Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [54]
But animals, the kintango told them, were the best teachers of the art of hunting, which was one of the most important things for any Mandinka to learn. When the kintango was satisfied that they had mastered the techniques of marching, he took the kafo, for the next half moon, deep into the bush far from the jujuo, where they built lean-to shelters to sleep in between countless lessons in the secrets of becoming a simbon. Kunta’s eyes never seemed to have been closed before one of the kintango’s assistants was shouting them awake for some training session.
The kintango’s assistants pointed out where lions had recently crouched in wait, then sprung out to kill passing antelope, then where the lions had gone after their meal and laid down to sleep for the rest of the night. The tracks of the antelope herd were followed backward until they almost painted a picture for the boys of what those antelope had done through the day before they met the lions. The kafo inspected the wide cracks in rocks where wolves and hyenas hid. And they began to learn many tricks of hunting that they had never dreamed about. They had never realized, for example, that the first secret of the master simbon was never moving abruptly. The old kintango himself told the boys a story about a foolish hunter who finally starved to death in an area thick with game, because he was so clumsy and made so much noise, darting here and there, that all about him animals of every sort swiftly and silently slipped away without his even realizing that any had been near.
The boys felt like that clumsy hunter during their lessons in imitating the sounds of animals and birds. The air was rent with their grunts and whistles, yet no birds or animals came near. Then they would be told to lie very quietly in hiding places while the kintango and his assistants made what seemed to them the same sounds, and soon animals and birds would come into sight, cocking their heads and looking for the others who had called to them.
When the boys were practicing bird calls one afternoon, suddenly a large-bodied, heavy-beaked bird landed with a great squawking in a nearby bush. “Look!” one boy shouted with a loud laugh—and every other boy’s heart leaped into his throat, knowing that once again that boy’s big mouth was going to get them all punished together. No few times before had he shown his habit of acting before thinking—but now the kintango surprised them. He walked over to the boy and said to him very sternly, “Bring that bird to me—alive!” Kunta and his mates held their breaths as they watched the boy hunch down and creep toward the bush where the heavy bird sat stupidly, turning its head this way and that. But when the boy sprang, the bird managed to escape his clutching hands, frantically beating its stubby wings just enough to raise its big body over the brushtops—and the boy went leaping after it in hot pursuit, soon disappearing from sight.
Kunta and the others were thunderstruck. There was clearly no limit to what the kintango might order them to do. For the next three days and two nights, as the boys went about their training sessions, they cast long glances at each other and then the nearby bush, all of them wondering and worrying about what had befallen their missing mate. As much as he had annoyed them before by getting them all beaten for things he’d done, he seemed never more one of them now that he was gone.
The boys were just getting up on the morning of the fourth day when the jujuo lookout signaled that someone was approaching the village. A moment later came the drum message: It was he. They rushed out to meet him, whooping as if their own brother had returned from a trek to Marrakech. Thin and dirty and covered with cuts and bruises, he swayed slightly as they ran up and slapped him on the back. But he managed a weak smile—and well he should: Under his arm, its wings and feet and beak bound with a length of vine, he held the bird. It looked even worse than he did, but it was still alive.
The kintango came out, and though speaking to that boy, he made