Big Angry Cocks
1.
“Hey, Jesse. Uhm… What about it?”
I was taking a chance leading with Jesse Stocstill’s usual southern greeting.
Jesse leaned against the roll-around cart piled high with metal glands I intended to inertia weld to a rack of hydraulic cylinders. By the look of his glassy eyes and the set of his jaw, it was safe to assume whatever had upset him, he looked to take his angst out on the nearest available Yankee. Since I was the lone Yankee employed by the machine shop…
“Not doing worth a damn,” he spat. “Got a tooth pulled and it hurts like a sumbitch.”
There seemed to be swelling along his jawline, but that could have been the wad of Red Man chewing tobacco. A pulled tooth left him three by my count. How did the dentist even know which one to pull.
“That’s too bad, Jesse.”
“Yeah, I’m sure your heart’s broke.”
We stood in utter silence. At least as silent as a factory can be when there was all manner of machinery cutting, drilling, and grinding steel.
“What you know ‘bout raising cocks?” He asked.
I hesitated. This felt like a loaded question. His three teeth peeked out from his lips like shit-dipped Tic Tacs.
His question reminded me of the time he asked if I liked duck meat. Though I had never tasted duck meat, I answered in the affirmative thinking; if pressed for details, I could just say it tasted like chicken and get on with my unfulfilling life. Upon admitting I liked duck meat; Jesse motioned toward his groin and invited me to duck down and get myself some.
“Jesse.” I chose my words carefully. “I can’t speak on behalf of other cocks, but I can say nothing raises my cock quicker than a spread-eagle blonde.”
Jesse narrowed his eyes to slits. “Spread-eagle blonde? What the hell? I’m talking ‘bout rooster cocks, boy, not dick cocks. What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“Uh…”
“You’re a dag gum Yankee, that’s what’s wrong with you. They not fight roosters where you’re from?”
“Isn’t that illegal?”
“So’s cooking meth. Sure don’t stop nobody, does it?”
“I guess not.”
“You do a helluva lot of guessing and not a whole lotta knowing.”
I watched a trickle of tobacco-tinged saliva dribble down his chin. There was nothing I could say, so I said nothing. I had work to do, and, strangely, I wanted to do it.
“Now, you’re gonna clam up, huh?”
“Uh…”
“What you know ‘bout the innernet?”
“Internet?”
“Yeah, smart ass. Innernet. You look like you spend all your free time pulling your pud in front of a computer screen.”
I thought back to Pornhub this morning before work.
“I know my way around the internet,” I answered cryptically.
“Well, that’s good to hear, Yankee Boy, cause me and you, we’re getting into the cock business together.”
2.
“How ‘bout bigangrycocks.com?”
“I don’t know, Jesse.”
“I do. Write it down and check see if there’s already one.”
I flipped the memo pad open and scrawled “big angry cocks” on the line below “ring ready cocks.”
I had whiled away a good portion of my break time looking up Jesse’s suggestions for website names. All I got for my troubles was an eyeful of dick, most of which put mine to shame.
“I gotta ask. If fighting cocks is illegal, why start a website advertising it?”
This seemed a fair question to ask while we were getting into Jesse’s ’82 Chevy C10. Jesse thought differently.
“What kinda partnership this gonna be if I gotta pat your hand the whole dag gum time? We ain’t advertising fighting them. We’re advertising that we got ‘em to breed and sell. We ain’t doing nothing wrong. We’re just training ‘em to kill. If someone wants to buy ‘em to fight ‘em, well, that’s on them, not us. Far as I’m concerned, they pay the five hundred, they can fry ‘em up and eat ‘em all I care.”
“Ok.”
“Course, we’re gonna be fighting ‘em, too.”
During the last couple days, while I’d been scraping together my finances and surfing the internet, Jesse received his new set of dentures through the mail. He’d been smiling like a jackass all morning. His dentures we already a muddy brown, but at least he’d been able to keep the tobacco juice off his chin and shirt for the first time in twenty years.
By the time we reached Mobile in his Chevy, Jesse had provided another twenty possible names for a website I just knew were going to lead to more penis.
“Alright,” Jesse said as he exited the interstate. “Leldon Wendall is a hall of fame cock raiser. He’s giving us such a good deal on some yellow-legged hatch cause I tole him you was my nephew and wanted to get started fighting cocks.”
