Billy Joe sat right beside me exhausted and day-dreaming. He stared dead-eye looking down at the ground, maybe a little too long and quiet for my own comfort. Feeling bugged, I reached over and nudged him, “You ready to go back?”, I said, knowing he was really just quiet, patiently waiting on me to be the one to bounce one way or the other. I watched him methodically wiping the salty sweat off his skin with his wet 'Nehi Grape' soda bottle. The salt stood out white and chalky on his dark skin. I leaned back once more against the rusty, red gas pump, and slowly stretched my tired aching legs preparing to get up from the cracked, and hard, concrete curb.
The sun was just about in the day when it begins to turn the sky gold. It was uncomfortably still and silent unless you were listening for something in particular or hoping there was more than pure country silence itself.
I watched Billy tilt his head to the side with the third or fourth crow of a rooster that was coming from somewhere back beyond the backside of the sad, old whisky bar next to us. I had also heard them just as many times. I could tell you, it was distinctly three completely different roosters out there, that is if you knew what you were listening to, and if you had a country ear like we did. I unfortunately had heard them myself quite a ways back on the road. I heard one screech after another and then over again, some were high and squawking, some low and guttural, that if a rooster could growl at all, that would be that sound. But as attuned as I was, I still pretended not to pay it any attention, though I knew, as did Billy, where they was squawking from. Clearly, this was not the normal crowing sound you associate with a morning rooster. This sound was faster and more of a screech and cackle, which meant only one thing around these parts. This was a cock fight. There it went again louder than before. Billy, without another thought, jumped to his feet as if fired up and said,"come on lets go and check on ol’ Johnny."
I knew way back on the road, with that first Rooster sound, we were going to follow it like a beacon.
I slowly stood up and poured the rest of my peanuts in my mouth. I didn’t want it to look like I jumped every time Billy said so. I still kept thinking to myself, I shouldn’t have come up here in the first place, and Billy knew it too, he knew I didn't care much for being back this side of nowhere after the trouble we always find ourselves in going back there. He could feel my reluctance and that’s why he went on, decisively walking ahead before I changed my mind. He quipped and mumbled, walking away with his back to me, “Come on lets go, it will be fun and you can say hello to Katrina. she'll be back there”.
Billy knew well enough I was going to follow him if I wanted to or not, even if he didn’t mention Katrina, but I guess the only reason I came at all in this heat was hoping I might see her even if at a distance. The thought of her alone was enough to take my mind off missing Serena and Cassidy, both of who just up and disappeared the last weeks of this summer.
Katrina was as sheer opposite of Serena and Cassidy as milk and whiskey. I loved being with Serena and Cassidy and would spend every day I could with them over anything, but when it came to Katrina, she was by far the hottest mean little Spanish firecracker you will ever come across in a lifetime, pouty and ferocious with the witchy soul of a little gypsy princess. She was without question, shockingly pretty, but also tough and dangerous as hunting rattlesnakes. Her full wine colored lips, as delicious as they may be, were usually engaged in a heated confrontation with someone, spitting out blistering insults of any and all kind. You just had to look at her wrong and she would lash out lightning fast, dismissing and diminishing you to next to nothing, while shutting down any type of advance you might be foolishly silly drunk to think about. I myself, like many, many others, was intimidated by her, and even more so because she was in fact Johnny’s little sister, who I dreaded to have to ever answer to. Everyone though, including him, knew me and her had a kind of thing for each other, although truthfully, as hard as I tried, I could never get anywhere with her, and I actually got the closest of anyone, for whatever that's worth. It was something akin to a cat and mouse game and had been that way since we first caught eyes day one on the school bus, and from that day on, there was no turning away for me from that fiery presence of hers, especially knowing it was me she might have feelings for. Her beauty was truly toxic. I shuddered every time seeing her gorgeous breathtaking sinewy figure and untouchable, dark, almond skin, that she tirelessly teased and tormented me and the world with. It was enough to lure anyone into a burning fire or off a cliff and why i came up here at all. She was a mystery from every angle. Her temper was frustrating as it was confusing. Maybe she was just plain crazy, I can't say. Perhaps it was just that she was the youngest of nine kids that made her fighting mad or maybe she’s protecting her flowered innocence with that hard impenetrable tough exterior just to not go down the road of her older sisters. Whatever it was, it kept me coming back just to breathe the air she had just walked through.
