Roots (37 page)

At last there came a voice that Kunta knew was the oldest man among them, the one who sat in the rocking chair and wove things of cornshucks, and who blew the conch horn. The others would bow their heads, and he would begin speaking slowly what Kunta guessed was some kind of prayer, though it was certainly not to Allah. But Kunta remembeed what was said by the old alcala down in the big canoe: “Allah knows every language.” While the
prayer continued, Kunta kept hearing the same odd sound exclaimed sharply by both the old man and others who kept interrupting him with it: “Oh Lawd!” He wondered if this “Oh Lawd” was their Allah.

A few days later, the night winds began to blow with a coldness beyond any that Kunta had ever felt, and he woke up to find the last leaves stripped from the trees. As he stood shivering in line to go out to the fields, he was bewildered when the “oberseer” directed everyone into the barn instead. Even the massa and the missus were there, and with them four other finely dressed toubob who watched and cheered as the blacks were separated into two groups and made to face each other at ripping off and flinging aside the whitened, dried outside shucks from the piled harvest of corn.

Then the toubob and the blacks—in two groups—ate and drank their fill. The old black man who prayed at night then took up some kind of musical instrument with strings running down its length—it reminded Kunta of the ancient kora from his own homeland—and began to make some very odd music on it by jerking some kind of wand back and forth across the strings. The other blacks got up and began to dance—wildly—as the watching toubob, even the “oberseer,” gleefully clapped and shouted from the sidelines. Their faces reddened with excitement, all the toubob suddenly stood up, and as the blacks shrank to the side, they clapped their way out into the middle of the floor and began to dance in an awkward way while the old man played as if he had gone mad and the other blacks jumped up and down and clapped and screamed as if they were seeing the greatest performance of their lives.

It made Kunta think of a story he had been told by his beloved old Grandmother Nyo Boto when he was in the first kafo. She had told how the king of a village had called together all of the
musicians and commanded them to play their very best for him to dance for the people, including even the slaves. And the people were all delighted and they left all singing loudly to the skies and there had never been another king like him.

Back in his hut later that night reflecting upon what he had seen, it occurred to Kunta that in some strong, strange, and very deep way, the blacks and the toubob had some
need
for each other. Not only during the dancing in the barn, but also on many other occasions, it had seemed to him that the toubob were at their happiest when they were close around the black ones—even when they were beating them.

K
unta’s left ankle had become so infected that pus draining from the wound all but covered the iron cuff with a sickly yellow slickness, and his crippled limping finally caused the “oberseer” to take a close look. Turning his head away, he told Samson to remove the cuffs.

It was still painful to raise his foot, but Kunta was so thrilled to be unfettered that he hardly felt it. And that night, after the others had gone to bed and all had become still, Kunta limped outside and stole away once again. Crossing a field in the opposite direction from the one he had fled across the last time, he headed toward what he knew was a wider, deeper forest on the other side. He had reached a ravine and was clambering up the far side on his belly when he heard the first sound of a movement in the distance. He lay still with his heart pounding as he heard heavy footfalls approaching and finally the hoarse voice of Samson cursing and shouting, “Toby! Toby!” Gripping a stout stick he had sharpened into a crude spear, Kunta felt strangely calm, almost numb, as his eyes coldly watched the bulky silhouette moving quickly this way and that in the brush at the top of the ravine. Something made him sense that Samson feared for himself if Kunta succeeded in getting away. Closer and closer he stalked—Kunta coiled tight but motionless as a stone—and then the moment came. Hurling the spear with all his might, he
grunted slightly with the pain it caused and Samson, hearing him, sprang instantly to one side; it missed him by a hair.

Kunta tried to run, but the weakness of his ankles made him hardly able to keep upright, and when he whirled to fight, Samson was upon him, slamming with his greater weight behind each blow, until Kunta was driven to the earth. Hauling him back upward, Samson kept pounding, aiming only at his chest and belly, as Kunta tried to keep his body twisting as he gouged and bit and clawed. Then one massive blow sent him crashing down again, this time to stay. He couldn’t even move to defend himself any further.