“They got a hall of fame for chicken fighting?” I asked, dubiously.
“Goddammit. See, that’s why I want you to keep your mouth shut. In fact, it might just be better you stay in the truck. Gimme your half of the money. I’ll talk to the man.”
“But, I wanna see–.”
“Cause you go in there talking ‘bout chicken fighting, he’s liable to put a load of buckshot in both our asses and dump us on our ears.”
“What do you…”
“It’s called cock fighting, you dumb Yankee. These ain’t no chickens. Ain’t got no use for chickens. You go talking about chickens, we may as well tell them we cops that don’t know a coon from a pole cat. Which you don’t. We’re here for some big angry cocks to tear hell outta everyone else’s chickens.”
Leldon lived on what he referred to as a “farm,” but most law enforcement would term a “compound.” The house was a bunker, thick and squat, and easily defensible against the Democratic hordes looking to confiscate the guns and Christian domination. There was a good amount of barb wire that would have been a fence if it hadn’t petered out two thirds the way around the compound.
Just inside the barb wire, junk cars crusted with chickenshit ringed the perimeter. Many of the vehicles were missing such vital components as motors, wheels, transmissions, and drive shafts.
Chickens ran rampant as we pulled onto the gravel driveway. Here and there, chickens clucked and strutted, ruffling their sleek, brownish red feathers. One cock roosting on a disembodied axle caught my attention. Its wings were tied to its legs with what looked like bungee cord. The cock struggled to pull itself erect.
We saw Leldon, the Willy Wonka of this chicken empire, leaning against a gigantic, thirty-year-old Blazer painted a tasteful camouflage. He greeted us with a cool tip of his dirty Carlsbad Stetson. He stood 5’11 but if you removed his ten-gallon hat and shit-splattered boots, he’d go maybe 5’4. He wore Liberty overalls and a black T-shirt emblazoned with the hillbilly war cry “Git-R-Done.”
I considered heeding Jesse’s advice. Leldon took that option away from me by opening the passenger door before we even rolled to a complete stop.
“What about it, Earl?” He hollered.
“Earl?” It dawned on me I was supposed to be Jesse’s nephew. I realized this only after complete confusion registered on my face.
“We call ‘em Dumbass, on account of he’s a dumbass,” Jesse explained.
“Oh, hell,” Leldon said, offering a sympathetic nod. “My cousin, Cora’s boy’s the same way. Except we call him Goober. Dumb bastard tried to find a propane leak by flicking matches. You ain’t that dag gum stupid, are you?”
“No, sir.” Though it seemed the more time I spent in the south the more of my IQ puddled in my shoes.
Leldon introduced us to a couple cans of Natural Lite he kept iced down in a cooler stashed in the back of a stripped-down El Camino.
“So, you never guess who I talked to the other night.” Before we could hazard a guess, Leldon continued. “Roy Jones Jr. He called me up wanting to know if I was coming out for the tournament this weekend.”
“Fighting glaives?”
“Nah, talons. Five-hundred-dollar entry fee. They’re gonna be having some world class cocks going head-to-head. I’m thinking I’m taking Dodgy, Dizzy, and Jethro. Those are my best natural fighting roosters.”
Leldon led us around back. We were greeted with the tornadic sound of flapping wings, annoyed bawking and clucking, and talons scratching wood. The roosters were caged; the cages piled on top of each other six high in rows of ten forming a sort of Cabrini Green of poultry.
Set aside from the general populace, our cocks were stuffed in makeshift boxes of cast-off wood nail-gunned together and festooned with chicken wire. The cocks didn’t look particularly promising, but then, every chicken I ever came across were deep-fried and carried in a greasy bucket.
“Yellow-legged hatch,” Jesse said in a neutral tone that, as his business partner, I found alarming.
Leldon nodded, swelling with pride as we inspected his cocks.
“That’s mighty fine breeding right there,” Leldon said. “These here cocks come from a long line of savage studs. The grandfather was a state champion. You ever hear of Ernest?”
“Hell, yeah. I hated his movies.”
Jesse winced. Leldon, whom I doubted watched very many movies that didn’t involve Burt Reynolds getting chased across Texarkana by Jackie Gleason, favored me with tight-lipped smile.
