Cockfighter (7 page)

I entered the feed shed, dipped into the open sack of cracked corn in the corner, and picked out a dozen fat grains. I returned to the cock's walk, opened the gate and entered. As the cock watched me with his head to one side I lined up the grains of corn on the ground about six inches apart. The cock marched toward me boldly, eating as he came, and pecked the remaining grain of corn out of my outstretched palm. He wasn't a man fighter. Ed had probably spent a good many hours talking to the cock and gently handling him. I picked Icarus up with both hands, holding him underhanded, and examined the cock's legs and feet.

They hung down in perfect alignment with his body. If a cock's legs are out of line with the direction of his body, he is called a dry-heeled cock, because he can't hit and do much harm. But if the legs are in perfect direction, the cock stands erect, and he raises high. And usually he's a close hitter. This cock's legs were perfect.

I lowered the cock to the ground, released him and opened the gate. The cock tried to follow me out, and I liked that for some reason. Ed came out of the feed shack and showed me the bird's weight chart, which was attached to a clipboard.

Icarus was seventeen months old and weighed 4:03 pounds. He had maintained this weight fairly well for the past three months, within two ounces either way. For a cock that wasn't on a conditioning diet, this even weight indicated that the bird was healthy enough. He was fed cracked corn twice a day, barley water, and purged twice a week with a weak solution of one grain of calomel and one grain of bicarbonate of soda dissolved in water.

The flirting and exercising sections on the chart were empty. I tapped them with a forefinger and looked questioningly at Mr. Middleton.

“I haven't done any conditioning, Frank. But as you can see, I've watched his weight closely. He should go to 4:05 maybe, or 4:07 at most—under training. That's my opinion, anyway,” he qualified his estimate. For a full minute, Ed looked through the fence at the cock, and I returned the weight chart to the hook on the wall inside the shack.

“Do you want this cock, Frank?” Ed asked fiercely, when I rejoined him.

What could I say? I stretched out the fingers of my left hand and made a sawing motion higher up, at the shoulder.

“Okay, Frank. You can have him for five hundred dollars. I told Martha last night you'd come home with me to buy the last of my chickens. So that's the price. Pay me and take him!”

The old cock fancier dug his hands into his pockets and walked away from me, unable, for the moment, to look me in the face.

He knew perfectly well I didn't have five hundred dollars, and he also knew that the cock wasn't worth that much. For fifty dollars apiece I could purchase country-walked gamecocks, with authenticated bloodlines, from almost any top breeder in the United States. And fifty dollars was a good price. I've seen Ace cocks sell for a hundred, and sometimes for one hundred and fifty—but never for five hundred.

No breeder wants to sell any of his fighters to another cocker he may meet at the same pit someday. The cock he sells or gives away may possibly kill some of his own birds in a pitting. On the other hand, the breeders who raise game fowl to sell would be thought ridiculous if they attempted to peddle an untested cock for five hundred dollars!

The answer was simple. Ed Middleton didn't want to sell Icarus. He was looking for an out to keep his pet. After I left he could tell Martha I had made an offer and that he had promised to sell it to me. Anybody else who came around to buy it could be legitimately refused. “I'd be glad to sell it,” he could truthfully say to a prospective buyer, “but I've promised the cock to Frank Mansfield. Sorry…”

The old bastard was trying to renege on his promise to his wife. Knowing that I didn't have his price and was unlikely to pay it if I did, he planned on keeping his pet cock until it died of old age. One thing I did know, if I showed up with the money, he would have to sell it. And I wanted that bird. I seemed to sense somehow that this was the turning point in my run of bad luck at the pits…Little Icky.

Standing by an orange tree, Ed jerked a piece of fruit from a lower limb and threw it in a looping curve over the trees. I could hear the mushy thud of the orange as it landed deep in the grove. I crossed the space separating us with an outstretched hand.

Ed grimly accepted my promise to buy his cock with a strong handshake.

While Mr. Middleton made a mixture of barley water, I leaned against the door of the feed shack and finished my cigarette. Somehow, I was going to get the money to buy that cock. Now my impending trip to Jacksonville had a sharpened point to it. If Doc Riordan had any money at all, I intended to get it.

