Cockfighter (16 page)

I walked down the asphalt road. My biggest problem now was how to retrieve my shaving kit from the dresser in my room. If I returned to the house to get it, Randall would be curious as to why I was leaving so soon. If I wrote a note informing him I was going to take my rightful property and have him and Frances tossed out, he would attempt, with his trained lawyer's logic, to argue me out of my convictions. As I remembered, I had never really bested him in an oral argument. The only way I had ever won an argument with Randall was by resorting to force. And besides, Frances would bawl and carry on like a crazy.

By the time I was level with the house, I decided the hell with the shaving kit, and continued on down the road. It would be less trouble all the way around if I bought another razor and a toothbrush when I got back to Jacksonville.

I walked about four miles before I was picked up by a kid in a hot rod and taken the rest of the way into Mansfield. When he let me out at a service station, I walked through the shady residential streets to Judge Brantley Powell's house on the upper side of town. He only went to his office in the mornings, and I was certain I could catch him at home. When I rapped with the wrought-iron knocker, I only had to wait a minute before Raymond, his white-wooled Negro servant, opened the door. Raymond peered at me blankly for a moment or so before he recognized me, and then he smiled.

“Mr. Frank,” he said cordially, “come in, come in!”

It was dark in the musty hallway when he closed the door. Raymond took my hat, led the way into the dim living room and raised the shades to let in some light.

“The judge he takin' his nap now, Mr. Frank,” he said uneasily. “I don't like to wake him up 'less it's somethin' important.”

I considered. What was so important to me probably wouldn't be considered important by the old judge. I waved my right hand with an indifferent gesture, and settled myself in a leather chair to wait.

“You goin' to wait, Mr. Frank?”

I nodded, picked up an old
Life
magazine from the table beside the chair and leafed through it. Raymond left the room silently, and returned a few minutes later with a glass of ice cubes and a pitcher of lemonade. A piece of vinegar pie accompanied the lemonade. Firm, tart and clear, with a flaky, crumbly crust, it was the best piece of vinegar pie I had ever eaten.

It was almost five before the judge came downstairs. Evidently Raymond had told him I was waiting on him because he addressed me by name when he entered the room and apologized for sleeping so late. Judge Powell had aged considerably in the four or five years that had gone by since I had last talked to him. He must have been close to eighty. His head wobbled and his hands trembled as he talked. I handed him the list of instructions I had written, and he sat down in a chair close to the window to read them. He looked through the papers a second time, as if he were searching for something, and then removed his glasses.

“All right, Frank,” he said grimly. “I'll handle this for you. Your Daddy was a stubborn man, and I told him he was wrong when he changed his will.”

I picked up my hat from the table where Raymond had placed it.

“One more thing, Frank. How long do you expect to be at the Jeff Davis Hotel in Jax?”

I shrugged, mentally totaled my remaining money, and then held up four fingers.

“You'll hear from me before then. And when you get your money, Frank, I hope you'll settle down. A dog has fun chasing his own tail, but he never gets anywhere while he's doing it.”

I shook hands with the old man and he walked me to the front door. “Can you stay for dinner, son?”

I shook my head and smiled my thanks, but when I opened the door he grasped at my sleeve.

“There're all kinds of justice, Frank,” he said kindly, “and I've seen most of them in fifty years of practice. But poetic justice is the best kind of all. To measure the night, a man must fill his day,” he finished cryptically.

I nodded knowingly, although I didn't know what he meant, and I doubt very much whether he did either. When a man manages to live as long as Judge Powell has, he always thinks he's a sage of some kind.

I cut across town to the U.S. Highway and ate dinner in a trucker's café about a mile outside the city limits. Two hours later I was riding in the cab of a diesel truck on my way back to Jacksonville. I had the feeling inside that I had finally burned every bridge, save one, to the past. But I didn't have any regrets. To survive in this world, a man has got to do what he has got to do.

