Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [333]
“What de matter, Tom?” she asked him on the next Sunday, her tone full of concern.
“Ain’t nothin’.”
They rode on silently for a while. Then she said in her candid, open manner, “Well, ain’t gwine press you if you don’ want to say, jes’ long as you knows I knows sump’n workin’ hard on you.”
Hardly aware of the reins in his hands, Tom thought that among Irene’s qualities that he most admired were her frankness and honesty, yet for weeks, months, he had been actually dishonest with her, in the sense that he had evaded telling her his true thoughts, however painful it might prove to them both. And the longer he delayed would be continued dishonesty, as well as dragging out his bitter frustrations.
Tom strained to sound casual. “While back, ’member I tol’ you how my brudder Virgil’s wife had to stay wid her massa when us got sol’?” It being unconnected with his point, he did not speak of how after his own recent personal appeal, Massa Murray had traveled to Caswell County and successfully had purchased Lilly Sue and her son Uriah.
Forcing himself to go on, Tom said, “Jes’ feel like if I was ever maybe git thinkin’ ’bout matin’ up wid anybody... well, jes’ don’t b’leeve I could if’n we s’pose to be livin’ on different massas’ plantations.”
“Me neither!” Her response was so quickly emphatic that Tom nearly dropped the reins, doubting his ears. He jerked about toward her, agape. “What you mean?” he stammered.
“Same as you jes’ said!”
He practically accosted her, “You know Massa an’ Missis Holt ain’t gwine sell you!”
“I git sol’ whenever I gits ready!” She looked at him calmly.
Tom felt a weakness coursing throughout his body. “How you talkin ’bout?”
“Not meanin’ to soun’ short, dat ain’t yo’ worry, it be’s mine.”
Limply, Tom heard himself saying, “Well, whyn’t you git sol’ den—”
She seemed hesitant. He nearly panicked.
She said, “Awright. You got any special time?”
“Reckon dat up to you, too—”
His mind was racing. What earthly sum would her massa demand for such a prize as she was... if this was not all some wild dream in the first place?
“You got to ax yo’ massa if he buy me.”
“He buy you,” he said with more certainty than he felt. He felt like a fool then, asking, “How much you reckon you be costin’? Reckon he need to have a idea o’ dat.”
“’Speck dey’ll take whatever he offer, reasonable.”
Tom just stared at her, and Irene at him.
“Tom Murray, you’s in some ways de ’zasperatines’ man I’se ever seed! I could o’ tol’ you dat since de day we firs’ met! Long as I been waitin’ fo’ you to say sump’n! You jes’ wait ’til I gits hol’ o’ you, gwine knock out some dat stubbornness!” He scarcely felt her small fists pummeling his head, his shoulders, as he took his first woman into his arms, the mule walking without guidance.
That night, lying abed, Tom began to see in his mind’s eye how he was going to make for her a rose of iron. In a trip to the county seat he must buy only a small bar of the finest newly wrought iron. He must closely study a rose, how its stem and base were joined, how the petals spread, each curving outward in its own way... how to heat the iron bar to just the orange redness for its quickest hammering to the wafer thinness from which he would trim the rose petals’ patterns that once reheated and tenderly, lovingly shaped, would be dipped into brine mixed with oil, insuring her rose petals’ delicate temper...
CHAPTER 107
First hearing the sound, then rapidly advancing upon the totally startling sight of her treasured housemaid Irene huddled down and heavily sobbing behind where the lower staircase curved into an are, Missis Emily Holt instantly reacted in alarm. “What is it, Irene?” Missis Emily bent, grasping and shaking the heaving shoulders. “Get yourself up from there this minute and tell me! What is it?”
Irene managed to stumble upright while gasping to her missis of her love for Tom, whom she said she wished to marry, rather than continuing her struggle to resist her regular pursuit by certain young massas. Pressed by a suddenly agitated Missis Holt to reveal their identities, Irene