Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [366]
“Mr. Vaughan,” he said, “this payment slipped Mr. James’ mind, and I know he wouldn’t want to keep you waitin’ till Monday.”
Invited inside to dry, he said, “No, thank you, sir, Cynthia’ll be wonderin’ where I am.” And wishing the banker a good night, he rode back off in the rain.
The banker, deeply impressed, told the incident all over town.
In the fall of 1893, someone came and told Will he was wanted at the bank. Puzzled throughout the few minutes’ walk there, Will found inside, waiting for him, Henning’s ten leading white businessmen, all seeming red-faced and embarrassed. Banker Vaughan explained, speaking rapidly, that the lumber company’s owner had declared bankruptcy, with plans to move elsewhere with his family. “Henning needs the lumber company,” said the banker. “All of us you see here have been weeks discussing it, and we can’t think of anyone better to run it than you, Will. We’ve agreed to cosign a note to pay off the company’s debts for you to take over as the new owner.”
Tears trickling down his cheeks, Will Palmer walked wordlessly along the line of white men. As he double-gripped and squeezed each hand, then that man hurriedly signed the note and even more quickly left with tears in his own eyes. When they had all gone, Will wrung the banker’s hand for a long moment. “Mr. Vaughan, I’ve got one more favor to ask. Would you take half of my savings and make out a check for Mr. James, without his ever knowing where it came from?”
Within a year, Will’s credo—to provide the best possible goods and service for the lowest possible price—was drawing customers even from adjoining towns, and wagonloads of people, mostly black, were coming from as far away as Memphis—forty-eight miles to the South—to see with their own eyes western Tennessee’s first black-owned business of its kind, where Cynthia had hung ruffled, starched curtains in the windows and Will had painted the sign on the front: “W. E. PALMER LUMBER COMPANY.”
CHAPTER 117
Cynthia’s and Will’s prayers were answered in 1895 with the birth of the sound, healthy girl whom they named Bertha George—the “George” after Will’s father. Cynthia insisted on assembling a houseful of family before whom she told the gurgling infant the whole story back to the African, Kunta Kinte, just as Tom Murray had told it to all of his children at intervals when they had been young.
Will Palmer respected Cynthia’s devotion to her ancestors’ memory, but it irritated his own deep pride to be considered as having married into Cynthia’s family rather than the other way around. It was probably why he began to monopolize little Bertha even before she could walk. Every morning he carried her about before he left for work. Every night he tucked her into the little crib that he had made with his hands for her.
By the time Bertha was five, the rest of the family and much of the town’s black community quoted Cynthia and speaking for themselves echoed her opinion, “Will Palmer jes’ spilin’ dat gal to pieces!” He had arranged that she had credit at every Henning store that sold candy; and he paid the bill each month, though he made her keep an accounting, which he solemnly checked “to teach her business.” As her fifteenth-birthday present, when he opened a Sears, Roebuck mail-order account in her name, the people shook and wagged their heads in mingled astonishment, dismay—and pride: “All dat young’un got to do is pick what she like out’n dat pitcher catalogue, an’ write off de order blank, an’ firs’ thing you knows dem Sears, Roebuck white folks way yonder in Chicago