A Dream of Daring (29 page)

“I think it was pink too,
just as yours will be,” Solo said, embellishing.

The woman spontaneously
hugged her teacher, then she paid Jerome for her fabric and walked away, the
pink cloth spread across her arms.

Watching her saunter,
almost dancing with the fabric, Tom was fascinated.

He turned to look at
Solo. The coarse cotton of her homespun frock was a jarring contrast to the
smooth sheen of her bronze skin. His imagination strayed from his guard to
envision the comely figure before him in a daring silk dress, with wild hair
tumbling over bare shoulders.

“Where are
your
beans?” he asked.

“I don’t have any.”

“Why not? Why can’t
you
have a nice dress too?”

“Because I work for you.”

He recalled her standing
in his line earlier, taking her homespun from Kitty with all the eagerness of
getting a bottle of tonic to cure ringworm. Suddenly, he laughed. It was the
hearty laugh of someone who had just found the answer to a problem perplexing
him.

She seemed drawn to the
first sustained laughter she had ever heard from him. She studied his face, and
the smile that formed on hers seemed involuntary.

“That’s it! That’s what I
can do!”

“What?” She looked
confused.

“I can give you cocoa
beans! I can give you
all
cocoa beans!”

He felt the heavy gloom
lifting from his spirit. He sprinted to the stone tower that held the
plantation bell. He pulled the cord, and the gong rang through the fields. The
bell was like his cry of rebellion against the people from the dying world who
wanted to pull him down.
No! No!
the resonating tone of the great bell
seemed to announce. He wasn’t going down.

As the slaves gathered in
the grassy field in front of the big house and garden, wondering why they were
being summoned, they saw their young master laughing as he rang the bell, as
happy as if calling them to a wedding.

Standing before the
growing group of slaves sitting in the field, he felt like a conductor ready to
lead his players in a new score; their theme would be
man’s
engine.
Jerome had shown the way to spark the imaginations and productive energies of
those who were plodding along, forgotten in the dying age.

Tom saw a simple truth in
Jerome’s experiences with the chocolate squares and the slaves’ rations, which
had awakened the cook’s own energies and those of others. A man’s work can’t be
separated from his choice to perform it or from the fruits of his labor. The
dying age separates him from both and shuts him down. Once his will, his
actions, and their rewards are reunited under his control, then he’s a master
of himself, and the results are amazing.

The slaves coming to hear
Tom sat on the grass, leaned against the tree trunks, and sprawled across the
dirt paths, with the setting sun painting a gold glaze on their faces.

Overseer Nick Bergen
appeared from the direction of his cottage. He walked toward Tom with a bounce
in his step, as if eager for his next task. His honest face and competent
manner suggested that the job of driving gangs of men through fields of cotton was
an intelligent trade when an intelligent man did it.

Tom took Nick aside to
explain his intentions. The immigrant farmer, who shared Tom’s disdain for
forced labor, nodded his approval as the young inventor spoke of his plans. The
men talked animatedly, smiled in mutual respect, and shook hands.

Then Tom faced the group.
The mumbling in the crowd stopped as they turned their attention to the tall,
trim man with the bright yellow hair.

“I called you here
because I want to tell you that there’s a new age coming, and things are going
to be different than they were before. In the new age, each and every one of us
is a master.” He pointed to a few of them. “You, Henry, you’re a master. And
you, Violet, you’re a master.” He swept his hands across the crowd. “
All
of you are masters.”

The slaves looked at one
another, baffled. Had their master gone mad?

“In the new age, we’re
all masters of only one person, and that person is ourselves.”

Tom paced before the
group. Behind him, the big house and the gangly oaks with their swaying moss
were like the background of a painting in which the artist would create a world
to his liking. Could Tom do the same?

