Roots (73 page)

One chilly morning in early November, when Massa Lea arrived in the mulecart, Uncle Mingo and George were waiting with the crowing, viciously pecking stags already collected in covered wicker baskets. After loading them into the cart, George helped Uncle Mingo catch his favorite old scarred, squawking catchcock.

“He’s just like you, Mingo,” said Massa Lea with a laugh. “Done all his fightin’ an’ breedin’ in his young days. Fit for nothin’ but to eat and crow now!”

Grinning, Uncle Mingo said, “I ain’t hardly even crowin’ no mo’ now, Massa.”

Since George was as much in awe of Uncle Mingo as he was afraid of the massa, he was happy to see them both in such rare good spirits. Then the three of them climbed onto the mulecart,
Uncle Mingo seated alongside the massa holding his old catchcock, and George balancing himself in the back behind the baskets.

Finally Massa Lea stopped the cart deep in the pine grove. He and Uncle Mingo cocked their heads, listening carefully. Then Mingo spoke softly. “I hears ’em back in dere!” Abruptly puffing his cheeks, he blew hard on the head of the old catchcock, which promptly crowed vigorously.

Within seconds came a loud crowing from among the trees, and again the old catchcock rooster crowed, its hackles rising. Then goosepimples broke out over George when he saw the magnificent gamecock that came bursting from the edge of the grove. Iridescent feathers were bristled high over the solid body; the glossy tail feathers were arched. A covey of about nine hens came hurrying up nervously, scratching and clucking, as the rangewalk cock powerfully beat its wings and gave a shattering crow, jerking its head about, looking for the intruder.

Massa Lea spoke in a low tone. “Let him see the catchcock, Mingo!”

Uncle Mingo hoisted it high, and the rangewalk cock seemed almost to explode into the air straight after the old rooster. Massa Lea moved swiftly, grabbing the thrashing rangewalk cock in flight, deftly avoiding the wickedly long natural spurs that George glimpsed as the massa thrust it into a basket and closed the top.

“What you gawkin’ for, boy? Loose one dem stags!” barked Uncle Mingo, as if George had done it before. He fumbled open the nearest basket, and the released stag flapped out beyond the mulecart and to the ground. After no more than a moment’s hesitation, it flapped its wings, crowed loudly, dropped one wing, and went strutting stiffly around one hen. Then the new cock o’ the walk started chasing all the other hens back into the pine grove.

Twenty-eight mature two-year-olds had been replaced with year-old stags when the mulecart returned just before dusk. After
doing it all over again to get thirty-two more the next day, George felt he had been retrieving gamecocks from rangewalks all his life. He now busily fed and watered the sixty cocks. When they weren’t eating, it seemed to him, they were crowing and pecking angrily at the sides of their pens, constructed so as to prevent their seeing each other, which would have caused some of them to get injured in their violent efforts to fight. With wonder, George beheld these majestically wild, vicious, and beautiful birds. They embodied everything that Uncle Mingo ever had told him about their ancient bloodlines of courage, about how both their physical design and their instincts made them ready to fight any other gamecock to the death anytime, anywhere.

The massa believed in training twice as many birds as he planned to fight during the season. “Some birds jes’ don’t never pink up an’ feed an’ work like de rest,” Uncle Mingo explained to George, “an’ dem what don’t we’s gwine to cull out.” Massa Lea began to arrive earlier than before to work along with Uncle Mingo, studying the sixty birds, one by one, for several hours each day. Overhearing snatches of their conversations, George gathered that they would be culling out birds with any sores on their heads or bodies, or with what they judged to be less than perfect beaks, necks, wings, legs, or over-all configuration. But the worst sin of all was not showing enough aggressiveness.

One morning the massa arrived with a carton from the big house. George watched as Uncle Mingo measured out quantities of wheatmeal and oatmeal and mixed them into a paste with butter, a bottle of beer, the whites of twelve gamehen eggs, some wood sorrel, ground ivy, and a little licorice. The resulting dough was patted into thin, round cakes, which were baked to crispness in a small earth oven. “Dis bread give ’em strength,” said Uncle Mingo, instructing George to break the cakes into small bits, feed
each bird three handfuls daily, and put a little sand in their water-pans each time he refilled them.

