Roots: The Saga of an American Family

At a big cockfight main with Massa Lea early during the 1824 season, Uncle Mingo heard from an old trainer he had known for years that a hackfight was due to be held that coming Saturday afternoon behind the large barn of a local plantation. “Reckon he’bout ready as he ever gwine be, Massa,” Mingo told the massa later. On Saturday morning, as he had promised, Massa Lea came down and counted out twenty dollars in small bills and coins to Uncle Mingo. “Now, you know my policy,” he said to both of them. “Don’t get in there fightin’ a bird if you’re afraid to bet on him! If you bet nothin’ you’ll never win nothin’! I’m willin’ to lose whatever you lose, but I’m puttin’ up the money and you’re fightin’ my chickens, so I want half of any winnin’s, you understand that? And if I even think there’s any messin’ around with my money, I’ll take it out of both your black hides!” But they could clearly see that he was only putting on a gruff act when he was really in a good humor as they chorused, “Yassuh, Massa!”

  Rounding the corner of the large gray-painted barn, trying not to show how excited he was, George saw about twenty black hackfighters moving around, laughing and talking on one side of a wide, shallow cockpit. Recognizing about half of them from the big fights they’d attended with their massas, as he had, he waved and smiled his greetings, exchanging nods with others whose colorful dress and cockily independent air made him guess that they must be free blacks. Flicking glances at about an equal number of poor whites just across the cockpit, he was surprised to find that he knew some of them, too, and pridefully, he overheard one telling another, “Them two’s Tom Lea’s niggers.” Both the black and white hackfighters soon began untying their hay-filled crocus bags, withdrawing their crowing, clucking birds and starting to limber them up as Uncle Mingo stepped around the cockpit and said something to the stout, ruddy-faced referee, who nodded with a glance across at George.

  The boy was diligently massaging his stag when Mingo returned and began working on the other bird they’d brought along. George felt vaguely uneasy at being physically closer than ever before to poor whites, who generally meant nothing but trouble for blacks, but he reminded himself that Uncle Mingo had told him on their way over here that hackfighting was the only thing he knew of that poor whites and blacks did together. The rule was that only two whites or two blacks fought their birds against each other, but anyone freely could bet on or against any bird in any fight.

  With his bird well massaged and limbered up and nestled back in its sack, George drank in more of the surrounding hubbub, and he saw yet more hackfighters with filled sacks hurrying toward the barn when the referee began waving his arms.

  “All right, all right now! Let’s get started fightin’ these birds! Jim Carter! Ben Spence! Get over here and heel ’em up!”

  Two gaunt, shabbily dressed white men came forward, weighed-in their birds, then fitted on the steel gaffs amid sporadic shouted bets of twenty-five and fifty cents. As far as George was concerned, neither bird looked any better than mediocre compared to the two culls from the massa’s flock in his and Uncle Mingo’s sacks.

  At the cry “Pit!” the birds rushed out, burst into the air, and dropped back down, flurrying and feinting—fighting conventionally, George felt, and without the quality of drama he always sensed with Uncle Mingo and the massa at the big fights. When at last one bird hung a gaff that badly wounded the other in the neck, it took minutes more to finish the kill that George knew would have taken a top-class bird only seconds. He watched the losing owner stalk off bitterly cursing his bad luck and holding his dead bird by the legs. In a second fight, then in a third, neither the winning nor losing birds showed George the fight fire and style he was used to seeing, so diminishing his nervousness that as the fourth fight wore on, he all but cockily anticipated his own turn in the cockpit. But when it came, his heart immediately started pounding faster.

  “All right, all right! Now Mr. Roames’ nigger with a speckled gray, and Mr. Lea’s nigger with a red bird! Y’all boys heel ’em up!” George had recognized his stocky black opponent when they arrived; in fact, several times over the past few years they had talked briefly at the big main fights. Now, feeling Uncle Mingo’s eyes fastened on him, George went through the weighing-in and then kneeled, unbuttoning the bib pocket of his overalls and pulling out the wrapped gaffs. Tying them onto his rooster’s legs, he remembered Mingo’s admonition, “not too loose or dey can git looser an’ slide down, an’ not too tight less’n dey numbs an’ cramps his legs.” Hoping that he was achieving just the right tightness, George heard around him the cries, “Fifty cents on de red!” ... “Covered!” ... “Dollar on de gray!” ... “Got dat!” “Fo’ dollars on de red!” It was Uncle Mingo, barking out by far the biggest bet, triggering a quick rash of cries to cover him. George could feel the excitement of the crowd increasing along with his own. “Get ready!”

