Jerry assumed all northerners to be
ignorant, but for some reason he took a shine to me and would do almost
anything, as long as it didn’t involve work, to assist in my southern
education. Jerry operated on the fringes of the law. He made moonshine back in
the hills somewhere, spotlighted deer on a regular basis, and kept fighting
chickens. Cock fighting qualified as major entertainment in that area in those
days, and Jerry had several prime contenders. When Sheriff Cletus F. “Bo”
Dawkins shut Jerry’s operation down, he was left with more roosters than a man
needed. I ran into him at the lumberyard. We jawed for a while and I informed
him I was about ready to install eight hens in a chicken coop I was building.
“Gotchee a rooster?” he asked.
“Not yet.”
“Naow, I’ll tell yew whut,” he went
on. “Yew git thet thar coop set up, an’ I’ll gitchee a rooster thet’ll wear
them girls plumb out! Git twenny-tew aigs a day outa them eight hens a yourn.
Lemme know when yer ready.” Jerry was prone to exaggeration.
I told him I’d call when it was
rooster time and he asked to borrow a rifle to do a little hunting that night.
It seems that Sheriff Dawkins had confiscated Jerry’s gun the week before.
Nothing came without strings when dealing with Jerry.
A few days later, chicken coop,
feeder, waterer, nest boxes and hens in place, I called him about his offer of
a rooster. He showed up a couple of hours later in road gear on an old Ford
tractor. Apparently his truck wasn’t running again. He had a rooster in a sack
and my rifle, badly in need of cleaning, on his lap.
“Got ‘im rachear in this bag,” he
grinned. “Son, this hyar is a, by Gawd, rooster! I wuz gonna fight ‘im, but
naow I cain’t.”
He held the sack over the edge of
the chicken wire and dumped out the biggest rooster I’d ever seen.
“His name’s El Rojo!” Jerry crowed.
“Ain’t he somthin’?”
He was something, indeed. Over two
feet tall in various shades of red, he was steely of eye and belligerent in
attitude. He peered at me briefly, then attacked me through the fence.
“His wangs is clipped naow,” Jerry
advised me as he climbed back aboard the tractor. “Ya’ll might wanna keep ‘em
cut back some. I speck ol’ El Rojo’ll fly like a turkey if’n yew don’t. Have
fun, Yankee!” He roared off down the lane.
Some fun. Every time I got near the
pen, Rojo was there, watching and waiting for another opportunity to attack me.
Fearless, predatory, intimidating he was, and for several weeks I worked around
that bird. Whenever I was in the chicken yard I had to watch my back,
periodically ducking him as he flapped at my face, trying to spur me. The hens
loved him, pumping out eggs like machines. Large, brown, often double-yolked,
golden-centered specimens of the layers art poured forth in glorious bounty and
I was glad to have them, but I paid a heavy price in dealing with that
murderous rooster. Finally, I had all I could take.
On the way to gather eggs one day,
my job because of the obvious danger, I picked up a length of oak two-by-two
and informed my questioning wife that I was going to kill that damn bird if he
even looked at me sideways. Enough was enough. I was one step into the chicken
yard when he came at me, chest high, spurs extended. I laid a swing on him that
would have done credit to Babe Ruth and, when Rojo hit the ground, I knew he
was dead. I picked him up by the feet and tossed him in the bed of my old Chevy
truck to be disposed of later. Eating that rooster was out of the question.
Later in the day I went back to the
truck. The bird was gone. I assumed a raccoon or coyote had made off with him
until that evening when I went to put up the girls. There he was, pacing with
the hens from his position outside the fence. As I approached him, he eyed me
lovingly and began to voice that particular chicken purr of contentment. He
fell in beside me, walking where I walked, stopping where I stopped, staying
close to me with the loyalty of a dog and offering me no hostility whatever.
And so it went. From that day forward, when I worked outside, I would let him
out of the pen and he was my companion. Clucking and purring as we went about
our business. He learned to take a single kernel of corn from between my lips,
without his beak touching my skin. He did his job admirably, keeping the hens
happy and the egg basket full. His glorious crackling crow would echo around
the place, his clucking would greet me as I’d approach the pen while he’d pace
back and forth asking to be let out. He’d even sit in the porch swing with me,
from time to time, and enjoy the evening breeze. Nothing else, people, dogs,
cats, or pigs, could get close to him. He’d attack on sight, but he was devoted
to me. When the time came, after nearly two years, for us to leave the place I
did not know what to do with him. We gave the hens away, but El Rojo was so
nasty to anyone but me nobody would have a thing to do with him.
About a quarter mile behind the
house, just in the edge of a patch of woods, was a spring-fed stock pond, a
waterhole for various wild denizens in the area. I walked Rojo back there the
evening we were ready to leave, scattered a gallon or so of chicken feed out in
the weeds, and gently tied his leg to a small sapling with a piece of twine I
was sure he could easily peck through. As I walked away he called to me, and I
could hear him struggle with his bonds. I didn’t have the heart to look back.
Well over a year later, I had
occasion to visit an ex-neighbor lady who lived near that pond. At dusk, as I
was preparing to leave, I heard a glorious crackling crow wafting up from the
woods. I stopped and listened with appreciation.
“Thet’s thet rooster ya’ll left by
the pond when ya moved away,” she said. “Nasty bird. Won’t let ya near that
pond unless ya carry a big stick. Ya got a stick, he’ll just chirp at ya, an’
follow right along like a dog.”
It’s always nice to learn that old
friends are doing well.
