Roots (72 page)

On the morning of George’s first day on the job, Mingo showed him how to feed the scores of cockerels that were kept in several pens, each containing young birds of roughly the same ages and sizes. Seeing that the boy performed that trial task acceptably, the old man next let him feed the more matured “stags,” not quite a year old but already trying to fight each other from their triangular pens within the zigs and zags of a split-rail fence. Through the days that followed, Mingo kept George practically on the run, feeding the birds their cracked corn, giving them clean grit, oyster shell, and charcoal, and changing the sweet spring water in their drinking tins three times daily.

George had never dreamed that he could feel awe for chickens—especially the stags, which were starting to grow spurs and to develop bright feather colors as they strutted fearlessly about with their lustrous eyes flashing defiance. If he was away from Uncle Mingo’s immediate scrutiny, sometimes George would laugh aloud at how some of the stags would suddenly rear back their heads and crow awkwardly and throatily, as if they were trying to compete with the frequent raucous cries of Mingo’s six- or seven-year-old roosters—each bearing the scars of many past battles—that Uncle Mingo called “catchcocks” and always fed himself. George pictured himself as one of the stags and Uncle Mingo as one of the old roosters.

At least once every day, when Massa Lea came riding on his horse down the sandy road into the gamecock training area, George would make himself as inconspicuous as possible, having quickly sensed how much chillier the massa was acting toward him. George had heard Miss Malizy saying that the massa didn’t even permit the missis to come down where his chickens were, but she had indignantly assured him that was the last thing she’d want to do.

The massa and Mingo would go walking around, inspecting the pens of gamefowl, with Mingo always keeping exactly one step
behind, close enough to hear and respond to whatever the massa said between the crowings of the scarred old catchcock roosters. George noticed that the massa spoke almost companionably with Uncle Mingo, in sharp contrast to his brusque and cold manner with Uncle Pompey, Sister Sarah, and his mammy, who were only field hands. Sometimes when their inspection tour brought them close enough to wherever George was working, he would then overhear what they were saying. “I figure to fight thirty cocks this season, Mingo, so we’ve got to bring in around sixty or more from the rangewalk,” said the massa one day.

“Yassuh, Massa. By de time we culls ’em out, we oughta have a good forty birds dat’ll train good.”

George’s head became more and more filled with questions every day, but he had the feeling it would be best not to ask Uncle Mingo anything he didn’t have to. Mingo scored it as a point in the boy’s favor that he could keep from talking too much, since wise gamecockers kept many secrets to themselves. Mingo’s small, quick, deeply squinting eyes, meanwhile, missed no detail of how George performed his work. Deliberately he gave his orders briefly and then quickly walked away, to test how quickly and well the boy would grasp and remember instructions ; Mingo was pleased that George seemed to need to be told most things only once.

After a while, Mingo told Massa Lea that he approved of George’s care and attention to the gamefowl—but he carefully qualified himself: “Leas’ways far as I been able to tell in jes’ dis little bit o’ time, Massa.”

Mingo was totally unprepared for Massa Lea’s reply: “I’ve been thinking you need that boy down here all the time. Your cabin’s not big enough, so you and him put up a shack somewhere so he’ll be handy to you all the time.” Mingo was appalled at the prospect of anyone’s sudden and total invasion of the privacy that only he
and the gamefowl had shared for over twenty years, but he wasn’t about to voice openly any disagreement.

After the massa had left, he spoke to George in a sour tone. “Massa say I needs you down here all de time. I reckon he must know sump’n I don’t.”

“Yassuh,” said George, struggling to keep his expression blank. “But where I gwine stay at, Uncle Mingo?”

“We got to buil’ you a shack.”

As much as he enjoyed the gamecocks and Uncle Mingo, George knew this would mean the end of his enjoyable times in the big house, waving the peacock plumes and preaching for the massa and the missis and their guests. Even Missis Lea had just begun to show that she’d taken a liking to him. And he thought of the good things he wouldn’t get to eat from Miss Malizy in the kitchen anymore. But the worst part about leaving slave row was going to be breaking the news to his mammy.

Kizzy was soaking her tired feet in a washpan full of hot water when George came in, his face unusually somber. “Mammy, sump’n I got to tell you.”

“Well, tired as I is, choppin’ all day long, I don’t want to hear no mo’ ’bout dem chickens, tell you dat!”

