Leaving Uncle Tom's Cabin (Burning Uncle Tom's Cabin Book 2) Page 7

  “They were trying to pay less than the piece was worth, Jim!” George answered angrily. “How will you make money if your customers stop paying what you ask? How will you make money if your customers don’t respect you?”

  Jim rounded on him. “Is that any of your business? No! Your job was to deliver the furniture and take the payment, George, not tell me how to run my business! Or to anger my customers!”

  “And I’m just supposed to listen to those customers talk badly about my people?” George demanded.

  “George, when you’re working for yourself, you’re actually working for your customers. It’s your job to give them what they order—and that includes letting them be right, on occasion. You can’t be talking back to them. You can’t be angering them. You’ve done a job, and you must collect the money and return to your shop—that’s how your shop continues to exist. Nothing good comes of trying to argue with them.”

  “And you’d have me lay down and forget my principles, forget everything I’ve fought for, just to keep your goddamn business?” George snarled. “You’d have me forget my own pride, just to gain a few dollars?”

  Jim gave George a hard, cold stare, bit his lip, and then took a deep breath. “George, I’m sorry to say it, but I can’t have you working for me. Not if that’s the way you’re going to do it.”

  George turned without answering, stormed out of the shop, and slammed the door behind him, too furious even to respond.

  15

  The next day, after an evening of speaking to no one and a night of tossing and turning in his bed, George made his way into the city on his own. He’d barely spoken to Eliza that morning and had avoided Jim altogether. He was lucky, he knew, that Jim hadn’t thrown them out onto the street for what he’d done. But he also knew that he’d done the right thing. Jim should not be accepting such disrespect from his customers, and he shouldn’t be justifying that in his own mind. It went against everything they had run from back in Kentucky, and although George respected what Jim had built in Montreal, he knew that he would never be able to ignore his principles in that manner. No matter how much money it made him.

  The episode had taught him only one thing: that he could not work with Jim after all, and that he was going to have to go out into the city and find work for himself.

  Unfortunately, he soon found that finding a job was not as easy as he’d hoped it would be. He’d started with shops that he had thought would be simple places to work—blacksmiths, bakeries, and even the local grocer—but each and every employer had turned him away when he was unable to provide references or prove himself especially skilled in that form of work. He’d thought that the blacksmith’s shop would be well-suited for a man of his build and character and had told the owner of the shop that he’d spent much of his time working with machines in Kentucky, but the man had given him a simple test: take a horseshoe from the fire and hammer it straight, demonstrating not only his strength but his skill in the process.

  George, of course, though he’d dealt with machinery and metal in Kentucky, had never worked with horseshoes in his life—or with the heavy, unwieldy hammers used in the blacksmith’s shop. He’d fumbled the horseshoe, taking it out of the fire and nearly burning himself in the process. Then he had dropped the hammer twice while trying to hold the shoe on the anvil and hammer it at the same time. The one time he’d managed to bring the hammer down, he’d done so sloppily, and sparks had shot from the hot metal straight toward the hay baled at the side of the shop.

  At that point the blacksmith had snatched the hammer from George and pushed him out of the way, saying that he was sorry. He said George looked like a strong boy, but the shop couldn’t afford for anyone to be injured or burned.

  Things had gone downhill from there, and by lunchtime George had found himself at the end of the street of merchants and grocers, staring back at the path he’d walked.

  “In and out of every shop, and not a one of them is willing to give me a chance,” he murmured to himself, feeling quite lost and more than a little angry. How was he supposed to make his way in the world if no one would take a chance on him? How was he supposed to support his family or move ahead in life?

  Suddenly the door behind him opened, and a man walked out of the shop against which George was leaning, muttering an apology and shouldering past George. George turned to stare after him, glaring, but then noticed that the man was well-dressed and walking toward a well-kept carriage. A rich man, he realized. He turned toward the shop, wondering what the man had been doing in this area of town. He saw that the building behind him hosted a chimney sweep business, where men were paid to shove themselves into the deepest, darkest places in order to clean chimneys of the soot and dirt they collected.

  George wrinkled his nose in disgust, but then noticed a handwritten paper in the window.

  “Help wanted,” he whispered.

  Well, it wasn’t the most glamorous of jobs, but he’d tried everything else. And every man had to start somewhere. Besides, he couldn’t very well go back home to face Jim and the others without having a solution in mind. He knew that Jim was furious, and that Eliza would be both distraught and disappointed when she found out what he’d done with Mrs. Smith. She’d always been more evenhanded about such things than he and would never understand that he’d had to do what he’d done.

  No, he couldn’t go back there without an answer to their problems. He needed something to prove that he could take care of things quite well on his own.

  So he straightened his shoulders, collected his pride, and walked through the door, praying that this might be the shop that finally told him yes.

  * * *

  Half an hour later, George had expanded on his plan and was in the middle of telling the owner exactly why his idea was the one the owner had been waiting for.

  “I’m far too valuable to clean chimneys, you see,” he was saying, holding his hands out to the side and gesturing toward the dusty chimney-cleaning tools. “But I can make your job easier and quicker and make you more money in the process.”

