Alex Haley - Roots - The Saga of an American Family

Matilda waited until the next afternoon to drop by the blacksmithing shop. “Now, Tom, you know what I’m thinkin’ ’bout?” she asked. Smiling at her, Tom said, “You late, Mammy. I done already tol’ eve’ybody—an’ was fixin’ to tell you—to come squeeze in de cabin dis comin’ Sadday night an’ I’se gwine tell dis chile de fam’ly story jes’ like I done wid Maria, when she born.” As planned, the family did gather, and Tom continued the tradition that had been passed down from the late Gran’mammy Kizzy and Chicken George, and there was much joking afterward that if ever anyone among them should neglect to relate the family chronicle to any new infant, they could surely expect to hear from the ghost of Gran’mammy Kizzy.

But even the excitement of Tom and Irene’s second child soon diminished as a war’s swiftly paced events gained momentum. As Tom busily shod horses and mules and made and repaired tools, he kept his ears strained to hear every possible scrap of the exchanges of talk among the white customers gathered before his shop, and he winced with disappointment at their successive jubilant reports of Confederate triumphs. Particularly a battle the white men called “Bull Run” had set the white customers hollering, beating each others’ backs and throwing their hats into the air as they shouted such things as “What Yankees wasn’t left dead or hurt run for their lives!” or “Soon’s Yankees hears our boys comin’, they shows they asses!” The jubilance was repeated over a big Yankee loss at a “Wilson’s Creek” in Missouri, then not long after when at a “Ball’s Bluff ” in Virginia, hundreds of Yankees were left dead, including a bullet-riddled general who had been a close personal friend of President Lincoln. “Dem white mens was all jumpin’ up an’ down an’ laughin’ dat Pres’dent Lincoln heared it an’ commence to cryin’ like a baby,” Tom told his somber family. By the end of 1861—when Alamance County had sent twelve companies off into the various fighting—he hated to report more than a little of what he was continuing to hear, for it only deepened his family’s gloom, along with his own. “Lawd knows sho’ don’t soun’ like we’s gwine git free, keep gwine like dis!” said Matilda, glancing about one late Sunday afternoon’s semicircle of downcast faces. No one made any comment for a long while; then Lilly Sue said, as she nursed her sickly son Uriah, “All dat freedom talk! I done jes’ give up any mo’ hope!”

Then a spring 1862 afternoon, when a rider came cantering down the Murray driveway, wearing the Confederate officer’s gray uniform, even from some distance he seemed vaguely familiar to Tom. As the rider drew nearer, with a shock Tom realized that it was the former County Sheriff Cates, the feed-store owner, whose counsel to Massa Murray had forced Chicken George to leave the state. With growing apprehension, Tom saw Cates dismount and disappear within the big house; then before long Matilda came hurrying to the blacksmith shop, her brows furrowed with worry. “Massa want you, Tom. He talkin’ wid dat no-good feed-store Massa Cates. What you reckon dey wants?”

Tom’s mind had been racing with possibilities, including having heard his customers saying that many planters had taken slaves to battles with them, and others had volunteered the war services of their slaves who knew trades, especially such as carpentry, leather-working, and blacksmithing. But he said as calmly as he could, “Jes’ don’ know, Mammy. I go find out is de bes’ thing, I reckon.” Composing himself, Tom walked heavily toward the big house.

Massa Murray said, “Tom, you know Major Cates.”

“Yassuh.” Tom did not look at Cates, whose gaze he could feel upon him.

“Major Cates tells me he’s commanding a new cavalry unit being trained at Company Shops, and they need you to do their horseshoeing.”

Tom swallowed. He heard his words come with a hollow sound. “Massa, dat mean I go to de war?”

It was Cates who scornfully answered. “No niggers will go anywhere I’m fighting, to fly if they as much as hear a bullet! We just need you to shoe horses where we’re training.”

Tom gulped his relief. “Yassuh.”

“The major and I have discussed it,” said Massa Murray. “You’ll work a week for his cavalry, then a week here for me, for the duration of the war, which it looks like won’t be long.” Massa Murray looked at Major Cates. “When would you want him to start?”

“Tomorrow morning, if that’s all right, Mr. Murray.”

“Why, certainly, it’s our duty for the South!” said Massa Murray briskly, seeming pleased at his chance to help the war effort.

“I hope the nigger understands his place,” said Cates. “The military is no soft plantation.”

“Tom knows how to conduct himself, I’m sure.” Massa Murray looked his confidence at Tom. “Tonight I’ll write out a traveling pass and let Tom take one of my mules and report to you tomorrow morning.”

“That’s fine!” Cates said, then he glanced at Tom. “We’ve got horseshoes, but you bring your tools, and I’ll tell you now we want good, quick work. We’ve got no time to waste!”

“Yassuh.”

Carrying a hastily assembled portable horseshoeing kit on the mule’s back, when Tom approached the railroad repair settlement at Company Shops, he saw the previously lightly wooded surrounding acres now dotted with long, orderly rows of small tents. Closer, he heard bugles sounding and the flat cracking of muskets being fired; then he tensed when he saw a mounted guard galloping toward him. “Don’t you see this is the Army, nigger? Where do you think you’re headed?” the soldier demanded.

“Major Cates done tol’ me come here an’ shoe hosses,” Tom said nervously.

“Well, the cavalry’s over yonder—” the guard pointed. “Git! Before you git shot!”

Booting the mule away, Tom soon came over a small rise and saw four lines of horsemen executing maneuvers and formations, and behind the officers who were shouting orders, he distinguished Major Cates wheeling and prancing on his horse. He was aware when the major saw him there on the mule and made a gesture, whereupon another mounted soldier came galloping in his direction. Tom reined up and waited.

“You the blacksmith nigger?”

“Yassuh.”

The guard pointed toward a small cluster of tents. “You’ll stay and work down by those garbage tents. Soon as you get set up, we’ll be sending horses.”

The horses in dire need of new metal shoes came in an unending procession across Tom’s first week of serving the Confederate cavalry, and from first dawn until darkness fell, he shod them until the underside of hooves seemed to become a blur in his mind. Everything he overheard the young cavalrymen say made it sound even more certain that the Yankees were being routed in every battle, and it was a weary, disconsolate Tom who returned home to spend a week serving the regular customers for Massa Murray.

He found the women of slave row in a great state of upset. Through the previous full night and morning, Lilly Sue’s sickly son Uriah had been thought lost. Only shortly before Tom’s return Matilda, while sweeping the front porch, had heard strange noises, and investigating she had found the tearful, hungry boy hiding under the big house. “I was jes’ tryin’ to hear what massa an’ missy was sayin’ ’bout freein’ us niggers, but under dere I couldn’t hear nothin’ atall,” Uriah had said, and now both Matilda and Irene were busily trying to comfort the embarrassed and distraught Lilly Sue, whose always strange child had caused such a commotion. Tom helped to calm her, then described to the family his own week’s experience. “Ain’t hardly nothin’ I seed or heared make it look no better,” he concluded. Irene tried a futile effort to make them all feel at least a little better. “Ain’t never been free, so ain’t gwine miss it nohow,” she said. But Matilda said, “Tell y’all de truth, I’se jes’ plain scairt somehow us gwine wind up worse off ’n we was befo’.”