Nathanael West - The Day of the Locust [46]
When she turned to Homer again, he leaned away as though she were going to hit him. She flushed with shame at this and looked at Tod to see if he had noticed. The rest of the evening, she tried to be nice to Homer. She even touched him a little, straightening his collar and patting his hair smooth. He beamed happily.
21
When Tod told Claude Estee about the cock fight, he wanted to go with him. They drove to Homer’s place together.
It was one of those blue and lavender nights when the luminous color seems to have been blown over the scene with an air brush. Even the darkest shadows held some purple.
A car stood in the driveway of the garage with its headlights on. They could see several men in the corner of the building and could hear their voices. Someone laughed, using only two notes, ha-ha and ha-ha, over and over again.
Tod stepped ahead, to make himself known, in case they were taking precautions against the police. When he entered the light, Abe Kusich and Miguel greeted him, but Earle didn’t.
“The fights are off,” Abe said. “That stinkola from Diego didn’t get here.”
Claude came up and Tod introduced him to the three men. The dwarf was arrogant, Miguel gracious and Earle his usual wooden, surly self.
Most of the garage floor had been converted into a pit, an oval space about nine feet long and seven or eight wide. It was floored with an old carpet and walled by a low, ragged fence made of odd pieces of lath and wire. Faye’s coupe stood in the driveway, placed so that its headlights flooded the arena.
Claude and Tod followed Abe out of the glare and sat down with him on an old trunk in the back of the garage. Earle and Miguel came in and squatted on their heels facing them. They were both wearing blue denims, polka-dot shirts, big hats and high-heeled boots. They looked very handsome and picturesque.
They sat smoking silently, all of them calm except the dwarf, who was fidgety. Although he had plenty of room, he suddenly gave Tod a shove.
“Get over, lard-ass,” he snarled.
Tod moved, crowding against Claude, without saying anything. Earle laughed at Tod rather than the dwarf, but the dwarf turned on him anyway.
“Why, you punkola! Who you laughing at?”
“You,” Earle said.
“That so, hah? Well, listen to me, you pee-hole bandit, for two cents I’d knock you out of them prop boots.” Earle reached into his shirt pocket and threw a coin on the ground.
“There’s a nickel,” he said.
The dwarf started to get off the trunk, but Tod caught him by the collar. He didn’t try to get loose, but leaned forward against his coat, like a terrier in a harness, and wagged his great head from side to side.
“Go on,” he sputtered, “you fugitive from the Western Costume Company, you…you louse in a fright-wig, you.”
Earle would have been much less angry if he could have thought of a snappy comeback. He mumbled something about a half-pint bastard, then spat. He hit the instep of the dwarf’s shoe with a big gob of spittle.
“Nice shot,” Miguel said.
This was apparently enough for Earle to consider himself the winner, for he smiled and became quiet. The dwarf slapped Tod’s hand away from his collar with a curse and settled down on the trunk again.
“He ought to wear gaffs,” Miguel said.
“I don’t need them for a punk like that.”
They all laughed and everything was fine again. Abe leaned across Tod to speak to Claude.
“It would have been a swell main,” he said. “There was more than a dozen guys here before you come and some of them with real dough. I was going to make book.” He took out his wallet and gave him one of his business cards.
“It was in the bag,” Miguel said. “I got five birds that would of won easy and two sure losers. We would of made a killing.”
“I’ve never seen a chicken fight,” Claude said. “In fact, I’ve never even seen a game chicken.”
Miguel offered to show him one of his birds and left to get it. Tod went down to the car for the bottle of whiskey they had left In a side pocket. When he got back, Miguel was holding Jujutala in the