Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [261]
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!” ...
The massa walked hurriedly away from the wagon cradling a bird under his arm. George remembered feeding that bird, exercising it, holding it in his arms; he felt dizzy with pride. Then the massa and his opponent were by the cockpit, weighing-in their birds, then fitting on the steel gaffs amid a clamor of betting cries.
At “Pit your cocks!” the two birds smashed head-on, taking to the air, they dropped back to the floor, furiously pecking, feinting, their snakelike necks maneuvering, seeking any opening. Again bursting upward, they beat at each other with their wings—and then they fell with Massa Lea’s bird reeling, obviously gaffed! But within seconds, in the next aerial flurry, the massa’s bird fatally sank his own gaff.
Massa Lea snatched up his bird—which was still crowing in triumph—and came running back to the wagon. Only vaguely George heard, “The winner is Mr. Lea’s”—as Uncle Mingo seized the bleeding bird, his fingers flying over its body to locate the deep slash wound in the rib cage. Clamping his lips over it, Uncle Mingo’s cheeks puckered inward with his force of sucking out the clotted blood. Suddenly thrusting the bird down before George’s knees, Mingo barked, “Piss on it! Right there!” The thunderstruck George gaped. “Piss! Keep it