Cockfighter (3 page)

Bill Sanders, Jack Burke and the two Miami gamblers were in a huddle next to the canvas wall. Both gamblers were staring across the pit at Sandspur while Sanders and Burke talked at the same time. Sanders had a roll of money in his hand and was talking fast, although I couldn't hear his voice from where I was sitting beside the pit.

A fistfight broke out on the top tier of seats between two fruit tramps, and one of them was knocked off backward into the stands. The state trooper put an armlock on him and made him sit down on the other side of the pit. When I looked back to Bill Sanders, he was smiling and holding up three fingers.

So Bill had got three-to-one. That was good enough for me. When Sandspur won, I'd be $2,250 ahead from the Miami gamblers, plus $1,000 more from Jack Burke. $3,250. This would be more than enough money to see me through the Southern Conference season, and enough to purchase six badly needed fighting cocks besides.

“Get ready!” Mr. Middleton yelled. I stood up, stepped over the edge of the pit, and put my toes on the back score. The back score lines placed us eight feet away from each other. Ralph Hansen, holding Little David under the chest with one hand, called impatiently to the referee.

“How about letting us bill them first, Mr. Middleton?”

Billing is an essential prelude to pitting. Ed Middleton didn't need the reminder. “Bill your cocks,” he growled.

We cradled our fighters over our left arms, holding their feet, and stood sideways on our center scores, two feet apart, so the cocks could peck at each other. These cocks had never seen each other before, but they were mortal enemies. Ed allowed us about thirty seconds for the teasing and then told us to get ready. Ralph backed to his score and I returned to mine. I squatted on my heels and set the straining Sandspur with his feet on the score. The cocks were exactly eight feet apart.

I watched Mr. Middleton's lips. This was a trick I had practiced for many hours on end and I was good at it. Before a man can say the letter “P” he must first compress his lips. There isn't any other way he can say it. The signal to release the cocks is when the referee shouts “Pit” or “Pit your cocks!” The handler who releases the tail of his cock first on the utterance of the letter “P” has a split-second advantage over his rival. And in the South, where “Pit” is often a two-syllable word, “Pee-it,” my timing was perfect.

“Pit!” Mr. Middleton announced, and before the word was out of his mouth Sandspur was in the air and halfway to Little David. The cocks met in midair, both of them shuffling with blurred yellow feet, and then they dropped to the ground. Neither cock had managed to get above the other.

With new respect for each other, the two birds circled, heads held low, watching each other warily. Little David feinted cleverly with a short rush, but Sandspur wasn't fooled. He held his ground, and Burke's cock retreated with his wings fluttering at the tips.

As he dropped back, Sandspur rose with a short flight and savagely hooked the gaff of his right leg into Little David's wing. The point of the heel was banged solidly into the bone and Sandspur couldn't get it dislodged. He pecked savagely at Little David's head, and hit the top of the downed cock's dubbed head hard with his bill open… too hard.

The upper section of Sandspur's bill broke off cleanly at the doctored crack I had made. A bubble of blood formed, and Sandspur stopped pecking. Both cocks struggled to break away from each other, but the right spur was still stuck, and all Sandspur could do was hop up and down in place on his free leg. I looked at Mr. Middleton.

“Handle!” the judge shouted. “Thirty seconds!”

A moment later I disentangled the gaff from Little David's wing and retreated to my starting line. I put Sandspur's head in my mouth and sucked the blood from his broken beak. I licked the feathers of his head back into place and spat as much saliva as I could into his open mouth. For the remaining seconds I had left I sucked life into his clipped comb. The comb was much too pale…

“Get ready!” I held Sandspur by the tail on the line. “Pit your cocks!”

Instead of flying into the air, Sandspur circled for the right wall. Little David turned in midair, landed running, and chased my cock into the far corner. Sandspur turned to fight, and the cocks met head on, but my injured bird was forced back by the fierceness of Little David's rush.

