Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [157]
“I knowed it!” the fiddler exclaimed. “Niggers gon’ git dragged in it an’ kilt, jes’ like dat French an’ Indian War. Den soon’s it’s over, white folks be right back whippin’ niggers!”
“Maybe not,” said Luther. “Heared some white folks call themselves Quakers done put together a Anti-Slavery Society, up in dat Philadelphia. Reckon dey’s some white folks jes’ don’t believe in niggers bein’ slaves.”
“Me neither,” put in the fiddler.
The frequent bits of news that Bell contributed would sound as if she had been discussing them with the massa himself, but she finally admitted that she had been listening at the keyhole of the dining room whenever the massa had guests, for not long ago he had curtly told her to serve them and leave immediately, closing the door behind her; then she had heard him lock it. “An’ I knows dat man better’n his mammy!” she muttered indignantly.
“What he say in dere after he lock de do’?” asked the fiddler impatiently.
“Well, tonight he say don’t seem no way not to fight dem English folks. He speck dey gon’ send big boatloads a soldiers over here. He say it’s over two hunnud thousand slaves just in Virginia, an’ de biggest worry is if dem Englishmans ever riles up us niggers’gainst white folks. Massa say he feel loyal to de king as any man, but ain’t nobody can stan’ dem taxes.”
“Gen’l Washington done stopped ’em taking any more niggers in the Army,” said Luther, “but some free niggers up Nawth is arguin’ dey’s part of dis country an’ wants to fight.”
“Dey sho’ gon’ git dey chance, jes’ let ’nough white folks git kilt,” said the fiddler. “Dem free niggers is crazy.”
But the news that followed two weeks later was even bigger. Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, had proclaimed freedom for slaves who would leave their plantations to serve on his English fleet of fishing boats and frigates.
“Massa fit to be tied,” reported Bell. “Man come to dinner say lotta talk ’bout chainin’ or jailin’ slaves suspicioned a joinin’ up—or even thinkin’ ’bout it—an’ maybe kidnapin’ an’ hangin’ dat Lord Dunmore.”
Kunta had been given the job of watering and feeding the horses of the flushed, agitated massas who visited the grim-jawed Massa Waller. And Kunta told how some of the horses had sweat-soaked flanks from long, hard riding, and how some of the massas were even driving their own buggies. One of them, he told the others, was John Waller, the massa’s brother, the man who had bought Kunta when they took him off the boat eight years before. After all that time, he had known that hated face at first glance, but the man had tossed the reins to Kunta with no apparent recognition.
“Don’ ack so surprised,” said the fiddler. “Massa like him ain’t gone say howdy to no nigger. ’Specially if’n he ’members who you is.”
Over the next few weeks, Bell learned at the keyhole of the massa’s and his visitors’ alarm and fury that thousands of Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia slaves were said to be boldly fleeing their plantations to join Lord Dunmore. Some said they had heard that most of the fleeing slaves were simply heading for the North. But all the whites agreed on the need to start breeding more bloodhounds.
Then one day Massa Waller called Bell into the living room and twice read slowly aloud a marked item in his Virginia Gazette. He ordered Bell to show it to the slaves, and handed the paper to her. She did as she was told, and they reacted just as she had—less with fear than anger. “Be not, ye Negroes, tempted to ruin yourselves . . . whether we suffer or not, if you desert us, you most certainly will.”
Before returning the Gazette, Bell spelled out for her own information several other news items in the privacy of her cabin, and among