Cockfighter (23 page)

While Omar crushed two hard-boiled eggs, shells and all, into the feed pan, I measured out cracked Flint corn and pinhead oats. When the mixture was blended, each of the five cocks got one heaping teaspoonful. We never mixed more than enough for one feeding, and they all got a second feeding that night. Every other morning I tossed three or four larger chunks of marble grit on the floor of their stalls.

When the chickens finished eating, and they ate fast, a cup of water was put in each coop. As long as they were drinking they were left strictly alone, but the moment they quit drinking or lost interest in the water, the cup was removed.

By six thirty they were ready for the foam-rubber mattress workbench. It was firm and only slightly springy, and it was covered with an Army surplus shelter half. I ran the cocks first, one at a time, of course, from one end to the other, and then back again, twenty times the first day, thirty the second day, increasing the number of runs ten each day until they reach a hundred. A cock fights fast so I ran them as fast as I could up and down the workbench.

Following the runs, the cocks were flirted. Flirting forces a cock to flap his wings to maintain his balance, and his wing muscles are strengthened. Like the runs, they started with twenty flirts the first day, and were increased ten flirts every day until they reached a hundred. Once a man gets the hang of it, flirting isn't really difficult. A conditioner must remember to always be as careful as he can so the cock won't get bruised. If a cock is flirted roughly, he will soon get stiff, even if he doesn't get bruised. Omar was good at flirting, so I usually took the runs and let him fly them back and forth between his big hands. It was a pleasure to relax with a cigarette and watch Omar work.

With his left hand on the cock's breast, he would toss the bird deftly back for about a foot and a half, catch him with his right hand, and then toss him back. Omar started slowly, but once he caught the rhythm the cock was flying back and forth from one hand to the other so fast it looked like the cock was running in place. He had a definite flair for careful flirting, and he was proud of his ability.

Every other day, following the flirting period, we heeled a pair of the cocks undergoing conditioning with sparring muffs, and let them fight each other in the pit for about a minute and a half.

If one of the cocks appeared to be too tired, I didn't spar him. There is always risk involved in sparring. Even when a bird is armed with soft chamois muffs he can get hurt. But by watching two sparring cocks closely, I can observe how well their stamina is building up.

After the sparring period, the cocks were allowed to rest for fifteen minutes, and then we washed them with warm soapy water. To help relieve soreness, I rubbed their legs down gently with a sponge dipped in rubbing alcohol. When the birds were all washed and rubbed down, they were placed in separate sun coops for twenty minutes. There was a roosting pole in each sun coop, and if the cocks were still active enough to have a fine old time jumping up to the pole and then down again with animated eagerness, I made a note to increase their runs and flirting for the next day.

The drying-off period gave Omar and me enough time to have a coffee break.

Before we returned the cocks to the cockhouse for the day, each bird was given two flies. Two daily flies not only bring out the aggressive spirit of a gamecock, they get him used to the idea that the best way to reach his opponent is to use his wings and fly to him. For the fly, Omar held out one of the cocks with his arm extended, with the tail of the bird facing me. I held the flying cock on the ground until Omar was ready, and then I'd let him go. When I released his tail he would take to the air, but before he could reach the bird Omar was holding out toward him, Omar would twist slightly to one side, causing the flying bird to extend himself to fly higher. After a few days of flying, a mature cock could rise eight or ten feet into the air from a standing position. If a cock could remember that he knew how to fly this well, it could save his life when pitted.

The flies completed the morning conditioning. A record sheet was kept on a clipboard beside each coop, and I filled in the cock's weight, number of runs, flirts, flies, and made a note of his color. The well-conditioned cock has a dark red face and comb. When the color turns pinkish something is wrong. In the space for comments I jotted down any observed weaknesses, or changes to be made in the diet due to gains or losses that were unexpected.

Like people, every gamecock has to be handled a little differently. A chicken's brain is about the size of a BB, but within those tiny brains there is an infinite variety of character and personality traits. I've seen personalities that ranged from lassitude to zealousness, from anarchy to obedience, from friendliness to indifference. Luckily, a chicken can't count. If they could count, they would have resented the daily raising of the number of flirts and runs we gave them.