Ed measured out the cracked corn and fed his pet, the two battered Gray roosters, and the old hen. Although I could feel some sympathy for Martha in not wanting her husband out traveling the cockfight circuits, I could not understand her desire to make him give up cock-breeding. If she considered cock-breeding morally wrong, she could have consoled herself with the idea that Ed was doing the breeding, not her. A man like Ed Middleton could never give up his love of the game. Perhaps she was going through her menopause and, as a consequence, was losing her mind.

“Let's go get us some breakfast, Frank,” Ed said, as he locked the feed shack door. Ed started down the path toward the lake, and I lingered for a last look at Icarus. He pecked away at his grain hungrily. I could see the fine breeding of the cock in his stance and proud bearing. The cock had shape, health, and an inborn stamina. Through proper conditioning I could teach him responsiveness, alertness, improve his speed, and sharpen his natural reflexes. Other than that, there wasn't much else I could do for the cock. His desire to fight was inherited. And the only way his gameness could be tested truly was in the pit.

I turned away from the walk and ran down the path to catch up with Ed.

When we entered the kitchen, Martha greeted us cheerfully and began to prepare our breakfast. Ed and I sat down across from each other at the breakfast nook and I inhaled the delicious fragrance of the frying bacon. It was quite a breakfast: crisp bacon, fried eggs, hot biscuits, grits and melted butter, orange juice, and plenty of orange-blossom honey to coil onto the fluffy biscuits.

As I sat back with a full stomach to drink my after-breakfast coffee, Ed told his wife that I was going to buy his remaining chickens.

“That's wonderful, Ed,” Martha said happily. She smiled at me and bobbed her chin several times. “You know Ed wouldn't sell those old birds to just anybody, Frank. But Ed has always had a lot of respect for you, and I know you'll take good care of them.”

I nodded, finished my coffee, and slid out of the booth.

“Frank isn't taking the cocks today, Martha,” Ed said, getting up from the table. “He'll be back for them later on.”

“Oh, I didn't know that! I thought he was taking them now.”

“These deals aren't made in an instant, sweetheart,” Ed said sharply. “But we've shaken hands on the deal, and Frank'll be back, all in good time.” He forced a smile and turned to me. “Come on, Frank. I'll drive you into Orlando.”

“Where're you going, Frank?” Martha asked.

I shrugged indifferently and returned her smile. This was the kind of question that could only be answered by writing it down, and I didn't feel that it required an answer. Where I was going or what I was going to do couldn't possibly have any real interest for the old lady.

“Frank can't answer questions like that without writing them down,” Ed reminded his wife. “But you know we'll be reading about him in the trade magazines.”

“Well, I'll pack a lunch for you anyway. Wait out on the patio. Take some more coffee out there with you. It'll only take a minute and you can surely wait that long.”

While she fixed a lunch for me, I repacked my suitcase and took it out to the car. Ed unlocked the door, and I removed the coop and handed it to him before I tossed the suitcase on the floorboards.

“Sure, leave the coop with me if you like,” he said, leaning it against the concrete wall.

When I returned for Icky, I could use the coop to carry him, and I didn't feel like lugging it along to Jacksonville, not hitchhiking, anyway.

A few minutes later Martha joined us on the patio and handed me a heavy paper bag containing my lunch.

“I used the biscuits left from breakfast,” she said, “and made a few ham sandwiches. There is a fat slice of tomato on each one and plenty of mayonnaise. There wasn't any pie left, but I put a couple of apples for dessert.”

Rather than simply shake hands with her, I put an arm around her narrow shoulders and kissed her on the cheek. Mrs. Middleton broke away from me and returned to the safety of her kitchen. Ed called through the door that he would be back from Orlando when he got back.

We drove down Ed's private road to the highway. I didn't know where he was taking me, but I hoped he wouldn't drop me off in the center of town. With the baggage I was carrying, the best place to start hitchhiking was on the I-4 Throughway on the other side of Winter Park. Several years had passed since I had been forced to use my thumb, and I wasn't too happy about the prospect.

