Cockfighter

I DIDN’T ARRIVE in Jacksonville until a little after three that afternoon. Instead of waiting for an express, I had taken the first bus that left Orlando, and it turned out to be the kind that stops at every filling station, general store and cow pasture along the way. A long, dull ride.

After getting my baggage out of the side of the bus from the driver I left the station and walked three blocks to the Jeff Davis Hotel, where I always stayed when I was in Jax. On the way to the hotel I stopped at a package store and bought a pint of gin.

Perhaps the Jeff Davis isn’t the most desirable hotel in Jax, but it is downtown, handy to everything, the people know me there, and crowded or not I can always get a room. The manager follows cockfighting, advertises in the game-fowl magazines, and there is usually someone hanging around the lobby who knows me. The daily rate is attractive, as well—only three dollars a day for cockers, instead of the regular rate of five.

As soon as I checked in at the desk and got to my room, I opened my suitcase and dug out my corduroy coat. In September, Jacksonville turns chilly in the afternoons, and the temperature drops below seventy. Not that it gets cold, but the weather doesn’t compare favorably with southern Florida. The long pull of gin I took before going out on the street again felt warm in my stomach.

I walked briskly through the streets to the post office, entered, and twirled the combination dial on my post-office box. It didn’t open, but I could see that there was mail inside the box through the dirty brown glass window. I searched through my wallet, found my receipt for the rental, and shoved it through the window to the clerk. He studied the slip for a moment, and called my attention to the date.

“You’re almost ten days overdue on your quarterly box payment, Mr. Mansfield,” he said. “Your box was closed out and rented to somebody else. I’m sorry, but there’s a big demand for boxes these days and I don’t have any more open at present. If you want me to, I’ll put your name on the waiting list.”

I shook my head and pointed to the rack of mail behind him. This puzzled him for a moment, and then he said: “Oh, you mean your mail?”

I picked up my receipt and gave it to the woman at the general delivery window. She handed me two letters and my current Southern Cockfighter magazine. I shoved the letters and magazine into my coat pocket and filled in change-of-address cards to transfer the magazine and post-office-box letters to my Ocala address. After mailing one card to the magazine and turning in the other to the woman at the window I returned to my hotel room.

The first letter I opened was from a pit operator in Tallahassee inviting me to enter a four-cock derby he was holding in November. I tossed the letter into the wastebasket. The other letter was the one I had been expecting. It was from the Southern Conference Tournament committee, and contained my invitation, the rules, and the schedule for the S.C.T. season.

I studied the mimeographed schedule, but I wasn’t too happy about it. There wasn’t a whole lot of time to obtain and keep gamecocks for the tourney.

Oct. 15 —Greenville, Mississippi

Nov. 10 —Tifton, Georgia

Nov. 30 —Plant City, Florida

Dec. 15 —Chattanooga, Tennessee

Jan. 10 —Biloxi, Mississippi

Jan. 28 —Auburn, Alabama

Feb. 24 —Ocala, Florida

Mar. 15-16 —S.C.T.—Milledgeville, Georgia

I was already too late for Greenville, Mississippi. The S.C.T. was unlike other invitational mains and derbies, both in rules and gamecock standards. When Senator Foxhall had organized the S.C.T. back in the early thirties, his primary purpose had been to improve the breeds and gameness in southern cockfighting. The hardest rule of the tourney was that all the cocks entered in the final round at Milledgeville had to be four-time winners. A cock can win one or sometimes two fights with flashy flies on the first pitting, and some good luck. But any cock that wins four in a row is dead game. Luck simply doesn’t stretch through four wins. This single S.C.T. rule, more than any other, had certainly raised breeding standards in the South, and it kept out undesirables and fly-by-night cockers looking for a fast dollar. All the pit operators on the S.C.T. circuit were checked from time to time by members of the committee, and if their standards of operation dropped, they were dropped, in turn, by the senator.

Like the other big-time chicken men, I had fought cocks in the highly competitive six-day International Tournament in both Orlando and Saint Pete, and I intended to enter it again someday, but I preferred the more rigid policies of the S.C.T. It was possible to enter the annual International Tournament by posting a preliminary two-hundred-dollar forfeit, which was lost if you didn’t show up and pay the three-hundred-dollar balance. The winning entries made big money at the International, but I could make just as much at S.C.T. pits and the final Milledgeville meet. And the wins on the S.C.T. circuit really meant something to me.

