Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [131]
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