Cockfighter (29 page)

I shook my head and smiled. The senator wasn't interested in the money. He had more money than he knew what to do with, but he would still come out even and probably ahead. There would be at least four hundred spectators at the two-day tourney paying a ten-dollar admission fee each day. And the senator would make a profit from his restaurant, too. The Milledgeville cockpit was seven miles out in the country. Where else could the visitors eat?

“Do you have to win the tourney to get the Cockfighter of the Year award, Frank?” Omar asked me.

I spread my arms wide and shrugged my shoulders.

I didn't really know. Senator Foxhall hadn't given the award to anybody in three years, and it was possible that he wouldn't give the medal again this year. All I knew was that the senator awarded the medal to the man he thought deserved it. I didn't want to think about it.

I studied my partner across the table. If anything, his beard was blacker and more unkempt than it had been at the beginning of the season. He still wore his bib overalls, short-sleeved work shirt and high-topped work shoes. During our association, I had never seen him dressed differently. He was a free American and entitled to dress any way he pleased. Once a week, when he took a bath, he changed his overalls, but he wore them everywhere he went, to dinner when we ate in Ocala, and downtown when we had fought in Biloxi. Everywhere. This was my problem, and I had to tell him. I pulled the tablet toward me and began to write.

Here are some things about the tourney I have to tell you. As official entries, we'll be put up in Senator Foxhall's home and eat our meals there. We don't have to wear tuxes for dinner, but we do have to wear coats and ties. Entries and spectators alike are not admitted to the pit unless they wear suits and ties. This is a custom of the tourney out of respect to Senator Foxhall. But he's really a good man. He was never a real senator, I mean in Congress. He was a Georgia state senator in the late twenties. But for whatever it means, he's a gentleman of the old school and we have to abide by the customs. I don't mind wearing a suit and tie in the pit and you shouldn't either, because it's an honor to fight at Milledgeville.

I also have a personal problem, two of them. I've made seat reservations for four people. My fiancée and her brother, and for Mrs. Bernice Hungerford and her nephew. This was several months ago. I don't know if they're coming—neither woman has written or wired me. I don't care. Well, I won't lie. I DO care. If they come, help me entertain them. I'll be handling most of the time, and you'll have to give them some attention for me. Neither woman has seen a cockfight before. My fiancée's name is Mary Elizabeth Gaylord

I looked over the message, which had taken two sheets of tablet paper, and then passed it to Omar. He scanned it slowly, folded the two sheets, put them carefully in his shirt pocket and entered his bedroom.

He slammed the door behind him.

I wanted to damn Omar's sensitive soul, but I couldn't. The custom of the cockpit wasn't my doing, but I felt ashamed. To dictate a person's wearing apparel is a violation of every human right, but I had been forced to tell my partner about the custom or he wouldn't have been allowed through the gate.

After fifteen minutes had passed and Omar still didn't reappear, I got out of my chair and knocked softly on his door.

“I'll be out in a minute,” he called out. “Fix yourself a drink!”

I measured three ounces of bourbon into a six-ounce glass. Every time I wrote a note of any kind, I always felt that I was circumventing my vow in an underhanded way, but I was sorry I hadn't written a more detailed explanation about the suit business. But I needn't have worried.

Two drinks later the bedroom door opened. I set my glass on the table, grinned at my partner and shook my head in disbelief.

Omar had cut his beard off square across the bottom with a pair of scissors, and evenly trimmed the sides. His newly cropped beard was a stiff as the spade it resembled. His heavy black moustache had been combed to both sides, and the ends were twisted into sharp points. The white smiling teeth in the dark nest of his inky beard were like a glint of lightning in a dark cloud. He wore a pearl-gray homburg over his bushy black hair, a dark gray double-knit suit, a white shirt and cordovan shoes. Hanging out for two or three inches below his beard, a shimmering gray silk necktie was clipped to his shirt by a black onyx tie bar. He looked like a wealthy Greek undertaker.

“I was saving this costume as a surprise for you tomorrow,” Omar said with a pleased laugh. “My new suit arrived from my New York tailor three days ago. How do I look?”

