Roots: The Saga of an American Family

  Somehow he must find a way around his wife’s and his mammy’s blindness to the rare opportunity he felt he could open for young Virgil, especially since at nearly six years of age the boy would soon have to start working in the fields. During his absence, it had occurred to him that Virgil could be assigned to help Uncle Mingo with the gamecocks—and then simply kept on in the job after they returned—but he had hardly brought up the idea before Matilda had flared, “Let massa buy somebody to help ’im, den!” and Kizzy had put in hotly, “Dem chickens done stole ’nough from dis family!” Wanting no new fights with them, he hadn’t tried to force the matter, but certainly didn’t intend to see the massa possibly buy some total stranger to intrude in his and Uncle Mingo’s private province.

  Even if the massa knew better than to bring in an outsider, though, George couldn’t be sure if Virgil’s help would be accepted by Uncle Mingo, who seemed to be rankling more and more ever since his first helper had developed with the massa a relationship closer than his own. Only recently, in his bitterness about not being allowed to come along with them to New Orleans, Mingo had snapped, “You an’ massa figger y’all can trust me to feed de chickens while you’s gone?” George wished that Uncle Mingo would realize that he had nothing to do with the massa’s decisions. At the same time, he wondered why the old man wouldn’t simply face the fact that at seventy-odd years of age, he just wasn’t in any kind of shape to travel for six weeks in either direction; almost surely he would fall sick somewhere, with all of the extra problems that would present to him and the massa. George wished hard that he knew some way to make Uncle Mingo feel better about the whole thing or at least that Uncle Mingo would stop blaming him for everything.

  Finally the two wagons turned off the big road and were rolling down the driveway. They were almost halfway to the big house when, to his amazement, he saw Missis Lea come onto the front porch and down the steps. A moment later, out the back door, came Miss Malizy. Then, hurrying from their cabins, he saw Matilda and their boys, Mammy Kizzy, Sister Sarah, and Uncle Pompey. What are they all doing here Thursday afternoon, wondered George, when they should be out in the fields? Were they so anxious to see the fine new wagon that they had risked the massa’s anger? Then he saw their faces, and he knew that none of them cared anything about any new wagon.

  When Missis Lea kept walking on to meet the massa’s wagon, George reined to a halt and leaned far over from his high driver’s seat to hear better what she said to the massa. George saw the massa’s body jerk upright as the missis fled back toward the house. Dumbfounded, George watched as Massa Lea clambered down from the new wagon and walked slowly, heavily back toward him. He saw the face, pale with shock—and suddenly he knew! The massa’s words reached him as if from a distance: “Mingo’s dead.”

  Slumping sideways against the wagonseat, George was bawling as he never had before. He hardly felt the massa and Uncle Pompey half wrestling him onto the ground. Then Pompey on one side and Matilda on the other were guiding him toward slave row with others around them weeping afresh at seeing his grief. Matilda helped him to lurch inside their cabin, followed by Kizzy with the baby.

  When he had recovered himself, they told him what had happened. “Y’all left Monday mornin’,” said Matilda, “an’ dat night nobody here slept no good. Seem like Tuesday morning we all got up feelin’ like we’d heared whole lots’a hoot owls an’ barkin’ dogs. Den we heared de screamin’—”

  “Was Malizy!” exclaimed Kizzy. “Lawd, she hollered! Us all jes’ flew out dere where she’d done gone to slop de hogs. An’ dere he was. Po’ ol’ soul layin’ out on de road, look like some pile o’ rags!”

  He was still alive, said Matilda, but “was jes’ one side o’ his mouth movin’. I got right down close on my knees an’ could jes’ barely make out he was whisperin’. ‘B’lieve I done had a stroke,’ he say. ‘He’p me wid de chickens ... I ain’t able—’”

  “Lawd have mercy, none us knowed what to do!” said Kizzy, but Uncle Pompey tried to lift the limp, heavy form. When he failed, their combined efforts finally succeeded in lugging Uncle Mingo back to slave row and onto Pompey’s bed.