  The owner of the shop scoffed at him. “Boy, you can make me money by cleaning chimneys. Now, I’ve offered you a job, and either you’ll take it or you’ll leave it. But I’m not interested in discussing whatever it is you want to do beyond that.”

  “But I can build you a machine to make it easier!” George continued, his head full of plans. “I built machines down in Kentucky, and they all worked! You wouldn’t want to waste a mind like that on manual labor!”

  The man walked up to George and grabbed his shirt, pulling George close. “Listen to me, boy,” he said grimly. “I don’t want no machinery, and I don’t want no inventors. I’m not buying whatever it is you think you’ll sell me, and I’d suggest that you just stop trying, understand? You look like a strong man. Not as thin as I’d like for this sort of work, but strength is important, too. You’ll make a decent enough sweep, and you can start tomorrow. But I don’t want to hear any more of this gibberish about machines, understand me? The job is to be a chimney sweep. No more, no less. And your answer will be yes or no.”

  George pushed his lips out, both angry and frustrated. Why, the nerve of the man! George had designed a machine that made his last employer plenty of money, and if this man didn’t see that—

  Then he remembered the situation he’d left at home. He remembered Eliza, little Harry, and his great dreams of a house of their own. This job as a sweep didn’t pay much—barely enough to keep them in food and clothes—but it would be a start. And if it gave him the opportunity to save a bit, perhaps find a new direction for his inventing …

  “I’ll take it,” he said bitterly. “I’ll be back tomorrow.” And with that, he spun on his heel, rushed out the door, and turned back toward home, a newly employed man.

  16

  A few days after the auction, Tom, along with the other slaves in Haley’s new gang, walked to docks to board the ship bound for their next destination. Tom knew this only because
Haley had never ceased talking about it, bragging to anyone who might listen about how he was going to take his gang south and sell them for a pretty penny.

  Tom, with his gentle nature and well-meaning mind, had done his best to ignore the implications as well as the long, serious looks coming from the men to whom Haley was speaking. He’d heard enough, by now, to know what it meant to go into the South. And he knew that it was nothing good.

  Still, he’d spent the nights since his departure from the Shelby plantation convincing himself that his Lord was watching over him, and that this was no different than the struggles Jesus himself might have gone through. Through the long, cold nights in the basement of the jail—where he and the other two slaves had been stationed—he’d made a list of the reasons to be grateful for his position and continued giving thanks to the Lord.

  Now, as he stared up at the vessel in front of him, he wondered if this wasn’t another reason. He’d never seen a steamboat before, and the yards and yards of gleaming metal, the hiss of the steam rushing through the workings, and even the long, smooth decks appealed to his workman’s heart. A carpenter born and trained, he felt his fingertips itching to run along the wooden railings of the deck, to find the seams and see how they’d been done. And though he had no head for machinery, he could just imagine the heat of the steam engine, the movement of the steam itself through the engine.

  His awe waned, however, when he saw that he would in fact be nowhere near the metal workings. Nor would he be near that deck. For though there was a long, steady gangplank up to the upper decks and cabins of the ship, it was only being used by the white folk. The people like him—the blacks —were being shuffled instead through a doorway that opened to a dark hole at the base of the ship. Tom gave one last glance at the gangplank and the upper levels but was quickly reprimanded.

  “You there!” a white man shouted, raising his fist threateningly. “Stop your starin’. That deck ain’t for the likes o’ you. Get to your proper place!”

  And with that he gave Tom a shove directly through the hole and, Tom being the last slave to board, shut the door behind him.

  Tom looked around, doing his best not to breathe through his nose. The area wasn’t entirely closed off, though it was certainly more closed than the higher deck. The white men had put the slaves here with the luggage and merchandise as if they were no more important than the clothes with which the men above traveled. But it wouldn’t be so bad, he realized. In fact, if he took three steps to his left, he came up against another rail and could see out a porthole into the water. They wouldn’t receive much sunlight, but at least they would receive some.

  * * *

  Some days later, after a fairly uneventful trip, the boat put into a dock. Looking out over the water, Tom saw that they were near a small town, with several of the white inhabitants of the boat walking down the gangplank and toward what must have been the central square.

  He’d hardly had the thought before Haley dropped down the ladder and onto their deck.

  “Boys,” he said, coming up briskly, “I hope you keep up good heart and are cheerful. Now, no sulks; keep a stiff upper lip, boys. Do well by me, and I’ll do well by you.”

  The gang responded with the invariable “Yes, Mas’r”—for ages the watchword of poor Africa. But they didn’t feel particularly cheerful, Tom knew, as each of them had left behind wives, children, mothers, sisters, and friends, seen for the last time.

  And with Haley gone, that quickly became the topic of conversations among the three of them.

  “My wife doesn’t even know I was sold,” the man named John said, laying his manacled wrist on Tom’s knee. “Taken from my family, so I was, and they none the wiser. If only I could have seen her one more time, to tell her I love her …”

  Tom drew a long breath from a sore heart and tried, in his poor way, to comfort him. “Never fear, John,” he said kindly. “The good Lord has a plan for us all. I’ve no doubt you’ll be reunited with ’em, either on earth or in heaven.”

