Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [69]
“For toubob money, we turn against our own kind,” said Juffure’s senior elder. “Greed and treason—these are the things toubob has given us in exchange for those he has stolen away.”
No one talked again for a while, and the fire sputtered quietly. Then the kintango spoke again: “Even worse than toubob’s money is that he lies for nothing and he cheats with method, as naturally as he breathes. That’s what gives him the advantage over us.”
A few moments passed, and then a young man of the kafo ahead of Kunta’s asked, “Will toubob never change?”
“That will be,” said one of the elders, “when the river flows backward!”
Soon the fire was a pile of smoking embers, and the men began to get up, stretch themselves, wish one another good night, and head home to their huts. But five young men of the third kafo stayed behind—one to cover with dust the warm ashes of all the fires, and the rest, including Kunta, to take the late shift as village lookouts beyond each corner of Juffure’s high bamboo fence. After such alarming talk around the fire, Kunta knew he would have no trouble staying awake, but he didn’t look forward to spending this particular night beyond the safety of the village.
Ambling through Juffure and out the gate with what he hoped was nonchalance, Kunta waved to his fellow guards and made his way along the outside of the fence—past the sharp-thorned bushes piled thickly against it, and the pointed stakes concealed beneath them—to a leafy hiding place that afforded him a silvery view of the surrounding countryside on this moonlit night. Getting as comfortable as he could, he slung his spear across his lap, drew up his knees, clasped his arms around them for warmth, and settled in for the night. Scanning the bush with straining eyes for any sign of movement, he listened to the shrilling of crickets, the eerie whistling of nightbirds, the distant howling of hyenas, and the shrieks of unwary animals taken by surprise, and he thought about the things the men had said around the fire. When dawn came without an incident, he was almost as surprised that he hadn’t been set upon by slave stealers as he was to realize that for the first time in a moon, he hadn’t spent a moment worrying about his personal problems.
CHAPTER 29
Nearly every day, it seemed to Kunta, Binta would irritate him about something. It wasn’t anything she would do or say, but in other ways—little looks, certain tones of voice—Kunta could tell she disapproved of something about him. It was worst when Kunta added to his possessions new things that Binta hadn’t obtained for him herself. One morning, arriving to serve his breakfast, Binta nearly dropped the steaming couscous upon Kunta when she saw he was wearing his first dundiko not sewn with her own hands. Feeling guilty for having traded a cured hyena hide to get it, Kunta angrily offered her no explanation, though he could feel that his mother was deeply hurt.
From that morning on, he knew that Binta never brought his meals without her eyes raking every item in his hut to see if there was anything else—a stool, a mat, a bucket, a plate, or a pot—that she’d had nothing to do with. If something new had appeared, Binta’s sharp eyes would never miss it. Kunta would sit there fuming while she put on that look of not caring and not noticing that he had seen her wear so many times around Omoro, who knew as well as Kunta did that Binta could hardly wait to get to the village well among her women friends so that she could loudly bemoan her troubles—which was what all Mandinka women did when they disagreed with their husbands.
One day, before his mother arrived with the morning meal, Kunta picked up a beautifully woven basket that Jinna M’Baki, one of Juffure’s several widows, had given him as a gift, and he set it just inside the door of his hut, where his mother would be sure to all but stumble over it. The widow was actually a little younger than Binta, it occurred to him. While Kunta was still a second-kafo goatherd,