Roots: The Saga of an American Family

  “Git! Everything out of your cabins! All you niggers, GIT!” For the next hour, carrying, dragging, heaping their meager belongings outside, under the massa’s searching eyes and abusive threats of what he would do to whomever he found concealing any weapons or suspicious objects, they shook out every cloth, opened every container, cut and tore apart every cornshuck mattress—and still his fury seemed beyond any bounds.

  With his boot he shattered Sister Sarah’s box of nature remedies, sending her dried roots and herbs flying while he yelled at her, “Get rid of that damn voodoo!” Before other cabins he flung away treasured possessions and smashed others with his fists or his feet. The four women were weeping, old Uncle Pompey seemed paralyzed, the frightened children clutched tearfully about Matilda’s skirts. Chicken George’s own fury boiled as Matilda cried out, almost in pain, when the shotgun’s butt smashed the front paneling of her precious grandfather clock. “Let me find a sharpened nail in there, some nigger’ll die!”

  Leaving slave row in a shambles, the massa rode in the wagonbed holding his shotgun as George drove them down to the gamefowl training area.

  Faced with the gun and the barked command for all of their belongings to be emptied out, the terrified old Uncle Mingo began blurting, “Ain’t done nothin’, Massa—”

  “Trustin’ niggers got whole families dead now!” yelled Massa Lea. Confiscating the ax, the hatchet, the thin wedge, a metal frame, and both of their pocket knives, the massa loaded them all into the wagon as Chicken George and Uncle Mingo stood watching. “In case you niggers try to break in, I’m sleepin’ with this shotgun!” he shouted at them, lashing the horse into a gallop and disappearing up the road in a cloud of dust.

  CHAPTER 97

  “Hear you’ve got four boysin a rownow!”The massa was getting off his horse in the gamefowl training area. It had taken a full year for the white South’s mingled fear and fury—including Massa Lea’s—to fully subside. Though he had resumed taking Chicken George with him to cockfights a month or two after the revolt, the massa’s obvious coldness had taken the rest of a year to thaw. But for reasons unknown to either man, their relationship had seemed to grow closer than ever before ever since then. Neither one ever mentioned it, but they both hoped fervently that there would be no more black uprisings.

  “Yassuh! Big ol’ fat boy borned fo’ daybreak, Massa!” said Chicken George, who was mixing a dozen gamehen egg whites and a pint of beer with oatmeal, cracked wheat, and a variety of crushed herbs to bake a fresh supply of the gamecocks’ special bread. He had learned the “secret” recipe only that morning, grudgingly, from ailing old Uncle Mingo, whom Massa Lea had ordered to rest in his cabin until his unpredictable and increasingly severe coughing spells eased off. In the meanwhile, Chicken George alone was intensely training twenty-odd top-prime gamecocks after almost ruthless cullings from among the seventy-six freshly matured birds recently brought in off the rangewalks.

  It was but nine weeks from the day that he and Massa Lea were to leave for New Orleans. His years of local victories, plus no few in statewide competitions, had finally emboldened the massa to pit his topmost dozen birds in that city’s renowned New Year’s Day season-opening “main.” If the Lea birds could win as many as half of their pittings against the caliber of championship fighting cocks assembled there, the massa would not only win a fortune but also find himself elevated overnight into recognition among the entire South’s major gamecockers. Just the possibility was so exciting that Chicken George had been able to think of almost nothing else.

  Massa Lea had walked his horse over and tied a small rope from its halter onto the split-rail fence. Ambling back over near George, the massa scuffed the toe of his boot against a clump of grass and said, “Mighty funny, four boy young’uns, an’ you ain’t never named none after me.”

  Chicken George was surprised, delighted—and embarrassed. “You sho’ right, Massa!” he exclaimed lamely. “Dat ’zactly what to name dat boy—Tom! Yassuh, Tom!”

  The massa looked gratified. Then he glanced toward the small cabin beneath a tree, his expression serious. “How’s the old man?”

  “Tell you de truth, Massa, middle of las’ night, he had a bad coughin’ spell. Dat was ’fo’ dey sent Uncle Pompey down here to git me up dere when ’Tilda havin’ de baby. But when I cooked ’im sump’n to eat dis mo’nin’, he set up an’ et it all, an’ swear he feel fine. He got mad when I tol’ ’im he got to stay in de bed till you say he can come out.”

