Cockfighter - Charles Ray Willeford [84]
On the morning of November 9, we left for Tifton, Georgia, at five, and arrived at the Tifton game club at three the same afternoon. We signed the derby contracts and were assigned to a cockhouse and given a padlock for the door.
Jack Burke was an entry in the Tifton derby, and he looked me up that evening after supper. Omar had stayed in our motel room to watch television, but I was edgy and drove out to the pit to take a final look at the twelve cocks we had brought along. The birds were roosting all right. As I locked the door and lit a cigarette, Jack Burke approached me through the dusk.
“Evenin', Frank,” he greeted me cordially. “It's nice to see you again.” Jack looked prosperous in a double-breasted blue worsted suit, a wide paisley necktie, and black-and-white shoes.
I shook hands with the man. Jack rubbed his chin nervously, and I could sense that something was on his mind. He fixed his eyes on an imaginary point to the left of my head.
“I don't suppose you heard the good news,” he said, smiling bleakly.
I waited patiently for him to tell it.
“I got married!” He laughed. “Bet that surprises you, don't it? Yes, sir! Sooner or later they catch up with the best of us, Frank!” He hesitated. “I married Dody White, Frank,” he added softly.
I felt sorry for Jack, but I shook hands with him again anyway. So White was Dody's last name. I had wondered about that. And now she was Mrs. Dody Burke.
“I wanted to bring Dody along to the derby, Frank, but she wouldn't come because you were here. I tried to tell her you weren't the kind who would rake up the past, but she wouldn't believe me. She seems to have the idea that you can talk, and she's afraid you'll say something about her. I know you can't talk, but I couldn't convince Dody.” He hesitated. “Can you use your voice, Frank?”
I smiled and flipped the butt of my cigarette in an arc to the ground. The idea that I would ever say anything about Burke's wife whether I could talk or not was patently ridiculous. And Burke knew it. Dody had undoubtedly forced him to ask me to keep quiet about our former alliance. For an instant I felt sorry for him, and then I despised him for being so damned weak and pussy-whipped.
“1 feel like a fool!” Burke blushed. For a man in his mid-forties, the ability to blush is quite a feat.
“Well,” Burke said, “I'll bring her along to the Plant City derby, and introduce you all just like you'd never seen each other before. That way, Dody's mind'll be at ease. All right?”
I nodded and looked away. I could almost smell the rancorous acid burning Jack's insides. What a comedown for Jack Burke, to let a little tramp like Dody humiliate him this way.
“Now, to business!” Jack said briskly, in his regular voice. “D'you think you and that new partner of yours can show enough cocks after the Plant City meet to fight me in an old-fashioned main?”
The decision was up to me. I was positive Omar wouldn't object to the challenge. Burke fed almost twice as many cocks as we did, but I had a fierce hankering to beat him in a two-entry main. I lowered my chin a fraction and spat between his feet.
“Good! I'll make the necessary arrangements to get the pit on the thirty-first, the day after the derby. How does two hundred dollars a fight sound, with a thousand on the odd fight?”
For the third time in as many minutes, I shook hands with Burke.
He started to say something else, changed his mind, and walked away through the deepening dusk toward the parking lot. Burke was still a damned good man. In time he would learn how to handle Dody. But the memory of this humiliating episode would rankle him forever. I knew this, and I knew just as well that he would eventually blame me instead of himself. That's the way men are.
The next day we lost only one fight in the six-cock derby, but it was one fight too many. Jack Burke didn't lose a single fight, and picked up the thousand-dollar purse. Getting close only means something when it comes to pitching horseshoes. But despite the lost fight, Omar had placed enough judicious bets to add nine hundred dollars to