A Stranger in the Kingdom (16 page)

Welcome's junkyard covered about five acres. It was an incredible mechanical hodgepodge, not just of old dead cars of all makes and vintages going back to Model Ts, but of dump trucks, logging trucks, tractors, stoves, old-fashioned iceboxes, console radios, a Brink's armored car, and an operating steam crane on crawler treads with which Welcome moved vehicles around and stacked and unstacked them with unflagging gusto, making of his wrecks the most marvelous pentagons, Druid circles, and fleurs-de-lis, designed to attract visitors from outer space.

Cousin W's masterwork was a totem of car shells twenty vehicles high, resembling a surpassingly outlandish multicolored windmill tower. Sticking out of the top of this structure was the point of an old white pine, which Welcome had used to steady his automobile abacus. In a high wind, the whole shebang whipped back and forth with fearsome groans and clatters of protesting metal that could be heard as far away as the village common. My cousin's car totem was one of the wonders of Kingdom County and something to see—from a distance.

As we came into the dooryard, Welcome was grilling the day's losers over a blazing fire in the old sunken vat once used to keep cans of milk cool. Stuck in his slouch hat was a small American flag in honor of Decoration Day. The neck of an Old Duke bottle protruded from his hunting jacket pocket. At his feet was a great heap of dead roosters of every color, which Frenchy LaMott was plucking and cleaning.

“So where is everybody?” Nat asked me.

“Down cellar. They have the fights in the house cellar.”

I was afraid Welcome would send us packing, but instead he beckoned us forward. “Hurry up, boys,” he called. “You're just in time for the finale.”

As we approached the old slab of concrete, Frenchy ripped the innards out of a limp, gray-speckled bird and threw them in the direction of the two raccoons, who scrambled down off the Model A, snarling ferociously. “I thought that sign said no kids,” Frenchy said.

“Family,” Welcome said, meaning that I was related and so exempt from the no-kids rule. To me he said, “You're just in time. Ethan Allen's about to be put up against Bumper's Great White for the championship.”

Frenchy, in the meantime, had been staring at Nathan. “Say, preacher boy. Old Bumper says your daddy ain't going to last out the summer. Bumper says he don't like the idea of your daddy preaching in that church.”

“Why not?” Nathan did not seem angry, just curious.

“You know why not,” Frenchy said. “You know damn well why not. You'd better tell your daddy to watch his step.”

“Bumper Stevens ain't been in that church since the night he got blind drunk and mistaken it for the hotel and went in to order more beer and tripped over the pulpit and knocked himself out cold, Frenchy,” Welcome said. “He don't have no say what goes on over there. Now shut up and finish plucking them roosters.”

Welcome shoved the first mess of roasting chickens to the far end of the grill where they wouldn't burn and said, “I got to get down to that finale now. You two boys go along the side of the house to the cellar window past the kitchen. You can look in there and view the proceedings. Don't say I sent you if you get caught.”

Nathan and I started around the corner of the house, which listed off toward the east, where for years my cousins had banked up the foundation with dirt and the sills had rotted away. The kitchen door hung partway off its hinges, revealing a room unlike any I have ever seen since. Everywhere, on the table and counters, kitchen shelves and windowsills, were stacks of dishes encrusted with the unidentifiable remains of long-forgotten meals. Even the wood stove was piled high with plates and saucers. Stuffed into a gaping hole in the floor were burlap sacks overflowing with bottles and Campbell's bean cans. Flyspecked calendars with faded pictures of cowgirls and bathing beauties sporting heavily waved hairstyles were tacked askew on the walls. A rank odor resembling that of rotten potatoes drifted out the door, though in the south window sat three of the biggest and reddest geraniums I'd ever seen, which Welcome had somehow managed to conjure into bloom under conditions that should have wilted the hardiest houseplant within a week.

“Right out of
Better Homes and Gardens
,” Nat said.

He put his finger to his lips and pointed to the cellar window just ahead of us. He dropped to his hands and knees. So did I, and we crawled forward through the debris of broken planks and tarpaper with which my cousins covered the opening during cold weather. Motioning for me to stay where I was, Nat rose to a crouch, sprinted past the window, flattened himself on his belly and looked back around into the cellar. Very cautiously, with my heart beating fast, I eased into position and peered into the cellar from my side.

