Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [55]
The big bird was quickly roasted and eaten with great relish by everyone except his captor, who was so tired that he couldn’t stay awake long enough for it to cook. He was permitted to sleep through the day and also through the night, which Kunta and the others had to spend out in the bush on a hunting lesson. The next day, during the first rest period, the boy told his hushed mates what a torturous chase he had led, until finally, after two days and a night, he had laid a trap that the bird walked into. After trussing it up—including the snapping beak—he had somehow kept himself awake for another day and night, and by following the stars as they had been taught, had found his way back to the jujuo. For a while after that, the other boys had very little to say to him. Kunta told himself that he wasn’t really jealous, it was just that the boy seemed to think that his exploit—and the kintango’s approval of it—had made him more important than his kafo mates. And the very next time the kintango’s assistants ordered an afternoon of wrestling practice, Kunta seized the chance to grab that boy and throw him roughly to the ground.
By the second moon of manhood training, Kunta’s kafo had become almost as skilled at survival in the forest as they would have been in their own village. They could now both detect and follow the all but invisible signs of animals, and now they were learning the secret rituals and prayers of the forefathers that could make a very great simbon himself invisible to animals. Every bite of meat they ate now was either trapped by the boys or shot by their slings and arrows. They could skin an animal twice as fast as they could before, and cook the meat over the nearly smokeless fires they had learned to build by striking flint close to dry moss under light, dry sticks. Their meals of roasted game—sometimes small bush rats—were usually topped off with insects toasted crispy in the coals.
Some of the most valuable lessons they learned weren’t even planned. One day, during a rest period, when a boy was testing his bow and one careless arrow happened to strike a nest of kurburungo bees high in a tree, a cloud of angry bees swarmed down—and once again all the boys suffered for the mistake of one. Not even the fastest runner among them escaped the painful stings.
“The simbon never shoots an arrow without knowing what it will hit,” the kintango told them later. Ordering the boys to rub one another’s puffed and hurting places with shea tree butter, he said, “Tonight, you will deal with those bees in the proper manner.” By nightfall, the boys had piled dry moss beneath the tree that held the nest. After one of the kintango’s assistants set it afire, the other one threw into the flames a quantity of leaves from a certain bush. Thick, choking smoke rose into the tree’s upper limbs, and soon dead bees were dropping around the boys by the thousands, as harmlessly as rain. In the morning, Kunta and his kafo were shown how to melt down the honeycombs—skimming off the rest of the dead bees—so that they could eat their fill of honey. Kunta could almost feel himself tingle with that extra strength it was said honey would give to great hunters when they were in need of quick nourishment deep in the forest.
But no matter what they went through, no matter how much they added to their knowledge and abilities, the old kintango was never satisfied. His demands and his discipline remained so strict that the boys were torn between fear and anger most of the time—when they weren’t too weary to feel either. Any command to one boy that wasn’t instantly and perfectly performed still brought a beating to the