Upset by the animal carnage and the human brutality, I yelled sarcastically,
“Yeah, too bad I didn’t get a chance to bet on him.”
Waylon either didn’t notice the sarcasm or chose to ignore it. “If we’da got here a minute sooner, you coulda. I had me a hunnerd on him. Tried to lay five, but didn’t get no takers. Easy way to make a hunnerd, though.”
“Tell that to the dead one,” I said.
He swiveled and studied me, then nodded. “I reckon it does kindly depend on where you’re at in the peckin’ order, don’t it?”
“So this was the financial business you needed to do—putting a bet on a cockfight?” He nodded.
“This ain’t for me, Doc, and it ain’t just for fun. I got a cousin in a bind. Quickest way I know to raise some money for him.”
“Does Orbin Kitchings know there’s a cockfighting pit a stone’s throw from his house?”
Waylon spat in the sawdust on the floor, which absorbed blood and spittle with equal efficiency. “Know it? Hell, he’s a damn regular. Gets a percentage of the take. Bets big, too. If he wins, he’s real quick to collect. If he loses, you can figure on hell freezing over ’fore he’ll pay up. Folks try not to bet with him on account of that, ’cept he pressures ’em, if you know what I mean.” I was starting to get the picture, and it was a deeply disturbing portrait of Cooke County’s chief deputy. “Listen, Doc, I got to speak to this fella over yonder. Won’t take but just a minute.” He reached into a pocket and extricated a small, round container, the size and shape of a tunafish can. “Here, have a little dip while you wait.” He popped off the lid and I caught the moist, pungent aroma of tobacco. I looked down, amazed: in all my years in East Tennessee, I had never before been offered a chew; now, suddenly, I was face to face with a wad of tobacco while standing ringside at an illegal cockfight. What next, I wondered—
moonshine? hookers? animal-sex acts? Waylon saw the uncertainty in my eyes.
“You ain’t never dipped before?” He sounded incredulous. I shook my head. He held the container closer and smiled encouragingly, a stray strand of depleted tobacco wedged between his upper incisors.
A man leaned down from the bleachers above my head, evidently taking an interest in our exchange. “Go on, buddy, give ’er a try.”
Waylon looked up. “Oh, hey, Rooster.”
Rooster nodded to Waylon, then resumed meddling. “Go on, it’ll perk you right up. You look like you could use some perkin’ up.”
What the hell, I thought, and reached in with my thumb and forefinger. I snagged a pinch of the soft, shredded leaf and brought it slowly toward my mouth. Waylon laughed. “Shit far, Doc, that ain’t near enough. Git you some more.” I reached in and doubled the size of my pinch. “Aw, hell, that ain’t gonna do nothin’. Go on, grab you a hunk.” Embarrassed, I reached in a third time, scooping with my middle finger, too. This time my hand emerged clutching a ragged wad of Copenhagen the size of a cotton ball. Waylon winked in approval, then tugged open his lower lip—mercifully empty at the moment—
and pointed, showing me the spot to cram it. When I did, carefully tamping in the loose ends, he beamed. “Doc, we’ll make a good ol’ boy out of you yet,” he said. “Don’t you go nowheres; I’ll be right back.” I nodded, afraid of the harelip sounds and the slobbery mess that might emerge from my swollen lower lip if I spoke. Waylon gave me a final appraisal and felt moved to offer a final word of advice. “Just blend in.”
With that, he threaded his way through the crowd, moving with surprising grace. On the opposite side of the ring, he bent to confer with a wizened bantam rooster of a man whose creased face resembled distressed leather. The man reached into a pocket and pulled out a thick roll of bills; he peeled off one and handed it to Waylon. Waylon leaned down and spoke urgently, but the man shook his head stoically.
Just then another pair of handlers stepped into the pit, accompanied by a new referee. The handlers had numbers on their backs, I noticed; these two were numbered 29 and 57. If the entrants’ numbers started with one and ran sequentially, this cockfight was blood sport on a scale worthy of ancient Rome. And if the betting that was cranking up again for this match was typical—
dozens of bets of twenty dollars, a handful more at forty and fifty and a hundred, even one at a thousand—some serious money was changing hands here. Was it possible that the sheriff himself didn’t know this was going on?
Or—and this seemed more plausible—were Tom Kitchings and his deputies all being paid to look the other way?