Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [179]
It opened almost before his knuckles touched the wood, and Bell stepped immediately outside. Glancing down at the harness, and then at Kunta, she said nothing—and when he didn’t either, she began to walk slowly down toward the back fencerow; he fell into step beside her. The half moon had begun to rise, and in its pale light they moved along without a word. When a groundvine entangled the shoe on his left foot, Kunta stumbled—his shoulder brushing against Bell—and he all but sprang away. Ransacking his brain for something—anything—to say, he wished wildly that he was walking with the gardener or the fiddler, or practically anyone except Bell.
Finally it was she who broke the silence. She said abruptly, “De white folks done swore in dat Gen’l Washington for de Pres’dent.” Kunta wanted to ask her what that was, but he didn’t, hoping that she’d keep on talking. “An’ it’s annuder massa name of John Adams is Vice Pres’dent,” she went on.
Floundering, he felt that he must say something to keep the talk going. He said finally, “Rode massa over to see his brother’s young’un yestiddy,” instantly feeling foolish, as he knew full well that Bell already knew that.
“Lawd, he do love dat chile!” Bell said, feeling foolish, since that’s about all she ever said about little Missy Anne whenever the subject came up. The silence had built up a little bit again when she went on. “Don’t know how much you knows ’bout massa’s brother. He de Spotsylvania County clerk, but he ain’t never had our massa’s head fo’ binness.” Bell was quiet for a few more steps. “I keeps my ears sharp on little things gits dropped. I knows whole lot more’n anybody thinks I knows.”
She glanced over at Kunta. “I ain’t never had no use for dat Massa John—an’ I’s sure you ain’t neither—but dere’s sump’n you ought to know ’bout him dat I ain’t never tol’ you. It weren’t him had your foot cut off. Fact, he pitched a fit wid dem low-down po’ white trash what done it. He’d hired ’em to track you wid dey nigger dogs, an’ dey claim how come dey done it was you tried to kill one of ’em wid a rock.” Bell paused. “I ’members it like yestiddy when Sheriff Brock come a-rushin’ you to our massa.” Under the moonlight, Bell looked at Kunta. “You near ’bout dead, massa said. He got so mad when Massa John say he ain’t got no use for you no more wid your foot gone, he swore he gon’ buy you from him, an’ he done it, too. I seen de very deed he bought you wid. He took over a good-sized farm long wid you in de place of money his brother owed him. It’s dat big farm wid de pond right where de big road curve, you passes it all de time.”
Kunta knew the farm instantly. He could see the pond in his mind, and the surrounding fields. “But dey business dealin’s don’t make no difference, ’cause all dem Wallers is very close,” Bell continued. “Dey’s ’mongst de oldes’ families in Virginia. Fact, dey was ol’ family in dat England even fo’ day come crost de water to here. Was all kinds of ‘Sirs’ an’ stuff, all b’longin’ to de Church of England. Was one of dem what writ poems, name of Massa Edmund Waller. His younger brother Massa John Waller was de one what comes here first. He weren’t but eighteen, I’s heared massa say, when some King Charles de Secon’ give him a big lan’ grant over where Kent County is now.”
Their pace had become much slower as Bell talked, and Kunta couldn’t have been more pleased with Bell’s steady talking, although he had already heard from some other Waller family cooks at least some of the things she was saying, though he never would have told her that.
“Anyhow, dis John Waller married a Miss Mary Key, an’ dey built de Enfield big house where you takes massa to see his folks. An’ dey had three boys, ’specially John de Secon’, de younges’, who come to be a whole heap of things—read de law while he was a sheriff, den was in de House of Burgesses, an’ he helped to found Fredericksburg an’ to put together Spotsylvania County. It was him an’ his Missis Dorothy what built Newport, an’ dey had six young’uns. An’ co