I don’t believe she thought consciously of sex at all. If she did, she must have thought of it as “something Frank and I do at The Place,” but not connected with conjugal love or as something out of keeping with her straitlaced Methodist beliefs. Perhaps it was only habit.
I had never managed to make love to Mary Elizabeth anywhere else. She had been seventeen the first time, with just the two of us at The Place. It had been an accident more than anything else. Afterward I had been ashamed of myself for taking advantage of her innocence. But the first time had led to the second, and all during that never-to-be-forgotten summer we had made daily pilgrimages to The Place.
I have never underrated Mary Elizabeth nor underestimated her intelligence, but the situation was unusual. After all, Mary Elizabeth was a college graduate now, and a teacher of high school English—she surely must have known what we were doing. But we had never discussed sex. I had an idea that the subject would be distasteful to her, and she had never brought it up on her own. And yet, every time I came home we headed for The Place like homing pigeons long absent from their coop. I had a hunch, and I had never pressed my good fortune, that as long as Mary Elizabeth never thought about it, or discussed it, we could continue to make love at The Place forever.
Once, and only once, I had asked Mary Elizabeth to drive to Atlanta with me for a weekend. She had been shocked into tears by my reasonable proposition.
“What kind of girl do you think I am?” she had asked tearfully.
Completely bewildered by her reaction, I had been unable to come up with a ready reply. I had never brought up the subject again. And besides, there wasn’t a better spot in the world for making love than The Place.
Mary Elizabeth sat up suddenly, swung her long bare legs gracefully around, and sat on the rock facing me, dangling her feet in the water. I was in the pool, chest deep, and I had been studying her body as she lay flat on her back. Spreading a towel across her lap, but leaving her breasts uncovered, Mary Elizabeth looked at me sternly, and then wet her lips.
“What about us, Frank?” she said at last. “How long do we go on like this?” The tone of her voice had changed. It wasn’t harsh, but it wasn’t feminine either. It was more like the voice of a young boy, on the near verge of changing.
I raised my eyebrows, watching her intently.
She cupped her breasts and pointed the long pink nipples toward the sky. She narrowed her eyes, no longer greenish, but now a dark aquamarine, and caught mine levelly.
“Are they still beautiful, Frank?” she asked in this strange new voice.
I nodded, dumbly, trying to figure out what she was driving at.
“You’re wrong.” She smiled wanly, dropped her hands, and her plump breasts bobbed beautifully from their own momentum. “You haven’t noticed, but they’re beginning to droop. Not much, but how will they look in five years? Ten years? Nobody’s ever seen them except you, Frank, but how much longer will you be interested? All I’ve ever asked you to do is quit cockfighting so we could get married. We’ve drifted along in a deadlock too long, Frank, and it’s impossible for me to accept your way of life. I thought that as you got older, you would see how wrong it is, but now you seem to be entangled in a pattern. And cockfighting is wrong, morally wrong, legally wrong, and every other kind of wrong! You’re a grown man now, Frank!”
I sloshed forward in the tiny pool, put my arms around her hips, warm from the sun, and buried my face in her lap.
“Yes, you big, dumb child,” she said softly, running her fingers through my damp hair, “but I can’t meet you halfway on an issue like cockfighting. Give it up, please, give it up, and marry me. Can’t you see that you’re wrong, wrong, wrong!” She gripped my hair with both hands and tugged my head gently from side to side.
“I can’t exist in postcards any longer, Frank. ‘Dear M.E., I’m in Sarasota. Won the derby 4-3. I love you. Will write from Ocala. F.!’ In a few more weeks, I’ll be thirty years old. I want to be married and have children! I’m tired of people snickering behind my back at our engagement. Nobody believes it anymore. If you loved me only half as much as I love you, you’d give it up. Please, Frank, stay home, marry me—”
There was a catch in her voice, and I lifted my head to look at her face. She wasn’t crying, far from it. She was trying to beat me down again with an emotional appeal to my “reason.” I had explained patiently to Mary Elizabeth, a dozen times or more, that cockfighting was not a cruel sport, that it was a legitimate, honorable business, and I had asked her to witness one fight, just one fight, so she could see for herself instead of listening to fools who didn’t know what they were talking about. She had always refused, falling back on misinformation learned from reformers, the narrow-minded Methodist minister, and the shortsighted laws prohibiting the sport that were pushed through by a minority group of do-gooders. If she wouldn’t see for herself, how could I persuade her?
