Dirty Rice (25 page)

“Pit'em,” another man standing off to one side hollered, and the handlers let loose the roosters and the birds went at each other, flying and slashing with their steel spurs until they fell down to the dirt floor in a tumble. “Louisiana Black Top,” a bunch of people yelled out when that happened, that name mixed up with the general roar from the crowd and the name of the other cock, Little Red from Alabam, who didn't seem to have as many fans on his side. The two chickens rolled around together in the dirt, feathers flying up, and steel spurs jerking and twisting, one of the birds making a loud clucking noise like you will hear when you throw down a handful of corn in among a flock of chickens at feeding time and every one of them starts claiming it ought to have first rights to every last kernel that's landed.

Neither Louisiana Black Top nor Little Red from Alabam seemed to be getting the advantage during that tussle, though I could see a good-sized mist of blood flying up in the air, from which bird I wasn't able to tell. I'd decided I wanted Little Red from Alabam to win because of the name he had, and I thought to myself here was another case that shows how much it means what a living thing is called. I had more in common with that chicken than with the other one, and that was because we had connection through the way a certain word sounds when it's said out loud. You can't help the way a word makes you feel.

The third man in the pit, the umpire I guess you'd call him if cockfighting was anything like baseball, stopped the action about then by yelling out something in Cajun French I couldn't understand, but the handlers could. Each man picked up his bird, walked off to the side, and started figuring out the damage done by then and what to do about it before the next inning. The one managing Louisiana Black Top splashed water on his bird's beak, and then stuck the chicken's head in his mouth, blowing out his cheeks so big it looked like he had little rubber balloons in his jaw.

When the manager of Louisiana Black Top pulled his gamecock's head out from where he'd been blowing breath into him, the bird looked like it'd perked him up to have his head done that way. Seeing that made me uneasy about Little Red from Alabam, but I needn't have worried, it turned out, since the next time the handlers let their chickens go when the umpire said “pit'em” the rooster I was favoring flew up a little higher than the other bird right from the beginning, slashed both steel spurs up and then down, and one of them caught Louisiana Black Top right in the top of his head, there in the middle of where his comb would've been if somebody hadn't already trimmed it off with a blade.

By the time both chickens hit the ground, Louisiana Black Top was dead, stretching his legs out once and craning his neck and then not making another move. Little Red from Alabam saw he'd won, hopped up and down a couple of times like I've seen pitchers do when the last out of a close game is made, and the bird crowed. As much noise as the people in that tin building watching were making, you would've predicted not being able to hear a rooster crow, but that's where you'd have been wrong. Little Red from Alabam crowed loud, and he was heard by every man in the place, and he didn't bother to take another look at the chicken he'd whipped, the same way a batter who's hit a ball deep over the outfield fence doesn't have a need to look at anything or anybody when he's trotting around the bases, just make sure to touch all four of them so nobody can take that homer he's hit away from him.

Little Red from Alabam got picked up and petted by his manager, the manager of Louisiana Black Top pulled the steel spurs off his bird and threw him in the box with the other dead losers, not even bothering to watch him land, and Dynamite Dunn asked me how I'd liked my first chicken fight.

“Don't you wish you'd had some money on that red-colored bird, Gemar?” he went on to say. “He wasn't supposed to win. Good odds on that boy. That's why all these people are squalling now. They played it safe but they bet wrong.”

“You can look at a man's record, and see what he's done before,” I said. “But that really don't mean a lot about what he'll do again. You know that.”

“Sure, but the odds favor one side over another every time, whether it's chicken fighting or baseball. You always bet the odds, and you'll make a steady living.”

“Except when you don't,” I said. “That's why you got to play every game and not just give the win to the one that's supposed to come out on top.”

“What you really want is the underdog to come out on top, if you're a betting man,” Dynamite said. “Ask Sal Florio.”

“Sal makes a good living, I reckon. He must know when to bet against the odds.”

“Sally Florio knows how to fix it so he can tell when the odds don't mean nothing. Sal is figuring all the time how to get that done.”

“I guess he studies everybody's record, how many they won and lost and how many the ones they're playing won and lost. Then he makes him up an equation and figures stuff out with that. He told me he's a student.”

