Dirty Rice

by Gerald Duff

  “No, sir,” I said to Sal Florio, still dressed in that nice suit and tie, “this business is all new to me.”

  “Cockfighting’s got a long history to it,” Sal Florio said. “It goes back all the way to the Romans, probably even before them. They might have taken it from somebody else. But they perfected the sport, like they did most things. They’re like your people, Gemar Batiste, the Romans were. They got things done, they were brave, and they were filled with the fighting spirit. Just like you in that game you pitched against Lake Charles tonight. The Explorers were not going to get a hit, you decided, and by God, they didn’t. They were having to deal with a full blood Indian on the warpath, and they didn’t have the stomach for it. Did they now?”

  “Maybe not that game,” I said. “But it’s baseball. It can be turned around all the way different the next time we play Lake Charles. Winning won’t necessarily last.”

  “That’s the spirit, Chief,” Sal Florio said, putting his arm around my shoulder and squeezing it. “Look, I’m not going to take up any more of your time. They’re about to put beaks together and get these next two pitted. You going to put some money on this one?”

  “I don’t believe so,” I said. “I don’t know enough to bet money.”

  “That’s a wise position to take,” he said. “But look. Would you see it as an insult if I put a bill or two in your pocket to get you started?” Sal Florio held his hand out toward me. “I don’t expect a thing back if you win or lose, understand.”

  “I don’t think so, Mr. Florio,” I said, keeping my hands where I had them on the edge of the pit. “It don’t feel right to me.”

  “Another wise statement, if I ever heard one. You don’t know this great and ancient sport, so you’re not comfortable laying down a bet. But you do know baseball. You’re a lot more at ease about that game. I can swear to that.”

  “I got a lot left to learn about ball playing still,” I said. “I don’t reckon anybody ever knows it all.”

  “You’re an impressive man, young as you are,” Sal Florio said. “You got a lot to teach us all about baseball, and I want to be one of the ones you instruct. I’m a student of the game. We’ll be talking again pretty soon, I know. Now, watch close at this pitting about to start up here. It’ll be your first lesson in learning how to hazard your money and come out on top.”

  Sal Florio slapped me on the back and walked off then, and Dynamite Dunn squeezed in beside me to look down into the pit.

  “Did Sal make you a proposition, pitcher?” Dynamite said. “Or y’all just passing the time of day before the next round of blood-letting kicks off?”

  “He was talking about the Romans,” I said. “How they invented cockfighting. How it’s like baseball and whether I was going to bet some money on it. Stuff like that.”

  “Sal will go on about them Romans, all right. But them boys in the old days bet on more than roosters fighting.”

  “I know all about gladiators,” I told Dynamite, “and how they killed each other in the ring and went toe-to-toe with tigers and lions and bulls. I learned about that in school.”

  “You paid attention in school? I never did, and I’m glad I didn’t. Saved me a whole bunch of worry and time.”

  “I paid attention when Miz Amerine told us about fighting and wars,” I said. “It was a lot more interesting than hearing about all them treaties that got signed.”

  “You don’t like treaties? That’s what you’re saying, Gemar?”

  “We always come on the wrong end of them treaties, Dynamite,” I said. “My people did, it looked like to me, no matter how much that old lady teacher tried to twist it and make us appreciate how nice everything always ended up.”

  Dynamite had stopped listening to me by then, taken as he was by what was going on in the cockpit, so I watched along with him and with everybody else in that big tin building. I got to admit it drawed your attention a lot more than thinking about the way treaties had divided up chunks of land and water and air to favor one party of folks over another.

  Below us in the middle of the pit, two men were dancing around facing each other, each one of them holding a gamecock straining forward with their eyes bugged out to get at the other one. When the handlers got the birds close enough to touch beaks together, they’d peck away like they wanted to eat the head off the one facing them, lifting their legs up and slashing forward with them at the same time. Right above their feet, where the real spurs grow on a bird, the handlers had fastened with rawhide thongs what looked like sharp knives to improve what the birds came with natural out of the egg. The way the spotlight from above fell on the new and improved spurs made them shine like silver as they jerked back and forth in a blur so fast you couldn’t follow it with the eye.

