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By Root 1294 0

the hot season known as “summer” was over and harvest time had begun along with a great many more duties for Kunta and the others. While the rest of the blacks—even Bell—were busy with the heavy work out in the fields, he was expected to tend the chickens, the livestock, and the pigs in addition to his garden. And at the height of the cotton picking, he was called upon to drive the wagon along the rows. Except for having to feed the filthy swine, which almost made him ill, Kunta didn’t mind the extra work, for it made him feel less of a cripple. But it was seldom that he got back to his hut before dark—so tired out that he sometimes even forgot to eat his supper. Taking off nothing but his frayed straw hat and his shoes—to relieve the aching of his half foot—he would flop down on his cornshuck mattress, pulling his quilt of cotton-stuffed burlap up over him, and within moments he would be sound asleep, in clothes still wet with sweat.

Soon the wagons were piled high with cotton, then with plump ears of corn, and the golden tobacco leaves were hanging up to dry. The hogs had been killed, cut into pieces, and hung over slowly burning hickory, and the smoky air was turning cold when everyone on the plantation began preparing for the “harvest dance,” an occasion so important that even the massa would be there. Such was their excitement that when Kunta found out that the black people’s Allah didn’t seem to be involved, he decided to attend himself—but just to watch.

By the time he got up the courage to join the party, it was well under way. The fiddler, whose fingers were finally nimble again, was sawing away at his strings, and another man was clacking two beef bones together to keep time as someone shouted, “Cakewalk!” Dancers coupled off and hurried out before the fiddler. Each woman put her foot on the man’s knee while he tied her shoestring; then the fiddler sang out, “Change partners!” and when they did, he began to play madly, and Kunta saw that the dancers’ footsteps and body motions were imitating their planting of the crops, the chopping of wood, the picking of cotton, the swinging of scythes, the pulling of corn, the pitchforking of hay into wagons. It was all so much like the harvest dancing back in Juffure that Kunta’s good foot was soon tapping away on the ground—until he realized what he was doing and looked around, embarrassed, to see if anyone had noticed.

But no one had. At that moment, in fact, almost everyone had begun to watch a slender fourth-kafo girl who was dipping and whirling around as light as a feather, her head tossing, her eyes rolling, her arms describing graceful patterns. Soon the other dancers, exhausted, were moving to the sides to catch their breaths and stare; even her partner was hard put to keep up.

When he quit, gasping, a shout went up, and when finally even she went stumbling toward the sidelines, a whooping and hollering engulfed her. The cheering got even louder when Massa Waller awarded that girl a half-dollar prize. And smiling broadly at the fiddler, who grinned and bowed in return, the massa left them amid more shouting. But the cakewalk was far from over, and the other couples, rested by now, rushed back out and went on as before, seemingly ready to dance all night.

Kunta was lying on his mattress thinking about what he had heard and seen when suddenly there came a rapping at his door.

“Who dat?” he demanded, astonished, for only twice had anyone ever come to his hut in all the time he’d lived there.

“Kick dis do’ in, nigger!”

Kunta opened the door, for it was the voice of the fiddler; instantly he smelled the liquor on his breath. Though he was repelled, Kunta said nothing, for the fiddler was bursting to talk, and it would have been unkind to turn him away just because he was drunk.

“You seen massa!” said the fiddler. “He ain’t knowed I could play dat good! Now you watch an’ see if ’n he don’t ’range for me to play for white folks to hear me, an’ den hire me out!” Beside himself with happiness, the fiddler sat on Kunta’s three-legged stool, fiddle across his lap, and