Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [260]
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