Roots (103 page)

After the last heartrending chorus of “The Old Rugged Cross,” again—led by Matilda, looking more radiant than Chicken George had ever seen her—the congregation dried their eyes and filed out past the preacher, pumping his hand and slapping him on
the back. Retrieving their picnic baskets on the porch, they spread sheets on the lawn and proceeded to relish the fried chicken, pork chop sandwiches, deviled eggs, potato salad, cole slaw, pickles, cornbread, lemonade, and so many cakes and pickles that even L’il George was gasping for breath when he finished the last slice.

As they all sat chatting, or strolled around—the men and boys in coat and tie, the older women all in white, the girls in bright-colored dresses with a ribbon at the waist—Matilda watched misty-eyed as her brood of grandchildren ran about tirelessly playing tag and catch. Turning finally to her husband and putting her hand on his, gnarled and scarred with gamecock scratches, she said quietly, “I won’t never forget dis day, George. We done come a long way since you first come courtin’ me wid dat derby hat o’ yours. Our fam’ly done growed up an’ had chilluns of dey own, an’ de Lawd seen fit to keep us all togedder. De onliest thing I wish is you Mammy Kizzy could be here to see it wid us.”

Eyes brimming, Chicken George looked back at her. “She lookin’, baby. She
sho’
is!”

P
romptly at the noon hour on Monday, during their break from the fields, the children started filing into church for their first day of school indoors. For the past two years, ever since she came to town after being one among the first graduating class from Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee, Sister Carrie White had been teaching out under the bush arbors, and this use of the church was a great occasion. The New Hope CME stewards—Chicken George, Tom, and his brothers—had contributed the money to buy pencils, tablets, and primers on “readin’, writin’, an’ ’rithmetic.” Since she taught all the children of school age at the same time, in her six grades Sister Carrie had pupils ranging from five to fifteen, including Tom’s oldest five: Maria Jane, who was twelve; Ellen; Viney; L’il Matilda; and Elizabeth, who was six. Young Tom, next in line, began the year after that, and then Cynthia, the youngest.

By the time Cynthia was graduated in 1883, Maria Jane had dropped out, gotten married, and given birth to her first child; and Elizabeth, who was the best student in the family, had taught their father Tom Murray how to write his name and had even become his blacksmithing bookkeeper. He needed one, for by this time he had become so successful with his rolling blacksmith shop that he had also built a stationary one—without a
murmur of objection—and was among the more prosperous men in town.

About a year after Elizabeth went to work for her father, she fell in love with John Toland, a newcomer to Henning who had gone to work sharecropping on the six-hundred-acre farm of a white family out near the Hatchie River. She had met him in town one day at the general store and been impressed, she told her mother Irene, not only by his good looks and muscular build but also by his dignified manner and obvious intelligence. He could even write a little, she noticed, when he signed for a receipt. Over the next several weeks, during the walks she’d take with him in the woods once or twice each week, she also found out that he was a young man of fine reputation, a churchgoer, who had ambitions of saving up enough to start a farm of his own; and that he was as gentle as he was strong.

It wasn’t until they’d seen each other regularly for almost two months—and had begun to talk secretly about marriage—that Tom Murray, who had known about them from the start, ordered her to stop skulking around and bring him home from church the following Sunday. Elizabeth did as she was told. John Toland couldn’t have been friendlier or more respectful when he was introduced to Tom Murray, who was even more taciturn than usual, and excused himself after only a few minutes of painful pleasantries. After John Toland left, Elizabeth was called by Tom Murray, who said sternly: “It’s plain to see from de way you act roun’ dat boy dat you’s stuck on ’im. You two got anythin’ in mind?”

“What you mean, Pappy?” she stuttered, flushing hotly.

“Gittin’ married! Dat’s on your mind, ain’t it?”

She couldn’t speak.

“You done tol’ me. Well, I’d like to give you my blessin’s, ’cause I wants you to be happy much as you does. He seem like a good man—but I can’t let you hitch up wid ’im.”

Elizabeth looked at him uncomprehendingly.

“He too high-yaller. He could nigh ’bout pass fo’ white—jes’ not quite. He ain’t fish or fowl. Y’unnerstan’ what I’se sayin’? He too light fo’ black folks, too dark fo’ white folks. He cain’t he’p what he look like, but don’t care how hard he try, he never gon’ b’long nowhere. An’ you got to think ’bout what yo’ chilluns might look like! I don’t want dat kinda life fo’ you, ’Lizabeth.”

“But Pappy, ever’body
like
John! If ’n we gits ’long wid Ol’ George Johnson, why can’t we git ’long wid him?”

“Ain’t de same!”

“But Pappy!” she was desperate. “You talk ’bout people not’ceptin’ ’im!
You’s
de one ain’t!”

“Dat’s ’nough! You done said all I’m gon’ hear ’bout it. You ain’t got de sense to keep ’way from dat kinda grief, I gotta do it fo’ you. I don’ want you seein’ ’im no mo’.”

“But Pappy . . .” She was sobbing.

“It’s over wid! Dat’s all is to it!”

“If ’n I cain’t marry John, ain’t never gon’ marry nobody!” Elizabeth screamed.

Tom Murray turned and strode from the room, slamming the door. In the next room, he stopped.

“Tom, what do you . . .” Irene began, sitting up rigidly in her rocker.

“Ain’t got no mo’ to say ’bout it!” he snapped, marching out the front door.

When Matilda found out about it, she got so angry that Irene had to restrain her from confronting Tom. “Dat boy’s pappy got white blood in ’im!” she shouted. Suddenly wincing, then clutching at her chest, Matilda lurched against a table. Irene caught her as she toppled to the floor.