On his back, Sandspur hit his opponent twice in the chest, drawing blood both times, and then Little David was above him in the air and cutting at his head with both spurs. A sharp gaff entered Sandspur's right eye, and he died as the needle point pierced his central nervous system. Little David strutted back and forth, pecked twice at my lifeless cock, and then crowed his victory.

“The winner is Mr. Burke's Ace,” Mr. Middleton announced, as a formality. “Twenty-eight seconds in the second pitting.”

All I had left was a folded ten-dollar bill in my watch pocket and one dead chicken.

THERE WAS
a burial hole in the marshy ground, about four feet square and three feet deep, on the far side of the parking area. Water was seeping visibly into the mucky pit, and the dead roosters in the bottom had begun to float.

I removed the gaffs from my dead cock's spurs and added his body to the floating pile of dead chickens. As I put the heels away in my gaff case, Bill Sanders joined me at the edge of the communal burying pit.

“I just wanted to let you know that I got all your dough down, Frank,” he said. “Every dollar at three-to-one, and there's nothing left.”

I nodded.

“Tough, Frank, but my money was riding on Sandspur with yours.”

I shrugged and emptied the peat moss out of the aluminum coop into the hole on top of the dead chickens.

“You're going to be all right, aren't you? I mean, you'll be on the Southern Conference circuit this year, and all?”

I nodded and shook hands with Sanders. As I looked down at Bill's bald head, I noticed that the top was badly sunburned and starting to peel. The little gambler never wore a hat.

“Okay, Frank. I'll probably see you in Biloxi.”

I clapped Bill on the shoulder to squeeze out a farewell. He went over to the blue Chrysler convertible and started talking to the blonde. She had evidently recovered from her upset stomach. She had remade her face, and she now listened with absorbed attention to whatever it was that Bill Sanders was telling her.

I removed the bamboo handle from the aluminum coop, collapsed the sides, and made a fairly flat, compact square out of the six frames. After locking them together with the clamps, I attached the handle again so I could carry the coop folded. A machinist in Valdosta had made two of the traveling coops for me to my own specifications and design. At one time I had considered having several made, and putting them up for sale to chicken men traveling around the country, too, but the construction costs were prohibitive to make any profit out of them. My other traveling coop was at my farm in Ocala.

Carrying my gaff case and coop, I walked back to the trailer camp. Dody met me at the door of the Love-Lee-Mobile Home with a bright, lopsided smile. Her lipstick was on crooked, and there was too much rouge on her cheeks. She wanted to look older, but the makeup made her look younger instead.

“Did you win, Frank?”

I leaned the folded coop against the side of the trailer and pointed to it with a gesture of exasperation.

“Oh!” she said. Her red lips were fixed in a fat, crooked “O” for an instant. “I'm real sorry, Frank.”

I placed my gaff case beside the coop and entered the trailer. There was a dusty leather suitcase under the bed, and I wiped the scuffed surfaces clean with a dirty T-shirt I found on top of the built-in dresser. I unstrapped the suitcase, opened it on the bed, and began to pack. There wasn't too much to put into it. Most of my clothes were on the farm. I packed my clean underwear, two clean white shirts, and then searched the trailer for my dirty shirts. I found them in a bucket of cold water beneath the sink. Dody had been promising to wash and iron them for me for the past three days, but just like everything else, she hadn't gotten around to doing it. I couldn't very well pack wet shirts in the suitcase on top of clean dry clothing, so I left the dirty shirts in the bucket.

In the tiny bathroom I gathered up my toilet articles and zipped them into a blue nylon Dropkit. When I packed the Dropkit into the suitcase, Dody began to evidence an avid interest in my actions.

“What are you packing for, Frank?” she asked.

Despite the fact that I had never said so much as a single word to her in the three weeks we had been living together, she persisted in asking me questions that couldn't be answered by an affirmative nod, a negative waggle of my head, or an explanatory gesture of some kind. If I had answered every foolish question she put to me in writing, I could have filled up two notebooks a day.