Orlando is a fairly large city and well spread out. The streets that morning were crowded with traffic. Ed drove his big car skillfully, and when he hit the center of town, he made several turns and then stopped in front of the Greyhound bus station. I took my baggage out of the back and started to close the door, but held it open when Ed heaved himself across the seat. He got out on my side, reached in his wallet, and handed me a twenty-dollar bill.

“You can't hitchhike with all that stuff, Frank. You'd better take a bus.”

I nodded, accepted the bill and buttoned it into my shirt pocket. That made five hundred and twenty dollars that I owed him, but I was grateful for the loan.

We shook hands rather formally, and Ed plucked at his white chin with his puffy fingers. “Now don't worry about Icarus, Frank,” he said with an attempt at levity. “I'll take good care of him whether you come back for him or not.” His eyes were worried just the same.

I held up two spread fingers in the “V” sign. It was a meaningless gesture in this instance, but Ed smiled, thinking I meant it for him. I remained at the curb and waved to him as he drove away.

I picked a folder out of the rack, circled Jacksonville on the timetable with my ballpoint pencil, shoved the folder and my twenty under the wicket, and paid for my ticket. After slipping the ticket into my hatband, I gathered my baggage around me and sat down on a bench to wait for the bus.

I thought about Icky. In reality, five hundred dollars wasn't enough money to get started. I needed a bare minimum of one thousand, five hundred dollars to have at least a thousand left over after paying for the cock. Two thousand was more like it.

Somehow, I had to get my hands on this money.

I DIDN'T ARRIVE
in Jacksonville until a little after three that afternoon. Instead of waiting for an express, I had taken the first bus that left Orlando, and it turned out to be the kind that stops at every filling station, general store and cow pasture along the way. A long, dull ride.

After getting my baggage out of the side of the bus from the driver I left the station and walked three blocks to the Jeff Davis Hotel, where I always stayed when I was in Jax. On the way to the hotel I stopped at a package store and bought a pint of gin.

Perhaps the Jeff Davis isn't the most desirable hotel in Jax, but it is downtown, handy to everything, the people know me there, and crowded or not I can always get a room. The manager follows cockfighting, advertises in the game-fowl magazines, and there is usually someone hanging around the lobby who knows me. The daily rate is attractive, as well—only three dollars a day for cockers, instead of the regular rate of five.

As soon as I checked in at the desk and got to my room, I opened my suitcase and dug out my corduroy coat. In September, Jacksonville turns chilly in the afternoons, and the temperature drops below seventy. Not that it gets cold, but the weather doesn't compare favorably with southern Florida. The long pull of gin I took before going out on the street again felt warm in my stomach.

I walked briskly through the streets to the post office, entered, and twirled the combination dial on my post-office box. It didn't open, but I could see that there was mail inside the box through the dirty brown glass window. I searched through my wallet, found my receipt for the rental, and shoved it through the window to the clerk. He studied the slip for a moment, and called my attention to the date.

“You're almost ten days overdue on your quarterly box payment, Mr. Mansfield,” he said. “Your box was closed out and rented to somebody else. I'm sorry, but there's a big demand for boxes these days and I don't have any more open at present. If you want me to, I'll put your name on the waiting list.”

I shook my head and pointed to the rack of mail behind him. This puzzled him for a moment, and then he said: “Oh, you mean your mail?”

I nodded impatiently, drumming my fingers on the marble ledge.

“If you have any, it'll be at the general delivery window.”

I picked up my receipt and gave it to the woman at the general delivery window. She handed me two letters and my current
Southern Cockfighter
magazine. I shoved the letters and magazine into my coat pocket and filled in change-of-address cards to transfer the magazine and post-office-box letters to my Ocala address. After mailing one card to the magazine and turning in the other to the woman at the window I returned to my hotel room.

The first letter I opened was from a pit operator in Tallahassee inviting me to enter a four-cock derby he was holding in November. I tossed the letter into the wastebasket. The other letter was the one I had been expecting. It was from the Southern Conference Tournament committee, and contained my invitation, the rules, and the schedule for the S.C.T. season.