Killing the Cock

Springtime draws up memories like worms. In the years just shy of the explosion out from the weed and swamplands of North Jersey, in the years before the great escape, on the weekends I would make it to the kennel and feed the sheep and my mind with responsibility and all the lesson of the workhorse blues. They were good days, some of the very best, and if the lord saw it fit I would have overturned every inch of that swampland with my hands in obedience and died happy. But the girls don’t love a kennel hand and the world was too small for me not to engage it and my ideas were too large for me not to enhance it so I left. It was only always a temporary parting which continues to the present. The lessons remain and persist. Like cock fighting.

“Did I ever tell you the story about the boss’ cock.”
“Really? You mean a chicken?”
“A male chicken, a rooster, yes, the boss’ cock.” “His name is Dick.”
“The chicken?”
“No, not the cock, he was named One-Low-Hung-Jowel. He had a giant dangling Jowel and you couldn’t miss him. We called him One-Hung-low.”
“Oh.”
“I killed One-Hung Low. Or I thought I killed him. I knocked him out cold for 40 minutes. The deal was this cock would watch me to see when my hands were full then attack with his talons. He’d really dig in. He’d literally be attacking the hands that feed him. What a bastard. Usually I’d punt him as a solution then he’d stay away for a day or two. This time I wound back with the shovel and kind of aimed it at his body but just as I swung, a good solid swing, he jumped back, put his neck forward, feathers flared as he does, and I landed the blow solid directly to his head.”
“Wow.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it. His head instantly dropped as if I had broken his neck and he ran around the yard essentially like a chicken with his head cut off. Then he dropped and all the hens rushed to peck at him. They do that, I mean One-Hung-Low was a tyrant, they were probably happy to see him go. I felt terrible. He had blood coming from his eye and beak. He was dead so I picked him up and flopped him in an upper kennel, holding him high so the elkhounds wouldn’t tear him up. He was clearly dead. I had to tell the boss that I killed his cock. So I did that, I told him and I felt so bad. The boss took a look, he was dead. So we made a plan to leave him in the swamp for the fox and set about kennel work. Then about a half an hour later he was up, just sitting there like a hen, completely confused with his head low. We fed him in that cage for a month but he lived.”
“Really?”
“Yea, that’s the story of killing the cock. I have a better version which involves the curdled crow he was able to get out a month or more later. I miss One-Hung-Low, he was a righteous bastard, a real scrapper. That fucker.”