Roots (78 page)

“W
hat 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.

“Nothin’,” he replied. “Wasn’t thinkin’ ’bout nothin’, Massa.”

“Somethin’ I am’t never understood about you niggers!” There was an edge in Massa Lea’s voice. “Man try to talk to y’all decent, you right away start acting stupid. Makes me madder’n hell, especially a nigger like you that talks his head off if he wants to. Don’t you reckon white people would respect you more if you acted like you had some sense?”

Chicken George’s lulled mind had sprung to keen alertness. “Dey might, den again some might not, Massa,” he said carefully. “It all depen’.”

“There you go with that round-the-mulberry-bush talk. Depend on what?”

Still parrying until he got a better idea of what the massa was up to, Chicken George offered yet another meringue of words. “Well, suh, I means like it depen’ on what white folks you talkin’ to, Massa, leas’ways dat’s what I gits de impression.”

Massa Lea spat disgustedly over the side of the wagon. “Feed and clothe a nigger, put a roof over his head, give him everything else he needs in this world, and that nigger’ll never give you one straight answer!”

Chicken George risked a guess that the massa had simply decided upon impulse to open some sort of conversation with him, hoping to enliven what had become a boring and seemingly endless wagon ride.

In order to stop irritating Massa Lea, he tested the water by saying, “You wants de straight, up-an’-down truth, Massa, I b’lieves mos’ niggers figger dey’s bein’ smart to act maybe dumber’n dey really is, ’cause mos’ niggers is scairt o’ white folks.”

“Scared!” exclaimed Massa Lea. “Niggers slick as eels, that’s what! I guess it’s scared niggers plottin’ uprisings to kill us every time we turn around! Poisonin’ white people’s food, even killin’ babies! Anything you can name against white people, niggers doin’ it all the time, and when white people act to protect themselves, niggers hollerin’ they so scared!”

Chicken George thought it would be wise to stop fiddling with the massa’s hairtrigger temper. “Don’t b’lieve none on yo’ place ever done nothin’ like dat, Massa,” he said quietly.

“You niggers know I’d kill you if you did!” A gamecock crowed loudly in its coop behind them, and some others clucked in response.

George said nothing. They were passing a large plantation, and he glanced across at a group of slaves beating down the dead cornstalks in preparation for plowing before the next planting.

Massa Lea spoke again. “It makes me sick to think how tough niggers can make it for a man that’s worked hard all his life tryin’ to build up somethin’.”

The wagon rolled on in silence for a while, but Chicken George could feel the massa’s anger rising. Finally the massa exclaimed, “Boy, let me tell you somethin’! You been all your life on my place
with your belly full. You don’t know nothin’ about what it’s like to grow up scufflin’ and half starvin’ with ten brothers and sisters and your mama and papa all sleeping in two hot, leaky rooms!”

Chicken George was astonished at such an admission from the massa, who went on heatedly as if he had to get the painful memories out of his system. “Boy, I can’t remember when my mama’s belly wasn’t big with another baby. And my papa chawin’ his tobacco and half drunk forever hollerin’ and cussin’ that none of us was workin’ hard enough to suit him on ten rocky acres that I wouldn’t give fifty cents an acre for, where he called himself a farmer!” Glaring at Chicken George, he said angrily, “You want to know what changed my life?”

“Yassuh,” said George.

“This big faith-healer came. Everybody was runnin’ around excited about his big tent bein’ put up. The openin’ night everybody who could walk, even those who needed to be carried, were overflowin’ that tent. Later on, people said there had never been such a hellfire sermon and such miracle cures in Caswell County. I never will forget the sight of those hundreds of white people leapin’, screamin’, shoutin’, and testifyin’. People fallin’ out in one ’nother’s arms, moanin’ and twitchin’ and havin’ the jerks. Worse than you’ll see at any nigger camp meetin’. But midst all that ruckus and hoorah, there was one thing that somehow or ’nother really hit me.” Massa Lea looked at Chicken George. “You know anything about the Bible?”

“Not—well, nawsuh, not to speak of.”

“Bet you wouldn’t of thought I know nothin’ about it, either! It was from the Psalms. I’ve got that place marked in my own Bible. It says, “I have been young and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor His seed beggin’ bread.”

