Roots: The Saga of an American Family

  CHAPTER 106

  A Sunday several months before, Massa and Missis Murray had returned home from church, and the massa almost immediately rang the bell for Matilda, whom he told to have Tom come around to the front porch.

  The massa’s pleasure was showing both in his face and in his tone as he told Tom that Mr. Edwin Holt, who owned the Holt Cotton Mill, had sent him a message that Missis Holt had recently been highly impressed with seeing some of Tom’s delicate ironwork; that she had already sketched a design for decorative window grills that they hoped that Tom could soon make and install at their “Locust Grove” home.

  With a traveling pass from Massa Murray, Tom left on a mule early the next morning to see the sketches and measure the windows. Massa Murray had told him not to worry about whatever jobs awaited doing in his shop, and the massa said that the best route was to follow the Haw River Road to the town of Graham, then the Graham Road to Bellemont Church, where after a right turn and about another two miles, the elegant Holt mansion would be impossible to miss.

  Arriving and identifying himself to a black gardener, Tom was told to wait near the front steps. Missis Holt herself soon came pleasantly congratulating Tom’s previous work that she had seen, and showing him her sketches, which he carefully studied for an iron window grill having the visual effect of a trellis amply covered with vines and leaves. “B’leeves I can do dem, leas’ I try my bes’, Missis,” he said, but he pointed out that with so many windows needing the grills, each of which would require much patiently tedious work, the completing of the task might take two months. Missis Holt said she would be delighted if it could be done in that time, and handing Tom her sketches to keep and work by, she left him to go about his necessary starting job of carefully measuring the many windows’ dimensions.

  By the early afternoon, Tom was working on the upstairs windows opening onto a veranda when his instincts registered someone watching him, and glancing about, he blinked at the striking prettiness of the coppery-complexioned girl holding a dustrag who stood quietly just within the next opened window. Wearing a simple housemaid’s uniform, her straight black hair coiled into a large bun at the back of her head, she was evenly but warmly returning Tom’s stare. Only his lifelong innate reserve enabled him to mask his jolting inner reaction as, collecting himself, and quickly removing his hat, he blurted, “Hidy, miss.”

  “Hidy do, suh!” she replied, flashing a bright smile, and with that she disappeared.

  Finally riding back to the Murray plantation, Tom was surprised, and unsettled, that he couldn’t rid his mind of her. Lying in his bed that night, it hit him like a bolt that he hadn’t even gotten her name. He guessed her age at nineteen or maybe twenty. At last he slept, fitfully, and awakened torturing himself that her prettiness guaranteed that she was married, or surely was courting with somebody.

  Making the basic grill frames, smoothly lap-welding four precut flat iron bars into window-sized rectangles was only a routine job. After six days of doing that, Tom began forcing white-hot rods through his set of successively smaller steel reducing dies until he had long rods no thicker than ivy or honeysuckle vines. After Tom had experimentally heated and variously bent several of these, dissatisfied, he began taking early-morning walks, closely inspecting actual growing vines’ graceful curvings and junctures. Then he had a sense that his efforts to simulate them improved.

  The work went along well, with Massa Murray explaining daily to sometimes irate customers that Tom could attend only the most urgent emergency repair jobs until he had finished a major job for Mr. Edwin Holt, which blunted the indignance of most. Massa Murray, then Missis Murray came to the shop to observe, then they brought visiting friends, until sometimes eight or ten of them stood silently watching Tom work. Plying his craft, he thought how blessed he was that all people seemed even to expect being ignored by blacksmiths engrossed in what they were doing. He reflected upon how most slave men who brought him their massas’ repairing jobs usually seemed either morose, or they big-talked among other slaves about the shop. But if any white people appeared, in the instant, all of the slaves grinned, shuffled, and otherwise began acting the clown, as in fact Tom often previously had felt embarrassed to conclude privately of his own derby-wearing, bombastic-talking father, Chicken George.

  Tom felt further blessed with how sincerely he enjoyed feeling immersed, to a degree even isolated, within his world of blacksmithing. As he worked on the window grills from the daylights until he could no longer see, his private random musings would occupy his mind sometimes for hours before he again caught himself thinking of the pretty housemaid he had met.