“Ain’t no movie made about Ernest, yet. But I tell you what, Ernest was the finest cock ever lifted its head to the morning sunrise. Jesse, I’m sure you heard how Ernest ripped open Tamminy’s cock at the annual Tennessee Malt Liquor Festival. Ernest had both legs and a wing broke and his heart hanging out of his beak and still killed the hell outta Tamminy’s cock. And that cock was twice as big as Ernest. Course, I had Ernest shot up with enough crystal meth to kill a trailer park.”
Jesse grinned. “They’re still talking ‘bout that one out in Hopewell.”
Patently untrue. I lived in Hopewell and never heard shit about Ernest, or any other cock.
Leldon stared at Jesse for an awkward moment. “Jesse, you get teeth?”
Jesse smiled.
“Holy shit. Well, if you got cash money for new chompers, I’m guessing you got enough money to afford these cocks.”
Jesse’s smile disappeared.
Back in Jesse’s Chevy with the scions of Ernest’s illustrious bloodline clucking away in their cages behind the cab, Jesse consulted his watch.
“We got three hours to get home, then head back out to Ottawa County. How much money you got?”
There was forty dollars huddled like shell-shocked survivors of a vicious battle within my wallet. “About twenty bucks.”
“No, dag gum, how much you got in the bank?”
About thirteen hundred, give or take. “I don’t know, Jesse, not much. Five hundred bucks tops.”
“Good,” he grunted. “We’re gonna need it.”
“Need it for what what? I just gave you three hundred bucks for about ten dollars’ worth of chicken, fried. What more do we need?”
I’d never raised my voice to Jesse before. I could tell he didn’t care for it by the way he wrung the steering wheel in his hands as though it were a chicken neck.
“Firstly, they ain’t chickens. They’re fighting cocks. I ain’t gonna tell you again. Secondly, we’re gonna need that money for an entry fee and a little betting money on the side.”
“An entry fee for what?”
“For the cock fights tonight out in Ottawa County, that’s what for. You think they just let you come in and throw any damn bird into the ring? Hell, no.”
“I thought we were breeding them?”
“We are. After we fight ‘em and make sure them cocks are worth a damn. Ain’t no sense wasting time raising cocks if they’re gonna end up limp fowl.”
“But… you heard Leldon. Their grandfather was a legendary rooster.”
“Yeah, well, maybe they take up after their mother hen. You ever think of that? Course you ain’t cause you’re a dumb Yankee. You worried ‘bout the money?”
“Well…”
“Cause I’m matching you every cent you put in. That’s what being business partners is all about. Listen, we’re gonna go to this here cockfight; we’re gonna maul them other cocks, split the winnings and raise us some world class cocks. We’re gonna have every man in the Tennessee Valley wishing they had our cocks. We’re gonna have every cockfighter across the country checking our website and looking at our cocks.”
“I don’t know html to create a website, Jesse.”
“You ain’t got to. I know everything there is to know about raising cocks and I’m here to tell you, all they need is a little TLC and some PCP to get ‘em itching to fight.”
“I don’t know.”
“You ain’t gotta know. All you gotta do is gimme twenty bucks so I can stop in this here beer store and invest in some Natty Lites for our corporation.”
3.
Five minutes later, our corporate holdings included three fighting cocks, a case of Natural Lite and forty-five possible names for a website. I was down three hundred dollars, to say nothing of the self-esteem I lost looking at big dicks on the internet half the night.
The Natural Lites tasted good going down. The beers Jesse guzzled actually helped his driving ability. I began to feel secure in the cab of a truck rather than feeling I was strapped down in the cockpit of a NASCAR racer.
By the time we reached town, I was lubricated enough to withdraw three hundred dollars from the ATM with scarcely a whimper.
An hour later, all those anonymous back roads we traveled culminated in a horse meadow stretching out miles in every direction. At least I thought it was a horse meadow. It might have been a cow pasture. I saw no animals with which to make this distinction. Apparently, this land was owned by Seymour Blanton, dealer in auto parts and crystal meth.
As Jesse pulled onto the penultimate dirt road, he leaned over, his breath strong enough to pickle eggs. “Same rules apply here. Don’t speak to no one. They hear your Yankee voice, they’re liable to string you up by your scrawny neck and, even worse, ban me from the sport.”
