Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [207]
Similarly crowded wagons were coming out of other plantations’ side roads, and with every happy wave and greeting as they rode along, Kunta became more and more indignant. By the time they reached the campground—in a flowered, rolling meadow— he had worked himself into such a state that he hardly noticed the dozen or more wagons that were already there and the others that were arriving from all directions. As each wagon pulled to a halt, the occupants would pile noisily out, hooting and hallooing, soon joining Bell and the others who were kissing and hugging each other in the milling crowd. Slowly it dawned on Kunta that he had never seen so many black people together in one place in toubob land, and he began to pay attention.
While the women assembled their baskets of food in a grove of trees, the men began to drift toward a small knoll in the middle of a meadow. Kunta tethered the mules to a stake that he drove into the ground, and then sat down behind the wagon—but in such a way that he could see everything that went on. After a while, all of the men had taken seats close to one another on the ground near the top of the knoll—all excepting four who appeared to be the oldest among them; they remained standing. And then, as if by some prearranged signal, the man who seemed to be the oldest of the four—he was very black and stooped and thin, with a white beard—suddenly reared back his head and shouted loudly toward where the women were, “I say, chilluns of JESUS!”
Unable to believe his eyes or ears, Kunta watched as the women swiftly turned and shouted as one, “Yes, Lawd!” then came hurrying and jostling to sit behind the gathered men. Kunta was astonished at how much it reminded him of the way the people of Juffure sat at the Council of Elders’ meetings once each moon.
The old man shouted again: “I say—is y’all chilluns of JESUS?”
“Yes, Lawd!”
Now, the three other old men stepped out in front of the oldest one, and one after another, they cried out:
“Gon’ come a time we be jes’ GAWD’s slaves!”
“Yes, Lawd!” shouted all who sat on the ground.
“You make youse’f ready, Jesus STAY ready!”
“Yes, Lawd!”
“Know what de Holy Father said to me jes’ now? He say, ‘Ain’t NOBODY strangers!’”
A massed shouting rose, all but drowning out what the oldest of the four had begun to say. In a strange way even Kunta felt some of the excitement. Finally the crowd quieted enough for him to hear what the graybeard was saying.
“Chilluns o’ Gawd, dey is a PROMISE lan’! Dat’s where ev’y-body b’lieve in Him gon’ go! An’ dem dat b’lieve, dat’s where dey gon’ LIVE—for all e-terni-ty! . . . ”
Soon the old man was sweating profusely, his arms flailing the air, his body quivering with the intensity of his singsong exclamations, his voice rasping with emotion. “It tell us in de Bible dat de lamb an’ de lion gwine lay down TOGETHER!” The old man threw his head backward, flinging his hands toward the sky. “Ain’t gon’ be no massas an’ slaves NO MO’! Jes’ gon’ be all GAWD’s CHILLUNS!”
Then, suddenly, some woman leaped up and began shrieking, “O Jesus! O Jesus! O Jesus! O Jesus!” It set off others around her, and within minutes two dozen or more women were screaming and jerking themselves about. It flashed into Kunta’s mind how the fiddler had once told him that on some plantations where the massas forbade slaves to worship, they concealed a large iron pot in the woods nearby, where those who felt the spirit move them would stick their heads inside and shout, the pot muffling the noise sufficiently for it not to be heard by the massa or the overseer.
It was in the middle of this thought that Kunta saw, with profound shock and embarrassment, that Bell was among the women who were staggering