  “Well, let the old buzzard stay in there another day, anyhow,” said the massa. “Maybe I ought to get a doctor to come down here and look him over. That bad coughing off and on, for long as it’s been, it’s no good!”

  “Nawsuh. But he sho’ don’ b’lieve in no doctors, Massa—”

  “I don’t care what he believes! But we’ll see how he does the rest of the week—”

  For the next hour, Massa Lea inspected the cockerels and the stags in their fence-row pens, and finally the magnificent birds that Chicken George was conditioning and training. Massa Lea was pleased with what he saw. Then, for a while, he talked about the forthcoming trip. It would take almost six weeks to reach New Orleans, he said, in the heavy new wagon he was having custom-built in Greensboro. It would have an extended bed with twelve fitted removable cock coops, a special padded workbench for daily exercising of birds during travel, along with special shelves, racks, and bins that Massa Lea had specified to hold all necessary items and supplies for any long trips carrying gamecocks. It would be ready in ten days.

  When Massa Lea left, Chicken George immersed himself in the day’s remaining tasks. He was driving the gamecocks to the limit. The massa had given him the authority to use his own judgment in further culling out any birds in which he discovered the slightest flaw of any sort, as only the most comprehensively superb birds could stand a chance in the level of competition awaiting them in New Orleans. Working with the birds, he kept thinking about the music he had been told he was going to hear in New Orleans, including big brass bands marching in the streets. The black sailor he had met in Charleston had also said that early every Sunday afternoon, thousands of people would gather in a large public square called “Place Congo” to watch hundreds of slaves perform the dances of the African places and peoples they had come from. And the sailor had sworn that the New Orleans waterfront surpassed any other he had ever seen. And the women! An unending supply of them said the sailor, as exotic as they were willing, of every kind and color, known as “creoles,” “octoroons,” and “quadroons.” He could hardly wait to get there.

  Late that afternoon, after having meant to do so several times before when some chore had detained him, George finally knocked, then stepped on inside the cluttered, musty cabin of Uncle Mingo.

  “How you feelin’?” George asked. “Is it anything I can git you?” But he didn’t need to wait for an answer.

  The old man was shockingly wan and weak—but as irritable as ever about his enforced inactivity.

  “Git on out’n here! Go ax massa how I feels! He know better’n I does!” Since Uncle Mingo clearly wished to be left alone, Chicken George did leave, thinking that Mingo was getting to be like his leathery, pin-feathered old catchcocks—tough old veterans of many battles, but with age catching up and taking its toll, leaving mostly the instincts.

  By the time the last of the birds had been given their extra wing-strengthening exercise and returned to their coops, it was shortly after sundown, and Chicken George at last felt free to pay at least a brief visit home. Upon reaching his cabin, delighted to find Kizzy visiting with Matilda, he told them with much chuck-ling about the morning’s exchange with the massa about naming the new baby Tom. When he was through, he noticed with great surprise that they seemed not to be sharing his enjoyment.

  It was Matilda who spoke first, her words flat and noncommittal, “Well, I reckon lotsa Toms in dis worl’.”

  His mammy looked as if she had just had to chew a bar of soap. “I ’speck me a
n’ ’Tilda feelin’ de same thing, an’ she ruther spare yo’ feelings ’bout yo’ precious massa. Ain’t nothin’ wrong wid de name Tom. Jes’ sho’ wish it was some other Tom dis po’ chile git named after—” She hesitated, then added quickly, “’Cose, dat’s jes’ my’pinion—ain’t my young’un, or my business!”

  “Well, it’s de Lawd’s business!” snapped Matilda, stepping across to get her Bible. “Fo’ de chile was born, I was huntin’ in de Scriptures to see what it say ’bout names.” Hurriedly she thumbed pages, finding the section, page, and verse she sought, and read it aloud: “De mem’ry of de jes’ is blessed; but de name of de wicked shall rot!”

  “Have mercy!” exclaimed Gran’mammy Kizzy.