“O my God!” she moaned, her face contorted with pain. “Sweet Jesus! O Lawd, no!” Her eyelids fluttered and closed.

“Grandmammy!” Irene shouted, seizing her around the shoulders. “
Grandmammy!
” She put her head to her chest and listened. There was still a heartbeat. But two days later it stopped.

Chicken George didn’t cry. But there was something heart-breaking about his stoniness, the deadness in his eyes. From that day on, no one could remember him ever smiling again or saying a civil word to anyone. He and Matilda had never seemed really close—but when she died, somehow his own warmth died with her. And he began to shrink, dry up, grow old almost overnight—not turning feeble and weak-minded but hard and mean-tempered. Refusing to live anymore in the cabin he had shared with Matilda, he began to roost with one son or daughter after another until both he and they were fed up, when old gray-headed Chicken George moved on. When he wasn’t complaining, he’d usually sit on the porch in the rocker he took along with him and stare fiercely out across the fields for hours at a time.

He had just turned eighty-three—having cantankerously refused to touch a bite of the birthday cake that was baked for him—and was sitting late in the winter of 1890 in front of the fire at his eldest granddaughter Maria Jane’s house. She had ordered him to sit still and rest his bad leg while she hurried out to the adjacent field with her husband’s lunch. When she returned as quickly as she could, she found him lying on the hearth, where he’d dragged himself after falling into the fire. Maria Jane’s screams brought her husband running. The derby hat, scarf, and sweater were smoldering, and Chicken George was burned horribly from his head to his waist. Late that night he died.

Nearly everyone black in Henning attended his funeral, dozens of them his children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren. Standing there by the grave as he was lowered into the ground
beside Matilda, his son L’il George leaned to Virgil and whispered: “Pappy so tough ’speck he wouldn’t o’ never died natural.”

Virgil turned and looked sadly at his brother. “I loved ’im,” he said quietly. “You too, an’ all us.”

“’Cose we did,” said L’il George. “Nobody couldn’t stan’ livin’ wid de cockadoodlin’ ol’ rascal, an’ look now at ever’body snufflin’’cause he gone!”

“M
ama!” Cynthia breathlessly exclaimed to Irene, “Will Palmer done axed to walk me home from church nex’ Sunday!”

“He ain’t ’zackly one to rush into things, is he? Leas’ two years I seen ’im watchin’ you in church every Sunday—” said Irene.

“Who?” Tom asked.

“Will Palmer! Is it awright for him to walk her home?”

After a while Tom Murray said drily, “I think ’bout it.”

Cynthia went off looking as if she had been stabbed, leaving Irene studying her husband’s face. “Tom, ain’t
nobody
good ’nough fo’ yo’ gals? Anybody in town know dat young Will jes’ ’bout
run
de lumber company fo’ dat ol’ stay-drunk Mr. James. Folks all over Henning seen ’im unload de lumber off de freight cars hisself, sell it an’ deliver it hisself, den write out de bills, colleck de money, an’’posit it in de bank hisself. Even do different l’il carpenterin’ de customers needs an’ ax nothin’ fo’ it. An’ wid all dat fo’ whatever l’il he make, he don’t never speak a hard word ’gainst ol’ Mr. James.”

“De way I sees it, doin’ his job an’ mindin’ his own business,” said Tom Murray. “I sees ’im in church, too, half de gals in dere battin’ dey eyes at ’im.”

“’Cose dey is!” said Irene, “’cause he de bes’ catch in Henning. But he ain’t never yet ax to walk none home.”

“How ’bout dat Lula Carter he gave dem flowers to?”

Astonished that Tom even knew, Irene said, “Dat more’n a year ago, Tom, an’ if you knows so much, reckon you also know she carried on like sich a fool after dat, fawnin’ roun’ ’im like a shadow, he finally quit talkin’ to her at all!”

“He done it once, he could do it agin.”

“Not to Cynthia, he ain’t, not much sense as
she
got, ’long wid bein’ pretty an’ well raised. She done tol’ me much as she like Will, she ain’t never let on to ’im how
she
feel! Mos’ she ever say is howdy an smile back when he do. Don’t care how many gals buzzin’ after ’im, you see who
he
buzzin’ after!”

“See you got everythin’ worked out,” said Tom.

Irene pleaded, “Aw, Tom, let ’im walk de child home. Leas’ let’em git togedder. Dey stays togedder’s up to dem.”

“An’
me!”
Tom said sternly. He did not want to seem too easy to any of his daughters, his wife either. Above all, he did not want Irene aware that before now he had seen the potential, had weighed it, and thoroughly approved of Will Palmer if the time came. Having watched young Will since he had come to Henning, Tom privately had often wished that either of his two sons showed half of young Will’s gumption. In fact, the deviously serious, ambitious, highly capable Will Palmer reminded Tom of a younger himself.

No one had expected that the courtship would develop so fast. Ten months later, in the “company room” of Tom and Irene’s new four-room house, Will proposed to Cynthia, who barely could restrain her “Yes!” until he had finished speaking. The third Sunday from then, they were married in the New Hope CME Church in a ceremony attended by well over two hundred people, about half of whom had come from North Carolina on the wagon train, and their children—and who now lived on farms scattered throughout Lauderdale County.

Will with his own hands and tools built their small home where, a year later, in 1894, their first child, a son, was born, who died within a few days. By now Will Palmer never took off a weekday from work, the lumber company’s hard-drinking owner being so far gone into the bottle that Will practically
was
running the entire business. Going over the company’s books one stormy late Friday afternoon, Will discovered a bank payment overdue that day at People’s Bank. He rode his horse eight miles through drenching rains to knock at the bank president’s back porch.

“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.”