Roots: The Saga of an American Family
“Do Lawd!” said Kizzy, her eyes bathing in the sight of her approaching son. After the usual kissing and hugging with the women and handshaking with Uncle Pompey, they all settled onto stools brought quickly from their cabins. First they told George the latest white folks’ news that Miss Malizy had managed to overhear during the week. The scant news this time was that more and more strange-talking white folks from across the big water were said to be arriving by the shiploads up North, swelling the numbers of those already fighting to take the jobs previously held by free blacks, and there was also steadily increasing talk of sending the free blacks on ships to Africa. Living as he did in such isolation with that strange old man, they kidded George, he couldn’t be expected to know about any of this, or about anything else that was going on in the rest of the world—“less’n it git told to you by some dem chickens”—and George laughingly agreed.
These weekly visits offered not only the pleasure of seeing his mammy and the others but also of getting some relief from Uncle Mingo’s cooking, which was more suitable for chickens than for people. Miss Malizy and Kizzy knew enough by now to prepare at least two or three platefuls of George’s favorite dishes.
When his conversation began to lag—around noon, as usual—they knew he was getting restless to leave, and after they had exacted his promise to pray regularly, and after another round of huggings and kissings and pumping of hands, George went hurrying back down the road with his basket of food to share with Uncle Mingo.
In the summertime, George often spent the rest of his Sunday afternoon “off” in a grassy pasture where Mingo could see him springing about catching grasshoppers, which he would then feed as tidbits to the penned-up cockerels and stags. But this was early winter, and the two-year-old birds had just been retrieved from the rangewalks for training, and George was trying to salvage one of the several birds that Mingo and the massa felt were probably too wild and man-shy to respond properly to training and were likely to be culled out as discards. Mingo watched with affection and amusement as George forcibly restrained the pecking, squawking, struggling stag and started crooning to it, blowing gently on its head and neck, rubbing his face against the brilliant feathers, massaging its body, legs, and wings—until it actually began to settle down.
Mingo wished him luck, but he hoped George remembered what he had told him about taking chances with an unreliable bird. A gamecocker’s breeding and development of a fine gameflock could represent a lifetime investment, and it could all be lost in a single emotional gamble. You simply couldn’t risk fighting a bird unless every detectable flaw had been permanently corrected. And if it wasn’t well, George had learned by now to quite calmly wring a gamecock’s neck. He had come to share fully the massa’s and Uncle Mingo’s view that the only worthwhile birds were those whose intense training and conditioning, coupled with instinctive aggressiveness and courage, would drive them to drop dead in a cockpit before they would quit fighting.
George loved it when the massa’s birds killed their opponents swiftly and without injury, sometimes within as little as thirty or forty seconds, but privately—though he never would have breathed this to Mingo or Massa Lea—nothing could match the thrill of watching a bird he had helped raise from a baby chick battle to the death with another equally game champion, each of them staggering, torn and bleeding, beaks lolling open, tongues hanging out, wings dragging on the cockpit floor, bodies and legs trembling, until finally both simply collapsed; then with the referee counting toward ten, the massa’s bird would find somehow one more ounce of strength to struggle up and drive in a fatal spur.
George understood very well Mingo’s deep attachment to the five or six scarred old catchcocks that he treated almost as pets—especially the one he said had won the biggest bet of the massa’s career. “Terriblest fight I ever seed!” said Uncle Mingo, nodding toward that one-eyed veteran. “It was back dere in his prime, reckon three-four years fo’ you come here. Somehow or ’nother massa had got in dis great big New Year’s main bein’ backed by some real rich massa clear over in Surrey County, Virginia. Dey’nounced no less’n two hunnud cocks was to fight for a ten thousand dollars’ main stake, wid no less’n hunnud-dollar side bets. Well, massa an’ me took twenty birds. You lemme tell you, dem twenty birds was ready! We driv days in de wagon to git dere, feedin’, waterin’, an’ massagin’ dem birds in dey coops as we went. Well, gittin’ on near de end o’ de fightin’, we’d winned some, but we’d lost too many to git at dat main purse, an’ massa was plenty mad. Den he foun’ out we was gwine be matched ’gainst what folks claimin’ was de meanest mess o’ feathers in Virginia. You oughta heared de hollerin’ of bets on dat bird!
