Roots: The Saga of an American Family

For most of the next six weeks, Chicken George and Massa Lea were seldom seen by anyone else on the plantation. “It’s a good thing massa keepin’ off down dere wid dem chickens, mad as ol’ missis is!” Miss Malizy told the others on slave row at the end of the third week. “I heard her jes’ screechin’ at him ’bout takin’ five thousan’ dollars out’n de bank. Heared her say it near ’bout half what dey got saved up from all dey lives, an’ she jes’ hollered an’ carried on ’bout ’im tryin’ to keep up wid dem real rich massas what got a thousan’ times mo’ money dan he is.” After shouting at the missis to shut up and mind her own damn business, the massa had stalked out of the house, said Miss Malizy.

  Listening grimly, but saying nothing, were Matilda and twenty-two-year-old Tom, who four years before had returned to the plantation and built a blacksmith shop behind the barn, where by now he was serving a thriving trade of customers for Massa Lea. Fit to burst with anger, Matilda had confided to her son how Chicken George had furiously demanded and gotten their own two-thousand-dollar cache of savings, which he was going to turn over to the massa to be bet on the Lea birds. Matilda, too, had screeched and wept in desperate effort to reason with Chicken George, “but he act like he gone crazy!” she had told Tom. “Hollered at me, ‘Woman, I knows every bird we got from when dey was eggs. Three or fo’ ain’t nothin’ wid wings can beat! Ain’t ’bout to pass up dis chance to zackly, double what we got saved no quicker’n it take one our chickens to kill another’n! Two minutes can save us eight, nine mo’ years o’ scrapin’ an’ savin’ to buy us free!’”

  “Mammy, I know you tol’ Pappy de savin’ have to start over ag’in if de chicken lose!” Tom had exclaimed.

  “Ain’t only tol’ ’im dat! Tried my bes’ to press on ’im he ain’t got no right to gamble wid our freedom! But he got real mad, hollerin’, ‘Ain’t no way we kin lose! You gimme my money, woman!’” And Matilda had done so, she had told Tom, her face stricken.

  In the gamefowl area, Chicken George and Massa Lea finished culling seventeen of the best rangewalk birds down to ten of the finest gamecocks either of them had ever seen. Then they began air-training those ten birds, tossing them higher and higher, until finally eight of them flew as much as a dozen yards before their feet touched the ground. “I ’clare look like we’s trainin’ wil’ turkeys, Massa!” chortled Chicken George.

  “They’re going to need to be hawks up against Jewett’s and that Englishman’s birds,” said the massa.

  When the great cockfight was but a week away, the massa rode off, and late the following day he returned with six pairs of the finest obtainable Swedish steel gaffs, their lengths as sharp as razors tapering to needle points.

  After a final critical appraisal two days before the fight, each of the eight birds seemed so perfect that there was simply no way to say which five were best. So the massa decided to take all eight and choose among them at the last minute.

  He told Chicken George that they would leave the following midnight in order to arrive early enough for both the gamecocks and themselves to rest from the long ride and be fresh for the big fights. Chicken George knew that the massa was itching as bad as he was just to get there.

  The long ride through the darkness was uneventful. As he drove, his gaze idly upon the lantern glowing and bobbing at the end of the wagon’s tongue between the two mules, Chicken George thought with mingled feelings of his and Matilda’s recent emotional altercation about the money. He told himself resentfully that he knew better than she did how many years of patient saving it represented; after all, hadn’t it been his own perennial scores upon scores of hackfights that had earned it? He’d never feel for a moment that Matilda wasn’t as good as wives came, so he regretted he’d had to shout her down, upsetting her so badly, as apparently the massa had also been forced to do within the big house, but on the other hand there were those times when the head of a family simply had to make the important, hard decisions. He again heard Matilda’s tearful cry, “George, you ain’t got no right to gamble wid all our freedom!” How quickly she’d forgotten that it had been he in the first place who had introduced the idea of accumulating enough to buy their freedom. And after all those slow years of saving, it was now nothing but a godsend that the massa had confided that he needed more cash for side betting during the forthcoming fights, not only to make a good showing before those snobby, rich massas, but to win their money as well. Chicken George grinned to himself, remembering with relish Massa Lea’s utterly astounded expression at hearing him say, “I got ’bout two thousand dollars saved dat you can use to bet wid, Massa.” Upon recovering from his shock, Massa Lea had actually grabbed and shook his trainer’s hand, pledging his word that Chicken George would receive every cent that was won in bets using his money, declaring, “You ought to double it, anyhow!” The massa hesitated. “Boy, what you gonna do with four thousand dollars?”

