Gamecocks of New York: A Fan of the Bloodsport Seeks to Explain

I've learned a few things about cockfighting in the past few months that I believe may be directly related to life in general. I've learned that the big cock always wins. Inarguable. I've learned that the people will do what the people will do. Again, inarguable. I've learned that cockers love their cocks as much as any dog or cat owner loves his animal. An opinion, certainly, but one gleaned from close observation and personal experience. I stand tall and firm behind it. I've learned there is method to the madness involved in all sporting enterprises that exploit animals: strategies, training techniques, breeding. The ponies and dog shows come immediately to mind. I've learned that because of assimilation and attrition, Dominicans long ago usurped Puerto Ricans as top cockers in New York City (Asians, Thais in particular, and perhaps Mexicans, may beg to differ). But most of all, despite initial reservations, I've learned that I'm a fan, not only of the bloodsport itself, but of the rituals and traditions that accompany it. I've also learned, much to my dismay, that Sen. Clinton, through her support of Senate Bill S. 345, which seeks to outlaw the interstate transport of gaming roosters, disapproves of New York's fighting cocks and cockers. Imagine that.

Cockfighting goes all the way back to Alley Oop. There are drawings of mad, stork-like chickens peck-pecking each other on cave walls in northern France. Stories and pictures abound of cockfights in the open agoras of early Greece and I'm told of high-ranking members of the Praetorian Guard wagering a day's pay on their favorite cock in the plazas and piazzas of old Rome. It is said that when the ancient Thai King Naresuan was captured by Myanmar nationals during one of their many wars, he brought his favorite fighting cock to prison. The Thai rooster beat all his opponents, and so impressed the Myanmars that they sent the wise king home but kept his cock, further developing what is today agreed to be the fiercest cock on the planet: the white-tailed yellow rooster, or the Naresuan.

I saw my first cockfights in San Juan just this past April. I was surprised at how "normal" it was. They took place in a contemporary mini-arena so clean it approached antiseptic. It reminded me of one of those operating rooms in-the-round for student observers at med schools. The crowd, about 100 men, was decidedly middle class and heavy bettors. The cocks were huge, muscled birds, trained and bred like Olympic athletes, though no white-tailed yellow roosters. Most fought with passion and panache, if you can imagine that from a chicken, and lived to fight another day. The ones that got killed were dinner, just like real life. But, unlike a Frank Perdue oven roaster, at least these cocks had a life.

I watched 10 fights that night and was hooked. But cockfights in Puerto Rico are legal; you can go to the Club Gallistico any night of the week. Not so the USA. Only our enlightened cousins in Mississippi, Louisiana and New Mexico let freedom ring. In New York, you gotta know somebody.

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Sheldon and I meet Hector on the corner of Rivington and Allen Sts. at 7:30 on a Sunday evening, late June. It's pouring. Hector's the Don Zimmer of dice men: been everywhere, done everything. He lives in Union City, NJ, and Ponce, PR. Back and forth, back and forth. He's maybe 70. He wears a gray straw fedora tipped to the left, like a Frenchman fashions a beret, and matching tasseled loafers. He sports tinted aviator glasses and looks sharp in jet-black pants with continental pockets and waistband and a clean white t-shirt. His jacket, too, is white, and a source of great pride. There's a picture on its back of two green banana trees huddling over and around a brightly drawn gambling casino. A couple inches beneath the casino, writ in fancy red and gold script, arched as if rocking the house, the word ANTIGUA. It's where Hector once won $120,000 with crooked dice constructed and supplied by Sheldon. And walked away.

Sheldon is to gambling what Louisville is to baseball: he supplies the hardware by which professionals go about their business?professional hustlers, that is. He marks decks, loads dice, weights wheels. It's a living. Where do you think these guys come from, Philadelphia? Sheldon's my friend.