I tossed two pairs of clean blue jeans into the open suitcase, and then undressed as far as my shorts. I pulled on a pair of gray-green corduroy trousers, and put on my best shirt, a black oxford cloth Western shirt with white pearl buttons. The jodhpur boots I was wearing were black and comfortable, and they were fastened with buckles and straps. I had ordered them by mail from a bootmaker in El Paso, Texas, and had paid forty-five dollars for them. They were the only shoes I had with me. I untied the red bandanna from around my neck and exchanged it for a square of red silk, tying a loose knot and tucking the ends inside my collar before I buttoned the top shirt button. It was much too hot to wear the matching corduroy coat to my trousers, so I added it to the suitcase. The coat would come in handy in northern Florida.

“You aren't leaving, are you, Frank?” Dody asked worriedly. “I mean, are we leaving the trailer?”

I nodded impatiently, and searched through a dozen drawers and compartments before I found my clean socks. There were only three pairs, white cotton with elastic tops. I usually wear white socks. Colored socks make my feet sweat. I put the socks into the suitcase.

“Where're we going, Frank? I can get ready in a second,” the girl lied.

There were five packages of Kools left, a half can of lighter fluid and a package of flints. I put a fresh pack of Kools in my pocket, and tossed the remaining packs, fluid and flints into the suitcase. After one last look around I closed the lid and buckled the straps. To get my guitar from under the bed I had to lie flat on the floor and reach for it. The guitar was now the substitute for my voice, and my ability to play it is what had attracted Dody to me in the first place. When I needed a woman again, the guitar would help me get one.

I carried the guitar case and suitcase into the combination kitchen-living-dining room.

“Why don't you answer me!” Dody yelled, pounding me on the back with her double fists. “You drive me almost crazy sometimes. You pretend like you can't talk, but I know damned well you can! I've heard you talking in your sleep. Now answer me, damn you! Where're we going?”

I drank a glass of water at the sink, set the glass down on the sideboard, and pointed in a northerly direction.

“I don't consider that an answer! North could be anywhere. Do you mean your farm in Ocala?”

Dody had an irritating voice. It was high and twangy, and there was a built-in nasal whine. I certainly was sick of listening to her voice.

The pink slip for the Caddy and the mobile home were in the drawer of the end table by the two-seater plastic couch. I opened the drawer, removed the pink slips and insurance papers and put them on the Masonite dinette table. In the linen cupboard of the narrow hallway I found a ruled writing pad and a dirty, large brown Manila envelope. I took the five twenty-dollar bills out of the utensil cupboard and sat down at the table. Now that I had lost, I was happy about having the foresight to hide the money from Dody to cover my bet with Burke.

Standing at the sink, her arms folded across her breasts, Dody glared at me with narrowed eyes. Her lips were poked out sullenly and drawn down at the corners. I put the insurance policies, pink slips and money into the envelope. With my ballpoint lead pencil I wrote out a bill of sale on the top sheet of the ruled pad:

That would do it, I decided. If Burke wanted to transfer the pink slips and insurance to his own name, the homemade bill of sale would be sufficient proof of ownership.

“Is that note for me?” Dody asked sharply.

Although I answered with a short, negative shake of my head, Dody rushed across the narrow space, snatched the pad from the table and read it anyway. Her flushed face paled as her lips moved perceptibly with each word she read.

“Oh, you didn't lose the trailer?” she exclaimed.

I nodded, curiously watching her face. The girl was too young to have control over her features. Every emotion she felt was transmitted to her pretty, mobile face. Her facial expressions underwent a rapid exchange of dismay, anger, frustration and fear, settling finally on a fixed look of righteous indignation.

“And, of course,” she said, with an effort at sarcasm, “you lost all your money, too?”

I nodded again and held out a hand for the pad. She handed it to me, and I ripped off the top sheet and added it to the contents of the bulging envelope.

“You don't give a damn what happens to me, do you?”

I shook my head. I felt sorry for her, in a way, but I didn't worry about her. She was pretty, young and a good lay. She could get by anywhere. Twisting in the seat, I reached into my pocket for my key ring. I unsnapped the two car keys and the door key for the trailer. After dropping them into the envelope, I licked the flap, sealed it and squared it in the center of the table.