Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [16]
CHAPTER 10
By the time Kunta sauntered back into his mother’s hut that night, he had made sure that everyone in Juffure had seen him in his dundiko. Though he hadn’t stopped working all day, he wasn’t a bit tired, and he knew he’d never be able to go to sleep at his regular bedtime. Perhaps now that he was a grown-up, Binta would let him stay up later. But soon after Lamin was asleep, the same as always, she sent him to bed—with a reminder to hang up his dundiko.
As he turned to go, sulking as conspicuously as he thought he could get away with, Binta called him back—probably to reprimand him for sulking, Kunta thought, or maybe she’d taken pity on him and changed her mind. “Your Fa wants to see you in the morning,” she said casually. Kunta knew better than to ask why, so just said, “Yes, Mama,” and wished her good night. It was just as well he wasn’t tired, because he couldn’t sleep now anyway, lying under his cowhide coverlet wondering what he had done now that was wrong, as it seemed he did so often. But racking his brain, he couldn’t think of a single thing, especially nothing so bad that Binta herself wouldn’t have whacked him for it, since a father would involve himself only with something pretty terrible. Finally he gave up worrying and drifted off to sleep.
At breakfast the next morning, Kunta was so subdued that he almost forgot the joy of his dundiko, until naked little Lamin happened to brush up against it. Kunta’s hand jerked up to shove him away, but a flashing look from Binta prevented that. After eating, Kunta hung around for a while hoping that something more might be said by Binta, but when she acted as if she hadn’t even told him anything, he reluctantly left the hut and made his way with slow steps to Omoro’s hut, where he stood outside with folded hands.
When Omoro emerged and silently handed his son a small new slingshot, Kunta’s breath all but stopped. He stood looking down at it, then up at his father, not knowing what to say. “This is yours as one of the second kafo. Be sure you don’t shoot the wrong thing, and that you hit what you shoot at.”
Kunta just said, “Yes, Fa,” still tongue-tied beyond that.
“Also, as you are now second kafo,” Omoro went on, “it means you will begin tending goats and going to school. You go goat-herding today with Toumani Touray. He and the other older boys will teach you. Heed them well. And tomorrow morning you will go to the schoolyard.” Omoro went back into his hut, and Kunta dashed away to the goat pens, where he found his friend Sitafa and the rest of his kafo, all in their new dundikos and clutching their new slingshots—uncles or older brothers having made them for boys whose fathers were dead.
The older boys were opening the pens and the bleating goats were bounding forth, hungry for the day’s grazing. Seeing Toumani, who was the first son of the couple who were Omoro’s and Binta’s best friends, Kunta tried to get near him, but Toumani and his mates were all herding the goats to bump into the smaller boys, who were trying to scramble out of the way. But soon the laughing older boys and the wuolo dogs had the goats hurrying down the dusty path with Kunta’s kafo running uncertainly behind, clutching their slingshots and trying to brush the dirtied spots off their dundikos.
As familiar with goats as Kunta was, he had never realized how fast they ran. Except for a few walks with his father, he had never been so far beyond the village as the goats were leading them—to a wide grazing area of low brush and grass with the forest on one side and the fields of village farmers on the other. The older boys each nonchalantly set their own herds to