Cockfighter (19 page)

“Just as I anticipated, he presented me with a bonus check for a thousand clams. And we sat around his swimming pool all afternoon—which was empty by the way—drinking Scotch and water and talking business. Out of nothing, he asked me if I'd like to see a cockfight that night.

“‘Cockfight!' I said. ‘They're illegal, aren't they?' ‘Sure, they are!' he laughed. ‘But so was sleeping with that blonde you fixed me up with in New York. If you've never seen a cockfight, I think you might get a kick out of it.'

“So I went to my first cockfight. I'll never forget it, Frank. The sight of those beautiful roosters fighting to the death, the gameness, even when mortally wounded, was an exciting, unforgettable experience. Before the evening was over, I knew that that's what I wanted to do with my life: breed and fight game fowl. It was infantile, crazy maybe, I don't know. My wife thought I'd lost my mind and wouldn't even listen to my reasons. Probably because I couldn't give her any, not valid reasons. I
wanted
to do it and that was my sole reason!

I was fed up to the teeth with advertising, and I had saved enough money to quit. I was only fifty, and although my future still glimmered on Madison Avenue, I didn't really need any more money than I already had. Still, I played it pretty cagy with the firm. I made a secret deal with one of the other vice-presidents to feed him my accounts in return for supporting my resignation on the grounds of ill health. That way, I picked up twenty-five thousand dollars in severance pay. I sold my apartment house and set up a trust fund for my wife to take care of her needs in New York. Besides, she has money of her own. Her father was a proctologist, and he left her plenty when he died. And for the first time in my life, I'm happy, really happy. Funny, isn't it?”

This was Omar Baradinsky, who owned a game farm only three miles away from mine. So far, he hadn't prospered in his adopted profession, but he was breaking even by selling trios and stags to other cockers. His gamecocks usually lost when he fought them in the southern pits. He must have been hard enough to succeed in the business world, but the stubborn streak of tenderness in his makeup didn't give him enough discipline to make Aces out of his pit fowl. He overfed them, and he didn't work them hard enough to last.

Turning away from the poem, Omar turned his huge brown orbs on me and jerked a thumb at the wall.

“Did you write that, Frank?”

I shook my head and pulled out a chair for him to sit down.

“Then what about your new cock, Icky? If that chicken wasn't bred purely for color I've never seen one.”

I shrugged. Icky had been bred for color, certainly, but from a pure game strain, and his conformation was ideal for fighting. In a few days I'd see whether he could fight or not when I gave him a workout with sparring muffs in my training pit.

“Anyway, I like the looks of those Mellhorn Blacks, and especially your two Middleton Grays.”

So did I. Buford, my part-time Negro helper, had gone downtown to the depot with me the night before when I picked up my shipment of Mellhorn Blacks. After helping me put the dozen cocks away in their separate stalls in the cockhouse, he had driven by Omar's place and told him about them. Omar had arrived early that morning for a look at the Mellhorn and a long admiring examination of Icky. Buford had undoubtedly given Icky a big buildup, but Omar hadn't been impressed until he saw the cock for himself.

“Tell me something, Frank, if you will,” Omar said, when he finished pouring some condensed milk into his coffee. “Did you get an invitation to the Southern Conference Tourney at Milledgeville?”

In reply, I got up from the table, rummaged in the top drawer of my dresser until I found the invitation and the schedule for the S.C. pit battles, and passed them to Omar. He glanced at the forms, pulled on his shaggy beard a couple of times, and returned the papers.

“I just don't understand you people down here,” he said. “It may be partly my fault, because I wrote Senator Foxhall a personal letter asking for an invitation and enclosed a two-hundred-dollar forfeit. Three days later I got the check back in the mail and no invitation. Not a damned word of explanation. What in the hell's the matter with me? I've got more than fifty birds under keep, and last season my showings hit fifty-fifty. Maybe I'm not in the same class as the S.C. regulars, but if I'm willing to lose my entry fee why should Senator Foxhall care? And here you are—I saw the date on your invitation—and you didn't own a single gamecock when you got that invite! I'm not belittling your ability, Frank. I know you're a top cocker and all that, but how did the senator know you'd be able to attend? How did you receive an invitation without asking for one when I couldn't get one when I did?

“I've never attended the Milledgeville meet, and I want to go, even as a spectator. But after fighting at all the other S.C. pits this season, I'd be embarrassed to attend the tournament without an entry. Do you know what I mean?”

