Alex Haley - Roots - The Saga of an American Family

The same sense of foreboding pervaded Tom as he began his second week of horseshoeing for the Confederate cavalry. During the third night, as he lay awake, thinking, he heard a noise that seemed to be coming from one of the adjoining garbage tents. Nervously Tom groped, and his fingers grasped his blacksmithing hammer. He tipped out into the faint moonlight to investigate. He was about to conclude that he had heard some foraging small animal when he glimpsed the shadowy human figure backing from the garbage tent starting to eat something in his hands. Tipping closer, Tom completely surprised a thin, sallow-faced white youth. In the moonlight for a second, they stared at each other, before the white youth went bolting away. But not ten yards distant, the fleeing figure stumbled over something that made a great clatter as he recovered himself and disappeared into the night. Then armed guards who came rushing with muskets and lanterns saw Tom standing there holding his hammer.

“What you stealin’, nigger?

Tom sensed instantly the trouble he was in. To directly deny the accusation would call a white man a liar—even more dangerous than stealing. Tom all but babbled in his urgency of knowing that he had to make them believe him. “Heared sump’n an’ come lookin’ an’ seed a white man in de garbage, Massa, an’ he broke an’ run.”

Exchanging incredulous expressions, the two guards broke into scornful laughter. “ We look that dumb to you, nigger?” demanded one. “Major Cates said keep special eye on you! You’re going to meet him soon’s he wakes up in the morning, boy!” Keeping their gazes fixed on Tom, the guards held a whispered consultation.

The second guard said, “Boy, drop that hammer!” Tom’s fist instinctively clenched the hammer’s handle. Advancing a step, the guard leveled his musket at Tom’s belly. “Drop it!”

Tom’s fingers loosed and he heard the hammer thud against the ground. The guards motioned him to march ahead of them for quite a distance before commanding him to stop in a small clearing before a large tent where another armed guard stood. “We’re on patrol an’ caught this nigger stealin’,” said one of the first two and nodded toward the large tent. “We’d of took care of him, but the major told us to watch him an’ report anything to him personal. We’ll come back time the major gets up.”

The two guards left Tom being scowled at by the new one, who rasped, “Lay down flat on your back, nigger. If you move you’re dead.” Tom lay down as directed. The ground was cold. He speculated on what might happen, pondered his chances of escape, then the consequences if he did. He watched the dawn come, then the first two guards returned as noises within the tent said that Major Cates had risen. One of the guards called out, “Permission to see you, Major?”

“What about?” Tom heard the voice growl from within.

“Last night caught that blacksmith nigger stealing, sir!”

There was a pause. “Where is he now?”

“Prisoner right outside, sir!”

“Coming right out!”

After another minute, the tent flap opened and Major Cates stepped outside and stood eyeing Tom as a cat would a bird. “Well, highfalutin’ nigger, tell me you been stealin’! You know how we feel about that in the Army?”

“Massa—” Passionately Tom told the truth of what had happened, ending, “He was mighty hungry, Massa, rummagin’ in de garbage.”

“Now you got a white man eating garbage! You forget we’ve met before, plus I know your kind, nigger! Took care of that no-good free nigger pappy of yours, but you slipped loose. Well, this time I got you under the rules of war.”

With incredulous eyes, Tom saw Cates go striding to snatch a horsewhip hanging from the pommel of his saddle atop a nearby post. Tom’s eyes darted, weighing escape, but all three guards leveled their muskets at him as Cates advanced; his face contorted, raising the braided whip, he brought it down lashing like fire across Tom’s shoulders, again, again . . .

When Tom went stumbling back in humiliation and fury to where he had been shoeing the horses, uncaring what might happen if he was challenged, he seized his kit of tools, sprang onto his mule, and did not stop until he reached the big house. Massa Murray listened to what had happened, and he was reddened with anger as Tom finished, “Don’t care what, Massa, I ain’t gwine back.”

“You all right now, Tom?”

“I ain’t hurt none, ’cept in my mind, if dat’s what you means, suh.”

“Well, I’m going to give you my word. If the major shows up wanting trouble, I’m prepared to go to his commanding general, if necessary. I’m truly sorry this has happened. Just go back out to the shop and do your work.” Massa Murray hesitated. “Tom, I know you’re not the oldest, but Missis Murray and I regard you as the head of your family. And we want you to tell them that we look forward to us all enjoying the rest of our lives together just as soon as we get these Yankees whipped. They’re nothing but human devils!”

“Yassuh,” Tom said. He thought that it was impossible for a massa to perceive that being owned by anyone could never be enjoyable. As the weeks advanced into the spring of 1862, Irene again became pregnant, and the news that Tom heard daily from the local white men who were his customers gave him a feeling that Alamance County seemed within the quiet center of a hurricane of war being fought in other places. He heard of a Battle of Shiloh where Yankees and Confederates had killed or injured nearly forty thousand apiece of each other, until survivors had to pick their way among the dead, and so many wounded needed amputations that a huge pile of severed human limbs grew in the yard of the nearest Mississippi hospital. That one sounded like a draw, but there seemed no question that the Yankees were losing most of the major battles. Near the end of August Tom heard jubilant descriptions of how in a second Battle of Bull Run, the Yankees had retreated with two generals among their dead, and thousands of their troops straggling back into Washington, D.C., where civilians were said to be fleeing in panic as clerks barricaded federal buildings, and both the Treasury’s and the banks’ money was being shipped to New York City while a gunboat lay under steam in the Potomac River, ready to evacuate President Lincoln and his staff. Then at Harpers Ferry hardly two weeks later, a Confederate force under General Stonewall Jackson took eleven thousand Yankee prisoners.

“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?”