Cockfighter (33 page)

Without another word Jack Burke picked up his dead gamecock and left the pit. I picked up the Blue and held him to my chest. His long neck dangled limply over my left arm. My eyes were suddenly, irrationally, humid with tears.

“That's what I call a dead-game chicken, Frank!” Senator Foxhall called out from the judge's box.

I nodded blindly in his general direction and then turned my back on the old man to look for Mary Elizabeth. She wasn't in her seat. I caught a glimpse of her blue topcoat as she hurried through the side entrance to the parking lot. I ran after her and caught up with her running figure just beyond the closed, shuttered box office.

“Mary Elizabeth!” I said aloud. My voice sounded rusty, strangled, different, nothing at all like I remembered it.

She stopped running, turned and faced me, her face like a mask. Her lips were as bloodless as her face.

“You've decided to talk again? Is that it? It's too late now, Frank. And I know now that it was always too late for us. You aren't the man I fell in love with, but you
never
were! If I'd seen you in the cockpit ten years ago, I would've known then. I didn't watch those poor chickens fight, Frank, I watched your face. It was awful. No pity, no love, no understanding, nothing! Hate! You hate everything, yourself, me, the world, everybody!”

She closed her eyes to halt the tears. A moment later she opened her purse and wiped her eyes with a small white handkerchief.

“And I gave myself to you, Frank,” she said, as though she were speaking to herself. “I gave you everything I had to offer, everything, to a man who doesn't even have a heart!”

I didn't know this woman. I had never seen her before. This was a Mary Elizabeth I had hidden from myself all these years.

I dropped my dead Blue chicken to the ground, put my left heel on its neck, reached down, and jerked off his head with my right hand. I held the beaten, bloody, but never, never bowed head out to Mary Elizabeth in my palm. I had nothing else to say to the woman.

Mary Elizabeth licked her pale lips. She took Icky's head from my hand and wrapped it in her white handkerchief. Tucking the wrapped head away in her purse, she nodded.

“Thank you. Thank you very much, Frank Mansfield. I'll accept your gift. When I get home, I'll preserve it in a jar of alcohol. I might even work out some kind of ritual, to remind myself what a damned fool I've been.”

Her emerald eyes burned into mine for a moment.

“My brother's been right about you all along, but I had to drive up here to find out for myself. You're everything he said you were, Frank Mansfield. A mean, selfish, sonofabitch!”

Turning abruptly, she headed toward the rows of parked cars. After only a few steps, she broke into a wobbling, feminine run. I don't know how long I stood there, looking after her retreating figure, even after she had passed from sight. A minute, two minutes, I don't know.

A voice blared over the outside speakers of the PA system: “MR. ROY WHIPPLE AND MR. FRANK MANSFIELD. REPORT TO THE JUDGE'S BOX, PLEASE!” The announcement was repeated twice, and I heard it, but I didn't pay any attention to the amplified voice. I was immobilized by thought. I've grown up, I reflected. After thirty-three years, I was a mature individual. I had never needed Mary Elizabeth, and she had never needed me. Finally, it was all over between us—whatever it was we thought we had. My last tie with the past and Mansfield, Georgia, was broken. From now on I could look toward the future, and it had never been any brighter—

He must have made some noise, but I didn't hear Omar's feet crunching on the gravel until he grabbed my arm.

“For God's sake, Frank,” Omar said excitedly. “What the hell are you standing out here for? Senator Foxhall's awarding you the Cockfighter of the Year award! Let's go inside, man! As your partner, I'm entitled to a little reflected glory, you know.”

Now that he had my attention, he smiled broadly, his white teeth gleaming through his black moustache. “Of course,” he shrugged, “Old Man Whipple won the tourney, but what do we care? Thanks to Icky's victory, we're loaded!” He patted his bulging jacket pockets. “We've got so damned much money, I'm almost afraid to count it.”

Smiling, I gestured for him to go on ahead of me. Omar turned toward the entrance and trotted down the short hallway to the pit.

When I reached the doorway, I paused. After the barbecue was over, I would ask Bernice to go to Puerto Rico with me for a month or so. If it got dull in Puerto Rico, we could swing on down to Caracas, and I might be able to pick up some Spanish Aces for next season. Omar could put our proven birds out on their Alabama walks without any assistance from me. And then, if I returned from South America by the middle of April, I would be back in plenty of time to start working with the spring stags.

Across the pit, standing behind the referee's table in front of the judge's box, the two greatest game fowl men in the world were waiting for me. Senator Foxhall and Ed Middleton. To the left of the table, Peach Owen was holding the leather box that contained my award.

Well, they could wait a little longer.

As I neared her seat in the front row, Bernice smiled and said, “Congratulations, Frank!”

“Thanks,” I replied.

“Oh!” she said, her eyes widening with astonishment. “You—you've got your voice back!”

“Yeah,” I said, grinning at her expression, “and you'll probably wish I hadn't.”

“I—I don't know what you mean.”

“You'll find out that I'm quite the talker, Bernice, once I get wound up. How'd you like to go to Puerto Rico for a few weeks?”

“Right now,” she said, “I'm so confused that the only answer I can think of on the spur of the moment is ‘Yes.'”

I laughed and turned away, joy burbling out of my throat. How good to talk again, to
laugh
again!

I jerked my jacket down in back and pushed my white hat back on my head at a careless angle. Then, squaring my shoulders, I crossed the empty pit to get my goddamned medal.