Cockfighter (8 page)

I studied the mimeographed schedule, but I wasn't too happy about it. There wasn't a whole lot of time to obtain and keep gamecocks for the tourney.

SCHEDULE
Southern Conference

I was already too late for Greenville, Mississippi. The S.C.T. was unlike other invitational mains and derbies, both in rules and gamecock standards. When Senator Foxhall had organized the S.C.T. back in the early thirties, his primary purpose had been to improve the breeds and gameness in southern cockfighting. The hardest rule of the tourney was that all the cocks entered in the final round at Milledgeville had to be four-time winners. A cock can win one or sometimes two fights with flashy flies on the first pitting, and some good luck. But any cock that wins four in a row is dead game. Luck simply doesn't stretch through four wins. This single S.C.T. rule, more than any other, had certainly raised breeding standards in the South, and it kept out undesirables and fly-by-night cockers looking for a fast dollar. All the pit operators on the S.C.T. circuit were checked from time to time by members of the committee, and if their standards of operation dropped, they were dropped, in turn, by the senator.

Like the other big-time chicken men, I had fought cocks in the highly competitive six-day International Tournament in both Orlando and Saint Pete, and I intended to enter it again someday, but I preferred the more rigid policies of the S.C.T. It was possible to enter the annual International Tournament by posting a preliminary two-hundred-dollar forfeit, which was lost if you didn't show up and pay the three-hundred-dollar balance. The winning entries made big money at the International, but I could make just as much at S.C.T. pits and the final Milledgeville meet. And the wins on the S.C.T. circuit really meant something to me.

At that moment, however, I didn't feel like a big time cockfighter. I was at rock bottom and it was ironical to even think about fighting any cocks that season. All I had in my wallet was eighteen dollars, plus some loose change in my pockets. I owned a thirty-dollar guitar, a gaff case, a few clothes in a battered suitcase, and a lease on a farm.

Of course, the contents of my gaff case were worth a few hundred dollars, but I needed everything I had to fight cocks. I sat down on the edge of my bed, and opened my gaff case to search for the last letter Doc Riordan had sent me. I opened the letter, but before reading it again, I made a quick inventory of the gaff case to see if there was anything I could do without. There wasn't. I needed every item.

There were sixteen sets of gaffs, ranging from the short one-and-one quarter-inch heels I preferred, up to a pair of three-inch Texas Twisters. I even had a set of slashers a Puerto Rican breeder had given me one afternoon in San Juan. With slashers, the bird is armed on one leg only. I don't believe in fighting slashers for one simple reason. When you fight slashers, the element of chance is too great, and the best cock doesn't always win. With a wicked sharp blade on a cock's left leg, the poorest cock can sometimes get in a lucky hit. Pointed gaffs, round from socket to point, are legitimate. Once a cock's natural spur points have been sawed off, the hand-forged heels fitted over the half-inch stumps are a clean substitute for his God-given spurs, and they make for humane fighting. Two cocks meeting anywhere in their natural state will fight to death or until one of them runs away. Steel spurs merely speed up the killing process, and a cock doesn't have to punish himself unnecessarily by bruising his natural spurs.

Of course, I had fought slashers when I was a soldier in the Philippines because I had to, and I knew how to fight them. But I had never considered them altogether fair because of that slight element of chance. Cockfighting is the only sport that can't be fixed, perhaps the only fair contest left in America. A cock wouldn't throw a fight and couldn't if he knew how.

Every pair of my sixteen sets of heels was worth from twenty to thirty-five dollars, and I needed them all. The correct length of heels is a common argument, but what really determines the right length of heels for any given cock is the way it fights. And even though I favor short heels, like they use in the North, or “short-heel country” as the North is called, I would never handicap a cock by arming him with the wrong spurs out of vain, personal preference. It is a crime not to arm a cock with the spurs which will allow him to fight his very best.

In addition to my heel sets I had a spur saw, with a dozen extra blades, moleskin heeling tape, blade polishers, gaff pointers, a set of artificial stubs for heeling slip-leg cocks, two pairs of dubbing shears, one curved and the other straight, and two new heeling outfits, each containing pads, tie strings and leather crosspieces. There was also a brand new roll of Irish flax, waxed tie string, some assorted salves and a few gland stimulant capsules. To anybody except a cocker, this collection of expensive equipment was worthless junk. If I pawned the entire contents of my case, a pawnbroker wouldn't give me more than forty dollars for the lot.

For a few thoughtful moments I clicked the dubbing shears in my hand, then picked up Doc's letter. I'd been carrying it around in my case for more than three months.

To anyone who didn't know Doc Riordan, this letter would have sounded encouraging indeed. But the letter was more than three months old and, unfortunately, I knew Doc too well. I liked the man for what he was and respected him for what he was trying to be. But unlike me, Doc lives with a big dream that was practically unattainable. All I wanted to be was the best cockfighter who ever lived. Doc, who had already reached his late fifties, wanted to be a big-time capitalist and financier.

He wasn't a real doctor, I knew that much. He was a pharmacist, and a good one, and somewhere along the years he had added Doc to his name. I had met him several years before at various Florida cockpits, and I had bought conditioning powder and ergot capsules from him when he still had his mail-order business. Conditioning powder can be made up by any pharmacist who is given the formula, but Doc was dependable, well liked by cockers, and had also invented a salve that was a quick healer for battered cocks. However, there are a lot of businessmen who advertise the same types of items in cocker's journals. There wasn't enough big money in cocker medical supplies for Doc, and he dropped out of the field. However, he would still supply a few friends like myself when we wrote to him.