  “Pit’em,” another man standing off to one side hollered, and the handlers let loose the roosters and the birds went at each other, flying and slashing with their steel spurs until they fell down to the dirt floor in a tumble. “Louisiana Black Top,” a bunch of people yelled out when that happened, that name mixed up with the general roar from the crowd and the name of the other cock, Little Red from Alabam, who didn’t seem to have as many fans on his side. The two chickens rolled around together in the dirt, feathers flying up, and steel spurs jerking and twisting, one of the birds making a loud clucking noise like you will hear when you throw down a handful of corn in among a flock of chickens at feeding time and every one of them starts claiming it ought to have first rights to every last kernel that’s landed.

  Neither Louisiana Black Top nor Little Red from Alabam seemed to be getting the advantage during that tussle, though I could see a good-sized mist of blood flying up in the air, from which bird I wasn’t able to tell. I’d decided I wanted Little Red from Alabam to win because of the name he had, and I thought to myself here was another case that shows how much it means what a living thing is called. I had more in common with that chicken than with the other one, and that was because we had connection through the way a certain word sounds when it’s said out loud. You can’t help the way a word makes you feel.

  The third man in the pit, the umpire I guess you’d call him if cockfighting was anything like baseball, stopped the action about then by yelling out something in Cajun French I couldn’t understand, but the handlers could. Each man picked up his bird, walked off to the side, and started figuring out the damage done by then and what to do about it before the next inning. The one managing Louisiana Black Top splashed water on his bird’s beak, and then stuck the chicken’s head in his mouth, blowing out his cheeks so big it looked like he had little rubber balloons in his jaw.

  When the manager of Louisiana Black Top pulled his gamecock’s head out from where he’d been blowing breath into him, the bird looked like it’d perked him up to have his head done that way. Seeing that made me uneasy about Little Red from Alabam, but I needn’t have worried, it turned out, since the next time the handlers let their chickens go when the umpire said “pit’em” the rooster I was favoring flew up a little higher than the other bird right from the beginning, slashed both steel spurs up and then down, and one of them caught Louisiana Black Top right in the top of his head, there in the middle of where his comb would’ve been if somebody hadn’t already trimmed it off with a blade.

  By the time both chickens hit the ground, Louisiana Black Top was dead, stretching his legs out once and craning his neck and then not making another move. Little Red from Alabam saw he’d won, hopped up and down a couple of times like I’ve seen pitchers do when the last out of a close game is made, and the bird crowed. As much noise as the people in that tin building watching were making, you would’ve predicted not being able to hear a rooster crow, but that’s where you’d have been wrong. Little Red from Alabam crowed loud, and he was heard by every man in the place, and he didn’t bother to take another look at the chicken he’d whipped, the same way a batter who’s hit a b
all deep over the outfield fence doesn’t have a need to look at anything or anybody when he’s trotting around the bases, just make sure to touch all four of them so nobody can take that homer he’s hit away from him.

  Little Red from Alabam got picked up and petted by his manager, the manager of Louisiana Black Top pulled the steel spurs off his bird and threw him in the box with the other dead losers, not even bothering to watch him land, and Dynamite Dunn asked me how I’d liked my first chicken fight.

  “Don’t you wish you’d had some money on that red-colored bird, Gemar?” he went on to say. “He wasn’t supposed to win. Good odds on that boy. That’s why all these people are squalling now. They played it safe but they bet wrong.”

  “You can look at a man’s record, and see what he’s done before,” I said. “But that really don’t mean a lot about what he’ll do again. You know that.”

  “Sure, but the odds favor one side over another every time, whether it’s chicken fighting or baseball. You always bet the odds, and you’ll make a steady living.”

  “Except when you don’t,” I said. “That’s why you got to play every game and not just give the win to the one that’s supposed to come out on top.”

  “What you really want is the underdog to come out on top, if you’re a betting man,” Dynamite said. “Ask Sal Florio.”

