Free Cockfighter Page B

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