Roots (61 page)

“Dey brung us here naked!” he heard himself blurting. Kizzy jerked up her head, staring; but he couldn’t stop. “Even took our names away. Dem like you gits borned here don’t even know who dey is! But you jes’ much Kinte as I is! Don’t never fo’git dat! Us’ns fo’fathers was traders, travelers, holy men—all de way back hunnuds o’ rains into dat lan’ call Ol’ Mali! You unnerstan’ what I’m talkin’ ’bout, chile?”

“Yes, Pappy,” she said obediently, but he knew she didn’t. He had an idea. Picking up a stick, smoothing a place in the dirt between them, he scratched some characters in Arabic.

“Dat my name—Kun-ta Kin-te,” he said, tracing the characters slowly with his finger.

She stared, fascinated. “Pappy, now do my name.” He did. She laughed. “Dat say Kizzy?” He nodded. “Would you learn me to write like you does?” Kizzy asked.

“Wouldn’t be fittin’,” said Kunta sternly.

“Why not?” She sounded hurt.

“In Africa, only boys learns how to read an’ write. Girls ain’t got no use fer it—over here, neither.”

“How come mammy can read an’ write, den?”

Sternly, he said, “Don’t you be talkin’ dat! You hear me? Ain’t nobody’s business! White folks don’ like none us doin’ no readin’ or writin’!”

“How come?”

“’Cause dey figgers less we knows, less trouble we makes.”

“I wouldn’t make no trouble,” she said, pouting.

“If’n we don’ hurry up an’ git back to de cabin, yo’ mammy gon’ make trouble fo’ us both.”

Kunta got up and started walking, then stopped and turned, realizing that Kizzy was not behind him. She was still by the bank of the stream, gazing at a pebble she had seen.

“Come on now, it’s time to go.” She looked up at him, and he walked over and reached out his hand. “Tell you what,” he said. “You pick up dat pebble an’ bring it ’long an’ hide it somewheres safe, an’ if’n you keeps yo’ mouth shet ’bout it, nex’ new moon mornin’ I let you drop it in my gourd.”

“Oh, Pappy!” She was beaming.

I
t was almost time for Kizzy to drop another pebble into Kunta’s gourd—about a year later, in the summer of 1800—when the massa told Bell he was going to Fredericksburg for about a week on business, and it was arranged that his brother would be coming over “to look after things” while he was away. When Kunta heard the news, he was even more upset than the rest of slave row, for he hated leaving Bell and Kizzy exposed to his former owner even more than he disliked having to be away from them for so long. Of course, he said nothing about these concerns, but on the morning of departure, as he left the cabin to hitch up the horses, he was taken aback that it seemed almost as if Bell had read his mind. She said, “Massa John sho’ ain’t like his brother, but I knows how to deal wid his kin’. An’ it ain’t but a week. So don’t you worry none. We be fine.”

“I ain’t worryin’,” said Kunta, hoping she couldn’t tell he was lying.

Kneeling to kiss Kizzy, he whispered in her ear, “Don’t forgit dat new moon pebble, now,” and she winked conspiratorially as Bell pretended not to have heard, although she had known what they were doing for almost nine months now.

For the next two days of the massa’s absence, everything went on pretty much as usual, although Bell was mildly annoyed at nearly everything Massa John said or did. She particularly disliked how he
sat up late in the study at night, drinking his brother’s best whiskey from the bottle, smoking his own big black, smelly cigars and flicking the ashes on the carpet. Still, Massa John didn’t interfere too much with Bell’s normal routine, and he stayed mostly to himself.

But the midmorning of the third day, Bell was out sweeping off the front porch when a white man on a lathered horse came galloping up and leaped off, demanding to see the massa.

Ten minutes later, the man left as hurriedly as he had come. Massa John barked down the hallway for Bell to come into the study. He looked deeply shaken, and it flashed in Bell’s mind that something terrible had happened to Kunta and the massa. She was sure of it when he brusquely ordered her to assemble all the slaves in the backyard. They all gathered, standing in a line, tense with fear, as he flung open the back screen door and stalked out toward them; he had a revolver conspicuous in his belt.

Coldly scanning their faces, he said, “I just got word of some Richmond niggers’ plot to kidnap the governor, massacre the Richmond white people, and burn the city.” The slaves gawked at one another in astonishment as he went on. “Thanks to God—an’ a few smart niggers who found out and told their massas just in time—the plot’s been crushed, and most of the niggers that started it already caught. Armed patrols are on the roads lookin’ for the rest, an’ I’m gonna make sure none of ’em decides to stop off here for the night. ’Case any o’ you got uprising notions, I’m gonna be patrollin’ day and night. None of you’re to set foot off this property! I don’t want no gatherin’ of any kind; an’ nobody outside their own cabin after dark!” Patting his revolver, he said, “I’m not as patient an’ soft with niggers as my brother! Any of you even looks like you’re
thinkin’
about steppin’ outa line, his doctorin’ won’t patch up a bullet ’tween your eyes. Now
git!”

