Roots: The Saga of an American Family

  Frantically he went burrowing in. The leaves were packed together far more tightly than he had expected, but at last his body was concealed. Even after pawing open an air space to breathe more freely—the stench of the filthy weed almost made him sick—he had to keep moving his back and shoulders a bit this way or that, trying to get comfortable under the pressing weight. But finally he found the right position, and the rocking motion of the wagon, cushioned by the leaves, which were very warm around him, soon made him drowsy.

  A loud bump brought him awake with a sickening start, and he began to think about being discovered. Where was the wagon going, and how long would it take to get there? And when it arrived, would he be able to slip away unseen? Or would he find himself trailed and trapped again? Why had he not thought of this before? A picture flashed into his mind of the dogs, and Samson, and the toubob with their guns, and Kunta shuddered. Considering what they did to him last time, he knew that this time his life would depend upon not getting caught.

  But the more he thought of it, the stronger his urge grew to leave the wagon now. With his hands, he parted the leaves enough to poke his head out. Out in the moonlight were endless fields and countryside. He couldn’t jump out now. The moon was bright enough to help his pursuers as much as it could help him. And the longer he rode, the less likely it was that the dogs could ever track him. He covered up the hole and tried to calm himself, but every time the wagon lurched, he feared that it was going to stop, and his heart would nearly leap from his chest.

  Much later, when he opened the hole again and saw that it was nearing dawn, Kunta made up his mind. He had to leave the wagon right now, before he came any closer to the enemy of open daylight. Praying to Allah, he grasped the handle of his knife and began to wriggle out of his hole. When his entire body was free, he waited again for the wagon to lurch. It seemed to take an eternity, but when it finally did he made a light leap—and was on the road. A moment later he was out of sight in the bushes.

  Kunta swung in a wide arc to avoid two toubob farms where he could see the familiar big house with the small, dark huts nearby. The sounds of their wake-up horns floated across the still air to his ears, and as the dawn brightened, he was slashing through underbrush deeper and deeper into what he knew was a wide expanse of forest. It was cool in the dense woods, and the dew that sprinkled onto him felt good, and he swung his knife as if it were weightless, grunting in his pleasure with each swing. During the early afternoon, he happened upon a small stream of clear water tippling over mossy rocks, and frogs jumped in alarm as he stopped to drink from it with his cupped hands. Looking around and feeling safe enough to rest for a while, he sat down on the bank and reached into his pocket. Taking out a piece of the dried rabbit and swashing it around in the stream, he put it in his mouth and chewed. The earth was springy and soft beneath him, and the only sounds he could hear were made by the toads and the insects and the birds. He listened to them as he ate, and watched sunlight stippling the leafy boughs above him with splashes of gold among the green, and he told himself that he was glad he didn’t have to run as hard or as steadily as he had before, for exhaustion had made him an easy prey.

  On and on he ran, for the rest of the afternoon, and after pausing for his sundown prayer, he went on still farther until darkness—and weariness—forced him to stop for the night. Lying on his bed of leaves and grass, he decided that later he would build himself a shelter of forked sticks with a roof of grass, as he had learned in manhood training. Sleep claimed him quickly, but several times during the night he was awakened by mosquitoes, and he heard the snarlings of wild animals in the distance as they made their kills.

  Up with the first rays of the sun, Kunta quickly sharpened his knife and then was off again. A while later he came upon what was clearly a trail where a number of men had walked; although he could see that it had not been used in a long time, he ran back into the woods as fast as he could go.

  Deeper and deeper into the forest, his knife kept slashing. Several times he saw snakes, but on the toubob farm he had learned that they would not attack unless they were frightened or cornered, so he let them slither away. Now and then he would imagine that he heard a dog barking somewhere, and he would shiver, for more than men, he feared dogs’ noses.