At that moment, however, I didn’t feel like a big time cockfighter. I was at rock bottom and it was ironical to even think about fighting any cocks that season. All I had in my wallet was eighteen dollars, plus some loose change in my pockets. I owned a thirty-dollar guitar, a gaff case, a few clothes in a battered suitcase, and a lease on a farm.

Of course, the contents of my gaff case were worth a few hundred dollars, but I needed everything I had to fight cocks. I sat down on the edge of my bed, and opened my gaff case to search for the last letter Doc Riordan had sent me. I opened the letter, but before reading it again, I made a quick inventory of the gaff case to see if there was anything I could do without. There wasn’t. I needed every item.

There were sixteen sets of gaffs, ranging from the short one-and-one quarter-inch heels I preferred, up to a pair of three-inch Texas Twisters. I even had a set of slashers a Puerto Rican breeder had given me one afternoon in San Juan. With slashers, the bird is armed on one leg only. I don’t believe in fighting slashers for one simple reason. When you fight slashers, the element of chance is too great, and the best cock doesn’t always win. With a wicked sharp blade on a cock’s left leg, the poorest cock can sometimes get in a lucky hit. Pointed gaffs, round from socket to point, are legitimate. Once a cock’s natural spur points have been sawed off, the hand-forged heels fitted over the half-inch stumps are a clean substitute for his God-given spurs, and they make for humane fighting. Two cocks meeting anywhere in their natural state will fight to death or until one of them runs away. Steel spurs merely speed up the killing process, and a cock doesn’t have to punish himself unnecessarily by bruising his natural spurs.

Of course, I had fought slashers when I was a soldier in the Philippines because I had to, and I knew how to fight them. But I had never considered them altogether fair because of that slight element of chance. Cockfighting is the only sport that can’t be fixed, perhaps the only fair contest left in America. A cock wouldn’t throw a fight and couldn’t if he knew how.

Every pair of my sixteen sets of heels was worth from twenty to thirty-five dollars, and I needed them all. The correct length of heels is a common argument, but what really determines the right length of heels for any given cock is the way it fights. And even though I favor short heels, like they use in the North, or “short-heel country” as the North is called, I would never handicap a cock by arming him with the wrong spurs out of vain, personal preference. It is a crime not to arm a cock with the spurs which will allow him to fight his very best.

In addition to my heel sets I had a spur saw, with a dozen extra blades, moleskin heeling tape, blade polishers, gaff pointers, a set of artificial stubs for heeling slip-leg cocks, two pairs of dubbing shears, one curved and the other straight, and two new heeling outfits, each containing pads, tie strings and leather crosspieces. There was also a brand new roll of Irish flax, waxed tie string, some assorted salves and a few gland stimulant capsules. To anybody except a cocker, this collection of expensive equipment was worthless junk. If I pawned the entire contents of my case, a pawnbroker wouldn’t give me more than forty dollars for the lot.

For a few thoughtful moments I clicked the dubbing shears in my hand, then picked up Doc’s letter. I’d been carrying it around in my case for more than three months.

Dear Frank,

I haven’t written you for some time, but I wanted you to know your investment is as good as gold. Don’t be surprised if you get a stock split one of these days soon and double your eight hundred dollars. Next time you get to Jax, drop in and see me and I’ll give you the details.

Very truly yours,

Doc Riordan

To anyone who didn’t know Doc Riordan, this letter would have sounded encouraging indeed. But the letter was more than three months old and, unfortunately, I knew Doc too well. I liked the man for what he was and respected him for what he was trying to be. But unlike me, Doc lives with a big dream that was practically unattainable. All I wanted to be was the best cockfighter who ever lived. Doc, who had already reached his late fifties, wanted to be a big-time capitalist and financier.

He wasn’t a real doctor, I knew that much. He was a pharmacist, and a good one, and somewhere along the years he had added Doc to his name. I had met him several years before at various Florida cockpits, and I had bought conditioning powder and ergot capsules from him when he still had his mail-order business. Conditioning powder can be made up by any pharmacist who is given the formula, but Doc was dependable, well liked by cockers, and had also invented a salve that was a quick healer for battered cocks. However, there are a lot of businessmen who advertise the same types of items in cocker’s journals. There wasn’t enough big money in cocker medical supplies for Doc, and he dropped out of the field. However, he would still supply a few friends like myself when we wrote to him.

