OUT OF LONG HABIT more than anything else, I drank a quick cup of coffee in the dining room the next morning and was in the cockhouse by five thirty. Gamecocks cooped for long periods in a small two-by-two stall have a tendency to get sleepy and bored. Too much lassitude makes a cock sluggish when pitted. To wake them up, I took each cock out of its coop and washed its head with a damp sponge dipped in cheap whiskey. By the time I finished the sponging at seven thirty, our gamecocks were skipping up and down inside their stalls with rejuvenated animation and crowing and clucking with happiness.
Omar joined me at eight, and a few minutes later Doc Riordan showed up at the cockhouse to wish me luck in the tourney. The pharmacist and my partner hit it off well together from the moment they met.
“I never miss the Southern Conference Tourney,” Doc told Omar, “but all season long I’ve been chained to my desk. I’m the president of the Dixie Pharmaceutical Company, as Frank may have told you, and this year our firm is launching a new product.” He reached into his coat pocket and handed Omar a small white packet. “Licarbo!” he said proudly. “Advertising is our biggest headache, although the raising of capital isn’t the simple matter it used to be.”
“Who handles your advertising?” Omar asked, tearing open the sample and cautiously tasting the product with the tip of his tongue.
“Unfortunately,” Doc sighed, “I have to handle it myself. That’s been my main trouble. But I’m a registered pharmacist, and most of the drugstores in Jax have allowed me to put my posters in their windows.”
“I think you’ve got a good idea here in Licarbo,” Omar said sincerely. “After the tourney I won’t have too much to do until April, and maybe you and I can get together on this product. I used to be in advertising in New York. Perhaps Frank told you?”
“No, he didn’t.” Doc looked at me reproachfully. “I didn’t know Frank had himself a partner until I read the account of the Plant City Main between you-all and Jack Burke. Now, that was a main I wish I’d seen! That reminds me, Frank—” Doc took a small bottle of black-and-gray capsules out of his pocket and placed it on the workbench. “These are energy capsules. I made ‘em up for Mr. Burke from a formula he gave me, and they should be good. They take about an hour for the best results, but when I made ‘em up for Mr. Burke’s chickens, I said to myself: ‘While I’m at it, I’ll just make up a batch for Frank Mansfield.’”
“We appreciate it, Doctor,” Omar said—and then to me, “The restaurant should be open by now. Let’s get some breakfast.”
Shaking my head, I opened my gaff case on the workbench and started to polish gaffs with my conical grinding stone.
“I’ll have some coffee with you, Mr. Baradinsky,” Doc offered.
“Fine. I’d like to find out more about Licarbo.”
“Right now,” Doc said, “advertising isn’t quite as important as raising a little capital. However, I’d appreciate any advice you’d—”
“I’ll bring you some coffee, Frank,” Omar said over his shoulder. “Capital, Doctor, is simply a matter of devious stratagems worked out through a mathematical process known as pressure patterns peculiar to a pecuniary people.”
As soon as they were out of earshot I opened the small bottle of energy capsules Doc had given me, dumped them on the floor, and crushed them into powder with my heel. The capsules might have been wonderful, but I wouldn’t take any chances with them. Jack Burke knew that Doc Riordan was a friend of mine, and that fact alone was enough to make me distrust the medicine. Perhaps Jack didn’t have enough brains to plan anything so devious, but I wouldn’t have used a strange product on my chickens whether Burke’s name had been mentioned or not. A major tournament is not the place for experimentation.
As the parking lot filled slowly, I leaned against the locked door of our cockhouse and watched the arriving cars as they pulled in and parked under the directions of the attendants. By nine a.m., when the time came for Omar and me to go over to the pit for the opening of the tourney, there was still no sign of either Bernice or Mary Elizabeth.
Tension was building up inside me, as it always does just before a meet, and I was happy when Peach Owen disengaged the mike and handed it to Senator Foxhall. Peach played out the extra cord behind the senator as the old man marched stiffly to the center of the pit. The senator waited for silence, which didn’t take very long. This early in the morning, there were only about two hundred spectators, but by two in the afternoon, the place would be jammed.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Senator Foxhall said in his high reedy voice, “welcome to the Southern Conference Tourney! We sincerely hope that all of you will have a good time. There is only one rule that you must observe during the meet.” He paused. “Conduct yourselves like ladies and gentlemen.”
