Roots: The Saga of an American Family
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.
One chilly morning in early November, when Massa Lea arrived in the mulecart, Uncle Mingo and George were waiting with the crowing, viciously pecking stags already collected in covered wicker baskets. After loading them into the cart, George helped Uncle Mingo catch his favorite old scarred, squawking catchcock.
“He’s just like you, Mingo,” said Massa Lea with a laugh. “Done all his fightin’ an’ breedin’ in his young days. Fit for nothin’ but to eat and crow now!”
Grinning, Uncle Mingo said, “I ain’t hardly even crowin’ no mo’ now, Massa.”
Since George was as much in awe of Uncle Mingo as he was afraid of the massa, he was happy to see them both in such rare good spirits. Then the three of them climbed onto the mulecart, Uncle Mingo seated alongside the massa holding his old catchcock, and George balancing himself in the back behind the baskets.
Finally Massa Lea stopped the cart deep in the pine grove. He and Uncle Mingo cocked their heads, listening carefully. Then Mingo spoke softly. “I hears ’em back in dere!” Abruptly puffing his cheeks, he blew hard on the head of the old catchcock, which promptly crowed vigorously.
Within seconds came a loud crowing from among the trees, and again the old catchcock rooster crowed, its hackles rising. Then goosepimples broke out over George when he saw the magnificent gamecock that came bursting from the edge of the grove. Iridescent feathers were bristled high over the solid body; the glossy tail feathers were arched. A covey of about nine hens came hurrying up nervously, scratching and clucking, as the rangewalk cock powerfully beat its wings and gave a shattering crow, jerking its head about, looking for the intruder.
Massa Lea spoke in a low tone. “Let him see the catchcock, Mingo!”
Uncle Mingo hoisted it high, and the rangewalk cock seemed almost to explode into the air straight after the old rooster. Massa Lea moved swiftly, grabbing the thrashing rangewalk cock in flight, deftly avoiding the wickedly long natural spurs that George glimpsed as the massa thrust it into a basket and closed the top.
“What you gawkin’ for, boy? Loose one dem stags!” barked Uncle Mingo, as if George had done it before. He fumbled open the nearest basket, and the released stag flapped out beyond the mulecart and to the ground. After no more than a moment’s hesitation, it flapped its wings, crowed loudly, dropped one wing, and went strutting stiffly around one hen. Then the new cock o’ the walk started chasing all the other hens back into the pine grove.
Twenty-eight mature two-year-olds had been replaced with year-old stags when the mulecart returned just before dusk. After doing it all over again to get thirty-two more the next day, George felt he had been retrieving gamecocks from rangewalks all his life. He now busily fed and watered the sixty cocks. When they weren’t eating, it seemed to him, they were crowing and pecking angrily at the sides of their pens, constructed so as to prevent their seeing each other, which would have caused some of them to get injured in their violent efforts to fight. With wonder, George beheld these majestically wild, vicious, and beautiful birds. They embodied everything that Uncle Mingo ever had told him about their ancient bloodlines of courage, about how both their physical design and their instincts made them ready to fight any other gamecock to the death anytime, anywhere.
The massa believed in training twice as many birds as he planned to fight during the season. “Some birds jes’ don’t never pink up an’ feed an’ work like de rest,” Uncle Mingo explained to George, “an’ dem what don’t we’s gwine to cull out.” Massa Lea began to arrive earlier than before to work along with Uncle Mingo, studying the sixty birds, one by one, for several hours each day. Overhearing snatches of their conversations, George gathered that they would be culling out birds with any sores on their heads or bodies, or with what they judged to be less than perfect beaks, necks, wings, legs, or over-all configuration. But the worst sin of all was not showing enough aggressiveness.
One morning the massa arrived with a carton from the big house. George watched as Uncle Mingo measured out quantities of wheatmeal and oatmeal and mixed them into a paste with butter, a bottle of beer, the whites of twelve gamehen eggs, some wood sorrel, ground ivy, and a little licorice. The resulting dough was patted into thin, round cakes, which were baked to crispness in a small earth oven. “Dis bread give ’em strength,” said Uncle Mingo, instructing George to break the cakes into small bits, feed each bird three handfuls daily, and put a little sand in their water-pans each time he refilled them.
