Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [76]
The trip back seemed shorter to Kunta. Lamin’s feet bled worse, but he walked faster when Kunta handed him the quills to carry, saying “Your mother should enjoy these.” Lamin’s happiness was no greater than his own at having taken his brother traveling, just as their father had done for him—just as Lamin would one day take Suwadu, and Suwadu would take Madi. They were approaching Juffure’s travelers’ tree when Kunta heard Lamin’s headload fall off again. Kunta whirled angrily, but then he saw his brother’s pleading expression. “All right, get it later!” he snapped. Without a word, his aching muscles and his bleeding feet forgotten, Lamin bolted past Kunta for the village, his thin legs racing faster than they’d ever taken him.
By the time Kunta entered the village gate, excited women and children were clustered around Binta, who was sticking the six quills of gold into her hair, clearly bursting with relief and happiness. A moment later, Binta’s and Kunta’s faces exchanged a look of tenderness and warmth far beyond the usual greetings that passed between mother and her grown-up son home from traveling. The women’s clacking tongues soon let everyone in Juffure know what the two oldest Kinte sons had brought home with them. “There’s a cow on Binta’s head!” shouted an old grandmother—there was enough gold in the quills to buy a cow—and the rest of the women took up that cry.
“You did well,” said Omoro simply when Kunta met him. But the feeling they shared without further words was even greater than with Binta. In the days that followed, elders seeing Kunta around the village began to speak to him and smile in a special way, and he solemnly replied with his respects. Even Suwadu’s little second-kafo mates greeted Kunta as a grown-up, saying “Peace!” and then standing with palms folded over their chests until he passed by. Kunta even chanced to overhear Binta one day gossiping about “the two men I feed,” and he was filled with pride that his mother had finally realized he was a man.
It was all right with Kunta now not only for Binta to feed him, but even to do such things as searching on Kunta’s head for ticks, as she had been resenting not doing. And Kunta felt it all right now also to visit her hut again now and then. As for Binta, she bustled about all smiles, even humming to herself as she cooked. In an offhand manner, Kunta would ask if she needed him to do anything, she would say so if she did, and he did whatever it was as soon as he could. If he but glanced at Lamin or Suwadu, when they were playing too loudly, for example, they were instantly still and quiet. And Kunta liked tossing Madi into the air, catching him as he fell, and Madi liked it even more. As for Lamin, he clearly regarded his man-brother as ranking second only to Allah. He cared for Kunta’s seven goats—which were multiplying well—as if they were goats of gold, and he eagerly helped Kunta to raise his small farm plot of couscous and groundnuts.
Whenever Binta needed to get some work done around the hut, Kunta would take all three children off her hands, and she would stand smiling in her doorway as he marched