Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [217]
Massa John was as good as his word. For the next two days, he enraged Bell by insisting upon watching Kizzy taste his food before he’d eat it. He roamed the fields on horseback during the day and sat on the porch at night with a shotgun across his lap—his vigilance so absolute that the slave-row people dared not try even discussing the uprising, let alone plan one of their own. After receiving and reading the next issue of the Gazette, Massa John burned it in the fireplace, and when a neighboring massa visited one afternoon, he ordered Bell to leave the house and they huddled talking in the study with the windows shut. So it was impossible for anyone even to find out more about the plot, or especially about its aftermath, which was what had Bell and the others worried sick—not about Kunta, since he’d be safe with the massa, but about the fiddler, who had left on the day before they had to play at a big society ball in Richmond. The slave-row people could only imagine what might be happening to black strangers in Richmond at the hands of enraged, panic-stricken whites.
The fiddler still hadn’t returned when Kunta and the massa did—three days early—their trip cut short by the uprising. Upon Massa John’s departure later that day, the restrictions he’d imposed were relaxed somewhat, although not completely, and the massa was very cold toward everyone. It wasn’t until Kunta and Bell were alone in their cabin that he could tell her of what he’d overheard in Fredericksburg: that the black revolters already captured had been tortured into helping the authorities round up others involved, and some had confessed that the revolt had been planned by a free blacksmith named Gabriel Prosser, who had recruited around two hundred hand-picked black men—butlers, gardeners, janitors, waiters, ironworkers, rope makers, coal miners, boatmen, even preachers—and trained them for more than a year. Prosser was still at large, and the militia was combing the countryside for suspects, said Kunta, poor-white “paterollers” were terrorizing the roads; and there were rumors about some massas beating slaves, some to death, for little or no provocation.
“Look like our only hope is we’s all dey got,” said Bell. “If ’n dey kills us off, dey won’t have no slaves no mo’.”
“Fiddler back?” asked Kunta, ashamed that he’d been so engrossed in telling what had happened that he hadn’t thought of his friend until now.
Bell shook her head. “We all been mighty worried. But dat fiddler a crafty nigger. He get home awright.”
Kunta didn’t fully agree. “He ain’t home yet.”
When the fiddler didn’t return the next day, the massa wrote a message notifying the sheriff, and told Kunta to deliver it to the county seat. Kunta had done so—seeing the sheriff read the message and silently shake his head. Then returning homeward, Kunta had driven slowly for three or four miles, staring gloomily at the road ahead, wondering if he’d ever see the fiddler again, feeling badly that he had never actually expressed that he considered him a good friend—despite his drinking, his cussing, and other shortcomings—when he heard a poor imitation of a white “cracker” drawl, “Hey, nigger!”
Kunta thought he must be hearing things. “Where de hell you think you goin’?” the voice came again, and reining the horses, Kunta looked around and along both sides of the road, but saw nobody. Then, suddenly, “You ain’t got no travel pass, boy, you in a heap o’ trouble”—and there, climbing from a ditch, ragged and torn, cut and bruised, covered with mud while carrying