  “George, he stunk so bad, wid dat sick smell on ’im!” said Matilda. “We commence fannin’ his face, an’ he kept whisperin’, ‘de chickens ... got to git back—’”

  “Miss Malizy done run an’ tol’ missis by den,” said Kizzy, “an’ she come a-wringin’ her hands an’ cryin’ an’ carryin’ on! But not’bout Br’er Mingo! Naw! First thing she hollerin’ was somebody better git to dem chickens less’n massa have a fit! So Matilda called Virgil—”

  “I sho’ didn’t want to!” said Matilda. “You know how I feels’bout dat. One of us ’nough down wid dem chickens. ’Sides, I done heared you talkin’ ’bout stray dogs an’ foxes, even wildcats be’s roun’ tryin’ to eat dem birds! But bless de chile’s heart! His eyes was bucked scairt, but he say, ‘Mammy, I go, I jes’ don’ know what to do!’ Uncle Pompey got a sack o’ corn an’ say, ‘You throw han’ful dis to any chickens you sees, an’ I be down dere soon’s I can—’”

  With no way to reach him and the massa, and Sister Sarah’s telling them that she feared Uncle Mingo was beyond what her roots could cure, and not even the missis knowing how to contact any doctor, “weren’t nothin’ else us could do ’cept jes’ wait on y’all—” they told him. Matilda began weeping, and George reached out to hold her hand.

  “She cryin’ ’cause when we got back in Pompey’s cabin after talkin’ to the missis, Mingo gone,” said Kizzy. “Lawd! Knowed it jes’ to look at ’im!” She began sobbing herself. “Po’ ol’ soul done died all by hisself.”

  When Missis Lea was told, said Matilda, “she commence hollerin’ she jes’ don’t know what to do wid dead peoples, ’cept she done heared massa say dey starts to rottin’ if dey’s kept out mo’n a day. She say be ’way past dat fo’ y’all git back, so us gwine have to dig a hole—”

  “Lawd!” exclaimed Kizzy. “Below de willow grove de groun’ kin’ o’ sof. We took de shovel, Pompey an’ us wimmins dug an’ dug, one at de time, ’til we had a hole enough to put ’im in. We come back, den Pompey bathed ’im up.”

  “He rubbed some glycerin on ’im Miss Malizy got from missy,” said Matilda, “den sprinkled on some dat perfume you brung me las’ year.”

  “Weren’t no decent clothes to put ’im in,” continued Kizzy. “De ones he had on stunk too bad, an’ what l’il Pompey have was ’way too tight, so jes’ rolled ’im up in two sheets.” She said Uncle Pompey then had cut two straight green limbs while the women found old planks, and they had fashioned a litter. “Have to say for missis dat when she seen us all bearin’ ’im over to de hole,” said Matilda, “she did come a-runnin’ wid dey Bible. When we got ’im dere, she read some Scripture, from de Psalms, an’ den I prayed, axin’ de Lawd to please res’ an’ keep Mr. Mingo’s soul—” Then they had put the body in the grave and covered it.

  “We done ’im de bes’ we could! Don’t care if you’s mad,” Matilda burst out, misreading the anguish on her husband’s face.

  Grabbing her and squeezing her fiercely, he rasped, “Nobody mad—” too stifled by his emotions to convey in words his anger with himself and the massa for not being there that morning. There might have been something they could have done to save him.

  A little later, he left his cabin thinking about what concern, care, even love had been shown to Uncle Mingo by those who had always claimed to dislike him so. Seeing Uncle Pompey, he walked over and wrung his hands, and they talked a little while. Nearly as old as Uncle Mingo had been, Pompey said he had just come up from the gamefowl area, leaving Virgil watching the chickens. “Dat a good boy y’all got, he sho’ is!” Then he said, “When you goes down dere, since it ain’t been no rain, you can still see in de dus’ o’ de road de crooked trail where Br’er Mingo dragged hisself all de way up here in de night.”

  George didn’t want to see that. Leaving Uncle Pompey, he walked slowly to below the w
illow grove. Awhile passed before he could look directly at the freshly mounded earth. Moving about as if in a daze, picking up some rocks, he arranged them in a design around the grave. He felt unworthy.

  In order to avoid Mingo’s dust trail in the road, he cut through a field of broken cornstalks to reach the gamefowl area.

  “You done a good job, boy. Now you better go on back up to your mammy,” he said, patting Virgil roughly on the head, thrilling the boy with his first compliment. After he was gone, George sat down and stared at nothing, his mind tumbling with scenes from the past fifteen years, listening to echoes of his teacher, his friend, his nearest to a father he ever had known. He could almost hear the cracked voice barking orders, speaking more gently of gamecocking; complaining bitterly about being cast aside: “You an’ massa figger y’all can trust me to feed de chickens whilst y’all’s gone?” George felt himself drowning in remorse.

