You says you wants to know how I live after soldiers all go away?  Well, firstes thing, I work on the railroad.  They was just beginning to come here.  I digged pits out, going along front of where the tracks was to go.  How much I get?  I get $1.00 a day.  You axes me how it seem to earn money?  Lady, I felt like the richess man in the world!  I boarded with a white fambly.  Always I was a watching for my slave pension to begin coming.  ’Fore I left the army my captain, he telled me to file.  My file number, it is 1,115,857.  After I keeped them papers for so many years, white and black folks bofe telled me it ain’t never coming—­my slave pension—­and I reckon the chilren tored up the papers.  Lady, that number for me is filed in Washington.  Iffen you go there, see can you get my pension.

After the railroad I went steamboating.  First one was a little one; they call her Fort Smith ’cause she go frum Little Rock to Fort Smith.  It was funny, too, her captain was name Smith.  Captain Eugene Smith was his name.  He was good, but the mate was sure rough.  What did I do on that boat?  Missy, was you ever on a river boat?  Lordy, they’s plenty to do.  Never is no time for rest.  Load, onload, scrub.  Just you do whatever you is told to do and do it right now, and you’ll keep outen trouble, on a steamboat, or a railroad, or in the army, or wherever you is.  That’s what I knows.

Yessum, I reckon they was right smart old masters what didn’t want to let they slaves go after freedom.  They hated to turn them loose.  Just let them work on.  Heap of them didn’t know freedom come.  I used to hear tell how the govmint had to send soldiers away down in the far back country to make them turn the slaves loose.  I can’t tell you how all them free niggers was living; I was too busy looking out for myself.  Heaps of them went to farming.  They was share croppers.

Yessum, miss, them Ku-Kluxers was turrible,—­what they done to people.  Oh, God, they was bad.  They come sneaking up and runned you outen your house and take everything you had.  They was rough on the women and chilren.  People all wanted to stay close by where soldiers was.  I sure knowed they was my friend.

Lady, lemme tell you the rest about when I runned away.  After peace, I got with my sister.  She’s the onliest of all my people I ever seed again.  She telled me she was skeered all that day, she couldn’t work, she shake so bad.  She heerd overseer man getting ready to chase me and Jerry.  He saddle his horse, take his gun and pistol, bofe.  He gwine kill me en sight, but Jerry, he say he bring him back, dead er alive, tied to his horse’s tail.  But he didn’t get us, Ha, Ha, Ha.  Yankees got us.