  Making the leaves for the window grills would be his toughest test, he had realized from when Missis Holt first showed him her sketches. Again Tom walked, now intently studying nature’s leaves. Heating and reheating inch-square iron pieces, beating them with his heavy, square-faced hammer into delicately thin sheets, with his trimming shears he cut out eventually scores of oversized heart-shaped patterns. Since such thin metal could quickly burn and ruin if a forge was too hot, he pumped his homemade bellows with utmost care, hastily tonging each red-hot thin sheet onto his anvil and deftly shaping it into leafy contours with quick tappings of his lightest ball-point hammer.

  With intricate welding, Tom delicately veined his leaves, and next stemmed them onto the vines. He felt it good that no two looked exactly the same, as he had observed in nature. Finally in his seventh intensive week, Tom spot-welded his leafy vines onto their waiting window-grill frames.

  “Tom, I ’clare look like dey jes’ growin’ somewheres!” Matilda exclaimed it, staring in awe at her son’s craftsmanship. Scarcely less demonstrative was L’il Kizzy, who by now was flirting openly with three local young slave swains. Even Tom’s brothers and their wives—only Ashford and Tom were single now—cast glances that mirrored their further heightened respect for him. Massa and Missis Murray could hardly contain the extent of their pleasure, as well as their pride, that they owned such a blacksmith.

  In the wagon laden with window grills, Tom drove alone to the Holt big house to install them. When he held up one for Missis Holt to inspect, exclaiming and clapping her hands, ecstatic with pleasure, she called outside her teen-aged daughter and several grown young sons who happened to be there, and all of them joined instantly in congratulating Tom.

  Right away, he began the installations. After two hours, the downstairs window grills were in place, being further admired by the Holt family members, as well as several of their slaves; he guessed that their grapevine must have sped word of their missis’ delight and they had come running to see for themselves. Where was she? Tom was tense from wondering it as one of the Holt sons directed him through the polished downstairs foyer to mount the curving stairs to install the remaining grills at the second-floor veranda windows.

  It was the very area where she had been before. How, whom, might he query, without seeming more than curiously interested, as to who she was, where she was, and what was her status? In his frustration, Tom went at his work even faster; he must finish quickly and leave, he told himself.

  He was installing the third upstairs window grill when after a rush of footsteps there she was, flushed, nearly breathless from hurrying. He stood just tongue-tied.

  “Hidy, Mr. Murray!” It jolted him to realize she wouldn’t know of “Lea,” only that a Massa Murray owned him now. He fumbled off his straw hat.

  “Hidy, Miss Holt....”

  “Was down in de smokehouse smokin’ meat, jes’ heared you was here—” Her gaze swept to the last window grill he had fixed into place. “Ooh, it jes’ beautiful!’ she breathed. “Passed Missis Emily downstairs jes’ havin’ a fit ’bout what you done.”

  His glance flicked her field-hand headrag. “I thought you was a housemaid—” It sounded such an inane thing to say.

  “I loves doin’ different things, an’ dey lets me,” she said, glancing about. “I jes’ run up here a minute. Better git back to workin’, an’
you, too—”

  He had to know more, at least her name. He asked her.

  “Irene,” she said. “Dey calls me ’Reeny. What your’n?”

  “Tom,” he said. As she had said, they had to get back to work.

  He had to gamble. “Miss Irene, is—is you keepin’ company wid anybody?”

  She looked at him so long, so hard, he knew he had terribly blundered. “I ain’t never been knowed for not speakin’ my mind, Mr. Murray. When I seed befo’ how shy you was, I was scairt you wouldn’t come talk wid me no mo’.”

  Tom could have fallen off the veranda.

  From then, he had begun asking Massa Murray for an all-day traveling pass each Sunday, along with permission to use the mulecart. He told his family as well that he searched the roadsides for discarded metal objects to freshly supply his blacksmith shop scrap pile. He nearly always did find something useful while driving different routes in the round trip of about two hours each way to see Irene.

  Not only she, but the others whom he met at the Holts’ slave row could not have received or treated him more warmly. “You’s so shy, smart as you is, folks jes’ likes you,” Irene candidly told him. They would ride usually to some reasonably private fairly nearby place where Tom would unhitch the mule to let it graze on a long tether as they walked, with Irene doing by far the most talking.

