Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [221]
“Oyez, oyez, gentlemen of Spotsylvania, I offer the finest lot of niggers ever seen in y’all’s lives!” As the auctioneer shouted to the crowd, his beefy, younger assistant jerked an old slave woman up onto the platform. “A fine cook!” he began—but she began screaming, gesturing frantically to a white man in the crowd: “Massa Philip! Philip! you act like you done forgot I worked fo’ you an’ yo’ brudders’ daddy when y’all was jes’ young’uns! Knows I’se ol’ an’ ain’t much now, but please, Lawd, keep me! I work for you hard, Massa Philip! Please, suh, don’ let ’em whup me to death somewheres down South!”
“Stop the buggy, Toby!” the massa ordered.
Kunta’s blood ran cold as he reined the horses to a halt. Why after all these years of showing no interest in slave auctions did Massa Waller want to watch one? Was he thinking of buying someone, or what? Was it the pitiful woman’s heartbreaking outburst? Whomever she had appealed to yelled back some ridicule, and the crowd was still laughing when a trader bought her for seven hundred dollars.
“He’p me, Gawd, Jesus, Lawd, he’p me!” she cried as the trader’s black helper began shoving her roughly toward the slave pen. “Git yo’ black hands off’n me, nigger!” she screamed, and the crowd rocked with laughter. Kunta bit his lip, blinking back tears.
“Prize buck o’ the lot, gentlemen!” Next on the platform was a young black man, glaring baleful hatred, his barrel chest and thickly muscled body crisscrossed with the angry, reddish welts of a very recent, severe lashing. “This one jes’ needed some remindin’! He’ll heal up quick! He can plow a mule into the ground! Pick you four hundred pounds of cotton any day! Look at ’im! A natural stud—if your wenches ain’t bearin’ every year like they ought! A steal at any price!” The chained young man brought fourteen hundred dollars.
Kunta’s vision blurred anew as a weeping mulatto woman great with child was led onto the platform. “Two for the price of one, or one for free, dependin’ on how you look at it!” shouted the auctioneer. “Pickaninnies today worth a hundred dollars soon’s they draw breath!” She brought a thousand dollars.
It was becoming unendurable when the next one came, being pulled along by her chain—and Kunta nearly fell from his seat. The teen-aged black girl, quaking with terror, in her build, her skin color, even her facial features, might have been an older Kizzy! As if Kunta had been poleaxed, he heard the auctioneer start his spiel: “A fine trained housemaid—or she’s prime breedin’ stock if you want one!” he added with a leering wink. Inviting closer inspection, he abruptly loosened the neckpiece of the girl’s sack dress, which fell about her feet as she screamed, weeping, flinging her arms downward in an effort to cover her nakedness from the ogling crowd, several of whom jostled forward, reaching out to poke and fondle her.
“That’s enough! Let’s get out of here!” the massa commanded—an instant before Kunta felt he would have done it anyway.
Kunta hardly saw the road before them as they rode back toward the plantation; his mind was reeling. What if the girl had really been his Kizzy? What if the cook had been his Bell? What if they both were sold away from him? Or he from them? It was too horrible to think about—but he could think of nothing else.
Even before the buggy reached the big house, Kunta intuitively sensed that something was wrong, perhaps because it was a warm summer evening, yet he saw none of the slave-row people strolling or sitting around outside. Dropping the massa off, Kunta hurriedly unhitched and stabled the horses, then headed straight for the kitchen, where he knew Bell now would be preparing the massa’s supper. She didn’t hear him until he asked through the screen door, “You awright?