Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [143]
Kunta was so filled with curiosity that in the morning he made it his business to hobble down to that hut. He hadn’t expected to find the brown one seated just inside his doorway. They simply looked at each other. The man’s face and eyes were expressionless. And so was his voice when he said, “What you want?” Kunta had no idea what he was saying. “You one a dem African niggers.” Kunta recognized that word he’d heard so often, but not the rest. He just stood there. “Well, git on, den!” Kunta heard the sharpness, sensed the dismissal. He all but stumbled, wheeling around, and went crutching in angry embarrassment back on up to his own hut.
He grew so furious every time he thought about that brown one that he wished he knew enough of the toubob tongue to go and shout, “At least I’m black, not brown like you!” From that day on, Kunta wouldn’t look in the direction of that hut whenever he was outside. But he couldn’t quell his curiosity about the fact that after each evening’s meal, most of the other blacks hastened to gather at that last hut. And, listening intently from within his own doorway, Kunta could hear the voice of the brown one talking almost steadily. Sometimes the others burst into laughter, and at intervals he could hear them barraging him with questions. Who or what was he, Kunta ached to know.
In midafternoon about two weeks later, the brown one chanced to be emerging from the privy at the very moment Kunta was approaching it. The brown one’s bulky white arm covering was gone, and his hands were plaiting two cornshucks as the furious Kunta rapidly crutched on past. Sitting inside, Kunta’s head whirled with the insults he wished he could have expressed. When he came back outside, the brown one was calmly standing there, his matter-of-fact expression as if nothing had ever happened between them. Still twisting and plaiting cornshucks between his fingers, he beckoned with his head for Kunta to follow him.
It was so totally unexpected—and disarming—that Kunta found himself following the brown one back to his cabin without a word. Obediently, Kunta sat down on the stool the brown one pointed to and watched as his host seated himself on the other stool, still plaiting. Kunta wondered if he knew that he was plaiting much the same as Africans did.
After a while more of reflective silence, the brown one began speaking: “I been hearin’ ’bout you so mad. You lucky dey ain’t kilt you. Dey could of, an’ been inside de law. Jes’ like when dat white man broke my hand ’cause I got tired of fiddlin’. Law say anybody catch you ’scapin’ can kill you and no punishment for him. Dat law gits read out again eve’y six months in white folks’ churches. Looka here, don’t start me on white folks’ laws. Startin’ up a new settlement, dey firs’ builds a courthouse, fo’ passin’ more laws; nex’ build-in’s a church to prove dey’s Christians. I b’lieve all dat Virginia’s House of Burgess do is pass more laws ’gainst niggers. It’s a law niggers can’t carry no gun, even no stick that look like a club. Law say twenty lashes you get caught widdout a travelin’ pass, ten lashes if’n you looks white folks in dey eyes, thirty lashes if’n you raises your hand ’gainst a white Christian. Law say no nigger preachin’ lessen a white man dere to listen; law say can’t be no nigger funeral if dey think it’s a meetin’. Law say cut your ear off if’n white folks swear you lied, both ears if dey claim you lied twice. Law say you kill anybody white, you