  “My pappy a Injun. He name Hillian, my mammy say. Dat’count fo’ de ’culiar color I is,” Irene volunteered matter-of-factly. “Way back, my mammy run off from a real mean massa, an’ in de woods some Injuns cotched her an’ took her to dey village where her an’ my pappy got togedder an’ I got borned. I weren’t much size when some white mens ’tacked de village, an’ ’mongst de killin’ captured my mammy an’ brung us back to her massa. She say he beat her bad an’ sol’ us to some nigger trader, an’ Massa Holt bought us, what was lucky, ’cause dey’s high-quality folks—” Her eyes narrowed. “Well, leas’ mos’ly. Anyhow, Mammy was dey washin’ an’ ironin’ woman, right up ’til she took sick an’ died ’bout fo’ years back, an’ I been here ever since. I’se eighteen now, gwine turn nineteen New Year’s Day—” She looked at Tom in her frank way. “How ol’ is you?”

  “Twenty-fo’,” Tom said.

  Telling Irene in turn the essential facts about his family, Tom said that as yet they had but little knowledge of this new region of North Carolina into which they had been sold.

  “Well,” she said, “I’se picked up a heap ’cause de Holts is mighty’portant folks, so nigh ever’body big comes visitin’, an’ gin’ly I be’s servin’, an’ I got ears.”

  “Dey says mos’ dese Alamance County white folks’ great-great-gran’daddies come here from Pennsylvania long fo’ dat Revolution War, when wasn’t much nobody herebouts ’cept Sissipaw Injuns. Some calls ’em Saxapaws. But English white so’jers kilt dem out ’til Saxapaw River de only thing even got dey name now—” Irene grimaced. “My massa say dey’d run from hard times crost de water an’ was crowdin’ Pennsylvania so bad dem Englishmans runnin’ de Colonies ’nounced all de lan’ dey wanted be sellin’ in dis part Nawth Ca’liny fo’ less’n two cents a acre. Well, massa say no end o’ Quakers, Presbyterian Scotch-Irishers, an’ German Lutherans squeezed ever’thin’ dey could in covered wagons an’ crost dem Cumberlan’ an’ Shenando’ valleys. Massa say sump’n like fo’ hundred miles. Dey bought what lan’ dey could an’ commence diggin’, clearin’, an’ farmin’, jes’ mos’ly small farms dey worked deyselves, like mos’ dis county’s white folks herebouts still does. Dat’s how come ain’t many niggers as where it’s great big plantations.”

  Irene toured Tom on the following Sunday to her massa’s cotton mill on a bank of Alamance Creek, prideful as if both the mill and the Holt family were her own.

  After his hard work attending weekly scores of blacksmithing jobs, Tom coveted each next Sunday when the cart rolled past the miles of split-rail fences enclosing crops of corn, wheat, tobacco, and cotton, with an occasional apple or peach orchard and modest farmhouses. Passing other blacks, who were nearly always afoot, they exchanged waves, Tom hoping they understood that if he offered a ride, it would rob his privacy with Irene. Abruptly stopping the mule sometimes, he would jump out and throw into the cart’s rear some rusty discarded metal he had spied while driving. Once Irene startled him, also jumping out, picking a wild rose. “Ever since I was a l’il gal I’se loved roses,” she told him.

  Meeting white people also out driving, or on horseback, Tom and Irene would become as two statues, with both them and the white people staring straight ahead. Tom commented after a while that since in Alamance County he felt he had seen fewer “po’ cracker” type of whites than abounded where he previously lived.

  “I knows dem turkey-gobbler rednecks kin’ you mean,” she said. “Naw, ain’t many roun’ here. Any you sees be’s gin’ly jes’ passin’ through. De big white folks haves less use fo’ ’em dan dey does niggers.”

  Tom expressed surprise at how Irene seemed to know something of every crossroads store they passed, or church, school-house, wagon shop, or whatever. “Well, I jes’ hears massa tellin’ guests how his folks had sump’n to do wid pret’ near ever’thin’ in Alamance County,” was how Irene explained it, then identifying a gristmill that they were passing as belonging to her massa, she said, “He turn lotta his wheat into flour, an’ his cawn into whiskey to sell in Fayetteville.”

