Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [264]
It seemed to George that Uncle Mingo must have taught him a thousand things, yet thousands more were still in Uncle Mingo’s head. As hard as George had tried to understand, he still couldn’t comprehend how Mingo—and the massa—could seem to sense which birds would prove to be the smartest, boldest, and proudest in the cockpit. It wasn’t simply the assets you could see, which by now even George had learned to recognize: the ideal short, broad backs with the full, rounded chests tapering to a fine, straight keel-bone and a small, compact belly. He knew that good, solid, round-boned wings should have hard-quilled, wide, glossy feathers that tended to meet under a median-angled tail; that short, thick, muscular legs should be spaced well apart, with stout spurs evenly spaced above strong feet whose long back toe should spread well backward and flat to the ground.
Uncle Mingo would chide George for becoming so fond of some birds that he seemed to forget their jungle instincts. Now or then some gamecock docilely being petted in George’s lap would glimpse one of Uncle Mingo’s old catchcocks and with a shattering crow burst from George’s grasp in violent pursuit of the old bird, with George racing to stop them before one killed the other. Uncle Mingo also repeatedly cautioned George to control his emotions better when some bird of George’s got killed in the cockpit; on several occasions the big, strapping George had burst into tears. “Nobody can’t speck to win every fight, don’ know how many times I got to tell you dat!” said Mingo.
Mingo also decided to let the boy know that for several months he had been aware that George had been disappearing not long after full darkness fell, then returning very late, recently close to daybreak. Uncle Mingo was sure it had a connection with George’s having once mentioned, with elaborate casualness, that while he had been at the gristmill with Massa Lea one day, he had met a pretty and nearly high-yaller big-house maid named Charity from the adjacent plantation. “All dese years down here, dese of ears an’ eyes o’ mine’s like a cat’s. I knowed de first night you slipped off,” Uncle Mingo said to his astounded apprentice. “Now, I ain’t one to poke in nobody’s business, but I’se gwine tell you sump’n. You jes’ be mighty sho’ you ain’t cotched by some dese po’ white paterollers,’cause if dey don’t beat you half to death deyself, dey’ll bring you back, an’ don’t you think massa won’t lay his whip crost yo’ ass!” Uncle Mingo stared for a while across the grassy pasture before he spoke again. “You notice I ain’t said quit slippin’ off?”
“Yassuh,” said George humbly.
During another silence, Mingo sat down on a favorite stump of his, leaned slightly forward, and crossed his legs, with his hands clasped around his knees. “Boy! I ’members back when I first foun’ out what gals was, too—” and a new light crept into Uncle Mingo’s eyes as the aged features softened. “It was dis here long, tall gal, she was still new to de county when her massa bought a place right next to my massa’s.” Uncle Mingo paused, smiling. “Bes’ I can ’scribe ’er, well, de niggers older’n me commence to callin’ ’er ‘Blacksnake’—” Uncle Mingo went on, his smile growing wider and wider the more he remembered—and he remembered plenty. But George was too chagrined at being caught to be embarrassed by anything Mingo was telling him. It was pretty clear though that he had underestimated the old man in more ways than one.
CHAPTER 91
Walking up the road toward slave row one Sunday morning, George sensed that something was wrong when he saw that neither his mammy nor any of the others were standing around Kizzy’s cabin to greet him, as they had never failed to do before in the four years he’d spent