Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [151]
The “laying by” had to be finished before the second “Sunday” in July, Kunta learned, when the blacks from most of the plantations in this area—which was called “Spotsylvania County”—would be permitted to travel someplace to join in some kind of “camp meetin’.” Since, whatever it was, it had to do with their Allah, no one even suggested that Kunta go along with the more than twenty of them who left very early that Sunday morning, packed into a wagon whose use Massa Waller had approved.
Nearly everyone was gone for the next few days—so many that few would have been there to notice if Kunta had tried to run away again—but he knew that even though he had learned to get around all right and make himself fairly useful, he would never be able to get very far before some slave catcher caught up with him again. Though it shamed him to admit it, he had begun to prefer life as he was allowed to live it here on this plantation to the certainty of being captured and probably killed if he tried to escape again. Deep in his heart, he knew he would never see his home again, and he could feel something precious and irretrievable dying inside of him forever. But hope remained alive; though he might never see his family again, perhaps someday he might be able to have one of his own.
CHAPTER 54
Another year had passed—so fast that Kunta could hardly believe it—and the stones in his gourd told him that he had reached his twentieth rain. It was cold again, and “Christmas” was once more in the air. Though he felt the same as he always had about the black ones’ Allah, they were having such a good time that he began to feel his own Allah would have no objection to his merely observing the activities that went on during this festive season.
Two of the men, having received week-long traveling passes from Massa Waller, were packing to go and visit their mates living on other plantations; one of the men was going to see a new baby for the first time. But every hut except theirs—and Kunta’s—was busy with some kind of preparations, chiefly the fixing up of party clothes with lace and beads, and the taking of nuts and apples from their storage places.
And up in the big house, all of Bell’s pots and pans were bubbling with yams and rabbits and roast pig—and many dishes made from animals Kunta had never seen or heard of until he came to this country: turkey, ’coons, ’possums, and the like. Though he was hesitant at first, the succulent smells from her kitchen soon persuaded Kunta to try everything—except for pig, of course. Nor was he interested in sampling the liquor Massa Waller had promised for the black ones: two barrels of hard cider, one of wine, and a keg of whiskey he had brought in his buggy from somewhere else.
Kunta could tell that some of the liquor was being quietly consumed in advance, no little of it by the fiddler. And along with the drinkers’ antics, the black children were running around holding dried hog bladders on sticks closer and closer to fires until each one burst with a loud bang amid general laughing and shouting. He thought it was all unbelievably stupid and disgusting.
When the day finally came, the drinking and eating began in earnest. From the door of his hut, Kunta watched as guests of Massa Waller’s arrived for the midday feast, and afterward as the slaves assembled close by the big house and began to sing, led by Bell, he saw the massa raise the window,