“Because each of you is
master of yourself, you’re all different from one another. You shouldn’t all
have to wear the same clothes or eat the same food or live in the same kind of
cabin or have the same things in your house. You should have what you want as
individual, separate people. And you should decide for yourselves. It shouldn’t
come from me. You should all wear the clothing you want, eat the food you want,
grow whatever you want in your gardens, and for goodness’ sake, marry whoever
you want. Those decisions should be
yours
to make. That’s what it means
to be master of yourself.”

More than one hundred
pairs of eyes followed him as he paced. Separate from the throng that were
sitting, three people were standing near him like allies: Solo, Jerome, and
Nick.

“Now, if you were really
masters of yourselves, you could choose the type of work you want to do and be
paid for it. You could decide whether you want to work for me, or work for
someone else, or save your money and buy a farm or a shop of your own and work
for yourselves. That’s not possible because the new age hasn’t arrived yet.
Right now, we’re glued together, you and me, on this farm. We can’t change
that, but we can still get around it some.

“For instance, we see
that a task that you need to do in a day, if you put your mind to it, can
actually be completed in less than a day, sometimes in much less than a day
when you really work hard. Jerome did an experiment, and he discovered this.”

Tom saw Jerome smile at
the mention of his name.

“I want to apply this
experiment to
all
of you. I want to take a day’s task for each of you
and make a rule that when you finish it and finish it properly, you’ve done
your work for the day and you’re through. Then you can have the rest of the day
to yourselves. You can relax or socialize or work for yourselves. I want to be
sure all of the tasks we assign are reasonable, so you can complete them and
still have time to spare.

“Maybe in your free time,
you’ll want to grow your own vegetables or raise your own hogs or chickens or
do wood carvings or weave baskets, and then sell your products in town. We have
some of that going on now, but with the new system, we can have more of it.
Maybe some of you will want to start your own business like Jerome did with his
chocolate squares.”

Jerome’s smile broadened
with pride.

“You see, Jerome pretty
much is his own master. Do you know why?”

The group silently waited
for the answer.

“Because he has the same
thing any master has, the thing that makes him a master, and that’s his
intelligence
.”
Tom looked at the silent figures watching him, wondering if they understood.
“None of you needs any other master than that. You have inside you the one
thing that makes you master of yourself.”

The sun glowed on Solo,
who listened intently.

“In the new age, you’ll
get to use your intelligence.” The breeze sent strands of Tom’s blond hair
dancing in the air like a lively fire. “And right now, we can adopt new ways to
start us on that path.”

His audience remained
still. Perhaps from habit or distrust, or simply from bewilderment, their faces
revealed nothing to their master.

“Here’s how these new
ways will work. You’ll get cocoa beans for completing your tasks. And we’ll
open a plantation store with food, clothing, and other things you need and want
to have. Then you can use your beans to buy whatever you want in that store.
The more work you do, the more beans you get, and the more you can buy. If you
prefer to have time off, you can buy that too with your beans. Later on, I
think we can convert your beans into real money. Then you can go to town, if
you want to, and buy things we don’t keep in our store.”

Tom glanced at Nick, who
smiled in agreement with the plan.

“Cocoa beans are the key
to the new way. Cocoa beans mean that I no longer can take your work for
nothing. I have to pay you for it. Cocoa beans also mean that you no longer can
avoid your work and get the same provisions you would if you had done it
properly. Cocoa beans mean I can’t take advantage of you and you can’t take
advantage of me. And they mean you can spend your earnings as you please, not
as I determine. You control the beans you get and how you spend them. That’s
how you start to become masters of yourselves.”

Tom turned to the young
teacher, whom he had heard expressing a similar theme in her lessons. In their
odd way of relating to each other, in which the boundaries of master and slave had
blurred, he shot a questioning glance at her as if to ask how he was doing, and
she shot back a nod of approval.

“Like a carpenter or a
gardener needs tools, a person who’s master of himself needs tools too. And an
important tool that you need is
education
. I’ll supply that to you, if
you want it. I think you all know by now that we started a little school here,
which is our own special secret.”

Like explorers on a new
terrain who were encountering an unfamiliar life form, the group studied him
cautiously.

