Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [256]
She was almost as stunned as he was by what she had said.
“It’s true! An’ jes’ well you know it fo’ you’s figgerin’ he doin’ you sich favors! Only thing massa wants is you’s helpin’ dat ol’ crazy nigger take care his chickens dat he figger gwine make him rich!”
George stood dumfounded.
She went pummeling at George with both fists. “Well, what you hangin’ on roun’ here fo’?” Whirling, she snatched up his few items of clothing and flung them toward him. “G’wan! Git out’n dis cabin!”
George stood there as if he had been poleaxed. Feeling her tears flooding up and spilling out, Kizzy ran from the cabin and went bolting across to Miss Malizy’s.
George’s own tears trickled down his face. After a while, unsure what else to do, he stuffed his few pieces of clothing into a sack and went stumbling back down the road to the gamecock area. He slept near one of the stag pens, using his sack for his pillow.
In the predawn, the early-rising Mingo came upon him asleep there and guessed what had happened. Throughout the day, he went out of his way to be gentle with the boy, who went about his tasks silent and withdrawn.
During their two days of building the tiny shack, Mingo began speaking to him as if he had only just now really become aware of George’s presence. “Yo’ life got to be dese chickens, til dey’s like yo’ family, boy,” he said abruptly one morning—that being the foremost thing that he wanted to plant in his mind.
But George made no response. He couldn’t think of anything but what his mother had told him. His massa was his pappy. His pappy was his massa. He couldn’t deal with it either way.
When the boy still said nothing, Mingo spoke again. “I knows dem niggers up yonder thinks I’se peculiar—” He hesitated. “I reckon I is.” Now he fell silent.
George realized that Uncle Mingo expected him to respond. But he couldn’t admit that that was exactly what he had heard about the old man. So he asked a question that had been on his mind since the first day he came to visit. “Uncle Mingo, how come dese chickens ain’t like de rest?”
“You’s talkin’ ’bout tame chickens ain’t fit for nothin’ ’cept eatin’,” said Uncle Mingo scornfully. “Dese here birds near ’bout same as dey was back in dem jungles massa say dey come from in ancient times. Fact, I b’leeves you stick one dese cocks in de jungle, he jes’ fight to take over de hens an’ kill any other roosters jes’ like he ain’t never left.”
George had other questions he’d been saving up to ask, but he hardly got the chance to open his mouth once Uncle Mingo got going. Any gamecockerel that crowed before reaching the stag stage, he said, should promptly have its neck wrung, for crowing too early was a sure signal of cowardice later on. “De true birds come out’n de egg wid de fightin’ already in dey blood from dey gran’daddies and great-gran’daddies. Massa say ’way back, a man an’ his gamechickens was like a man an’ his dogs is now. But dese birds got mo’ fightin’ in ’em dan you fin’ in dogs, or bulls, or bears, or ’coons, or whole lots of mens! Massa say it’s all de way up to kings an’ pres’dents fights gamebirds, ’cause it’s de greatest sport dey is.”
Uncle Mingo noticed George staring at the latticework of small, livid scars on his black hands, wrists, and forearms. Going over to his cabin, Mingo returned shortly with a pair of curving steel spurs that tapered to needle sharpness. “De day you starts to handlin’ birds, yo’ hands gon’ be lookin’ like mine, less’n you’s mighty careful,” said Uncle Mingo, and George was thrilled that the old man seemed to consider it possible that he might put spurs on the massa’s gamefowl one day.
Through the following weeks, though, long intervals would pass when Uncle Mingo wouldn