…I followed Billy behind the store, and after crossing through a hole in the fence, and ducking under some low hanging china-berry branches, we went traipsing single file down a foot path that wove through the backs of all the houses amongst the sharp mesquite trees.
The path was trodden down and bare from mostly little skinny shirtless kids that would run back and forth, barefoot and surefooted between houses like little messenger ant soldiers. They were usually carrying something like a loaf of bread or soda-water that they were sent to the store for. Time seemed crucial for them as they darted unstopping as if anticipating a scolding. Their little bare feet navigated like wild lizards over the broken glass, crushed beer cans, and occasional car battery or bumper, that littered and lined the trail.
I instinctively stepped cautiously clear of an old refrigerator laying on it’s side. I would have bet a million dollars a rattlesnake was hiding in it somewhere.
The trail quickly came to a sharp end, and Billy and I stepped out from the deep shade of the mesquite, wincing into the blinding brightness of open air and the offensive sharp pungent odor that hung in the air like a fog, assaulting all you senses with a stinging offense. It was a sharp contrast to the cool welcoming shade and the sweet smell of Johnson grass and milkweed that edged the inside trail.
I recognized the harsh smell of trash smoldering from rusty burning barrels that combined in the air with the oily stench of seasoned cow tripe, boiling in large pots of menudo, that were most likely on every stove in a mile radius. It was foul enough to make you annoyed and sick at the same time. I wished I had with me a bandana to cover my nose and mouth.
On Sunday, menudo and tamales are as holy as Guadalupe and St. Christopher around here with each recipe as guarded as the Holy Grail. I myself loved the taste of both, but I couldn’t stand the smell of the cow stomach, and hated walking into a kitchen to see a pig’s head staring up at you from a pot that was being boiled for the tamale meat.
Passing the familiar houses, I timidly waved at the old widow Luna through her open kitchen door. I could tell by the motion in which her hands rolled together that she was kneading dough for tortillas. She didn’t return my greeting as I expected. She was just old evil-eye mean. Never got over moving here from Juarez and never tried or cared to learn English and probably wouldn't be surprised if she had killed her husband years back with voodoo and a cast iron frying pan.
We were heading in the direction where the faint sound of scratchy Tejano-am radio and drunken laughter was getting louder and closer.
A scraggly assemblage of spectator cheers could be heard up ahead over the music. They were sounds unmistakably distinct around here on a Sunday at sunset. As festive as it was all sounding, mixed emotions began to set in of both apprehension and excitement.
Where there is this kind of loud macho laughter, obviously mixed with alcohol, instinctively it makes you put your guard up simply from past familiarity and experience. Even for people living here, including family members, the situation can be unpredictable. You could either have fun or fight and sometimes both, but rarely anything in between. It was like playing Russian roulette to salsa music. I had some of the best and worst times of my life here and sometimes both in the same day.
Every youth around here bragged and showed off scars from mostly knife wounds, or so they would say, that they wore like badges of honor or decorated and covered them with prison style, Indian ink tattoos, mostly Holy crosses and initials. I myself even had a cross on my forearm that came from being over here one night for just an hour too long. The next morning I tried to wash it off when I got home, but that only made it red and irritated. On another occasion, I got my ear pierced with a fat dull sewing machine needle. I was told to put fishing string through it to keep the hole open. When I did that, it got so infected within a few days that I thought my ear lobe would fall off. It could have been much worse though, my knuckles on both hands nearly read LOVE and HATE that was visible on quite few others around here including Johnny who got it the same time i got my cross.
I spotted Johnny right away as we approached, but he was too engaged to come over to greet us. We nodded around to other familiar faces as we walked up, but overall we were ignored in the absorbed commotion. I didn’t have to hear the scared screech of a rooster more than once to be reminded of how much I hated it. I could never understand how someone doesn’t feel the pain and fear in an animal. It was another one of those situations of wondering how I got here. I wanted to be on that other train I could always see running parallel to the one I seemed destined to be on. My distaste was an opinion I could never voice and too often silently left me tortured in situations like this in which I would have to 'grin and bare it', along with my time, much like a prison sentence.
