused. “Settle Up” had talked to them. He knew how to get back at folks who crossed him. And he could put pressure on those who were in debt to him. Papa wasn’t able to find any land to work. He’d go off and get drunk. It didn’t take long for that piece of money I “helped” him get for the seeds to dry up.

  One of the white property-owners Mama and Woodie had washed and ironed clothes for sent us word that there was a little shack on a corner of their land, and we could move in there. Every day, it seemed, Papa found some reason to yell at me, get on me no matter how much I tried to help out. Nothing I did was right. Mama asked him to ease up, but he shouted her down. My sisters, especially Ruby, were too young to understand what was going on: the outdoors all the time, the waiting, and finally the moving into a new place.

  Woodie was just getting into her teens, and the woman she and Mama worked for urged us all to move into the city. She told Mama to get us all in school there, especially Woodie, who was proving to be a very bright young woman. Papa couldn’t say anything while the woman was around, but as soon as she wasn’t, he’d start yelling at Mama to quit listening to all that foolishness about schooling for all of us. The farm was good enough for him, it was good enough for his kids. Mama said very little. But I could feel her wanting Woodie to go where she could have a better chance in life than doing someone else’s housework was ever going to provide.

  Papa was drinking more and more. Slowly, steadily, he was falling apart. His work fell off. He forgot things he was supposed to do, broke up tools when he got mad, and stayed away from the little shack we had moved into. He’d be gone for days at a time. When he came back he’d be yelling and ordering everybody around with threats. My young brothers and sisters grew more and more afraid of him. From the look in Woodie’s eyes, I saw that she was just waiting for the day to come when she’d be able to leave. I felt the same way.

  All that really interested me now was getting the deacons at Floyd Chapel to give me a chance at a trial sermon. I wanted my preacher’s license, even though I wasn’t yet fourteen. But the deacons told everybody they weren’t going to give me a chance to be tested, not yet anyway. Folks
in the church were starting to grumble about this, telling the deacons to let me preach. But they kept holding out, making up one excuse after another—they couldn’t get a full deacon board meeting together to decide, Reverend Low was away and couldn’t give his approval—just one stumbling block after another.

  I always thought that jealousy was at the bottom of that attitude the deacons had about me. I could read, whereas most of them didn’t know the alphabet. So they kept me coming back to take their little tests on the Bible. But even then, as a boy, I knew more than all of them put together. Finally, the deacons passed me. I was licensed. And I went on out to preach.

  The only thing wrong during this whole period was that Papa picked at me every chance he got, making fun, laughing, cussing and calling me names.

  He walked into the house on this particular night, and we could all tell he had himself full of whiskey; he was barely able to walk up the path to our door. Usually we just tried to stay out of his way when he was like that, the way, I guess, that millions of people do in families with drinkers. But he was in a bad mood, and I could see a look of concern come across my mother’s face. She shushed some of the younger ones, Ruby, Lucille, my brother James, they were all just little at this time, and Mama finally told me to take them on outside in the fresh air while it was still early. Papa just looked around at everybody, his eyes half shut, his mouth loose. I could feel trouble moving in the house. He was in an ugly disposition.

  I could hear the kids out in the yard playing, and then Mama began humming the way she generally did when she was cooking or at some other chore. Otherwise the house was quiet.

  Papa had a big fish, wrapped up in a newspaper, tucked under his coat. He pulled it out.

  “Delia,” he said, his words unsteady, “I want this fish for supper, want you to cook it for me right now.”

  Mama kept stirring this little pot she had on the wood stove.

  “James Albert,” she said, in a very steady voice, “I already started supper for the children.”

  He leaned close to her. “Woman,” he said, “I told you I want this fish. Now you cook it!”

  Mama turned around and looked him close in the face.

  “I am cookin’ supper, James Albert!”

  He must have seen something in her that said she wasn’t going to back away from what she had to do. Papa stared for a moment, then pulled his hand back suddenly and slapped her in the face.

  I was on my feet as Mama reeled back away from him and tried to raise her arms to protect herself. He moved after her. I caught up to him as he raised his hand at her again, and I pulled him around to face me. His eyes seemed to be swimming around in his head, he was weaving, but I could feel the strength that man had in his arms, in his hands. My papa was tough, no question about it.

  “Don’t you hit my mama,” I said to him. “Don’t you hit her no more, Papa, I ain’t gon’ let you.”

  His eyes began squinting at me. “You ain’t gon’ what?” he said. “Boy, I’ll knock you into next week!”

  He swung the other hand at me, and I was knocked back off of him, but I held on to his other hand and pulled him away from Mama. We started wrestling across the room, crashing against the table and into the walls. God, he was a strong man. Even with all that liquor in him, I had my hands full. By this time in my young life I was built like one of these blocking backs in football. I was a little on the stubby side, but with big shoulders and a lot of hard meat on me. It wasn’t just a father and his son going round that shack, but two strong country men looking to hurt one another.

  I finally got a grip around his neck and held on to him while I told Mama to go on out and leave us. She was still over against the wall beside the stove where he’d hit her. She didn’t move.

  Papa fell underneath the weight I’d been pressing on him and I was able to pin him to the floor and hold him. His eyes were flashing at me and he started screaming:

  “I’ll kill you, kill you, I’ll do it, damn you . . .!”