I knew what he meant, all right. Omar had done the normal, logical thing, and the turndown had hurt his feelings. Most of the U.S. derbies and tourneys get their entries through fees. The man who sends in a two- or three-hundred-dollar forfeit either shows up or he loses his money. A contract is returned to him by mail. When the list is filled, no more entries are accepted. I didn't really know why Omar had been turned down by Senator Foxhall. It wasn't because he was a Pole or a New Yorker.

Members of the cockfighting fraternity are from all walks of life. There are men like myself, from good southern families, sharecroppers, businessmen, loafers on the county relief rolls, Jews, and Holy Rollers. If there is one single thing in the world, more than all the others, preserving the tradition of the sport of cocking for thousands of years, it's the spirit of democracy. In a letter to General Lafayette, George Washington wrote, “It will be worth coming back to the United States, if only to be present at an election and a cocking main at which is displayed a spirit of anarchy and confusion, which no countryman of yours can understand.” I carried a clipping of this letter, which had been reprinted in a game fowl magazine, in my wallet. I had told Mary Elizabeth once that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton had both been cockfighters during the colonial period, but she had been unimpressed. Nonetheless, cockfighters are still the most democratic group of men in the United States.

But the Milledgeville Tourney was unlike other U.S. meets. Senator Foxhall had his own rules, and he made his own decisions about whom to invite. I had earned my right to fight there, and I suppose the old man knew that I would be there if it was physically possible for me to be there. Maybe he didn't think Omar was ready yet. I didn't know. Surely Omar's fifty-fifty showing didn't put him into the top cocker's class. He still had a lot to learn about game fowl if he wanted to be a consistent winner.

I looked at Omar and smiled. There wasn't any use to write a note for him telling him what I thought was the reason for his turndown. His feelings would be hurt more than they were already. By writing to the senator, he had made a grave error, a social error. It was like calling a host of a party you were not invited to and asking point black for an invitation!

I had finished my coffee, and I had work to do. I got up from the table and clapped Omar on the shoulder. Before leaving the shack, I took a can of lighter fluid off the dresser and slipped it into my hip pocket. Omar sighed audibly and decided to follow me out.

When we got to the cockhouse, I removed the Mellhorn Blacks one at a time from their separate coops, showing off the good and the bad points to Omar as well as I could before putting them back. For a shipment of a dozen, they were a beautiful lot. As Jake had promised in his letter, six were full brothers, a few months past staghood, and the other six were Aces, two to three years old, with one or more winning fights behind them. Each cock was identifiable by its web-marking, and the cardboard record sheet of each bird had been enclosed in its shipping crate when Jake had expressed them down from North Carolina. Before putting them away the night before, I had purged them with a mild plain-phosphate mixture, and they were feeling fine as consequence.

As a conditioning bench, I used a foam-rubber double mattress stretched flat on a wooden, waist-high platform Buford and I had knocked together out of scrap lumber when I had first leased the farm. I had one of the older Mellhorn cocks on the bench showing it to Omar. The cock was a one-time winner, but he must have won by accident. His conformation was fair, but the bird was high-stationed, with his spurs jutting out just below the knee joint. He would miss as often as he hit. A low-stationed cock would have greater leverage and fight best in long heels, but a high-stationed cock like this one would never make a first-class fighter. Jake Mellhorn hadn't gypped me on the sale. He was truly bred, and in small-time competition against strainers, the cock could often win. It had weight in its favor and was close to the shake class, but the chicken couldn't really compete in S.C. competition unless it got lucky. Luck is not for the birds. The element of chance must be reduced to the minimum if a cocker wants to win the prize money. In a six-entry derby, for instance, when the man winning the most fights takes home the purse put up by all the entries, the odd fight often provides the verdict. I couldn't take a chance with this one.

After pointing out the high spurs to show Omar what was wrong with the Black, I picked up my hatchet and chopped off the rooster's head on the block outside the doorway.

“I see,” Omar said thoughtfully, as he watched the decapitated chicken flop about in the dusty yard. “You don't like to put high-stationed cocks.”

I clipped the hatchet into the block so it stuck.

“Some cockers prefer high-stationed birds,” Omar said argumentatively. “And a seventy-five dollar chicken is damned expensive eating.”

