Cockfighter - Charles Ray Willeford [70]
Omar had developed a firm, gruff manner with these farmers who loaned their farms for walks. Despite his strong New York accent, which rural southerners distrust instinctively, he had won them over completely during four years of contact. He didn't merely leave a stag and forget about it until the following season. He wrote letters periodically during the year, asking how his rooster was getting along, enclosing a stamped, self-addressed postcard to make sure he would get a reply. The farmers responded cheerfully to Omar's active interest, and, if nothing else, they were awed by his impressive jet-black beard.
Most farmers, once they accept the idea of having a gamecock instead of a dunghill ruling their hens, are well pleased by the setup. Why shouldn't they be? The eggs they obtain are bigger and better-tasting, the offspring of a gamecock have more meat, and the small payment of ten dollars a year is money from an unexpected source. And any farmer who keeps a few hens has to have a rooster. Why not a game rooster?
Every time we picked up another country-walked rooster my heart swelled with pleasure. Their feathers were tight and their yellow eyes were bright and alert. Their exercised bodies were firm to the touch, and their dubbed combs usually had the dark red color of health. Out of the twenty-eight cocks Omar had on country walks, we picked up twenty-one. The other seven, in my considered opinion, needed another full year of exercise in the country.
I was happy to get back to Ocala and anxious to get to work. The little town of Ocala has always been my favorite Florida city, combining, as it does, the best aspects of Georgia and the worst side of Florida. A small city, of about twenty thousand permanent residents, and some one hundred miles below the Georgia state line, Ocala is where the state of Florida really begins.
As a driver enters town on the wide island-divided highway, the first sight that hits his eyes is the banner above the road: OCALA—BIRTHPLACE OF NEEDLES! This famous racehorse will be remembered by the Ocala townspeople forever.
To his left, six miles away, is Silver Springs, one of the most publicized tourist attractions in the world. On either side of the highway there are weird attractions, displays and souvenir shops. Commercial Florida also begins at Ocala. But the town itself is like a small Georgia town. Decent, respectable and God-fearing. The townspeople are good southerners—they provide their services to the rural residents and to themselves, and take only from the vacationing tourists with cameras dangling from their rubber necks.
Two miles outside the city limits in gently swelling country is my small leased farm of twenty-three acres, a small house to live in, an outhouse and outside shower, a well-constructed concrete brick cockhouse and some thirty-odd coop walks. My shack, as I called it, was unpainted but comfortable. The man who built it had started with concrete bricks, but ran short before the walls had reached shoulder height. The remainder of the house had been completed with rough, unfinished pine, and roofed over with two welded sheets of corrugated iron. In a downpour, the heavy pounding of raindrops on the corrugated iron had often driven me out of the shack.
Omar dropped me off first and then drove to his own farm. He had much better facilities to take care of the cocks than I had, and, upon his suggestion, I had agreed to alternate between our farms for conditioning purposes.
Buford ran out of the cockhouse as I entered the yard, a big white smile shining in the middle of his ebony face.
“Mr. Frank,” he said happily, taking my bag, “I sure is happy to see you! My curiosity's been drivin' me near crazy for two days. Just wait till you see them big packages I put in the house!”
I entered the shack, followed closely by Buford,