Roots (88 page)

It had not been really necessary for Massa Lea to tell his veteran trainer that he was going after a share of such a huge pot.

“Well,” he said upon return to the plantation after posting his $1,875 bond, “we’ve got six weeks to train five birds.” “Yassuh, ought to be able to do dat, I reckon,” Chicken George replied, trying
as hard—and as unsuccessfully—not to seem excited. Apart from his own deep thrill just to think of such a contest, Chicken George exulted to the assembled slave-row family that it seemed to him that sheer excitement had rolled twenty-five years off Massa Lea. “Dey’s sho’ pricin’ out any hackfighters!” he exclaimed. “Massa say it’s sho’ de bigges’ money fight he ever got anywheres near to—fac’, de secon’ bigges’ he ever even heared of!”

“Phew! What bigger fight was
dat?”
exclaimed Uncle Pompey.

Chicken George said, “Reckon maybe twenty years back dis double-rich Massa Nicholas Arrington what live near Nashville, Tennessee, took ’leben covered wagons, twenty-two mens, and three hunnud birds clear crost no tellin’ how many states, through bandits an’ Indians an’ everythin’, ’til dey got to Mexico. Dey fought ’gainst ’nother three hunnud birds belongin’ to de Pres’dent o’ Mexico, a Gen’l Santa Ana, what had so much money he couldn’ even count it, an’ swo’ he raised de world’s greatest gamecocks. Well, Massa say de fightin’ jes’ dem two men’s birds went on a solid
week!
De stake was so big dey main purse was a chest apiece full o’ money! Massa say even dey side bets could o’ broke mos’ rich mens. In de end, dis Tennessee Massa Arrington won roun’ half a million dollars! His birds he called ‘Cripple Tonys’ after his crippled nigger trainer named Tony. An’ dat Mexican Gen’l Santa Ana wanted one dem ‘Cripple Tonys’ so bad fo’ a breedin’ cock he paid its weight in gol’!”

“I see right now I better git in de chicken business,” said Uncle Pompey.

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 burst 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.