(Applause.)
“Before the tourney is over,” he said wryly, licking his thin lips, “some of you may desire to place a small wager or two—”
(Laughter.)
“If you do, make certain you know the man you’re betting with—there may be Internal Revenue agents in the crowd!”
(Laughter.)
The old man turned the hand microphone over to Peach Owen and returned to his chair beside the judge’s box. For the remainder of the tourney he would sit there quietly, watching everything that went on with his deep-set, cold blue eyes. With those experienced eyes watching me, I knew I couldn’t make a single mistake when I was in the pit.
I was elated when Peach Owen called over the PA system for entry Number Two and entry Number Five to report to the judge’s box to pick up their weight slips. My tension disappeared. Now I could be busy.
The first match was 5:00 cocks. After getting our weight-slip, Omar and I double-timed back to the cockhouse to heel our chicken. Time was going on from the second we received our weight slip, and only fifteen minutes were allowed to heel and be ready for the pitting. If an entry failed to make it on time, he forfeited that fight, and the next waiting, heeled pair was called. The fifteen-minute time limit kept the fights moving along fast. Where a match was even, or after ten minutes of fighting in the main pit, the two cocks were sent to the drag pit and a new pair was started in the center pit.
From the first pitting, I knew that the fight was going to be a long-drawn-out battle. Pete Chocolate matched a Spanish cross against my Mellhorn Black, and both birds were wary and overcautious. They did little damage to each other by the fourth pitting, and just before the fifth, when Ed Middleton saw that Roy Whipple and Baldy Allen were heeled and ready, he signaled for second referee Buddy Waggoner to start the next match and ordered us to follow him into the drag pit.
In the thirty-first pitting we went to breast after the third count of twenty, one hand under the bird only, at the center score.
“Get ready,” Ed Middleton said.
Pete and I faced each other across the two-foot score, both holding weary fighters with our right hand, and one foot above the ground. That’s when the Indian made his first mistake.
“Pit!”
I dropped on signal and so did Pete, but Pete pushed, causing his Spanish to peck first because of the added impetus. I saw him plainly, but Ed missed it. Snapping my fingers I made a pushing gesture with my right palm and pointed to the straight-faced Seminole.
“I’m refereeing this fight, Mr. Mansfield!” Ed snapped angrily. “Handle!”
We picked up the cocks for the short rest period. I couldn’t argue, but Ed had been alerted and he watched Pete closely during the next actionless pittings. There are no draws at the S.C.T., and I was beginning to think the fight was going to last all day when Pete just barely pushed his bird on the forty-fifth pitting. This time, Ed caught him at it.
“Foul! The winner is Number Five!”
“Foul?” Pete asked innocently. “I committed a foul of some kind?”
“Pushing on the breast score. Are you trying to argue, Mr. Chocolate?”
“I’m afraid I must, Mr. Middleton,” Pete said with feigned bewilderment. Spreading his arms widely, Pete turned to the crowd of a dozen or so spectators who had followed the first fight into the drag pit. “Did any of you gentlemen see me pushing?”
“That’s a fifty-dollar fine for arguing. Anything else to say, Pete?”
Pete glowered at Ed for about ten seconds, and then shook his head. We carried our birds out, returning to our respective cockhouses. The door was open and my partner was attempting frantically to heel a 5:02 Roundhead by himself when I entered.
“Take over, Frank!” Omar said excitedly. “Your drag lasted almost an hour, and we’ve got less than five minutes to meet Roy Whipple with a 5:02!”
I put the battered Mellhorn away, and while Omar held, I finished heeling the Roundhead. We made it to the weighing scales with two minutes to spare. During the long drag battle with Pete, three fights had been held in the main pit.
From the word “Pit!” my Allen Roundhead lasted exactly twenty-five seconds with the Whipple cock before it was cut down in midair and killed.
The fighting was just as fast for the rest of the morning. If I didn’t lose during the first three or four pittings I usually won the battle. My tough, relentless conditioning methods paid off with stamina. In a long go, my rock-hard gamecocks invariably outlasted their opponents. Every fight at Milledgeville was a battle between two Aces, however, and during the first three to five pittings, when both cocks were daisy fresh, it was anybody’s fight. At one p.m., when a one-hour break for lunch was called, I had lost two and won three.
