Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [322]
“Me too,” Tom said simply. He was silent for a moment. “Mammy, I been thinkin’, wid some different massa we jes’ might fin’ ourselves better off. Dat is, long’s we all stays together. Dat’s my big worry.”
As others began to come out of their cabins for the morning, Matilda hurried away rather than unduly alarm them by continuing the conversation.
After Missis Lea told Miss Malizy that she had a headache and wanted no breakfast, the massa and his visitor ate a hearty one, and then set out walking in the front yard, busily talking, their heads close together. Before very long, they sauntered alongside the big house, into the backyard, and finally over to where Tom was pumping his homemade bellows, sending yellowish sparks flying up from his forge in which two flat sheets of iron were approaching the heating necessary for their conversion into door hinges. For several minutes the two men stood closely watching Tom use long-handled tongs to remove the cherry-red iron sheets. Deftly folding their middles tightly about a shaping rod fixed into the hardy hole of his Fisher & Norris anvil, forming the channel for hinge pins, he then steel-punched three screw holes into each leaf. Taking up his short-shanked cold chisel and his favorite homemade four-pound hammer, he cut the leaves into the H-shaped hinges that a customer had ordered, working all the while as if unaware of his observers’ presence.
Massa Lea finally spoke. “He’s a pretty fair blacksmith, if I do say so myself,” he said casually.
The other man grunted affirmatively. Then he began moving around under the little blacksmithing shed, eyeing the many examples of Tom’s craftsmanship that hung from nails and pegs. Abruptly, the man addressed Tom directly. “How old are you, boy?”
“Gwine on twenty-three now, suh.”
“How many young’uns you got?”
“Ain’t got no wife yet, suh.”
“Big, strong boy like you don’t need no wife to have young’uns scattered everywhere.”
Tom said nothing, thinking how many white men’s young’uns were scattered in slave rows.
“You maybe one of these real religious niggers?”
Tom knew the man was trying to draw him out for a reason—almost certainly to size him up for purchase. He said pointedly, “I’magines Massa Lea done tol’ you we’s mostly a family here, my mammy, gran’mammy, an’ brothers an’ sisters an’ young’uns. We’s all been raised to believe in de Lawd an’ de Bible, suh.”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “Which one of y’all reads the Bible to the rest?”
Tom wasn’t about to tell this ominous stranger that both his gran’mammy and mammy could read. He said, “Reckon we all jes’ growed up hearin’ de Scriptures so much we knows ’em by heart, suh.”
Seeming to relax, the man returned to his original subject. “You think you could handle the blacksmithing on a much bigger place than this one?”
Tom felt ready to explode with the further confirmation that his sale was planned, but he had to know if the family also was to be included. Through his rage to be dangled in suspense like this, again he probed, “Well, suh, me an’ de res’ us here can raise crops an’ do pret’ near ever’thing a place need, I guess—”
Leaving the seething Tom as calmly as they had come, the massa and his guest had no more than headed out toward the fields when old Miss Malizy came hurrying from the kitchen. “What dem mens sayin’, Tom? Missis can’t even look me in de eye.”
Trying to control his voice, Tom said, “It’s gwine be some sellin’, Miss Malizy, maybe all us, but could be jes’ me.” Miss Malizy burst into tears, and Tom roughly shook her shoulders. “Miss Malizy, ain’t no need o’ cryin’! Jes’ like I tol’ mammy, I ’speck some new place see us better off dan here wid ’im.” But try as Tom would, he couldn’t ease the aged Miss Malizy