  George kneeled, holding his rooster firmly against the ground, feeling its body vibrating in its anxiety to burst into attack.

  “Pit!”

  He had forgotten to watch the referee’s lips! By the time his hands jerked up, the other bird was already blurring into motion. Scrambling backward, George watched in horror as his bird got hit broadside and knocked tumbling off balance, then gaffed in the right side with such swiftness and force that it was sent reeling. But recovering quickly, it turned to the attack as a patch of feathers began to darken with blood. The two birds flurried upward, his own flying higher, but its gaffs somehow missed on the way down. Feinting, they went up again, about evenly high this time, both of their gaffs flashing faster than anyone’s eyes could follow. George’s heart skipped beats for endless minutes as the birds pecked, feinted, lunged, and leaped all over the cockpit. He knew his rooster had to be weakening from its steady loss of blood, even as it kept countering the rushes of the spangled gray. Then suddenly, with the flash of a spur, it was all over, and George’s bird lay quivering and fluttering in its final throes. He scarcely heard the bettors’ shouts and curses as he snatched his dying bird from the cockpit. Tears bursting forth, he had pushed through the crowd of astonished, staring men when Uncle Mingo roughly seized his elbow and propelled him on beyond where anyone else could hear.

  “You’s actin’ like a fool!” he rasped. “Go git dat other bird fo’ yo’ next fight!”

  “I ain’t no good at it, Uncle Mingo. Done got massa’s bird kilt!”

  Mingo seemed incredulous. “Anytime birds fight one gwine lose! Ain’t you never seen massa lose? Now git on back out dere!” But neither his threats nor urgings were sufficient to move the boy, and finally he stopped trying. “Awright! I ain’t gwine back tellin’ massa we was scared to try winnin’ his money back!”

  Angrily, Uncle Mingo turned back toward the crowd around the cockpit. Humiliated, George was surprised and grateful that he was hardly noticed by the other hackfighters, who had turned their attention to the next contest. Two more fights passed before the referee cried out again, “Tom Lea’s nigger!” In deeper shame, he heard Mingo bet ten dollars and get it covered before the old man pitted the second of the massa’s cull birds. It expertly killed its opponent in less than two minutes.

  Uncle Mingo’s efforts to console George as they trudged back toward the plantation did little good. “We done made two dollars, so how come you actin’ like sump’n dyin?”

  “Jes’ so shame o’ losin—an’ reckon massa won’t hardly want me losin’ no mo’ his birds—”

  Mingo was so upset that his boy seemed determined to become a loser even before he got started that after George had moped around for three days, acting as if he wanted the earth to open up and swallow him whole, he spoke to Massa Lea about it. “Would you have a word with dat boy, Massa? Seem like he think it a disgrace to lose one fight!” When the massa next visited the gamefowl area, he accosted George. “What’s this I hear you can’t lose a fight?”

  “Massa, jes’ feel terrible gittin’ yo’ bird kilt!”

  “Well, I’ve got twenty more I want you to fight!”

&nb
sp; “Yassuh.” He was halfhearted even with the massa’s reassurance.

  But when George won with both birds in his next hackfight, he began to preen and crow like one of his winning roosters. After proudly collecting his bets, Uncle Mingo took him aside and whispered, “Git yo’ head big, you be losin’ again!”

  “Jes’ lemme hol’ all dat money, Uncle Mingo!” he exclaimed, holding out his cupped hands.

  As he stared at the pile of crumpled one-dollar bills and more in coins, Mingo said laughingly, “You take de money to massa. Do y’all both good!”

  On their way home, George tried for what seemed the hundredth time to persuade Uncle Mingo to visit the slave row to meet his mammy, Miss Malizy, Sister Sarah, and Uncle Pompey. “Massa ain’t got but de six o’ us niggers, Uncle Mingo, look like de leas’ we could do is know one ’nother! Dey sho’ like to meet you. I talks ’bout you all de time when I’se dere, but dey feels like you don’t like ’em or sump’n!”

  “You an’ dem both ought to know I can’t be ’gainst nobody I don’t even know!” said Mingo. “Les’ jes’ keep it like it been, den dey ain’t got to worry wid me, an’ me neither wid dem!” And once again, when they reached the plantation, Mingo took the path that would give him a wide berth around slave row.

