Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [307]
“When he gwine let you start shoein’ de hosses?” asked Chicken George, still pushing, seeming almost as if he wanted to embarrass his blacksmithing son, but Tom grinned. “Dunno, Pappy, but I reckon soon’s he feel like I kin do it widout ’is he’p. Jes’ like you said, I sho’ has got kicked aplenty times. Fact, some dem bad ones git to rarin’ up, dey won’t only kick, dey’ll bite a plug out’n you if you ain’t careful.”
“Do white folks come roun’ dat blacksmith shop, son?” asked Sister Sarah.
“Yes, ma’am, whole lots of ’em. Ain’t hardly no day don’t see leas’ a dozen or mo’ standin’ roun’ talkin’ while dey’s waiting for Mr. Isaiah to finish whatever work dey done brung.”
“Well, den what kind o’ news is you done heared ’em talkin’’bout dat maybe we ain’t, bein’ stuck off like we is here?”
Tom thought a moment, trying to remember what had Mr. Isaiah and Miss Emma felt were the most important things they’d recently heard white people talking about. “Well, one thing was sump’n dey calls ‘telegraph.’ It was some Massa Morse in Washington, D.C., dat talked to somebody clear in Baltimore. Dey say he say, ‘What have God wrought?’ But I ain’t never got de straight of what it s’posed to mean.”
Every head around the dinner table turned toward Matilda as their Bible expert, but she seemed perplexed. “I—well, I can’t be sho’,” she said uncertainly, “but b’lieve I ain’t never read nothin’’bout dat in de Bible.”
“Somehow or ’nother, Mammy,” said Tom, “seem like it weren’t to do wid de Bible. Was jes’ sump’n talked a long ways through de air.”
He asked then if any of them were aware that a few months before, President Polk had died of diarrhea in Nashville, Tennessee, and had been succeeded by President Zachary Taylor.
“Everybody know dat!” exclaimed Chicken George.
“Well, you know so much, you ain’t never told it in my hearin’,” said Sister Sarah sharply.
Tom said, “White folks, ’specially dey young’uns, is been comin’ roun’ singing songs s’posed to soun’ like us, but dey was writ by a Massa Stephen Foster.” Tom sang the little that he could remember of “Ol’ Black Joe,” “My Ol’ Kentucky Home,” and “Massa’s in de Col’, Col’ Ground.”
“Sho’ do soun’ sump’n like niggers!” Gran’mammy Kizzy exclaimed.
“Mr. Isaiah say dat Massa Foster growed up spendin’ a lotta time lissenin’ to nigger singin’ in churches an’ roun’ de steamboats an’ wharves,” said Tom.
“Dat ’splain it!” said Matilda. “But ain’t you heared of no doin’s by none o’ us?”
“Well, yas’m,” said Tom, and he said that free blacks who brought work to Mr. Isaiah had been talking a lot about famous northern blacks who were fighting against slavery, traveling around, lecturing large mixed audiences to tears and cheers by telling their life stories as slaves before they had escaped to freedom. “Like it’s one name Frederick Douglass,” Tom said. “Dey says he was raised a slave boy in Maryland, an’ he teached hisself to read an’ write an’ finally worked an’ saved up enough to buy hisself free from his massa.” Matilda cast a meaningful glance at Chicken George as Tom went on. “Dey says people gathers by de hunnuds anywhere he speak, an’ he done writ a book an’ even started up a newspaper.
“It’s famous womens, too, Mammy.” Tom looked at Matilda, Gran’mammy Kizzy, and Sister Sarah, and he told them of a former slave named Sojourner Truth, said to be over six feet tall, who also lectured before huge crowds of white and black people, though she could neither read nor write.
Springing up from her seat, Gran’mammy Kizzy began wildly gesturing. “Sees right now I needs to git up Nawth an’ do me some talking’.” She mimicked as if she were facing a big audience, “Y’all white folks listen here to Kizzy! Ain’t gwine have dis mess no mo’! Us niggers sick an’ tired o’slavin’!”
“Mammy, de boy say dat woman six feet! You ain’t tall enough!” Chicken George said, roaring with laughter, as the others around the table glared at him in mock indignation.