  But John snorted, his face angry. “Reunited? What good will that be, if’n we’re dead? I’ve no faith in your good Lord, I tell you. None at all.”

  Tom drew back, shocked at such sacrilege. “How could you say such a thing?” he gasped. “When the Lord has done so much for you?”

  “What has he done for us?” Albert suddenly cut in. “Put us in desp’rate straits? Set us into lives where we ain’t even treated as men? Put other men above us, allowed us to be beaten and starved, sold without a trace, separated from our families without a word? What sort o’ kind Lord would do such a thing?”

  Tom stared at the boy, surprised both by the level of education he must have received—for his speech was well bred—and the bitterness in his voice. What could a boy of fourteen know of the ways of the world, and who was he to question the will of God? Tom wondered.

  So, despite the fact that their words might have given him pause, he became even more stubborn in his opinion and crossed his arms.

  “You know nothin’ of the will of God,” he said, scowling. “But I believe that He loves us, and will bless us in this life and the one comin’. I believe that I’ll be united wit’ my family, and I can’t speak to yours, but to say that faith is the only way.”

  And with that, he turned his back, thinking that he’d rather be on his own than arguing about faith with these two, who were obviously too bitter and angry to see things aright.

  * * *

  Barely an hour later, and just as Tom was beginning to find it in his heart to try to speak to Albert and John again, Haley reappeared wearing a grin that stretched from ear to ear and towing behind him a young black woman with a small child in her arms.

  “Boys, this ’ere’s Lucy and her child, and you’ll treat ’er with respect. Or as much respect as she deserves.” And with a laugh at his own joke, Haley shoved the two of them into their midst and turned to make his way back up to the upper deck.

  Tom, quite surprised by this, turned to stare at the young woman. She was dressed quite respectably and, he saw, had come with her own trunk of things. And though she looked as if she’d lived a good life, he could see the fear behind her eyes and the knowledge of what was going on. Instead of talking to any of them, however, she moved through the boxes and bales of the lower deck until she found a place to sit down and then busied herself with talking to her baby.

  Haley, evidently having had second thoughts about leaving her alone so soon, returned to the lower deck and, seeing the woman, walked over and began to talk to her. He was too far away for Tom to hear what he was saying, but he could see a cloud passing over the girl’s face, and she answered vehemently, shaking her head.

  “I don’t believe it! I won’t believe it!” he heard her say. “You’re just foolin’ with me.”

  “If you won’t believe it, look here!” Haley said, drawing out a paper. “This here’s the bill of sale, and there’s your master’s name to it. I paid down good solid cash for it, too, which means I can tell you what I’m going to do with it.”

  “I don’t believe Mas’r would cheat me so. It can’t be true!” said the woman, jumping up with increasing agitation.

  “You can ask anyone that can read writing. Here!” he said, to a nearby white man. “Just read this here, won’t you? This here gal won’t believe me when I tell her what it is.”

  “Why, it’s a bill of sale, signed by John Fosdick,” said the man. “Making over to you the girl Lucy and her child. It’s all straight enough, for aught I see.”

  The woman’s passionate exclamations had drawn a crowd now, and several white men were gathering around, dropping from the deck above at the shouting.

  “He told me that I was going down to Louisville to hire out as cook to the same tavern where my husband works,” she sobbed. “That’s what Mas’r told me his ownself, and I can’t believe he’d lie to me! Told me that this man here”—she pointed to Haley—“would be taking me down there!”

  “But he has sold
you, my poor woman, there’s no doubt about it,” said a good-natured-looking man, who was now examining the papers. “He has done it, and no mistake.”

  “Then it’s no account talking,” said the woman, suddenly growing quite calm. And clasping her child tighter in her arms, she sat down on her box, turned her back round, and gazed listlessly into the river.

  “Going to take it easy, after all!” Haley said. “Gal’s got grit, I see.”

  The woman looked calm as the boat pulled away from the dock, and a beautiful soft summer breeze blew in like a compassionate spirit over her head.

  Tom, though, watched her, knowing enough to realize that the woman wasn’t calm at all. She was grieving in her heart but hadn’t yet given up hope. Silently, Tom decided that he would befriend the girl and see what comfort he might offer her.

  17

  George was strolling sadly along the street, still cursing his luck and hating the fact that, starting the next day, he would be working as a lowly chimney sweep. Then he shook himself. Hadn’t he been saying the day before that he needed a job and would do anything to support his family? Hadn’t he spoken with Eliza about the need for them to be out on their own, with their own home and life, away from Jim and Anita? And hadn’t he just realized that he couldn’t work with Jim, when their philosophies about business were so different?

  “Doesn’t matter, any of it,” he snarled in answer to these thoughts. He was undervaluing himself and his skills, and both would be undervalued as well at his new job. He was certain of it. He was a man of steel and gears, not someone to be stuffed up a chimney to do menial work in white folks’ homes! He was a man of intelligence and education, and hadn’t he worked hard to become so?