  Several times during the day, Kunta got into foliage so dense that in some places even his knife wasn’t stout enough to clear a path, and he had to return and find another way. Twice he stopped to sharpen his knife, which seemed to be getting dull more and more often, but when it didn’t work any better afterward, he suspected that the constant slashing at briars, bushes, and vines had begun to sap his strength. So he paused to rest again, ate some more rabbit—and some wild blackberries—and drank water that he found in cupped leaves of plants at the bases of trees. That night he rested by another stream, plunging into sleep the moment he lay down, deaf to the cries of animals and night birds, insensible even to the buzzing and biting of the insects that were drawn to his sweaty body.

  It wasn’t until the next morning that Kunta began to think about where he was going. He hadn’t let himself think of it before. Since he couldn’t know where he was going because he didn’t have any idea where he was, he decided that his only course was to avoid nearness to any other human beings, black or toubob, and to keep running toward the sunrise. The maps of Africa he’d seen as a boy showed the big water to the west, so he knew that eventually he’d reach it if he kept moving east. But when he thought about what might happen then, even if he wasn’t caught; of how he would ever be able to cross the water, even if he had a boat; of how he would ever get safely to the other side, even if he knew the way—he began to get deeply frightened. Between prayers, he fingered the saphie charm on his arm even as he ran.

  That night, as he lay hidden beneath a bush, he found himself thinking of the Mandinkas’ greatest hero, the warrior Sundiata, who had been a crippled slave so meanly treated by his African master that he had escaped and gone hiding in the swamps, where he found and organized other escaped ones into a conquering army that carved out the vast Mandinka Empire. Maybe, Kunta thought as he set out again on this fourth day, he could find other escaped Africans somehow here in the land of toubob, and maybe they would be as desperate as he was to feel their toes once again in the dust of their native land. Maybe enough of them together could build or steal a big canoe. And then . . .

  Kunta’s reverie was interrupted by a terrible sound. He stopped in his tracks. No, it was impossible! But there was no mistake; it was the baying of hounds. Wildly he went hacking at the brush, stumbling and falling and scrambling up again. Soon he was so tired that when he fell again, he just sat there, very still, clutching the handle of his knife and listening. But he heard nothing now—nothing but the sounds of the birds and the insects.

  Had he really heard the dogs? The thought tormented him. He didn’t know which was his worst enemy, the toubob or his own imagination. He couldn’t afford to assume that he hadn’t really heard them, so he started running again; the only safety was to keep moving. But soon—exhausted not only by having to race so far and so fast, but also by fear itself—he had to rest again. He would close his eyes for just a moment, and then get going again.

  He awoke in a sweat, sitting bolt upright. It was pitch dark! He had slept the day away! Shaking his head, he was trying to figure out what had wakened him when suddenly he heard it again: the baying of dogs, this time much closer than before. He sprang up and away so frantically that it was several moments before it flashed upon his mind that he had forgotten his long knife. He dashed back where he had lain, but the springy vines were a maze, and though he knew—maddeningly—that he had to be within arm’s length of it, no amount of groping and scrabbling enabled him to lay his hand on it.

  As the baying grew steadily louder, his stomach began to churn. If he didn’t find it, he knew he would get captured again—or worse. With his hands jerking around everywhere underfoot, he finally grabbed hold of a rock about the size of hi
s fist. With a desperate cry, he snatched it up and bolted into the deep brush.

  All that night, like one possessed, he ran deeper and deeper into the forest—tripping, falling, tangling his feet in vines, stopping only for moments to catch his breath. But the hounds kept gaining on him, closer and closer, and finally, soon after dawn, he could see them over his shoulder. It was like a nightmare repeating itself. He couldn’t run any farther. Turning and crouching in a little clearing with his back against a tree, he was ready for them—right hand clutching a stout limb he had snapped off another tree while he was running at top speed, left hand holding the rock in a grip of death.

  The dogs began to lunge toward Kunta, but with a hideous cry he lashed the club at them so ferociously that they retreated and cowered just beyond its range, barking and slavering, until the two toubob appeared on their horses.

  Kunta had never seen these men before. The younger one drew a gun, but the older one waved him back as he got down off his horse and walked toward Kunta. He was calmly uncoiling a long black whip.