“Okay, Jesse.”
“Don’t ‘okay, Jesse’ me. From here on out, you use hand gestures, And don’t forget. Your name’s Earl.”
I connected my thumb and ring finger in a circle and raised three fingers.
“And lay off the beer. Otherwise, I ain’t gonna have enough to last me.”
I extended my thumb and brought it down, violently.
“Good,” he said. “As long as we understand each other.”
The dirt road ribboned to what appeared to be a horse path. This led to a horse barn the size of a rural airport. We skirted the building. I could hear the buzzing of activity. The revving of engines. Hollering. Laughing.
I didn’t know what to expect. Professionalism, maybe. Perhaps a tidy ring surrounded by bleachers. Vendors selling peanuts, popcorn, and Red Man chewing tobacco. Perhaps an ESPN van with a satellite dish mounted to the roof.
What I found as Jesse bounced the Chevy around the bar was a winery of twenty pick-up trucks of varying vintage parked in a loose circle.
The sharp twang of chickenshit permeated the air. The cacophony of cock noises at Leldon’s compound was mouse nuts compared to the raucous mosh pit of noise which greeted us here. Everywhere, good ole boys with their cocks hanging out in homemade cages, hollered and horse laughed and passed around mason jars of clear fluid within which the odd, shriveled peach or pear reclined. Lynard Skynard jammed through a set of speakers mounted to the barn wall.
The men here could be divided into three categories. Men who wore John Deere caps, men who wore Crimson Tide caps, and men who wore Dale Ernhardt Jr. caps.
When Jesse parked the Chevy and got out, the whole shitkicker carnival went so quiet you could hear a fly spit.
I stepped out of the cab feeling like the first pilgrim to set foot on Plymouth Rock. The sudden atmosphere of suspicion, distrust, and ill will was as cloying as the reek of chickenshit.
I kept my eyes focused on the ground as though this lackadaisical alliance of hillbillies were back-alley muggers and my survival depended upon my inability to recall their individual characteristics.
Certain details caught my peripheral attention. There was a guy wearing overalls without a shirt, looking as though he were moments away from wrestling the Iron Shiek for the Intercontinental championship. Next to Hillbilly Jim, there was Alabama’s version of a metrosexual. He wore clean shorts, a pastel shirt devoid of any lawn care product advertisements, socks with sandals, and a phone clipped to his belt. Likely, he took his tobacco mentholated.
Seymour Blanton was in attendance. Even I recognized him. He sat on his throne; the tailgate of a brand-new Chevrolet Silverado 1500 High Country.
The man who greeted us wore a Chicken Master Incubators gimme cap and a T-shirt with a rooster that looked to have been painted by Norman Rockwell with SPORT OF KINGS written along the bottom. He didn’t look pleased to see us and he got right to it.
“What the hell you doing here, Jesse? I thought we decided you weren’t welcomed here no more?”
Jesse treated him to his best “you ever tried duck meat?” smile and pulled out a wad of money from his pocket. Married with my money, Jesse’s roll of cash was large enough to choke a horse, if Blanton’s horse barn actually housed any horses.
“I’ve got the cash and I’ve got the cocks. I figured that’d be enough to get me anywhere, Mr. Flynn.”
Flynn sized up the money, glanced at the trio of feathered champions shitting and scratching in their cages. “Alright, Jesse. I’ll pencil you in for the fifth match.” Flynn’s bloodshot eyes found me. He assessed me with the same arrogant side eye he gave the chickens. “I’m not sure I like you bringing unfamiliar faces around here.”
“Ah, hell, that there’s Earl. Glenda’s kid. He ain’t all there, no way, but he’s all right.”
He held me in his gaze. I had no problem shying away from him like a simpleton. He turned his attention back to Jesse and told him to keep the potato head away from the cocks. “And I hope you brought glaives,” he added. “It’s going to be a short night.”
I’d never been quite so intimidated by a man with a chicken on his shirt. I told this to Jesse once Flynn receded toward the pit.
“Firstly, it’s a fighting cock. Or, at the very least, a rooster. How many times I gotta tell you? Secondly, that there’s Felton Flynn. And you do not want to fuck with him. He’s Brindlee Mountain Mafia. What he says goes around here.”