Some four years before, Doc had caught me in an amiable mood and with more than five thousand dollars in my pockets. I had put eight hundred into his company—The Dixie Pharmaceutical Company—and I had never received a dividend. I had had several glowing letters from him, but not a cent in cash. In fact, I didn’t even have any stock certificates to show for my investment. It was one of those word-of-mouth deals so many of us enter into in the South. A handshake is enough, and I knew my money would be returned on demand… providing Doc had it. But whether he had it or not was something else altogether.

I left my room, walked down the street to a café and ate two hamburgers and drank two glasses of milk. When I returned to my room, I nipped at the gin and read my new Southern Cockfighter magazine. The magazine had been published and mailed out before the Belle Glade derby, but there was a short item about the Homestead pitting, and my name was mentioned in Red Carey’s column, “On the Gaff.”

Looks like bad luck is still dogging Silent Frank Mansfield.

His sad showing at Homestead makes us wonder if his keeping methods are off the beam. Another season like his last three, and we doubt if he’ll still be on the S.C.T. rolls.

The item should have irritated me, but it didn’t. A columnist has to put something in his column, and I was fair game. There was nothing wrong with my conditioning methods. They had paid off too many times in the past. My problem was to get the right cocks, and when I got Icky from Mr. Middleton, I would be off to a good season. I finished the rest of the gin and went to bed.

As far back as 320 B.C. an old poet named Chanakya wrote that a man can learn four things from a cock: To fight, to get up early, to eat with his family, and to protect his spouse when she gets into trouble. I had learned how to fight and how to get up early, but I had never gotten along too well with my family and I didn’t have any spouse to protect. Fighting was all very well, but getting up early was not the most desirable habit to have when living in a big city like Jacksonville.

The next morning I was up, dressed and shaved, and sitting in the lobby by five-thirty. I bought a morning Times-Union, glanced at the headlines and then went out for breakfast because the hotel coffee shop didn’t open until seven thirty. I lingered as long as I could over coffee, but it was still only six thirty when I returned to the hotel. I was too impatient just to sit around, and I soon left the dreary lobby and walked the early morning streets. The wind off the river was chilly and it felt good to be stirring about. A sickly sun rode the pale morning sky, but after an hour passed it began to get warm and promised to be a good day.

Promptly at eight I entered the Latham building to see if Doc Riordan had arrived at his office. The Latham building was an ancient red-brick structure of seven stories built in the early 1900s. Nothing had been done to it since. The entrance lobby was narrow, grimy, and filled with trash blown in from the street. There was a crude, hand-lettered sign on the elevator stating that it was out of order. Doc’s company was on the sixth floor.

The stairwell up was unlighted and without windows. I climbed the six flights only to discover that his office was closed. The office was two doors away from the far end of the hallway, and the frosted glass top half of the door had gold letters painted on it four inches high:

I tried the door and found it locked. Rather than descend the stairs and then climb up again I leaned against the wall and smoked cigarettes until Doc showed up.

The wait was less than twenty minutes and I heard Doc huffing up the stairs long before I could see him. He entered the hall, red-faced, carrying a large cardboard container of coffee. The container was too hot for him to hold comfortably, and as he recovered his breath, he kept shifting it from one hand to the other as he fumbled with his key in the door lock.

“Come on in, Frank,” Doc said, as he opened the door. “Soon as I set this coffee on the desk I’ll shake hands.”

I followed Doc into the tiny office, and we shook hands. Doc wiped his perspiring bald head and brow with a handkerchief and cursed angrily for two full minutes before he sat down behind his desk

“I’ve told the superintendent before and I’m going to tell him one more time,” Doc said as he ran down, “and if he don’t get that damned elevator fixed, I’m moving out! That’s a fact, Frank, a fact!”