  In that instant Chicken George had decided to take an even bigger gamble—to reveal why he had been saving so long and so hard, “Massa, don’t mistake me none, ain’t got nothin’ but de bes’ kin’ o’ feelin’s ’bout you, Massa. But me an’ ’Tilda jes’ got to talkin’, an’ Massa we jes’ ’cided we gwine try see couldn’ us buy us an’ our chilluns from you, an’ spen’ out de res’ our days free!” Seeing Massa Lea clearly taken aback, Chicken George again implored, “Please Lawd don’t take us wrong, Massa—”

  But then in one of Chicken George’s most richly warming life experiences, Massa Lea had said, “Boy, I’m gonna tell you what’s been on my mind about this chickenfight we’re going into. I’m figuring for it to be my last big one. Don’t think you even realize, I’m seventy-eight years old. I’ve been over fifty years of dragging back and forth every season worrying with raising and fighting these chickens. I’m sick of it. You hear me! I tell you what, boy! With my cut of that main pot and side bets, I’m figgerin’ to win enough to build me and my wife another house—not no great big mansion like I wanted one time, but just five, six rooms, new, that’s all we need. And I hadn’t thought about it until you just brought it up, but then won’t be no more point in owning a whole passel of y’all niggers to have to fend for. Just Sarah and Malizy could cook and keep a good garden we can live off, and have enough money in the bank not to never have to beg nobody for nothin’—”

  Chicken George was barely breathing as Massa Lea went on. “So I’m gonna tell you what, boy! Y’all have served me well an’ ain’t never give me no real trouble. We win this chickenfight big, at least double both our money, yeah, you just give me what you’ll have, four thousand dollars, and we’ll call it square! And you know good as I do all y’all niggers are worth twice that! Fact, I never told you, but once that rich Jewett offered me four thousand just for you, an’ I turned him down! Yeah, an’ y’all can go on free if that’s what you want!”

  Suddenly in tears, Chicken George had lunged to embrace Massa Lea, who quickly moved aside in embarrassment. “Oh Lawdy, Massa, you don’ know what you’s sayin’! Us wants to be free so bad!” Massa Lea’s reply was strangely hoarse. “Well, I don’t know what y’all niggers’ll do, free, without somebody lookin’ out for you. An’ I know my wife’s going to raise all manners of hell about me just the same as giving y’all away. Hell, that blacksmith boy Tom alone is worth a good twenty-five hundred plus he’s making me good money to boot!”

  Roughly the massa had shoved Chicken George. “Git, nigger, before I change my mind! Hell! I must be crazy! But I hope your woman an’ mammy and the rest y’all niggers find out I ain’t bad as I know they always make me out to be!”

  “Aw nawsuh, nawsuh, Massa, thank you, Massa!” Chicken George went scrambling backward, as Massa Lea hastily departed up the road toward the big house.

  Chicken George wished now more than ever that the bitter encounter with Matilda had never occurred. Now he decided it best to keep his triumphant secret, to let Matilda, his mammy Kizzy, and the whole family learn of their freedom as an absolutely total surprise. Still, fit to bur
st with such a secret, several times he nearly told Tom, but then always at the last moment he didn’t, for even as solid a man as Tom was, he was so close with both his mammy and gran’mammy that he might swear them to secrecy, which would ruin it. Also that would activate among them the very sticky issue that according to what the massa had said, Sister Sarah, Miss Malizy, and Uncle Pompey were going to have to be left behind, though they were as much family as anybody else.

  So across the interim weeks, Chicken George, pent up with his secret, had submerged himself body and soul into honing into absolute perfection the final eight gamecocks that now were riding quietly in their coops behind him and Massa Lea in the big custom-built wagon rolling along the lonely road through the dark. At intervals Chicken George wondered what the uncommonly silent Massa Lea was thinking.

  It was in the early daylight when they caught sight of the vast and motley throng that even this early had not only overrun the cockfighting area but had also spilled into an adjoining pasture that was quickly filling with other wagons, carriages, buggies, carts, and snorting mules and horses.