We had a hard time seeing the roosters through a bunch of scraggly drunk men holding their crumpled dollar bills in a make shift semi circle. They stood abreast and swayed like weeds with a frenzied cacophony of deafening chatter and frantic, disorderly, flying hand gestures. Everyone seemed so drunk, I couldn’t help but let out a laugh envisioning the comparison to peasant string puppets hanging in the border town curio shops. But other than that, none of this was going to be fun or funny to me.
I tried to feebly busy myself in the general vicinity as if I was participating by picking out the lone and drunkest old man I could find and pretended to have small talk, like I even knew him. No one paid me much attention or could they hear me over the chaos. This one old man just stood there like stone, with his glazed cross eyed yellow cataract eyes staring with a frozen glare at nothing. I don’t even know if he spoke English. He was mumbling, but I don’t think it was me he was speaking to. I did whatever it took not to see the little black eyes of the roosters wide with terror about to be thrown at each other in the circle at our feet.
Some of these guys took cock fighting pretty serious. You could tell which ones they were by the way they held their birds stroking them more gently and with more affection than they probably ever did with their own kids.
They can call it a tradition and an old art form all they want to, but this was no more than an angry blood sport to gamble on and nothing sacred to it as far as i was concerned. Perhaps in the overall picture, it was just a way to forget your poverty and life, if only for a day, but why not just watch football like the rest of the World?
There was no big ancient secret to cock fighting at all. Truth is you can always get just about any rooster to fight. A rooster is a proud animal and not just the noisy barn bird you think it is. I would be pretty good at it myself. As much as I hated and was disgusted by it, I pretty much knew everything there was to know about cock fighting, although I couldn’t tell you why and not sure why myself, being I had only been to a few of them. It’s another circumstance where useless knowledge like that just kind of absorbs into you at times: Boring situations where you heard hours of drunks bragging, going on and on about this and that until you knew you had heard it all. Then you repeat it back yourself as if you yourself was an expert, although all of it was mostly half-truth at best. It reminds me of fishing in a way that even if you have never fished you somehow know how to. You know the difference of a bass and a perch and a catfish and what it takes to catch them from bait, to hooks and bobbers, and you will hear every kind of mumbo jumbo nonsense in every fish story.
Then on cue, I heard Carlos holler out to me to get over there, “How much do you want to put on Johnny’s red? Only evens though on his red...” was all he said without as much as a hello.
The best fighting roosters are hands down, Rhode Island Reds. It’s a big proud lean rooster with thick feathers that are hard to penetrate, long strong legs. Johnny had a red. I had no doubt he would win against the other white speckled Missouri he was about to square up to, even though the Missouri was twice its size. Big roosters are just too heavy to fight. The winners are usually good fliers that can pounce from high. What made these roosters dangerous though, were the silver spur knives the Mexicans called little machetes or kanetsune. These were two inch spiked razor knives that were attached with leather to the back of their legs where their natural fighting spur had been partially clipped off. You had to really pay attention to how you held the legs as not to stick yourself. If you let loose and they start kicking you could get sliced to the bone or a spike poked all the way through your palm. The easiest way though to spot a real sport rooster, even when they are just running around the yard or in a pen, is by looking at the red leather comb on top of their head that they usually would proudly wear like a crown while prancing and shaking it between pecking for bugs and feed. What you see on a fighting cock though, is a jagged nub where that crown was cut off at one time by a dull knife or razor and even some times by the edge of a torn in half beer can. It's what makes a rooster pure mean and vengeful. His manhood ripped off in a torturous manner to where now even the laying hens will peck at him.
I looked over at heads of both the roosters here that were about to fight. Johnny’s rooster still had its red leather crown intact. The other ones had been removed and was visibly scarred and jagged. Johnny’s older brother Raymond held the rooster for him. To Johnny, his rooster was more of a pet and didn’t want to be the one to actually fight him. Raymond knew he could make money with his rooster and there was nothing much Johnny could do but go along with it.