Massa John was as good as his word. For the next two days, he enraged Bell by insisting upon watching Kizzy taste his food before
he’d eat it. He roamed the fields on horseback during the day and sat on the porch at night with a shotgun across his lap—his vigilance so absolute that the slave-row people dared not try even discussing the uprising, let alone plan one of their own. After receiving and reading the next issue of the
Gazette,
Massa John burned it in the fireplace, and when a neighboring massa visited one afternoon, he ordered Bell to leave the house and they huddled talking in the study with the windows shut. So it was impossible for anyone even to find out more about the plot, or especially about its aftermath, which was what had Bell and the others worried sick—not about Kunta, since he’d be safe with the massa, but about the fiddler, who had left on the day before they had to play at a big society ball in Richmond. The slave-row people could only imagine what might be happening to black strangers in Richmond at the hands of enraged, panic-stricken whites.

The fiddler still hadn’t returned when Kunta and the massa did—three days early—their trip cut short by the uprising. Upon Massa John’s departure later that day, the restrictions he’d imposed were relaxed somewhat, although not completely, and the massa was very cold toward everyone. It wasn’t until Kunta and Bell were alone in their cabin that he could tell her of what he’d overheard in Fredericksburg: that the black revolters already captured had been tortured into helping the authorities round up others involved, and some had confessed that the revolt had been planned by a free blacksmith named Gabriel Prosser, who had recruited around two hundred hand-picked black men—butlers, gardeners, janitors, waiters, ironworkers, rope makers, coal miners, boatmen, even preachers—and trained them for more than a year. Prosser was still at large, and the militia was combing the countryside for suspects, said Kunta, poor-white “paterollers” were terrorizing the roads; and there were rumors about some massas beating slaves, some to death, for little or no provocation.

“Look like our only hope is we’s all dey got,” said Bell. “If ’n dey kills us off, dey won’t have no slaves no mo’.”

“Fiddler back?” asked Kunta, ashamed that he’d been so engrossed in telling what had happened that he hadn’t thought of his friend until now.

Bell shook her head. “We all been mighty worried. But dat fiddler a crafty nigger. He get home awright.”

Kunta didn’t fully agree. “He ain’t home yet.”

When the fiddler didn’t return the next day, the massa wrote a message notifying the sheriff, and told Kunta to deliver it to the county seat. Kunta had done so—seeing the sheriff read the message and silently shake his head. Then returning homeward, Kunta had driven slowly for three or four miles, staring gloomily at the road ahead, wondering if he’d ever see the fiddler again, feeling badly that he had never actually expressed that he considered him a good friend—despite his drinking, his cussing, and other shortcomings—when he heard a poor imitation of a white “cracker” drawl, “Hey, nigger!”

Kunta thought he must be hearing things. “Where de hell you think you goin’?” the voice came again, and reining the horses, Kunta looked around and along both sides of the road, but saw nobody. Then, suddenly, “You ain’t got no travel pass, boy, you in a heap o’ trouble”—and there, climbing from a ditch, ragged and torn, cut and bruised, covered with mud while carrying his battered case and grinning from ear to ear, was the fiddler.

Kunta let out a shout, jumping down from his seat, and within seconds he and the fiddler were hugging and whirling each other around, laughing.

“You de spittin’ image of a African I knows,” exclaimed the fiddler, “but couldn’t be him—he wouldn’t never let nobody know he glad to see ’em.”

“Don’ know why I is,” said Kunta, embarrassed at himself.

“Fine welcome fo’ a friend what crawled on his han’s an’ knees all de way back from Richmon’ jes’ to see yo’ ugly face again.”

Kunta’s seriousness conveyed the degree of his concern. “Was it bad, Fiddler?”

“
Bad
ain’t even close to it. Thought sho’ I’d be playin’ a duet wid angels fo’ I got out’n dere!” As Kunta took the muddy fiddle case and they both clambered into the wagon, the fiddler continued talking, nonstop. “Richmon’ white folks jes’ ’bout crazy scared. Militiamens ever’where stoppin’ niggers, an’ dem widout a travel pass next stop in jail wid a headache. An’ dem de lucky ones. Packs o’ po’ crackers roamin’ de streets like wil’ dogs, jumpin’ on niggers, beatin’ some so bad can’t hardly tell who dey was.

