Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [318]
“O Lawd! O Lawd! O Lawd!” Chicken George went bolting, knocking aside men in his lunge into the circular cockpit. Bellowing like a baby, scooping up the obviously mortally wounded “Hawk,” he sucked clotting blood from its beak as it weakly fluttered, dying in his hands. He struggled to his feet with the nearest men drawing back from his bawling anguish as he stumbled back through the crowd and toward the wagon cradling the dead bird.
Back about the pit a gathering of planters were wildly back-slapping and congratulating the Englishman and Massa Jewett. All of their backs were turned to the stricken, solitary figure of Massa Lea, who stood rooted, staring down with a glazed look at the bloodstains in the cockpit.
Turning finally, Sir C. Eric Russell walked over to where Massa Lea was, and Massa Lea slowly raised his eyes.
“What’d you say?” he mumbled.
“I said, sir, it just wasn’t your lucky day.”
Massa Lea managed a trace of a smile.
Sir C. Eric Russell said, “Concerning the wager. Of course, no one carries about such sums in his pocket. Why don’t we settle up tomorrow? Say, sometime in the afternoon—” He paused. “After the tea hour, at Mr. Jewett’s home.”
Numbly, Massa Lea nodded. “Yes, sir.”
The trip home took two hours. Neither the massa nor Chicken George spoke a word. It was the longest ride Chicken George had ever taken. But it had not been long enough, as the wagon pulled into the driveway ...
When Massa Lea returned from Massa Jewett’s during the next day’s dusk, he found Chicken George mixing meal for the cockerels in the supply hut, where he had spent most of the hours since Matilda’s screams, wails, and shouting during the previous night had finally driven him from their cabin.
“George,” the massa said, “I got somethin’ hard to tell you.” He paused, groping for words. “Don’t know how to say it hardly. But you already know I ain’t had nowhere near the money folks thinks I did. Fact is, ’cept for a few thousand, ’bout all I own is the house, this land, and you few niggers.”
He’s going to sell us, George sensed.
“Trouble is,” the massa went on, “even all that ain’t but roun’ half what I owe that goddamned sonofabitch. But he’s offered me a break—” The massa hesitated again. “You heard him say what he’d heard about you. And he said today he could see how good you train in both the birds fought—”
The massa took a deep breath. George held his. “Well, seems like he needs to replace a trainer he lost over in England awhile back, and he thinks bringing back a nigger trainer would be fun.” The massa couldn’t look into George’s disbelieving eyes and became more abrupt. “Not to drag out this mess, he’ll call us square for all I’ve got in cash, a first and second mortgage on the house, and using you over in England long enough to train somebody else. He says no more’n a couple of years.”
The massa forced himself to look Chicken George in the face. “Can’t tell you how bad I feel about this, George.... I ain’t got no choice. He’s lettin’ me off light. If I don’t do it, I’m ruint, everything I ever worked for.”
George couldn’t find words. What could he say? After all, he was the massa’s slave.
“Now, I know you’re wiped out, too, and I mean to make it up to you. So I pledge you my word right here and now while you’re gone I’ll take care of your woman and young’uns. And the day you get home—”
Massa Lea paused, sliding a hand into his pocket, withdrawing it, and holding a folded paper that he unfolded and thrust before Chicken George.
“Know what that is? Sat down an’ wrote it out last night. You’re looking right at your legal freedom paper, boy! I’m gonna keep it in my strongbox to hand you the day you come back!”
But after momentarily staring at the