Cockfighter (4 page)

There was a rap on the door. I jerked my head toward the door, and Dody opened it, standing to one side as Jack Burke came inside.

“Afternoon, ma'am,” Burke said politely, removing his hat. He turned to me. “I'm sorry, Mr. Mansfield, but I made the bet in good faith and sure didn't know Sandspur had him a cracked bill. But if you'd won, I know damned well you'd of come around for eight hundred dollars from me. So I'm here for the car and trailer.”

Still seated, I shoved the envelope toward him. Burke unfastened the flap, which hadn't quite dried, and pawed through the contents. He put the hundred dollars into his wallet before he read the bill of sale. His face reddened, and he returned the bill of sale to the envelope.

“Please accept my apology, Mr. Mansfield. I don't know why, but I guess I expected an argument.”

Either he was plain ignorant or he was trying to make me angry. A handshake by two cockfighters is as binding as a sworn statement witnessed by a notary public, and he knew this as well as I did. For a long moment I studied his red face and then concluded that he was merely ill at ease on account of Dody's presence and didn't know what he was implying.

Dody leaned against the sink, glaring angrily at Burke. “I never heard of nobody so low-down mean to take a family's home away from them!” she said scathingly.

Her remark was uncalled for, but it caused Burke a deeper flush of embarrassment. “I reckon you don't know Mr. Mansfield, little lady,” he said defensively, “and not overmuch about cockfighting neither. A bet is a bet.”

“For men, yes! But what about me?” Dody patted her big breasts several times with both hands and looked beseechingly into Burke's eyes. He was troubled and he scratched his head, slanting his wary eyes in my direction.

I stood up, smiled grimly, and holding out my hands with the palms up, I made an exaggerated gesture of presentation of Dody to Jack Burke. There could be no mistake about the meaning.

“Well, I don't rightly know about that, Mr. Mansfield.” Burke scratched his head. “I already got me a lady friend up Kissimmee way.”

I stepped out from behind the table and put on my cowboy hat. Dody came flying toward me with clawing nails. The space was cramped, but I sidestepped her rush and planted a jolting six-inch jab into her midriff. Dody sat down heavily on the linoleum floor and stayed there, gasping for breath and staring up at me round-eyed with astonished disbelief.

There are three good ways to win a fight: A blow to the solar plexus,
first,
an inscrutable expression on your face, or displaying a sharp knife blade to your opponent. Any of these three methods, singly or in combination, will usually take the bellicosity out of a man, woman, or child.

The swift right to her belly and the sight of my impassive face were enough to take the fight out of Dody. Burke tried to help her to her feet, but she shrugged his hands away from her shoulders as she regained her lost breath.

“You—can—go—to—hell, Frank Mansfield!” Dody said in gasps. “I can take care of myself!” However, she prudently remained seated, supporting herself with her arms behind her back.

Burke said nothing. He ran his fingers nervously through his long hair, looking first at me and then at Dody and back to me again. He wanted to say something but didn't know what to say. I sat down at the table again and scratched out a short note.

I pushed the straw cowboy hat back from my forehead and handed him the note. After reading the message, Burke crumpled the paper and looked at me thoughtfully.

“You don't have any fighting cocks left, do you, Mr. Mansfield?”

I shook my head, and moved my shoulders in a barely perceptible shrug.

“Do you honestly believe you can train a short-heeled stag to beat Little David, a nine-time winner”—he counted on his fingers—“in only six months' time?”

In reply, I pointed to the crumpled challenge in his hand.

“Sure, Mr. Mansfield. I accept, but it'll be your funeral. And I expect you to put some money where your mouth is when the hack's held.”

We shook hands. I picked up my suitcase and guitar and went outside. As I collected my gaff case and coop together, trying to figure out how I could carry everything, Burke and Dody followed me outside. The four odd-sized pieces made an awkward double armload.

“I'll give you ten bucks for that coop,” Burke offered.

The suggestion was so stupid that I didn't dignify it with so much as a shrug. If Burke wanted a coop like mine, he could have made one.