“An equation, huh? You keep giving yourself away, pitcher. You listened way too much in school to what them teachers told you. But Sal Florio now, he don't worry about past records except to know how they're going to make the odds act. No, what he studies is not numbers. He studies folks, and that's the best predictor of all when it comes to knowing who's really going to win.”

“No matter what the odds say?”

“Odds? What're odds? They came from yesterday. You play a game today, right now. That's what you can fix, what's happening right now. Not what happened yesterday and what might happen tomorrow.”

Dynamite looked back down into the cockpit at the colored man raking the dirt smooth where Little Red from Alabam had messed it up when he killed his opponent, and pointed toward the handlers leaning over the coops holding their gamecocks. “Here comes another pitting, Gemar,” he said. “Better get your bet down.”

“No,” I said, looking at the names of the birds painted on the side of their coops. “I believe I'll let Texas Two Step and Mama's Baby settle this fight by themselves. I'm going to go outside, get me some air, look up at the moon maybe.”

“That ain't no fun,” Dynamite said. “Scientists got it all figured out exactly what the moon's going to do every night that rolls. And it does what it's told, that moon up in that black sky. There ain't no odds there a man can work with.”

“You're right,” I said, stepping away from the pit. “It's all just even odds outside in the dark, just like Abba Mikko laid it down to begin with, no matter where you look.”

We finished up that series in Rayne with Lake Charles and the next one with three games against the Hammond Berries, and then we loaded up in the toad mobile and went down south to Morgan City to play three with them. We won four out of the six with Lake Charles and with Hammond, and that put us only a game behind Opelousas, so the Rice Bird team was feeling good when we started that swing toward the towns close to the big water. Right before we left early in the morning, Dutch Bernson reminded me about the fishing trip out into the Gulf I'd be taking with the co-owners of the Rayne team. He didn't have to do that, but Dutch had to tell you a thing over and over again to be sure it was set in your mind.

What he was really doing was making sure if anything went wrong with any plans he'd set out for you that nobody would be able to say he didn't tell you so. It was like a manager had a little book in his head he could flip the pages of so he could show you'd had due warning after a bad thing had took place. If you missed a sign or read it wrong and didn't hit behind the runner or got picked off first base because you'd took too long a lead on a particular pitcher with a good move, the manager would point it out to you. Why didn't you listen to me, he'd say when it was time to place the blame. I told you what was going to happen if you didn't pay attention to what I was saying. This is all your doing. Remember?

“After that first game with Morgan City,” Dutch told me, “the one Hookey Irwin is going to pitch and you're going to be in left field, Mr. LeBlanc and Mr. Guidry will pick you up early the next morning and take you out for some fishing on that big boat. Can you remember that now, Gemar?”

“Yep,” I said. “I believe I might be able to.”

“Don't you just believe it. Do it. Don't you keep them waiting because you stayed up too late or some shit like that. These two fellows own this ball team, and they ain't used to being held up because some ballplayer has a bad head in the morning. You taking Mike Gonzales with you, right? That's who you said was the one going with you.”

“Did I say that?” I said to Dutch. I'd done told Mike Gonzales about the trip and let Legon LeBlanc know that Mike was the man I'd proposed to bring with me and Mr. LeBlanc said that was the exactly the man he wanted to come fishing with us. I had learned to like keeping Dutch Bernson a little stirred up by then, though, so I did that. It was something to do.

Me and Mike were standing outside in the gravel in front of our room in the Dun Traveling tourist court where they'd put the Rice Bird team to stay in Morgan City, ready and waiting, when a black Packard automobile pulled right up to us that morning. Mist was still hanging over the rice fields next to the tourist court, and flocks of gulls were floating above that. The sun was barely up, and the air smelled the best it was going to all day.

A colored man wearing pants and a shirt and hat the same shade of gray was driving the car, and Mr. Legon LeBlanc hopped out of the backseat to say howdy as soon as the Packard stopped. The colored man had already jumped out from behind the steering wheel and was coming around to open the door, but he didn't get to it before Legon LeBlanc had got out. “Don't worry about letting me out, Raymond,” Mr. LeBlanc said. “We're just going fishing this morning, and we ain't going to stand on ceremony, are we, gentlemen?”

