Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [321]
Matilda’s telling Tom that she saw him as the family leader startled him the more since it implied his becoming their intermediary with Massa Lea, with whom he intentionally had very little actual contact. From when the equipment had been bought to establish a blacksmith shop, the massa somehow had always seemed to respect Tom’s quiet reserve, along with his obvious competence at blacksmithing, which brought in an increasing flow of customers. They always paid the massa at the big house for whatever jobs Tom had done, and each Sunday the massa gave Tom two dollars for his week’s work.
Along with Tom’s ingrained reticence to talk very much with anyone was his equal tendency to ponder deeply on private thoughts. No one ever would have dreamed that for two years or more he had turned over and over again in his mind his father’s descriptions of exciting potentials that “up Nawth” offered to free black people, and Tom had weighed at great length proposing to the whole slave-row family that instead of waiting more endless years trying to buy their freedom, they should carefully plan and attempt a mass escape to the North. He had reluctantly abandoned the idea in realization that Gran’mammy Kizzy must be well into her sixties, and old Sister Sarah and Miss Malizy, who seemed the same as family, were in their seventies. He felt that those three would have been the quickest to leave, but he seriously doubted if any of them would survive the risks and rigors of such a desperate gamble.
More recently, Tom had privately deduced that the massa’s recent cockfight loss must have been even greater than he had fully revealed. Tom had closely watched Massa Lea becoming more strained, haggard, and aged with each passing day and each emptied bottle of whiskey. But Tom knew that the most disturbing evidence of something deeply amiss was that by now, Lewis declared, the massa had sold off at least half of his chickens, whose blood-lines represented at least half a century of careful breeding.
Then Christmas came, and ushered in the New Year of 1856, as a heavy pall seemed to hang over not only the slave row, but also the entire plantation. Then an early spring afternoon, another rider came up the entry lane. At first Miss Malizy appraised him as another chicken buyer. But then, seeing how differently the massa greeted this one, she grew apprehensive. Smiling and chitchatting with the man as he dismounted, the massa yelled to the nearby L’il George to feed, water, and stable the horse for the night, then graciously Massa Lea squired his visitor inside.
Before Miss Malizy even began serving the big-house supper, outside in slave row the family members were exchanging fearful questions. “Who dat man anyhow?”... “Ain’t never seen ’im befo’!”... “Massa ain’t acted like dat no time recent!”... “Well, what you reckon him here fo’?” They could hardly await the later arrival and report of Miss Malizy.
“Dey ain’t talked in my hearin’ nothin’ ’mount to nothin’,” she said. “Could be ’cause ol’ missis was right dere.” Then Miss Malizy went on emphatically, “But somehow or ’nother, I jes’ don’t nohow like dat odder man’s looks! Seed too many like ’im befo’, shifty-eyed an’ tryin’ to act like dey’s sump’n dey ain’t!”
A dozen pairs of slave-row eyes were monitoring the big-house windows from slave row when the obvious movements of a lamp told that Missis Lea had left the men in the living room and made her way upstairs to bed. The living room’s lamp was still burning when the last of the slave-row family gave up the vigil and went to bed, dreading the daybreak wake-up bell.
Matilda took