  Chicken George rose, incensed. “Awright den! Which one y’all gwine tell massa we ain’t?” He stood glaring at them. He was getting sick of so many goadings when he came in his own house! And he was fed up past the limit with Matilda’s never-ending damnation from the Bible. He raked his mind for something he once heard, then it came. “Y’all call ’im for Tom de Baptis’, den!” He shouted it so loudly that the faces of his three sons appeared in the bedroom doorway, and the day-old infant began crying as Chicken George stomped out.

  At that very moment, at the living room writing desk in the big house, Massa Lea dipped his pen, then scrawled carefully inside his Bible’s front cover a fifth date-and-birth line below the four names already recorded there—Chicken George and his first three sons: “September 20, 1833 ... boy born to Matilda ... name Tom Lea.”

  Returning angrily down the road, George fumed that it wasn’t that he didn’t care for Matilda. She was the finest, most loyal woman he ever had met. A fine wife, however, was not necessarily one who piously chastized her husband every time he turned around just for being human. A man had a right now and then to enjoy the company of the kind of women who wanted only to enjoy laughter, liquor, wit, and the body’s urgencies. And from their past year’s travels together, he knew that Massa Lea felt the same. After fighting their gamecocks near any sizable town, they always stayed on an extra day, with the mules in a stable and some local gamecocker’s helper paid well to care for the cooped birds, while he and Massa Lea went their separate ways. Meeting at the stable early the next morning, they would collect their gamecocks and ride on homeward, each nursing hangovers, and neither one saying a word about the fact that he knew the other one had been tomcattin’.

  It was five days before Chicken George’s exasperation had diminished enough for him to think about returning home. Ready to forgive them, he strode up the road to slave row and opened the cabin door.

  “Lawd! Is dat you, George?” said Matilda. “De chilluns be so glad to see dey pappy again! ’Specially dis one—his eyes wasn’t open yet when you was here las’!”

  Instantly furious, he was about to stalk right back outside when his glance fell upon his older three sons—aged five, three, and two—huddled awkwardly together, staring at him almost fearfully. He felt an urge to grab them and hug them close. Soon he wouldn’t be seeing them for three months when he went to New Orleans; he must bring them some really nice presents.

  Reluctantly, he sat down at the table when Matilda laid out a meal for him and sat down to bless the food. Then, standing back up, she said, “Virgil, go ax Gran’mammy to come over here.”

  Chicken George stopped chewing, merely swallowing what he had in his mouth. What did the two of them have plannned to plague him with this time?

  Kizzy knocked and came in hugging Matilda, kissing, petting, and clucking over the three boys before glancing at her son. “How do? Ain’t seen you so long!”

  “How you do, Mammy?” Though he was fuming, he tried to make a weak joke of it.

  Settling in a chair and accepting the baby from Matilda, his mammy spoke almost conversationally. “George, yo’ chilluns been wantin’ to ax you sump’n—” She turned. “Ain’t you, Virgil?”

  Chicken George saw the oldest boy hanging back. What had they primed him to say?

  “Pappy,” he said finally in his piping voice, “you gwine tell us’bout our great-gran’daddy?”

  Matilda’s eyes reached out to him.

  “You’s a good man, George,” said Kizzy softly. “Don’t never let nobody tell you no different! An’ don’t never git to feelin’ we don’t love you. I b’lieves maybe you gits mixed up ’bout who you is, an’ sometime who we is. We’s yo’ blood, jes’ like dese chilluns’ great-gran’pappy.”

  “It’s right in de Scriptures—” said Matilda. Seeing George’s apprehensive glance, she added, “Everything in de Bible ain’t sump’n hard. De Scriptures have plenty ’bout love.”

  Overwhelmed with emotion, Chicken George moved his chair near the hearth. The three boys squatted down before him, their eyes glistened with anticipation, and Kizzy handed him the baby. Composing himself, he cleared his throat and began to tell his four sons their gran’mammy’s story of their great-gran’pappy.

  “Pappy, I knows de story, too!” Virgil broke in. Making a face at his younger brothers, he went ahead and told it himself—including even the African words.

  “He done heared it three times from you, and gran’mammy don’t cross de do’sill widout tellin’ it again!” said Matilda with a laugh. George thought: How long had it been since he last heard his wife laughing?

  Trying to recapture the center of attention, Virgil jumped up and down. “Gran’mammy say de African make us know who we is!”

  “He do dat!” said Gran’mammy Kizzy, beaming.