“Brindlee Mountain Mafia? Whatever happened to the klan? Have they updated their image? Injecting a little sophistication into their criminal activities?”
“No. Mostly they just go around, torturing and killing smartass carpet-bagging Yankees who don’t know how to keep their dag gum mouths shut.”
Carpetbaggers. I knew when Jesse reverted to Reconstructionist era jargon, it was time to ease off the smartassing.
Getting Felton Flynn’s blessing immediately endeared us to the other cocksmen. Jesse introduced me (as Earl) to the gallery of southern stereotypes, a Saltine factory worth of backwoods crackers. After the third such person asked why I wasn’t wearing a helmet, I felt a sulk coming on. Once Lennie asked when Jesse was going to bring that “dumbass Yankee what got his second-best coon dog shot so they could slap him around a bit,” I was ready to go home.
As the first round began and the men prepared their poultry combatants, Jesse led me to the back of his Chevy. In my palm he placed two pieces of metal like hooked needles, razor sharp and maybe three and a half inches long.
I must have looked confused, again. He said “those are glaives, boy. Them’ll pierce the skin of a warthog. Good thing Lennie had an extra pair to loan us.”
“What do we do with them?”
“You tie ‘em to their feet. What do you think?”
I didn’t bother answering. Jesse pulled the first cage onto the tailgate.
“What do you think we oughta call this one?” He asked.
“Uh, how about –.”
“We’ll call ‘em Stonewall, after my coon dog you got kilt.”
“Jesse, you shot him. I –.”
“You think I wanted to shoot my second-best coon dog? If it hadn’t been for you knocking that coon on ‘em, it never would’ve happened. But bygones under the bridge and all that shit. Help me get this cage to the pit.”
The pit was a concave dirt bowl, three feet deep and ten feet across. By the time we carried Stonewall to the red corner, the dirt was already stained with fresh blood and chickenshit, feathers stuck here and there like the banners of war.
Across the pit, Felton Flynn knelt down and pulled his cock out. Jesse hardly glanced in his direction as he unclasped the cage. He reached in and grabbed hold of the cock with both hands. It squawked and pecked and sprayed shit, but Jesse was in the zone. Nothing fazed him. He withdrew Stonewall and instructed me to tie the glaives around its feet.
Come to find out, tying an insanely sharp piece of metal around an excited chicken’s clawing, pin-wheeling talon was comparable to lassoing a rat with a loop of dental floss. A rabid, attacking rat. After five minutes of tussling, I got the first one tied on. The point jutted at a forty-five-degree angle.
“Good enough,” Jesse huffed, unable to ignore the guffaws and catcalls as well as I could. “Get the other one. The other one. Dag gum potato head.”
The second one went on a little easier, which was to say, I only suffered three more deep scratches across my hand.
“Okay,” Jesse said as we crouched over the side of the pit. “What I need you to do now is stick your finger up Stonewall’s ass.”
“Pardon?”
“Stick your finger up its ass.”
“Are you insane? Why would I want to do that?”
“You want a soft little chicken going out there, or a big angry cock? If I stuck my finger up your ass in front of all these people, would you be fighting mad?”
“Hell, yeah.”
“Well, cocks ain’t no different. Get your finger up its ass, on the double.”
Finding a chicken’s asshole wasn’t much easier than tying a glaive around its leg. I jabbed my index finger all over its tail end before finding anything remotely resembling an orifice. And even then, my finger met heavy resistance.
“This ain’t your boyfriend. Jam it up there.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled, not quite sure I was speaking to Jesse or Stonewall.
I rammed my finger in up to the knuckle. The cock unleashed a shrill squawk and went nuts. Jesse could scarcely hold on to it. The signal which comprised of Seymour Blanton simply saying “go” was given and Jesse and Felton simultaneously threw their cocks into the pit.
There was a five second flurry of wings and talons, a tornado of high-pitched chicken war cries, and then, Stonewall laid down on its side, dead as hell, one wing raised as though trying to claim victory in death.
The men gathered around the pit began hollering. Money changed hands. Felton’s cock stood erect, cawing proudly.
As the noise died down, Felton said, “somebody better call Colonel Sanders.”
I figured at a venue like this, that joke had been said a hundred times before. The guys laughed as though he were a shiny, new jokes spat from the lips of Larry the Cable Guy himself.
