A Dream of Daring (12 page)

The mayor clearly had his
own banner to wave. Invoking the senator’s prestige at such a poignant moment
surely helped him further his
own
cause. Painting the senator in the
colors of his own banner helped the mayor spread a message of his own. That
must be it, Tom concluded, rubbing his eyes as if clearing away a foreign
object that had impaired his sight.

At the end of the
service, Tom walked along the street before heading home, feeling an urge to
dissipate the tension that had built inside him during the ceremony. As he
passed the printer’s shop, he saw stacks of the latest newspaper being loaded
onto a wagon. Nothing could bring the senator back, he thought sadly, but there
was still one thing that could—and must—be done. The emblem on the sheriff’s
badge, the goddess with her scales, flashed across his mind. The newspaper’s
headline gave him hope that justice would soon be done to close the matter and
give them all peace.

The headline read:
Barnwell
Murder Trial Set for Late March.

Chapter
9

In the weeks following
the murder, Tom felt a growing isolation from the townspeople. There were those
who blamed their beloved senator’s death on Tom’s invention, a contraption they
called foolhardy. Some snubbed him, others criticized him in newspaper columns,
and a few withdrew their money from his bank. As a result, he had little
interest in dealing with them. He stopped buying the newspapers and limited his
reading to farm periodicals. He avoided social functions and went to town only
when necessary to manage his bank, retrieve his mail, and buy necessities.

Tom also felt uneasy
around Rachel. His visits to her home focused on business matters, such as
arranging a loan for Charlotte and helping her manage Ruby Manor and the
Crossroads. After his meetings with Charlotte, he made excuses to leave, rather
than linger there with Rachel. He was wounded by her curious behavior toward
him at the memorial service. Where did she stand, he wondered, with him or with
his detractors? But her tragic loss—and his involvement in it—stopped him from
raising the issue with her.

He spent all the time he
could spare searching for his missing device. He explored potential hiding
spots off trails, in clearings, on dry mounds near the swamps, and in other
places he thought were accessible by horse in the range Cooper could have
covered on the night of the murder. But he found no trace of his tractor. The
sheriff conducted his own search, also without success.

Would Cooper’s voice be
choked by the hangman, with the secret of the invention’s whereabouts still
inside him? Tom wondered, as he rode his horse up to Indigo Springs on a
morning in early March. Returning home from one of his overnight searches, he
saw the roof of his workshop on the hilltop, and his mind traveled through the
locked doors and shuttered windows to the tools lining the walls, his
worktable, and the shelves containing his notebooks, experiments, and drawings.
It had taken him years to design and fabricate every part of his tractor. He
sighed at the prospect of having to repeat the arduous process if he couldn’t
retrieve his lost treasure.

With the device missing,
there was no reason to enter the workshop now. His journey to the new age had
hit a roadblock. The empty space in the center of the shed was matched by a
gaping hole in his life. For as long as he could remember, his life had always
contained activities that excited him and that he energetically pursued, but
now he lumbered through the tasks he
had
to perform and was left with
nothing he truly
wanted
to do.

In the distance he saw
his overseer with a slave team harrowing the fields for the massive
cotton-planting operation to begin in a couple of weeks. He thought of the
arduous process involved in putting a cotton seed into the ground. It took
three laborers: one to make a hole, a second to drop the seed, and a third to
cover it with soil. This laborious work was performed for each and every plant
sown over thousands of acres.

To streamline the
process, Tom had begun using a device developed by prior inventors: a seed
drill, which was a small, horse-drawn wood hopper on a wheel chassis. The
hopper was filled with seeds that could be dropped into the ground at
intervals. He needed to make adjustments to its design to plant cotton more
effectively. He also hoped eventually to hitch the seed drill to his tractor,
instead of to a draft animal, and advance his dream of mechanizing the planting
process.

The seed drill.
That
was what he could work on. Even with his invention missing, he still could make
progress by speeding up the planting operation. He picked up his pace and soon
arrived at the big house. After leaving his horse with Jerome, he went directly
to the carpenter’s cabin. There he found the seed drill he’d been adjusting and
brought it outside to examine it.

Before leaving for his
trip, Tom had begun modifying its parts to improve its performance. He stared
at the three components of the device designed to plant seed in rows: the blade
in front to cut a furrow in the soil for the seed, the hopper that held the
seed and released it at fixed intervals to space the plants properly, and the
harrow in back that covered the seed with soil. With the blade, the hopper, and
the harrow, the seed drill replaced the manual work of three field hands on
foot, requiring the work of only one man on horseback to haul the implement.
That
amounted to reducing labor by two thirds.

