Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [146]
The next day, the old gardener showed Kunta what to do. As he chopped away at the weeds that seemed to spring up daily among the vegetables, so did Kunta. As he plucked tomato worms and potato bugs from the plants and squashed them underfoot, so did Kunta. They got along well, but apart from working side by side, they didn’t communicate much, either. Usually the old man would only make grunts and gestures whenever Kunta needed to be shown how to do some new task, and Kunta, without responding, simply did as he was told. He didn’t mind the silence; as a matter of fact, his ears needed a few hours’ rest each day between conversations with the fiddler, who ran his mouth every minute they were together.
That night after the evening meal, Kunta was sitting in the doorway of his hut when the man called Gildon—who made the horse and mule collars and also shod the black people—walked up to him and held out a pair of shoes. At the orders of the “massa,” he said he had made them especially for Kunta. Taking them and nodding his thanks, Kunta turned them over and over in his hands before deciding to try them on. It felt strange to have such things on his feet, but they fit perfectly—even though the front half of the right shoe was stuffed with cotton. The shoemaker bent down to tie the lacings, then suggested that Kunta get up and walk around in them to see how they felt. The left shoe was fine, but he felt tiny stinging sensations in his right foot as he walked awkwardly and gingerly around outside his hut without the crutches. Seeing his discomfort, the shoemaker said that was because of the stump, not the shoe, and he would get used to it.
Later that day, Kunta walked a bit farther, testing, but the right foot was still uncomfortable, so he removed a little of the cotton stuffing and put it back on. It felt better, and finally he dared to put his full weight on that foot, and there wasn’t any undue pain. Every now and then he would continue to experience the phantom pain of his right toes aching, as he had nearly every day since he started walking around, and he would glance downward—always with surprise—to find that he didn’t have any. But he kept practicing walking around, and feeling better than he let his face show; he had been afraid that he would always have to walk with crutches.
That same week the massa’s buggy returned from a trip, and the black driver, Luther, hurried to Kunta’s hut, beckoning him down to the fiddler’s, where Kunta watched him say something, grinning broadly. Then with gestures toward the big house and with selected key words, the fiddler made Kunta nod in understanding that Massa William Waller, the toubob who lived in the big house, now owned Kunta. “Luther say he just got a deed to you from his brother who had you at first, so you his now.” As usual, Kunta did not let his face show his feelings. He was angry and ashamed that anyone could “own” him, but he was also deeply relieved, for he had feared that one day he would be taken back to that other “plantation,” as he now knew the toubob farms were called. The fiddler waited until Luther had left before he spoke again—partly to Kunta and partly to himself. “Niggers here say Massa William a good master, an’ I seen worse. But ain’t none of’em no good. Dey all lives off us niggers. Niggers is the biggest thing dey got.”
CHAPTER 52
Almost every day now, when work was done, Kunta would return to his hut and after his evening prayer would scratch up the dirt in a littler square on his floor and draw Arabic characters in it with a stick, then sit looking for a long time at what he had written, often until supper. Then he would rub out what he had written, and it