Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [220]
Kunta saw Bell’s sudden agitation. “Dat ol’ man—” she asked, “he real black an’ skinny, kin’ o’ stooped over an’ got a white beard an’ had a big scar down his neck?”
The fiddler looked startled. “Yeah! Sho’ was! Sho’ did. All dem things—you know who he was?”
Bell looked at Kunta as if she were ready to weep. “Dat de preacher what christened Kizzy,” she said somberly.
Kunta was visiting in the fiddler’s cabin late the next day when Cato knocked at the open door. “What you doin’ out dere? Come on in!” the fiddler shouted.
Cato did. Both Kunta and the fiddler were very glad that he had come. Only recently they had expressed mutual wishing that the quiet, solid lead field hand Cato was closer to them, as the old gardener had been.
Cato seemed ill at ease. “Jes’ want to say I b’lieves it be good if y’all maybe don’ tell de scaries’ things y’all hears ’bout so many folks gittin’ sol’ off down South—” Cato hesitated. “Reason why I’m tellin’ y’all de truth, out in de fields de folks is gittin’ so scairt dey gwine git sol’, dey jes’ can’ hardly keep dey minds on no workin’.” Again he paused briefly. “Leas’ways nobody ’ceptin’ me an’ dat boy Noah. I figgers if I gits sol’, well, I’se jes’ sol’, ain’t much I can do’bout it. An’ dat Noah—don’ seem like he scairt o’ nothin’.”
After several minutes of talk among the three of them—during which Kunta sensed Cato’s warm response to their warm welcoming of his visit—they agreed that it would probably be best if only they, not even Bell, shared the news that was the most frightening, that could only alarm the others needlessly.
But one night in the cabin a week or so later, Bell looked up abruptly from her knitting and said, “Seem like de cat got some tongues roun’ here—either dat or white folks done quit sellin’ niggers, an’ I knows I got mo’ sense dan dat!”
Grunting in embarrassment, Kunta was amazed that she—and probably all the other people on slave row—had guessed intuitively that he and the fiddler weren’t telling them all they knew anymore. So he began reporting slave sale stories again—omitting the most unpleasant details. But he stressed news about successful runaways, featuring the black grapevine tales he had heard about wily, fast-talking slaves in the act of escaping and making fools of ignorant poor cracker “paterollers.” One night he told them of a high-yaller butler and a black stablehand having stolen a buggy, horse, and fine clothing and a hat that the high yaller wore while he pretended to be a rich massa loudly cursing his black buggy driver whenever he drew within earshot of any white patrols they met along their rapid buggy ride into the North and automatic freedom. Another time Kunta told of a no less audacious slave who always galloped his mule almost into the “paterollers’” faces before halting and unrolling with a flourish a large, fine-print document that he said would explain his urgent errand for his massa—gambling always correctly that the illiterate white crackers would wave him on rather than admit they couldn’t read. Kunta often now set the slave-row people to laughing—telling such as how other escaping blacks had so perfected an act of chronic stuttering that disgusted “paterollers” told them to get along their way rather than spend obvious hours trying to question them. He told of runaways’ affected fearful reluctance before finally apologetically confiding how much their rich, powerful massas despised poor whites and how harshly they dealt with any interference with their servants. One night Kunta set slave row to roaring about a house slave he’d been told of who reached safety up North just a jump ahead of his hotly pursuing massa, who quickly summoned a policeman. “You know you my nigger!” the massa screamed wildly at his slave, who simply looked blank and kept exclaiming, “He’p me Gawd, I ain’t never sot eyes on dat white man!”—convincing a gathered crowd, along with the policeman who ordered the furious white man to quiet down and move on or he’d have to arrest him for disturbing the peace.
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