A rush of cool air hit my face. I caught the scent of damp earth, cigarette smoke, and the sweaty press of hard-drinking men crowded together in a small area.

All I could see at first was a single naked lightbulb hanging from the cellar ceiling. By degrees, as my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I made out a ring of shadowy figures. Above them, on all four sides, rose the gigantic unmortared granite boulders my great-great-great-grandfather had somehow levered into place with the intention of using this redoubt as an ammunition and powder magazine for his projected invasion of Canada.

The hundred or so men crowded below us were squatting around a shallow pit directly under the lightbulb in the center of the floor. The pit was about as large as a batter's box and strewn with sawdust. Kneeling on opposite sides of it and facing one another like two troglodytes were Bumper Stevens and my cousin Resolvèd. Each man was holding his rooster by the tail feathers and the birds were lunging at each other across the pit. Just to one side sat a water bucket with a long-handled dipper.

At first I thought the championship fight had already started, but after a minute I realized this was some sort of preliminary exercise to the serious bloodletting, since the birds were allowed to come only within a foot or so of each other, then were drawn back. Welcome, in the meantime, was elbowing his way through the crowd, recording bets on a pad and collecting money.

Bumper and Resolvèd stood up and held their birds out over the pit. Both roosters let out shrill war cries. They slashed the air with their spurred feet and the light from the overhead bulb glinted fiercely off the honed steel rowels of the spurs.

“Yes sir, gentlemen,” Welcome announced. “All wagers should be in, the championship bout of the day is about to commence. Be them birds ready?”

“You bet your hairy ass!” Bumper Stevens roared.

“Hold your water,” Resolvèd said. “Which regulations is it to be here, Albany or Boston?”

“Albany, by the Jesus,” Bumper growled.

The crowd murmured approval.

“I don't know about Albany,” Resolvèd said. “Ethan Allen's six years old. He's won what, four fights already today? He's tired. Besides, I intend to put him out to pasture with two, three good-looking young hens after this bout.”

“I and the Great White shall put him out to pasture for you,” Bumper said. “We'll put him six foot under your Christly pasture.”

“Old Ethan's going to a bar-b-que, Cousin R,” yelled a stumblebum in a dirty white cowboy hat.

“I ain't just determined on no Albany regulations, Bumper,” Resolvèd said. “This was to be Ethan's last go-round before retirement.”

“It will be,” Bumper said. “I guarantee it.”

“Albany rules, brother,” Welcome said briskly. “These good folk didn't journey clear up here into God's Kingdom to watch no sparring match. Ready?”

“Ready!” Bumper hollered.

Resolvèd said nothing.

“Commence,” said Welcome, and the men tossed their birds into the ring.

What happened next was not pretty. Before they hit the sawdust the two roosters were locked together. They spun over and over in a whirling blur of red and white feathers. They landed, disengaged momentarily, leapt high, and came together again.

“Break,” Welcome said when the birds parted for the second time.

Resolvèd and Bumper snatched up their roosters. The leghorn seemed to be unhurt, but Ethan Allen had been raked along the neck. How badly I couldn't tell, because of the bird's dark red plumage, but blood was dripping steadily off Ethan into the sawdust.

Resolvèd stretched the red rooster's neck out between his fingers and ran his tongue over the wound. He turned his head aside, spat, and repeated the process, like a man giving first aid to a snakebite victim. I was amazed. This was the first humane act I'd ever seen my outlaw cousin perform.

Resolvèd reached for the water dipper. “Open your trap,” he said to Ethan, not ungently.

Incredibly, Ethan Allen gaped his beak wide as a hungry nestling. Cousin R sipped from the dipper, tilted his head sideways, and allowed a few drops of water to trickle out of the corner of his mouth and down the rooster's throat.

Across the pit, Bumper Stevens flapped the leghorn's wings up and down to ventilate its body. Someone handed him a bottle of beer, which he drank in three or four gulps, pouring the last small swallow directly down his rooster's throat. Exultingly, he roared, “We got you now, poacher boy. I and Great White have got your ass in a rhinestone sling, by the cockfighting Jesus Christ.”

“Commence,” said Welcome.