I WAS TIRED
when I reached Jacksonville, but I wasn't sleepy. I had hoped to get some sleep in the cab of the truck on the long drive down, but the driver had talked continuously. As I listened to him, dumbly, my eyes smarting from cigarette smoke and the desire to close them, he poured out the dull, intimate details of his boring life—his military service with the First Calvary Division in Vietnam, his courtship, his marriage, and his plans for the future (he wanted to be truck dispatcher so he could sit on his ass). He was still going strong when we reached Jax. To finish his autobiography, he parked at a drive-in and bought me ham and eggs for breakfast.

After shaking hands with the voluble truck driver, who wasn't really a bad guy, I caught a bus downtown and checked into the Jeff Davis Hotel. One look at the soft double bed and I became wide awake. If my plan was successful, I would know within three days, and I didn't have time to sleep all day. I had to proceed with a confidence I didn't actually have, as though there could be no doubt of the outcome.

After I shaved, I prepared a list for Doc Riordan. These were supplies I would need, and I intended to take advantage of our agreement. It would take a long time to use up eight hundred dollars worth of cocker's supplies.

One.
Conditioning powder. Doc made a reliable conditioning powder—a concoction containing iron for vigor, and Vitamin B
₁
. This powder, mixed with a gamecock's special diet, is a valuable aid to developing a bird's muscles and reflexes. I put down an order for three pounds.

Two.
Dextrose capsules. A dextrose capsule, dropped down a gamecock's throat an hour before a fight, gives him the same kind of fresh energy a candy bar provides to a mountain climber halfway up the mountain. On my list I put down an order for a twenty-four-gamecock season supply.

Three.
Doc Riordan's Blood Builder. For many years Doc Riordan had made and sold a blood coagulant that was as good as any on the market. If he didn't have any on hand he could make more. This was a blood builder in capsule form containing Vitamin K, the blood coagulating vitamin, whole liver and several other secret ingredients. Who can judge the effectiveness of a blood coagulant? I can't. But if any blood coagulants worked, and I don't leave any loopholes when it comes to conditioning, I preferred to use Doc Riordan's. Again I marked down enough for a twenty-four-gamecock supply.

Four.
Disinfectants. Soda, formaldehyde, sulfur, carbolic acid, oil of tansy, sassafras, creosote, camphor and rubbing alcohol. Insects are a major problem for cockfighters. Lice are almost impossible to get rid of completely, but a continuous fight against them must be fought if a man wants to keep healthy game fowl.
Give me a plentiful supply of all of these,
I wrote on my list.

Five.
Turpentine. Five gallons. The one essential fluid a cocker must have for survival. God has seen fit to subject chickens to the most loathsome diseases in the world—pip, gapes, costiveness, diarrhea, distemper, asthma, catarrh, apoplexy, cholera, lime legs, canker and many others. Any one of these sicknesses can knock out a man's entire flock of game fowl before he knows what has happened to him. Fortunately, a feather dipped in turpentine and shoved into a cock's nostrils, or swabbed in his throat, or sometimes just a few drops of turpentine in a bird's drinking water, will prevent or cure many of these diseases. When turpentine fails, I destroy the sick chicken and bury him deep to prevent the spread of his disease.

When I completed my list I sealed it in a hotel envelope, wrote Doc Riordan's name on the outside, and headed for the drugstore where he had part-time work. Doc wasn't in, but the owner said he was expected at noon. Figuring that Doc would freely requisition most of the items on my list from the owner,, I decided not to leave it, and to come back later.

I walked to the Western Union office and sent two straight wires. The first wire was to my neighbor and fellow cocker in Ocala, Omar Baradinsky:

I knew Omar wouldn't mind attending to this chore for me in downtown Ocala and inasmuch as I didn't know what day or what time I would arrive at the farm, I wanted to be certain there was water and electricity when I got there.

The other wire was to Mr. Jake Mellhorn, Altamount, North Carolina. Jake Mellhorn bred and sold a game strain called the Mellhorn Black. It was a rugged breed, and I knew this from watching Blacks fight many times.