Gasping for breath, Samson tied Kunta’s wrists tightly together with a rope, and then began jerking Kunta along by its free end, back toward the farm, kicking him savagely whenever he stumbled or faltered, and cursing him every step of the way.

It was all Kunta could do to keep staggering and lurching behind Samson. Dizzy from pain and exhaustion—and disgust with himself—he grimly anticipated the beatings he would receive when they reached his hut. But when they finally arrived—shortly before dawn—Samson only gave him another kick or two and then left him alone lying in a heap.

Kunta was so used up that he trembled. But with his teeth he began to gnash and tear at the fibers of the rope binding his wrists together, until his teeth hurt like flashes of fire. But the rope finally came apart just as the conch horn blew. Kunta lay weeping. He had failed again, and he prayed to Allah.

Through the days that followed, it was as if he and Samson shared some secret pact of hatred. Kunta knew how closely he was being watched; he knew that Samson was waiting for any excuse to hurt him in a manner the toubob would approve. Kunta responded by going through the motions of doing whatever work he was given to do as if nothing had happened—but even faster and more efficiently than before. He had noticed how the “oberseer” paid less attention to
those who worked the hardest or did the most grinning. Kunta couldn’t bring himself to grin, but with grim satisfaction he noted that the more he sweated, the less often the lash fell across his back.

One evening after work, Kunta was passing near the barn when he spotted a thick iron wedge lying half concealed among some of the sawed sections of trees where the “oberseer” had two men splitting firewood. Glancing around quickly in all directions, and seeing no one watching, Kunta snatched up the wedge and, concealing it in his shirt, hurried to his hut. Using it to dig a hole in the hard dirt floor, he placed the wedge in the hole, packed the loose dirt back over it, then beat it down carefully with a rock until the floor looked completely undisturbed.

He spent a sleepless night worrying that a wedge discovered missing might cause all of the cabins to be searched. He felt better when there was no outcry the following day, but he still wasn’t sure just how he might employ the wedge to help himself escape, when that time came again.

What he really wanted to get his hands on was one of those long knives that the “oberseer” would issue to a few of the men each morning. But each evening he would see the “oberseer” demanding the knives back and counting them carefully. With one of those knives, he could cut brush to move more quickly within a forest, and if he had to, he could kill a dog—or a man.

One cold afternoon almost a moon later—the sky bleak and slaty—Kunta was on his way across one of the fields to help another man repair a fence when, to his astonishment, what looked like salt began to fall from the sky, at first lightly, then more rapidly and thickly. As the salt became a flaky whiteness, he heard the black nearby exclaiming, “Snow!” and guessed that was what they called it. When he bent down to pick some of it up, it was cold to his touch—and even colder when he licked it off a finger with his tongue. It stung, and it had no taste whatever. He tried to
smell it, but not only did there seem to be no odor either, it also disappeared into watery nothingness. And wherever he looked on the ground was a whitish film.

But by the time he reached the other side of the field, the “snow” had stopped and even begun to melt away. Hiding his amazement, Kunta composed himself and nodded silently to his black partner, who was waiting by the broken fence. They set to work—Kunta helping the other man to string a kind of metal twine that he called “wire.” After a while they reached a place almost hidden by tall grass, and as the other man hacked some of it down with the long knife he carried, Kunta’s eyes were gauging the distance between where he stood and the nearest woods. He knew that Samson was nowhere near and the “oberseer” was keeping watch in another field that day. Kunta worked busily, to give the other man no suspicion of what was in his mind. But his breath came tensely as he stood holding the wire tight and looking down on the head of the man bent over his work. The knife had been left a few steps behind them, where the chopping of the brush had stopped.