  Questions came to him: Where was Uncle Mingo from before Massa Lea bought him? Who had been his family? He had never mentioned any. Had he a wife or children somewhere? George had been the closest person in the world to Uncle Mingo, yet he knew so little about the man who had taught him everything he knew.

  Chicken George paced: Dear God, where was the beloved old shambling companion with whom he had so many times trod every inch of this familiar place?

  He stayed there alone through the next day and night. It was Saturday morning before Massa Lea showed up. His face bleak and somber, he went directly to the point. “I’ve been thinking through this whole thing. To start with, just burn Mingo’s cabin, now. That’s the best way to get rid of it.”

  A few minutes later they stood and watched as the flames consumed the small cabin that for over forty years had been home to Uncle Mingo. Chicken George sensed that the massa had something else on his mind; he was unprepared for it when it came.

  “I’ve been thinking about New Orleans,” said the massa. “There’s too much at stake unless everything’s right—” He spoke slowly, almost as if he were talking to himself. “Can’t leave without somebody here to mind these chickens. Take too much time to find somebody, maybe have to teach them to boot. No point in me goin’ by myself, that much driving and twelve birds to look after. No point goin’ to a chicken fight unless you aim to win. Just foolish to make the trip now—”

  Chicken George swallowed. All those months of planning ... all the massa’s spending ... all of the massa’s hopes to join the South’s most elite gamecocking circles ... those birds so magnificently trained to beat anything with wings. Swallowing a second time, he said, “Yassuh.”

  CHAPTER 99

  Working by himself down there with the gamefowl was so strange and lonely that Chicken George wondered how in the world Uncle Mingo had managed to do it for over twenty-five years before he came to join him. “When massa bought me,” the old man had told him, “an’ de flock got to growin’, he kept sayin’ he gwine buy me some he’p, but he never did, an’ I reckon I jes’ fin’ out chickens maybe better company dan peoples is.” Though George felt that he, too, loved the birds about as much as any man could, with him they could never take the place of people. But he needed someone to help him, he told himself, not to keep him company.

  As far as he was concerned, Virgil still seemed the most sensible choice. It would keep things all in the family, and he could train the boy just as Uncle Mingo had trained him. But since he wasn’t anxious to deal with Matilda and Kizzy in order to get him, George tried to think of some gamefowl trainer acquaintance whom he might be able to persuade the massa to buy away from his present owner. But he knew that any real gamecocker massa would have to be in some truly desperate fix for money to even think about selling his trainer, especially to such a competitor as Massa Lea. So he began considering black hackfighters, but a good half of them were trainers like himself fighting their massa’s cull birds, and most of the others, like their birds, were third-raters or shady characters who fought very good birds that had been suspiciously acquired. There were a number of free black hackfighters he had seen who were really good, and were available for hire by the day, the week, the month, or even the year, but he knew there was no way Massa Lea would ever permit even the best free-black trainer in North Carolina on his place. So George had no choice. And finally one evening he mustered his nerve to bring it up at home.

  “Fo’ you tells me ag’in why you won’t stan’ fo’ it, woman, you listen to me. Nex’ time massa want me to travel wid ’im somewhere, dat’s when he sho’ gwine say, ‘Go git dat oldes’ young’un of your’n down here!’ An’ once dat happen, Virgil be wid chickens to stay, less’n massa say different, which might be never, an’ you or me neither can’t say a mumblin’ word—” He gestured to stop Matilda from interrupting. “Wait! Ain’t wantin’ no back talk! I’se tryin’ to git you to see de boy need to come on down dere now. If ’n I bring’im, den he can stay jes’ long ’nough fo’ me to teach ’im how to feed de birds when I has to leave, an’ he’p me exercise ’em durin’ trainin’ season. Den res’ de time, mos’ de year, he can be wid y’all in de fiel’.” Seeing Matilda’s tight expression, he shrugged elaborately and said with mock resignation, “Awright, I jes’ leave it up to you an’ massa, den!”

  “What git me is you talk like Virgil grown awready,” said Matilda. “Don’ you realize dat chile ain’t but six years ol’? Jes’ half de twelve you was when dey drug you off down dere.” She paused. “But I knows he got to work now he’s six. So reckon can’t do nothin’ ’cept what you says, much as I jes’ gits mad every time I thinks ’bout how dem chickens stole you!”

  “Anybody listen to you an’ mammy! Y’all soun’ like chickens done snatched me up an’ off crost de ocean somewheres!”

  “Jes’ well’s to, mos’ de time, much as you’s gone.”