I clasped my hands over my head like a boxer, and shook them.

“Do you know what makes my beard so stiff?” Omar said, as he mixed a drink at the table. “Pommade Hongroise. And just in case you don't know what that means, it's imported moustache wax from France.”

Omar added more whiskey to my glass.

“You Southerners don't have a cartel on manners, Frank. It may come as a shock to you, partner, but I even know the correct tools to use at a formal dinner.” He raised his glass. “A toast, Mr. Mansfield!”

I grinned and clinked my glass against his.

“To the All-American cockfighters, the English-Polish team of Mansfield and Baradinsky! Gentlemen, gamblers, dudes and cocksmen, each and every one!”

We drank to that.

We left Ocala at three o'clock, but it was almost two in the afternoon before we reached Milledgeville. I should have traded my old pickup in for a newer one, but I had never gotten around to it. For Omar, trailing me all the way, the slow rate of speed on the highway must have been maddening.

When we reached Milledgeville, I waved for Omar to follow me out, and drove on through without stopping. Milledgeville isn't much of a city—a boy's military academy, a girl's college and a female insane asylum—but it's a pretty little town with red cobblestoned streets lined with shade trees.

Once we were out of town and drawing closer to the cockpit, I didn't mind driving so slowly because I liked the familiar scenery. During the summer, the highway would be bordered on both sides with solid masses of blackberry bushes draped over the barbed-wire fences. In the middle of March, the fields were iron-colored and bare. The tall Georgia slash pines were deep in rust-colored needles. The sky was a watercolor blue, and tiny tufts of white clouds were arranged on this background like a dotted-swiss design. The sun was smaller in March, but the weather wasn't cold. The clear air was sharp, tangy and stimulating, without being breezy.

Like Omar, in his new double-knit suit, I was dressed up, and we both had a place to go. I wore a blue gabardine suit that I had had for two years, but it was fresh from the cleaners. Well in advance of the tourney, I had ordered a white cattleman's Town and Country snap-brim hat from Dallas, and a new pair of black jodhpur boots from the Navarro Brothers, in El Paso. For the past seven nights I had shined and buffed the new boots until they gleamed like crystal. I wore yellow socks with my suit, and I had paid forty dollars in Miami Beach for my favorite yellow silk necktie, with its pattern of royal blue, hand-painted gamecocks.

I wasn't dressed conservatively, but a lot of my fans would be at the tourney, and they expected me to look dashing and colorful. Press representatives from all five game fowl magazines would be present, and Omar and I were bound to get our photos printed in two or three magazines whether we won the tourney or not.

A Georgia state highway patrolman waved us through the gate to the senator's plantation without getting off his motorcycle. Seeing the back of the pickup and the station wagon both loaded with chicken coops, he didn't need to check our identification cards. A mile down the yellowgraveled road, I took the fork toward the cockpit and cockhouses to weigh in and put our gamecocks away before signing in at the senator's house.

Peach Owen met us in the yards, assigned us to a cock-house, and gave us our numbers to wear on the back of our coats. We were No. 5, and before we did anything else we pinned our numbers.

Mr. Owen was the weight-and-time official for the tourney, and president of the Southern Conference Cock-fighting Association. He was a well-liked, friendly man in his mid-thirties who had given up a promising career in cock-fighting to work full time for the senator and the Southern Conference. Senator Foxhall, who was getting too old now to do much of anything, paid Peach ten thousand dollars a year to breed and take care of his flock of fancy game fowl.

“Do you want to weigh in now or wait till morning?” Peach asked.

“Let's get it over with,” Omar said, handing Peach our record sheets.

“I don't need both of you,” Peach winked at me. “There's a fellow up at the house who wants to see you, Mr. Mansfield.”

He didn't say who it was so I stayed for the weighing-in, an almost useless precaution at a professional meet like the S.C. Tourney.