He thought of how such a
device could enable crops to be grown cheaper and faster. He thought of how
customers could buy less-expensive crops and have money left to spend on other
things. He thought of how humans freed from the back-breaking toil of manual
planting could engage in more intellectual work. He thought of the even greater
progress that could be achieved with the development of an advanced type of
seed drill, one that consisted of several hoppers over multiple planting rows.
Then he thought of the superior new source of power, his tractor, which could
drive, perhaps, a
dozen
seed drills, with one person in the tractor
replacing
the work
of . . . thirty-six . . . human
planters
—

“’Skuse me, Mr.
Tom . . .”

His mind was fathoms
away, trying to grasp the profound implications of his reasoning.

“Mr. Tom,
sir . . .”

He turned from the device
to see one of his house servants, Fannie, who had approached him while he had
been deliberating.

“’Tis ’bout my garden,
sir.”

The household slaves
planted their own vegetable gardens behind their cabins.

“I wuz thinkin’ to start
’nother plot on the side o’ the cabin an’ grow mo’ stuff, sir.”

Tom looked puzzled at the
question. “That’s fine, Fannie. But why ask me?”

“The colonel, yer daddy,
he wuz fussy ’bout how much we grows. He allow jus’ small plots in back, sir.”

“Oh?” He looked out
toward the row of cabins near the big house. “So that’s why all your gardens
are in the back.” After eighteen months, Tom was still uncovering rules from
his father, which he learned from the slaves as he went along.

“Yer daddy, he wuz
a-frettin’ ’bout us takin’ too much time wid our plots an’ sellin’ our stuff at
the dock, ’cause then us be neglectin’ our work fer him.”

Tom nodded as if it
didn’t surprise him to learn that the slaves would work harder on their own
plots than on tasks for his father.

“Maybe I kin grow a
little mo’ ’taters an’ carrots an’ corn, sir? Lawd, my boys eat ’nuff fer a
small army.”

He frowned at the irony
of the predicament he and his slaves were in. They seemed to blatantly disobey
his orders on important matters and to ask his permission for trivialities.

“Why don’t
you
decide? Okay?”

“You mean, you wants
me
 . . .”
Fannie looked surprised.

“Yes, yes!” He tried to
curb his impatience. “Plant whatever you want around your cabin. Use the front,
the back, the sides. It’s up to
you
.”

Fannie looked confused as
if grappling with a new thought.

“Go on, now, Fannie.”

When she walked away, Tom
returned to the seed drill, inspecting the parts, considering the possibilities
of improving the little device before him. He had an idea—

“Mr. Tom?”

He turned to see another
slave approaching him. “What, Hadley?”

“Sir, when you gives out
blankets, we don’t need all you given the wife and me. ’Stead, we needs mo’
shoes. Kin us give back a blanket for one mo’ pair shoes?”

Tom stared,
expressionless.

“I needs ’nother pair cuz
what happen the day o’ the big storm—”

“You don’t have to go
into all that, or trade any blankets—”

“Don’t you needs to know?
You mean, I kin jus’ ask for somethin’ and I gits it?”

Tom frowned. How could he
verify the legitimacy of such requests? Why would he want to spend his time
doing that? Was it fair to the slaves if he refused requests for things they
really needed? Was it fair to him if the slaves feigned a need and drained his
supplies, then sold what he gave them at the docks? He rubbed his hands over
his face, as if he wished to wipe away the matter from his mind. How could he
end this quickly, so he could get back to his work?

“Tell Corey to make you
another pair.”

Corey was the slave who
made their shoes.

Hadley seemed surprised
at Tom’s reply. “But him needs a
order
from
you
, sir.”

Tom nodded wearily.
“Right. I’ll tell Corey to make you another pair.”

“Why, thank you, sir!”
Hadley smiled and walked away.

Tom returned to the seed
drill. He thought of how cotton planting was complicated by the need to drop
several seeds in every spot. This, in turn, required an additional laborious
task: thinning the seedlings. After the first leaves appeared, workers had to
comb the fields again to remove the less hardy plants at each spot and leave
the most vigorous one to take a stand and grow to maturity. Tom wondered if the
planting could be improved to the point at which only
one
seed would
need to be dropped, a seed with a near-certain chance of hardy development,
instead of just one chance in three. That would eliminate the thinning process,
saving an
enormous
amount of labor. What if he modified the harrow on
the seed drill—

“Say, Mr.
Tom . . . Mr. Tom?”