“Well, now! Massa’d done hit his bottle a couple good licks, an’ got all red in de face as he could git! An’ out’n de birds we had left, he pick dat ol’ buzzard you’s lookin’ at right over dere. Massa stuck dat bird under one arm, an’ commence walkin’ roun’ dat cockpit swearin’ loud he weren’t backin’ off nobody’s bets! He say he started wid nothin’, if he win’ up wid nothin’ again, he sho’ wouldn’t be no stranger to it! Boy, lemme tell you! Dat tough ol’ meat an’ pinfeathers over yonder went in dat cockpit, an’ he come out jes’ barely, but dat other bird was dead! Dem referees ’nounced dey’d been steady tryin’ to kill one ’nother for nigh fo’teen minutes!” Uncle Mingo looked with warm nostalgia across at the old rooster. “So bad cut up an’ bleedin’ he was s’posed to die, but I ain’t slept a wink ’til I saved ’im!”
Uncle Mingo turned toward George. “Fact, boy, dis sump’n I’se got’ to press on you mo’n I’se done—you got to do everything you can to save hurt birds. Even dem dat’s been lucky ’nough to kill quick, an’ standin’ up dere crowin’ big an’ actin’ ready to fight again, well, dey can fool you! Soon’s you git ’im back in yo’ wagon, be sho’ you checks ’im good all over, real close! Maybe he got jes’ some l’il spur cuts, or nicks, dat can easy git ’fected. Any sich cut, piss on it good. If it’s any bleedin’, put on a spider web compress, or l’il bit o’ de soft belly fur of a rabbit. If you don’t, two-three days later yo’ bird can start lookin’ like it’s shrinkin’ up, like a limp rag, den next thing you know yo’ bird dead. Gamebirds is like I hears racehosses is. Dey’s tough, but same time dey’s mighty delicate critters.”
It seemed to George that Uncle Mingo must have taught him a thousand things, yet thousands more were still in Uncle Mingo’s head. As hard as George had tried to understand, he still couldn’t comprehend how Mingo—and the massa—could seem to sense which birds would prove to be the smartest, boldest, and proudest in the cockpit. It wasn’t simply the assets you could see, which by now even George had learned to recognize: the ideal short, broad backs with the full, rounded chests tapering to a fine, straight keel-bone and a small, compact belly. He knew that good, solid, round-boned wings should have hard-quilled, wide, glossy feathers that tended to meet under a median-angled tail; that short, thick, muscular legs should be spaced well apart, with stout spurs evenly spaced above strong feet whose long back toe should spread well backward and flat to the ground.
Uncle Mingo would chide George for becoming so fond of some birds that he seemed to forget their jungle instincts. Now or then some gamecock docilely being petted in George’s lap would glimpse one of Uncle Mingo’s old catchcocks and with a shattering crow burst from George’s grasp in violent pursuit of the old bird, with George racing to stop them before one killed the other. Uncle Mingo also repeatedly cautioned George to control his emotions better when some bird of George’s got killed in the cockpit; on several occasions the big, strapping George had burst into tears. “Nobody can’t speck to win every fight, don’ know how many times I got to tell you dat!” said Mingo.
Mingo also decided to let the boy know that for several months he had been aware that George had been disappearing not long after full darkness fell, then returning very late, recently close to daybreak. Uncle Mingo was sure it had a connection with George’s having once
mentioned, with elaborate casualness, that while he had been at the gristmill with Massa Lea one day, he had met a pretty and nearly high-yaller big-house maid named Charity from the adjacent plantation. “All dese years down here, dese of ears an’ eyes o’ mine’s like a cat’s. I knowed de first night you slipped off,” Uncle Mingo said to his astounded apprentice. “Now, I ain’t one to poke in nobody’s business, but I’se gwine tell you sump’n. You jes’ be mighty sho’ you ain’t cotched by some dese po’ white paterollers,’cause if dey don’t beat you half to death deyself, dey’ll bring you back, an’ don’t you think massa won’t lay his whip crost yo’ ass!” Uncle Mingo stared for a while across the grassy pasture before he spoke again. “You notice I ain’t said quit slippin’ off?”
