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[top right corner in pencil the number '20' circled] Luke Warn, Negro. Red Bay, Alabama.
R. V. Waldrop Editorial Department. AL-81
LUKE WARN: HE AIN'T TALKIN'
Luke Warn leaned agains the creosoted power-pole on Red Bay's main street. It was evident Luke was passing a few hours of the Saturday afternoon before going where his team and wagon were hitched behind the stores [crossed out text 'and'] to drive homeward with his load of flour, coffee, sugar, and meat [crossed out text 'and his family] [crossed out text 'home.'] He watched the depot, where in a few minutes the I. C. train, from Birmingham, would pass through on the way to Chicago. "Spin us a yarn about your life, Luke." I approach him and smiled, hoping that a friendly manner would disarm him. "I's got nothing to tell you'bout my life. There is one secret we's all got and that's yourself, and I ain't gonna tell my secret. I don't mean I don't trust you-all. You's a good white man." Luke had turned and spoken, and now he looked to the depot. "I don't mean to ask you to tell everything." He looked around once more, lifeted a hand to smooth back his moustache, straighten the frazzled ends. I remembered that Ples Epps described Luke's face as looking like it belonged to a monkey. "I don't min'," Luke began, "tellin' I was born over here on the Cooper place." The Cooper place is 5 miles from Red Bay,
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the site of a store now gone, and the site of an old grist mill also gone. "The first work I ever done was fer yore granpa out there. I was 18 when I started workin' on my own--away from my family, I mean.
"I useta haul stuff to Iuka fer Mr. Wash, yore granpa; I'd sell cotton, and brang back th' money to Mr. Wash. I hauled, he'ped gin cotton there at the water mill, and grind corn meal, fer about ten years, and then I moved away and stayed thirty years 'fore I come back into this part of the country. The people are better, 'cause they ain't so many niggers and they ain't so many white mens too. They ain't so mean' round here. I likes it better than I like Corinth where I farmed."
"What other work have you done?"
"In the winter time, 'way back yonder, I used to sawmill in the winter. I done purty near everything. I even sold a quart of whiskey once..." He stopped and seemed to aftraid to go on, as if his tongue had stuck to the roof of his mouth.
"Go on Luke."
"No, I ain't gonna tell you my life. I just won't do hit... "Yes, I guess it's because I was mean part of th' time. You want me to tell you the good things I've done? I'm afeared they'd be purty few and fer between.
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"I's been married twice. The first one died with the flu. I's had 8 chillun, and they's all died 'cept 5." Now Luke closed up; he was looking past a car that was parked; then he ran his eyes over the frame. I asked him if he ever owned a car.
"No, I never did have no car. Back in good times I went to town to git me one. I looked at a second-handed car, and the man I was farming fer tole me he wouldn't buy no second-handed car, and he tole me to come back next week and we'd buy a new one. I went home and I thought it all out. When I went to town the next Satiday, I decided I didn't want no car. Them thangs won't run without gas. And you has to be fixin' and fixin' on something nuther all the time."
I still stood by as he was silent, and he looked at me suspiciously. He was still leery of his tongue.
"You wants to know 'bout my life. I can't tell you nothin' that would do you no good. If that there sidewalk was life--he waved down the street toward the postoffice with a calloused hand--"and I had to go through it, walk on hit: I don't know just how I'd walk, if I loped, hopped, er crawled. If I stopped and hung 'round an' made bad faces at people, er if I smiled at all th' peoples. No, I can't tell you nothin' 'bout how to live. You couldn't learn nothin' 'bout how to do hit, if I did tell you."
"Would you be religious as you walked down that street, turn the other
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cheek like Jesus?"
"No, sir:" His face broke into a smile; "no sir, I wouldn't. Nobody but Jesus could've done hit. I ain't very religious. I mean I don't do nothin' like prayin' and shoutin'. It ain't in me, I guess. I joined the church: the Missionary Baptist--in Pleasant Site. I goes to church every Sunday. My religion," he said, "can be b'iled down: it's just faith and a-trustin'. You don't know nothin', and you just hope and trust you air right. Now, that's th' way I sees hit."
The train from Birmingham, heading for Chicago came to a stop at the depot as we watched the mail being piled in and the mail being piled out.
"I never have been to Birmingham, but I went up to Memphis and stayed there fer a while once. No, I couldn't carry a bale on my shoulders." Luke is not a big man; he is squat, long-armed. "Some of 'em could. I seed a feller once that could jump three feet with a bale of cotton. He did hit thisuhway:" Luke crouched with arms extened before him. "He'd grab hit with cotton hooks in front of him, and he'd jump hit ahead of him.
"When I was in Memphis I rode a steamboat. The cheapest ridin' I ever done, hit was. I was on the boat to go across, give 'em a dime,and they started goin' up the river, and I jus' stayed all th' day. Hit was fun, but I ain't seen no boat like that since."
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I asked him concerning any difficulties he had had with white men, whether he drank, cussed danced, or raised hell.
"You's ast a lot of questions."
"I want to write your life..."
"You're going to write my life? That," he scratched his graying head, "that's how come? I ain't got no life to write ' bout. I ain't going' to tell nothin'. Yes, I've been drunk. I fought some--not much. I fought William Tiffin once; he was drunk at a dance, and we had hit 'round and 'round. He was a white man, you know, and you wouldn't've thought we'd a-fit. Us Warn boys used to fight them Tiffin boys all the time. They didn't care." He paused: "Dr. Arch, your uncle says we's right honorable niggers. I never was in no rale trouble, never did go to jail. You mean, has I ever had any ups and downs? I's had plenty of 'em!"
"Crops are bad this year..." I suggested.
"I'll make ' bout a half-crop. We's had a lot of overflows. Three or four bales, I guess. No, th' corn in the bottom ain't no count neither. "Here, I told you a lie; I did have some trouble." The tone of his voice conveyed to me his carefulness in telling what he intended to tell; "You knowed 'bout my trouble, reason you ast. It was with Mr. Epps.
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