Hard Twisted (5 page)

At the center of their squalid metropolis, a low log parapet girded a circular earthen pit.

I don't see any kids, she whispered to her father.

Me neither.

Look! Yonder's his truck.

It sat in shade between the last of the cabins and the largest of the chicken coops, the latter a teetering rick of pinewood crates. They drove to the far end of the camp and parked beside a derelict Overland jalopy. The bird smell as they alighted was overwhelming.

Clint?

Lottie pinched her nose and hailed the open doorway while her father lingered at the coop to stare openmouthed at the tower of caged roosters that squawked and fluttered behind the grid of wood and wire, their pink heads bobbing like some vast anemone netted and swaying in a tidal current.

Palmer stepped shirtless onto the stoop, his face lathered for shaving, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He rubbed his belly and squinted, gesturing with a razor as he spoke.

You can stack that wood back of the coop! Come on in when you're done! He turned into the doorway and signaled with his head that Lottie follow.

The cabin was a dank and squalid cloister with a table at its center and a bed against the back wall. In one corner was a woodstove fashioned from a sheet-iron boiler, and in the corner opposite was an old chifforobe. The room's only window was a salvaged automobile windscreen that had been rough-bucked and chinked at eye level beside the door. Wooden pegs between door and window held Palmer's hat and some old and mismatched tack leather.

A railroad lantern was on a sideboard, and a zinc bucket, and Palmer returned to these and dipped his razor, the cigarette bobbing as he spoke.

I was afraid for a while you wasn't comin.

We brung the wood.

How much?

A dollar's worth.

Shit.

You got a dollar I hope.

He paused to look at her, and at the open doorway behind her. He pinched out the smoke and spoke in a low voice.

Just between you and me, darlin, I ain't got a plugged nickel. But don't go worryin your pa none, cuz we's a cockfightin tonight, and I'll have it soon enough.

He replaced the smoke and lifted his chin to the razor.

Yes, sir, he said, scraping as he did. A dollar and then some. You just stick around and watch.

There was no sun save the pink memory of sun above the treetops. Crickets and bullfrogs struck up their eternal chorus, and the cabin was soon awash in their soothing nightsound. Then lanterns appeared out of the darkness, flowing and converging on the cockpit, where pikes were set and lanterns hung and a halo formed above the parapet.

Muffled voices and drunken laughter burbled in the gloaming, and there appeared the red tracers of cigarettes. Then motor sounds, and rocking headlamps, and the hollow slamming of car doors. Shouted greetings and the pop and tinkle of breaking glass. Black shapes of men gathering like shadow puppets in the ring of golden lamplight.

Dillard Garrett sat and smoked and watched the scene unfold, until Palmer at last emerged from the cabin, holding something aloft.

Didn't know if you was a temperance man, he said, but this right here might be good for what ails you.

That chicken supper would go a long ways to curin what ails me, Garrett said, accepting the bottle and studying its label.

I wouldn't worry about that. They'll be chicken aplenty tonight.

The men at the pit grew silent, and a lone voice spoke from across the distance. Then a tumult rose and subsided, and there was silence again in which they heard the awful shrieking of the birds.

We gettin in on this?

Palmer took the bottle and smiled. Don't worry, cousin. Once these country boys've drunk a little corn and smelled a little blood, then they'll be ready for us. Right now they's just pinchin nickels and watchin out for their old ladies.

They aligned themselves on the stoop three abreast, the bottle moving back and forth between the men with Lottie bracketed by the warmth of their bodies and the medicine smell of the whiskey. Across the clearing, the action at the pit took on a rhythm of commotion and silence and frenzy and silence that grew familiar as the fire reddened and the bottle emptied and the stars above them formed in the night sky.

Showtime, Palmer announced, flinging the empty bottle into the grass.

He carried the railroad lantern from cabin to coop, returning with a cage under each arm and the lamp bail clamped in his teeth, his face underlit and eerily spectral. He spit as Lottie took the lantern, and he passed a cage off to her father.

These two should be bird aplenty for this bunch. Come on.

