Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [156]
What was happening “up Nawth” continued to arrive piece by piece through the summer and into the fall. Then, as time passed, Luther began to report that as exercised as white folks were about the taxes, that wasn’t their only worry. “Dey’s sayin’ it’s some counties got twice many niggers as white folks. Dey’s worryin’ dat king’crost the water might start offerin’ us niggers freedom to fight’gainst dese white folks.” Luther waited for the gasps of his audience to subside. “Fact,” he said, “done heared some white folks so scared, done took to lockin’ dey doors at night, done even quit talkin’ roun’ dey house niggers.”
Kunta lay on his mattress at night for weeks afterward thinking about “freedom.” As far as he could tell, it meant having no massa at all, doing as one wanted, going wherever one pleased. But it was ridiculous, he decided finally, to think that white folks would bring blacks all the way across the big water to work as slaves—and then set them free. It would never happen.
Shortly before Christmas, some of Massa Waller’s relatives arrived for a visit, and their black buggy driver was eating his fill in Bell’s kitchen while regaling her with the latest news. “Done heared dat over in Geo’gia,” he said, “nigger name a George Leile, de Baptis’ white folks done give ’im a license to preach to niggers up an’ down de Savannah River. Hear de claim he gon’ start a African Baptis’ church in Savannah. First time I heard ’bout any nigger church. . . . ”
Bell said, “I heard ’bout one ’fo’ now in Petersburg, right here in Virginia. But tell me, you heared anythin’ about de white folks’ troubles up Nawth?”
“Well, I hear tell while back whole lotta impo’tant white folks had a big meetin’ in dat Philadelphia. Dey call it de First Continental Congress.”
Bell said she had heard that. In fact, she had painstakingly read it in Massa Waller’s Virginia Gazette, and then she had shared the information with the old gardener and the fiddler. They were the only ones who knew she could read a little. When they had spoken about it recently, the gardener and the fiddler had agreed that Kunta shouldn’t be told of her ability. True, he knew how to keep his mouth shut, and he had come to understand and express things unexpectedly well for anyone from Africa, but they felt that he couldn’t yet fully appreciate how serious the consequences would be if the massa got the slightest hint that she could read: He would sell her away that same day.
By early the next year—1775—almost no news from any source was without some further development in Philadelphia. Even from what Kunta heard and could understand, it was clear that the white folks were moving toward a crisis with the king across the big water in the place called England. And there was a lot of exclaiming about some Massa Patrick Henry having cried out, “Give me liberty or give me death!” Kunta liked that, but he couldn’t understand how somebody white could say it; white folks looked pretty free to him.
Within a month came news that two whites named William Dawes and Paul Revere had raced on horses to warn somebody of hundreds of King’s soldiers heading for somewhere called “Concord” to destroy rifles and bullets that were stored there. And soon afterward they heard that in a furious battle at “Lexington,” some “Minutemen” had lost only a handful while killing over two hundred King’s soldiers. Scarcely two days later came word that yet another thousand of them had fallen in a bloody battle at a place called “Bunker Hill.” “White folks at the county seat is laughin’, sayin’ dem king’s soldiers wears red coats not to show de blood,” said Luther. “Heared some a dat blood gettin’ spilt by niggers fightin’ ’longside white folks.” Wherever he went now, he said he kept on hearing that Virginia massas were showing greater than usual signs of mistrust toward their slaves—“even dey oldest house niggers!”
Relishing