  “Gone! Who settin’ up here talkin’ to you? Who been here every day dis month?”

  “Dis month maybe, but where you gwine be fo’ long?”

  “If you’s talkin’ ’bout de fightin’ season, I be wherever massa tell me we’s gwine. If you talkin’ ’bout right now, soon’s I eats, I sho ain’t gwine set here ’til some varmints creeps roun’ down dere an’ eats some chickens, or den I really be gone!”

  “Oh! You’s finally ’greein’ he’d sell you, too!”

  “I b’lieves he sell missis, she let his chickens git et!”

  “Look,” she said, “we done got by widout no big fallin’ out ’bout Virgil, so let’s sho’ don’t start none ’bout nothin’ else.”

  “I ain’t arguin’ in de firs’ place, it’s you de one!”

  “Awright, George, I’se through wid it,” Matilda said, setting steaming bowls on the table. “Jes’ eat yo’ supper an’ git on back, an’ I sen’ Virgil down dere in de mornin’. Less’n you wants to take ’im back wid you now. I can go git ’im from over at ’is gran’mammy’s.”

  “Naw, tomorrow be fine.”

  But within a week it became clear to Chicken George that his eldest son lacked totally what had been his own boyhood fascination with gamebirds. Six years old or not, it seemed inconceivable to George that after completing an assigned task, Virgil would either wander off and play alone, or just sit down somewhere and do nothing. Then Virgil would leap up as his father angrily exclaimed, “Git up from dere! What you think dis is? Dese ain’t no pigs down dere, dese fightin’ chickens!” Then Virgil would do acceptably well whatever new task he was set to, but then once more, as George watched from the corner of his eye, he would see his son soon either sitting down again or going off to play. Fuming, he remembered how, as a boy, he had spent what little free time he had scampering around admiring the cockerels and the stags, plucking grass and catching grasshoppers to feed them, finding it all incredibly exciting.

  Though Uncle Mingo’s way of training had been cool and businesslike—an order given, a watchful silence, then another order—George decided to try another approach with Virgil in hopes that he’d snap out of it. He’d talk to him
.

  “What you been doin’ wid yo’self up yonder?”

  “Nothin’, Pappy.”

  “Well, is you an’ de other young’uns gittin’ ’long all right an’ mindin’ yo’ mammy an’ gran’mammy?”

  “Yassuh.”

  “Reckon dey feeds you pretty good, huh?”

  “Yassuh.”

  “What you like to eat de mos’?”

  “Anythin’ Mammy cooks us, yassuh.”

  The boy seemed to lack even the faintest imagination. He’d try a different tack.

  “Lemme hear you tell de story ’bout yo’ great-gran’daddy like you done once.”

  Virgil obediently did so, rather woodenly. George’s heart sank. But after standing there thoughtfully for a moment, the boy asked, “Pappy, is you seed my great-gran’pappy?”

  “Naw, I ain’t,” he replied hopefully. “I knows ’bout ’im same as you does, from yo’ gran’mammy.”

  “She used to ride in de buggy wid ’im!”

  “Sho’ she did! It was her pappy. Jes’ like one dese days you tell yo’ chilluns you used to set down here ’mongst de chickens wid yo’ pappy.”

  That seemed to confuse Virgil, who fell silent.

  After a few more such lame efforts, George reluctantly gave up, hoping that he’d have better luck with Ashford, George, and Tom. Without communicating to anyone his disappointment in Virgil, he regretfully decided to use the boy for the simple part-time duties he had discussed with Matilda, rather than try futilely to train him as a full-time permanent helper as he had actually intended.

  So when Chicken George felt Virgil had mastered the task of feeding and watering the cockerels and stags in their pens three times daily, he sent him back up to Matilda to begin working with them in the fields—which seemed to suit the boy just fine. Chicken George would never have breathed it to Matilda, Kizzy, or the others, but George had always felt a deep disdain for field work, which he saw as nothing more than a ceaseless drudge of wielding hoes under hot sun, dragging cottonsacks, picking endless tobacco worms, and beating cornstalks down for fodder, in relentless seasonal succession. With a chuckle he remembered Uncle Mingo’s saying, “Gimmme a good corn or cotton field or a good fightin’ bird, I’ll take de bird every time!” It was exhilarating just to think of how anywhere a cockfight had been announced—if it was in a woods, an open cow pasture, or behind some massa’s barn—the very air would become charged as gamecockers began converging on it with their birds raucously crowing in their lust to win or die.