Lottie led their procession to the cockpit with the lantern raised, and her appearance in their midst was to the sporting men as miraculous as a child Venus risen from the waters of the lake. The men parted and fell silent until Palmer stepped lastly into the lamplight. Then catcalls, some of them friendly, sounded from around the circle.

Howdy, boys! Palmer crowed, raising on his toes. Brung over some culls we all was gonna have for supper! Thought we'd save us the trouble of wringin necks!

An old Mexican in a leather apron stood at the center of the circle, his legs bowed and his shirtsleeves rolled, his flickering shadow a compass rose on ground already feathered and bloody.

Palmer set his cage on the log. I got five dollars says this little bird right here can outfuck and outfight any prairie chicken in this camp!

The crowd murmured. The referee scanned the lamplit faces, returning again to Palmer's and beckoning him forward with a hand. Palmer vaulted the logs and lifted the cage and set it carefully at the center of the circle.

Bullshit! called a voice from the darkness.

Heads turned, and Palmer shaded his eyes.

Is that you, Junior Wells? I hope you brung a cock bigger'n what's in your pants, son.

A plow-ground farmboy stepped through the rain of laughter and into the ring, his straw hat bent and torn, his overalls filled to bursting. He lumbered forward and unsnapped his bib and coaxed forth a lean and lacquered gamecock.

I got a dollar says you're fulla shit, Palmer.

Let's see it, son.

The boy pried a bill from his pocket and surrendered it to the Mexican. Palmer patted his trousers and his shirtfront, then half-turned and called behind him.

Hey, Bonnie? Do me a favor and run get my billfold off the table! You hurry up now!

Heads turned again as Lottie perked and straightened, excusing herself and shouldering her way through the crowd, beyond the lamplight where, alone in the darkness, she stalked the shifting circus of light and shadow until, stumbling onto a low boulder, she boosted herself upward.

The referee called the men together. Palmer squatted and opened the cage, and when he rose again he held his bird like a dowser, outstretched before him with both hands. The boy did
likewise, and as the birds grew closer, they swelled and coiled, lunging and squawking like the arcing of twin electrodes.

After the third such presentation, the old man pronounced the odds at even money. He pulled a pad from his apron and licked his pencil and nodded to acknowledge the chorus of shouted wagers.

Lottie watched as Palmer passed the trembling bird to her father. When he returned again to center, he and the farmboy presented their gaffs for the referee's inspection. The old man held them up to the lamplight, squinting like a pawnbroker.

Her father held the bird, inverted now and strangely quiescent, while Palmer fitted the cockspurs. The audience grew still. Then Palmer nodded into the crowd and was handed a fruit jar, from which he took a mouthful.

Palmer carried his bird again to center and hoisted it aloft, as if to offer some final advice or whispered benediction, but instead loosed into its face an aerosol blast of spittle and moonshine. The enraged cock squawked and flapped and nearly tore loose from his grasp.

The old Mexican spoke some final instructions as both handlers squatted. There were shouts from the crowd, and whistles, and a shrill clamor that built and swelled until it swallowed even the frenzied keening of the birds. The old man leaned with one foot forward, nodded left and right, and then dropped his open hand.

The gamecocks met like windblown newsprint, clapping and rising and tumbling downward in the grasp of a phantom whirlwind, feathers flying and blood arcing in crimson pinwheels. The crowd, red-mouthed and savage, was a sea of corded necks and pumping fists. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the fight was over, with one bird strutting in drunken triumph over the twitching body of its rival.

The crowd howled as the farmboy cursed and turned a circle, lifting a bloodied boot to stomp the head of the fallen. This last affront reanimated the carcass, which rose anew and staggered crazily until it fell again, jerking and scrabbling in a circular parody of its master.

Foul! the boy bellowed, his face darkly flushed. Foul! Y'all saw it! You cheatin son of a bitch!

The boy bent to his boot, and when he rose again, Lottie caught a slender glinting of steel.

The old Mexican backed to the logs and there was swallowed whole by the sporting men, who, at the sight of the knife, had begun overflowing the ramparts. They surged forward to close an inner circle around man and boy, their shadows forming a jagged iris at the center of the pit.

