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?”
For half a moment the youth stared quizzically at Tom, then his eyes flew wide; he disappeared so fast that Irene stood astounded—and she was even more so when Tom told her whom she had been about to feed.
The whole of slave row became aware of the incredible occurrence on the next night when—with both Tom and Irene among the family gathering—Matilda mentioned that just after breakfast, “some scrawny po’ white boy” had suddenly appeared at the kitchen screen door piteously begging for food; she had given him a bowl of leftover cold stew for which he had thanked her profusely before disappearing, then later she had found the cleaned bowl sitting on the kitchen steps. After Tom explained who the youth was, he said, “Since you feedin’ ’im, I ’speck he still hangin’ roun’. Probably jes’ sleepin’ somewhere out in de woods. I don’ trust him nohow; first thing we know, somebody be in trouble.”
“Ain’t it de truth!” exclaimed Matilda. “Well, I tell you one thing, if he show me his face ag’in, I gwine ax him to wait an’ let’im b’leeve I’se fixin’ ’im sump’n while I goes an’ tells massa.”
The trap was sprung perfectly when the youth reappeared the following morning. Alerted by Matilda, Massa Murray hurried through the front door and around the side of the house as Matilda hastened back to the kitchen in time to overhear the waiting youth caught by total surprise. “What are you hanging around here for?” demanded Massa Murray. But the youth neither panicked nor even seemed flustered. “Mister, I’m just wore out from travelin’ an’ stayin’ hungry. You can’t hold that ’gainst no man, an’ your niggers been good enough to feed me something.” Massa Murray hesitated, then said, “Well, I can sympathize, but you ought to know how hard the times are now, so we can’t be feeding extra mouths. You just have to move on.” Then Matilda heard the youth’s voice abjectly pleading, “Mister, please let me stay. I ain’t scared of no work. I just don’t want to starve. I’ll do any work you got.”
Massa Murray said, “There’s nothing for you here to do. My niggers work the fields.”
“I was born and raised in the fields. I’ll work harder’n your niggers, Mister—to just eat regular,” the youth insisted.
“What’s your name and where you come here from, boy?”
“George Johnson. From South Carolina, sir. The war pretty near tore up where I lived. I tried to join up but they said I’m too young. I’m just turned sixteen. War ruint our crops an’ everything so bad, look like even no rabbits left. An’ I left, too, figgered somewhere—anywhere else—had to be better. But seem like the only somebody even give me the time of day been your niggers.”
Matilda could sense that the youth’s story had moved Massa Murray. Incredulously then she heard, “Would you know anything at all about being an overseer?”
“Ain’t never tried that.” The George Johnson youth sounded startled. Then he added hesitantly, “But I told you ain’t nothin’ I won’t try.”
Matilda eased yet closer to the edge of the screen door to hear better in her horror.
“I’ve always liked the idea of an overseer, even though my niggers do a good job raising my crops. I’d be willing to try you out for just bed and board to start—to see how it works out.”
“Mister—sir, what’s your name?”
“Murray,” the massa said.
“Well, you got yourself an overseer, Mr. Murray.”
Matilda heard the massa chuckle. He said, “There’s an empty shed over behind the barn you can move into. Where’s your stuff?”
“Sir, all the stuff I’ve got, I’ve got on,” said George Johnson.
The shocking news spread through the family with a thunder-bolt’s force. “Jes’ couldn’t b’leeve what I was hearin’!” exclaimed Matilda, ending her incredible report, and the family’s members fairly exploded. “Massa mus’ be goin’ crazy!” . . . “Ain’t we run his place fine ourselves?” . . . “Jes’ ’cause dey both white, dat’s all!”. . . “’speck he gwine see dat po’ cracker different time we sees to it’nough things go wrong!”
But as furious as they were, from their first direct confrontation with the impostor out in the field on the following morning, he immediately made it difficult for their anger to remain at a fever pitch. Already out in the field when they arrived led by Virgil, the scrawny, sallow George Johnson came walking to meet them. His thin face was reddened and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he said, “I can’t blame y’all none for hatin’ me, but I can ask y’all to wait a little to see if I turn out bad as y’all think. You the first niggers I ever had anything to do with, but seem like to me y’all got black same as I got white, an’ I judge anybody by how they act. I know one thing, y’all fed me when I was hungry, and it was plenty of white
folks hadn’t. Now seem like Mr. Murray got his mind set on having a overseer, and I know y’all could help him git rid of me, but I figger you do that, you be takin’ your chances the next one he git might be a whole lot worse.”
None of the family seemed to know what to say in response. There seemed nothing to do except filter away and set to work, all of them covertly observing George Johnson proceeding to work as hard as they, if not harder—in fact, he seemed obsessed to prove his sincerity.
Tom’s and Irene’s third daughter—Viney—was born at the end of the newcomer’s first week. By now out in the field, George Johnson boldly sat down with the members of the family at lunchtimes, appearing not to notice how Ashford conspicuously got up, scowling, and moved elsewhere. “Y ’all see I don’t know nothin’ ’bout overseein’, so y’all needs to help me along,” George Johnson told them frankly. “It would be no good for Mr. Murray to come out here an’ figger I ain’t doin’ the job like he want.”
The idea of training their overseer amused even the usually solemn Tom when it was discussed in the slave row that night, and all agreed that the responsibility naturally belonged to Virgil, since he had always run the field work. “First thing,” he said to George Johnson, “you gon’ have to change whole lot o’ yo’ ways. ’Cose, wid all us lookin’ all de time, massa ain’t likely to git close fo’ us can give you a signal. Den you have to hurry up an’ git ’way from too close roun’ us. Reckon you knows white folks an’ ’specially oberseers ain’t s’posed to seem like deys close wid niggers.”
“Well, in South Carolina where I come from, seem like the niggers never got too close to white folks,” George Johnson said.
“Well, dem niggers is smart!” said Virgil. “De nex’ thing, a massa want to feel like his oberseer makin’ his niggers work harder’n dey did befo’ de oberseer come. You got to learn how to holler, ‘Git to work, you niggers!’ an’ sich as dat. An’ anytime you’s roun’
massa or any mo’ white folks, don’ never call us by our names de way you does. You got to learn how to growl an’ cuss an’ soun’ real mean, to make massa feel like you ain’t too easy an’ got us goin’.”