“Well, ain’t zackly dat.” He took a deep breath. “Mammy, massa done tol’ me an’ Uncle Mingo to buil’ a shack an’ move me down dere.”

Kizzy sent some of the water splattering out of the pan as she leaped up, seemingly ready to spring on George. “Move you fo’ what? What you can’t do stayin’ up here where you always been?”

“Weren’t my doin’, Mammy! It was massa!” He stepped back from the fury on her face, voice rising to a high-pitched cry, “I ain’t wantin’ to leave you, Mammy!”

“You ain’t ol’ enough to be movin’ nowhere! I bet it’s dat ol’ Mingo nigger put massa up to it!”

“No’m, he didn’t Mammy! ’Cause I can tell he don’t like it neither! He don’t like nobody roun’ him all de time. He done tol’ me he ruther be by hisself.” George wished he could think of something to say that would calm her down. “Massa feel like he bein’ good to me, Mammy. He treat Uncle Mingo an’ me nice, ain’t like he acts to fiel’ hands—” Too late, he gulped sickly, remembering that his mammy was a field hand. Jealousy and bitterness twisted her face as she grabbed George and shook him like a rag, screaming, “Massa don’t care nothin’ bout you. He may be yo’ pappy, but he don’t care nothin’ ’bout nobody but dem chickens!”

She was almost as stunned as he was by what she had said.

“It’s true! An’ jes’ well you know it fo’ you’s figgerin’ he doin’ you sich favors! Only thing massa wants is you’s helpin’ dat ol’ crazy nigger take care his chickens dat he figger gwine make him rich!”

George stood dumfounded.

She went pummeling at George with both fists. “Well, what you hangin’ on roun’ here fo’?” Whirling, she snatched up his few items of clothing and flung them toward him. “G’wan! Git out’n dis cabin!”

George stood there as if he had been poleaxed. Feeling her tears flooding up and spilling out, Kizzy ran from the cabin and went bolting across to Miss Malizy’s.

George’s own tears trickled down his face. After a while, unsure what else to do, he stuffed his few pieces of clothing into a sack and went stumbling back down the road to the gamecock area. He slept near one of the stag pens, using his sack for his pillow.

In the predawn, the early-rising Mingo came upon him asleep there and guessed what had happened. Throughout the day, he went out of his way to be gentle with the boy, who went about his tasks silent and withdrawn.

During their two days of building the tiny shack, Mingo began speaking to him as if he had only just now really become aware of
George’s presence. “Yo’ life got to be dese chickens, til dey’s like yo’ family, boy,” he said abruptly one morning—that being the foremost thing that he wanted to plant in his mind.

But George made no response. He couldn’t think of anything but what his mother had told him. His massa was his pappy. His pappy was his massa. He couldn’t deal with it either way.

When the boy still said nothing, Mingo spoke again. “I knows dem niggers up yonder thinks I’se peculiar—” He hesitated. “I reckon I is.” Now he fell silent.

George realized that Uncle Mingo expected him to respond. But he couldn’t admit that that was exactly what he had heard about the old man. So he asked a question that had been on his mind since the first day he came to visit. “Uncle Mingo, how come dese chickens ain’t like de rest?”

“You’s talkin’ ’bout tame chickens ain’t fit for nothin’ ’cept eatin’,” said Uncle Mingo scornfully. “Dese here birds near ’bout same as dey was back in dem jungles massa say dey come from in ancient times. Fact, I b’leeves you stick one dese cocks in de jungle, he jes’ fight to take over de hens an’ kill any other roosters jes’ like he ain’t never left.”

George had other questions he’d been saving up to ask, but he hardly got the chance to open his mouth once Uncle Mingo got going. Any gamecockerel that crowed before reaching the stag stage, he said, should promptly have its neck wrung, for crowing too early was a sure signal of cowardice later on. “De true birds come out’n de egg wid de fightin’ already in dey blood from dey gran’daddies and great-gran’daddies. Massa say ’way back, a man an’ his gamechickens was like a man an’ his dogs is now. But dese birds got mo’ fightin’ in ’em dan you fin’ in dogs, or bulls, or bears, or ’coons, or whole lots of mens! Massa say it’s all de way up to kings an’ pres’dents fights gamebirds, ’cause it’s de greatest sport dey is.”

