Cockfighter - Charles Ray Willeford [90]
Although I couldn't have agreed with Omar more, I hated to leave. There was something exciting about fighting cocks in a hotel and the prospect of winning large sums of money. It's almost impossible to resist free drinks, and there would be some beautiful women around to spend some money on. And when it comes to good-looking women, Chattanooga has got prettier girls than Dallas, Texas.
I had written to Dirty Jacques Bonin in Biloxi and arranged a deal to put Omar and me and our gamecocks up at his game farm. When he came to fight his chickens at the Ocala derby in February, we would fix him up with like facilities either at my place or Omar's.
We shook hands and parted in the basement garage of the hotel. Omar headed for Biloxi in the pickup with twenty-two gamecocks, and I drove to Cook's Hollow with Icky and the derby-conditioned birds in the station wagon.
In the heat of the fighting the next day at Vern Packard's pit, I realized how much I had depended upon Omar to look after things during the season so far. If Vern hadn't done a good portion of my talking for me, I would have had a rough time getting matches. But thanks to Vern's efforts, I managed to fight five of my eight cocks, and I won every hack. By picking the winning derby entry, and laying even money with a local gambler, I won four hundred dollars. My five hack wins added two hundred and fifty dollars more to my roll, and I was well satisfied with the outcome of the side trip to Cook's Hollow. This was a small sum compared to what we might have won at Chattanooga, but it was enormous compared to winning nothing at all.
By four that afternoon the fighting was over, and I hadn't been able to get a match for Icky. Icky scaled now at a steady 4:02 and was too light for derby fighting in the Southern Conference. All of the S.C. derby weights began at 5:00, and the only way I could fight Icky was in hack battles. In New York and Pennsylvania, where the use of short heels is preferred and smaller gamecocks are favored, I could have had all the fights I wanted. So far, Icky had only had two fights. Before he met Jack Burke's Little David at Milledgeville, I wanted him to win at least three more. He would need all of the pit experience he could get to win over Burke's Ace.
The Cook's Hollow Game Club was similar to a hundred other small southern cockpits. The pit was on Vern Packard's rocky farm, adjacent to his barn, and covered with a corrugated iron roof. There were three-tier bleachers on three sides, and the fourth side was the barn wall. A double door in the barrier provided an entranceway inside, and two-by-two coops were nailed to the interior walls of the barn to serve as cockhouses for visitors.
There was a large blackboard nailed to the outside of the barn. The fans could follow the running results of the derby as they were chalked up by the referee following each battle. Cockfighters looking for individual hacks also used the blackboard. I had written my name and the weights of all my cocks in square letters, hoping for a challenge. When three-quarters of the crowd had left, I decided to quit myself.
I was inside the barn, transferring my birds into my traveling coops, when Vern Packard introduced me to an old farmer and his son.
“Frank,” Vern said, “this is Milam Peeples, and his son, Tom.”
I shook hands with both men. Milam Peeples was in his late fifties, tanned and well weathered by his years of outside labor. The yellow teeth on the left side of his mouth, I noticed, were worn down almost to the gum line from chewing on a pipe. The son was a full head taller than his father, with long thick arms and big raw-looking hands. He had a lopsided smile, a thick shock