Roots (12 page)

K
unta found himself nearly trotting to keep the proper two paces behind Omoro. He saw that almost two of his quick, short steps were necessary for each long, smooth stride of his father. After about an hour of this, Kunta’s excitement had waned almost as much as his pace. His headbundle began to feel heavier and heavier, and he had a terrible thought: Suppose he grew so tired he couldn’t keep up? Fiercely, he told himself he would drop in his tracks before that would happen.

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.

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.

I
n 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.