Fresh Young Cake

Fresh Young Cake



Dmitri Gagasterious, Commissioner of Cockfighting, would not allow Jackie So and Hurl Jessup to enter cockfighting matches with a bird named Fresh Young Cock. Jackie So, who had named the fowl hopeful, and who was very fond of his—bird, refused to bend. But isn’t all this moot? After all, at two-seventeen this morning, not two hours ago, Hurl Jessup “accidentally” killed Commissioner Gagasterious in a high-speed boating “accident” while blasting dubstep and arguing over the moral implications of rapidly entering a dark slip without permission.
Fresh Young Cock clucked and scratched in the trunk as Jessup screeched his giant car around little corners, snickering at So’s feverish petitions. While blowing a yield sign, Jessup flicked back his white Panama hat and twitched his white Van Dyke. “Chinatown is no place to promote a fighter named Fresh Young Cock. Fresh Young Cake, maybe, but—”
“Fresh Young Cake,” Jackie So seethed, lighting a sweat-damp Marlboro. “Drive to cockfight quiet now. Fresh Young Cock go trunk crazy when you booze and yap and swerve all over road. Bad enough car smell like fried chicken.”
“We will never get away with it, Suh. No respectable cockfighting club will allow us to enter a vulgarly named bird. Why, it is perverted and—and inhospitable.” Jessup squint-eyed So, the road, So. “You are only hurting the bird.”
“You kill Commissioner, so now we get in contests! Clever name intimidate competitor! Now no talk! Drive!” He raked down his steamed bangs. “Our cock fresh and young and ready to smack down any other cock that come his way. Name stands.”
Jessup check his reflection in the rearview mirror, and drawled, “Does the Potter say to the pot, ‘Why did I make you like this?’”
“He should. Ouch!” So lifted his butt off the seat and tossed a gnawed chicken wing out the window, then stared reflectively at his scratched hands and forearms. “You talk just like little drunk girl in Savannah.”
Jessup chuckled into his mint julep, then hit a curb while turning left.
So tried to relight his sweaty cigarette. “So hard training Fresh Young Cock alone. So tired.”
“Haw! Why, I taught him how to dip and parry.”
“You miss turn! Go back!”
Jessup screeched his pink car around three blurred objects and entered an intersection through a red light. Front tires on an island of broken glass, the car wobbled and choked and died before a symphony of horns and lights.
“The name plain sucks, So.” Jessup cranked the engine, gave up, removed his panama hat and, chomping down on his cigarillo, squinted out every headlight-blasted window. “And either we change that little prick’s name, or you can forget us as partners.”
“No compromise.” So blinked in sweat and his cigarette hissed out again. “Fix ac!”
Jessup poked his cottony head out the window and the red traffic light turned it pink. “How about we name him Tea Wrecks? Tea bag for a feed bag. Call him Li’l Pecker for short. So?”
So barely moved his lips. “I sit in awe.”
“Naw, Suh, this here is a de-Ville.”
A patrol officer approached Jessup’s open window, Jessup turned and smiled white and gold. “Evening, officer.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Car went stiff, Suh.”
“License and registration.”
Jessup’s revoked driver’s license and the expired registration were in the glove compartment under five ounces of cocaine and two unregistered handguns and six million dollars in stolen junk bonds, all souvenirs from Chinatown raids. He reached for his back pocket. “Why, I left my wallet in my Uncle Sam suit, which is in the trunk, and my trunk key is in Valdosta with my blushin’ bride Lulubelle.”
In the trunk, Fresh Young Cock shyly pecked away at Dmitri Gagasterious’s corpse.
The officer directed some lingering cars to go around and then unsnapped the button on his gun holster. “Registration?”
“It is regrettably in the trunk, Suh, as I broke off the key in the glove compartment lock, which is where I keep the trunk key.”
“Hand me those keys in the ignition.”
Jessup did.
The officer then peered into the car at So’s profile, which was in a continuous motion of adjusting various parts of its sweat-drenched clothing and clearing its throat. Shining a flashlight beam into his sweaty ear, the officer asked to see his identification. So extended his vibrating arm, then dropped his Home Depot card into Jessup’s mint julep.
“What the cluck? Done ruined my glass of almond-mint soymilk!” Jessup roared, then smiling upward, warmly drawled, “But do pardon him, officer. Chased by some turtles in the park earlier, So, uh, why, he floundered into the fourth dimension by mistake and was promptly, I say, promptly asked for a password he could not provide.” Jessup handed over So’s dripping card. “Least that is the word down at Madame Luna’s Palmistry.”
From the trunk, “Buh-cawk! Buh-cawk! Buh-cawk!”
“Remain in the car.” The officer drew his gun and moved around to the trunk.
At the opportune moment, Jessup pulled a lever by his knee, and the trunk lid sprang open, unleashing screams, screeches, clucks, gunshots and flying feathers into the already dumbfounded intersection. Jessup reached under his seat, pulled out another set of keys, started the car, and slammed into a big silver box anchored to the sparkling concrete island.
Jessup lifted his elbow to So. “Shall we promenade rapidly, Suh?”
“Speak Engrish!”
Fresh Young Cock flapped in through Jessup’s open window and ferociously turned his owners into loser scratch offs, then flapped and fluttered onto the littered road, anxious, no doubt, to get to the other side.