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Cockfight

Frank Bob Kull
1996
Río Grande, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina

 

His face was pitted with pox scars, and some belly fat hung down over his skivvies as he lounged in the cheap hotel’s court yard.  His head was hard and round with hair shorn into short bristles.  I didn’t like the look of him.  He was talking to a young Austrian who had just had a watch ripped off his wrist in the street.  “I don’t give a shit if there were three of them with knives,” he said, “I wouldn’t have given them my watch.  I’m Italian, and I’m crazy.  Ask my woman here if I’m not.”  I didn’t like the sounds he made either.  The brother was scarred too – the top of his mouth cobbled together in a sloppy, hare-lip patch-job – but he had sweet, gentle eyes.  The woman was Colombian.  She’d found her man while living in Verona, but had left a few years later and come home with the kid.  The brothers were just over for a visit.

I’d just come down from Mexico – flown in from Guatemala via Isla San Andres – on my way to southern Chile, and had a strange urge to see a cock fight.  I hadn’t been to the games in years, since I’d used them in the Dominican Republic to heat up reluctant tourist-women.  It was wonderful how betting a dollar or two to hook up the emotions then watching rapt the struggle to bloody death would get their juices flowing.  But that was a long time ago, and now, alone, I had this strange urge again.

There were others in the courtyard too:  a juicy Brit standing on one leg due to a festering boil on the other cheek just where it creased into a smooth, creamy thigh; four Argentine law students; a couple of French derelicts; a punk couple from Germany – hair tinted orange and green, ragged jeans, he covered with tattoos, she pierced by gold rings through the fleshy bits that defined her various orifices.

I tossed out the idea of a cockfight to see what it might stir up.  The punks were leaving, the boil needed rest, France and half of Argentina didn’t quiver, but the rest of us flagged two taxis and headed out to the barrios.  The entrance fee was twice what I’d been told it would be, and we squinted suspiciously at the doorman when he said there was a feria in progress; many more and better fights than usual.  Two locals passed through and paid the price without complaint, so we followed them in.

The pit, maybe ten meters across, was ringed by VIP benches which held various motley members of the owner/trainer caste plus a collection of drunken whores draped across the gold-chained, open-shirted chests of wealthy, dissolute studs, and caressed by Rolexed wrists so macho that even the street rats shied away.  Behind the privileged, el pueblo peopled the steep, rickety bleachers.  Our solitary cluster of gringo faces peered down from the rafters.

Inside the ring are five men.  A referee, a time-keeper and a bet-maker are hooking up the match.  Two owners cradle their cocks tenderly in their hands, softly stroking their male energy.  One owner frees his bird to strut and crow on the carpeted turf.  The rooster quickly slips from its conditioned stance and begins to quietly peck at something on the carpet; blood perhaps.  The mood is peaceful: a sleepy murmur of Spanish drifts up into the rafters; rum bottles tip into plastic cups; bodies sit loosely – not even waiting, just being there together in the night.

Now the voice of the bet-maker lifts, calling us slowly to attention.  The owners, cocks again in hand, circle the ring, flashing what their birds can do.  I hope the fighters will show the same flamboyant individuality of style as the owners do, but I know my hopes are in vain and have come more for the people than for the roosters.  One owner comes from the old school.  A taint of elegance clings to his cultured face and trim compact body.  Gold, half-frame glasses ride down on his nose with a thin chain looping behind his neck from the side pieces.  He wears creased, tan slacks and two-tone, polished shoes.  His cream shirt is buttoned nearly to the throat.  A wide-brim, planter’s hat rests easily on his head.  The other is different.  Big and black. Kinky hair halos a moon face and gleaming gold teeth.  Solid meat bulges against a bright-red, open-to-the-belly, Hawaiian-flowered shirt.  Bermuda shorts and sandals encase his lower half.  He gestures widely and even now, tension building, never loses the grin or dancing rhythm.

Bets placed, the men square off and spar.  They neither look at nor, perhaps, even notice each other.  All attention is focused on their cocks – now thrust out and lunging.  They circle, urging the symbols of their manhood toward ferocity.  Personal and cultural blood lust and rage are set free and simultaneously buried deep in metaphor.

The birds engaged and were released to the floor of the pit.  They both looked good; one, flat-black with grey speckles down the front, the other shone rust-red beneath the bright spot lights.  Both were plucked bare around the neck and along the back with only the head, underside and wings left feathered – a strange sight until you get used to it.  They circled and leapt, wings beating for balance and height, and lashed out with needle-sharp, metal spurs that had been fitted over the natural spurs on the hind side of their feet.  Contrary to a boxer’s gloves, the spurs are intended to make a strike more deadly not less.  Just before a fight begins the referee pierces a lime with the spurs to neutralize any attempt to paint them with poison.