I grab three Heinekens out of the deli and off we go, heading up to the Bronx. It's cockfighting night on Jerome Ave., just north of the stadium, and we don't want to be late. Hector's a talker and laugher and his hands dance around his conversation like little white birds, flashing gold and silver and emerald from surprisingly thick, strong fingers?the better to hold, fold or hide dice. As we zip past the Bronx House of Detention, Hector, fingering an ever-present set of cubes, tells of the time in 1952 when he spent 11 months in that "sone of ay beech" for killing two banditos who laid for him after a crap game. He was facing 99 years and after a three-week trial was acquitted. He flew straight back to Ponce.

I ask him about cockfighting in the city and Hector laughs and shakes his head.

"Jibaros," he says. "Country boys from mountains and small towns in Puerto Rico. They fight their chickens and dogs and fish, anything, anything to gamble, to make some money. Everybody poor in the old days. The young ones, the teenagers, they tie a string around the neck of a pigeon and swing over head, like the cowboy. They bet on when the body would fly away from the head and how far."

Hector tells me it's mostly Dominicans now. The Puerto Ricans have moved on, and there aren't as many straight from the island. Nuyoricans are anglicized. Anglos don't cockfight. The Dominicans come from the countryside and are very poor. The Dominicans are New York's cockfighters.

We park the car on a crowded block in the East Bronx. Even with the rain the street is filled with kids shooting hoops, screaming inane insults at one another, boys slapping girls on the butt and running away, hoping, begging to be chased. It's pure noise, pure joy, pure kids, pure Bronx 2001.

Sheldon and I follow Hector down the block single file, dodging errant preteens darting past and between us like unguided missiles with no place to land. A steel gate swings open and we step down off the street into a small passageway between two buildings. We turn right at the first pit bull and then left at the next pit bull. We enter a basement doorway attended by a short, fat Dominican in a dirty t-shirt. Hector and the man speak Spanish. The man smiles.

"Gringos. Amigos. Welcome."

We pass a group of men smoking reefer and drinking beer against the basement wall. They nod, amused, comfortable. Further into the building it's darker, chilly. Then a light, then noise, more noise and BAM! we're in.

The space is the size of a good one-bedroom co-op, or maybe a small loft, perhaps 1000 square feet. The walls are brick and cinderblock, each individual one painted either red, white or blue, the colors of the Dominican Republic flag. In front of the bar, where I buy three more Heinies at three bucks a pop from a fine, dark Dominican lady (the only female present), a six-man poker game is being played on a crooked card table lovingly swathed in cheap green felt. Immediately to the right, by the far wall, a crap table jerrybuilt with foam rubber, plywood and more green felt. At any given point in the night, 15 to 20 mostly Dominicans play a Spanish derivation of the original Greek dice game, Barbut. Two ones, two twos or a one and a two are automatic losers. Two sixes, two fives or a five and a six, you win. Any other combination is a no roll, roll again. Very simple, very fast. Only two people play. Everyone else side bets. Between the cockfights, poker and this game, minimum 50 grand passes hands through the course of the evening.

Situated between the poker game and the dice game is the main feature of the room, its riveting focus: the cockpit. Like everything else in the room, the cockpit is painstakingly put together by committee using whatever materials are available that seem to fit the task. Plywood is bent and pulled and cut and stretched into an approximate circle, 16 to 18 feet in circumference. It's then wrapped in large and small chunks and swathes and pieces of foam rubber, which are again wrapped and tightened by a single slash of cheap vinyl and staple-gunned down at evenly measured intervals. The pit floor is three uneven red squares of stitched-together, pissed-upon, shat-upon, bled-profusely-upon indoor/outdoor carpeting. Perfect.

Next to the cockpit is the prep table, a beat, scratched old mahogany one still standing tall and proud on its last legs. This is where the cockers prepare their birds for battle. Each cocker has a candle, tape, clipper and scissors and sits in a chair next to the table with his bird in his lap, stroking, soothing, talking to it during prep. Across from him, in another chair, is the trainer. First, the trainer clips off the rooster's mid-thigh claw, then applies ointment to soothe the pain. While the cocker bills and coos Spanish love songs in the rooster's ear, the trainer melts a lethal-pointed hollow plastic spur to a softened edge then affixes it over the stub where the claw once was. Melted plastic, drying and gluing itself to the leg. Next, he takes tape and wraps the spur in place, much like football and basketball trainers do ankles. In the meantime, dice roll, cards are dealt, money talks.

