Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [272]
With his bird well massaged and limbered up and nestled back in its sack, George drank in more of the surrounding hubbub, and he saw yet more hackfighters with filled sacks hurrying toward the barn when the referee began waving his arms.
“All right, all right now! Let’s get started fightin’ these birds! Jim Carter! Ben Spence! Get over here and heel ’em up!”
Two gaunt, shabbily dressed white men came forward, weighed-in their birds, then fitted on the steel gaffs amid sporadic shouted bets of twenty-five and fifty cents. As far as George was concerned, neither bird looked any better than mediocre compared to the two culls from the massa’s flock in his and Uncle Mingo’s sacks.
At the cry “Pit!” the birds rushed out, burst into the air, and dropped back down, flurrying and feinting—fighting conventionally, George felt, and without the quality of drama he always sensed with Uncle Mingo and the massa at the big fights. When at last one bird hung a gaff that badly wounded the other in the neck, it took minutes more to finish the kill that George knew would have taken a top-class bird only seconds. He watched the losing owner stalk off bitterly cursing his bad luck and holding his dead bird by the legs. In a second fight, then in a third, neither the winning nor losing birds showed George the fight fire and style he was used to seeing, so diminishing his nervousness that as the fourth fight wore on, he all but cockily anticipated his own turn in the cockpit. But when it came, his heart immediately started pounding faster.
“All right, all right! Now Mr. Roames’ nigger with a speckled gray, and Mr. Lea’s nigger with a red bird! Y’all boys heel ’em up!” George had recognized his stocky black opponent when they arrived; in fact, several times over the past few years they had talked briefly at the big main fights. Now, feeling Uncle Mingo’s eyes fastened on him, George went through the weighing-in and then kneeled, unbuttoning the bib pocket of his overalls and pulling out the wrapped gaffs. Tying them onto his rooster’s legs, he remembered Mingo’s admonition, “not too loose or dey can git looser an’ slide down, an’ not too tight less’n dey numbs an’ cramps his legs.” Hoping that he was achieving just the right tightness, George heard around him the cries, “Fifty cents on de red!” ... “Covered!” ... “Dollar on de gray!” ... “Got dat!” “Fo’ dollars on de red!” It was Uncle Mingo, barking out by far the biggest bet, triggering a quick rash of cries to cover him. George could feel the excitement of the crowd increasing along with his own. “Get ready!”
George kneeled, holding his rooster firmly against the ground, feeling its body vibrating in its anxiety to burst into attack.
“Pit!”
He had forgotten to watch the referee’s lips! By the time his hands jerked up, the other bird was already blurring into motion. Scrambling backward, George watched in horror as his bird got hit broadside and knocked tumbling off balance, then gaffed in the right side with such swiftness and force that it was sent reeling. But recovering quickly, it turned to the attack as a patch of feathers began to darken with blood. The two birds flurried upward, his own flying higher, but its gaffs somehow missed on the way down. Feinting, they went up again, about evenly high this time, both of their gaffs flashing faster than anyone’s eyes could follow. George’s heart skipped beats for endless minutes as the birds pecked, feinted, lunged, and leaped all over the cockpit. He knew his rooster had to be weakening from its steady loss of blood, even as it kept countering the rushes of the spangled gray. Then suddenly, with the flash of a spur, it was all over, and George’s bird lay quivering and fluttering in its final throes. He scarcely heard the bettors’ shouts and curses as he snatched his dying bird from the cockpit. Tears bursting forth, he had pushed through the crowd of astonished, staring men when Uncle Mingo roughly