  But he couldn’t get away from the hold I had on him, and finally he just stopped struggling and lay there.

  We stayed there like that on the floor for what seemed like a long, long time. Maybe it wasn’t more than just a few minutes. Anyway I finally got up and turned him loose. Papa didn’t move for I don’t know how long; he just lay there and looked up at me. Then, he said:

  “If you stay in here, I’ll take your life!”

  I looked over to Mama, and she motioned for me to go on outdoors. I did as she asked. And I walked on off from the place we lived in then, just walked on to the edge of the woods, feeling pain and anger inside. I didn’t know what to do anymore. Nothing came along the way I thought it should, and now here I was fighting with my own father. This was a low feeling, a bad, bad feeling inside me.

  I stopped and stood by the road, just lowered my head and said some prayers, tried to speak as plainly and clearly to God as I could. I needed help, and at least I knew that. If I hadn’t, well, there’s not any telling where my life might have gone from that night. I saw it all over Stockbridge all the time. A man’s anger gets the best of him. Violence is the only thing he’s got to calm him down some, or get him killed, one day.

  I stayed out by those woods most of the night. Mama came later to tell me that my father was asleep. Still angry, waking up once in a while and groaning about what he’d do when he saw me.

  The next day, when he got up, he came walking out on the road where I’d been all night. We stood around for a few minutes, didn’t say a word, either of us.

  Finally, Papa turned away as he started to talk to me, then turned back to me as he spoke:

  “You’re all right, boy. But I say to you now, I don’t want you goin’ up against me like that again, you hear?”

  “Yes, sir,” I told him.

  “All right. And I tell you here and now I won’t never hit your Mama again. Y’understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right,” he said, very quietly, and pushed his hand against my shoulder, just lightly.

  And he never hit Mama again. Not ever.

  FOUR

  But this incident weighed on my mind. I’d have nightmares about it and wake up shaking in the middle of the night. I really didn’t know if the Lord could forgive me, striking out at my father that way. This frightened and confused me. While everybody was sleeping one night, I slipped out of the house and started down the road. There was no plan in my mind, no notion about where I was going or what I’d do when I got there. I felt I had to go. Down in Stockbridge, there was a freight train stopped in the depot. When the engineer climbed back up and started out for Atlanta, I was in one of the boxcars. I just didn’t care anymore. Going was all that mattered. Where wasn’t important. I leaned back against the side of the car and watched the land rush by as the train picked up speed. I could only hope that Mama would understand and be all right until I could get in touch with her some way or another. And I thought about the other kids, worried about them, but I couldn’t turn back. If I didn’t go somewhere I was afraid I’d explode.

  The next morning I found myself in the Southern Railroad Yards, the section called the Southern Shops, Atlanta, where the train had pulled in for servicing. I jumped down out of the boxcar and wandered around, watching dozens of men, laborers mainly, go about their work. A big man with a badge on his jacket spotted me and came over. “You lookin’ for work, nigger?” he asked. I didn’t know what to say. Clearly, this fellow took me for a grown man because of my size. All those years of farm work had built me up to where I could easily be mistaken for a person several years older. I put my voice down as low as I could get it and said, “Yessir, I’m lookin’ for a job if you got one. . . .” By sunup that morning, I was pushing a broom around the sheds of the Southern Shops of the Southern Railroad, acting just like I belonged, grown up as I could be.

  For about a week I slept outside, around the yards or in boxcars when I could find one open. I showed up early for wo
rk every day and put in as many hours as the foreman would let me. One night, exhausted, I heard somebody yell out, “Pay call!” and I just followed everybody else over to the foreman. When my turn came he handed me a slip of paper to sign and then handed me twelve dollars in cash. I stood there counting it for the longest time, scarcely believing that it was all mine. But it made me realize, too, just how long I’d been away from home, away from everybody in my family.

  “Say, King!” One of the engineers called me aside.

  “Yessir,” I said.

  “Hear tell you can push coal. Ever fired an engine?”

  I told him I’d fired cotton gins down in the country, and he said that was good enough. There was a run down to Macon the next day. His regular fireman had a bad arm, burned it when some coals popped out on him from a run during that day. “If you want to earn a little extree money,” the engineer said, “you can run on down to Macon with us.”

  Extree was the term we used for what people call overtime today, and it didn’t come easy. Firing coal in a steam engine wasn’t just hard, it was very dangerous; men were thrown out of trains moving around turns and killed. But I wanted a shot at that cash, and I knew that having a good reputation around the yards for throwing coal to make steam was just the way to get some. By now I also knew that any success in a place like the yards meant keeping on the good side of the whites when I wasn’t keeping pretty much to myself. I heard the talk, the jealousies and rivalries, talk of how the unions up North were so much stronger and the men were so much better off. I watched men betray each other by reporting on them as union organizers, in a time when organizers weren’t welcome in the yards. And I watched as Negroes were passed over for some extree because they’d said something whites thought was said the wrong way, or somebody might not like “some nigger’s looks.” A lot of learning—about men and work—went into those days I spent working in the yards. I would never feel young again after that, because the thing you don’t know when you are young is just how tough all of life really is.