Uncle Mingo noticed George staring at the latticework of small, livid scars on his black hands, wrists, and forearms. Going over to his cabin, Mingo returned shortly with a pair of curving steel spurs that tapered to needle sharpness. “De day you starts to handlin’ birds, yo’ hands gon’ be lookin’ like mine, less’n you’s mighty careful,” said Uncle Mingo, and George was thrilled that the old man seemed to consider it possible that
he
might put spurs on the massa’s gamefowl one day.

Through the following weeks, though, long intervals would pass when Uncle Mingo wouldn’t permit much conversation, for it had been years since he had talked with anyone except for the massa and the gamechickens. But the more he began to get used to having George around—and thinking of the boy as his assistant—the oftener he would break his silence to address him, almost always abruptly, about something he felt would help George to understand that only the most superbly bred, conditioned, and trained gamefowl could consistently win fights and money for Massa Lea.

“Massa don’t fear no man in de cockpit,” Uncle Mingo told him one night. “Fact, he love to match up ’gainst dem real rich massas dat can ’ford dem flocks o’ much as a thousand birds so dey can pick out maybe dey bes’ hundred to fight wid ever’ year. You see we ain’t got no great big flock, but massa still win plenty bettin’ ’gainst dem rich ones. Dey don’t like it cause he done come up in de world from startin’ out as a po’ cracker. But wid ’nough real fine birds an’ ’nough luck, massa could git to be jes’ big an rich as dey is—” Uncle Mingo squinted at George. “You hear me, boy? Whole lots of peoples ain’t realize how much money can be winned in cock fightin’. I knows one thing, if somebody was to offer me a hunnud-acre cotton or tobacco field, or a real good fightin’ cock, I take de bird every time. Dat’s how massa feel, too. Dat’s how come he ain’t put his money in no whole big lot of land or ownin’ no big passel o’ niggers.”

By the time George turned fourteen, he began his Sundays off by visiting with his slave-row family, which he felt included Miss Malizy, Sister Sarah, and Uncle Pompey no less than his own mammy. Even after all this time, he would have to reassure her that he harbored no ill will over the way she told him about his father. But he still thought a lot about his pappy, though he never discussed it with anyone, least of all the massa. Everyone on slave row by now was openly awed by his new status, though they tried to seem as if they weren’t.

“I diapered yo’ messy behind, an’ you jes’ let me catch you puttin’ on any airs, I still beat it in a minute!” exclaimed Sister Sarah with affectionate mock ferocity one Sunday morning.

George grinned. “No’m, Sister Sarah, ain’t got no airs.”

But they were all consumed with curiosity about the mysterious things that took place down in the forbidden area where he lived with the gamecocks. George told them only things of a routine nature. He said he had seen gamecocks kill a rat, drive off a cat, even attack a fox. But the gamehens could be as bad-tempered as the roosters, he told them, and sometimes even crowed like the roosters. He said that the massa was vigilant against trespassers because of the high prices one could get for even the stolen eggs of championship birds, not to mention for the birds themselves, which thieves could easily take into another state and sell—or even fight as their own. When George said that Uncle Mingo had spoken of as much as three thousand dollars having been paid for one bird by the very rich gamecocking Massa Jewett, Miss Malizy exclaimed, “Lawd, could o’ bought three-four niggers for less’n dat chicken!”

After he had talked with them at length, George would begin to grow restless and fidgety by early Sunday afternoon. And soon he would go hurrying back down the sandy road to his chickens. Slowing down as he passed their pens along the road, he would
pluck fresh tender green grass, drop a handful into each one, and sometimes stand awhile, enjoying the stags’ contented
gluck, gluck, gluck
as they gobbled it down. About a year old now, they were maturing into glossy full feather, with fire in their eyes, and entering a stage of sudden explosive crowing and vicious flurrying efforts to get at each other. “De quicker de better we gits ’em out to de rangewalks to start matin’!” Uncle Mingo had said not long ago.

George knew that would happen when the fully matured roosters already out on the rangewalks would be brought in to be conditioned and trained for the coming cockfighting season.

After visiting with the stags, George would usually spend the rest of his afternoon off wandering farther down the road into the pine groves where the rangewalks were. Occasionally he caught a glimpse of one of the fully grown birds there ruling a covey of hens in total liberty. Grass, seeds, grasshoppers, and other insects, he knew, were plentiful there, along with good gravel for their craws and as much sweet, fresh water as they wanted from the grove’s several natural springs.