LeBlanc was old enough to have a grown son, Clayton, who I'd already run across. That had me a little nervous, I got to say. Mr. LeBlanc didn't look old enough to be Clayton's father. Another thing that interested me was how ought a man look who owned half a baseball team. I didn't know what a man had to do to be able to own half of the Rice Bird team, but Legon LeBlanc looked to me that morning like a man who'd never had to work hard a single day in his life so far. He looked a lot newer and less wore out than a man his age ought to.

“Well, Chief,” he said once we'd got loaded up in the Packard and headed off down the road, “I expect you and Mike Gonzales are feeling pretty good this morning, after what the Rice Birds did last night to the Oilers.”

“Hookey pitched a good game,” I said. “He had his stuff all right.”

“So did both of you boys, I got to say. You rookies are making Dutch Bernson look like some kind of a mastermind,” he said and laughed pretty loud, looking close at me while he did, though he was sitting right next to me.

“Dutch tells us what to do, all right,” Mike Gonzales said from where he was sitting on a little seat pulled down so he was facing me and Legon LeBlanc. “He gives us lots of good advice all the time he's managing.”

“That's a nice thing for you to say, Mike,” Mr. LeBlanc said, laughing too loud again for the size of that backseat we were all riding along together in. That space was having a hard time holding us. “But you know what? If Dutch is talking to the wrong man, it won't do a bit of good, no matter what kind of advice he gives. It's easy to say do a thing, but it's hard to do it. Am I right about that?”

Me and Mike both allowed that he was, and I wondered two things about then. Did Mr. LeBlanc know about me knocking his boy down in the Bon Soir Club? And how much farther did we have to go before we could get out of that Packard automobile?

Which half of the Rice Birds did Mr. LeBlanc own, I asked myself. How did they divide it up? Pitchers and catchers, maybe, in one bunch? Outfielders and first basemen in the other? I'd rather own the pitchers and catchers myself, I figured as I rode along toward a place where a boat was waiting to take me out onto big water, though pitchers and catchers were a lot crosser than outfielders and infielders. Pitchers and catchers always got a lot to think and worry about, and that works on their nerves. Owning them would require a lot of attention, but owning outfielders wouldn't be much more trouble than owning a small herd of cattle. Just keep them fed and the fences up.

I knew better than that, naturally, about how two men could own part of the same thing and not have to worry about exactly how to divide it, but it gave me something to occupy my thinking as we rode along in that big Packard toward where the boat was waiting for us.

The engine on the boat was all cranked up and idling when we got to the place where they had it tied, and it didn't take long for us to climb aboard it and get set to go out on the water. Three or four men were running the boat, the boss a Cajun it looked like, and the other ones Mexicans. One of them might have been a light skinned colored man. They all knew what they were doing and what needed doing next, so all me and Mike Gonzales and Legon LeBlanc had to do was sit on some cushioned seats that was nailed to the boat so they wouldn't slide around. By the time the crew had untied the ropes and got the boat headed out, Mr. Tony Guidry had come out of a door of a good-sized room in front of the boat onto the deck where we was, and he went around to each of us to shake our hands and say welcome aboard
Gulf Dream
. That was the name of the boat, written across the back of it in curly letters.

It took us a while to work our way through a bunch of other boats heading out between the shores of a bay on each side of us, but when we got to the open water, the man on top at the controls of the
Gulf Dream
gave it the gas, and we started moving at a good clip. From where I was sitting, I could look back at the trail the boat left in the water, and it reminded me of the crest of feathers on top of Red Bird's head, but a whole lot bigger. The faster we went, the higher the plume of water stood up, shining in the sun as it rose and fell back. That looked good to me, how regular it was, and I eased back in my seat and let the air get a good chance to push against my back and make the sleeves of my shirt flap as I watched where we'd been pull steady away from us.

Mr. Guidry asked me and Mike if we was ready for our first beer of the day on the water, and I told him not yet. Mike said he believed he was ready for one, and him and the two co-owners of the Rayne Rice Birds started sipping at bottles of Jax.

