Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [176]
One day after he had been talking for some time with the gardener and the fiddler and worked the conversation very slowly around to Bell, it seemed to Kunta that he had just the right tone of casualness in his voice when he asked, “Where she was fo’ she come here?” But his heart sank when they instantly sat up straighter and looked at him, sensing something in the air.
“Well,” the gardener said after a minute, “I ’members she come here ’bout two years fo’ you. But she ain’t never done much talkin’’bout herself. So ain’t much I knows more’n you does—.”
The fiddler said Bell had never spoken of her past to him either. Kunta couldn’t put his finger on what it was about their expressions that irritated him. Yes, he could: It was smugness.
The fiddler scratched his right ear. “Sho’ is funny you ax ’bout Bell,” he said, nodding in the gardener’s direction, “’cause me’n him ain’t been long back ’scussin’ y’all.” He looked carefully at Kunta.
“We was sayin’ seem like y’all both might be jes’ what de other’n needs,” said the gardener.
Outraged, Kunta sat with his mouth open, only nothing came out.
Still scratching his ear, the fiddler wore a sly look. “Yeah, her big behin’ be too much to handle for most mens.”
Kunta angrily started to speak, but the gardener cut him off, demanding sharply, “Listen here, how long you ain’t touched no woman?”
Kunta glared daggers. “Twenty years anyhow!” exclaimed the fiddler.
“Lawd, Gawd!” said the gardener. “You better git you some ’fo’ you dries up!”
“If he ain’t a-reddy!” the fiddler shot in. Unable to speak but able to contain himself a moment longer, Kunta leaped up and stamped out. “Don’ you worry!” the fiddler shouted after him. “You ain’t gon’ stay dry long wid her!”
CHAPTER 64
For the next few days, whenever Kunta wasn’t off driving the massa somewhere, he spent both his mornings and afternoons oiling and polishing the buggy. Since he was right outside the barn in any one’s view, it couldn’t be said that he was isolating himself again, but at the same time it said that his work was keeping him too busy to spend time talking with the fiddler and the gardener—at whom he was still furious for what they had said about him and Bell.
Being off by himself also gave him more time to sort out his feelings for her. Whenever he was thinking of something he didn’t like about her, his polishing rag would become a furious blur against the leather; and whenever he was feeling better about her, it would move slowly and sensuously across the seats, sometimes almost stopping as his mind lingered on some disarming quality of hers. Whatever her shortcomings, he had to admit that she had done a great deal in his best interests over the years. He felt certain that Bell had even played a quiet role in the massa’s having selected him as his buggy driver. There was no question that in her own subtle ways, Bell had more influence on the massa than anyone else on the plantation, or probably all of them put together. And a parade of smaller things came and went through Kunta’s mind. He remembered a time back when he was gardening and Bell had noticed that he was often rubbing at his eyes, which had been itching him in a maddening way. Without a word, she had come out to the garden one morning with some wide leaves still wet with dewdrops, which she shook into his eyes, whereupon the itching had soon stopped.
Not that he felt any less strongly about the things he disapproved of in Bell, Kunta reminded himself as the rag picked up speed—most particularly her disgusting habit of smoking tobacco in a pipe. Even more objectionable was her way of dancing whenever there was some festivity among the blacks. He didn’t feel that women shouldn’t dance, or do so less than enthusiastically. What bothered him was that Bell seemed to go out of her way to make her behind shake in a certain manner, which he figured was the reason the fiddler and the gardener had said what they did about her. Bell’s behind, of course, wasn’t any