Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [174]
The door opened. “What you want?” the fiddler asked coldly.
Swallowing with embarrassment, Kunta said, “Jes’ figgered I’d come by.”
The fiddler spat on the ground. “Look here, nigger, now hear what I tells you. Me an’ Bell an’ de ol’ man been ’scussin’ you. An’ we all ’grees if it’s anythin’ we can’t stan’, it’s a sometimey nigger!” He glared at Kunta. “Dat’s all been wrong wid you! You ain’t sick or nothin’. ”
Kunta stood looking at his shoes. After a moment, the fiddler’s glare softened and he stepped aside. “Since you’s already here, c’mon in. But I’m gon’ tell you—show yo’ ass one mo’ time, an’ you won’t git spoke to again ’til you’s ol’ as Methuselah!”
Choking down his rage and humiliation, Kunta went on inside and sat down, and after a seemingly endless silence between them—which the fiddler obviously had no intention of ending—Kunta forced himself to tell about the back-to-Africa proposal. The fiddler said coolly that he had long known about that, and that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that it would ever happen.
Seeing Kunta’s hurt expression, the fiddler seemed to relent a little. “Lemme tell you sump’n I bets you ain’t heared. Up Nawth in New York, dey’s what you call a Manumission Society dat done open a school for free niggers what wants to get learned readin’ an’ writin’ an’ all kin’s a trades.”
Kunta was so happy and relieved to have the fiddler talking to him again that he hardly heard what his old friend was saying to him. A few minutes later, the fiddler stopped talking for a moment and sat looking at Kunta inquiringly.
“Is I keepin’ you up?” he asked finally.
“Hmm?” said Kunta, who had been lost in thought.
“I ax you a question ’bout five minutes ago.”
“Sorry, I was thinkin’ ’bout sump’n.”
“Well, since you don’ know how to listen, I show ya how its done.” He sat back and crossed his arms.
“Ain’t you gonna go on wid what you was sayin’?” asked Kunta.
“By now I forgits what I was sayin’. Is you forgit what you was thinkin’?”
“It ain’t impo’tant. Jes’ sump’n been on my mind.”
“Better get it off dere fo’ you gits a headache—or gives me one.”
“I cain’t ’scuss it.”
“Huh!” said the fiddler, acting insulted. “If’n dat de way you feel . . . ”
“Ain’t you. It’s jes’ too personal.”
A light began to dawn in the fiddler’s eye. “Don’ tell me! It’s’bout a woman, right?”
“Ain’t nothin’ a de kin’!” said Kunta, flushing with embarrassment. He sat speechless for a moment, then got up and said, “Well, I be late fo’ work, so I see ya later. Thanks fo’ talkin’ wid me.”
“Sho thing. Jes’ lemme know when you wants to do some talkin’.”
How had he known? Kunta asked himself on his way to the stable. And why had he insisted on making him talk about it? It was only with the greatest reluctance that Kunta had even let himself think about it. But lately he could hardly seem to think about anything else. It had to do with the Ghanaian’s advice about planting his seeds.
CHAPTER 63
Long before he met the Ghanaian, Kunta had often had a hollow feeling whenever he thought about the fact that if he had been in Juffure, he would have had three or four sons by now—along with the wife who had given birth to them. What usually occasioned these thoughts was when about once each moon, Kunta had a dream from which he always awakened abruptly in the darkness, acutely embarrassed at the hot stickiness that had just burst from his still rigid foto. Lying awake afterward, he thought not so much of a wife as he did about how he knew that there was hardly a slave row where some man and woman who cared for one another had not simply begun living together in whichever’s hut was the better one.
There were many reasons why Kunta didn’t want to think about getting married. For one thing, it seemed to involve the couple’s “jumpin’ de broomstick” before witnesses from slave row, which seemed ridiculous to Kunta for such a solemn occasion. In a few cases he had heard of, certain favored house servants might repeat