I sat down in a straight-backed chair in front of Doc’s desk, and surveyed his ratty little office. A single dirty window afforded a close-up of the side of a red-brick movie theater less than three feet away, and the proximity of the building didn’t allow much light into the room. Doc probably had to burn his desk and ceiling lights even at midday. Doc’s desk was a great, wooden, square affair, and much too large for the size of the room. In front of the fluorescent desk lamp was his carved desk sign: Dr. Onyx P. Riordan, Pres. (and a beautifully carved ornate job it was, too). In addition to his desk there was a low two-drawer filing cabinet, the swivel executive chair he was sitting in, and two straight-back chairs. These simple furnishings made the room overly crowded. On the wall behind his desk was a hand-lettered, professionally done poster in three primary colors praising the virtues of a product called Licarbo. After reading the poster I studied Doc’s face. He had taken two green dime store cups out of his desk and was filling them with black coffee.

With his bald head and tonsure of thin, fine gray hair, Doc looked his fifty some-odd years, all right, but there was a certain youthfulness about his face that denied those years. His features were all small, gathered together in the center of a round, bland face. His mouth and snubby nose were small. His blue eyes were ingenuously wide and revealed the full optic circle. With his round red cheeks and freshly scrubbed look, Doc could probably have passed for thirty if he wore a black toupee and dyed his eyebrows to match.

“It’s been a long time, Frank,” Doc said sincerely, “and I’m really glad to see you again.” He sat back with a pleased smile. “I want to show you something!”

He began to rummage through his desk. I sipped some coffee and lit another cigarette from the butt of the one I was smoking. The sight of this little hole-in-the-wall office had dashed any hopes I might have had about getting even a portion of my money back from the old pharmacist.

“Read this, Frank!” Doc said eagerly, sliding a letter across the broad surface of the desk. I read the letter. It was from a drug laboratory in New York.

President

Dixie Pharmaceutical Co.

Latham Building

Jacksonville, Florida

Dear Dr. Riordan:

We have made exhaustive tests of your product, LICARBO, at your request, and we agree that it is nontoxic, and that it will provide nonharmful relief to certain types of indigestion, such as overeating, overindulgence, etc.

However, we are not in the market for such a product at this time. Thank you for letting us examine it. Best wishes.

Very truly yours,

The signature was indecipherable, but vice-president was typed beneath the inked scribble. I put the letter down on the desk.

“Do you realize what that letter means, Frank?” Doc said excitedly. “They’re interested, definitely interested! They couldn’t find a single fault and do you know why? Licarbo doesn’t have any, that’s why! I’ve dealt with companies like that before. They think I’ll sell out for little or nothing, but if they want Licarbo, and you can read between the lines of the letter that they’re dying to get it, it’ll cost them plenty!”

Doc sat back in his big chair, steepled his fingers together, and attempted to look shrewd by narrowing his eyes. His narrowed eyes only made him look sleepy, however.

“Not only do I want a flat ten thousand for my rights, Frank, I’m also holding out for a percentage on every package sold. Now what do you think of that?”

I admired Doc’s spirit, but, evidently, he refused to recognize a politely worded turndown when he saw it. I shrugged my shoulders noncommittally.

“By God, I forgot!” Doc snapped his fingers. “You haven’t tried Licarbo yet, have you?”

I shook my head. Doc opened the top right drawer of his desk and removed three flat packets approximately the size and shape of restaurant-size sugar packets. The name Licarbo was printed in red ink on each packet, including directions to take as needed, with or without water, following overindulgence, overeating or for mild stomach distress.

“Go ahead, Frank, open one up and taste it. There isn’t a better relief for indigestion in the world than Licarbo! Take it with a glass of water and you’ll belch every time. What more does a man want than a big healthy belch when his belly hurts him? Right? In the South we like our medicines in powder and liquid form. No self-respecting Southerner will take a fancy capsule for belly pains, no matter how many colors its got.”

I ripped open a packet and spilled some of the mixture into my hand. Licarbo resembled gunpowder, or a mixture of salt and black pepper, heavy on the pepper. I put my tongue to the mixture. It tasted like licorice, not an unpleasant taste at all.

“Mix it in with your coffee, Frank. Licarbo will dissolve almost instantly.”

“Tastes good, don’t it?” Doc beamed proudly, folding his short arms across his chest. “All it is, Frank, is a mixture of licorice root, bicarbonate soda, a few secret ingredients and some artificial coloring. But the formula will make me rich, and you too, Frank. It takes time, however, to invent and develop a new product and get it out to the waiting market. The New York company isn’t my only prospect, not by any means. I’ve got feelers out all over the nation. This is the big one, Frank, the one I’ve been working up to through thirty years in practical pharmacy. I’ve invented other products and sold them too, but this time I’m holding out to the last breath. Why, if I only had the capital I could manufacture Licarbo myself and literally make a fortune. A fortune!”