“Yassuh,” said George humbly.
During another silence, Mingo sat down on a favorite stump of his, leaned slightly forward, and crossed his legs, with his hands clasped around his knees. “Boy! I ’members back when I first foun’ out what gals was, too—” and a new light crept into Uncle Mingo’s eyes as the aged features softened. “It was dis here long, tall gal, she was still new to de county when her massa bought a place right next to my massa’s.” Uncle Mingo paused, smiling. “Bes’ I can ’scribe ’er, well, de niggers older’n me commence to callin’ ’er ‘Blacksnake’—” Uncle Mingo went on, his smile growing wider and wider the more he remembered—and he remembered plenty. But George was too chagrined at being caught to be embarrassed by anything Mingo was telling him. It was pretty clear though that he had underestimated the old man in more ways than one.
CHAPTER 91
Walking up the road toward slave row one Sunday morning, George sensed that something was wrong when he saw that neither his mammy nor any of the others were standing around Kizzy’s cabin to greet him, as they had never failed to do before in the four years he’d spent with Uncle Mingo. Quickening his pace, he reached his mammy’s cabin and was about to knock when the door was snatched open and Kizzy practically jerked him inside, quickly shutting the door behind them, her face taut with fear.
“Is missis seed you?”
“Ain’t seed her, Mammy! What’s the matter?”
“Lawd, boy! Massa got word some free nigger over in Charleston, South Ca’liny, name o’ Denmark Vesey, had hunnuds o’ niggers ready to kill no tellin’ how many white folks right tonight, if dey hadn’t o’ got caught. Massa ain’t long lef’ here actin’ like he gone wild, a-wavin’ his shotgun an’ threatenin’ to kill anybody missy see outside dey cabins fo’ he git back from some big organizin’ meetin’!”
Kizzy slid alongside the cabin’s wall until she could look through the cabin’s single window toward the big house. “She ain’t still where she was peepin’ from! Maybe she seen you comin’ an’ went an’ hid!” The absurdity of Missis Lea hiding from him struck some of Kizzy’s alarm into George. “Run back down wid dem chickens, boy. No tellin’ what massa do he catch you up here!”
“I gwine stay here an’ talk to massa, Mammy!” He was thinking that in such an extremity as this, he would even somehow indirectly remind the massa whose father he was, which should curb his anger, at least somewhat.
“You plum crazy? Git outa here!” Kizzy was shoving George toward the cabin door. “G’wan! Git! Mad as he was, he catch you here, jes’ make it wuss on us. Slip through dem bushes behin’ de toilet ’til you’s out’n sight o’ missy!”
Kizzy seemed on the verge of hysteria. The massa must have been worse than he’d ever been before to terrify her so. “Awright, Mammy,” he said finally. “But I ain’t slippin’ through no bushes. I ain’t done nothin’ to nobody. I’se gwine back down de road jes’ same as I come up it.”
“Awright, awright, jes’ go ’head!”
Returning to the gamefowl area, George had barely finished telling Uncle Mingo what he had heard, fearing that he sounded foolish, when they heard a horse galloping up. Within moments Massa Lea sat glowering down at them from his saddle, the reins in one hand, his shotgun in the other, and he directed the cold fury of his words at George. “My wife saw you, so y’all know what happened.”
“Yassuh—” gulped George, staring at the shotgun.
Then, starting to dismount, Massa Lea changed his mind, and staying on his horse, his face mottled with his anger, he told them, “Plenty good white people would be dyin’ tonight if one nigger hadn’t told his massa just in time. Proves you never can trust none of you niggers!” Massa Lea gestured with the shotgun. “Ain’t no tellin’ what’s in y’all’s heads off down here by yourselves! But you just let me half think anything funny, I’ll blow your heads off quick as a rabbit’s!” Glaring balefully at Uncle Mingo and George, Massa Lea wheeled his horse and galloped back up the road.
