Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [116]
It was around midmorning when Kunta heard what he knew instantly was a blacksmith pounding on metal; lifting his head, Kunta strained his eyes to see and finally located the sound somewhere beyond a thick growth of trees they were passing. He saw that much forest had been freshly cut, and stumps grubbed up, and in some places, as the rolling box lurched along, Kunta saw and smelled grayish smoke rising from where dry brush was being burned. He wondered if the toubob were thus fertilizing the earth for the next season’s crops, as it was done in Juffure.
Next, in the distance ahead, he saw a small square hut beside the road. It seemed to be made of logs, and in a cleared plot of earth before it, a toubob man was plodding behind a brown bullock. The toubob’s hands were pressing down hard against the curving handles of some large thing pulled by the bullock that was tearing through the earth. As they came nearer, Kunta saw two more toubob—pale and thin—squatting on their haunches under a tree; three equally skinny swine were rooting around them, and some chickens were pecking for food. In the hut’s doorway stood a she toubob with red hair. Then, dashing past her, came three small toubob shouting and waving toward the rolling box. Catching sight of Kunta, they shrieked with laughter and pointed; he stared at them as if they were hyena cubs. They ran alongside the wagon for a good way before turning back, and Kunta lay realizing that he had seen with his own eyes an actual family of toubob.
Twice more, far from the road, Kunta saw large white toubob houses similar to the one where the wagon had stopped the night before. Each was the height of two houses, as if one were on top of another; each had in front of it a row of three or four huge white poles as big around—and almost as tall—as trees; nearby each was a group of small, dark huts where Kunta guessed the blacks lived, and surrounding each was a vastness of cotton fields, all of them recently harvested, flecked here and there with a tuft of white.
Somewhere between these two great houses, the rolling box overtook a strange pair of people walking along the side of the road. At first Kunta thought they were black, but as the wagon came closer he saw that their skin was reddish-brown, and they had long black hair tied to hang down their backs like a rope, and they walked quickly, lightly in shoes and loincloths that seemed to be made of hide, and they carried bows and arrows. They weren’t toubob, yet they weren’t of Africa either; they even smelled different. What sort of people were they? Neither one seemed to notice the rolling box as it went by, enveloping them in dust.
As the sun began to set, Kunta turned his face toward the east, and by the time he had finished his silent evening prayer to Allah, dusk was gathering. He was getting so weak, after two days without accepting any of the food he had been offered, that he had to lie down limply in the bottom of the rolling box, hardly caring any more about what was happening around him.
But Kunta managed to raise himself up again and look over the side when the box stopped a little later. Climbing down, the driver hung one of those lights against the side of the box, got back in his seat, and resumed the trip. After a long while the toubob spoke briefly, and the black one replied; it was the first time since they had started out that day that the two of them had exchanged a sound. Again the box stopped, and the driver got out and tossed some kind of coverlet to Kunta, who ignored it. Climbing back up onto the seat, the driver and the toubob pulled coverlets over themselves and set out once again.
Though he was soon shivering, Kunta refused to reach for the coverlet