Ralph Hansen had Burke's Ford pickup parked on the road about twenty yards away from the trailer. Burke strolled over to his truck to say something to Ralph. The other handler was in the truck bed with Burke's fighting cocks. The truck bed had steel-mesh coops welded to the floor on both sides, with solid walls separating each coop so that none of the cocks could see each other. A nice setup for traveling, with plenty of space down the center to carry feed, luggage and sleeping bags. I walked down the sandy road toward the open gate and the highway.

A moment later Dody caught up with me and trotted along at my side.

“Please, Frank,” she pleaded, “take me with you. I don't want to stay with Mr. Burke. He's an old man!”

Burke was only forty-five or -six and not nearly as old as Dody thought. I shook my head. Dody ran ahead of me then, and planted herself in my path, spreading her long bare legs, and holding her arms akimbo. I stopped.

“I'll be good to you, Frank,” she said tearfully. “Real good! Honest, I will! I know you don't like them TV dinners I been fixin', but I'm really a good cook when I try. And I'll prove it to you if you'll take me with you. I'll wash your clothes and sew and everything!” She began to blubber in earnest. Juicy tears rolled out of her moist brown eyes and flowed over her smooth round cheeks, cutting furrows in her pancake makeup.

I jerked my head for her to get out of my way. Dody moved reluctantly to one side and let me pass. At the open gate to the highway I put my luggage down and lit a cigarette. Ralph stopped the white pickup at the gate.

“I can carry you up as far as Kissimmee, Mr. Mansfield,” he offered. “Mr. Burke is going to bring your Caddy and trailer up tomorrow, he said.”

I shook my head friendlily, and waved him on his way. I didn't want any favors from Jack Burke. After Ralph made his turn onto the highway, I looked back toward my old trailer. Jack Burke and Dody had their heads together, and it looked like both of them were talking at the same time. A moment later, Burke held the trailer door open for Dody and then followed her inside.

It occurred to me that I didn't know Dody's last name. She had never volunteered the information and, of course, I had never asked her. I hate to write notes, and I only write them when it is absolutely necessary. What difference did it make whether I knew her last name or not? But it
did
make a difference, and I felt a sense of guilty shame.

The long blue convertible came gliding down the trail from the cockpit. The driver stopped at the gate. The blonde sat between the two Miami gamblers on the front seat, and Bill Sanders, puffing a cigar, was sitting alone in the back.

“Do you want to go to Miami, by chance?” Sanders asked.

I shook my head and smiled.

“We've got plenty of room,” the driver added cheerfully. “Glad to take you with us.”

I shook my head again and waved them on. Sanders raised a hand in a two-finger “V” salute, and the big car soon passed out of sight.

I didn't want to go to Miami, and I had turned down a free ride to Kissimmee. Where did I want to go? The lease on my Ocala farm had two more years to run, and it was all paid up in advance. But without any game fowl, and without funds to buy any, there was no point in going there right now. The first thing on the agenda was to obtain some money. After I had some money, I could start worrying about game fowl.

Doc Riordan owed me eight hundred dollars. His office was in Jacksonville, and he was my best bet. My younger brother, Randall, owed me three hundred dollars, but the chances of getting any money from him were negligible. Doc Riordan was the man to see first. Even if Doc could only give me a partial payment of two or three hundred, it would be a start. With only a ten-dollar bill in my watch pocket, and a little loose change, I felt at loose ends. After collecting some money from Doc I could make a fast trip home to Georgia and see my brother. I couldn't go home completely broke. I never had before, and it was too late to start now.

As I thought of home I naturally thought of Mary Elizabeth. My last visit had been highly unsatisfactory, and I had left without telling her good-bye.

On my last trip home two years before, I had been driving a black Buick convertible, and I had worn an expensive white linen suit. Although I looked prosperous, most of it was front. My roll had only consisted of five hundred dollars. That was when Randall had nicked me for the loan of three hundred. In the rare letters I had received from him since—about one every four or five months—he had never once mentioned returning the money.

Jacksonville it would be then. If nothing else, I could pick up my mail at the Jacksonville post office.

Two ancient trucks rolled through the gate, loaded down with fruit tramps. They were returning to the migrant camp on the other side of Belle Glade. A couple of the men shouted to me, and I waved to them. There was a maroon Cadillac sedan about two hundred yards behind the last truck, hanging well back out of the dust. This was Ed Middleton's car. As he came abreast of the gate, I grinned and stuck out my thumb. Mr. Middleton pressed a button, and the right front window slid down with an electronic click.