“I’ll pay your teacher in
cocoa beans for every class she holds.”

He politely bowed his
head to Solo, and she returned the courtesy.

“Does anyone want to say
something?” Everyone remained quiet. What were they thinking? he wondered. “Are
there any questions?” There were none. Tom waited in the awkward silence.

Then Solo stepped
forward. “May I try?” she asked.

“Go ahead.”

“I’m speaking to the
students in my class.” Like a birdcall that could be heard over long distances,
Solo’s voice resonated. “You sure do a lot of talking during your lessons. Too
much!” Some of them grinned. “Let’s hear from you
now. . . . Come on.” She waited. No one stood up.

Jerome stepped forward to
employ his own manner of calling for volunteers. He pointed to his apprentice.
“You. Get up!”

Brook, a hardworking
young man whom Jerome had drafted from tending the kitchen garden to cooking,
obligingly rose to his feet, his face part fearful, part smiling. “Mr. Tom,
when I’s a master o’ myself, kin I go inta town a lot, like Jerome do?”

“If you do your work
here, and if you’re law-abiding when you’re in town, why not go whenever you
want to, like Jerome does? I’ll sign the passes.” Tom smiled. “You see, here’s
the thing that interests me. I need to produce the cotton crop, so I need your
jobs to be done. But outside of that, who am I to regulate your lives, to
arrange your affairs for you, to restrict your own inclinations? That’s all
your business. When you’re masters of yourselves, that sets
me
free
too.”

Brook sat back down on
the grass; he looked incredulous as he tried to absorb a message that was as
simple as it was unbelievable in that time and place.

Another man stood up
tentatively. It was someone who had recently joined Solo’s class. “Mr. Tom, I
hear there’s slave musicians who play fo’ massas’ parties on their
plantations.” The speaker was part of a talented slave trio that played banjo,
drums, and mandolin at social gatherings of the slaves on the plantation. “Can
me, Frank, an’ Boone hire ourselfs out fo’ playin’ at them parties?”

“Why, yes. I can post a
notice in town that I have for hire a trio of musicians.”

The questioner smiled
with pride at the last word being applied to him.

“You can keep what you
make from any jobs you get. If you need to buy new instruments or supplies,
that comes out of your earnings as the cost of doing business. Being masters of
yourselves mean you keep the rewards, but you also pay the costs.”

The speaker’s hesitation
had changed to eagerness. He reached out to tap the shoulder of one of the
other musicians, sitting near him. “You hear?” he said. His friend smiled,
looking interested.

“And if you want to be
invited back, you’ll bring your
manners
along with your music to those
plantations,” Solo added sternly. The speaker nodded respectfully to his teacher
as he sat down.

The sun had vanished
behind the trees. In the deepening blue of twilight, a lone figure stood up at
the back of the group. It was a field hand who had mustered the courage to
speak.

“Sir, kin us maybe has
our own plots to plant a little cotton? There be bare land a-sittin’ out there,
sir.” He pointed in the direction of a stretch of uncultivated land still
remaining on the property.

“What do you think,
Nick?” Tom turned to his overseer.

The obliging Nick nodded
his head. “Can be done.”

The questioner looked
stunned by the consideration his idea was getting.

In his deep German
accent, Nick added: “Those of you who want to take more work, I assign plot
that you cultivate for yourself. I arrange for field hands who want own plot to
work together in same gang, so you can go fast and finish task early to take
advantage of new opportunity.”

Tom added, “Just plant a
good crop for me, and you can have your own plot and keep the money you make
from it.”

A ripple of excitement
stirred through the crowd. After a lifetime of servitude, their spirit had not
been killed, Tom thought. Lying dormant and now being jostled to awaken was the
remarkable sleeping giant of personal enterprise.

Tom had a further
thought: “And you can use your profits to buy materials to build additions on
your cabins.”

This possibility—beyond
their wildest dreams—caused an outburst, and the slaves chatted among
themselves until Jerome hushed them so that the meeting could continue.