Sometimes, with very good luck, you can see a fight that lifts rather than depresses the spirit, but those nights are rare.  Then, the fight lasts a mere minute or two – a short, incandescent explosion of color and movement.  Both birds must be fine; well matched, full of strength and courage and fury.  They attack with no restraint, leap high, fluttering and flailing, lash out, circle, feint, and leap again – until by chance or intent a spur is driven into the heart, and the opponent still full of life and rage, drops dead in an instant.  Then the victor rears up and crows, victory scream filling the pit and echoing out across the dark, starry night.

This fight was sordid and made me feel sick and vulnerable and lonely.  From the first it was clear that in the red bird fury was mixed with fear.  Both birds circled and leapt, but the red one always gave way.  They soon spent the energy required to leap and slash, and shifted to the profane tactic of standing chest to chest and pecking at each other’s head and neck.  Even at this stage a well matched fight can be exciting if grim.  But here I felt only pity, shame and perverse pleasure.  The red bird soon began to turn aside and finally to run away, futilely trying to escape from the closed pit, circled with screaming spectators all intent only on winning their bets.  This was no fight, but a butchery with the killer intent on its victim.  They ran in a circle, the black bird just behind pecking at the red bird’s head until, exhausted, it stumbled and fell, and the black bird mounted and continued to peck and rip relentlessly.  Mercy and mercilessness are human terms, not applicable to animals, but in the arena there was no mercy from any quarter.

 

Once the red bird went down, the time keeper flipped over one of his large sand-timers.  If the bird stayed off its feet for the time required to drain the upper glass, the fight would be over.  But each time before the count was complete, the red bird, driven to a momentary frenzy of rage by the continued pecking on the back of its head, would struggle up and fight for a few seconds before turning to run away again.  This pattern repeated over and over for nearly half an hour.  Each time the red bird rose to fight back, its supporters would roar, stomp and pound, shaking the bleachers with illusory hope.  Finally, blood dribbling from eyes, ears and beak, head stretched out flat on the pit floor beneath the gouging pecks of the victor perched on its back, the red cock could no longer rise, and lay limp as the sand ran out.  Its owner, the small, neatly dressed man wearing the planter’s hat, picked up his destroyed bird and broke its neck.  The black bird, left free while its owner collected on his bets, strutted and crowed, but I felt no answering call of victory within myself.

After the fight the Italian bought a bottle of Colombian rum and he, his brother, the Austrian boy and I began to drink.  Then I started to like him better.  Soon after, the Argentines left and the rest of us moved from the arena to the cantina along side.  We were the only foreigners and decided we better switch to beer and keep our wits about us.  Near our table a group of black drummers were building complex rhythms.  It sounded like Latin salsa laid on top of a very old African beat.  The drums ranged from deep, hairy bull hide to thin, scraped goat skin.  Several women were shaking rain-makers and weaving their bodies in and out of the music.  The beer tasted good in the hot night.  The tourist grind was far away, left behind in the center of the city.  It all began to sink in and wash away the stain the fight had left on us.  Slowly we settled deeper into the night.

It was very late when the drumming ended.  Three of the young men came to our table and swooped down on the Austrian boy as instinctively as a hawk would onto a rabbit.  He was all smiles and open innocence; a cover for fear perhaps, or a need to seem unprejudiced and likable to everyone.  I signaled him with my eyes to tighten up.  Given our situation, we didn’t need a soft spot in our circle.  The blacks, too, saw my message and felt the boy withdraw from them.  One came to sit by me and ask why foreigners were always so cold and suspicious.  A good question and I wondered if old phantoms had risen up to blind me.  I offered him a beer and started to like him more and more as we talked.  But the drummers were leaving, and I convinced him to go with them.  He gave me his phone number and I promised to call him, but left the next day for Equador instead.

Beer and rum bottles cluttered the floor of the cantina.  The sporadic roar from the arena had faded to a rattling wheeze from the die-hards still there.  The bartender was leaning on his counter talking to a couple of whores so old and ugly that their only hope was to wait and hook someone too far gone to notice.  Drunk, we left and headed out to look for a taxi.  I was glad to be with the Italians and the woman and her son.  It is good to be surrounded by gentleness and insanity, walking softly through the Colombian night.

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