“You’re a brilliant man, Frank,” Mary Elizabeth continued earnestly. “You could make a success out of anything you went into in Mansfield. This farm is half mine, you know, and when we’re married, it’ll be half yours. If you don’t want to farm with Wright, I’ve got enough money saved that you can open a business of some kind in town. I’ve saved almost everything I’ve earned. Wright doesn’t let me spend a penny, and I’ve been teaching for six years. And I’ll help you get your voice back. We’ll work it out together, you and I, Frank. We can get a book on phonetics and you—”
As she constructed these impossible feminine castles I got restless. I pulled away from her, clambered up on the opposite bank and began to dress without waiting to get dry.
“What are you doing?” she said sharply.
As she could see for herself, I was putting my clothes on.
“You haven’t listened to a single word, have you?”
I grinned, and buckled the straps on my jodhpur boots.
“If you leave now,” she shouted, “you needn’t come back! We’re through, d’you hear? Through! I won’t be treated this way!”
When a woman starts to scream unreasonably, it’s time to leave. I snatched a cold fried chicken leg out of the basket, draped my coat over my arm and started down the trail. Mary Elizabeth didn’t call after me. Too mad, I reckoned.
Mary Elizabeth was stubborn. That was her problem. Anytime she truly wanted to get married, all she had to do was say so. But it had to be on my terms. I loved her, and she was a respectable woman with a good family background. I knew she would make a good wife, too, once she got over this foolishness of wanting me to give up cockfighting and settle down in some dull occupation in Mansfield. We had been over this ground too many times, and I had a new season of cockfighting to get through. Nothing would have pleased me more than to have Mary Elizabeth as a bride at my Ocala farm, preparing meals and keeping my clothes clean. And, until she became pregnant, what would keep her from teaching school in Ocala, if that was what she wanted to do? As soon as she came around to seeing things my way, and quit trying to tell me what I could and couldn’t do, we’d be married quick enough. And she knew it.
I grinned to myself, and tossed the chicken bone in the general direction of an ant nest. Mary Elizabeth had a sore point on those postcards. I’d have to do better than that. When I got back to Ocala, I’d write her a nice, interesting letter, a long newsy one for a change.
When I crossed through Wright’s yard to the state road, I looked about apprehensively to see if he had returned, but he hadn’t come back from town. Every time Wright caught me alone, he attempted to goad me into a fight. For Mary Elizabeth’s sake, I had always refused to fight him. It would have given me a good deal of pleasure to knock a little sense into his thick head, but I knew that as soon as we started fighting he would whip out his knife, and then I would have to kill him.
I walked down the asphalt road. My biggest problem now was how to retrieve my shaving kit from the dresser in my room. If I returned to the house to get it, Randall would be curious as to why I was
leaving so soon. If I wrote a note informing him I was going to take my rightful property and have him and Frances tossed out, he would attempt, with his trained lawyer’s logic, to argue me out of my convictions. As I remembered, I had never really bested him in an oral argument. The only way I had ever won an argument with Randall was by resorting to force. And besides, Frances would bawl and carry on like a crazy.
By the time I was level with the house, I decided the hell with the shaving kit, and continued on down the road. It would be less trouble all the way around if I bought another razor and a toothbrush when I got back to Jacksonville.
I walked about four miles before I was picked up by a kid in a hot rod and taken the rest of the way into Mansfield. When he let me out at a service station, I walked through the shady residential streets to Judge Brantley Powell’s house on the upper side of town. He only went to his office in the mornings, and I was certain I could catch him at home. When I rapped with the wrought-iron knocker, I only had to wait a minute before Raymond, his white-wooled Negro servant, opened the door. Raymond peered at me blankly for a moment or so before he recognized me, and then he smiled.