“After that preacher was long gone, that sayin’ stuck in my head. I turned it up and down and sideways tryin’ to figure out what
meanin’ it had for me. Everything I saw in my family just translated to beggin’ bread. We didn’t have nothin’, and we wasn’t goin’ go
get
nothin’. Finally it seemed like that sayin’ meant if I made myself to get righteous—in other words, if I worked hard, and lived the best I knew how—I’d never have to beg for bread when I was old.” The massa looked at Chicken George defiantly.

“Yassuh,” said Chicken George, not knowing what else to say.

“That’s when I left home,” Massa Lea went on
.
“I was eleven years old. I hit the road, askin’ any and everybody for a job, doing anything, includin’ nigger work. I was ragged. I ate scraps. I saved every cent I got, I mean for years, until I finally bought my first twenty-five woodsland acres, along with my first nigger, name of George. Fact, that’s who I named you for—”

The massa seemed to expect some response. “Uncle Pompey tol’ me ’bout ’im,” said Chicken George.

“Yeah. Pompey came along later, my second nigger. Boy, you hear what I tell you, I worked shoulder to shoulder alongside that George nigger, we slaved from can to can’t, rootin’ up stumps and brush and rocks to plant my first crop. It wasn’t nothin’ but the Lord that made me buy a twenty-five-cent lottery ticket, and that ticket won me my first gamecock. Boy, that was the best bird I ever had! Even when he got cut bad, I’d patch him up and he went on to win more hackfights than anyone ever heard of one rooster doin’.”

He paused. “Don’t know how come I’m sittin’ up here talkin’ this way to a nigger. But I guess a man just need to talk to somebody sometime.”

He paused again. “Can’t do no talkin’ to your wife, much. Seem like once a woman catches a husband to take care of them, they spend the rest of their lives either sick, restin’, or complainin’ about somethin’, with niggers waitin’ on them hand and foot. Or they’re forever pattin’ their faces with powder till they look like ghosts—”

Chicken George couldn’t believe his ears. But the massa couldn’t seem to stop himself. “Or then you can get the other kind, like my family. I’ve wondered a lot of times why none of my nine brothers and sisters didn’t fight to get away like I did. They’re still scufflin’ and starvin’ just the same as the day I left—only now they’ve all got their own families.”

Chicken George decided that he had best not acknowledge with even a “Yassuh” anything the massa was saying about his family, some of whom George had seen briefly talking with the massa when they were at cockfights or in town. Massa Lea’s brothers were dirt-poor crackers of the sort that not only the rich planters but also even their slaves sneered at. Time and again he had seen how embarrassed the massa was to meet any of them. He had overheard their constant whining about hard times and their begging for money, and he had seen the hatred on their faces when the massa gave them the fifty cents or a dollar that he knew they were going to spend on white lightning. Chicken George thought of how many times he had heard Miss Malizy tell how, when the massa used to invite members of his family home for dinner, they would eat and drink enough to glut three times their own number, and the moment he was out of earshot, would heap scorn on him as if he were a dog.

“Any one of them could have done what I did!” Massa Lea exclaimed beside him on the wagon seat. “But they didn’t have the gumption, so the hell with them!” He fell silent again—but not for long.

“One way or another, I’ve got things goin’ along pretty good now—a respectable roof to live under, my hundred or so gamebirds, and eighty-five acres with over half of it in crops, along with the horse, mules, cows, and hogs. And I’ve got you few lazy niggers.”

“Yassuh,” said Chicken George, thinking that it might be reasonably safe to express in a mild way another point of view. “But
us niggers works hard for you, too, Massa. Long as I been knowin’ my mammy an’ Miss Malizy an’ Sister Sarah an’ Uncle Pompey an’ Uncle Mingo—ain’t dey been workin’ fo’ you hard as dey can?” And before the massa could reply, he tacked on something Sister Sarah had mentioned during his visit to slave row the previous Sunday. “Fact, Massa, ’ceptin for my mammy, ain’t none of ’em less’n fifty years ol’—” He stopped himself, not about to add Sister Sarah’s conclusion that the massa was simply too cheap to buy any younger slaves, apparently expecting to work the few he had until they dropped dead.

“You must not have been payin’ attention to all I’ve been tellin’ you, boy! Ain’t a nigger I got worked as hard as me! So don’t come tellin’
me
how hard niggers work!”

“Yassuh.”

“‘Yassuh’
what?”

“Jes’ yassuh. You sho’ work hard, too, Massa.”

“Damn right! You think it’s easy being responsible for everything and everybody on my place? You think it’s easy keepin’ up a big flock of chickens?”