“Throw your stuff in the back seat, Frank,” Ed Middleton said. “I don't want to lose this cold air.” The window shot up again.

I opened the back door, arranged my luggage on the floor so it would ride without shifting, slammed the door, and climbed into the front seat. A refreshing icy breeze filled the roomy interior from an air-conditioning system that actually worked.

I settled backed comfortably, and Ed pointed the nose of the big car toward Orlando.

ED MIDDLETON IS
one of my favorite people. He is in his early sixties, and if I happen to live long enough, I want to be exactly like him someday. He is a big man with a big voice and a big paunch. Except for a bumpy bulbous nose with a few broken blood vessels here and there on its bright red surface, his face is smooth and white, with the shiny, licked look of a dog's favorite bone.

Against all the odds for a man his age, Mr. Middleton still has his hair. It is a shimmering silvery white, and he always wears it in a thick bushy crew cut. A ghost of a smile—as though he is thinking of some secret joke—usually hovers about the corners of his narrow lips. In southern cockfighting circles, or anywhere in the world where cockers get together for chicken talk, his name is respected as the man who bred the Middleton Gray. Properly conditioned, the purebred Middleton Gray is a true money bird.

Despite his amiable manner, Ed can get as hard as any man when the time to get tough presents itself, and he wears the coveted Cocker of the Year medal on his watch fob.

“Tough luck, Frank.” Mr. Middleton laughed aloud. “But I don't worry about you landing on your feet. If I know you, you've probably got a rooster hidden away somewhere that'll give Jack Burke his lumps.”

I smiled ruefully, made an “O” with the thumb and forefinger of my left hand and showed it to him.

“I sure didn't suspect that, Frank,” Mr. Middleton said sympathetically.

I opened a fresh pack of cigarettes, offered them to Ed and he waved them away. He was silent for more than ten minutes, and then he fingered his lower lip and squirmed about slightly in the seat. The signs were easily recognized. He wanted to confess something; a problem of some kind was on his mind. Two or three times he opened his mouth, started to speak his mind, and then shook his head and clamped his lips together. But he would get it out sooner or later, whatever it was. Since my vow of silence I had become, unwillingly, a man who listened to confessions. Now that I couldn't talk, or wouldn't talk—no one, other than myself, knew the truth about my muteness—people often told me things they would hesitate to tell a priest, or even to their wives. At first, it had bothered me, learning things about people I didn't want or need to know, but now I just listened—not liking it, of course, but accepting the confessions as an unwelcome part of the deal I had made with myself.

We sailed through the little town of Canal Point and hit Highway 441 bordering Lake Okeechobee.

From time to time, when the roadbed was higher than the dike, I got a glimpse of the calm mysterious lake, which was actually a huge inland sea. Small herds of Black Angus cattle were spotted every few miles between the lake and the highway, eating lush gama grass, but there were very few houses along the way. Lake Okeechobee, with its hundreds of fish and its clear sweet water, is a sportsman's paradise, but the great flood of the early twenties, when thousands of people were drowned, had discouraged real-estate development, I supposed. No plush resort hotels or motels had ever been built near its banks.

“Frank,” Ed Middleton said at last, lowering his voice to conspiratorial tones, “today's pitting at Belle Glade was my last appearance at a cockpit. Surprises you, doesn't it?”

It did indeed. I reached up and twisted the rear-view mirror into position so Ed could look at my face without taking his eyes off the highway too much. I looked seriously into the mirror and widened my eyes slightly.

“Nobody can keep a secret long in this business, Frank, but I've kept my plans to myself to avoid the usual arguments. I've argued the pros and cons of cockfighting thousands of times, and you know I've always been on the pro side. If there's a better way of life than raising and fighting game chickens, I haven't found it yet,” he said grimly. “But I'm a married man, Frank, and you aren't. That's the difference. I'm happily married, and I have been for more than thirty years, but I can still envy a man like you. There aren't a dozen men in the United States who've devoted their lives solely to cockfighting like you have, that is, without earning their living in some other line of business.