“Chief,” Mr. Guidry said to me, stepping out of the wind into the space where the high part of the boat gave some protection from the noise. “I understand you never been saltwater fishing before.”

I told him I hadn't, and he started talking a lot about what kind of fish we'd be going after and how we'd rig our gear to do it, and what they'd been catching lately in the spots we were going to be trying, and a lot more stuff that I heard some of and some not. I kept nodding, though, like I was following everything he was saying, Mike kept drinking every bottle of Jax they brought to him, and the Mexicans stayed busy getting lines fixed on the reels and hooks put on them, and we pushed along through the water with Red Bird's crest of feathers rising up strong and steady behind us.

When Tony Guidry ran out of things to tell me, he moved over to where Legon LeBlanc was sitting, and they started talking for a good while to each other, what they were saying was lost in the wind between me and Mike and them, and I was glad of that. I was tired of acting like I was listening to Mr. Guidry's directions, and I figured once we got to where the fishing took place I could figure out enough how to do to satisfy the people watching me.

That gave me a chance to look at what was outside the boat, and it came to me that for the first time in my life all I could see in every direction was nothing but water. I was in the middle of where there was not a thing but that, and the circle my eyes made as I moved them from one place to the other didn't contain a single living thing I could see. Not a hardwood, not a pine, not a blade of grass, not a hill, not a speck of dirt, not another person but the ones with me in the boat.

My belly did a little shift somewhere deep inside me when I thought about that, and I knew then how Lodge Boy must've felt when him and the other two young Alabamas left the shore and headed across the big water to find the edge of the world. What they did was told in the story McKinley Short Eyes would tell us children about the time the three boys went too far south out of the Nation and ended up in the land where the Karankawas lived. That tribe of Indians was cannibals, and they stayed hungry all the time because they couldn't find enough meat to eat down there where they lived on the shore of the big water. They had fish, sure, and sea birds if they could catch them, but their weapons was weak, and their arrows wouldn't hold a good point.

See, McKinley Short Eyes would say when he got to that place in the story, them Karankawas didn't have the advantages the People got here in the Big Thicket. Last thing we're worried about is finding good wood for our bows and arrows. What can we use for that? When he asked that question, some kid would answer, one of the young ones generally, since the rest of us had heard the story enough times not to get excited again about the strength of
beaux d'arc
limbs and how the ash is so straight its arrows fly true, and then the old man would go on with the story.

“All them cannibals had to work with was cane and crooked live oak and no real flint to make arrowheads, and when they did get those sorry tools put together, what could they use them on? Seagulls and turtles and fish so deep in the water you can't even see them. Trying to kill that trash using them weak weapons, you can understand why they decided they'd rather eat a human being, so long as he wasn't one of them. The Karankawas was real skinny and hungry all the time, that whole bunch, and didn't have enough sense to plant corn and squash and beans, and if they did, would it grow in that old sand?”

“No, Old Father,” some kid would holler.

“No,” McKinley Short Eyes would say. “Too stupid, them Karankawas. They'd rather eat a fat Alabama or a husky Coushatta anytime, instead of a seagull or some seaweed or grasshoppers.”

Thinking of that story of the three boys leaving shore to get out of range of the cannibal Indians and finding they had to paddle their little boat all the way to the end of the world to find land again, I lifted my eyes from the surface of all that water the
Gulf Dream
was moving through, and I caught sight of the clouds, white thunderheads puffed up bigger than any I'd seen before on land. That was a good change for me from the way the water was the same any direction I looked, and I couldn't help from laughing at the relief those clouds brought me.

“What's so funny?” Mike Gonzales said to me, bumping his shoulder into me where we sat.

“Nothing much,” I said. “I was just thinking about cannibals.”

“Cannibals? Why? We got all this free Jax beer to drink and you sitting there thinking about cannibals?”

“Yeah, that and whether they slipped onto the boat with us, and why they're so hungry and how to get away from them and how far is it to the edge of the world.”

“Crazy shit, again, Gemar,” Mike said. “You sure can come up with it. You better start sucking on a bottle of beer here to clear your mind. There ain't no cannibals but in Africa, last I heard, right?”