Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [354]
“Tom, I jes’ don’ want to hear no mo’ ’bout dis terrible war,” said Irene one evening in September as they sat staring into their fireplace after he had told her of two three-mile-long rows of Confederate and Yankee soldiers having faced and killed each other at a place called Antietam. “I sets here wid my belly full of our third young’un, an’ it somehow jes’ don’ seem right dat all us ever talks’bout any mo’ is jes’ fightin’ an’ killin’—”
Simultaneously then they both glanced behind them at the cabin door, having heard a sound so slight that neither of them paid it any further attention. But when the sound came again, now clearly a faint knock, Irene, who sat closer, got up and opened the door, and Tom’s brow raised hearing a white man’s pleading voice. “Begging pardon. You got anything I can eat? I’m hungry.” Turning about, Tom all but fell from his chair, recognizing the face of the white youth he had surprised among the garbage cans at the cavalry post. Quickly controlling himself, suspicious of some trick, Tom sat rigidly, hearing his unsuspecting wife say, “Well, we ain’t got nothin’ but some cold cornbread left from supper.”
“Sho’ would ’preciate that, I ain’t hardly et in two days.”
Deciding that it was only bizarre coincidence, Tom now rose from his chair and moved to the door. “Been doin’ a l’il mo’n jes’ beggin’, ain’t you?”
For half a moment the youth stared quizzically at Tom, then his eyes flew wide; he disappeared so fast that Irene stood astounded—and she was even more so when Tom told her whom she had been about to feed.
The whole of slave row became aware of the incredible occurrence on the next night when—with both Tom and Irene among the family gathering—Matilda mentioned that just after breakfast, “some scrawny po’ white boy” had suddenly appeared at the kitchen screen door piteously begging for food; she had given him a bowl of leftover cold stew for which he had thanked her profusely before disappearing, then later she had found the cleaned bowl sitting on the kitchen steps. After Tom explained who the youth was, he said, “Since you feedin’ ’im, I ’speck he still hangin’ roun’. Probably jes’ sleepin’ somewhere out in de woods. I don’ trust him nohow; first thing we know, somebody be in trouble.”
“Ain’t it de truth!” exclaimed Matilda. “Well, I tell you one thing, if he show me his face ag’in, I gwine ax him to wait an’ let’im b’leeve I’se fixin’ ’im sump’n while I goes an’ tells massa.”
The trap was sprung perfectly when the youth reappeared the following morning. Alerted by Matilda, Massa Murray hurried through the front door and around the side of the house as Matilda hastened back to the kitchen in time to overhear the waiting youth caught by total surprise. “What are you hanging around here for?” demanded Massa Murray. But the youth neither panicked nor even seemed flustered. “Mister, I’m just wore out from travelin’ an’ stayin’ hungry. You can’t hold that ’gainst no man, an’ your niggers been good enough to feed me something.” Massa Murray hesitated, then said, “Well, I can sympathize, but you ought to know how hard the times are now, so we can’t be feeding extra mouths. You just have to move on.” Then Matilda heard the youth’s voice abjectly pleading, “Mister, please let me stay. I ain’t scared of no work. I just don’t want to starve. I’ll do any work you got.”
Massa Murray said, “There’s nothing for you here to do. My niggers work the fields.”
“I was born and raised in the fields. I’ll work harder’n your niggers, Mister—to just eat regular,” the youth insisted.
“What’s your name and where you come here from, boy?”
“George Johnson. From South Carolina, sir. The war pretty near tore up where I lived. I tried to join up but they said I’m too young. I’m just turned sixteen. War ruint our crops an’ everything so bad, look like even no rabbits left. An’ I left, too, figgered somewhere—anywhere else—had to be better. But seem like the only somebody even