Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [330]
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