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By Root 1507 0

as a hummin’bird. Wasn’t hardly no bigger’n one, neither. Dat’s how come she died birthin’ dey first baby. Was a little gal; it died, too. Terriblest time I guess anybody ever seen ’roun’ here. An’ massa ain’t never been the same man since. Jes’ work, work, work, seem like sometime he tryin’ to kill hisself. He cain’t bear to think a nobody sick or hurt he can he’p. Massa would doctor a sick cat quick as he would some hurt nigger he hear’bout, like dat fiddler you always talkin’ to—or like when you was brung here. He got so mad ’bout how dey done your foot, he even bought you away from his own brother John. ’Co’se wunt his doin’, it was dem po’ cracker nigger catchers he hired, who say you tried to kill ’em.”

Kunta listened, realizing that just as he was only beginning to appreciate the individual depths and dimensions of the black ones, it had never occurred to him that even white folks could also have human sufferings, though their ways in general could never be forgiven. He found himself wishing that he could speak the white folks’ tongue well enough to say all this to Bell—and to tell her the story his old grandmother Nyo Boto had told him about the boy who tried to help the trapped crocodile, the story Nyo Boto always ended with, “In the world, the payment for good is often bad.”

Thinking of home reminded Kunta of something he’d been wanting to tell Bell for a long time, and this seemed like a good moment. Except for her brown color, he told her proudly, she looked almost like a handsome Mandinka woman.

He didn’t have long to wait for her response to this great compliment. “What fool stuff you talkin’ ’bout?” she said irately. “Don’ know how come white folks keep on emptyin’ out boatloads a you Africa niggers!”

CHAPTER 56

For the next month, Bell wouldn’t speak to Kunta—and even carried her own basket back to the big house after she had come for the vegetables. Then, early one Monday morning, she came rushing out to the garden, eyes wide with excitement, and blurted, “Sheriff jes’ rid off! He tol’ massa been some big fightin’ up Nawth somewhere call Boston! It’s dem white folks so mad’bout dem king’s taxes from ’crost de big water. Massa got Luther hitchin’ de buggy to git to de county seat. He sho’ upset!”

Suppertime found everyone clustered around the fiddler’s hut for his and the gardener’s opinions, the gardener being slave row’s oldest person, the fiddler its best traveled and most worldly.

“When it was?” somebody asked, and the gardener said, “Well, anything we hears from up Nawth got to of happened a while back.”

The fiddler added, “I heared dat from up roun’ where dat Boston is, ten days is de quickest dat fast hosses can git word here to Virginia.”

In the deepening dusk, the massa’s buggy returned. Luther hurried to slave row with further details he had picked up: “Dey’s tellin’ it dat one night some a dem Boston peoples got so mad’bout dem king’s taxes dey marched on dat king’s soldiers. Dem soldiers commence to shootin’, an’ firs’ one kilt was a nigger name a Crispus Attucks. Dey callin’ it ’De Boston Massacree’!”

Little else was talked of for the next few days, as Kunta listened, unsure what it was all about and why white folks—and even the blacks—were so agog about whatever was happening so far away. Hardly a day passed without two or three passing slaves “Yooohooo-ah-hoooing” from the big road with a new rumor. And Luther kept bringing regular reports from house slaves, stable-hands, and other drivers he talked with on every journey the massa made to attend sick people or to discuss what was going on in New England with other massas in their big houses, or the county seat or nearby towns.

“White folks ain’t got no secrets,” the fiddler said to Kunta. “Dey’s swamped deyselves wid niggers. Ain’t much dey do, hardly nowheres dey go, it ain’t niggers listenin’. If dey eatin’ an’ talkin’, nigger gal servin’ ’em actin’ dumber’n she is, ’memberin’ eve’y word she hear. Even when white folks gits so scared dey starts spellin’ out words, if any niggers roun’, well, plenty house niggers ain’t long