  “Sal makes a good living, I reckon. He must know when to bet against the odds.”

  “Sally Florio knows how to fix it so he can tell when the odds don’t mean nothing. Sal is figuring all the time how to get that done.”

  “I guess he studies everybody’s record, how many they won and lost and how many the ones they’re playing won and lost. Then he makes him up an equation and figures stuff out with that. He told me he’s a student.”

  “An equation, huh? You keep giving yourself away, pitcher. You listened way too much in school to what them teachers told you. But Sal Florio now, he don’t worry about past records except to know how they’re going to make the odds act. No, what he studies is not numbers. He studies folks, and that’s the best predictor of all when it comes to knowing who’s really going to win.”

  “No matter what the odds say?”

  “Odds? What’re odds? They came from yesterday. You play a game today, right now. That’s what you can fix, what’s happening right now. Not what happened yesterday and what might happen tomorrow.”

  Dynamite looked back down into the cockpit at the colored man raking the dirt smooth where Little Red from Alabam had messed it up when he killed his opponent, and pointed toward the handlers leaning over the coops holding their gamecocks. “Here comes another pitting, Gemar,” he said. “Better get your bet down.”

  “No,” I said, looking at the names of the birds painted on the side of their coops. “I believe I’ll let Texas Two Step and Mama’s Baby settle this fight by themselves. I’m going to go outside, get me some air, look up at the moon maybe.”

  “That ain’t no fun,” Dynamite said. “Scientists got it all figured out exactly what the moon’s going to do every night that rolls. And it does what it’s told, that moon up in that black sky. There ain’t no odds there a man can work with.”

  “You’re right,” I said, stepping away from the pit. “It’s all just even odds outside in the dark, just like Abba Mikko laid it down to begin with, no matter where you look.”

  25

  We finished up that series in Rayne with Lake Charles and the next one with three games against the Hammond Berries, and then we loaded up in the toad mobile and went down south to Morgan City to play three with them. We won four out of the six with Lake Charles and with Hammond, and that put us only a game behind Opelousas, so the Rice Bird team was feeling good when we started that swing toward the towns close to the big water. Right before we left early in the morning, Dutch Bernson reminded me about the fishing trip out into the Gulf I’d be taking with the co-owners of the Rayne team. He didn’t have to do that, but Dutch had to tell you a thing over and over again to be sure it was set in your mind.

  What he was really doing was making sure if anything went wrong with any plans he’d set out for you that nobody would be able to say he didn’t tell you so. It was like a manager had a little book in his head he could flip the pages of so he could show you’d had due warning after a bad thing had took place. If you missed a sign or read it wrong and didn’t hit behind the runner or got picked off first base because you’d took too long a lead on a particular pitcher with a good move, the manager would point it out to you. Why didn’t you listen to me, he’d say when it was time to place the blame. I told you what was going to happen if you didn’t pay attention to what I was saying. This is all your doing. Remember?

  “After that first game with Morgan City,” Dutch told me, “the one Hookey Irwin is going to pitch and you’re going to be in left field, Mr. LeBlanc and Mr. Guidry will pick you up early the next morning and take you out for some fishing on that big boat. Can you remember that now, Gemar?”

  “Yep,” I said. “I believe I might be able to.”

  “Don’t you just believe it. Do it. Don’t you keep them waiting because you stayed up too late or some shit like that. These two fellows own this ball team, and they ain’t used to being held up because some ballplayer has a bad head in the morning. You taking Mike Gonzales with you, right? That’s who you said was the one going with you.”

  “Did I say that?” I said to Dutch. I’d done told Mike Gonzales about the trip and let Legon LeBlanc know that Mike was the man I’d proposed to bring with me and Mr. LeBlanc said that was the exactly the man he wanted to come fishing with us. I had learned to like keeping Dutch Bernson a little stirred up by then, though, so I did that. It was something to do.

