Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [332]
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 seeing Irene any further.