Omar and I left the pit together, planning to eat at the senator’s house rather than wait for service in the crowded restaurant. As we left by the side entrance, a parking attendant came running over and caught up with us.
“Mr. Mansfield, there’s a lady down in the lot who asked me to find you.”
“Shall I go with you, Frank?” Omar said.
I nodded, and we followed the attendant into the parking lot.
It was Bernice Hungerford. As we approached her car, she got out, slammed the door and waited. Bernice looked much prettier than I remembered. Either she wore a tight girdle, or she had lost fifteen pounds. A perky, wheatstraw, off-the-face hat was perched atop a brand new permanent, and her dark hair gleamed with some kind of spray. She wore a mustard-colored tweed suit, softened at the throat by a lemon-yellow silk scarf. The air was chilly, but it wasn’t cold enough for the full-length sheared beaver coat she held draped over her left arm.
When I accepted her white-gloved extended right hand, I noticed that it was trembling.
“I had to send for you, Frank,” she apologized, lifting her face to be kissed. I brushed her lips with mine, and she stepped back a pace, blushing like a girl. “I’ve been here for more than an hour,” she said with a shy laugh. “But when I went up to the entrance and saw all those men standing around—and no women—I was afraid to go inside!”
“You’ll find a lot of ladies here, once you get inside, Miss—?”
“Mrs. Hungerford,” Bernice said self-consciously.
“Mrs. Hungerford,” Omar said, “I’m Frank’s partner, Omar Baradinsky. And I’m glad the boy caught us in time. We were just leaving for lunch, and now you can join us.”
“I feel better already,” Bernice smiled. “I started not to come, Frank.” She took my arm, and Omar relieved her of her heavy coat. “Tommy couldn’t get away, and I dreaded coming all by myself, but now… Mr. Baradinsky,” she turned impulsively to Omar on her left. “Is there such a thing as a powder room around here?”
Omar laughed. “If you can hold out for about five hundred more yards, Mrs. Hungerford, you’ll be made comfortable at the house.”
“Thank you. How do I look, Frank? How does a lady dress for a cockfight?”
“A woman as beautiful as you,” Omar said, “could wear sackcloth and still look like a queen.”
“Now I do feel better!” Bernice laughed gaily. “What does one do at a cockfight?”
“At first, I’d advice you to merely watch. But if you decide to place a wager, let me know. Frank and I will be busy, but one of us will look after you when we’re free.”
Thanks to my partner, the luncheon was a success. He was gracious and paternal toward Bernice, without being patronizing, and before we returned to the pit, she was no longer ill at ease or prattling with nervousness. When the fighting began, I rarely sat with her. Most of Omar’s time was taken up with the placing of bets, payoffs and collections, but he joined her as often as he could.
There was another one-hour break at seven, and then the fights were to continue until midnight. According to the schedule—if everything went according to plan—the tourney would be completed by three p.m. the following afternoon. After the prizes and purses were awarded, the senator always held a free barbecue for everybody on the parklike lawn between his house and the cockpit.
We ate dinner, all three of us, in the restaurant. After dinner, Bernice begged off as a spectator from the evening fights. She was tired and bored from watching them. Without a basic understanding or knowledge of what to look for, Bernice’s boredom was not unreasonable. Women rarely find cockfighting as exciting as men do.
Although I missed her friendly white-gloved wave and cheery cry of “good luck” each time I entered the pit, I wasn’t sorry to send her to the hotel in town. She promised to meet us at noon the following day, and I was relieved that I didn’t have to entertain her until then.
The night fighting got bungled up.
There were two forfeits in the 5:12 weights, when Dirty Jacques Bonin and Jack Burke weren’t heeled and ready on time, plus long technical arguments on both sides. To return to the cockpit after heeling, it was necessary to cross through the parking lot. Jack Burke claimed—and I think he had a reasonable point—that the automobiles leaving the area after the ten-thirty fight had held him up. He failed to see why he should be penalized for a parking attendant’s failure to control the traffic properly. Peach Owen brought out the rules and read them aloud. The rules stated clearly that the handler was to be ready for pitting within fifteen minutes after receiving his weight slip. No provisions had been written concerning interference, so Jack forfeited the fight after being promised by Peach Owen that this provision would be discussed by the S.C.T. committee before the next season.