  Kunta stood there wild-eyed, his body shaking, his brain flashing a memory of toubob faces in the wood grove, on the big canoe, in the prison, in the place where he had been sold, on the heathen farm, in the woods where he had been caught, beaten, lashed, and shot three times before. As the toubob’s arm reared backward with the lash, Kunta’s arm whipped forward with a viciousness that sent him falling sideways as his fingers released the rock.

  He heard the toubob shout; then a bullet cracked past his ear, and the dogs were upon him. As he rolled over and over on the ground ripping at the dogs, Kunta glimpsed one toubob’s face with blood running down it. Kunta was snarling like a wild animal when they called off the dogs and approached him with their guns drawn. He knew from their faces that he would die now, and he didn’t care. One lunged forward and grabbed him while the other clubbed with the gun, but it still took all of their strength to hold him, for he was writhing, fighting, moaning, shrieking in both Arabic and Mandinka—until they clubbed him again. Wrestling him violently toward a tree, they tore the clothes off him and tied him tightly to it around the middle of his body. He steeled himself to be beaten to death.

  But then the bleeding toubob halted abruptly, and a strange look came onto his face, almost a smile, and he spoke briefly, hoarsely to the younger one. The younger one grinned and nodded, then went back to his horse and unlashed a short-handled hunting ax that had been stowed against the saddle. He chopped a rotting tree trunk away from its roots and pulled it over next to Kunta.

  Standing before him, the bleeding one began making gestures. He pointed to Kunta’s genitals, then to the hunting knife in his belt. Then he pointed to Kunta’s foot, and then to the ax in his hand. When Kunta understood, he howled and kicked—and was clubbed again. Deep in his marrow, a voice shouted that a man, to be a man, must have sons. And Kunta’s hands flew down to cover his foto. The two toubob were wickedly grinning.

  One pushed the trunk under Kunta’s right foot as the other tied the foot to the trunk so tightly that all of Kunta’s raging couldn’t free it. The bleeding toubob picked up the ax. Kunta was screaming and thrashing as the ax flashed up, then down so fast—severing skin, tendons, muscles, bone—that Kunta heard the ax thud into the trunk as the shock of it sent the agony deep into his brain. As the explosion of pain bolted through him, Kunta’s upper body spasmed forward and his hands went flailing downward as if to save the front half of his foot, which was falling forward, as bright red blood jetted from the stump as he plunged into blackness.

  CHAPTER 50

  For the better part of a day, Kunta lapsed into and out of consciousness, his eyes closed, the muscles of his face seeming to sag, with spittle dribbling from a corner of his open mouth. As he gradually grew aware that he was alive, the terrible pain seemed to split into parts—pounding within his head, lancing throughout his body, and searing in his right leg. When his eyes required too much effort to open, he tried to remember what had happened. Then it came to him—the flushed, contorted toubob face behind the ax flashing upward, the thunk against the stump, the front of his foot toppling off. Then the throbbing in Kunta’s head surged so violently that he lapsed mercifully back into blackness.

  The next time he opened his eyes, he found himself staring at a spider web on the ceiling. After a while, he managed to stir just enough to realize that his chest, wrists, and ankles were tied down, but his right foot and the back of his head were propped against something soft, and he was wearing some kind of gown. And mingled with his agony was the smell of something like tar. He had thought he knew all about suffering before, but this was worse.

  He was mumbling to Allah when the door of the hut was pushed open; he stopped instantly. A tall toubob he had never seen came in carrying a small black bag. His face was set in an angry way, though the anger seemed not to be directed at Kunta. Waving away the buzzing flies, the toubob bent down alongside him. Kunta could see only his back; then something the toubob did to his foot brought such a shock that Kunta shrieked like a woman, rearing upward against the chest rope. Finally turning around to face him, the toubob placed his palm against Kunta’s forehead and then grasped his wrist lightly and held it for a long moment. Then he stood up, and while he watched the grimaces on Kunta’s drawn face called out sharply, “Bell!”