A gamecock is the most stupid creature on earth and, paradoxically, the most intelligent fighter.

When my chart notations were completed, I dropped a canvas cover over the slotted doorway of each coop, and the darkness kept the birds quiet until it was time for the evening training periods.

The other cocks, not under conditioning, were fed, watered, examined and weighed, and I was through for the morning. Omar and I would then play chess until time for lunch. When Buford was around, I drove to Omar's farm for lunch, and inspected his gamecocks before returning home. If Buford failed to drop by, I would cook either a potful of canned beef stew or pork and beans and fix a pan of hoe cakes.

“How come you've never gotten married, Frank?” Omar asked me one day, as he looked unhappily at his heaping platter of hot pork and beans. “By God, if I didn't eat something else besides stew or beans every day, I'd marry the first woman who came along!”

Omar was so used to my silence by now that he answered his own questions. “I don't suppose many women would want to marry a professional cockfighter, though. Most of the women I've known want their husband home every night, whether they like him or not, just so they can have somebody to complain to. But canned beans—ugh!”

In the afternoon, after Omar went home, I took a walk with one of my gamecocks that wasn't undergoing conditioning. When taken out of their runs, some of the cocks would follow me around. They like attention, but they also hoped that I would drop a grain of corn on the ground now and then. And sometimes I did.

Mary Bondwell either fixed supper for us at four thirty at Omar's farm, or we drove into Ocala for a steak or barbecued ribs. By five thirty, we were ready to start the conditioning all over again—the feeding, weighing, flies, flirts, runs and recording. Not many game strains can stand up to the hard conditioning I give them, but my two cocks—the Mellhorn and the Gray—came along fast, and Icky thrived on it. Omar's Roundheads had a tough time for the first three days, but as soon as their excess fat disappeared, they came up nicely.

At night, to get our gamecocks used to the lights and noise, because they would be fighting at night later on in the season, I turned on the overhead lights of the cockpit, and played sound-effects records on a portable phonograph. The records weren't loud enough to suit Omar. He charged around the outside of the pit, shouting out bets at the top of his voice.

“Hey! Who'll give me an eight to ten! I got a blinker here, half dead already! Who'll lay twenty to ten!”

He then accepted preposterous bets in a mincing falsetto, managing to make enough noise for a major cockpit. It was comical to watch his wild antics, charging around the pit, flopping his big bare arms loosely, his black beard glistening under the lights. I could never picture Omar in a homburg and gray flannel suit walking down Madison Avenue. He fitted in with a cocker's life as though he had been born to it.

After only a few nights of noise and lights, every one of the cocks could stand quietly and patiently in the center of the pit, and pay no mind either to the records or Omar.

And of course, we had a bottle every night, either gin or bourbon, and we passed it back and forth. Omar would tell me stories about New York, the advertising business, or anecdotes about radio and television people he had known.

Quite suddenly he would stop relating a story in midsentence—“Frank, do you want to know something? You and I, you big, dumb, silent son-of-a-bitch, we've got the best life in the entire world! I wouldn't trade my life now if I was given every filter-tip account in the United States and fifty percent of the stock!”

He would reach for the bottle, take a healthy swig and pass it to me.

“I know you're tired of listening to me ramble on. Why don't you get out that electronic monster of yours and play us something?”

I had rigged an extension cord from the shack, and I would play for an hour or so, sitting on the bench beside the lighted cockpit. I never played songs, I more or less played with the guitar instead, trying out chord progressions, or attempting to express a mood of some kind. Omar never said whether he liked my music or not, but he listened attentively.

One night Buford drove over with a big pot of greens his wife had cooked for me. Omar told Buford to get his enamel cup from the hook above the faucet where he kept it, and then filled it with whiskey. Before Buford had finished the cupful of whiskey he got mellow and sang for us—old-time blues and field hollers. When he held a note long enough for me to catch it, I would hit the corresponding chord on my guitar. I might have been a little drunk, but I thought Buford had the greatest voice I had ever heard.