Due to these delays, it was after one o’clock before Omar and I got back to our room in the mansion. I had lost four fights out of twelve, but my partner, who had placed shrewd bets on every match held during the day, had added two thousand, eight hundred dollars to our bankroll.
“Are we going to win the tourney, Frank?” Omar said, as we undressed for bed.
Down to my underwear, I sat on the edge of my bed and checked over the official scorecard. Jack Burke, Roy Whipple and Johnny Norris were ahead of us, but they weren’t so far ahead that we couldn’t catch up with them the next day. I drew a large question mark on the blank side of the scorecard, sailed the square of cardboard in Omar’s general direction and got wearily into bed. With a full day of fighting to go, the top three could just as easily be the bottom three when the points were tallied at the end of the meet.
Before Omar finished counting and stacking the money into neat piles on top of the dresser and switched off the overhead chandelier, I was sound asleep.
The next morning at eleven—during my third match of the second day—soft-spoken Johnny Norris was no longer a contender. His name was stricken from the lists, and he was barred forever from Southern Conference competition for ungentlemanly conduct.
At most southern pits, the sidewalls are constructed of wood, but the sunken pit at Milledgeville has concrete walls. At a wooden-walled pit, when two cocks are fighting close to the barrier, it isn’t unusual for one of the fighters to jab one of his gaffs into a board and get stuck.
Because of this possibility, cockpits with sixteen-inch wooden walls have a ground rule “to handle” when an accident like this happens. The handler then pulls the gaff loose from the wall and, following a thirty-second rest period, the birds are pitted again.
There was no such rule at Milledgeville.
With a concrete pit, this ground rule was considered unnecessary. Unfortunately for Johnny Norris, after many years of operation, there were hairline cracks in the concrete wall. In the sixth pitting, my Claret drove Johnny’s spangled Shuffler into the wall. During a quick flurry, the Shuffler hung a gaff into one of the narrow cracks. The long three-inch heel was wedged tight. The Shuffler was immobilized, with his head dangling down, about ten inches above the dirty floor of the pit.
Johnny looked angrily at Buddy and said: “Handle, for Christ’s sake!”
“No such rule at this pit.” Buddy shook his head stubbornly.
My Claret had backed away and was eyeing the upside-down bird, judging the distance. Advancing three short steps, he flew fiercely into the helpless Shuffler with both heels fanning. The fight was mine.
Johnny swung a roundhouse right and broke Buddy Waggoner’s jaw.
After a near riot, order was restored when Senator Foxhall announced that he would stop the tourney and clear the pit if everybody didn’t quiet down. Johnny Norris was taken off the S.C.T. rolls and banished back to Birmingham. Because of Johnny’s forced withdrawal, the remaining seven entries had to be reshuffled and rematched by the officials. This administrative work took more than an hour.
At one o’clock, when the lunch break was called, Mary Elizabeth still hadn’t put in an appearance. I had made a nuisance out of myself by writing notes and checking periodically with the box office and parking attendants, but by one p.m. I had resigned myself that she wouldn’t come.
I took Bernice to the house for lunch.
The rematching delay ruined the planned schedule. The last match between Roy Whipple and Colonel Bob Moore didn’t start until three thirty. The moment the two cockfighters entered the pit, Omar and I raced for our cockhouse to heel Icky for the last hack between my bird and Burke’s Little David.
When we returned to the pit, jack Burke was already heeled and waiting. As the three of us stood in the doorway, watching the fight in progress, Jack looked contemptuously at Icky and said, “Let’s raise the bet to two thousand, Frank.”
Omar bridled. “One thousand is the bet, Mr. Burke. You’ve had Little David on a country walk all season, and Icky’s had to fight to qualify. If there’s any bet-changing to be done, you should give us some odds.”
“Are you asking for odds, Frank?” Burke challenged, ignoring my partner.
I shook my head. Holding Icky under my left arm, I pointed to the pit with my free hand. Colonel Bob was carrying out a dead chicken, and Ed Middleton was cutting the gaff tie strings away from Whipple’s winner with his knife.
We reported to the judge’s booth and weighed in. Icky was at fighting weight, an even 4:02. The freedom of the long rest on a farm walk had brought Little David’s weight up from four pounds to 4:03. Omar protested the one-ounce overweight immediately, and Peach Owen ordered Burke to cut away feathers until his cock matched Icky exactly.
