Chicken Man

He walked a narrow line, and sometimes fell. There were a few drug charges along the way, and most seriously, an indiscretion involving a wig, a shotgun and a supermarket. In all, Jimbo spent nine years in prison. Three women married him, and three women walked away. Jimbo claims not to know what happened to his marriages. "What happens to any of them?" he says.

Over time, he developed political views, most of them concerning people who try to make life difficult for Jimbo. If the responsibility of caring for the poor is returned to the churches, Jimbo knows from experience the poor will be in trouble. As for the Lotto, "let me tell you what that is: All that is is a rich man's way to get the poor man to pay his income tax." And you know what game laws are about, don't you. Those game wardens just want to make money to hire more game wardens.

"It's flusterating," says Jimbo. If he were a chicken, he would probably be dead by now, he figures. "Probably would have stuck my neck out, you know, and had my head pecked off."

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Jimbo's interest in chickens began with John Kelso, who seems the nearest approximation to a friend that Jimbo has ever had. Jimbo produced a photograph of the old man grinning toothlessly beneath a cowboy hat, "the last picture Kelso took before they removed his ear." Kelso had skin cancer, and perhaps realizing that he was nearing conclusion, he used to sit out past dark, swatting mosquitoes under an oak tree on his farm, telling Jimbo stories of his life -- how it was he who grew the last bale of Egyptian cotton in Galveston County, and he who had driven the last wild horses across the Galveston causeway, and he who had been savvy enough to sell diseased hogs to the meatpacker, who had dropped them into a giant blender and whipped them, hair, hoof and all, into dog food.

Jimbo moved his trailer onto the old man's land, agreeing in return to feed Kelso's inbred cows. Jimbo began feeding them old bread and ham sandwiches, doughnuts and even candy. Opening the wrappers was the hardest part. It was Kelso's idea: Why should cows eat better than men? The food was only the leftovers from meals Jimbo and Kelso had begun sharing in the closeness of a Dumpster. Jimbo would quail before a specific item of garbage, and Kelso would offer moral support. Go on, try it, the old man would say. "I've been eating garbage for 50 years, and it ain't killed me yet."

At the time, Jimbo had scrounged up an old boat and was gigging flounder in the Galveston tidelands. A restaurant bought his fish for about $2 a pound, and Jimbo figured he was doing all right until the Fish and Wildlife Commission reduced his limit, and he lost a finger in the motor.

He thought he might enjoy working at home, but it was only out of kindness, he claims, that he became the owner of chickens. An alcoholic he knew was neglecting his birds, and Jimbo was suddenly seized with pity. "Man, this is terrible," he said. Five years ago Jimbo brought the chickens home to Kelso's farm, having paid a chicken-fighter's widow $100 for the pens.

It was only coincidence, he also insists, that these chickens were the famed Kelso gamecocks. Jimbo had found them running around loose, but he was sure they were the direct descendants of the chickens bred 70 years before by Walter Kelso, the Galveston cement contractor. Jimbo went to his friend, John, and convinced him to pose for an ad. John Kelso had nothing to do with gamecocks, but there he is in The Feathered Warrior, smiling with a chicken in his arms. "Pure Kelso Cocks For Sale," the ad reads. "First Time in U.S. By John Kelso, Nephew of W.A. (Walter) Kelso."

Jimbo quickly developed an interest in cockfighting. He began subscribing to both The Feathered Warrior and Grit & Steel. He collected cockfighting accounts from a half-century ago, in which the twitches of chickens were recorded like the left hooks of Joe Louis. "They slammed together in an awful furious first, so fast and short we couldn't tell who was in….It went beak to beak in the 14th, as Red slowly chopped Grey's head off."

He knew nothing about the care of gamecocks, and to learn, Jimbo bought Charlie Carr's how-to video, The Modern Keep. He tried to follow Charlie's chief advice: "Use your head. It hurts. It's hard to do. It ain't fun. But think."

Chickens lack that capacity, Jimbo realized. They live by instinct, and so what you desire in a chicken, you must get in the breeding. You want big bones, a small head and long wings. You want a chicken that will jump up, keep his head back, hit what he aims for and be ready to hit again. You want a bird, in short, that will stand up for you, a brave and noble warrior who will die pecking. If, in the face of death, your bird should fly the pen, you will have suffered the cockfighter's worst defeat. "It ain't never happened to me," Jimbo says quietly, "but I know it's embarrassing."