These were all pleasant evenings for me. I have always guarded my aloneness jealously. But Omar didn't encroach on my solitude, he complemented it. For the first time in my life, I realized that companionship between two kindred spirits is not impossible—as long as each man respects the other's rights.

On the eighth day of conditioning, the exercising of each cock was cut in half. On the morning of the ninth day my Mellhorn Black got moody and refused to eat. He wasn't sick, he was mean and sulky. I put the Gray game hen in his coop with him for a couple of hours and he snapped out of his lethargy. When I removed the hen and dumped a spoonful of feed on the floor of his coop, he gobbled it up in no time.

Omar thought this was funny. “Maybe that's what's wrong with me, Frank,” he laughed. “If somebody dropped a blonde into my bed for two hours every night, I could probably eat those beans of yours and like them.”

On the twelfth day, the cocks were taken off exercise and food together. They weren't given any water, but they didn't want water. This was a good sign, and meant they were ready for the pit. They would fast right up until pit time. All five cocks were in the peak of condition. I made Omar “feel” every one of them, and his fingers learned the difference.

“If I didn't know better, Frank,” he said, “I'd think these cocks were made out of stone.”

Sunday afternoon we put the cocks into traveling coops and drove to the cockpit in Omar's station wagon. The Ocala Game Club wasn't really in Ocala—it was closer to Martel, eight miles west of the city. But it was called the Ocala pit because out-of-town cockfighters stayed in Ocala motels when the February 24 S.C. derby was held. During the entire season, the pit operator, an old retired farmer named Bandy Taylor, held back matches almost every Sunday.

Bandy Taylor was in his late sixties, with brown leathery skin and enough deep wrinkles on his face to resemble a relief map. His legs were so bowed, he couldn't have caught a pig in a trench.

Although Bandy's pit was not an elaborate setup, all of the Lownes County cockfighters liked to meet there. His wife maintained a small stand outside the pit area, where she sold coffee, Coca-Colas and hamburgers, and Bandy charged a reasonable, one-dollar admission fee. The old man, an authorized S.C.T. referee, never bet on the fights, but he made enough money on admission fees and the food his wife sold to get by. Any wins I had there could be signed by Bandy on the official records, and they would be acceptable by the Milledgeville judges for qualifying purposes.

The crowd was small, considering that four hacks between Pete Chocolate and our new partnership had been scheduled. There were thirty some-odd spectators, including a nervous Yankee tourist from Silver Springs. There were only a half dozen other cockers, looking for extra hacks. I wanted to get an extra hack for Icky, but the prospects weren't too good. I wrote my name and Icky's weight on the blackboard and hoped for the best.

Pete Chocolate won the toss and decided to fight from bottom weights up. His fighters were all Spanish crosses, and they were in fine feather. Omar held for me while I heeled the 4:02 Roundhead, and then he tried to rustle up a few bets in the bleachers. I considered fighting Icky against the other 4:02 opponent, but the Spanish Ace looked too formidable. I had made a good decision. Omar was also lucky in the stands, because the only bet he could get was a ten-dollar even money wager.

The Spanish cock uncoupled my Roundhead, breaking his spine, in the first pitting. He was counted out, paralyzed and unable to move a feather. Omar paid Pete Chocolate the fifty-dollar loss, and paid off the fan in the stands. Because of our quick loss in the first fight, Omar was able to lay a thirty-dollar bet on the outcome of the second hack.

In the second fight, I showed the 5:00 Middleton Gray, and he finished his opponent in the fourth pitting. My Gray shuffler got above the Spanish every time.

The third battle was one of those fights that never appear to get anywhere. The two cocks were evenly matched, and very little damage was done until the eighteenth pitting. By the twenty-third pitting we were alternating on calling for the count. On my count, however, the Spanish developed a rattle from an earlier wound, refused to face, and the hack was mine. Our Roundhead was well battered and wouldn't be able to fight again for at least two months.