This time Bumper released his bird before Resolvèd was ready. The leghorn gave a great fluttering spring and landed on Ethan's back.

Fast as a fighting tomcat, Ethan Allen executed a barrel roll in midair. The Great White Hope hit the sawdust. Before the Hope could turn aside, Ethan was astride its head and had driven a spur deep into its left eye. A jet of blood spurted up into Bumper's face. The onlookers roared and surged forward in a body. Bumper cursed viciously.

“My God,” Nathan said softly.

“Break,” Welcome shouted.

Bumper grabbed his bird, whose eye was dangling from its socket by a single thin filament.

“Jesus!” Bumper said, and bit off the mined eye and spit it out into the sawdust.

The Great White Hope was bleeding profusely. Swearing steadily, Bumper dashed an entire dipperful of water over its head. Meanwhile, Resolvèd was blowing air into Ethan's nose and mouth. Time and again the red rooster twisted in my cousin's hands, trying to free itself and finish off its opponent. Ethan was enraged, beyond any human or animal rage I had ever witnessed, by the steady flow of blood running out of the leghorn's eye socket and down over its snowy neck and breast.

“Albany rules,” Welcome said. “Commence.”

With a final curse Bumper booted his rooster back into the pit. Blinded by pain and blood, it turned away from Ethan Allen, who leaped high and came down squarely on its neck with both spurred feet extended, like a chicken hawk I'd once seen swoop out of nowhere and pick up one of my mother's pullets.

The Great White Hope sagged into the sawdust. He jerked twice. Then, mercifully, he was dead. Ethan Allen Kinneson gave a single long triumphant cry. Depending on how they'd bet, the spectators cheered or groaned.

Bumper reached down, unbuckled the dead rooster's spurs, and dropped them into his shirt pocket. He picked up the limp carcass by its yellow legs. “Go fry, goddamn you,” he said, and flung it straight through the open window where we were watching.

Nathan and I jumped to our feet, whirled around, and found ourselves staring smack into the grim faces of my father and Reverend Andrews.

“How was the show, boys?” Dad said. “Bloody enough for you?”

“It's all my fault,” I blurted. “It was my idea, I got him to come here—”

“He's old enough to know better,” Reverend Andrews said.

The minister got out a cigarette and stepped into the shelter of the house wall to light it. Nathan sighed, gave me that fatalistic glance kids exchange when they've been caught doing something they shouldn't, and headed around the corner of the house with me at his heels.

Just as Nathan passed the kitchen doorway Bumper Stevens came slamming through it, colliding with my friend and nearly knocking him over. The auctioneer cursed. Then he saw who he'd run into.

“Well, if it ain't young Step'n Fetch, the new preacher's boy. Did your daddy send you up here to pray over us, sonny? Or was you going to perform a little cakewalk for the boys?”

Bumper, who was facing Nathan, had not yet seen Reverend Andrews. The minister looked at my father. “Is this the man who threw the rooster on Reverend Twofoot?”

Before Dad could reply, Bumper whirled around. “None other,” he snarled. “What do you intend to do about it?”

Then he added, in the most slurring manner imaginable, that word my father would punish Charlie and me more for using, if we'd ever used it, than any other in the language: “Nigger.”

Reverend Andrews did not seem to hit Bumper Stevens especially hard. Just very, very fast. And it was not a haymaker punch. It appeared to be more of a jab, though it landed squarely on Bumper's jaw with every bit of the force of another man's haymaker.

Bumper reeled back. He looked like a circus clown riding a bicycle backward. His peddling legs were having difficulty keeping pace with his upper body. He came up against the horse trough where Resolvèd kept his trout and sat down in the water the way an exhausted man piops into an armchair. Bumper did not make a large splash, a little water sloshed over the rim of the trough. Except that his jaw was twisted off at an odd angle to the rest of his face, Bumper looked more surprised than hurt and only mildly surprised, at that.

By this time half a dozen men had emerged from the kitchen, blinking like men who had spent hours in a cave. Among them was Welcome Kinneson, who glanced at Bumper.

“Soaked through,” my cousin said without breaking stride.

Reverend Andrews flexed his hand. He gave his quick two-fingered salute to the men in the yard.