Roots (66 page)

Now Kunta hesitated. Then he said, “Dat ’tween you and her.”

“I tell her in good time,” said Noah.

Impulsively, Kunta grasped the young man’s hand between both of his own. “I hopes you makes it.”

“Well, I see you!” said Noah, and he turned to walk back toward slave row.

Sitting that night in the cabin’s front room, staring into the low flames of the hickory log burning in the fireplace, Kunta wore a faraway expression that made both Bell and Kizzy know out of past experiences that it would be futile to make any effort to talk with him. Quietly Bell knitted. Kizzy was as usual hunched over the table practicing her writing. At sunup, Kunta decided he would ask Allah to grant Noah good luck. He thought afresh that if Noah did get away, it would yet again crush utterly Kizzy’s trusting faith that already had been wounded so badly by Missy Anne. He glanced up and watched his precious Kizzy’s face as her lips moved silently, following her finger across a page. The lives of all black people in the toubob land seemed full of suffering, but he wished he could spare her some of it.

I
t was a week after Kizzy’s sixteenth birthday, the early morning of the first Monday of October, when the slave-row field hands were gathering as usual to leave for their day’s work, when someone asked curiously, “Where Noah at?” Kunta, who happened to be standing nearby talking to Cato, knew immediately that he was gone. He saw heads glancing around, Kizzy’s among them, straining to maintain a mask of casual surprise. Their eyes met—she had to look away.

“Thought he was out here early wid you,” said Noah’s mother Ada to Cato.

“Naw, I was aimin’ to give ’im de debbil fo’ sleepin’ late,” said Cato.

Cato went banging his fist at the closed door of the cabin, once occupied by the old gardener, but which Noah had inherited recently on his eighteenth birthday. Jerking the door open, Cato charged inside, shouting angrily, “
Noah!”
He came out looking worried. “Am’t like ’im,” he said quietly. Then he ordered everyone to go quickly and search their cabins, the toilet, the storerooms, the fields.

All the others ran off in all directions; Kunta volunteered to search the barn. “NOAH! NOAH!” he called loudly for the benefit of any who might hear, although he knew there was no need of it, as the animals in their stalls stopped chewing their morning hay
to look at him oddly. Then, peering from the door and seeing no one coming that way, Kunta hastened back inside to climb quickly to the hayloft, where he prostrated himself and made his second appeal to Allah for Noah’s successful escape.

Cato worriedly dispatched the rest of the field hands off to their work, telling them that he and the fiddler would join them shortly; the fiddler had wisely volunteered to help with the fieldwork ever since his income from playing for dances had fallen off.

“B’lieve he done run,” the fiddler muttered to Kunta as they stood in the backyard.

As Kunta grunted, Bell said, “He ain’t never been missin’, an’ he don’t slip off nights.”

Then Cato said what was uppermost in all of their minds. “Gwine have to tell massa, Lawd have mercy!” After a hurried consultation, Bell recommmended that Massa Waller not be told until after he had eaten his breakfast, “’case de boy done jes’ eased off somewhere an’ got scairt to slip back fo’ it’s dark again, less’n dem road paterollers cotches ’im.”

Bell served the massa his favorite breakfast—canned peaches in heavy cream, hickory-smoked fried ham, scrambled eggs, grits, heated apple butter, and buttermilk biscuits—and waited for him to ask for his second cup of coffee before speaking.

“Massa—” she swallowed, “—Massa, Cato ax me to tell you look like dat boy Noah ain’t here dis mawnin’!”

The massa set down his cup, frowning. “Where is he, then? Are you trying to tell me he’s off drunk or tomcatting somewhere, and you think he’ll slip back today, or are you saying you think he’s trying to run?”

“All us sayin’, Massa,” Bell quavered, “is seem like he ain’t here, an’ us done searched eve’ywheres.”

Massa Waller studied his coffee cup. “I’ll give him until tonight—no, tomorrow morning—before I take action.”

“Massa, he a good boy, born and bred right here on yo’ place, an’ work good all his life, ain’t never give you, or nobody a minute’s trouble—”

He looked levelly at Bell. “If he’s trying to run, he’ll be sorry.”

“Yassuh, Massa.” Bell fled to the yard, where she told the others what the massa had said. But no sooner had Cato and the fiddler hurried off toward the fields than Massa Waller called Bell back and ordered the buggy.