  Kizzy’s eyes fairly bugged when she saw the bills and coins in George’s palm. “Lawdy, boy, where you git all dat?” she demanded, calling Sister Sarah to take a look.

  “How much is dat, anyhow?” asked Sarah.

  “Don’t know, ma’am, but plenty mo’ where it come from.”

  Sister Sarah towed George by his free hand to show the wind-fall to Uncle Pompey.

  “Speck I better git me a rooster,” said the old man. “But looka here, boy, dat’s massa’s money!”

  “He gimme half!” George explained proudly. “Fact, I got to go give him his share right now.”

  Presenting himself at the kitchen, George showed Miss Malizy the money, then asked to see the massa.

  When Massa Lea pocketed his nine dollars’ winnings, he laughed. “Hell, I think Mingo’s slippin’ you my best birds and me the culls!”

  George was beside himself!

  In the next hackfight, George won with two birds he had won with before, and Massa Lea grew so intrigued by George’s string of victories that he finally ignored his self-imposed objections to attending a hackfight.

  The massa’s unexpected arrival prompted hasty nudges and whispers among both the white and black hackfighters. Seeing even Uncle Mingo and George nervous and uncertain, Massa Lea began to feel misgivings that he had come. Then, realizing that any initiative must be his own, he began grinning and waving at one of the older poor whites. “Hi, Jim.” Then to another: “Hey there, Pete!” They grinned back, astounded that he even remembered their names. “Hey, Dave!” he went on. “See your wife kicked out the rest of your teeth—or was it that bad whiskey?” Amid uproarious laughter, the hackfight seemed nearly forgotten as they crowded around the man who had started out as poor as any of them and then became a legend for them.

  Bursting with pride, George cradled his bird under one arm, and astonishing Uncle Mingo as well as Massa Lea, he was suddenly strutting around the edges of the cockpit. “All right! All right!” he cried out loudly, “any y’all got any money, git it on de line! Don’t care what you bets, if I can’t cover it, my massa sho’ can, rich as he is!” Seeing the massa smiling, George grew yet louder. “Dis here jes’ his cull bird I’s fightin’, an’ he beat anything out here! C’mon!”

  An hour later, after ballyhooing a second winning fight, George had won twenty-two dollars and Massa Lea nearly forty from accepting side bets pressed upon him. He really hated to take the money from men whom he knew to be as dirt poor as he once had been, but he knew they would go the rest of the year boastfully lying how they had lost ten times as much as they had in betting against Tom Lea.

  The cocky, self-proclaiming George was missed when he didn’t show up at four of Caswell County’s next hackfights, for Uncle Mingo was suffering from another siege of severe coughing spells. George saw how they came on him suddenly, without warning, and then persisted, and he felt he shouldn’t leave his old teacher alone with the gamefowl, nor did he wish to go by himself. But even when Mingo had improved somewhat, he said he still didn’t feel quite up to walking all the way to the next hackfight—but he demanded that George go anyway.

  “You ain’t no baby! You sho’ be gone quick enough if it was some gals dere!”

  So George went alone, carrying in each hand a bulging bag containing a gamecock cull. As he came into view of the gamecockers who had been missing his recently colorful presence, one of them cried loudly, “Look out! Here come dat ‘Chicken George’!” There was a burst of laughter from them all, and he heartily joined in.

  The more he thought of it on his way home—with still more winnings in his pocket—the better he liked the sound of that name. It had a certain flair.

  “Betcha none y’all can’t guess what dey done name me at de hackfight!” he said the moment he arrived on slave row.

  “Naw, what?”

  “Chicken George!”

  “Do Lawd!” exclaimed Sister Sarah.

  Kizzy’s love and pride shone from her eyes. “Well,” she said, “it’s sho’ ’bout close as anybody gwine git to ’scribin’ you nowdays!”

  The nickname even amused Massa Lea when he was told it by Uncle Mingo, who added wryly, “Wonder to me dey ain’t callin’ im ‘Cryin George,’ de way he still bust out cryin’ anytime a bird he fightin’ git kilt. Much as he winnin’ nowdays, don’t make no difference! Jes’ let a killin’ gaff hit his rooster an’ he gushin’ and blubberin’ an’ huggin’ dat bird like it his own chile. Is you ever heared or seed de like of dat befo’, Massa?”

