Cockfighter Read Free Book Online Page B

hot water, and these towels are all clean in here. I’ll get you some sheets.”
    Ed left the room and I could hear him clumping down the hallway, yelling to ask his wife where she kept the clean sheets hidden.
    The Middletons’ ranch-style home was so modern in design and color that the old-fashioned furniture in the study was out of place. The walls were painted a bright warm blue, and there were matching floor-to-ceiling drapes over both windows. The floor was black-and-white pebbled terrazzo, and there the modernity stopped. The floor was covered with an oval-shaped hooked rag rug. There was an ugly, well-scratched, walnut rolltop desk against one wall, and there was an ancient horsehair-stuffed Victorian couch against the opposite wall. Beneath one window there was a scuffed cowhide easy chair, and a shiny black steamer trunk under the other window. A red-lacquered straight chair, with a circular cane seat, stood beside the desk. Three heavy wrought-iron smoking stands completed the furnishings.
    I was attracted to the framed photographs on the walls. Each photo was framed in a cheap glass-covered black frame, the type sold in dime stores. Most of the glossy photos were of gamecocks, but there were several photos of Ed Middleton and his cronies. An old cover page of the Southern Cockfighter, with a four-color drawing of Ed Middleton’s famous cock Freddy, held the place of honor above the desk. Freddy had won nineteen fights and had died in his coop ten years before. Anywhere chicken talk is held, Freddy’s name comes up sooner or later.
    Mr. Middleton reentered the room, carrying sheets, a blanket and a pillow under his right arm, and a portable television set in his left hand. He tossed the bedcovers on the couch, placed the portable set on the seat of the red straight-backed chair, and plugged the cord into the wall socket.
    â€œI told Martha you wouldn’t need a blanket, but you know how women are.”
    I nodded. I knew how women were. I began to make up the lumpy couch with the sheets.
    â€œTo give you something to do, I brought in the TV. It isn’t much good but you can get Orlando, anyway. I’d stay up and keep you company for a while, but I’m pretty tired. This has been a long day for an old man,”
    I soon had the couch made up, but Mr. Middleton lingered in the room. He studied a framed photograph of a cock on the wall, and beckoned to me as I started to sit down.
    â€œCome here, Frank. Take a look at this cock. It’s a phenomenon in breeding and you’ll never see another like it. A bird called Bright Boy, one of the most courageous birds I ever owned. Yet it was bred from a father and a daughter. By all rules, a cock bred that way usually runs every time, but this beauty never did. He was killed in his second fight in a drag pitting. Sorry now I didn’t keep him for a brood cock to see what would have happened. I suppose there are similar cases, but this is the only one I really know is true. Did you ever hear of a real fighter bred of father and daughter?”
    I shook my head. If true, and I doubted Ed’s story, this was an unusual case. When it comes to cocks of the same blood, those bred from mother and son have the biggest heart for fighting to the death. Somebody had probably switched an egg on old Ed.
    â€œEvery time a man thinks he’s got the answers on cock-breeding, something like this happens to teach him something new. I’m going to be pretty well lost without my chickens, Frank, but I’ve got a lot of stuff stored away in that trunk, old game-strain records and so on. Maybe I could write a useful book on breeding.” He shook his head sadly. “I don’t know. I suppose I’ll find something to do with my time.”
    To get rid of him, I clapped him on the shoulder, sat down, and unbuckled my jodhpur boots.
    I was growing weary of always being on the receiving end of personal confidences and long sad stories.