He looked up to find two
more slaves, Lucinda and Patty, awaiting his attention.

“Yes?”

Lucinda spoke first. “I’s
sorry, but I can’t be washin’ the laundry no mo’.”

Tom waited to hear more.

“Lucinda, she havin’ a
baby,” said Patty.

“I’s a-needin’ rest, sir.
Pleez don’ gimme them heavy baskets t’haul down the stream in my condition,”
said Lucinda.

“’Tis too much fo’ her,
sir,” added her friend.

“Then why don’t
you
carry the basket for her?”

“Oh, no, sir!” wailed
Patty. “I ain’t strong ’nuff.”

“Then put the basket in a
wheelbarrow and move it that way,” offered Tom.

“But I feels sickly,
sir,” said Lucinda, who looked quite healthy.

Involuntarily, Tom’s eyes
dropped to her midsection. Was she or wasn’t she? He couldn’t tell. He frowned,
unable to decide what to do. Frustration and guilt were wrestling in his mind,
as they often had since his return home.

Lucinda could easily be
faking her illness, he thought, because she knew he wouldn’t beat her and
couldn’t abandon her. He felt he should order her to work. But could he blame
her for dodging a job she had never chosen to do? Wouldn’t he, in her place, do
the same?

Then there was the
possibility that she really
was
telling the truth. Had he gotten so
cynical that he assumed every plea of his slaves was a lie? He sighed at the
tugging factions that left him indecisive. Though he dreamed of changing the
future, he felt mired in the present.

He disliked having to depend
on someone who was eminently unreliable, but at times like this, he saw no
alternative. Whenever he tried to demote the person who was his major vexation,
he found new reasons to use his services. “Jerome!” He looked at the stable and
called to the lanky slave, who was directing a stableboy unloading a wagon of
hay.

When he heard his name,
Jerome looked pleased at the prospect of being needed. He walked eagerly toward
Tom and the two women.

“Jerome, Lucinda has
a . . . situation.” He turned to the women. “Talk to
Jerome.” Then he said to his grinning stableman, “And let me know the outcome.”

Jerome seemed to increase
in height, enjoying the moment. His neck stretched like a proud rooster, and
his eyes suddenly came alive as if he were calculating how he might use Tom’s
need of him to best advantage.

“You gals, you comes wid
me. Mr. Tom, don’t you worry none. Jerome take charge o’ these good-fer-nothin’
servants, so they don’t cause you no mo’ trouble!”

Jerome’s authoritative
words and general swagger seemed to impress the women sufficiently. They
followed him without a fuss.

After being rescued by
Jerome, Tom returned to the seed drill. He studied the harrow that covered the
seed after it was dropped. He wondered if a wood block to compact the soil
would be superior to the harrow in covering the seed, or if using
both
implements could result in a better-planted seed, which could reduce the
quantity of seeds that had to be planted and in turn reduce and ultimately
eliminate the arduous thinning-out later. He had been thinking about this
before and had already made a wood block to attach to the seed drill. He looked
around in the carpenter’s cabin and found it. He crouched down at the drill to
install it. He wanted to test his ideas—

“Mr. Tom?”

One of his gardeners,
Rubin, now appeared.

“I wants to ask iffen me
an’ yer housekeeper Ally kin git married.” Although slave marriages had no
legal standing, Tom’s slaves bonded to each other the same as all other people
did.

The inventor looked
stunned.

“Kin we, Mr. Tom? Kin we?
Oh, pleez, sir!”

Rubin stood there
timidly, pleading as if his life rested on the answer. He held a trowel, which
he gripped fiercely, the whole of his anxiety coursing through his hand.

“Mr. Tom, sir?”

Tom was speechless at
being asked to decide such a personal matter between two people. He had been
home for eighteen months, but matters like this never ceased to unsettle him.

Rubin’s shoulders
slouched; his head jutted forward; sweat formed on his brow.

Tom realized that his
silence was intensifying the gardener’s anxiety, so he stood up, smiled, and
patted the man on the shoulder. “If it’s okay with Ally, then it’s okay with
me.”