Jesse pulled his limp cock out of the hole. Back at the truck, Jesse untied the glaives and dumped the dead bird. He pulled the second cage to the edge of the tailgate.
“I think you stuck your finger in too deep,” he said. “You’re suppose to get ‘em riled up, not rearrange its guts.”
“You gotta be kidding me?”
Jesse spat a stream of tobacco juice at my feet. “Does it look like I’m kidding you? You’re gonna hafta get your head out of your ass. Start thinking. We ain’t here playing no bullshit games. Our cocks are on the chopping block and that sumbitch, Mr. Flynn, is holding the hatchet. You wanna lose everything?”
“Not particularly.”
‘Well, then, when we take Nathanial B. Forrest here down to the pit, you stick your finger in its ass to the first joint. That’s it. Got it?”
I nodded, yes.
The second round with the second cock. This one’s asshole was a bit easier to find, a bit more accommodating to my finger. Felton Flynn hunkered down across from us, grinning like a fox in the hen house.
Upon release, Forrest immediately lept high, driving the glaives into its adversary’s chest.
Jesse’s victorious roar stopped short. Felton’s cock still had some life left in it. A lot of life. Even Forrest seemed surprised by the cock’s tenacity.
Wings smashed together like an orgy of dirty butterflies. Hollow bones snapped. The spectators hollered their approval. In the end, Forrest laid on its side, dead as hell, legs kicking spastically. Both glaives were broken at the talon.
Back at the truck, Jesse cursed Lennie’s name. “Sumbitch knew them glaives weren’t no damn good. Wait till I catch that sumbitch at the Wal-Mart. I’ll stomp a mud hole in his ass right in front of the dag gum customer service. I don’t even care.”
He inhaled and expelled great huffs of air. Then, he drank a beer.
“How much money you got?” He asked as he crinkled the can in his fist and tossed it in the bed of the truck with the two cock corpses.
“You got all my money.”
“Wrong answer.”
“It’s the only answer I got. You lost that entire wad of cash?”
“Pop your eyes back in your head, boy. That was just a Brindlee Mountain bankroll. Big bills on the outside, whole lotta little bills on the inside. We’re down to our last cock. Think we oughta go home?”
“Yes. Unequivocally, yes. At least we’ve got one cock we can breed with.”
Jesse shook his head, no. “We’re down the bankroll and another hundred besides. We gotta win to break even. We ain’t got no choice.”
“Then why the hell you ask if I wanted to go home?”
“Just wanted to see if you had any sack to you.”
Jesse lugged the cage off the tailgate and began hobbling toward the ring of men.
“One more question, Jesse. What if we lose this one, too?”
Jesse glanced over his shoulder. “Then I reckon when they fill that pit back in, we’ll be lying on the bottom of it.”
That information didn’t ease my nervous disposition. Returning to the pit and the circle of men, all ugly with their mocking primal smiles, and rotten toothed catcalls, I felt trapped in a Kentucky-fried Hieronymus Bosch painting.
And I was going to die here.
The fights were nearly over. The pit had grown a nest of plucked feathers stuck together with the blood of the defeated. Flynn stood on the far side of the pit. I’d never seen a smile as large nor as hateful as the smile that split his melon head from ear to ear.
“You and your retard don’t know when to quit,” he said.
“I wanted to quit, honest,” I said.
“He wasn’t talking to you,” Jesse growled. He set the cage down on the side of the pit. “One more cock, Mr. Flynn. That’s all I ask.”
“We’re fighting glaives, Jesse.”
“No glaives, Felton.”
“Then, no fight.”
“I’m down what? Five hundred? I’ll put Rebel here, natural, against whatever you got. One thousand dollars.”
“One thousand dollars?”
Jesse nodded. I felt the noose tightening around my throat.
Felton glanced at Seymour Blanton. They exchanged raised eyebrows. “Okay,” Felton said. “Lennie, grab Bocephus, won’t you?”
An orgiastic wave of excitement slithered through the crowd of men. Bocephus meant something to these people. By the look of naked dread on Jesse’s face, it meant something to him, too.
Lennie rushed back with the biggest, angriest looking cock I had ever seen. Its glossy, near black feathers and preternatural stillness led me to believe Bocephus had some crow perched in its family tree. Its murderous red eyes glared at us as though it planned on ripping out our throats once it made short work of Rebel.
