Cockfighter - Charles Ray Willeford [19]
The second cup of coffee seemed hotter than the first, and I was forced to sip it slowly. Ed snapped his fingers impatiently, pushed open the back door, and said over his shoulder, “Come on, Frank. We can have breakfast later, like I told you already.”
I gulped down the remainder of the coffee and followed him outside to the patio. The sun was just rising, and the upper rim could be seen through the trees. The tops of the orange trees across the pond were dipped in molten, golden-green fire. The oranges on the darker green lower limbs of the trees looked as if they had been painted on. A mist rose from the tiny lake like steam rising from a pot of water just before it begins to boil. Ed Middleton sat down in the center of the little skiff tied to the concrete pier, and fitted the oars into the locks. I sat forward in the prow.
“Untie the line, Frank, and let's cast off.”
Mr. Middleton rowed across the lake—all forty yards of it. It would have been less trouble to take the path that circled the pond, but if he wanted to use the skiff, it didn't make any difference to me.
When we reached the other side of the pond, I jumped out, held the skiff steady for Mr. Middleton, and then both of us pulled the boat onto dry land. There was a narrow path through the grove, and I trailed the old man for about five hundred yards until we reached his chicken walks. There was a flat, well-hidden clearing in the grove, and about a dozen coop walks, each separated by approximately twenty yards. The walks were eight feet tall, about ten feet wide by thirty feet in length, with the tops and sides covered with chicken wire. The baseboards were two feet high, and painted with old motor oil to keep down the mite population.
Seeing the empty walks reminded me of my own farm in Ocala, although I had a better setup for coop-walked birds than Ed Middleton. At one time, many years before, long before he had converted his land to orange trees, he had had the ideal setup for a country-walked rooster. A pond, gently rolling terrain, and enough trees for the chickens to choose their own limbs for roosting. We walked down the row of walks to the end coop. As the rooster crowed, Ed turned around with a proud expression and pointed to the cock.
If there is anything more beautiful than the sight of a purebred gamecock in the light of early morning I do not know what it is. This fighting cock of Ed's was the most brilliantly colored chicken I had ever seen, and I've seen hundreds upon hundreds of chickens.
Middleton had devoted sixteen years and countless generations of game fowl to developing the famous Middleton Gray, and there were traces of the Gray in the cock's shawl and broad, flat chest. But the cock was a hybrid of some kind that I couldn't place or recognize. He walked proudly to the fence and tossed his head back and crowed, beating the tips of his long wings together. The tips of his wings were edged with vermilion. The crow of a fighting cock is strong and deep and makes the morning sounds of a common dunghill barnyard rooster sound puny in comparison.
The same flaming color that tipped his wings was repeated in his head feathers and thighs, but his remaining feathers, including the sweep of his high curving tail, were a luminous peacock blue. Ed was planning—or had planned—to keep him for a brood cock, because his comb and wattles hadn't been clipped for fighting. His lemon beak was strong, short and evenly met. His feet and legs were as orange and bright as a freshly painted bridge.
The floor of the cock's private walk was thickly covered with a mixture of finely ground oyster shells and well-grated charcoal, essential ingredients for a fighter's diet. The oyster shells were for lime content, and the charcoal for digestion, but against this salt-and-pepper background, the cock's colorful plumage was emphasized.
Unfortunately, coloring is not the essential factor for a winning gamecock. Good blood first, know-how in conditioning,