“Mr. Frank,” he said cordially, “come in, come in!”
It was dark in the musty hallway when he closed the door. Raymond took my hat, led the way into the dim living room and raised the shades to let in some light.
“The judge he takin’ his nap now, Mr. Frank,” he said uneasily. “I don’t like to wake him up ’less it’s somethin’ important.”
I considered. What was so important to me probably wouldn’t be considered important by the old judge. I waved my right hand with an indifferent gesture, and settled myself in a leather chair to wait.
“You goin’ to wait, Mr. Frank?”
I nodded, picked up an old Life magazine from the table beside the chair and leafed through it. Raymond left the room silently, and returned a few minutes later with a glass of ice cubes and a pitcher of lemonade. A piece of vinegar pie accompanied the lemonade. Firm, tart and clear, with a flaky, crumbly crust, it was the best piece of vinegar pie I had ever eaten.
It was almost five before the judge came downstairs. Evidently Raymond had told him I was waiting on him because he addressed me by name when he entered the room and apologized for sleeping so late. Judge Powell had aged considerably in the four or five years that had gone by since I had last talked to him. He must have been close to eighty. His head wobbled and his hands trembled as he talked. I handed him the list of instructions I had written, and he sat down in a chair close to the window to read them. He looked through the papers a second time, as if he were searching for something, and then removed his glasses.
“All right, Frank,” he said grimly. “I’ll handle this for you. Your Daddy was a stubborn man, and I told him he was wrong when he changed his will.”
I picked up my hat from the table where Raymond had placed it.
“One more thing, Frank. How long do you expect to be at the Jeff Davis Hotel in Jax?”
I shrugged, mentally totaled my remaining money, and then held up four fingers.
“You’ll hear from me before then. And when you get your money, Frank, I hope you’ll settle down. A dog has fun chasing his own tail, but he never gets anywhere while he’s doing it.”
I shook hands with the old man and he walked me to the front door. “Can you stay for dinner, son?”
I shook my head and smiled my thanks, but when I opened the door he grasped at my sleeve.
“There’re all kinds of justice, Frank,” he said kindly, “and I’ve seen most of them in fifty years of practice. But poetic justice is the best kind of all. To measure the night, a man must fill his day,” he finished cryptically.
I nodded knowingly, although I didn’t know what he meant, and I doubt very much whether he did either. When a man manages to live as long as Judge Powell has, he always thinks he’s a sage of some kind.
I cut across town to the U.S. Highway and ate dinner in a trucker’s café about a mile outside the city limits. Two hours later I was riding in the cab of a diesel truck on my way back to Jacksonville. I had the feeling inside that I had finally burned every bridge, save one, to the past. But I didn’t have any regrets. To survive in this world, a man has got to do what he has got to do.
9
I WAS TIRED when I reached Jacksonville, but I wasn’t sleepy. I had hoped to get some sleep in the cab of the truck on the long drive down, but the driver had talked continuously. As I listened to him, dumbly, my eyes smarting from cigarette smoke and the desire to close them, he poured out the dull, intimate details of his boring life—his military service with the First Calvary Division in Vietnam, his courtship, his marriage, and his plans for the future (he wanted to be truck dispatcher so he could sit on his ass). He was still going strong when we reached Jax. To finish his autobiography, he parked at a drive-in and bought me ham and eggs for breakfast.
After shaking hands with the voluble truck driver, who wasn’t really a bad guy, I caught a bus downtown and checked into the Jeff Davis Hotel. One look at the soft double bed and I became wide awake. If my plan was successful, I would know within three days, and I didn’t have time to sleep all day. I had to proceed with a confidence I didn’t actually have, as though there could be no doubt of the outcome.
After I shaved, I prepared a list for Doc Riordan. These were supplies I would need, and I intended to take advantage of our agreement. It would take a long time to use up eight hundred dollars worth of cocker’s supplies.