A few minutes passed before Uncle Mingo even moved. Then he spat viciously and kicked away the hickory strips he had been weaving into a gamecock carrying basket. “Work a thousan’ years for a white man you still any nigger!” he exclaimed bitterly. George didn’t know what to say. Opening his mouth to speak again, then closing it, Mingo went toward his cabin, but turning at the door, he looked back at George. “Hear me, boy! You thinks you’s sump’n special wid massa, but nothin’ don’t make no difference to mad, scared white folks! Don’t you be no fool an’ slip off nowhere till this blow over, you hear me? I mean don’t!”
“Yassuh!”
George picked up the basket Mingo had been working on and sat down on a nearby stump. His fingers began to weave the hickory strips together as he tried to collect his thoughts. Once again Uncle Mingo had managed to divine exactly what was going on inside his head.
George grew angry for permitting himself to believe that Massa Lea would ever act like anything but a massa toward him. He should have known better by now how anguishing—and fruitless—it was to even think about the massa as his pappy. But he wished desperately that he knew someone he felt he could talk with about it. Not Uncle Mingo—for that would involve admitting to Uncle Mingo that he knew the massa was his pappy. For the same reason, he could never talk to Miss Malizy, Sister Sarah, or Uncle Pompey. He wasn’t sure if they knew about the massa and his mammy, but if one did, then they all would, because whatever anyone knew got told, even when it was about each other, behind each other’s backs, and he and Kizzy would be no exception.
He couldn’t even raise the agonizing subject with his mammy—not after her fervently remorseful apologies for telling him about it in the first place.
After all these years, George wondered what his mammy really felt about the whole excruciating thing, for by now, as far as he could see, she and the massa acted as if they were no longer aware that the other existed, at least in that way. It shamed George even to think about his mammy having been with the massa as Charity—and more recently Beulah—would be with him on those nights when he slipped away from the plantation.
But then, seeping up from the recesses of his memory, came the recollection of a night long ago, when he was three or four years old and awakened one night feeling that the bed was moving, then lying still and terrified with his eyes staring wide in the darkness, listening to the rustle of the cornshucks and the grunting of the man who lay there beside him jerking up and down on top of his mammy. He had lain there in horror until the man got up; heard the dull plink of a coin on the tabletop, the sound of footfalls, the slam of the cabin door. For a seemingly interminable time, George had fought back scalding tears, keeping his eyes tightly closed, as if to shut out what he had heard and seen. But it would always come back like a wave of nausea whenever he happened to notice on a shelf in his mother’s cabin a glass jar containing maybe an inch of coins. As time passed, the depth of coins increased, until finally he no longer could bring himself to look directly at the jar. Then when he was around ten years old, he noticed one day that the jar was no longer there. His mammy had never suspected that he knew anything about it, and he vowed that she never would.
Though he was too proud ever to mention it, George had once co
nsidered talking with Charity about his white father. He thought she might understand. The opposite of Beulah, who was as black as charcoal, Charity was a considerably lighter mulatto than George; in fact, she had the tan skin that very black people liked to call “high yaller.” Not only did Charity seem to harbor no distress whatever about her color, she had laughingly volunteered to George that her pappy was the white overseer on a big South Carolina rice and indigo plantation with over a hundred slaves where she had been born and reared until at eighteen she was sold at auction and bought by Massa Teague to be their big-house maid. On the subject of skin color, about all that Charity had ever expressed any concern about was that in South Carolina she had left behind her mammy and a younger brother who was practically white. She said that black-skinned young’uns had unmercifully teased him until their mammy told him to yell back at his tormentors, “Turkey buzzard laid me! Hot sun hatched me! Gawd gim’me dis color dat ain’t none o’ y’all black niggers’ business!” From that time on, Charity said, her brother had been let alone.
But the problem of George’s own color—and how he got it—was eclipsed for the moment by his frustration at realizing that the near-uprising in faraway Charleston was surely going to delay his following through with an idea he had been developing carefully in his head for a long time. In fact, nearly two years had gone into his finally reaching a decision to try it out on Uncle Mingo. But there was no sense in telling him about it now, since the whole thing would hang on whether or not Massa Lea would approve of the idea, and he knew Massa Lea was going to remain angrily unapproachable about anything for quite a while. Though the massa stopped carrying the shotgun after a week or so, he would inspect the gamefowl only briefly every day, and after terse instructions to Uncle Mingo, would ride off as grim-faced as he had come.