“Nawsuh, I know for sho’ dat’s hard on you, Massa.” George thought of Uncle Mingo’s having attended the gameflock every day for more than thirty years—not to mention his own seven. Then, as a ploy to emphasize Mingo’s decades of service, he asked innocently, “Massa, is you got any idea how ol’ is Uncle Mingo?”

Massa Lea paused, rubbing his chin. “Hell, I really don’t know. Let’s see, I once figured he’s around fifteen years older’n I am—that would put him somewhere up in his early sixties. And gettin’ older everyday. Seems like he’s gettin’ sick more and more every year. How does he seem to, you? You’re livin’ down there around him.”

Chicken George’s mind flashed to Uncle Mingo’s recent bout of coughing, the worst one he had ever yet suffered, as far as he knew. Remembering how Miss Malizy and Sister Sarah often declared
that the massa viewed any claim of sickness on their part as sheer laziness, he said finally, “Well, Massa, mos’ de time seem like he feelin’ fine, but I b’lieves you really ought to know he do git real bad coughin’ spells sometimes—so bad I gits scared, ’cause he jes’ like a daddy to me.”

Catching himself too late, instantly he sensed a hostile reaction. A bump in the road set the cooped gamecocks clucking again, and for several moments the wagon rolled on before Massa Lea demanded, “What’s Mingo done so much for you? Was it him took you out of the fields and sent you down there with a shack for yourself?”

“Nawsuh, you done all dat, Massa.”

They rode on in silence for a while until the massa decided to speak again. “I hadn’t much thought about what you said there back a ways, but now that you mention it, I really got me a bunch of old niggers. Some of ’em bound to start breakin’ down on me anytime now, goddammit! Much as niggers cost nowadays, I’m goin’ to have to buy one or two younger field hands!” He turned as if accosting Chicken George. “You see what I’m talking about, the kind of things I have to worry about all the time?”

“Yassuh, Massa.”

“‘Yassuh, Massa!’ That’s the nigger answer to everything!”

“You sho’ wouldn’t want no nigger disagreein’ wid you, suh.”

“Well, can’t you find somethin’ to say besides ‘Yassuh, Massa’?”

“Nawsuh—I means, well, suh, leas’ you got some money to buy niggers wid, Massa. Dis season you winned so good in de cockfights.” Chicken George was hoping to move the conversation onto a safer subject. “Massa,” he asked guilelessly, “is it any gamecockers ain’t got no farm atall? I means don’t raise no crops, jes’ nothin’ but chickens?”

“Hmmmm. Not that I know of, unless it’s some of those city slickers, but I never heard of any of them with enough birds to be
called serious gamecockers.” He thought for a moment. “In fact, it’s usually the more gamecocks, the bigger the farm—like that Mr. Jewett’s place where you’ve been tomcattin’.”

Chicken George could have kicked himself for handing the massa that kind of an opening, and he quickly sought to close it. “Ain’t been over dere no mo’, Massa.”

After a pause, Massa Lea said, “Found you another wench somewhere else, huh?”

Chicken George hesitated before replying. “I stays close now, Massa.” Which avoided a direct lie.

Massa Lea scoffed. “Big, strapping twenty-year-old buck like you? Boy, don’t tell
me
you’re not slippin’ around nights gettin’ plenty of that good hot tail! Hell, I could hire you out to stud; bet you’d like that!” The massa’s face creased into a half leer. “Good friend of mine says them black wenches got plenty good hot tail, now tell me the truth, ain’t that right, boy?”

Chicken George thought of the massa with his mammy. Steaming inside, he said slowly, almost coldly, “Maybe dey is, Massa—” Then, defensively, “I don’t know dat many—”

“Well, okay, you don’t want to tell you’ve been slippin’ off my place at night, but I know it’s time, and I know
where
you go and how
often
you go. I don’t want that road patrol maybe shooting you like happened to that Mr. Jewett’s trainer nigger, so I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, boy. When we get back, I’m goin’ to write you out a travelin’ pass to go chase tail
every
night if you want to! Ain’t never thought I’d do that for no nigger!”

Massa Lea seemed almost embarrassed, then covered it with a frown. “But I’m going to tell you one thing. First time you mess up, don’t get back by daybreak, or too wore out to work, or I find out you’ve been on that Jewett place again, or anything else you know you’re not supposed to do, I’m tearin’ up the pass for good—and you along with it. Got that?”