These chickens fought equally well in long and short heels, depending upon their conformation and conditioning, but they were unpredictable fighters—some were cutters and others were shufflers—and they had a tendency to alternate their tactics in the pit. As a general rule I prefer cutters over shufflers, but I needed a dozen Aces and a fair price. Jake Mellhorn had been after me for several years to try a season with his Blacks, and I knew that he would give me a fairly low price on a shipment of a dozen. If I won with his game strain at any of the major derbies, he would be able to jack the price up on the game fowl he sold the following season to other cockers. I could win with any hardy, farm-walked game strain that could stand up under my conditioning methods—Claret, Madigan, Whitehackle, Doms—but the excellent cocks I would need would cost too much, especially after putting out five hundred dollars for Icky. It wouldn't hurt anything to send a wire to Jake find out what he had to offer anyway.

If I knew Jake Mellhorn, and I knew the egotistic, self-centered old man well, I'd have special delivery letter from him within a couple of days. And on my first order, at least, he would send me Aces.

I paid the girl for the wires, and then ate a hamburger at a little one-arm joint down the street before returning to Foster's Drugstore.

Now that the wires were on their way, I felt committed, even though they didn't mean anything in themselves. I felt like I was getting the dice rolling by forcing my luck.

I couldn't pay for the Mellhorns, no matter how good a price Jake gave me. I couldn't even repay Omar Baradinsky the utilities deposit money he would put up for me in Ocala—and yet I felt confident. Surely Judge Powell would come through with one thousand, five hundred dollars now, because I had acted as though he would. It was a false feeling of confidence, and I knew that it was bogus in the same way a man riding in a transatlantic airplane knows that there cannot possibly be a crack-up because he bought one hundred thousand dollars' worth of insurance at the airport before the plane took off.

Doc Riordan was sitting at the fountain counter, wearing a short white jacket, when I entered the drugstore. I eased onto the stool beside him and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Hello, Frank,” he said, smiling. In the cramped space, we shook hands awkwardly without getting up. “Mr. Foster said there was a big man with a cowboy hat looking for me. Inasmuch as I don't know any bill collectors who don't talk, I figgered it was you.”

I handed Doc the envelope. He studied the list, and whispered softly through closed teeth. “That's a mighty big order on short notice, Frank,” he said, frowning. “I don't have any conditioning powder made up, and there's been so much flu going around Jax lately, I've got sixty-three prescriptions to fill before I can do anything else.” He tapped the list with a forefinger. “Can you let me have a couple of days?”

I had to smile. At that stage I could have let him have a couple of months. I clapped him on the shoulder and nodded understandingly.

“Good. Come in day after tomorrow and it'll be waiting for you. All of it.” He smiled. “Kinda looks like you've got your chickens for the season, and I hope you'll have a good one. Anytime you need something fast, just drop me a card here at Foster's. I know damned well I'll make the Milledgeville Tourney, but that'll be the only one this year. I've got too many feelers out on Licarbo to go to chicken fights. But then, I might get a chance to run down to Plant City—”

He had work to do, so I slid off the stool and left abruptly while he was still talking.

For the rest of the afternoon I prowled used car lots as a tire-kicker, trying to locate a pickup truck of some kind that would hold together for four or five months. Around four o'clock, I discovered an eight-year-old Ford half-ton pickup that looked suitable, and the salesmen rode around the block with me when I tried it out. All afternoon my silence had unnerved talkative used car salesman. After five minutes of my kind of silence, they usually gave up on their sales talks and let me look around in peace. This fellow was more persistent. After reparking the truck in its place on the fourth row of the lot, I looked at the salesman inquisitively.

“This is a real buy for one fifty,” he said sincerely. He was a young man in his early twenties, with a freckled earnest face. His flattop haircut and wet-look black leather sports jacket reminded me of a Marine captain wearing civilian clothes for the first time. For all I knew, he was an ex-Marine.

I looked steadily into his face and he blushed.