  “Tawm Lea!” A group of poor crackers cried out upon seeing the massa climb down from his huge wagon. “Go git ’em, Tawm!” As he adjusted his black derby, Chicken George saw the massa nodding at them in a friendly manner, but he kept on walking. He knew that the massa wavered between pride and embarrassment at his notoriety among the crackers. After half a century as a gamecocker in fact, Massa Lea was a legend wherever chickens were fought locally, since even at his age of seventy-eight, his ability to handle birds in a cockpit seemed undiminished.

  Chicken George had never heard such a din of crowing gamecocks as he began unpacking things for action. A passing slave trainer stopped and told him that among the crowd were many who had traveled for days from other states, even as distant as Florida. Glancing about as they talked, Chicken George saw that the usual spectator area was more than doubled, but already was crawling with men guaranteeing themselves a seat. Among those moving steadily past the wagon, he saw as many strange faces both white and black as he did familiar ones, and he felt pride when numerous among both races obviously recognized him, usually nudging their companions and whispering.

  The sprawling crowd’s buzzing excitement rose to a yet higher pitch when three judges came to the cockpit and began measuring and marking the starting lines. Another buzz arose when someone’s gamecock fluttered loose and went furiously attacking men in its path, even sending a dog yelping, until the bird was cornered and caught. And the crowd’s noises swelled with each arrival and identification of any of the area’s well-known gamecockers—especially the rest of the eight who would be competing against the sponsoring Massas Jewett and Russell.

  “I ain’t never seed no Englishman, is you?” Chicken George overheard one poor white man ask another, who said he hadn’t either. He also heard talk about the titled Englishman’s wealth, that he had not only a huge English estate, but also rich holdings in places called Scotland, Ireland, and Jamaica. And he heard that Massa Jewett had proudly boasted among friends of how his guest was known for fighting his birds anytime, anywhere, against any competition, for any amount.

  Chicken George was chopping a few apples into small bits to feed the birds when suddenly the crowd noise rose to a roar—and standing up quickly in the wagon he recognized the approaching canopied surrey driven by Massa Jewett’s always poker-faced black coachman. In the back were the two rich massas, smiling and waving down at the crowd, surging so thickly around them that the carriage’s finely matched horses had a hard time progressing. And not far behind came six wagons, each filled with tall cock coops, the lead wagon driven by Massa Jewett’s white trainer, alongside of whom sat a thin and keen-nosed white man whom Chicken George overheard someone nearby exclaim that the titled, wealthy Englishman had brought clear across the ocean just to care for his birds.

  But the oddly dressed, short, stockily built, and ruddy-complexioned English nobleman himself was the milling crowd’s major focus of attention as he rode alongside Massa Jewett in the surrey, both of them looking every inch the important, even lordly men they were, the Englishman seeming to display just an extra touch of disdain and hauteur toward the jostling throng on the ground.

  Chicken George had attended so many cockfights that he turned to his work of massaging the legs and wings of his birds, knowing out of experience that different sounds of the crowd would tell him whatever was going on, without his even looking. Soon a referee shouted for a quieting of the hoots, catcalls, and rebel yells that said that many in the crowd had already been hard at their bottles.

  Then he heard the first announcement: “Mr. Fred Rudolph of Williamstown is pitting his red bird against Sir C. Eric Russell of England with his speckled gray.”

  Then: “Bill your cocks!”

  And then: “Pit!” And the crowd’s shouting, followed by a sudden awed hush, told him as clearly as if he had been watching that the fight had quickly been won by the Englishman’s bird.

  As each of the eight challengers in turn fought their string of five birds alternately against one belonging either to Massa Jewett or the Englishman, Chicken George had never heard such a roar of side betting in his life, and the battles within the pit were often matched by the verbal contests between the crowd and the referees shouting for quiet. Now and then the crowd noises would tell the busy Chicken George that both birds had been hurt badly enough for the referees to stop the fight to let the owners doctor them up before the fight continued. George could tell from a special roaring of the crowd each time one of the wealthy men’s birds was beaten, which wasn’t often, and he wondered nervously how soon Massa Lea’s turn was going to come. George guessed that the judges must be picking the order of challengers by plucking their names on slips from a hat.