  For the first time in a long time, Chicken George felt that his cabin was his home again.

  CHAPTER 98

  Four weeks late, the new wagon was ready to be picked up in Greensboro. How right the massa had been to have it built, Chicken George reflected as they drove there, for they must arrive in New Orleans not creaking and squeaking in this battered old heap, but in the finest wagon money could buy—looking the parts of a great gamecocker and his trainer. For the same reason, before they left Greensboro, he must borrow a dollar and a half from the massa to buy a new black derby, to go with the new green scarf that Matilda had almost finished knitting. He would also make sure that Matilda packed both his green and yellow suits, his wide-webbed best red suspenders, and plenty of shirts, drawers, socks, and handkerchiefs, for after the cockfighting, he knew he’d have to look right when they were out on the town.

  Within moments after they arrived at the wagonmaker’s shop, as he waited outside, George began hearing snatches of loud argument behind the closed door. He’d known the massa long enough to expect that sort of thing, so he didn’t bother to listen; he was too busy sifting in his mind through the tasks he had to take care of at home before they left. The toughest one, he knew, would be the job of culling seven more birds from the nineteen magnificent specimens he had already trained to lethal keenness. There was room in the wagon for only a dozen, and selecting them would challenge not only his own judgment and the massa’s but also that of Uncle Mingo, who was once again up, out, and about, as vinegary and tart-tongued as ever.

  Inside the shop, Massa Lea’s voice had risen to a shout: The inexcusable delay in finishing the wagon had cost him money, which should be deducted from the price. The wagonmaker was yelling back that he had rushed the job as fast as he could, and the price should really be higher because cost of materials had risen along with his free black workmen’s outrageous salary demands. Listening now, Chicken George guessed that the massa was actually less angry than he seemed and was simply testing the wagonmaker to see if an argument might succeed in cutting at least a few dollars off the cost of the wagon.

  After a while something must have worked out inside, for the altercation seemed to end, and soon Massa Lea and the wagonmaker came out, still red-faced but acting and talking now in a friendly way. The tradesman shouted toward the area behind his shop, and a few more minutes later, four blacks hove into view, bent nearly double pulling the heavy new custom-built wagon behind them. George’s
eyes went wide at its sheer craftsmanship and beauty. He could feel the strength in its oaken frame and body. The center section of the luxuriously long bed showed the tops of the twelve removable cock coops. The iron axles and the hubs were obviously superbly balanced and greased, for despite the vehicle’s imposing weight, he could hear no creaking or even rubbing sounds at all. Nor had he ever seen Massa Lea’s face split into such a grin.

  “She’s one of the best we’ve ever turned out!” exclaimed the wagonmaster. “Nearly too pretty to drive!” Expansively, Massa Lea said, “Well, she’s about to roll a long way!” The wagonmaker’s head wagged. “New Orleans! That’s a six-week trip. Who all’s goin’ with you?”

  Massa Lea turned, gesturing at Chicken George on the old wagon driver’s seat. “My nigger there and twelve chickens!”

  Anticipating the massa’s command, Chicken George jumped down and went back to untie the pair of rented mules they’d brought along and led them over to the new wagon. One of the four blacks helped him hitch them up, then went back to join the others, who were paying Chicken George no more attention than he was to them; after all, they were free blacks, whom Massa Lea often said he couldn’t stand the sight of. After walking around the wagon a few times with his eyes shining and a big smile on his face, the massa shook hands with the wagonmaker, thanked him, and climbed proudly up onto the seat of the new wagon. Wishing him good luck, the wagonmaker stood there shaking his head in admiration for his own work as Massa Lea led the way out of the lot with Chicken George following in the old wagon.

  On the long drive home—his new derby on the seat beside him, along with a pair of elegant gray felt spats that had set him back a dollar—George finished his mental checklist of chores that he had to take care of before they left for New Orleans, and started thinking about what had to be done to make sure things would keep running smoothly while they were gone. As difficult as he knew it would be to get along without him at home, he was confident that Matilda and Kizzy would be equal to the task; and though Uncle Mingo didn’t get around quite as spryly anymore, and he was becoming increasingly forgetful with each passing year, George was sure the old man would be able to mind the chickens adequately until his return. But sooner or later, he knew he was going to need more help than Mingo would be able to offer anymore.