Doc turned in his chair, sighed deeply, and looked out the window at the rusty wall of the theater.

“People just don’t have faith no more, Frank. People today don’t recognize a commercial drug when they see and taste it, damn them all, anyway! But this product has got to go over, it has to!” Doc dropped the level of his voice, and said softly, as if to convince himself, “It’s only a matter of time, Frank. Only a matter of time…”

I slipped the two unopened packets of Licarbo into my jacket pocket. At least I had something to show for my eight-hundred-dollar investment. Doc swiveled his chair and faced me with a bright smile.

“I made this first batch up myself, Frank, and had the sample packages printed up here in town. It costs a lot of money to get started, but you’ve got to admit the product is good, don’t you?”

I nodded, pursing my lips. As far as I was concerned, Licarbo was as good as any one of a hundred similar products on the market. Plain old bicarbonate soda will make you belch if a belch is required, and that was Doc’s main ingredient.

“You’d like to have your eight hundred dollars back just the same. Am I right?” Doc said hesitantly.

“Well, I just don’t have it. But you’ll get it back one of these days soon, every damned dime, and with plenty of interest. To be honest, I’m just hanging on these days. Don’t even have a phone anymore in the office, as you can see. I’ve got a part-time pharmacist’s job at night in a drugstore near my rooming house, and every cent I make goes into my office rent and promotion of Licarbo, and I’m barely getting by on what’s left. I’ve dropped everything else to concentrate on Licarbo, but when it hits big, and it’s going to, it’ll be big, really big!”

Old Doc Riordan was another man like myself, riding along on an inborn, overinflated self-confidence and a wide outward smile. Deep inside, I knew he was worried sick about being unable to write me a check for my money. Well, I could relieve him from that worry in a hurry. Whether his product ever went over big or not was no concern of mine. I wasn’t about to ride another man’s dream; I had a big dream of my own. It was time to get the hell off Doc’s back.

There was a writing tablet on his desk. I reached for it, took my ballpoint lead pencil out of my coat pocket and wrote on the pad:

President, Dixie Pharm. Co.

In return for a ten-year supply of conditioning powder and other medicinal aids for poultry at the Mansfield Farms, the undersigned hereby turns over all his existing stock in the Dixie Pharm. Co. to the President.

After signing my name with a flourish, I smiled, and handed Doc the tablet. He read the note and frowned.

I got to my feet, leaned over the desk and underlined “ten-year supply” on the note I had written.

“You’re a mighty shrewd businessman, Frank. Why, if you ever expand your farms you’ll double your eight hundred dollars in five years easily! But damn your eyes, anyway!” he laughed gleefully. “I’m just going to take you up on this proposition! Whether Licarbo hits it big or not, I’ll either have my own lab or work in a pharmacy someplace where I can get wholesale prices on drugs. So on a deal like this, neither of us can lose!”

We shook hands, and I turned to go. Doc stopped me at the door by putting his hand on my arm. “Just a minute, Frank. As soon as I can afford it, I’m moving to a better office. And, of course, when I get enough capital I’m going to build my own laboratories. But meanwhile, here’s the address of the drugstore where I work.” He handed me a card and I slipped it into my wallet. “I’m on duty there every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night from six to midnight. And almost every Wednesday from noon till midnight. I relieve the owner, you see. So when you need anything, drop me a line there, or come by and see me yourself.”

“Well, I’ll probably see you in Milledgeville, then. I haven’t missed an S.C.T. in ten years and I don’t intend to now. And when you see any of the boys on the road, say hello for me, and tell them I still send out a few things when they write.”

I winked, clapped him on the shoulder, and we shook hands again. I started down the hallway toward the stairwell and Doc watched me all the way. When I reached the stairs, he called good-bye to me again. I waved an arm and descended the stairs. At the drugstore on the corner I had a cup of coffee at the counter and then returned to my room at the Jeff Davis Hotel. Fortunately, I had kept my morning newspaper.

I turned to the classified ads and looked under the Help Wanted, Male section to see what I could do about getting a job.