“I want ’em exercised down to nothin’ but muscle and bone, Mingo! I don’t want one ounce of fat in that cockpit!” George heard the massa order. “Gwine run dey tails off, Massa!” Starting the next day, George was sprinting back and forth tightly holding under an arm one of Uncle Mingo’s old, catchcocks as it was hotly pursued by one after another of the cocks in training. As Mingo had instructed, George would occasionally let the pursuing cock get close enough to spring up with its beak snapping and legs scissoring at the furiously squawking catchcock.
Catching the panting aggressor, Uncle Mingo would quickly let it hungrily peck up a walnut-sized ball of unsalted butter mixed with beaten herbs. Then he would put the tired bird on some soft straw within a deep basket, piling more straw over the bird, up to the top, then closing the lid. “It gwine sweat good down in dere now,” he explained. After exercising the last of the cocks, George began removing the sweating birds from their baskets. Before he returned them to their pens, Uncle Mingo licked each bird’s head and eyes with his tongue, explaining to George, “Dat git ’em used to it if I has to suck blood clots out’n dey beaks to help ’em keep breathin’ when dey done got bad hurt fightin’.”
By the end of a week, so many sharp, natural cockspurs had nicked George’s hands and forearms that Uncle Mingo grunted, “You gwine git mistook fo’ a gamecocker, you don’t watch out!” Except for George’s brief Christmas-morning visit to slave row, the holiday season passed for him almost unnoticed. Now, as the opening of the cockfighting season approached, the birds’ killer instincts were at such a fever pitch that they crowed and pecked furiously at anything, beating their wings with a loud whumping noise. George found himself thinking how often he heard his mammy, Miss Malizy, Sister Sarah, and Uncle Pompey bemoaning their lot; little did they dream what an exciting life existed just a short walk down the road.
Two days after the New Year, George grasped each gamecock in turn as Massa Lea and Uncle Mingo closely snipped each bird’s head feathers, shortened the neck, wing, and rump feathers, then shaped the tail feathers into short, curving fans. George found it hard to believe how much the trimming accentuated the birds’ slim, compact bodies, snakelike necks, and big, strong-beaked heads with their shining eyes. Some of the birds’ lower b
eaks had to be trimmed, too, “for when dey has to grab a mouth holt,” explained Uncle Mingo. Finally, their natural spurs were scraped smooth and clean.
At the first light of opening day, Mingo and George were stowing the finally selected twelve birds in square traveling coops woven of hickory strips. Uncle Mingo fed each bird a walnut-sized lump of butter mixed with powdered brown-sugar candy, then Massa Lea arrived in the wagon, carrying a peck of red apples. After George and Mingo loaded the twelve cockcoops, Mingo climbed up on the seat beside the massa, and the wagon began rolling.
Glancing back, Uncle Mingo rasped, “You gwine or not?”
Leaping after them, George reached the wagon’s tailgate and vaulted up and in. No one had said he was going! After catching his breath, he hunkered down into a squatting position. The wagon’s squeakings mingled in his ears with the gamecocks’ crowings, cluckings, and peckings. He felt deep gratitude and respect for Uncle Mingo and Massa Lea. And he thought again—always with perplexity and surprise—about his mammy’s having said that the massa was his daddy, or his daddy was the massa, whichever it was.
Farther along the road, George began seeing either ahead or emerging from side roads other wagons, carts, carriages, and buggies, as well as horsemen, and poor crackers on foot carrying bulging crocus sacks that George knew contained gamecocks bedded in straw. He wondered if Massa Lea had once walked to cockfights like that with his first bird, which people said he had won with a raffle ticket. George saw that most of the vehicles carried one or more white men and slaves, and every vehicle carried some cockpens. He remembered Uncle Mingo’s saying, “Cockfightin’ folks don’t care nothin’ ’bout time or distance when a big main gwine happen.” George wondered if maybe some of those poor crackers afoot would someday come to own a farm and a big house like the massa did.