At the majority of U. S. tournaments, cocks are weighed and banded upon checking in. This banding procedure is supposed to ensure that each entry will fight only the cocks he has entered. Before each fight, weight slips are called out, and the entrants heel the cock from their assigned cockhouse according to the exact weight on the slip. If they fail to show a cock making the weight within the check margin, that fight is forfeited to the other cocker who can. The metal band on the leg of the heeled cock is checked by the weight-and-time official immediately prior to the fight and then removed. If the cock wasn't banded by one of the tourney officials upon arrival, the cock is a ringer. In theory, banding upon arrival at a tourney appears to be a sound practice, but bands can be purchased from a dozen or more manufacturers of cocking supplies by anybody who wants to pay for them. The man who wants to cheat by entering a sure loser, for instance, instead of a legitimate fighter, can buy all the metal leg bands he wants to, and clamp one on a ringer in a couple of seconds.

Banding had been eliminated at the S.C. Tourney. Every cock pitted at the S.C. Tourney was a four-time winner at an authorized cockpit or game club. And all the wins were entered upon an official record sheet and initialed by the pit operator. Weighing-in at the tourney consisted of checking each gamecock against his record sheet and description and weighing the gamecock itself. Minor weight variations were taken into account by the official.

The system wasn't foolproof. It was still possible to substitute a runner for one of the checked-in fighters, but a man would be a fool to try it. Among the spectators were most of the S.C. pit operators who could recognize at sight the gamecocks that had fought in their pits earlier in the season. If one of them or one of the other entries spotted a ringer, the man who tried to pull a fast one was through with cockfighting. His name went out on a blacklist to every U.S. pit operator, and the blacklist of crooked cockfighters was published annually in the April issue of every U.S. game fowl magazine.

The four-win stipulation was a tough rule, but I was all for it because it separated the amateurs from the professionals and raised the breeding standards of game fowl. This single rule had been the biggest advance in U. S. cockfighting since the late Sol P. McCall had originated the modern tournament. Many of the fans and gamblers who attended the two-day event traveled thousands of miles to see it, but they knew they would get their money's worth. The fighting would be fast, and every cock shown had proven himself to be dead game.

After completing the weighing-in, which took about an hour, our thirty-one game cocks were transferred to their stalls inside the cockhouse. We gave each bird a half dip of water, and I scattered a very small portion of grain on the moss-packed floor of each coop to give them some exercise after the long trip. We dropped the canvas covers over the coops to keep the birds quiet, locked the door, and drove the short distance to the senator's home to sign the guest register.

I believe that Omar was impressed by the senator's home. I had been the first time I stayed there, and it still gave me a warm feeling to see the big house as we topped the rise and parked in front of the wide veranda. The mansion was one of the better southern examples of modified English Georgian. There are many great homes like it in the southern states, but not many of them are as well tended as they should be. It takes a lot of money. Good craftsmanship had been insisted upon when the house had been constructed. All the doors, and even the windows, had ornate, carved designs. The great balustrade that led from the downstairs hall to the upstairs bedrooms had been formed and curved for the purpose from a single tree. There was enough room to sleep thirty guests, but except for the official entries, their wives, and pit officials, spectators attending the meet had to find accommodations in a hotel or motel in Milledgeville.

As we climbed the steps to the veranda, the front door opened and Ed Middleton came out and grabbed my hand. He laughed at my expression and said fondly in his deep, booming voice: “You didn't expect to see me here, did you? How's my pretty blue chicken getting along?”

In a lightweight gray linen suit, with a pink-and-gray striped tie, Ed didn't look like a sick man to me, but the brown circles under his eyes were a little darker on his pale face. He looked happy, however, and he hadn't been happy when I last saw him in Orlando. Despite his appearance of well-being, he was still liable to have a heart attack at any moment.

Still gripping Ed's hand, I jerked my head for Omar to come forward and introduce himself.

“How do you do?” Omar said. “I've seen you referee, Mr. Middleton, but I've never had the pleasure of meeting you.”

“Glad to meet you at last then, Mr. Baradinsky. Evidently you've been a settling influence on my boy here. When I heard about the holdup in Chattanooga, I checked right away, and don't think I wasn't surprised when I learned that you two had pulled out before the meet! The
old
Frank Mansfield I knew would've been right in there, reaching for the ceiling with the rest of ‘em.”