“De ball I’se playin’ at break up halfway through when dey gits firs’ word ’bout de uprisin’, missies screamin’ an’ runnin’ roun’ in circles, massas pullid’ guns on us niggers up on de bad’stan’. ’Midst all de ruckus, I slips into de kitchen an’ hid in a garbage can till eve’ybody gone. Den I climbs out a window and took to de back streets, stayin’ way from lights. I’d got to de edge o’ town when all of a sudden I hears dis shoutin’ behin’ me, den a whole lotta feets runnin’ same way I is. Sump’n tell me dey ain’t black, but I ain’t waitin’ to fin’ out. I cuts ’roun’ de nex’ corner flyin’ low, but I hears’em gainin’ on me, an’ I’se ’bout to say my prayers when I sees a real low porch dat I rolls right under.

“It’s real tight under dere, an’ I’se inchin’ further back jes’ when dem crackers goes runnin’ by wid torches shoutin’ ‘Git dat nigger!’ I bumps ’gainst sump’n big an’ sof’, an’ a hand clap over my mouf, an’ a nigger voice say, ‘Nex’ time, knock!’ Turns out it’s a warehouse nightwatchman seen a mob tear a frien’ o’ his apart, an’ he ain’t got no ’tention o’ comin’ out from under dat porch ’til nex’ spring, if’n it take dat long to blow over.

“Well, after a while I wishes ’im luck, an’ heads out again an’ makes it to de woods. Dat was five days ago. Would a made it here
in fo’, but so many paterollers on de roads, I had to keep to de woods, eatin’ berries, sleepin’ in de thickets wid de rabbits. Did all right ’til yestiddy a few miles east o’ here, bunch o’ real mean crackers cotched me in de open.

“Day’s jes’ spoilin’ to whup deyselves a nigger, maybe even string’im up—dey had a rope right dere wid ’em! Dey’s shovin’ me back an’ fo’th, axin’ whose nigger I is an’ where I think I’se goin’, but not payin’ no ’tention to what I tells ’em—’til I says I’se a fiddler. Dey hol’ on, dey thinks I’se lym’, an’ hollers, ‘Well, le’s hear you play, den!’

“African, le’me tell you sump’n. I open up dat fiddle case an’ you ain’t never heard no concert like I give right out dere in de middle o’ de road. Played ‘Turkey in de Straw’—you know po’ crackers loves dat—an’ fo’ I’m warmed up good, I had dem all a-hootin’ an’ clappin’ an’ tappin’ dey feets, an’ I ain’t quit ’til dey’s had dey fill an’ tell me to go ’head an’ don’t dillydally gittin’ my tail home. An’ I ain’t neither! Done hit de ditch whenever I seen a hoss or buggy, or wagon comin’, until dis one was you! An’ here I is!”

As they rolled into the narrow road leading to the big house, soon they heard shouting and then saw the people of slave row running to meet the wagon.

“Might think a body was missed ’round here”—although the fiddler was grinning, Kunta could sense how moved the man was, as grinning himself, he said, “Look like you gon’ have to tell de whole story all over again.”

“You ever knowed dat to stop me?” asked the fiddler. “Leas’ways I’se here to tell it!”

I
n the months that followed, with the capture, trial, and execution of one conspirator after another, and finally of Gabriel Prosser himself, news of the Richmond uprising—and of the tensions it generated—gradually subsided, and once more politics became the chief discussion topic among the massa and his friends, and therefore also within the slave row. As best Kunta, Bell, and the fiddler could piece together what they overheard in various ways about the voting for the next President, a Massa Aaron Burr had run a tie with the famous Massa, Thomas Jefferson—who finally had gotten the job, apparently since he was supported by the powerful Massa Alexander Hamilton; and Massa Burr, an archenemy of Massa Hamilton, had been made Vice President.

No one seemed to know much about Massa Burr, but Kunta learned from a buggy driver who had been born in Virginia not far from Massa Jefferson’s Monticello plantation that his slaves declared there couldn’t be a better massa.

“Dat driver tol’ me Massa Jefferson ain’t never ’lowed his oberseers to whup nobody,” Kunta shared with the slave-row people. “An’ dey all eats good, an’ he let de womens spin an’ sew ’em all good clothes, an’ he b’lieve in lettin’ ’em learn different trades.” After Massa Jefferson returned home from one long trip, Kunta had heard, his slaves had met him two miles from the plantation,
unhitched the horses, and gleefully pulled the carriage that long distance to the Monticello big house, where they carried him on their shoulders to the doorstep.