The two men were holding their roosters with one hand by the legs between their fingers, with the spurs folded back against them while stroking the top feathers with the other hand.
Every now and then they would rub their fingertips gently under the wings making them flinch and shudder like when you touch the flank of a horse. It made them jumpy and agitated. It was no different than slapping a heavy weight prizefighter before stepping into the ring.
Both men then stepped a little closer to each other, now holding their roosters outstretched being even more careful of the razor spike that now pointed down with their legs hanging free.
Both Raymond and the man got about a foot apart and each started lowering their birds up and down real slow in a rhythmic pattern causing their heads and necks to bob up and down and sway back and forth. They would take turns moving closer speeding up the motion making the head lurch and stretch until the beaks finally clicked together. Then the other would do the same, trading dominance. The legs would begin to kick out and flail as the birds became more agitated and panicky from being restrained. After a few more head-butts they began to start to cackle and peck angrily. On either side, someone then poured a shot of whisky into the two men’s mouths and with a signaling glance and a nod to each other, they then lifted their roosters tail feathers and violently spit the whisky on the exposed tail flesh and then immediately flung their birds at each other into a mid air collision that exploded into a blind fury of crashing feathers and screeching calls. They both fell and hit the ground in a thud and angrily launched at each other again this time on their own momentum, with dust and feathers flying everywhere .
A rooster doesn’t fight with its beak like a chicken. It flies up more like a kangaroo with its feet flying upward and outstretched causing the spurs point straight down like daggers, which you are hoping comes straight down and into the others chest or back. The most lethal is right at the base of the neck.
They flailed around in the air with this flipping action so fast you couldn’t make out what was happening. Twice the big speckled rooster tried to escape and was hurled back in by the tip of someone’s boot. Too often these fights ended with a rooster high tailing it into the cornfields.
Then I saw it happen as if in slow motion. There was sheer utter silence when Johnny’s rooster jumped straight up as high as our shoulders as if to take flight. His wings flew fully stretched wide and back touching their tips together. The powerful sinewy legs shot straight out and up while its fanned tail scooped under his belly, he then dropped down with a murderous force burying it's silver spur with fatal accuracy as if guided to the heartbeat.. I watched in shock as the blood came fast spurting in small beady streams. The crimson red stood out ghastly in shocking contrast on the white feathers. Johnny, immediately jumped in and picked up his bird as if swooping up a puppy while the defeated bird continued stumbling forward flapping its wings trying to balance itself. It was running in circles switching its failing legs while tipping onto its wing tips like a seesaw desperate to gain balance. The blood pumped from under the feathers and was dripping onto the dusty dirt floor leaving small puddles of red mud. It then stumbled rapidly forward, looking terrified in all directions before falling onto its neck. A thin cloud of dust and feathers still filled the air, falling slowly as the life was sadly fading. It stared wide eyed in terror overwhelmed and still surrounded by beastly men. It was alive and breathing hard. He desperately tried once more to get up. Blood started to bubble and drip from his beak and nostril with each rapid breath, and then within moments, the blood ran freely in a gentle glistening stream. He, for the first time, looked like he surrendered to defeat with more sadness than fear in his eyes, lying alone in dirt while pooling blood mixed with its urine and feces. The legs shook rapidly while the feathers heaved with a convulsing quiver that vibrated a whiffing sound almost like purr and then all stopped motionless. The eyes now stared lifeless frozen and gray in contrast to the vibrant black that moments before glistened of fear. It was over.
I felt myself involuntarily shaking throughout my whole body and was afraid I would lose control of my emotions and be left standing there in tears and shame, ridiculed and laughed at. I even tried to fake a laugh. No one noticed this except Katrina, who I hadn’t realized until that very moment, had been standing there staring at me this whole time from her porch, seeing right through my disguise. I stood holding her stare that gazed back with unreadable emotion, while my frail emotions, though silent, lay bare and exposed in front of her like the phony impostor I was. I couldn’t disguise the lie. All I could think was, I just wanted off this train….
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