Some four years before, Doc had caught me in an amiable mood and with more than five thousand dollars in my pockets. I had put eight hundred into his company—The Dixie Pharmaceutical Company—and I had never received a dividend. I had had several glowing letters from him, but not a cent in cash. In fact, I didn't even have any stock certificates to show for my investment. It was one of those word-of-mouth deals so many of us enter into in the South. A handshake is enough, and I knew my money would be returned on demand… providing Doc had it. But whether he had it or not was something else altogether.

I left my room, walked down the street to a café and ate two hamburgers and drank two glasses of milk. When I returned to my room, I nipped at the gin and read my new
Southern Cockfighter
magazine. The magazine had been published and mailed out before the Belle Glade derby, but there was a short item about the Homestead pitting, and my name was mentioned in Red Carey's column, “On the Gaff.”

The item should have irritated me, but it didn't. A columnist has to put something in his column, and I was fair game. There was nothing wrong with my conditioning methods. They had paid off too many times in the past. My problem was to get the right cocks, and when I got Icky from Mr. Middleton, I would be off to a good season. I finished the rest of the gin and went to bed.

As far back as 320 B.C. an old poet named Chanakya wrote that a man can learn four things from a cock: To fight, to get up early, to eat with his family, and to protect his spouse when she gets into trouble. I had learned how to fight and how to get up early, but I had never gotten along too well with my family and I didn't have any spouse to protect. Fighting was all very well, but getting up early was not the most desirable habit to have when living in a big city like Jacksonville.

The next morning I was up, dressed and shaved, and sitting in the lobby by five-thirty. I bought a morning
Times-Union,
glanced at the headlines and then went out for breakfast because the hotel coffee shop didn't open until seven thirty. I lingered as long as I could over coffee, but it was still only six thirty when I returned to the hotel. I was too impatient just to sit around, and I soon left the dreary lobby and walked the early morning streets. The wind off the river was chilly and it felt good to be stirring about. A sickly sun rode the pale morning sky, but after an hour passed it began to get warm and promised to be a good day.

Promptly at eight I entered the Latham building to see if Doc Riordan had arrived at his office. The Latham building was an ancient red-brick structure of seven stories built in the early 1900s. Nothing had been done to it since. The entrance lobby was narrow, grimy, and filled with trash blown in from the street. There was a crude, hand-lettered sign on the elevator stating that it was out of order. Doc's company was on the sixth floor.

The stairwell up was unlighted and without windows. I climbed the six flights only to discover that his office was closed. The office was two doors away from the far end of the hallway, and the frosted glass top half of the door had gold letters painted on it four inches high:

THE DIXIE PHARMACEUTICAL CO.
Dr. Onyx P. Riordan
PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANGR
.

I tried the door and found it locked. Rather than descend the stairs and then climb up again I leaned against the wall and smoked cigarettes until Doc showed up.

The wait was less than twenty minutes and I heard Doc huffing up the stairs long before I could see him. He entered the hall, red-faced, carrying a large cardboard container of coffee. The container was too hot for him to hold comfortably, and as he recovered his breath, he kept shifting it from one hand to the other as he fumbled with his key in the door lock.

“Come on in, Frank,” Doc said, as he opened the door. “Soon as I set this coffee on the desk I'll shake hands.”

I followed Doc into the tiny office, and we shook hands. Doc wiped his perspiring bald head and brow with a handkerchief and cursed angrily for two full minutes before he sat down behind his desk

“I've told the superintendent before and I'm going to tell him one more time,” Doc said as he ran down, “and if he don't get that damned elevator fixed, I'm moving out! That's a fact, Frank, a fact!”

I sat down in a straight-backed chair in front of Doc's desk, and surveyed his ratty little office. A single dirty window afforded a close-up of the side of a red-brick movie theater less than three feet away, and the proximity of the building didn't allow much light into the room. Doc probably had to burn his desk and ceiling lights even at midday. Doc's desk was a great, wooden, square affair, and much too large for the size of the room. In front of the fluorescent desk lamp was his carved desk sign: Dr.
Onyx P. Riordan, Pres.
(and a beautifully carved ornate job it was, too). In addition to his desk there was a low two-drawer filing cabinet, the swivel executive chair he was sitting in, and two straight-back chairs. These simple furnishings made the room overly crowded. On the wall behind his desk was a hand-lettered, professionally done poster in three primary colors praising the virtues of a product called Licarbo. After reading the poster I studied Doc's face. He had taken two green dime store cups out of his desk and was filling them with black coffee.

With his bald head and tonsure of thin, fine gray hair, Doc looked his fifty some-odd years, all right, but there was a certain youthfulness about his face that denied those years. His features were all small, gathered together in the center of a round, bland face. His mouth and snubby nose were small. His blue eyes were ingenuously wide and revealed the full optic circle. With his round red cheeks and freshly scrubbed look, Doc could probably have passed for thirty if he wore a black toupee and dyed his eyebrows to match.

“It's been a long time, Frank,” Doc said sincerely, “and I'm really glad to see you again.” He sat back with a pleased smile. “I want to show you something!”

He began to rummage through his desk. I sipped some coffee and lit another cigarette from the butt of the one I was smoking. The sight of this little hole-in-the-wall office had dashed any hopes I might have had about getting even a portion of my money back from the old pharmacist.

“Read this, Frank!” Doc said eagerly, sliding a letter across the broad surface of the desk. I read the letter. It was from a drug laboratory in New York.