Palmer, to Lottie's surprise, did not retreat. Instead he crouched, crabwalking slowly to clockwise, until, with a feint of his head, he drew the razor neatly from his pocket. At this the crowd whooped and the circle tightened and the farmboy froze in his tracks.

They stood that way, a lamplit David and Goliath sculpted from the shapes and shards of the surrounding rabble. Further words were spoken, but Lottie could not hear them. Then the farmboy, his eyes still locked on Palmer, bent and groped for his bird, lifting it by the legs and slicing the cockspurs free.

The boy spoke a final threat, or epithet, gesturing with his knife. Then he turned and pushed through the crowd, which parted and quieted until, like a thing unplugged, it drifted slowly apart.

Thirty. Forty. Forty-five. They's four dollars and fifty cents here. Lottie spoke with a note of wonder in her voice.

Palmer set plates on the table, heaped and steaming, and the scent of fresh-grilled chicken filled the little cabin. He disappeared through the open doorway, returning again with his shirttail wrapped on the handle of a coffeepot.

Give your pa that dollar, he instructed, setting the pot on the table. That's for the wood, plus ten percent of the rest is thirty-five cents.

Garrett turned from the sideboard. What's that for?

Bein my second.

Second my ass. I didn't do spit.

Second gets ten percent. Palmer licked his fingers. Them all's the rules, cousin. I didn't make 'em.

Lottie was the last to carry her plate to the washbucket. At this they all moved onto the stoop, where the men reclined to belch and pick their teeth, their faces intermittently bathed in the sweep of departing headlamps.

A gentle night breeze rose off the lake, and the smell of fire-smoke drifted from the neighboring shacks. The sound of crickets. The long, pale smudge of the Milky Way. A lone figure, the old Mexican, lingering yet in the cockpit with his head bowed, his shoulders rolling as he swept.

So what do you think?

Think about what?

Palmer gestured. All of this here.

Her father surveyed the emptied clearing. The laboring man, the glowing cabins, the last of the departing taillights.

Seems like a good place to get yourself shanked.

Shit. Palmer leaned and spat. Let me ask you somethin.

Wear yourself out.

How long'd it take you to cut and bundle all that wood today?

I don't know. Hour maybe.

More like three would be my guess. Plus all day to sell it.

Your point bein?

Workin from can to can't, and all for what? A dollar twenty? Them's nigger wages, son.

Honest wages you mean.

The smaller man chuckled. Honest. Tell me another.

I take it you got a better idea.

Palmer struck a match off the porch post and lit another smoke.

You see them gamecocks yonder? He shook the match and pitched it toward the fire. I got thirty birds out there, give or take, plus I got a gal who sells me cockerels at a dollar a head. The water's free, and the feed sets me back around two bits a week for the lot. Now you think about that for a minute.

I'm listenin.

Palmer tipped his head and blew a stream of smoke. Here's my proposition. They's a dozen cockpits within a day's drive of where we're settin, and if I wasn't stuck feedin and workin and doctorin these ones here, I could take maybe three or four birds a day on the road, and I could make maybe five to ten dollars a day average.

If you win, you mean.

Average is what I'm sayin.

Garrett's ash tip glowed and faded. I'm still listenin.

I had me a notion that you and Lottie here might like to mind the roost. Say for a dollar a day, guaranteed. Plus I'd pay you ten percent of the take, plus all the chicken suppers you could eat. You could even train your own birds, startin with that one you already
got. And if that ain't enough, you could cut wood or grow truck or do whatever else you take a notion to do on the side. Palmer gestured toward the coop. And that old Willys yonder? It's yours to keep, you get it runnin. He leaned again and spat. I don't claim to be no Rockefeller, but that seems to me a damn sight better'n bustin ass in a tree all day like a goddamn monkey.

Lottie watched her father. He stared into the darkness, his foot tapping, the cigarette growing cold between his fingers.

When the truck arrived at the appointed hour, man and girl were waiting with their camp packed and their prayers said, and any qualms that her father might have felt he masked in a stiff rectitude born of Scripture and self-delusion.

I ain't so sure about this.

He turned to face his daughter. How's that?

What makes you think we can trust him?