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By Root 1434 0

from ’fectin’!” Fumbling, George did so, his strong stream splattering against the wounded bird and Uncle Mingo’s hands. Then Uncle Mingo was packing the bird lightly between soft straw in a deep basket. “B’lieve we save ’im, Massa! What one you fightin’ next?” Massa Lea gestured toward a coop. “Git dat bird out, boy!” George nearly fell over himself complying, and Massa Lea went hurrying back toward the shouting crowd as another fight’s winner was announced. Faintly, beneath the raucous crowing of hundreds of cocks crowing, of men shouting new bets, George could hear the injured bird clucking weakly in his basket. He was sad, exultant, frightened; he had never been so excited. And on that crisp morning, a new gamecocker had been born.

CHAPTER 90

“Look at ’im tryin’ to outstrut dem roosters!” exclaimed Kizzy to Miss Malizy, Sister Sarah, and Uncle Pompey. George came striding up the road to spend his Sunday morning with them.

“Hmph!” Sister Sarah snorted with a glance at Kizzy. “Aw, heish up, woman, we’s jes’ proud of ’im as you is!”

As George came on, still well beyond earshot, Miss Malizy told the others that only the previous evening she had overheard Massa Lea declare tipsily to some gamecocker dinner guests that he had a boy who after four years of apprenticeship seemed as “natural born” to become, in time, “the equal of any white or black gamecock trainer in Caswell County.”

“Massa say de ol’ Mingo nigger say dat boy jes’ live an’ breathe chickens! ’Cordin’ to massa, Mingo swear one evenin’ late he was walkin’ roun’ down dere an’ seed George settin’ hunched over kind of funny on a stump. Mingo say he ease up behin’ real slow, an’ he be dog if’n George wasn’t talkin’ to some hens settin’ on dey eggs. He swear dat boy was tellin’ dem hens all ’bout fights gwine be winned by de baby chicks de hens ’bout to hatch.”

“Do Lawd!” said Kizzy, her eyes bathing in the sight of her approaching son. After the usual kissing and hugging with the women and handshaking with Uncle Pompey, they all settled onto stools brought quickly from their cabins. First they told George the latest white folks’ news that Miss Malizy had managed to overhear during the week. The scant news this time was that more and more strange-talking white folks from across the big water were said to be arriving by the shiploads up North, swelling the numbers of those already fighting to take the jobs previously held by free blacks, and there was also steadily increasing talk of sending the free blacks on ships to Africa. Living as he did in such isolation with that strange old man, they kidded George, he couldn’t be expected to know about any of this, or about anything else that was going on in the rest of the world—“less’n it git told to you by some dem chickens”—and George laughingly agreed.

These weekly visits offered not only the pleasure of seeing his mammy and the others but also of getting some relief from Uncle Mingo’s cooking, which was more suitable for chickens than for people. Miss Malizy and Kizzy knew enough by now to prepare at least two or three platefuls of George’s favorite dishes.

When his conversation began to lag—around noon, as usual—they knew he was getting restless to leave, and after they had exacted his promise to pray regularly, and after another round of huggings and kissings and pumping of hands, George went hurrying back down the road with his basket of food to share with Uncle Mingo.

In the summertime, George often spent the rest of his Sunday afternoon “off” in a grassy pasture where Mingo could see him springing about catching grasshoppers, which he would then feed as tidbits to the penned-up cockerels and stags. But this was early winter, and the two-year-old birds had just been retrieved from the rangewalks for training, and George was trying to salvage one of the several birds that Mingo and the massa felt were probably too wild and man-shy to respond properly to training and were likely to be culled out as discards. Mingo watched with affection and amusement as George forcibly restrained the pecking, squawking,