I grew fond of our bird, and named him Butterball. He was a sooty gray color from the coal dust, but I could ruffle his feathers with the tip of my finger and reveal tufts of yellow down. I began taking his cage with me to the dinner place where we met other miners to eat our bait. The other boys teased me at first, but then they started to bring their birds too. We argued about whose bird was the best.

One of the Negro boys, Antoine Jones, had the biggest bird of all. He named him Tiger. The others agreed Tiger could lick any bird in the mine. But I wasn’t so sure. Butterball was small, but he jumped around constantly and had a bald spot on his scalp from hitting his head on the top of the tiny cage. I pointed this out to the others.

“He’s like a banty rooster,” I said. “He’s born to fight.”

“My daddy raises fighting birds,” Antoine countered. “He aint lost a cockfight in years. And he taught me a lot. Your bird couldn’t beat Tiger.”

Tommy Slater proposed a fight. The loser would have to give the winner his bait to eat. I was reluctant because bird fights were supposed to be to the death. But I couldn’t back down since I’d done too much bragging. We unlatched the doors, stuck the cages together and shook them sideways until Butterball was coaxed into the bottom of Tiger’s cage. He fluttered his wings and pranced nervously in one corner.

“Git up on the perch!” Antoine urged. “Git up there and fight, you coward!”

“He aint no coward!” I protested. “Tiger dont know what to do neither.”

Tiger sat on the bar and craned his head.

All the boys started yelling. “Come on! Fight, you cowards! Sic him, Tiger!”

The birds just sat.

“We got to make them mad,” Tommy Slater said. He picked up the cage and shook it. Tiger clutched the wooden perch and Butterball flew against the bars in a panic. “Come on! Fight!” Tommy shook the cage harder, up and down.

“Stop it!” I jerked the cage away from him. Tiger stood up in the bottom of the cage, wobbling like he was drunk. Butterball lay still, his head twisted sideways.

“He’s dead!” Antoine shouted. “Your bird is dead! Tiger wins!”

He opened my dinner pail, sorting out the biscuits and side meat. I didn’t care about the food. I reached into the cage and picked up Butterball as gently as I could. His head fell across my finger. I wrapped him in my bandana, concentrating hard on being neat so the others wouldn’t see me cry. When they were busy talking, I slipped back to Daddy’s place to be alone.

That night I took Butterball down by the creek to bury him. But I decided it would be cruel to put him back under the ground, so I made a pyre out of twigs, laid the stiff body upon it, and set it on fire. It burned quickly. A breeze bore away the gray flakes of ash.