Cockfighter - Charles Ray Willeford [4]
“I doubt if I can get you four to one, Frank.” Bill shook his head dubiously. “Your reputation is too damn good. You could show up with a battered dunghill, and if these redneckers thought you fed it, they'd bet on it. But I'll try.”
If anybody could get good odds for me, Sanders could, and I knew he would certainly try. When I was discharged from the Army, I had spent two months in Puerto Rico with Sanders, living in the same hotel; and we had attended mains at all the best game clubs—San Juan, Mayaguez, Ponce, Arecibo, and Aibonito. I had steered Sanders right on the betting, after I had gotten accustomed to the fighting techniques of the Spanish slashers, and both of us had returned to Miami with our wallets full of winnings. Bill Sanders was not a professional cockfighter like myself, he was a professional gambler. He had lost his share of the money he won in Puerto Rico at the Miami horse and dog tracks. A little bald guy with a passion for high living, he lived very well when he had money and even better when he had none. He was that kind of a man, and a good friend. I took Sandspur out of his coop and pointed out the “cracked” beak. Bill whistled softly and his blue eyes widened.
“If that beak breaks off, you've had it, Frank.” He shrugged. “But that mutilated boko should get me the four-to-one odds.”
Sanders hit me lightly on the shoulder with his fist and returned to the pit.
I held Sandspur with my left hand, filled my mouth with smoke, and blew the smoke at his head. He clucked angrily, shaking his head. Blowing tobacco smoke at a cock's head irritates it to a fighting pitch, and I was smoking a mild, mentholated cigarette. I enveloped the cock's head with one more cloud of smoke and returned him to his coop. Too much smoke could make a cock dizzy.
I opened my gaff case and removed two sets of heels. I put a pair of short spurs in my left shirt pocket and a pair of long jaggers in my right shirt pocket. After shutting my gaff case, I picked up the coop and case and entered the pit.
There were only about sixty spectators inside, but this was a fairly good crowd for September. The Florida cockfighting season didn't start officially until Thanksgiving Day, when an opening derby was held in Lake Worth. And Belle Glade isn't the most accessible town in Florida. The canvas walls successfully prevented any breeze from getting into the pit, and it was as hot inside as a barbecue grill.
I recognized a couple of Dade County fanciers and nodded acknowledgments to them when they greeted me by name. There was a scattering of Belle Glade townspeople, two gamblers from Miami who probably owned the blonde and the convertible, Burke and his two handlers, and two pregnant women I had seen around the trailer camp. The remainder of the crowd was made up from the migrant agricultural workers' camp on the other side of town.
The cockpit was made of rough boards, sixteen inches high, and about eighteen feet in diameter. The pit was surrounded on three sides by bleachers, four tiers high. Under an open beach umbrella on the fourth side of the pit, Mr. Middleton sat at a card table with Captain Mack. Behind the table there was a blackboard. I noted that Jack Burke had won both of the short-entry derbies, the first, four-one, and the second, three-two. That accounted for the glum expressions on the faces of the two Dade County breeders. Not only had they made a poor showing, their one-hundred-dollar entry fees, less Captain Mack's ten percent, had wound up in Burke's pocket as prize money.
Two men in the bleachers I didn't know called out my name and wished me good luck. I waved an acknowledgment to them, and joined Ed Middleton and Captain Mack. I removed Sandspur from the coop and handed the slip of paper to Mr. Middleton. Jack Burke and his handler, Ralph Hansen, came over. The handler was carrying Little