vituperation

“I don’t want to go in there,” I said. “All their stuff is crap, remember?”

“Yep,” Robyn said.

We skirted the long low building, each deep in thought at the wide array of junk contained within it. We were in the township of Lacon, south of Smallville, earlier this morning, to look around for whatever we could find at the giant flea market called “Trade Day”. Trade Day’s been around longer than I have, and I remember fond Saturday morning trips as a child, marveling over all the things for sale: guns, toys, clothes, tools, farm implements, and livestock of every breed, all in one lively and odor-laden shantytown of tin stalls.

Okay, that thing about the “whatever we could find” was a little white lie. We were there for a specific reason.

“I’m pretty sure they’ll be over this way,” I said, motioning.

We ambled through Trade Day, glancing here and there, until we entered the best part: livestock alley.

Springtime is, for obvious reasons, the best time to go to Lacon to look for farm animals, but pickings weren’t so bad today. We saw hens, ducks, geese, turkeys, and goats. There were quail and pheasant, and a few people with sad-looking puppies and kittens.

“I don’t see any,” I said, somewhat forlorn.

And then I heard it—the unmistakable sound of a proud male telling everyone what a stud he was.

“Over there!” I told Robyn, and made a beeline in the direction of the sound.

I found an old woman sitting on the tailgate of a pickup. Cages of chickens surrounded her. In front of her, to her right, was a long row of cages filled with bantam roosters. They were so small they looked like toys, miniature replicas of the real thing. To her left, in a single big cage, were two full-sized roos, one of which had drawn me with his crow. The roosters looked unhappy, if that’s possible for an animal with a thimble-sized brain, and dirty.

“Kin I help you?” the old woman asked.

“Yes ma’am, we’re looking for a rooster.”

Robyn rolled her eyes in a what’s this WE you mention, kemosabe? look and stared off into space.

“Banty or reg’lar?”

“Regular. Out of curiosity, would a banty, um, service a full-sized chicken?”

The woman looked at me like I might be retarded as she nodded.

“How old is this one?” I asked, pointing at a gigantic silver and black rooster that stood two feet tall if he was an inch. The spurs sticking off his legs were close to two inches long, and when I saw them I wondered how I could’ve ever thought Frick might be growing some.

“That one’s ’bout eighteen months. T’other one’s younger, from this season.”

The smaller of the two was a clone of the larger, and I wondered if it was his son.

“How much are you wantin’ for one of these?” I asked.

“They go for eight dollars.”

“He’s awfully pretty,” I said, and looked at Robyn for agreement.

She was still staring off into space, and paying me no mind.

Before I know what she was doing, the old woman wrenched open the top of the cage and caught up the smaller of the two roosters by a leg. She flipped him over and pulled him out.

The rooster did not seem pleased with this.

“You buy him now ‘n I kin put ‘im in a bag fer ya,” she said.

“We brought a carrier with us, actually.”

Nothing says “city people” like bringing a cat carrier to pick up a rooster.

“But, I’d like to look around for a bit and see what all’s here, if that’s okay,” I said.

Giving me a look that said she clearly did not think it was okay, the woman put the rooster back into the cage.

The next place we stopped was by far the saddest. Two good ole boys sat in lawn chairs surrounded by cages of bedraggled roosters, pygmy goats, puppies, and hens. Robyn spotted some kittens in the distance and left me to go see them.

“Whatyaneed?” one of them asked, when I looked more closely into one of the cages of roosters.

“Lookin’ for a rooster.”

“Game or reg’lar?

“What’s a game rooster?” I asked.

“They’re smaller. The Mexicans like to fight ‘em.”

The game roosters — game cocks, actually, I think they’re called — were beautiful, shades of red and brown and shiny green, with black and white here and there. Simply gorgeous. They were bigger than the bantams, but smaller than some of the full-sized roosters.

“Oh. How much are they?”

“Games are twenty-five each. We sell a lot of those because the Mexicans like ‘em so much. Others are twelve.”

I walked down to look more closely at the prettiest of the game roosters. The good ole boy kept pace with me over on his side of the cages.

“That’s a good lookin’ bird,” he said, when I’d settled on one.

“How old is he? He doesn’t have much of a comb; it looks pretty weird. I guess he’s pretty young?”

“He had a comb, but we chop ‘em off the game birds. Otherwise the other rooster’ll grab onto it and rip it off when they’re fighting. We cut off his wattle, too.”

He pointed at what was left of the rooster’s comb, which was black and looked burned. Inside, I winced, trying not to think about what it must be like for a rooster to have his comb chopped off.

“That’s just scab,” he said. “We just did that one yesterday, so it hasn’t healed.”

He opened the cage and fetched up the rooster with one hand. With the other, he thumped the rooster’s comb-stump and knocked the scab off. Blood welled up and ran down over the roo’s beak.

“See?” he asked. “Just a scab.”

To my credit, I did not scream what the FUCK is WRONG with you? at the man like I wanted to.

I just thanked him and got the hell away, vowing not to give him a penny of my money. I found Robyn and told her what the guy had done. She said that I should’ve bought the game rooster, just to save it from the fighting ring.

There was a third place selling roosters over by where the kittens were. The difference between this place and the others was like night and day. It was run by a mother and son, who looked like salt-of-the-earth people. Their birds were clean and shiny, they were alert, and they looked so healthy they practically glowed.

They had nothing but full-sized birds, and they were all so beautiful it was hard to decide on just one. They had white leghorns, barred rocks (like our salt-n-pepper speckled girls), Ameraucanas (like Frick and Flappy), silver-laced Wyandottes (which looked a lot like Ameraucanas) and one cage of exotic red, green, and black birds.

“What kind of roosters are those?” I asked.

“Their mother was a Rhode Island Red, and their father was a [Fred forgot].”

“They’re certainly pretty. How much are they?”

“Ten dollars.”

Ten minutes later we were headed home, the carrier in the back of the car covered with a towel.

“We need to think of a good name,” I said.

“Like a porn name, because he’s going to be sexing up the girls all the time,” Robyn replied.

“Dirk Diggler? Nah, nobody’ll get that. John Combs?”

She laughed.

“What about a modern movie stud?” I asked. “George Crooney? Wait, no. People will think we’re mocking Asians. bROOce Willis?”

“Maybe an old-time movie star,” Robyn said.

“Like Clark Gable?”

“CLUCK GABLE!” she shouted.

We agreed that Cluck Gable was about the finest name ever for a rooster.

Then, five minutes later, she said, “Or Cock Hudson.”

---

Meet Cluck Gable, the handsomest cock in Alabama.

 

Too sexy for you.

 

Showing his sexy moves to one of the girls.

 

Doing the mating dance with Frick.
A rooster’s dance is something like a flamenco.
He drops one wing, turns sideways, and march-stomps towards his target.
When he catches one, it’s pretty brutal, with feathers flying and lots of squawking.

 

Ever hear about how roosters strut? They do.

 

Very proud, this one is.

 

It’s almost like he knows how fine he looks.

 

That speckle is at the top of the pecking order, and she’s made
no bones about showing him who the boss girl is. He runs from her.

 

He’s so pretty he makes the girls look, well…

 

…kind of homely in comparison.

 

A proud and mighty cock.

 

I sure hope we don’t have to eat him.

---

You know, watching the people at Trade Day manhandle the roosters makes me question whether or not I’m going to be able to do any head-chopping come slaughter time next year.

---

And now, how about Peter Brady as a school teacher?