“While the results of the tourney are being tabulated and rechecked,” Peach drawled into the microphone with his deep southern voice, “there’ll be an extra hack for your pleasure. The weight is 4:02, short heels, between entries four and five!”
A murmur of approval and a scattering of applause encircled the packed tiers. The majority of the people in the audience were aware of the extra hack before the announcement. Omar had laughingly told me about some of the rumors he had heard. Some people thought that the hack was a simple grudge match, while others claimed that several thousand dollars had been bet between us. The reported incident at Plant City, when Dody had kicked me in the shins, had also caused a great many rumors. Supposedly, I had made a pass at Jack’s wife, or Jack Burke had taken Dody away from me, and—wildest of all—Dody had been my childhood sweetheart. How a man of thirty-three could possibly have had a childhood sweetheart of only sixteen didn’t prevent the rumors. What Jack had spread about himself, or what people said about me, didn’t matter. My only concern was to win the hack.
Ed Middleton examined both cocks, returned them to us, and told us to get ready.
“I’ve been ready!” Jack said.
I bobbed my head, and Ed said, “Bill ‘em.”
We billed the cocks on the center score.
“That’s enough,” Ed said, when he saw how quickly the combativeness of both cocks was aroused. “Pass ‘em once and get ready.”
Holding our gamecocks at arm’s length, we passed them in the air with a circling movement and retreated to our respective eight-foot scores.
“Pit!”
As usual, by watching the referee’s lips, I let Icky go first, beating Burke off the score. I needed the split second. The O’Neal Red, with its dark red comb, and fresh from a country walk, was faster than Icky. Despite his superb condition, the days and nights in a narrow coop walk had slowed my Blue chicken down. Icky missed with both spurs as Little David side-stepped, and my cock wound up on his back with a spur in his chest.
“Handle!”
The second I disengaged the spur from Icky’s breast, I retreated to my side of the pit and examined the wound. It wasn’t fatal. Using the cellulose sponge and pan of clean water furnished by the pit, I wiped away the flowing blood and pressed my thumb against the hole to stop the bleeding until the order came to get ready.
“Pit!”
Little David was overconfident and Icky was vigilant. The Red tried three aerial attacks and failed to get above my pit-wise Blue. With mutual respect, they circled in tight patterns, heads low above the floor, hackles raised, glaring at each other with bright, angry eyes. Icky tried a tricky rushing feint that worked. As Little David wheeled and dodged instead of sidestepping, Icky walked up his spine like a lineman climbing a telephone pole. There was an audible thump as Icky struck a gaff home beneath Little David’s right wing.
“Handle!”
Burke removed the gaff with gentle hands. The O’Neal Red had been hurt in the second pitting. The wound in Icky’s chest no longer bled, but I held my thumb over the hole anyway, and made him stand quietly, facing him toward the wall where he couldn’t see his opponent.
The third, fourth and fifth pittings were dance contests that could have been set to music. The two colorful gamecocks maneuvered, wheeled, sidestepped, feinted and leaped high into the air as they clashed. When one of them did manage to hang a heel, first one and then the other, the blow was punishing.
Prior to the sixth pitting, I held Icky’s legs tight under his body to rest them, facing him toward the wall. I raised my eyes for a moment, and there sat Mary Elizabeth, not six feet away from me. I almost didn’t recognize her at first. She was wearing a light blue coat with raglan sleeves, and she had a pastel-blue scarf over her blonde hair, tied beneath her chin. She sat in the second row—not in the seat I had reserved for her. Her skin was pale, and her expression was strained. As I smiled in recognition, Ed called for us to get ready, and I had to turn my back.
“Pit!”
For the first time in months I was second best in releasing my gamecock’s tail. Little David outflew my Blue and fanned him down. On his back, Icky shuffled his feet like a cat. Both birds fell over, pronged together with all four gaffs, like knitting needles stuck into two balls of colored yarn.
“Handle!”
It took Burke and me almost a full minute to disengage the heels. Both cocks were severely injured and my hands were red with blood as I sponged my battered bird down gingerly with cold water. During the short rest period I didn’t have time to exchange any love glances with my fiancée in the stands. Thirty seconds passed like magic.