  Privately, Tom gradually wearied of what began to sound to him as if Irene relished a running chronology of implied praises of her owner and his family. A Sunday when they ventured into the county-seat town of Graham, she said, “De year dat big California gol’ rush, my massa’s daddy ’mongst de big mens what bought de lan’ an’ built dis town to be de county seat.” The next Sunday, as they drove along the Salisbury Road, she pointed out a prominent rock marker, “Right dere on massa’s gran’daddy’s plantation dey fought de Battle o’ Alamance. Folks sick o’ dat king’s bad treatments took dey guns to his redcoats, an’ massa say dat battle what lit de fuse fo’ de ’Merican Revolution War roun’ five years later on.”

  By this time, Matilda had grown irate. It had strained her patience to the limit to suppress the exciting secret for so long. “What’s de matter wid you? Ack like you don’t want nobody to see yo’ Injun gal!”

  Checking his irritance, Tom only mumbled something unintelligible, and an exasperated Matilda hit below the belt. “Maybe she too good fo’ us ’cause she b’longst to sich big-shot folks!”

  For the first time Tom had ever done such a thing, he stalked away from his mother, refusing to dignify that with a reply.

  He wished there was someone, anyone, with whom he could talk about what had become his deep uncertainties regarding his continuing to keep company with Irene.

  He had finally admitted to himself how much he loved her. Along with her pretty mixed black and Indian features, unquestionably she was as charming, tantalizing, and smart a potential mate as he would have dreamed for. Yet being as inherently deliberate and careful as he was, Tom felt that unless two vital worries he had developed about Irene got solved, they could never enjoy a truly successful union.

  For one thing, deep within, Tom neither completely liked, nor completely trusted any white person, his own Massa and Missis Murray included. It seriously bothered him that Irene seemed actually to adore if not worship the whites who owned her; it strongly suggested that they would never see eye to eye on a vital matter.

  His second concern, seeming even less soluble, was that the Holt family seemed scarcely less devoted to Irene, in the way that some prosperous massa families often came to regard certain household slaves. He knew that he could never survive the charade of mating with any woman, then living apart on different plantations, involving the steady indignity of their having to ask their respective massas to approve occasional marital visits.

  Tom had even given thought to what might be the most honorable way, though he knew that any would be excruciating, to withdraw from s
eeing Irene any further.

  “What de matter, Tom?” she asked him on the next Sunday, her tone full of concern.

  “Ain’t nothin’.”

  They rode on silently for a while. Then she said in her candid, open manner, “Well, ain’t gwine press you if you don’ want to say, jes’ long as you knows I knows sump’n workin’ hard on you.”

  Hardly aware of the reins in his hands, Tom thought that among Irene’s qualities that he most admired were her frankness and honesty, yet for weeks, months, he had been actually dishonest with her, in the sense that he had evaded telling her his true thoughts, however painful it might prove to them both. And the longer he delayed would be continued dishonesty, as well as dragging out his bitter frustrations.

  Tom strained to sound casual. “While back, ’member I tol’ you how my brudder Virgil’s wife had to stay wid her massa when us got sol’?” It being unconnected with his point, he did not speak of how after his own recent personal appeal, Massa Murray had traveled to Caswell County and successfully had purchased Lilly Sue and her son Uriah.

  Forcing himself to go on, Tom said, “Jes’ feel like if I was ever maybe git thinkin’ ’bout matin’ up wid anybody... well, jes’ don’t b’leeve I could if’n we s’pose to be livin’ on different massas’ plantations.”

  “Me neither!” Her response was so quickly emphatic that Tom nearly dropped the reins, doubting his ears. He jerked about toward her, agape. “What you mean?” he stammered.

  “Same as you jes’ said!”

  He practically accosted her, “You know Massa an’ Missis Holt ain’t gwine sell you!”

  “I git sol’ whenever I gits ready!” She looked at him calmly.

  Tom felt a weakness coursing throughout his body. “How you talkin ’bout?”

  “Not meanin’ to soun’ short, dat ain’t yo’ worry, it be’s mine.”