“I want ’em exercised down to nothin’ but muscle and bone, Mingo! I don’t want one ounce of fat in that cockpit!” George heard the massa order. “Gwine run dey tails off, Massa!” Starting the next day, George was sprinting back and forth tightly holding under an arm one of Uncle Mingo’s old, catchcocks as it was hotly pursued by one after another of the cocks in training. As Mingo had instructed, George would occasionally let the pursuing cock get close enough to spring up with its beak snapping and legs scissoring at the furiously squawking catchcock.

Catching the panting aggressor, Uncle Mingo would quickly let it hungrily peck up a walnut-sized ball of unsalted butter mixed with beaten herbs. Then he would put the tired bird on some soft straw within a deep basket, piling more straw over the bird, up to the top, then closing the lid. “It gwine sweat good down in dere now,” he explained. After exercising the last of the cocks, George began removing the sweating birds from their baskets. Before he returned them to their pens, Uncle Mingo licked each bird’s head and eyes with his tongue, explaining to George, “Dat git ’em used to it if I has to suck blood clots out’n dey beaks to help ’em keep breathin’ when dey done got bad hurt fightin’.”

By the end of a week, so many sharp, natural cockspurs had nicked George’s hands and forearms that Uncle Mingo grunted, “You gwine git mistook fo’ a gamecocker, you don’t watch out!” Except for George’s brief Christmas-morning visit to slave row, the holiday season passed for him almost unnoticed. Now, as the opening of the cockfighting season approached, the birds’ killer instincts were at such a fever pitch that they crowed and pecked furiously at
anything,
beating their wings with a loud whumping noise. George found himself thinking how often he heard his
mammy, Miss Malizy, Sister Sarah, and Uncle Pompey bemoaning their lot; little did they dream what an exciting life existed just a short walk down the road.

Two days after the New Year, George grasped each gamecock in turn as Massa Lea and Uncle Mingo closely snipped each bird’s head feathers, shortened the neck, wing, and rump feathers, then shaped the tail feathers into short, curving fans. George found it hard to believe how much the trimming accentuated the birds’ slim, compact bodies, snakelike necks, and big, strong-beaked heads with their shining eyes. Some of the birds’ lower beaks had to be trimmed, too, “for when dey has to grab a mouth holt,” explained Uncle Mingo. Finally, their natural spurs were scraped smooth and clean.

At the first light of opening day, Mingo and George were stowing the finally selected twelve birds in square traveling coops woven of hickory strips. Uncle Mingo fed each bird a walnut-sized lump of butter mixed with powdered brown-sugar candy, then Massa Lea arrived in the wagon, carrying a peck of red apples. After George and Mingo loaded the twelve cockcoops, Mingo climbed up on the seat beside the massa, and the wagon began rolling.

Glancing back, Uncle Mingo rasped, “You gwine or not?”

Leaping after them, George reached the wagon’s tailgate and vaulted up and in. No one had
said
he was going! After catching his breath, he hunkered down into a squatting position. The wagon’s squeakings mingled in his ears with the gamecocks’ crowings, cluckings, and peckings. He felt deep gratitude and respect for Uncle Mingo and Massa Lea. And he thought again—always with perplexity and surprise—about his mammy’s having said that the massa was his daddy, or his daddy was the massa, whichever it was.

Farther along the road, George began seeing either ahead or emerging from side roads other wagons, carts, carriages, and buggies, as well as horsemen, and poor crackers on foot carrying bulging crocus sacks that George knew contained gamecocks bedded in straw. He wondered if Massa Lea had once walked to cockfights like that with his first bird, which people said he had won with a raffle ticket. George saw that most of the vehicles carried one or more white men and slaves, and every vehicle carried some cockpens. He remembered Uncle Mingo’s saying, “Cockfightin’ folks don’t care nothin’ ’bout time or distance when a big main gwine happen.” George wondered if maybe some of those poor crackers afoot would someday come to own a farm and a big house like the massa did.

After about two hours, George began hearing what could only be the crowing of many gamecocks faintly in the distance. The incredible chorus grew steadily louder as the wagon drew nearer to a heavy thicket of tall forest pines. He smelled the aroma of barbecuing meat; then the wagon was among others maneuvering for places to park. All around, horses and mules were tied to hitching posts, snorting, stomping, swishing their tails, and many men were talking.

