Cockfighter - Charles Ray Willeford [44]
At the foot of the stairs, I retrieved my hat and guitar, and made my exit into the dawn. The sky was just beginning to turn gray. I opened the guitar case, removed the instrument, and tried to scrape off my name with my knife. It was burned in too deeply, but Bernice would be able to see that I had tried to scrape it off. Then I put the neck of the guitar on the top step, and stomped on it until it broke. After cutting the strings with my knife, I placed the broken instrument on the welcome mat.
There was an oleander bush on the left side of the porch. I tossed the guitar case into the bush. Now I could keep the fifty-dollar bill in good conscience. The guitar had been worth at least thirty dollars, and the fee for the private concert was twenty dollars. We were even. The message was obscure, perhaps, but Bernice would be able to puzzle it out eventually.
I walked down the gravel driveway to the street, and noticed the number of the house on a stone marker at the bottom of the drive. 111. I grinned. I would always remember Bernice's number.
Carrying my wet underwear, I had to wander around in the strange neighborhood for almost five blocks before I could find a bus stop and catch a bus back to downtown Jacksonville.
8
All day long I stayed in my room. Ideas and plans circulated inside my head, but none of them were worthwhile. One dismal thought kept oozing to the top, and finally it lodged there.
I had been cheated out of my inheritance.
This wasn't a new thought by any means. I had thought about it often in the five years since Daddy died, but I had never considered seriously doing anything about it before. The telegram informing me of Daddy's death had reached me one day too late to allow me to attend the funeral. I had immediately wired Randall and given him the circumstances. Two weeks later I had received a letter from Judge Brantley Powell, the old lawyer who handled the estate, together with a check for one dollar. He had also included a carbon copy of Daddy's will. Randall, my younger brother, had inherited the four-hundred-acre farm, seven hundred dollars in bonds, and the bank account of two hundred and seventy dollars. The check for one dollar was my part of the inheritance.
With plenty of money in my pockets at the time, I had dismissed the will from my mind. After all, Randall had stayed home, and I had not. He had gone to college, earned a degree in law and passed the Georgia bar exams, returning home ostensibly to practice. I had attended Valdosta State College for one year only and had quit to go to the Southwestern Cocking Tourney in Oklahoma City. I had never returned to college and Daddy had never gotten over it. He had always wanted to keep both of us under his thumb, but no man can tell me what to do with my life.
What had happened to the lives we lived?
I had gone on to make a name for myself in cockfighting.
Sure, I was broke now, but I had firmly established myself in one of the toughest sports in the world. And what did Randall have to show for his fine education? What had he done with his inheritance?
When he was accepted for the bar he went to work as a law clerk for Judge Brantley Powell. Six months later, claiming that he was doing most of the work anyway, he asked for a full partnership in the firm. When the judge turned him down, he had quit, and