After about two hours, George began hearing what could only be the crowing of many gamecocks faintly in the distance. The incredible chorus grew steadily louder as the wagon drew nearer to a heavy thicket of tall forest pines. He smelled the aroma of barbecuing meat; then the wagon was among others maneuvering for places to park. All around, horses and mules were tied to hitching posts, snorting, stomping, swishing their tails, and many men were talking.
“Tawm Lea!”
The massa had just stood up in the wagon, flexing his knees to relieve the stiffness. George saw that the cry had come from several poor crackers standing nearby exchanging a bottle among themselves, and was thrilled at the instant recognition of his massa. Waving at those men, Massa Lea jumped to the ground and soon had joined the crowd. Hundreds of white people—from small boys holding their fathers’ pantslegs to old, wrinkled men—were all milling about in conversational clusters. Glancing around, George saw that nearly all the slave people remained in vehicles, seemingly attending to their cooped gamecocks, and the hundreds of birds sounded as if they were staging a crowing contest. George saw bedrolls under various nearby wagons and guessed that the owners had come from such long distances that they were going to have to stay overnight. He could smell the pungent aroma of corn liquor.
“Quit settin’ dere gapin’, boy! We got to limber up dese birds!” said Uncle Mingo, who had just gotten the wagon parked. Blocking out the unbelievable excitement as best he could, George began opening the travel coops and handing one after another angrily pecking bird into Uncle Mingo’s gnarled black hands, which proceeded to massage each bird’s legs and wings. Receiving the final bird, Uncle Mingo said, “Chop up half dozen dem apples good an’ fine. Dey’s de bes’ las’ eatin’ fo’ dese birds gits to fightin’.” Then the old man’s glance happened to catch the boy’s glazed stare at the crowd, and Uncle Mingo remembered how it had been for him at his first cockfight, longer ago than he cared to think about anymore “G’wan!” he barked, “git out’n here an’ run roun’ l’il bit if you want to, but be back fo’ dey starts, you hear me?”
By the time his “Yassuh” reached Uncle Mingo, George had vaulted over the wagon’s side and was gone. Slithering among the jostling, drinking crowd, he darted this way and that, the carpeting of pine needles springy under his bare feet. He passed dozens of cockcoops containing crowing birds in an incredible array of plumage from snow-white to coal-black, with every imaginable combination of colors in between.
George stopped short when he saw it. It was a large sunken circle, about two feet deep, with padded sides, and its packed sandy clay floor was marked with a small circle in its exact center and two straight lines equally distant from each side. The cockpit! Looking up, he saw boisterous men finding seats on a natural sloping rise behind it, a lot of them exchanging bottles. Then he all but jumped from his skin at the nearby bellow of a reddish-faced official, “Gentlemen, let’s get started fighting these birds!”
George sped back like a hare, reaching the wagon only an instant before Massa Lea did. Then the massa and Uncle Mingo went walking around the wagon talking in low tones as they glanced at the cooped birds. Standing up on the wagon’s front seat, George could see over men’s heads to the cockpit. Four men there were talking closely together as two others came toward them, each cradling a gamecock under an arm. Suddenly cries rose among the spectators: “Ten on the red!” ... “Taken!” ... “Twenty on the blue!” ... “Five of it!” ... “Five more!” ... “Covered!” The cries grew louder and more numerous as George saw the two birds being weighed and then fitted by their owners with what George knew must be the needle-sharp steel gaffs. His memory flashed to Uncle Mingo once telling him that birds were seldom fought if either of them was more than two ounces lighter or heavier than the other.
“Bill your cocks!” cried someone at the edge of the cockpit. Then quickly he and two other men squatted outside the ring, as the two owners squatted, within the circle, holding their birds closely enough to let them peck briefly at each other.
“Get ready!” Backing to their opposite starting marks, the two owners held their birds onto the ground, straining to get at each other.
“Pit your cocks!”