  Me and Mike were standing outside in the gravel in front of our room in the Dun Traveling tourist court where they’d put the Rice Bird team to stay in Morgan City, ready and waiting, when a black Packard automobile pulled right up to us that morning. Mist was still hanging over the rice fields next to the tourist court, and flocks of gulls were floating above that. The sun was barely up, and the air smelled the best it was going to all day.

  A colored man wearing pants and a shirt and hat the same shade of gray was driving the car, and Mr. Legon LeBlanc hopped out of the backseat to say howdy as soon as the Packard stopped. The colored man had already jumped out from behind the steering wheel and was coming around to open the door, but he didn’t get to it before Legon LeBlanc had got out. “Don’t worry about letting me out, Raymond,” Mr. LeBlanc said. “We’re just going fishing this morning, and we ain’t going to stand on ceremony, are we, gentlemen?”

  LeBlanc was old enough to have a grown son, Clayton, who I’d already run across. That had me a little nervous, I got to say. Mr. LeBlanc didn’t look old enough to be Clayton’s father. Another thing that interested me was how ought a man look who owned half a baseball team. I didn’t know what a man had to do to be able to own half of the Rice Bird team, but Legon LeBlanc looked to me that morning like a man who’d never had to work hard a single day in his life so far. He looked a lot newer and less wore out than a man his age ought to.

  “Well, Chief,” he said once we’d got loaded up in the Packard and headed off down the road, “I expect you and Mike Gonzales are feeling pretty good this morning, after what the Rice Birds did last night to the Oilers.”

  “Hookey pitched a good game,” I said. “He had his stuff all right.”

  “So did both of you boys, I got to say. You rookies are making Dutch Bernson look like some kind of a mastermind,” he said and laughed pretty loud, looking close at me while he did, though he was sitting right next to me.

  “Dutch tells us what to do, all right,” Mike Gonzales said from where he was sitting on a little seat pulled down so he was facing me and Legon LeBlanc. “He gives us lots of good advice all the time he’s managing.”

 
“That’s a nice thing for you to say, Mike,” Mr. LeBlanc said, laughing too loud again for the size of that backseat we were all riding along together in. That space was having a hard time holding us. “But you know what? If Dutch is talking to the wrong man, it won’t do a bit of good, no matter what kind of advice he gives. It’s easy to say do a thing, but it’s hard to do it. Am I right about that?”

  Me and Mike both allowed that he was, and I wondered two things about then. Did Mr. LeBlanc know about me knocking his boy down in the Bon Soir Club? And how much farther did we have to go before we could get out of that Packard automobile?

  Which half of the Rice Birds did Mr. LeBlanc own, I asked myself. How did they divide it up? Pitchers and catchers, maybe, in one bunch? Outfielders and first basemen in the other? I’d rather own the pitchers and catchers myself, I figured as I rode along toward a place where a boat was waiting to take me out onto big water, though pitchers and catchers were a lot crosser than outfielders and infielders. Pitchers and catchers always got a lot to think and worry about, and that works on their nerves. Owning them would require a lot of attention, but owning outfielders wouldn’t be much more trouble than owning a small herd of cattle. Just keep them fed and the fences up.

  I knew better than that, naturally, about how two men could own part of the same thing and not have to worry about exactly how to divide it, but it gave me something to occupy my thinking as we rode along in that big Packard toward where the boat was waiting for us.

  The engine on the boat was all cranked up and idling when we got to the place where they had it tied, and it didn’t take long for us to climb aboard it and get set to go out on the water. Three or four men were running the boat, the boss a Cajun it looked like, and the other ones Mexicans. One of them might have been a light skinned colored man. They all knew what they were doing and what needed doing next, so all me and Mike Gonzales and Legon LeBlanc had to do was sit on some cushioned seats that was nailed to the boat so they wouldn’t slide around. By the time the crew had untied the ropes and got the boat headed out, Mr. Tony Guidry had come out of a door of a good-sized room in front of the boat onto the deck where we was, and he went around to each of us to shake our hands and say welcome aboard Gulf Dream. That was the name of the boat, written across the back of it in curly letters.