Alex Haley - Roots - The Saga of an American Family

Here and there, as they passed, snuffling wild pigs would go rushing into the underbush, and partridges would whir up, and rabbits would bound for cover. But Kunta wouldn’t have paid an elephant much attention in his determination to keep up with Omoro. The mucles below Kunta’s knees were beginning to ache a little. His face was sweating, and so was his head; he could tell by the way his bundle began sliding off balance, a little bit one way or the other, and he kept having to put both his hands up there to readjust it.

Ahead, after a while, Kunta saw that they were approaching the travelers’ tree of some small village. He wondered what village it was; he was sure he would know its name if his father said it, but Omoro had neither spoken nor looked back ever since they left Juffure. A few minutes later, Kunta saw dashing out to meet them—as he himself had once done—some naked children of the first kafo. They were waving and hallooing, and when they got closer, he could see their eyes widen at the sight of one so young traveling with his father.

“Where are you going?” they chattered, scampering on either side of Kunta. “Is he your fa? ” “Are you Mandinka?” “What’s your village?” Weary as he was, Kunta felt very mature and important, ignoring them just as his father was doing.

Near every travelers’ tree, the trail would fork, one leading on into the village and the other past it, so that a person with no business there could pass on by without being considered rude. As Omoro and Kunta took the fork that passed by this village, the little children exclaimed unhappily, but the grown-ups seated under the village baobab only threw glances at the travelers, for holding everyone’s attention was a griot whom Kunta could hear loudly orating about the greatness of Mandinkas. There would be many griots, praise singers, and musicians at the blessing of his uncles’ new village, Kunta thought.

The sweat began to run into Kunta’s eyes, making him blink to stop the stinging. Since they had begun walking, the sun had crossed only half the sky, but his legs already hurt so badly, and his headload had become so heavy, that he began to think he wasn’t going to make it. A feeling of panic was rising in him when Omoro suddenly stopped and swung his headload to the ground alongside a clear pool at the side of the trail. Kunta stood for a moment trying to control his unsteady legs. He clutched his headbundle to take it down, but it slipped from his fingers and fell with a bump. Mortified, he knew his father had heard—but Omoro was on his knees drinking from the spring, without a sign that his son was even there.

Kunta hadn’t realized how thirsty he was. Hobbling over to the water’s edge, he kneeled down to drink—but his legs refused the position. After trying again in vain, he finally lay down on his stomach, braced himself on his elbows, and managed to lower his mouth to the water.

“Just a little.” It was the first time his father had spoken since they left Juffure, and it shocked Kunta. “Swallow a little, wait, then a little more.” For some reason, he felt angry toward his father. “Yes, Fa,” he intended to say, but no sound came. He sipped some cool water and swallowed it. Making himself wait, he wanted to collapse. After sipping a little more, he sat up and rested beside the pool. The thought passed through his mind that manhood training must be something like this. And then, sitting upright, he drifted off to sleep.

When he awakened with a start—how long had it been?—Omoro was nowhere to be seen. Jumping up, Kunta saw the big headload under a nearby tree; so his father wouldn’t be far away. As he began to look around, he realized how sore he was. He shook himself and stretched. The muscles hurt, but he felt much better than he had. Kneeling for a few more gulps of water from the spring, Kunta noticed his reflection in the still surface of the pool—narrow black face with wide eyes and mouth. Kunta smiled at himself, then grinned with all his teeth showing. He couldn’t help laughing, and as he looked up—there was Omoro standing at his side. Kunta sprang up, embarrassed but his father’s attention seemed to be on other things.

In the shade of some trees, neither of them speaking a word, as the monkeys chattered and the parrots screeched above their heads, they ate some of the bread from their headloads, along with the four plump wood pigeons Omoro had shot with his bow and roasted while Kunta slept. As they ate, Kunta told himself that the first time there was any chance, he was going to show his father how well he too could kill and cook food, the way he and his kafo mates did out in the bush.

When they finished eating, the sun was three-fourths across the sky, so it wasn’t as hot when the headloads were retied and readjusted on their heads and they set out on the trail once again.

“Toubob brings his canoes one day of walking from here,” said Omoro when they had gone a good distance. “Now is daytime when we can see, but we must avoid high bush and grass, which can hide surprises.” Omoro’s fingers touched his knife sheath and his bow and arrows. “Tonight we must sleep in a village.”

With his father, he need not fear, of course, but Kunta felt a flash of fright after a lifetime of hearing people and drums tell of disappearances and stealings. As they walked on—a little faster now—Kunta noticed hyena dung on the trail, its color lily-white because hyenas with their strong jaws cracked and ate so many bones. And beside the path, their approach caused a herd of antelope to stop eating and stand like statues, watching until the humans had passed by.

“Elephants!” said Omoro a little later, and Kunta saw the surrounding trampled bush, the young saplings stripped to bare bark and limbs, and some half-uprooted trees the elephants had leaned on to push the topmost tender leaves downward where they could reach them with their trunks. Since elephants never grazed near villages and people, Kunta had seen only a few of them in his life, and then only from a great distance. They had been among the thousands of forest animals that ran together, sounding like thunder, ahead of frightening black smoke clouds when a great fire had swept across the brushland once when Kunta was very young; but Allah’s rain had put it out before it harmed Juffure or any other nearby villages.

As they trudged along the seemingly endless trail, it occurred to Kunta that just as people’s walking feet made trails, so did spiders spin the long, thin threads they traveled on. Kunta wondered if Allah willed matters for the insects and the animals as He did for people; it surprised him to realize he never had thought about that before. He wished he could ask Omoro about it right now. He was even more surprised that Lamin hadn’t asked him about it, for Lamin had asked him about even smaller matters than insects. Well, he would have much to tell his little brother when he returned to Juffure—enough to fill days out in the bush with his fellow goatherds for moons to come.

It seemed to Kunta that he and Omoro were entering a different kind of country than the one where they lived. The sinking sun shone down on heavier grasses than he had ever seen before, and among the familiar trees were large growths of palm and cactus. Apart from the biting flies, the only flying things he saw here were not pretty parrots and birds such as those that squawked and sang around Juffure, but circling hawks in search of prey and vultures hunting for food already dead.

The orange ball of the sun was nearing the earth when Omoro and Kunta sighted a thick trail of smoke from a village up ahead. As they reached the travelers’ tree, even Kunta could tell that something wasn’t right. Very few prayer strips hung from the limbs, showing that few of those who lived here ever left their village and that most travelers from other villages had taken the trail that passed it by. Alas, no children came running out to meet them.