All day long, as he drove him from one patient to the next, Kunta soared from exhilaration—as he thought of Noah running—to anguish as he thought of the thorns and the briars and the dogs. And he felt what hope and suffering Kizzy must be enduring.

At that night’s huddled gathering, everyone spoke barely above whispers.

“Dat boy done lef’ here. Fo’ now, I done seed it in his eyes,” Aunt Sukey said.

“Well, I knows he ain’t no young’un to jes’ steal off gittin’ drunk, no suh!” said Sister Mandy.

Noah’s mother Ada was hoarse from a day of weeping. “My baby sho’ ain’t never talked to me nothin’ ’bout no runnin’! Lawd, y’all reckon massa gwine sell ’im?” No one chose to reply.

When they returned to their cabin, Kizzy burst into tears the moment she got inside; Kunta felt helpless and tongue-tied. But without a word, Bell went over to the table, put her arms around her sobbing daughter, and pulled her head against her stomach.

Tuesday morning came, still with no sign of Noah, and Massa Waller ordered Kunta to drive him to the county seat, where he went directly to the Spotsylvania jailhouse. After about half an hour, he came out with the sheriff, ordering Kunta brusquely to tie the sheriff’s horse behind the buggy and then to drive them home. “We’ll be dropping the sheriff off at the Creek Road,” said the massa.

“So many niggers runnin’ these days, can’t hardly keep track they’d ruther take their chances in the woods than get sold down South—” The sheriff was talking from when the buggy started rolling.

“Since I’ve had a plantation,” said Massa Waller, “I’ve never sold one of mine unless my rules were broken, and they know that well.”

“But it’s mighty rare niggers appreciate good masters, Doctor, you know that,” said the sheriff. “You say this boy around eighteen? Well, I’d guess if he’s like most field hands his age, there’s fair odds he’s tryin’ to make it North.” Kunta stiffened. “If he was a house nigger, they’re generally slicker, faster talkers, they like to try passin’ themselves off as free niggers or tell the road patrollers they’re on their master’s errands and lost their traveling passes, tryin’ to make it to Richmond or some other big city where they can easier hide among so many niggers and maybe find jobs.” The sheriff paused. “Besides his mammy on your place, this boy of yours got any other kin livin’ anywheres he might be tryin’ to get to?”

“None that I know of.”

“Well, would you happen to know if he’s got some gal somewhere, because these young bucks get their sap risin’, they’ll leave your mule in the field and take off.”

“Not to my knowledge,” said the massa. “But there’s a gal on my place, my cook’s young’un, she’s still fairly young, fifteen or sixteen, if I guess correctly. I don’t know if they’ve been haystacking or not.”

Kunta nearly quit breathing.

“I’ve known ’em to have pickaninnies at the age of twelve!” the sheriff chortled. “Plenty of these young nigger wenches even draw white men, and nigger boys’ll do anything!”

Through churning outrage, Kunta heard Massa Waller’s abrupt chilliness. “I have the least possible personal contact with my slaves, and neither know nor concern myself regarding their personal affairs!”

“Yes, yes, of course,” said the sheriff quickly.

But then the massa’s tone eased. “Along your line of thinking, though, this boy could have slipped off to see some other plantation gal. I don’t know, and of course the others wouldn’t say if they did. In fact, anything might have happened—some fight, perhaps; he could be half dead somewhere. It’s even possible that some of these slave-stealing poor whites could have grabbed him. That’s been going on around here, as you know; even some of the more unscrupulous traders engage in it. Again, I don’t know. But I’m told this is the boy’s first time being unaccounted for.”

His general manner now more careful, the sheriff said, “You told me he was born on your place and never traveled much?”

“I’d guess he wouldn’t have any idea how to get even to Richmond, let alone North,” said the massa.

“Niggers exchange a lot of information, though,” the sheriff said. “We’ve picked up some and beat it out of them that they practically had maps in their heads of where they’d been told to run and where to hide. A lot of this can be traced to nigger-loving white people like the Quakers and Methodists. But since he ain’t never been nowhere, ain’t never tried runnin’ before, and ain’t never give you no other trouble to now, sounds like to me a good bet a couple more nights in the woods might bring him back, scared to death and half starved. A nigger’s powerfully moved by a hungry belly. And that’ll save you spending to advertise in the
Gazette
or hiring some of these nigger catchers with their dogs to track him. He just don’t sound to my experience like one of them hard, outlaw niggers that’s slipping around in and out of the swamps and woods right now, killing people’s cattle and hogs like they would rabbits.”