True, the plateful of fried chicken I would eat that night would be a costly meal, but it would have been much more expensive to pit the cock when he would probably lose. And an owner should only bet his own gamecock—not against it. I shrugged indifferently.

“I suppose you know what you're doing,” Omar said. “But he was a purebred Mellhorn and could have been kept as a brood cock.”

Except on a small scale, I've never done much breeding. I prefer to buy my gamecocks. Conditioning and fighting them are what I do best, but I would never have bred the high-stationed Black. Like begets like, and the majority of the chicks sired would have been high-stationed.

I shook my head and grinned at Omar. He was well aware of the heredity factor—his head was crammed with breeding knowledge he had learned through reading and four years' experience. Omar was still sore about the Milledgeville Tourney.

“What about the six brothers? How do you know they're game? The Aces have been pit-tested, but if one of the brothers is a runner they all may be runners.”

Unfortunately, there is no true test for gameness. Only a pit battle can decide gameness. There are various tests, however, a cocker can try which will give him an indication of a cock's gameness. In the case of the six brothers, I was stymied by a lack of knowledge concerning the father and mother. If the father had been a champion, Jack Mellhorn would have said so, and would have charged a higher price for them. The six cocks were obviously Mellhorn Blacks. I could tell that by looking at them. But only one drop of cold blood from a dunghill will sometimes cause a cock to run when it is hurt. One of the young cocks had to be tested for gameness, and I had planned on doing it this morning before Omar came over. If the cock I tested proved to be game, I could then assume that the others were equally game. But in the testing I would lose the gamecock. Another seventy-five bucks shot.

One rigid test for gameness is to puncture a cock all over his body with an ice pick, digging it in for a quarter to half an inch. If the injured cock will still attempt to fight another cock the next morning, even if all he can do is lie on his back and peck, it is considered game. The ice-pick method of testing is fairly popular with cockers because they can usually salvage their bird after it recovers from its injuries. I don't consider this test severe enough. The Roman method I use is more realistic than halfhearted jabbing with an ice pick, even though the cock is lost during the process.

For the test, I selected one of the brothers with the poorest conformation. The choice was difficult because all of the brothers were fine Mellhorn Blacks. For an opponent, I used the largest of the two Middleton Grays. Omar held the Gray when I heeled it with sparring muffs. The Black would be practically helpless, and I didn't want him killed until he had suffered sufficiently to determine his gameness.

My homemade pit is crudely put together with scrap lumber, but it meets the general specifications. I've also strung electric lights above it in order to work my birds at night, and it's good enough for training purposes. Omar put the Gray under one arm, after I completed the heel-tying of the muffs, and headed for the training pit in front of my shack.

The young Black was a man fighter and pecked my wrist before I could get a good grip around his upper legs with my left hand. A moment later I had his body held firmly against my left where he couldn't peck at me anymore. In this awkward position, I stretched his legs out on the block outside the cockhouse and chopped them off at the knee with the hatchet.

When I joined Omar at the pit, his brown eyes bulged until they resembled oil-soaked target agates. “Good God, Frank! You don't expect him to fight without any legs, do you?”

I nodded and stepped over the pit wall. I cradled the Black over my left arm, holding the stumps with my right hand, and raised my chin to indicate that we should bill them. Omar brought the Gray in close and the Black tore out a beakful of feathers.

We billed the cocks until their ingrained natural combativeness was aroused, and then I set the Black down on the floor of the pit and took the Gray away from Omar. The Gray was anxious to get to his legless opponent, but I held him tightly by the tail and only let him approach to within pecking range. When the Black struggled toward him, I pulled him back by his tail. Without his feet, the Black was unable to get enough balance or leverage to fly, and his wildly fluttering wings couldn't support him in an upright position. He kept falling forward on his chest, and after a short valiant period of struggling, he gave up altogether. I let the Gray scratch into range, still holding him by the tail. The Black pecked every time, although he no longer tried to stand on his stumps. Finally, I let the Gray go, and he described a short arc in the air and landed, shuffling, in the center of the Black's back. Getting a good bill hold on the prostrate cock, the Gray shuffled methodically in place, hitting the padded muffs hard enough to make solid thumping sounds on the Black's body. This was the first time I had seen the Gray in action. I realized that Ed Middleton had really done me a favor when he gave me the once-battered fighter. Any cock that could shuffle with the deadly accuracy displayed by the Middleton Gray would win a lot of pit battles.