  He would have loved to see at least some of the actual fighting, but so much was at stake: He was not going to interrupt his massaging, not even for one moment. He thought fleetingly about what a fortune of money, some of it his own years of savings, the massa was only waiting to bet on the very birds whose muscles he was gently kneading under his fingers. Although only some chosen five among them would fight, there was no way to guess which five, so every one of the eight had to be in the very ultimate of physical readiness and condition. Chicken George had not often prayed in his life, but now he did so. He tried to picture what Matilda’s face was going to look like, first when he returned and dropped into her apron their money at least doubled, and next when he would ask her to assemble the whole family, when he would announce they were FREE.

  Then he heard the shout of the referee: “The next five challenging birds are owned and will be handled by Mr. Tom Lea of Caswell County!”

  George’s heart leaped up into his throat! Clapping his derby tighter on his head, he sprang down from the wagon, knowing the massa would be coming now to select his first bird.

  “Taaaaawm Lea!” Above the crowd noise he heard the name being squalled out by the poor crackers. Then came advancing raucous rebel yells as a group of men surged out of the crowd, surrounding the massa. Reaching the wagon amid them, he cupped his hand over his mouth and over the din shouted in George’s ear, “These fellas will help us take ’em all over by the cockpit.”

  “Yassuh, Massa.”

  George went leaping back onto the wagon, handing down the eight cock coops to the massa’s poor-white companions, his thoughts flashing that in his thirty-seven years of gamecocking he never had ceased to marvel at Massa Lea’s appearance of a totally detached calm in such tense times as now. Then they were all trooping back toward the cockpit through the crowd, Massa Lea carrying the splendid dark buff bird he had chosen to fight first, and Chicken George bringing up the rear carrying his woven basket of emergency injury medications, rabbit underbelly fur, some leaves of fresh ivy, glycerin, a ball of spider’s web, and turpentine. It was a worsening push-and-shove progress the closer they got toward the cockpit, with the alcoholic cries of “Tawm Lea!” ri
nging in their ears, as well as sometimes “That’s his Chicken George nigger!” and George could feel the eyes on him as if they were fingers, and it felt good, but kept both moving and looking straight ahead, trying to appear as cool as the massa.

  And then Chicken George saw the short, squat, titled Englishman standing casually near the cockpit, holding a magnificent bird within the crook of his left arm, as his eyes watchfully appraised the little procession of them arriving with the challenger birds. After exchanging curt nods with Massa Lea, Russell set his bird on the scales and the referee sang out, “Five pounds and fifteen ounces!” The beautiful bird’s silvery blue plumage reflected brilliantly in the sunlight.

  Then the massa stepped up with his dark buff bird, which was one of Chicken George’s particular favorites. It was powerful, savage, its neck jerking about like a rattlesnake, murder in its eyes, and it was seething to be released. When the referee shouted “Six pounds even!” the hard-drinking poor-white fans started yelling as if the extra ounce meant the fight was won already. “Taaaaawm Lea! Go git that Britisher, Tawm! Act like he mighty stuck up! Take ’im down a peg!”

  It was plain that Massa Lea’s special fans were really well liquored, and Chicken George saw the darkening flush of embarrassment on both the massa’s and the Englishman’s faces as, pretending not to hear, they kneeled to tie on their birds’ steel gaffs. But the cries grew more loud and rude: “Them chickens or ducks he fightin?” ... “Naw, it’s swimmin’ chickens!” ... “Yeah! He feed ’em fishes!” The Englishman’s face was angry. The referee had begun dashing back and forth, furiously waving his arms, shouting, “Gentlemen! Please!” But the derisive laughter only spread and the wisecracks became more cutting: “Where’s his red coat at?” ... “Do he fight foxes, too?” ... “Naw, too slow, waddle like a possum!” ... “More like a bullfrog!” ... “He look to me like a bloodhound!”

  Massa Jewett strode out, angrily confronting the referee, his hands hacking the air, but with his words drowned out by the chanting chorus, “Tawmmm Lea!” ... “Tawmmmmm LEA!” Now even the judges joined the referee, dashing this way and that, flailing their arms, brandishing their fists and barking repeatedly, “The cockfight will stop unless there’s quiet!” ... “Y’all want that, keep it up!” Slowly, the drunken cries and laughter began subsiding. Chicken George saw Massa Lea’s face sick with his embarrassment, and that both the Englishman and Massa Jewett were absolutely livid.