MEMPHIS: Nigger, is you crazy! Insurance cost five times what the building is worth. That’s why I keep me some good tenants upstairs. I don’t put none of them fools up there that’s liable to get drunk and burn down the place. When Mr. Collins died I let it set empty three months till I got somebody up there that was responsible. Look back in the kitchen . . .  ask Risa . . .  I got four or five fire extinguishers back there . . .  and you talking about burning down the place. That’s the one thing I am scared of. If it burn down I don’t get nothing. I don’t even get the fifteen thousand. See, they don’t know. The half ain’t never been told. I’m ready to walk through fire. I don’t bother nobody. The last person I bothered is dead. My mama died in ’54. I said then I wasn’t going for no more draws. They don’t know I feel just like I did when my mama died. She got old and gray and sat by the window till she died. She must have done that cause she ain’t had nothing else to do. I was gone. My brother was gone. Sister gone. Everybody gone. My daddy was gone. She sat there till she died. I was staying down on Logan Street. Got the letter one day and telegram the next. They usually fall on top of one another . . .  but not that close. I got the letter say, “If you wanna see your mother you better come home.” Before I could get out the door the telegram came saying, “It’s too late . . .  your mother gone.” I was trying to borrow some money. Called the train station and found out the schedule and I’m trying to borrow some money. I can’t go down there broke. I don’t know how long I got to be there. I ain’t even got the train fare. I got twelve dollars and sixty-three cents. I got the telegram and sat down and cried like a baby. I could beat any newborn baby in the world crying. I cried till the tears all run down in my ears. Got up and went out the door and everything looked different. Everything had changed. I felt like I had been cut loose. All them years something had a hold of me and I didn’t know it. I didn’t find out till it cut me loose. I walked out the door and everything had different colors to it. I felt great. I didn’t owe nobody nothing. The last person I owed anything to was gone. I borrowed fifty dollars from West and went on down to her funeral. I come back and said, “Everybody better get out my way.” You couldn’t hold me down. It look like then I had somewhere to go fast. I didn’t know where, but I damn sure was going there. That’s the way I feel now. They don’t know I got a clause of my own.