Nathanael West - The Day of the Locust [46]
Claude took out his wallet.
“I’d like to see him fight,” he said. “Suppose you sell me one of your other birds and I put it against him.”
Miguel thought a while and looked at Earle, who told him to go ahead.
“I’ve ‘got a bird I’ll sell you for fifteen bucks,” he said. The dwarf interfered.
“Let me pick the bird.”
“Oh, I don’t care,” Claude said, “I just want to see a fight. Here’s your fifteen.”
Earle took the money and Miguel told him to get Hermano, the big red.
“That red’ll go over eight pounds,” he said, “while Juju won’t go more than six.”
Earle came back carrying a large rooster that had a silver shawl. He looked like an ordinary barnyard fowl. When the dwarf saw him, he became indignant. “What do you call that, a goose?”
“That’s one of Street’s Butcher Boys,” Miguel said. “I wouldn’t bait a hook with him,” the dwarf said. “You don’t have to bet,” Earle mumbled.
The dwarf eyed the bird and the bird eyed him. He turned to Claude.
“Let me handle him for you, mister,” he said. Miguel spoke quickly.
“Earle’ll do it. He knows the cock.”
The dwarf exploded at this.
“It’s a frameup!” he yelled.
He tried to take the red, but Earle held the bird high in the air out of the little man’s reach.
Miguel opened the trunk and took out a small wooden box, the kind chessmen are kept in. It was full of curved gaffs, small squares of chamois with holes in their centers and bits of waxed string like that used by a shoemaker. They crowded around to watch him arm. Juju. First he wiped the short stubs on the cock’s legs to make sure they were clean and then placed a leather square over one of them so that the stub came through the hole. He then fitted a gaff over it and fastened it with a bit of the soft string, wrapping very carefully. He did the same to the other leg.
When he had finished, Earle started on the big red. “That’s a bird with lots of cojones,” Miguel said. “He’s won plenty fights. He don’t look fast maybe, but he’s fast all right and he packs an awful wallop.”
“Strictly for the cook stove, if you ask me,” the dwarf said.
Earle took out a pair of shears and started to lighten the red’s plumage. The dwarf watched him cut away most of the bird’s tail, but when he began to work on the breast, he caught his hand.
“Leave him be!” he barked. “You’ll kill him fast that way. He needs that stuff for protection.”
He turned to Claude again.
“Please, mister, let me handle him.”
“Make him buy a share in the bird,” Miguel said.
Claude laughed and motioned for Earle to give Abe the bird. Earle didn’t want to and looked meaningly at Miguel. The dwarf began to dance with rage.
“You’re trying to cold-deck us!” he screamed.
“Aw, give it to him,” Miguel said.
The little man tucked the bird under his left arm so that his hands were free and began to look over the gaffs in the box. They were all the same length, three inches, but some had more pronounced curves than the others. He selected a pair and explained his strategy to Claude.
“He’s going to do most of his fighting on his back. This pair’ll hit right that way. If he could get over the other bird, I wouldn’t use them.”
He got down on his knees and honed the gaffs on the cement floor until they were like needles.
“Have we a chance?” Tod asked.
“You can’t ever tell,” he said, shaking his extra large head. “He feels almost like a dead bird.”
After adjusting the gaffs with great care, he looked the bird over, stretching its wings and blowing its feathers in order to see its skin.
“The comb ain’t bright enough for fighting condition,” he said, pinching it, “but he looks strong. He may have been a good one once.”
He held the bird in the light and looked at its head. When Miguel saw him examining its beak, he told him anxiously to quit stalling. But the dwarf paid no attention ‘and went on muttering to himself. He motioned for Tod and Claude to look.
“What’d I tell you!” he said, puffing with indignation. “We’ve been cold-decked.”
He pointed to a hair line running across the top of the bird’s beak.
“That’s not a crack,” Miguel protested, “it’s just a mark.” He reached for the bird as though to rub its beak and the bird pecked savagely at him. This pleased the dwarf.