  Massa Lea laughed. “Well, plenty times I’ve felt like crying myself when I’d bet a lot more’n I ought to and my bird caught a gaff! But, no, I guess he’s the only one I’ve heard of takin’ on like you say. I think he just gets too attached to chickens.”

  Not long afterward, at the biggest “main” of the year, the massa was returning to the wagon, carrying his bird, which had just won in the final contest, when he heard someone shout, “Oh, Mr. Lea!” Turning, he was astonished to see the gamecocker aristocrat George Jewett striding toward him, smiling.

  Massa Lea managed to make himself sound casual. “Oh, yes, Mr. Jewett!”

  Then they were shaking hands. “Mr. Lea, I’ll be very frank, as one gentleman and gamecocker to another. I’ve recently lost my trainer. The road patrol stopped him without a pass the other night. Unfortunately, he tried to run and was shot, badly. It’s not likely he’ll pull through.”

  “Sorry to hear it—for you, I mean, not the nigger.” Massa Lea cursed his confusion, guessing at what was coming. The aristocrat wanted Mingo.

  “Of course,” said Jewett. “So I find myself needing at least a temporary trainer, one who knows at least something about birds—” He paused. “I’ve noticed at our cockfights you’ve got two of them. I wouldn’t think of wanting your experienced older one, but I wonder if you would entertain a fair offer for the other, the young one who’s sparkin’ one of the gals on my place, my niggers tell me—”

  Massa Lea’s astonishment mixed with fury at this evidence of treachery by Chicken George. He sounded choked: “Oh, I see!”

  Massa Jewett smiled again, knowing he’d drawn blood. “Let me prove I’m not wishing to engage us in bargaining.” He paused. “Would three thousand be all right?”

  Massa Lea was staggered, not sure if he had heard right. “I’m sorry, Mr. Jewett,” he heard himself say flatly. He felt the thrill of refusing a rich blueblood.

  “All right.” Jewett’s voice tightened. “My final offer: four!”

  “I’m just not selling my trainers, Mr. Jewett.”

  The rich gamecocker’s face fell, his eyes had gone cold. “I understand. Of course! Good day to you, sir!”

  “The same to yo
u, sir,” said Massa Lea, and they strode away in opposite directions.

  The massa returned to the wagon as quickly as he could without running, his rage rising. Uncle Mingo and Chicken George, seeing his face, sat with their own carefully blank. Reaching the wagon, he brandished his fist at George, his voice trembling with fury. “I’ll bash your brains in! What the hell are you doin’ over at Jewett’s—tellin’ him how we train chickens?”

  Chicken George turned ashen. “Ain’t tol’ Massa Jewett nothin’, Massa—” He could hardly speak. “Ain’t spoke nary word to him, never, Massa!” His total astonishment and fright half convinced Massa Lea. “You tryin’ to tell me you’re goin’ way the hell over there just to tomcat with Jewett’s wench?” Even if it was innocent, he knew how every visit exposed his apprentice trainer to Jewett’s cunning, which could lead to anything.

  “Massa, Lawdy mercy—”

  Another wagon now was pulling close by, with men calling and waving to the massa. Returning their waves, Massa Lea slitted his mouth into a smile and went clambering up onto the fartherest edge of the wagon’s seat, snapping at the terrified Uncle Mingo out of the corner of his mouth, “Drive, goddammit!” A knife could have cut the tension during the seemingly endless trip back to the plantation. Nor was the tension much less taut between Uncle Mingo and Chicken George during the rest of the day. That night a sleepless George lay in a sweat of anticipation over the punishment he knew was coming.

  But none came. And a few days later the massa said to Uncle Mingo, as if nothing had happened, “Next week I’ve got a bid to fight birds just over the state line in Virginia. I know that long ride wouldn’t do your coughing spells any good, so I’ll just take the boy.”

  “Yassuh, Massa.”

  Uncle Mingo had long known this day was coming; that’s why the massa had trained the boy to replace him. But he hadn’t dreamed it would come so soon.

  CHAPTER 93

  “What you thinkin’ about so hard, boy?”

  After more than an hour sharing the wagon’s seat and watching the warm February morning’s fleecy clouds, the dusty load stretching ahead, or the monotonously flexing muscles of the mules’ rumps, Massa Lea’s sudden question startled Chicken George.