Alex Haley - Roots - The Saga of an American Family

As they passed by the village baobab, Kunta saw that it was partly burned. Over half of the mud huts he could see were empty; trash was in the yards; rabbits were hopping about; and birds were bathing in the dust. The people of the village—most of them leaning or lying about in the doorways of their huts—were almost all old or sick, and a few crying babies seemed to be the only children. Kunta saw not a person of his age—or even as young as Omoro.

Several wrinkled old men weakly received the travelers. The eldest among them, rapping his walking stick, ordered a toothless old woman to bring the travelers water and couscous; maybe she’s a slave, thought Kunta. Then the old men began interrupting each other in their haste to explain what had happened to the village. Slave takers one night had stolen or killed all of their younger people, “from your rains to his!” One old man pointed at Omoro, then at Kunta. “We old they spared. We ran away into the forest.”

Their abandoned village had begun going to pieces before they could bring themselves to return. They had no crops yet, and not much food or strength. “We will die out without our young people,” said one of the old men. Omoro had listened closely as they talked, and his words were slow as he spoke: “My brother’s village, which is four days distant, will welcome you, grandfathers.”

But all of them began shaking their heads as the oldest said: “This is our village. No other well has such sweet water. No other trees’ shade is as pleasant. No other kitchens smell of the cooking of our women.”

The old men apologized that they had no hospitality hut to offer. Omoro assured them that he and his son enjoyed sleeping under the stars. And that night, after a simple meal of bread from their headloads, which they shared with the villagers, Kunta lay on his pallet of green, springy boughs, and thought about all he had heard. Suppose it had been Juffure, with everybody he knew dead or taken away—Omoro, Binta, Lamin, and himself too, and the baobab burned, and the yards filled with trash. Kunta made himself think about something else.

Then, suddenly, in the darkness, he heard the shrieks of some forest creature caught by some ferocious animal, and he thought about people catching other people. In the distance he could also hear the howling of hyenas—but rainy season or dry, hungry or harvest, every night of his life, he had heard hyenas howling somewhere. Tonight he found their familiar cry almost comforting as he finally drifted off to sleep.

In the first light of dawn, Kunta came awake, springing onto his feet. Standing beside his pallet was a queer old woman demanding in a high, cracked voice to know what had happened to the food she had sent him for two moons ago. Behind Kunta, Omoro spoke softly: “We wish we could tell you, Grandmother.”

As they hurried on beyond the village after washing and eating, Kunta remembered an old woman in Juffure who would totter about, peering closely into anyone’s face and telling him happily, “My daughter arrives tomorrow!” Her daughter had disappeared many rains before, everyone knew, and the white cock had died on its back, but all those she stopped would gently agree, “Yes, Grandmother—tomorrow.”

Before the sun was very high, they saw ahead a lone figure walking toward them on the trail. They had passed two or three other travelers the day before—exchanging smiles and greetings—but this old man, drawing near, made it clear that he wanted to talk. Pointing from the direction he had come, he said, “You may see a toubob.” Behind Omoro, Kunta nearly stopped breathing. “He has many people carrying his headloads.” The old man said the toubob had seen him and stopped him, but only sought help in finding out where the river began. “I told him the river begins farthest from where it ends.”

“He meant you no harm?” asked Omoro.

“He acted very friendly,” said the old man, “but the cat always eats the mouse it plays with.”

“That’s the truth!” said Omoro.

Kunta wanted to ask his father about this strange toubob who came looking for rivers rather than for people; but Omoro had bade farewell to the old man and was walking off down the footpath—as usual, without a glance to see if Kunta was behind him. This time Kunta was glad, for Omoro would have seen his son holding onto his headload with both hands while he ran painfully to catch up. Kunta’s feet had begun to bleed, but he knew it would be unmanly to take notice of it, let alone mention it to his father.

For the same reason, Kunta swallowed his terror when, later that day, they rounded a turn and came upon a family of lions—a big male, a beautiful female, and two half-grown cubs—lounging in a meadow very near the path. To Kunta, lions were fearsome, slinking animals that would tear apart a goat that a boy permitted to stray too far in its grazing.

Omoro slowed his pace, and without taking his eyes from the lions, said quietly, as if sensing his son’s fear, “They don’t hunt or eat at this time of the day unless they’re hungry. These are fat.” But he kept one hand on his bow and the other by his quiver of arrows as they passed by. Kunta held his breath but kept walking, and he and the lions watched each other until they were out of sight

He would have continued to think about them, and about the toubob, also somewhere in the area, but his aching legs wouldn’t let him. By that night, he would have ignored twenty lions if they had been feeding at the place Omoro chose for them to spend the night. Kunta had barely lain down on his bed of soft branches before he was into a deep sleep—and it seemed only minutes before his father was shaking him awake in the early dawn. Though he felt as if he hadn’t slept at all, Kunta watched with unconcealed admiration how swiftly Omoro skinned, cleaned, and roasted their morning meal of two hares, which he had caught in night snares. As Kunta squatted and ate the tasty meat, he thought how he and his goatherding mates used up hours of catching and cooking game, and he wondered how his father and other men ever found time to ever learn so much—about everything there was to know, it seemed.

His blistered feet, and his legs, and his back, and his neck all began to hurt again this third day on the trail—in fact, his whole body seemed to be one dull ache—but he pretended that manhood training had already begun and that he would be the last boy in his kafo to betray his pain. When he stepped on a sharp thorn just before midday, Kunta bravely bit his lip to avoid crying out, but he began to limp and fall so far behind that Omoro decided to let him rest for a few minutes beside the path while they ate their afternoon meal. The soothing paste his father rubbed into the wound made it feel better, but soon after they began walking again, it began to hurt—and bleed—in earnest. Before long, however, the wound was filled with dirt, so the bleeding stopped, and the constant walking numbed the pain enough to let him keep up with his father. Kunta couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to him that Omoro had slowed down a tiny bit. The area around the wound was ugly and swollen by the time they stopped that night, but his father applied another poultice, and in the morning it looked and felt good enough to bear his weight without too much pain.

Kunta noticed with relief, as they set out the next day, that they had left behind the thorn and cactus land they had been traveling through and were moving into bush country more like Juffure’s, with even more trees and thickly flowering plants, and more chattering monkeys and multicolored landbirds than he had ever seen before. Breathing in the fragrant air made Kunta remember times when he had taken his little brother to catch crabs down along the banks of the bolong, where he and Lamin would wait to wave at their mother and the other women rowing homeward after work in their rice fields.