Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [359]
Taking Irene by the hand, Tom went walking with her in the moonlight toward the fields. Vaulting lightly over a fence, he took long strides, made a right-angle turn, and paced off a square, then striding back toward the rail fence, he said, “Irene, that’s going to be ours!” She echoed him, softly. “Ours.”
Within a week, the family’s separate units were each working their fields. A morning when Tom had left his blacksmith shop to help his brothers, he recognized a lone rider along the road as the former Cavalry Major Cates, his uniform tattered and his horse spavined. Cates also recognized Tom, and riding near the fence, he reined up. “Hey, nigger, bring me a dipperful of your water!” he called. Tom looked at the nearby water bucket, then he studied Cates’ face for a long moment before moving to the bucket. He filled the dipper and walked to hand it to Cates. “Things is changed now, Mr. Cates,” Tom spoke evenly. “The only reason I brought you this water is because I’d bring any thirsty man a drink, not because you hollered. I jes’ want you to know that.”
Cates handed back the dipper. “Git me another one, nigger.”
Tom took the dipper and dropped it back into the bucket and walked off, never once looking back.
But when another rider came galloping and hallooing along the road with a battered black derby distinguishable above a faded green scarf, those out in the fields erupted into a mass footrace back toward the old slave row. “Mammy, he’s back! He’s back!” When the horse reached the yard, Chicken George’s sons hauled him off onto their shoulders and went trooping with him to the weeping Matilda.
“What you bellerin’ fo’, woman?” he demanded in mock indignation, hugging her as if he would never let go, but finally he did, yelling to his family to assemble and be quiet. “Tell y’all later ’bout all de places I been an’ things I done since we las’ seen one’nother,” hollered Chicken George. “But right now I got to ’quaint you wid where we’s all gwine togedder!” In pindrop quiet and with his born sense of drama, Chicken George told them now that he had found for them all a western Tennessee settlement whose white people anxiously awaited their arrival to help build a town.
“Lemme tell y’all sump’n! De lan’ where we goin’ so black an’ rich, you plant a pig’s tail an’ a hog’ll grow ... you can’t hardly sleep nights for de watermelons growin’ so fas’ dey cracks open like firecrackers! I’m tellin’ you it’s possums layin’ under ’simmon trees too fat to move, wid de ’simmon sugar drippin’ down on ’em thick as ’lasses . . . !”
The family never let him finish in their wild excitement. As some went dashing off to boast to others on adjacent plantations, Tom began planning that afternoon how to alter a farm wagon into a covered “Rockaway,” of which about ten could move all of the units of the family to this new place. But by that sundown a dozen other heads of newly freed families had come—not asking, but demanding that their families, too, were going—they were black Holts, Fitzpatricks, Perms, Taylors, Wrights, Lakes, Mac-Gregors, and others, from local Alamance County plantations.
Amid the next two months of feverish activity, the men built the “Rockaways.” “The women butchered, cooked, canned, and smoked foodstuffs for travel and selecting what other vital things to take. Old Chicken George strode about, supervising every activity, loving his hero role. Tom Murray was thronged with volunteered assistance from yet more newly freed families, and with assurances that they would swiftly obtain their own wagons to become their family’s “Rockaways.” Finally he announced that all who wished could go—but that there must be but one “Rockaway” per family unit. When at last twenty-eight wagons were packed and ready to roll on the following sunup, in a strange calm sense of sadness, the freed people went about gently touching the familiar things,