Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [222]
“Oh, Kunta!” Whirling around, her eyes wide with shock, loudly she blurted, “Slave trader done been here!” Then, lowering her voice, “I heared Cato’s whippoorwill whistle from out in de fiel’ an’ run to de front window. Minute I seed dat citified-lookin’ white man gittin’ off his hoss, I jes’ smelt what he was! Lawd a mercy! I open de do’ by time he got up de steps. He ax to see my massa or missis. I say my missis in de graveyard, an my massa a doctor off tendin’ sick peoples, an’ no tellin’ what time o’ night he git back. Den he throw me dis smirkin’ look an’ han’ me a l’il card wid printin’ on it an’ say give dat to massa an’ tell ’im he be back. Well, I’se feared not to give massa de card—finally jes’ stuck it on his desk.”
“Bell!” a call came from the living room.
She nearly dropped her spoon. She whispered, “Wait! I be back!” Kunta waited—hardly daring to breathe, expecting the worst—until he saw the returning Bell’s expression of immense relief.
“He say he want early supper! De card gone from de desk where I lef’ it, but he don’ say nothin’ ’bout it, an’ fo’ sho’ I ain’t neither!”
After supper, Bell filled in the field hands on the developments after Cato’s warning whistle, and Aunt Sukey started crying. “Lawd, y’all think massa gwine sell some us?”
“Ain’t nobody never gon’ beat me no mo’!” declared Cato’s big wife, Beulah.
A long, heavy silence fell. Kunta could think of nothing to say; but he knew he wasn’t going to tell them about the auction.
“Well,” said the fiddler finally, “massa ain’t one o’ dem wid a whole lotta spare niggers. An he is one dem got plenty money, so ain’t needin’ to sell no niggers to pay debts, like a whole lot doin’.”
Kunta hoped the others found the fiddler’s comforting effort more convincing than he did. Bell looked a little hopeful. “I knows massa, or anyhow, I thinks I does. Long as we’s all been here, he ain’t never sol’ off nobody—leas’ways nobody ’cept dat buggy driver Luther, an’ dat ’cause Luther drawed dat map to he’p a gal try to ’scape.” Bell hesitated before continuing. “Naw!” she said. “Massa wouldn’t git rid o’ none us widout no good cause—any y’all speck he would?” But nobody answered.
CHAPTER 79
Kunta’s ears were riveted upon the massa’s dialogue with a favorite one of his cousins, who was being brought home for dinner, as they sat in the rear of the rolling buggy.
“At a county seat auction the other day,” the massa was saying, “I was astonished that everyday field hands are selling for twice to three times what they fetched just a few years ago. And from advertisements I read in the Gazette, carpenters, brickmasons, blacksmiths—in fact, slaves who are really experienced in about any trade, leatherworkers, sailmakers, musicians, whatever, are going for as much as twenty-five hundred dollars apiece.”
“It’s the same everywhere since this new cotton gin!” exclaimed the massa’s cousin. “More than a million slaves already in the country, I’ve been told, yet the ships still can’t seem to bring enough new ones to supply those Deep South bottomlands trying to meet the demands of the northern mills.”
“What’s concerning me is that too many otherwise sensible planters, in their eagerness for quick profits, may be starting to see our state of Virginia eventually losing its best quality of slaves, even the best breeding stock,” said Massa Waller, “and that’s just plain foolishness!”
“Foolishness? Hasn’t Virginia got more slaves than she needs? They cost more to maintain than most are worth in work.”
“Maybe today,” said the massa, “but how do we know our needs five, ten years from today? Who would have predicted such a cotton boom as this ten years ago? And I’ve never gone along with your very popular talk of slaves keep costing so much. It seems to me on any place that’s just halfway well organized, don’t they plant, raise, and harvest what they eat? And they’re usually prolific—every pickaninny that’s born is worth money to you, too. A lot are fully capable of learning skills to make them even more valuable. I’m convinced that slaves and land, in that order, are