Cockfighter - Charles Ray Willeford [12]
Jacksonville it would be then. If nothing else, I could pick up my mail at the Jacksonville post office.
Two ancient trucks rolled through the gate loaded down with fruit tramps. They were returning to the migrant camp on the other side of Belle Glade. A couple of the men shouted to me, and I waved to them. There was a maroon Cadillac sedan about two hundred yards behind the last truck, hanging well back out of the dust. This was Ed Middleton's car. As he came abreast of the gate, I grinned and stuck out my thumb. Mr. Middleton pressed a button, and the right front window slid down with an electronic click.
“Throw your stuff in the back seat, Frank,” Ed Middleton said. “I don't want to lose this cold air.” The window shot up again.
I opened the back door, arranged my luggage on the floor so it would ride without shifting, slammed the door, and climbed into the front seat. A refreshing icy breeze filled the roomy interior from an air-conditioning system that actually worked.
I settled backed comfortably, and Ed pointed the nose of the big car toward Orlando.
3
Ed Middleton is one of my favorite people. He is in his early sixties, and if I happen to live long enough, I want to be exactly like him someday. He is a big man with a big voice and a big paunch. Except for a bumpy bulbous nose with a few broken blood vessels here and there on its bright red surface, his face is smooth and white, with the shiny licked look of a dog's favorite bone.
Against all the odds for a man his age, Mr. Middleton still has his hair. It is a shimmering silvery white, and he always wears it in a thick bushy crew cut. A ghost of a smile—as though he is thinking of some secret joke—usually hovers about the corners of his narrow lips. In southern cockfighting circles, or anywhere in the world where cockers get together for chicken talk, his name is respected as the man who bred the Middleton Gray. Properly conditioned, the purebred Middleton Gray is a true money bird.
Despite his amiable manner, Ed can get as hard as any man when the time to get tough presents itself, and he wears the coveted Cocker of the Year medal on his watch fob.
“Lost your car and trailer, eh Frank?”
I nodded. Bad news has a way of traveling faster than good news.
“Tough luck, Frank.” Mr. Middleton laughed aloud. “But I don't worry about you landing on your feet. If I know you, you've probably got a rooster hidden away somewhere that'll give Jack Burke his lumps.”
I smiled ruefully, made an “0” with the thumb and forefinger of my left hand and showed it to him.
“I sure didn't suspect that, Frank,” Mr. Middleton said sympathetically.
I opened a fresh package of cigarettes, offered them to Ed and he waved them away. He was silent for more than ten minutes, and then he fingered his lower lip and squirmed about slightly in the seat. The signs were easily recognized. He wanted to confess something; a problem of some kind was on his mind. Two or three times he opened his mouth, started to speak his mind, and then shook his head and clamped his lips together. But he would get it out sooner or later, whatever it was. Since my vow of silence I had become, unwillingly, a man who listened to confessions. Now that I couldn't talk, or wouldn't talk—no one, other than myself, knew the truth about my muteness—people often told me things they would hesitate to tell to a priest, or even to their wives. At first, it had bothered me, learning things about people I didn't want or need to know, but now I just listened—not liking it, of course, but accepting the confessions as an unwelcome part of the deal I had made with myself.
We sailed through the little town of Canal Point and hit Highway 441 bordering Lake Okeechobee.
From time to time, when the roadbed was higher than the dike, I got a glimpse of the calm mysterious lake, which