Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [237]
“You niggers can’t hear?” The sheriff’s hand was withdrawing the pistol, and Kunta was tensed to plunge for it—just as Bell’s voice trembled behind him “Yassa”—and he felt her desperately pulling his arm. Then his feet were moving backward throught the doorway—and suddenly the door was slammed behind them, a key clicking sharply in the lock.
As Kunta crouched with his wife in the hall, drowning in his shame, they heard some tense, muted conversation between the massa and the sheriff ... then the sound of feet moving, scuffling faintly ... then Kizzy’s crying, and the sound of the front door slamming shut.
“Kizzy! Kizzy chile! Lawd Gawd, don’t let ’em sell my Kizzy!” As she burst out the back door with Kunta behind her, Bell’s screams reached away out to where the field hands were, who came racing. Cato arrived in time to see Bell screeching insanely, springing up and down with Kunta bearhugging her to the ground. Massa Waller was descending the front steps ahead of the sheriff, who was hauling Kizzy after him—weeping and jerking herself backward—at the end of a chain.
“Mammy! Maaaaaaamy!” Kizzy screamed.
Bell and Kunta leaped up from the ground and went raging around the side of the house like two charging lions. The sheriff drew his gun and pointed it straight at Bell: She stopped in her tracks. She stared at Kizzy. Bell tore the question from her throat: “You done dis thing deys says?” They all watched Kizzy’s agony as her reddened, weeping eyes gave her answer in a mute way—darting imploringly from Bell and Kunta to the sheriff and the massa—but she said nothing.
“O my Lawd Gawd!” Bell shrieked. “Massa, please have mercy! She ain’t meant to do it! She ain’t knowed what she was doin’! Missy Anne de one teached ’er to write!”
Massa Waller spoke glacially. “The law is the law. She’s broken my rules. She’s committed a felony. She may have aided in a murder. I’m told one of those white men may die.”
“Ain’t her cut de man, Massa! Massa, she worked for you ever since she big ’nough to carry your slopjar! An’ I done cooked an’ waited on you han’ an’ foot over forty years, an’ he ...” gesturing at Kunta, she stuttered, “he done driv you eve’ywhere you been for near ’bout dat long. Massa, don’ all dat count for sump’n?”
Massa Waller would not look directly at her. “You were doing your jobs. She’s going to be sold—that’s all there is to it.”
“Jes’ cheap, low-class white folks splits up families!” shouted Bell. “You ain’t dat kin’!”
Angrily, Massa Waller gestured to the sheriff, who began to wrench Kizzy roughly toward the wagon.
Bell blocked their path. “Den sell me an’ ’er pappy wid ’er! Don’ split us up!”
“Get out of the way!” barked the sheriff, roughly shoving her aside.
Bellowing, Kunta sprang forward like a leopard, pummeling the sheriff to the ground with his fists.
“Save me, Fa!” Kizzy screamed. He grabbed her around the waist and began pulling frantically at her chain.
When the sheriff’s pistol butt crashed above his ear, Kunta’s head seemed to explode as he crumpled to his knees. Bell lunged toward the sheriff, but his outflung arm threw her off balance, falling heavily as he dumped Kizzy into the back of his wagon and snapped a lock on her chain. Leaping nimbly onto the seat, the sheriff lashed the horse, whose forward jerk sent the wagon lurching as Kunta clambered up. Dazed, head pounding, ignoring the pistol, he went scrambling after the wagon as it gathered speed.
“Missy Anne! ... Missy Annnnnnnnnnnne!” Kizzy was screeching it at the top of her voice. “Missy Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnne!” Again and again, the screams came; they seemed to hang in the air behind the wagon swiftly rolling toward the main road.
When Kunta began stumbling, gasping for breath, the wagon was a half mile away; when he halted, for a long time he stood looking after it until the dust had settled and the road stretched empty as far as he could see.
The massa turned and walked very quickly with his head down back into the house, past Bell huddled sobbing by the bottom step. As if Kunta were sleepwalking, he