“I hope you’re right,” said Massa Waller, “but whatever the case, he’s broken my rules by leaving without permission to begin with, so I’ll be selling him South immediately.” Kunta’s fists squeezed the reins so tightly that his nails dug into his palms. “Then that’s
a good twelve to fifteen hundred dollars you’ve got runnin’ around loose somewhere,” said the sheriff. “You’ve written me his description, I’ll sure get it to the county road patrollers, and if we pick ’im up—or we hear anything—I’ll let you know right away.”

Saturday morning after breakfast, Kunta was currycombing a horse outside the barn when he thought he heard Cato’s whip-poor-will whistle. Cocking his head, he heard it again. He tied the horse quickly to a nearby post and cripped rapidly up the path to the cabin. From its front window he could see almost from where the main road intersected with the big-house driveway. Inside the big house, he knew that Cato’s call had also alerted Bell and Kizzy.

Then he saw the wagon rolling down the driveway—and with surging alarm recognized the sheriff at the reins. Merciful Allah, had Noah been caught? As he watched the sheriff dismount, Kunta’s long-trained instincts tugged at him to hasten out and provide the visitor’s winded horse with water and a rubdown, but it was as if he were paralyzed where he stood, staring, from the cabin window, as the sheriff hurried up the big-house front steps two at a time.

Only a few minutes passed before Kunta saw Bell almost stumbling out the back door. She started running—and Kunta was seized with a horrible premonition the instant before she nearly snatched their cabin door off its hinges.

Her face was twisted, tear-streaked. “Sheriff an’ massa talkin’ to Kizzy!” she squealed.

The words numbed him. For a moment he just stared disbelievingly at her, but then violently seizing and shaking her, he demanded, “What he want?”

Her voice rising, choking, breaking, she managed to tell him that the sheriff was scarcely in the house before the massa had yelled for Kizzy to come from tidying his room upstairs. “When I heared him holler at her from de kitchen, I flew to git in de drawin’ room hallway where I always listens from, but I couldn’t
make out nothin’ clear ’cept he was mighty mad—” Bell gasped and swallowed. “Den heared massa ringin’ my bell, an’ I run back to look like I was comin’ from de cookhouse. But massa was a-waitin’ in de do’way, wid his han’ holdin’ de knob behin’ him. Ain’t never seed ’im look like he did at me. He tol’ me col’ as ice to git out’n de house an’ stay out ’til I’m sent for!” Bell moved to the small window, staring at the big house, unable to believe that what she had just said had really happened. “Lawd Gawd, what in de worl’ sheriff want wid my chile?” she asked incredulously.

Kunta’s mind was clawing desperately for something to do. Could he rush out to the fields, at lease to alert those who were chopping there? But his instincts said that anything could happen with him gone.

As Bell went through the curtains, into their bedroom, beseeching Jesus at the top of her lungs, he could barely restrain himself from raging in and yelling that she must see now what he had been trying to tell her for nearly forty rains about being so gullible, deluded, and deceived about the goodness of the massa—or any other toubob.

“Gwine back in dere!” cried Bell suddenly. She came charging through the curtain and out the door.

Kunta watched as she disappeared inside the kitchen. What was she going to do? He ran out after her and peered in through the screen door. The kitchen was empty and the inside door was swinging shut. He went inside, silencing the screen door as it closed, and tiptoed across the kitchen. Standing there with one hand on the door, the other clenched, he strained his ears for the slightest sound—but all he could hear was his own labored breathing.

Then he heard: “Massa?” Bell had called softly. There was no answer.

“
Massa
?” she called again, louder, sharply.

He heard the drawing room dooor open.

“Where my Kizzy, Massa?”

“She’s in my safekeeping,” he said stonily. “We’re not having another one running off.”

“I jes’ don’t understan’ you, Massa.” Bell spoke so softly that Kunta could hardly hear her. “De chile ain’t been out’n yo’ yard, hardly.”

The massa started to say something, then stopped. “It’s possible you really don’t know what she’s done,” he said. “The boy Noah has been captured, but not before severely knifing the two road patrolmen who challenged a false traveling pass he was carrying. After being subdued by force, he finally confessed that the pass had been written not by me but by your daughter. She has admitted it to the sheriff.”