One. Conditioning powder. Doc made a reliable conditioning powder—a concoction containing iron for vigor, and Vitamin B1. This powder, mixed with a gamecock’s special diet, is a valuable aid to developing a bird’s muscles and reflexes. I put down an order for three pounds.
Two. Dextrose capsules. A dextrose capsule, dropped down a gamecock’s throat an hour before a fight, gives him the same kind of fresh energy a candy bar provides to a mountain climber halfway up the mountain. On my list I put down an order for a twenty-four-gamecock season supply.
Three. Doc Riordan’s Blood Builder. For many years Doc Riordan had made and sold a blood coagulant that was as good as any on the market. If he didn’t have any on hand he could make more. This was a blood builder in capsule form containing Vitamin K, the blood coagulating vitamin, whole liver and several other secret ingredients. Who can judge the effectiveness of a blood coagulant? I can’t. But if any blood coagulants worked, and I don’t leave any loopholes when it comes to conditioning, I preferred to use Doc Riordan’s. Again I marked down enough for a twenty-four-gamecock supply.
Four. Disinfectants. Soda, formaldehyde, sulfur, carbolic acid, oil of tansy, sassafras, creosote, camphor and rubbing alcohol. Insects are a major problem for cockfighters. Lice are almost impossible to get rid of completely, but a continuous fight against them must be fought if a man wants to keep healthy game fowl. Give me a plentiful supply of all of these, I wrote on my list.
Five. Turpentine. Five gallons. The one essential fluid a cocker must have for survival. God has seen fit to subject chickens to the most loathsome diseases in the world—pip, gapes, costiveness, diarrhea, distemper, asthma, catarrh, apoplexy, cholera, lime legs, canker and many others. Any one of these sicknesses can knock out a man’s entire flock of game fowl before he knows what has happened to him. Fortunately, a feather dipped in turpentine and shoved into a cock’s nostrils, or swabbed in his throat, or sometimes just a few drops of turpentine in a bird’s drinking water, will prevent or cure many of these diseases. When turpentine fails, I destroy the sick chicken and bury him deep to prevent the spread of his disease.
When I completed my list I sealed it in a hotel envelope, wrote Doc Riordan’s name on the outside, and headed for the drugstore where he had part-time work. Doc wasn’t in, but the owner said he was expected at noon. Figuring that Doc would freely requisition most of the items on my list from the owner,, I decided not to leave it, and to come back later.
I walked to
the Western Union office and sent two straight wires. The first wire was to my neighbor and fellow cocker in Ocala, Omar Baradinsky:
HAVE LIGHTS AND WATER TURNED ON AT MY FARM.
WILL REIMBURSE UPON ARRIVAL. F. MANSFIELD.
I knew Omar wouldn’t mind attending to this chore for me in downtown Ocala and inasmuch as I didn’t know what day or what time I would arrive at the farm, I wanted to be certain there was water and electricity when I got there.
The other wire was to Mr. Jake Mellhorn, Altamount, North Carolina. Jake Mellhorn bred and sold a game strain called the Mellhorn Black. It was a rugged breed, and I knew this from watching Blacks fight many times.
These chickens fought equally well in long and short heels, depending upon their conformation and conditioning, but they were unpredictable fighters—some were cutters and others were shufflers—and they had a tendency to alternate their tactics in the pit. As a general rule I prefer cutters over shufflers, but I needed a dozen Aces and a fair price. Jake Mellhorn had been after me for several years to try a season with his Blacks, and I knew that he would give me a fairly low price on a shipment of a dozen. If I won with his game strain at any of the major derbies, he would be able to jack the price up on the game fowl he sold the following season to other cockers. I could win with any hardy, farm-walked game strain that could stand up under my conditioning methods—Claret, Madigan, Whitehackle, Doms—but the excellent cocks I would need would cost too much, especially after putting out five hundred dollars for Icky. It wouldn’t hurt anything to send a wire to Jake find out what he had to offer anyway.
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