I unclasped the cage and Jesse eased Rebel out. Rebel came easily which was more than I could say for the other two cocks. Jesse told me not to bother with the finger.
“Is it that hopeless?”
“No,” Jesse whispered. “What we got here is a natural born killer. If there’s one cock that could go blow for blow with Bocephus, I believe Rebel’s the one.”
I looked at Rebel. Rebel looked at me with its beady little eyes.
Felton smiled so wide; drool hung from his lower lip. His cronies edged in around like jack o lanterns carved by a caricaturist. Even Seymour Blanton who had viewed the previous fights with calculated apathy took a spot at the lip of the pit and cheered as the cocks were released.
Rebel sauntered toward the center of the pit. Bocephus descended like the shadow of death. As Bocephus reared up to strike, Rebel nonchalantly dipped forward and plucked out Bocephus’s right eye. If cocks were capable of facial expressions, I’d imagine Bocephus showed horrified surprise. Sort of like Felton’s expression.
In the ensuing silence, Rebel gobbled down the eyeball. Then they got to it, launching themselves at each other. Felton’s cock had to be at least twice the size of Rebel. With the impact of their collision, Rebel’s left wing snapped. The wound barely registered as Rebel raked its talons up and down Bocephus’s torso. Their beaks jackhammered at each other, pulling out tufts of feather and bits of bloody flesh.
Jesse’s hand gripped my shoulder. “I tole you,” Jesse whispered. “Look at ‘em go.”
The cocks seemed to levitate inches above the dirt bottom. Fueled by the sort of poultry hatred I could never understand, they rent each other. Wings flapped, desperately, making it difficult to discern the action taking place.
They broke away from each other momentarily, a bare second, not long enough to catch one’s breath, and they assailed each other once more. Bocephus attacked high, Rebel ducked low and repeatedly thrusted its beak into Bocephus’s abdomen, opening a wound large enough to expose its innards.
Bocephus remained disconcertingly silent. Its right leg hung off its body by a shred of skin. It settled back on its left leg, opening its impressive wingspan. Rebel charged beak first, worrying the abdominal wound, looping out a piece of gut.
Bocephus’s beak guillotined down, snapping Rebel’s neck. Rebel pitched forward, dead as hell. Bocephus took two staggering steps forward and fell dead as well.
Felton showed no emotion.
Jesse lowered his head. Everyone turned toward us. There was not a friend in the bunch.
Felton approached us, grim as a pall bearer. “I’ll be taking my money, now.”
“Rebel still got some life left in him.”
Rebel remained absolutely still.
“I’ll be taking my money, now.”
Jesse’s good ole boy smile looked more like a tortured rictus, now. “Well, Mr. Flynn, I ain’t exactly got all of the money on me at the moment.”
Felton Flynn and Seymour Blanton stood a little too close for comfort. I felt like someone had their finger up my ass.
“I fucking knew it. You ain’t changed none, have you? What are we going to do with you, Jesse?”
“Let me go home and get it? I got the money, Mr. Flynn. I thought I had it on me, but it must be in my other pants. You want, I’ll leave Earl here with you while I run back and get it.”
“What the hell I want with a goddam retard?”
Sensing a path to survival, I let my eyes go stupid and kept my mouth slightly opened.
“As a sign of good faith,” Jesse continued. “That I’ll come back with the money.”
“You ain’t got no good faith, Jesse. But I know damn well you’ll give me what’s mine. In the meantime, I’ll hold on to something else you hold dear.”
Jesse didn’t say much on the ride home. I didn’t say much either. The money was gone. The cocks were massacred.
Jesse never took his eyes off the road. He didn’t want to meet my accusing gaze. Without the dentures in his mouth, the tobacco juice dribbled out of his lip, unimpeded, dripping off his chin, down his shirt, onto his lap.
Karl Koweski is a displaced Region Rat now living in rural Alabama. He writes when his pen allows it. He’s a husband to a lovely wife and father to some fantastic kids. He collects pop culture ephemera. On most days he prefers Flash Gordon to Luke Skywalker and Neil Diamond to Elvis Presley.
THE POLISH HAMMER POETRY CORNER is a weekly column, posted each Tuesday morning.
