The Cock Fights

Mama says, “Hector is different than we are – he’s Puerto Rican. They’re dark and dirty and carry knives.”      “Hector doesn’t carry a knife,” I say to her. “Besides he’s only half Puerto Rican.”      Hector Murphy lives near the migrant-labor camp. He is a year older, skinny with lots of pimples, and barely passed Mr. Grady’s sixth grade. I see him smoking cigarettes along the school’s back fence at lunchtime. I think I might try cigarettes when I get to sixth grade. After school lets out for the summer, I hang out with him around the picking fields once in a while, where he speaks Spanish with some of the younger pickers.      One Saturday Hector and I camp out in his backyard, but later sneak off for the migrant camp, a cluster of low, whitewashed blockhouses where the laborers live during the picking season. Just outside the glow of a campfire, we hunker down and peer through the tall grass. The camp swells to over a hundred men. We know most of them by daylight, but at night it is “no gringos allowed” – that means me and half of Hector. indigo shadows the coolness of the woods       By eleven an almost-full moon rises to reveal shadowy figures at the edge of the compound unloading crates of chickens from the backs of several trucks – mangy cocks with tufts of feathers missing and many scars where their bare skin is showing. The moonlight reflects in silvery streaks from the broken razor blades strapped to the cocks’ ankles. A tight circle of men crowd in for the gore and betting.      Cash, gold chains, crucifixes, and the like are laid down. Betting runs heavy for a red-topped bird twice the size of its opponent and a lot meaner. The owners face off with their birds and let them have at it. The heftier bird barely hits the ground before it leaps back up twirling in mid-air with its spurs extended. One spur slashes across the smaller bird’s eyes and the other cuts its throat. The match is over in a matter of seconds.      The next bouts are better matched. Round after round, birds flail at each other with their razor-clad ankles. Feathers and blood fly. One gush splatters our two faces back in the shadows. A young migrant, Jesus, glances our way, his eyes following the spray. He squints once but then looks away.     Midmorning on Monday, Hector and I wander over to the fields. The migrants are taking a break. “Hola!” Hector calls to Jesus. “Que tal?”      The space between Jesus’ dark brows narrow. “I saw you,” he says in a barely audible tone but in English, so that I can understand. The pickers scramble back to work, Hector and I are left to trudge home.      After Labor Day, school starts back up – I sit in Mr. Grady’s class, and Hector moves up to the junior- high wing of our school building. He starts seeing girls and riding in older guys’ cars. We lose our passion for the picking fields and never meet there again. gathering clouds footprints in the sand  to the future to the past