With a silent prayer to Allah, Kunta clasped his hands together, lifted them high, and brought them down across the back of the man’s neck with all the violence of which his slight body was capable. The man crumpled without a sound, as if he had been poleaxed. Within a moment, Kunta had bound the man’s ankles and wrists with the wire. Snatching up the long knife, Kunta suppressed the impulse to stab him—this was not the hated Samson—and went running toward the woods, bent over almost double. He felt a lightness, as if he were running in a dream, as if this weren’t really happening at all.

He came out of it a few moments later—when he heard the man he had left live yelling at the top of his lungs. He should have killed him, Kunta thought, furious with himself, as he tried to run yet faster. Instead of fighting his way deeply into the underbrush
when he reached the woods, he skirted it this time. He knew that he had to achieve distance first, then concealment. If he got far enough fast enough, he would have time to find a good place to hide and rest before moving on under cover of the night.

Kunta was prepared to live in the woods as the animals did. He had learned many things about this toubob land by now, together with what he already knew from Africa. He would capture rabbits and other rodents with snare traps and cook them over a fire that wouldn’t smoke. As he ran, he stayed in the area where the brush would conceal him but wasn’t thick enough to slow him down.

By nightfall, Kunta knew that he had run a good distance. Yet he kept going, crossing gullies and ravines, and for quite a way down the bed of a shallow stream. Only when it was completely dark did he allow himself to stop, hiding himself in a spot where the brush was dense but from which he could easily run if he had to. As he lay there in the darkness, he listened carefully for the sound of dogs. But there was nothing but stillness all around him. Was it possible? Was he really going to make it this time?

Just then he felt a cold fluttering on his face, and reached up with his hand. “Snow” was falling again! Soon he was covered—and surrounded—by whiteness as far as he could see. Silently it fell, deeper and deeper, until Kunta began to fear he was going to be buried in it; he was already freezing. Finally he couldn’t stop himself from leaping up and running to look for better cover.

He had run a good way when he stumbled and fell; he wasn’t hurt, but when he looked back, he saw with horror that his feet had left a trail in the snow so deep that a blind man could follow him. He knew that there was no way he could erase the tracks, and he knew that the morning was now not far away. The only possible answer was more distance. He tried to increase his speed, but he had been running most of the night, and his breath was coming in labored gasps. The long knife had begun to feel heavy; it
would cut brush, but it wouldn’t melt “snow.” The sky was beginning to lighten in the east when he heard, far ahead of him, the faint sound of conch horns. He changed course in the next stride. But he had the sinking feeling that there was nowhere he could find to rest safely amid this blanketing whiteness.

When he heard the distant baying of the dogs, a rage flooded up in him such as he had never felt before. He ran like a hunted leopard, but the barking grew louder and louder, and finally, when he glanced back over his shoulder for the tenth time, he saw them gaining on him. The men couldn’t be far behind. Then he heard a gun fire, and somehow it propelled him forward even faster than before. But the dogs caught up with him anyway. When they were but strides away, Kunta whirled and crouched down, snarling back at them. As they came lunging forward with their fangs bared, he too lunged at them, slashing open the first dog’s belly with a single sideways swipe of the knife; with another blur of his arm, he hacked the blade between the eyes of the next one.

Springing away, Kunta began running again. But soon he heard the men on horses crashing through the brush behind him, and he all but dove for the deeper brush where the horses couldn’t go. Then there was another shot, and another—and he felt a flashing pain in his leg. Knocked down in a heap, he had staggered upright again when the toubob shouted and fired again, and he heard the bullets thud into trees by his head. Let them kill me, thought Kunta; I will die as a man should. Then another shot hit the same leg, and it smashed him down like a giant fist. He was snarling on the ground when he saw the “oberseer” and another toubob coming toward him with their guns leveled and he was about to leap up and force them to shoot him again and be done with it, but the wounds in his leg wouldn’t let him rise.

The other toubob held his gun at Kunta’s head as the “oberseer” jerked off Kunta’s clothing until he stood naked in the snow, the
blood trickling down his leg and staining the whiteness at his feet. Cursing with each breath, the “oberseer” knocked Kunta all but senseless with his fist; then both of them tied him facing a large tree, with his wrists bound on the other side.