With blurring speed, the gamecocks lunged against each other so hard that each of them went bouncing backward, but recovering within a second, they were up into the air shuffling their steel-gaffed legs. Dropping back onto the pit floor, instantly they were airborne again, a flurry of feathers.
“The red’s cut!” someone hollered, and George watched breathlessly as each owner snatched his bird as it came down, examining the bird quickly, then set it back on its start mark. The cut, desperate red bird somehow sprang higher than its opponent, and suddenly one of its scissoring legs had driven a steel gaff into the brain of the blue bird. It fell with its wings fluttering convulsively in death. Amid a welter of excited shouting and coarse cursing, George heard the referee’s loud announcement, “The winner is Mr. Grayson’s bird—a minute and ten seconds in the second pitting!”
George’s breath came in gasps. He saw the next fight end even more quickly, one owner angrily flinging aside his losing bird’s bloody body as if it were a rag. “Dead bird jes’ a mess of feathers,” said Uncle Mingo close behind George. The sixth or the seventh fight had ended when an official cried out, “Mr. Lea!” ...
The massa walked hurriedly away from the wagon cradling a bird under his arm. George remembered feeding that bird, exercising it, holding it in his arms; he felt dizzy with pride. Then the massa and his opponent were by the cockpit, weighing-in their birds, then fitting on the steel gaffs amid a clamor of betting cries.
At “Pit your cocks!” the two birds smashed head-on, taking to the air, they dropped back to the floor, furiously pecking, feinting, their snakelike necks maneuvering, seeking any opening. Again bursting upward, they beat at each other with their wings—and then they fell with Massa Lea’s bird reeling, obviously gaffed! But within seconds, in the next aerial flurry, the massa’s bird fatally sank his own gaff.
Massa Lea snatched up his bird—which was still crowing in triumph—and came running back to the wagon. Only vaguely George heard, “Th
e winner is Mr. Lea’s”—as Uncle Mingo seized the bleeding bird, his fingers flying over its body to locate the deep slash wound in the rib cage. Clamping his lips over it, Uncle Mingo’s cheeks puckered inward with his force of sucking out the clotted blood. Suddenly thrusting the bird down before George’s knees, Mingo barked, “Piss on it! Right there!” The thunderstruck George gaped. “Piss! Keep it from ’fectin’!” Fumbling, George did so, his strong stream splattering against the wounded bird and Uncle Mingo’s hands. Then Uncle Mingo was packing the bird lightly between soft straw in a deep basket. “B’lieve we save ’im, Massa! What one you fightin’ next?” Massa Lea gestured toward a coop. “Git dat bird out, boy!” George nearly fell over himself complying, and Massa Lea went hurrying back toward the shouting crowd as another fight’s winner was announced. Faintly, beneath the raucous crowing of hundreds of cocks crowing, of men shouting new bets, George could hear the injured bird clucking weakly in his basket. He was sad, exultant, frightened; he had never been so excited. And on that crisp morning, a new gamecocker had been born.
CHAPTER 90
“Look at ’im tryin’ to outstrut dem roosters!” exclaimed Kizzy to Miss Malizy, Sister Sarah, and Uncle Pompey. George came striding up the road to spend his Sunday morning with them.
“Hmph!” Sister Sarah snorted with a glance at Kizzy. “Aw, heish up, woman, we’s jes’ proud of ’im as you is!”
As George came on, still well beyond earshot, Miss Malizy told the others that only the previous evening she had overheard Massa Lea declare tipsily to some gamecocker dinner guests that he had a boy who after four years of apprenticeship seemed as “natural born” to become, in time, “the equal of any white or black gamecock trainer in Caswell County.”
“Massa say de ol’ Mingo nigger say dat boy jes’ live an’ breathe chickens! ’Cordin’ to massa, Mingo swear one evenin’ late he was walkin’ roun’ down dere an’ seed George settin’ hunched over kind of funny on a stump. Mingo say he ease up behin’ real slow, an’ he be dog if’n George wasn’t talkin’ to some hens settin’ on dey eggs. He swear dat boy was tellin’ dem hens all ’bout fights gwine be winned by de baby chicks de hens ’bout to hatch.”