Hector works the room of about 75?livery drivers, day laborers, Little League coaches, maybe a postal worker or two. Everybody knows him, seems to like him, that's why they won't let him on the table. No pros allowed. Sheldon and I meander, watch the games, the cockers, sip beer, comment. We missed the first fight of the night but notice the cockpit wall is smeared with fresh blood. There are eight cloth bags hanging from nails in a cinderblock behind the prep table. This is where the roosters rest, cocooned in peace and darkness before a match. No cages, bright light, distractions.

Preparation complete, two cockers step casually into the pit, each holding and caressing his bird. No announcement. No fanfare. The dice players and card sharps shut down their games and casually begin filling the single row of folding chairs arranged around the cockpit. Sheldon and I step onto an elevated wooden platform behind the chairs and lean into its railing. Each cock is outfitted with a colored leg band?red, blue or white?for betting purposes. Latino voices bellow and bicker, excitement and intensity rise and continue to increase as bets are made, adjusted, negotiated and renegotiated. Sheldon and I lay a friendly five on the red and the white. The cockers themselves strut like roosters around the pit, thrusting their birds up high, showing off shaved and creatively tapered plumage. The birds, of course, are more and more agitated and eager to get loose and tear into the opponent. It's in the blood. It's what they do. Once betting and anticipation peak, the birds are dropped and the fight begins.

Neck feathers flare like an umbrella opening and closing. The birds leap and squawk and flap their wings, intimidating, preening. Then attack. Peck-peck-peck-kick. Peck-kick-squawk. Peck-peck-kick. Pecks are like jabs in boxing?more annoying than terrifying, but they accumulate and cause real damage. The kick is a roundhouse hook that can take a cock out. In San Juan, I saw one bird squirt blood like a fire hose when spurred flush by a well-placed kick. By comparison, these two Bronx battlers are smaller in size and lack a sophisticated fighting style. They don't kick with the same practiced intent, but their pecking techniques are similar.

Sheldon's larger white cock is pecking my red cock all over the face and neck. Fierce wagering continues as the fight wears on, those backing whatever bird seems to be winning, trying to increase their dinero. They also bet on the possibility of a kill. Young red is tiring, his face bleeding and ripped apart. He wants to quit but instinct and his cocker won't allow it. He struggles on until finally falling, unable to rise, and his cocker swoops in and scoops him up. A loud cheer goes up, as much for the loser as for the winner. It was a good fight. Both birds survive. Two-three weeks, Hector assures us, the red rooster'll be back in the pit, squawking, flapping its wings, pecking away.

All bets are settled as the men slowly shift their attention and positions back to the card and crap tables. New cockers occupy the prep chairs enacting the same ritual clipping, salving, cooing, taping procedures. There are approximately 40 minutes between the 20-minute fights. The three of us stay for two more, another decision and a slow kill. We thank our host, the Dominican in a dirty t-shirt, and head for the street. It's stopped raining and the night air smells sweet. The man said to come on back anytime. Bueno, bueno, I will. You never know when that white-tailed yellow will show.

?

Once we finally find our way out of the Bronx, I ask Hector if he thinks Hillary Clinton's backing of the bill to ban gamecocks from being shipped to New York will have any impact on what we saw tonight. Hector laughs and rolls his dice on the front seat. Eleven. He laughs again. "Nah. Een thees country, eet ees the people who decide what to do, not the politicians. Eef people want cockfight, then we cockfight."

I sit back and ponder Hector's proclamation as we cruise down the FDR, passing the skyscrapers and bright lights. We smoke, we drink, we take drugs. We break the Ten Commandments whenever it's convenient, or we can't help ourselves. We wear fur, leather, feathers. We eat veal. The people will do what the