Cockfighter - Charles Ray Willeford [30]
One thing I could always do was walk and condition cocks for another breeder. There were plenty of chicken men in the South who would have jumped at the chance to pay me five dollars apiece for every game fowl I conditioned for them. But for a man who was still considered a big-time cockfighter throughout the South, it would be too much of a comedown to work for another cock breeder. I had never worked for anybody else in my thirty-two years on this earth, and it was too late to start now. By God, I wasn't that desperate!
Sitting in that hotel room, with only a few loose dollars in my pocket, I was beginning to feel sorry for myself. My eyes rested on my guitar case.
My guitar was an old friend. During the first few months of my self-enforced silence, the days and nights had almost doubled in length. It is surprising how much time is killed everyday in idle conversation. Just to have something to fill in time I had purchased a secondhand Gibson guitar for thirty dollars in a Miami pawnshop. The case wasn't so hot—cheap brown cardboard stamped to resemble alligator leather—but the guitar was a good one, and it had a strong, wonderful tone. The guitar served as a substitute for my lost voice, and I don't know what I would have done without it.
I opened the guitar case, removed the instrument and ran through a few exercises to limber my fingers. I hadn't played the guitar for five or six days, but the calluses on my fingers were still hard and tough. The Uncle who sold me the Gibson had also thrown in a free instruction booklet, but I had never learned how to play any regular songs. After learning most of the chords and how to tune and pick the strings, I had tossed the booklet away.
I only knew three songs, and they were tunes I had made up myself, sitting around, picking them out until they sounded like the mental images I wanted them to resemble. One was “Georgia Girl.” This was a portrait in sound of Mary Elizabeth, my fiancée. The second tune I had composed I called “Empty Pockets” My pockets had been empty many times in my life, and in making up this song I had discovered a way of getting a hollow sound effect by banging the box near the hole and playing a succession of fast triplets on the lower three strings at the same time. Despite the hollow sounds, this was a gay, fast tune and I was rather fond of it. The remaining song was merely my impression of an old patchwork quilt Grandma had made many years ago, and that's what I called it—“Grandma's Quilt.” I had tried to duplicate the colors and designs of that old patchwork, faded quilt in chord patterns, and I had been fairly successful.
My repertoire, then, consisted of three highly personal songs. If it was music, it was reflective music made up for my own personal enjoyment, and not for the general public. But I had to get a few dollars together, and soon, and maybe my guitar was the way? I could have pawned the Gibson for twenty dollars or so, and this sum would pay a week's rent, but if I pawned the guitar, where would I be then?
I decided to take a chance and temporarily invade the world of music. As a last resort, when push came to shove, I could pawn the instrument. I removed my wristwatch, waited until the sweep hand hit twelve, picked up my guitar and played my three songs in succession all the way through. Time elapsed: seventeen minutes, fourteen seconds. Not a lot of time for a guitar concert, but I had nothing to lose by trying, and the songs were all different. Perhaps some bar owner would put me on for a few dollars in the evening.
I shucked out