  A black-skinned woman, short and powerfully built, with a stern but not forbidding face, soon came inside bringing water in a tin container. In some peculiar way, Kunta felt that he recognized her, that in some dream she had been already there looking down at him and bending beside him with sips of water. The toubob spoke to her in a gentle way as he took something from his black bag and stirred it into a cup of the water. Again the toubob spoke, and now the black woman kneeled and one of her hands raised the back of Kunta’s head as the other tilted the cup for him to drink, which he did, being too sick and weak to resist.

  His fleeting downward glance enabled him to catch a glimpse of the tip of the huge bandaging over his right foot; it was rust-colored with dried blood. He shuddered, wanting to spring up, but his muscles felt as useless as the vile-tasting stuff that he was permitting to go down his throat. The black woman then eased his head back down, the toubob said something to her again, and she replied, and the two of them went out.

  Almost before they were gone, Kunta floated off into deep sleep. When next he opened his eyes late that night, he couldn’t remember where he was. His right foot felt as if it were afire; he started to jerk it upward, but the movement made him cry out. His mind lapsed off into a shadowy blur of images and thoughts, each of them drifting beyond his grasp as quickly as they came. Glimpsing Binta, he told her that he was hurt, but not to worry, for he would be home again as soon as he was able. Then he saw a family of birds flying high in the sky and a spear piercing one of them. He felt himself falling, crying out, desperately clutching out at nothingness.

  When he woke up again, Kunta felt sure that something terrible had happened to his foot; or had it been a nightmare? He only knew that he was very sick. His whole right side felt numb; his throat was dry; his parched lips were starting to split from fever; he was soaked in sweat, and it had a sickly smell. Was it possible that anyone would really chop off another’s foot? Then he remembered that toubob pointing to his foot and to his genitals, and the horrible expression on his face. Again the rage flooded up, and Kunta made an effort to flex his toes. It brought a blinding sheet of pain. He lay there waiting for it to subside, but it wouldn’t. And it was unbearable—except that somehow he was bearing it. He hated himself for wanting that toubob to come back with more of whatever it was he put in the water that had given him some ease.

  Time and again he tried to pull his hands free of the loose binding at his sides, but to no avail. He lay there writhing and groaning in anguish when the door opened again. It was the black woman, the yellowish light from a flame flickering on her black face. Smiling, she began making sounds, facial expressions, and motions that Kunta
knew was an effort to make him understand something. Pointing toward the hut’s door, she pantomimed a tall man walking in, then giving something to drink to a moaning person, who then broadly smiled as if feeling much better. Kunta made no sign that he understood her meaning that the tall toubob was a man of medicine.

  Shrugging, she squatted down and began pressing a damp, cooling cloth against Kunta’s forehead. He hated her no less for it. Then she motioned that she was going to raise his head for him to sip some of the soup she had brought. Swallowing it, he felt flashing anger at her pleased look. Then she made a small hole in the dirt floor into which she set a round, long, waxy thing and lighted a flame at the top of it. With gesture and expression, she asked finally if there was anything else he wanted. He just glowered at her, and finally, she left.

  Kunta stared at the flame, trying to think, until it guttered out against the dirt. In the darkness, the kill-toubob plotting in the big canoe came into his mind; he longed to be a warrior in a great black army slaughtering toubob as fast as his arms could swing. But then Kunta was shuddering, fearful that he was dying himself, even though that would mean he would be forevermore with Allah. After all, none had ever returned from Allah to tell what it was like with Him; nor had any ever returned to their villages to tell what it was like with the toubob.

  On Bell’s next visit, she looked down with deep concern into Kunta’s bloodshot and yellowing eyes, which had sunken farther into his fevered face. He lay steadily shuddering, groaning, even thinner than when he had been brought here the week before. She went back outside, but within an hour was back with thick cloths, two steaming pots, and a pair of folded quilts. Moving quickly and—for some reason—furtively, she covered Kunta’s bared chest with a thick, steaming poultice of boiled leaves mixed and mashed with something acrid. The poultice was so blistering hot that Kunta moaned and tried to shake it off, but Bell firmly shoved him back. Dipping cloths into her other steaming pot, she wrung them out and packed them over the poultice, then covered Kunta with the two quilts.