“
Tawm Lea!
”

The massa had just stood up in the wagon, flexing his knees to relieve the stiffness. George saw that the cry had come from several poor crackers standing nearby exchanging a bottle among themselves, and was thrilled at the instant recognition of his massa. Waving at those men, Massa Lea jumped to the ground and soon had joined the crowd. Hundreds of white people—from small boys holding their fathers’ pantslegs to old, wrinkled men—were all milling about in conversational clusters. Glancing around, George saw that nearly all the slave people remained in vehicles,
seemingly attending to their cooped gamecocks, and the hundreds of birds sounded as if they were staging a crowing contest. George saw bedrolls under various nearby wagons and guessed that the owners had come from such long distances that they were going to have to stay overnight. He could smell the pungent aroma of corn liquor.

“Quit settin’ dere gapin’, boy! We got to limber up dese birds!” said Uncle Mingo, who had just gotten the wagon parked. Blocking out the unbelievable excitement as best he could, George began opening the travel coops and handing one after another angrily pecking bird into Uncle Mingo’s gnarled black hands, which proceeded to massage each bird’s legs and wings. Receiving the final bird, Uncle Mingo said, “Chop up half dozen dem apples good an’ fine. Dey’s de bes’ las’ eatin’ fo’ dese birds gits to fightin’.” Then the old man’s glance happened to catch the boy’s glazed stare at the crowd, and Uncle Mingo remembered how it had been for him at
his
first cockfight, longer ago than he cared to think about anymore “
G’wan!
” he barked, “git out’n here an’ run roun’ l’il bit if you want to, but be back fo’ dey starts, you hear me?”

By the time his “Yassuh” reached Uncle Mingo, George had vaulted over the wagon’s side and was gone. Slithering among the jostling, drinking crowd, he darted this way and that, the carpeting of pine needles springy under his bare feet. He passed dozens of cockcoops containing crowing birds in an incredible array of plumage from snow-white to coal-black, with every imaginable combination of colors in between.

George stopped short when he saw it. It was a large sunken circle, about two feet deep, with padded sides, and its packed sandy clay floor was marked with a small circle in its exact center and two straight lines equally distant from each side. The cockpit! Looking up, he saw boisterous men finding seats on a natural sloping rise behind it, a lot of them exchanging bottles. Then he
all but jumped from his skin at the nearby bellow of a reddish-faced official, “Gentlemen, let’s get started fighting these birds!”

George sped back like a hare, reaching the wagon only an instant before Massa Lea did. Then the massa and Uncle Mingo went walking around the wagon talking in low tones as they glanced at the cooped birds. Standing up on the wagon’s front seat, George could see over men’s heads to the cockpit. Four men there were talking closely together as two others came toward them, each cradling a gamecock under an arm. Suddenly cries rose among the spectators: “Ten on the red!” ... “Taken!” ... “Twenty on the blue!” ... “Five of it!” ... “Five more!” ... “Covered!” The cries grew louder and more numerous as George saw the two birds being weighed and then fitted by their owners with what George knew must be the needle-sharp steel gaffs. His memory flashed to Uncle Mingo once telling him that birds were seldom fought if either of them was more than two ounces lighter or heavier than the other.

“Bill your cocks!” cried someone at the edge of the cockpit. Then quickly he and two other men squatted outside the ring, as the two owners squatted, within the circle, holding their birds closely enough to let them peck briefly at each other.

“Get ready!” Backing to their opposite starting marks, the two owners held their birds onto the ground, straining to get at each other.

“Pit your cocks!”

With blurring speed, the gamecocks lunged against each other so hard that each of them went bouncing backward, but recovering within a second, they were up into the air shuffling their steel-gaffed legs. Dropping back onto the pit floor, instantly they were airborne again, a flurry of feathers.

“The red’s cut!” someone hollered, and George watched breathlessly as each owner snatched his bird as it came down, examining
the bird quickly, then set it back on its start mark. The cut, desperate red bird somehow sprang higher than its opponent, and suddenly one of its scissoring legs had driven a steel gaff into the brain of the blue bird. It fell with its wings fluttering convulsively in death. Amid a welter of excited shouting and coarse cursing, George heard the referee’s loud announcement, “The winner is Mr. Grayson’s bird—a minute and ten seconds in the second pitting!”

George’s breath came in gasps. He saw the next fight end even more quickly, one owner angrily flinging aside his losing bird’s bloody body as if it were a rag. “Dead bird jes’ a mess of feathers,” said Uncle Mingo close behind George. The sixth or the seventh fight had ended when an official cried out, “Mr. Lea!” ...