Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [123]
Back in his hut, Kunta kneeled and touched his forehead to the hard dirt floor in the direction in which he knew the next sun would rise. He prayed for a long time to make up for the two prayers he had been unable to perform out in the field, which would certainly have been interrupted by a lash across his back from the toubob who rode the “hoss.”
After finishing his prayer, Kunta sat bolt upright and spoke softly for a while in the secret sira kango tongue, asking his ancestors to help him endure. Then—pressing between his fingers a pair of cock’s feathers he had managed to pick up without being noticed while “Samson” had led him around that morning—he wondered when he would get the chance to steal a fresh egg. With the feathers of the cock and some finely crushed fresh eggshell, he would be able to prepare a powerful fetish to the spirits, whom he would ask to bless the dust where his last footsteps had touched in his village. If that dust was blessed, his footprints would one day reappear in Juffure, where every man’s footprints were recognizable to his neighbors, and they would rejoice at this sign that Kunta Kinte was still alive and that he would return safely to his village. Someday.
For the thousandth time, he relived the nightmare of his capture. If only the cracking twig that alerted him had snapped a single footstep earlier, he could have leaped and snatched up his spear. Tears of rage came welling up into Kunta’s eyes. It seemed to him that for moons without end, all that he had known was being tracked and attacked and captured and chained.
No! He would not allow himself to act this way. After all, he was a man now, seventeen rains of age, too old to weep and wallow in self-pity. Wiping away the tears, he crawled onto his thin, lumpy mattress of dried cornshucks and tried to go to sleep—but all he could think of was the name “To-by” he had been given, and rage rose in him once more. Furiously, he kicked his legs in frustration—but the movement only gouged the iron cuffs deeper into his ankles, which made him cry again.
Would he ever grow up to be a man like Omoro? He wondered if his father still thought of him, and if his mother had given to Lamin, Suwadu, and Madi the love that had been taken away from her when he was stolen. He thought of all of Juffure, and of how he had never realized more than now how very deeply he loved his village. As it had often been on the big canoe, Kunta lay for half the night with scenes of Juffure flashing through his mind, until he made himself shut his eyes and finally sleep came.
CHAPTER 45
With each passing day, the hobbles on his ankles made it more and more difficult and painful for Kunta to get around. But he kept on telling himself that the chances of gaining freedom depended upon continuing to force himself to do whatever was wanted of him, all behind a mask of complete blankness and stupidity. As he did so, his eyes, ears, and nose would miss nothing—no weapon he might use, no toubob weakness he might exploit—until finally his captors were lulled into removing the cuffs. Then he would run away again.
Soon after the conch horn blew each morning, Kunta would limp outside to watch as the strange black ones emerged from their huts, the sleepiness still in their faces, and splashed themselves with water from buckets drawn up in the well nearby. Missing the sound of the village women’s pestles thumping the couscous for their families