“Get ready… Pit!”
Both gamecocks remained on their scores as we released them.
“Count!” Burke ordered.
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and one for Mr. Burke. Handle!” Ed said, looking up from his wristwatch.
Both of us needed the additional thirty-second rest period. I sucked Icky’s comb to warm his head, held his beak open wide and spat into his open throat to refresh him. I was massaging his tired legs gently when Ed told us to get ready.
“Pit!”
Stiff-winged, the two cocks advanced toward each other from their scores and clashed wearily in the center. Too sick and too tired for aerial fighting, they buckled again and again with weakened fury. Little David fell over limply, breathing hard, and stayed there. Grateful for this respite, Icky also stopped fighting, standing quietly with his head down, bill touching the dirt.
“The count is going on,” Ed announced, watching his wristwatch and the two cocks at the same time. At the silent count of twenty seconds, when neither bird had tried to fight, Ed ordered us to handle.
I wanted to work feverishly, but I was unable to do the nursing needed to help my fighter. Bough nursing could put Icky out of the fight for good. I sponged him gently and let him rest. Icky had recovered considerably by himself from the twenty-second count.
When the order to pit was given again, he crossed the dirt floor toward his enemy on shaky legs. Little David squatted on his score like a broody hen on eggs, with his beak wide open and his neck jerking in and out.
Icky pecked savagely at the downed cock’s weaving head. An instant later, the maddened Little David bounced into the air as though driven by a compressed spring and came down on Icky’s back with blurring, hard-hitting heels. My cock was uncoupled by a spine blow, paralyzed, and unable to move from the neck down. Little David’s right one-and-a-quarter-inch heel had passed cleanly through Icky’s kidney and the point was down as far as the caeca. On the order to handle, I disengaged the gaff and returned to my score.
I didn’t dare to sponge him. There was very little I could do. Water would make him bleed more rapidly than he was bleeding already. I held him loosely between my hands, pressing my fingers lightly into his hot body, afraid he would come apart in my hands. Fortunately, Little David was as badly injured as Icky. His last desperate attack had taken every ounce of energy he had left.
After three futile counts of twenty, Ed Middleton ordered us to breast on the center score, one hand only beneath the bird.
Which gamecock would peck first?
Which gamecock would die first?
It was an endurance test. Little David had been the last chicken to fight. If Icky died first, Little David would be declared the winner by virtue of throwing the last blow. On the third breast pitting, Icky stretched out his limp neck and pecked feebly. The order to handle was given. Again we pitted, and again Icky pecked, and this time he got a billhold on the other cock’s stubby dubbed comb. Little David didn’t feel or notice the billhold. Little David was dead. And so was Icky, his beak clamped to the Red’s comb to the last.
“I’ll carry my bird out,” Jack Burke said.
“You’re entitled to three more twenty-second counts,” Ed reminded him, going by the book.
“What’s the use?” Burke said indifferently. “They’re both dead, now.”
“Dead or not,” Ed said officially, “you’re entitled by the rules to three counts of twenty after the other cock pecks.”
Without another word Jack Burke picked up his dead gamecock and left the pit. I picked up the Blue and held him to my chest. His long neck dangled limply over my left arm. My eyes were suddenly, irrationally, humid with tears.
“That’s what I call a dead-game chicken, Frank!” Senator Foxhall called out from the judge’s box.
I nodded blindly in his general direction and then turned my back on the old man to look for Mary Elizabeth. She wasn’t in her seat. I caught a glimpse of her blue topcoat as she hurried through the side entrance to the parking lot. I ran after her and caught up with her running figure just beyond the closed, shuttered box office.
“Mary Elizabeth!” I said aloud. My voice sounded rusty, strangled, different, nothing at all like I remembered it.
She stopped running, turned and faced me, her face like a mask. Her lips were as bloodless as her face.
“You’ve decided to talk again? Is that it? It’s too late now, Frank. And I know now that it was always too late for us. You aren’t the man I fell in love with, but you never were! If I’d seen you in the cockpit ten years ago, I would’ve known then. I didn’t watch those poor chickens fight, Frank, I watched your face. It was awful. No pity, no love, no understanding, nothing! Hate! You hate everything, yourself, me, the world, everybody!”
She closed her eyes to halt the tears. A moment later she opened her purse and wiped her eyes with a small white handkerchief.
“And I gave myself to you, Frank,” she said, as though she were speaking to herself. “I gave you everything I had to offer, everything, to a man who doesn’t even have a heart!”
I didn’t know this woman. I had never seen her before. This was a Mary Elizabeth I had hidden from myself all these years.
I dropped my dead Blue chicken to the ground, put my left heel on its neck, reached down, and jerked off his head with my right hand. I held the beaten, bloody, but never, never bowed head out to Mary Elizabeth in my palm. I had nothing else to say to the woman.
Mary Elizabeth licked her pale lips. She took Icky’s head from my hand and wrapped it in her white handkerchief. Tucking the wrapped head away in her purse, she nodded.
“Thank you. Thank you very much, Frank Mansfield. I’ll accept your gift. When I get home, I’ll preserve it in a jar of alcohol. I might even work out some kind of ritual, to remind myself what a damned fool I’ve been.”
Her emerald eyes burned into mine for a moment.
“My brother’s been right about you all along, but I had to drive up here to find out for myself. You’re everything he said you were, Frank Mansfield. A mean, selfish, sonofabitch!”
Turning abruptly, she headed toward the rows of parked cars. After only a few steps, she broke into a wobbling, feminine run. I don’t know how long I stood there, looking after her retreating figure, even after she had passed from sight. A minute, two minutes, I don’t know.
A voice blared over the outside speakers of the PA system: “MR. ROY WHIPPLE AND MR. FRANK MANSFIELD. REPORT TO THE JUDGE’S BOX, PLEASE!” The announcement was repeated twice, and I heard it, but I didn’t pay any attention to the amplified voice. I was immobilized by thought. I’ve grown up, I reflected. After thirty-three years, I was a mature individual. I had never needed Mary Elizabeth, and she had never needed me. Finally, it was all over between us—whatever it was we thought we had. My last tie with the past and Mansfield, Georgia, was broken. From now on I could look toward the future, and it had never been any brighter—
He must have made some noise, but I didn’t hear Omar’s feet crunching on the gravel until he grabbed my arm.
“For God’s sake, Frank,” Omar said excitedly. “What the hell are you standing out here for? Senator Foxhall’s awarding you the Cockfighter of the Year award! Let’s go inside, man! As your partner, I’m entitled to a little reflected glory, you know.”
Now that he had my attention, he smiled broadly, his white teeth gleaming through his black moustache. “Of course,” he shrugged, “Old Man Whipple won the tourney, but what do we care? Thanks to Icky’s victory, we’re loaded!” He patted his bulging jacket pockets. “We’ve got so damned much money, I’m almost afraid to count it.”
Smiling, I gestured for him to go on ahead of me. Omar turned toward the entrance and trotted down the short hallway to the pit.
When I reached the doorway, I paused. After the barbecue was over, I would ask Bernice to go to Puerto Rico with me for a month or so. If it got dull in Puerto Rico, we could swing on down to Caracas, and I might be able to pick up some Spanish Aces for next season. Omar could put our proven birds out on their Alabama walks without any assistance from me. And then, if I returned from South America by the middle of April, I would be back in plenty of time to start working with the spring stags.
Across the pit, standing behind the referee’s table in front of the judge’s box, the two greatest game fowl men in the world were waiting for me. Senator Foxhall and Ed Middleton. To the left of the table, Peach Owen was holding the leather box that contained my award.
Well, they could wait a little longer.
As I neared her seat in the front row, Bernice smiled and said, “Congratulations, Frank!”
“Thanks,” I replied.
“Oh!” she said, her eyes widening with astonishment. “You—you’ve got your voice back!”
“Yeah,” I said, grinning at her expression, “and you’ll probably wish I hadn’t.”
“I—I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’ll find out that I’m quite the talker, Bernice, once I get wound up. How’d you like to go to Puerto Rico for a few weeks?”
“Right now,” she said, “I’m so confused that the only answer I can think of on the spur of the moment is ‘Yes.’”
I laughed and turned away, joy burbling out of my throat. How good to talk again, to laugh again!
I jerked my jacket down in back and pushed my white hat back on my head at a careless angle. Then, squaring my shoulders, I crossed the empty pit to get my goddamned medal.