The Dog Fighter (27 page)

When I left Cantana I went to Guillermo and the poet and repeated what the businessman had told me.

Cantana is pimp. Guillermo hissed. Our children will be not his whores.

 

O
n the night of my fifth fight Cantana nodded to me as the trainer brought the dog into the ring. Sitting next to him she looked to me with wonder in her eyes at how it was that the businessman and I now knew each other. I smiled at her while the ragmen wrapped my arms and fitted my hand with the metal glove and she trusted me and smiled back. Then I believed so much in myself that I believed love to be this easy.

Once again Ramón drew the stick of Mendoza. The yelling men spoke of how rare this was for him to fight the sharpened teeth six times.

In the ring he does not have the luck that he has with women. One said.

But he is still alive. One man argued.

In the end though he will die by the teeth.

But it was Vargas that night who was the unlucky one. During his fight an argument in the crowd between two workers from the hotel became a knife fight. Another ring developed outside our ring. A ring of men. Once more Vargas was left to kill his dog while the men had their backs to him. When his fight was done and he did not hear the yelling but saw that the men were distracted watching one man stab at another he left the ring with his head down. His chest sprinkled with dogs blood.

After the fight I went down to the water instead of the cantina beneath the abandoned church. I swam out to the mouth of the bay to a place where I stood on the coral with the water crashing against my chest. I stood there and yelled back over the bay for her laughing and singing of my love. The moon full and the sky the color of the water. She was there with me in love. The two of us in me alone. I floated on my back and with the tiny waves splashing into my ears I whispered to her.

Te quiero mi amor. Again and again. Te quiero.

When I came up from the beach to the malecón the streets leading toward the mountains were empty. Dimly lit by the few buzzing streetlamps along the curve of the bay. Lonely benches beneath them. I stood for a moment deciding which street to follow to my room at the dentists. I had walked them so many times by then that often I stood in one place wondering which way to take. Wondering what might be new along each. While I walked the night breeze dried the salt water dripping from my hair onto my forehead. My pants wet after being naked in the water. Over the stones I made squeaking noises in my huaraches. I enjoyed the sound. I made it on purpose as loud as I could and it made me feel like a child. The simple distraction took from my mind thoughts of Javier and the dentist and the soft music of their back room I knew I was to return to. I did not want that loneliness after being so near to her.

The stones of the street were uneven but smooth from sand blown by years of the evening winds wearing them down. Ahead several men staggered from a lit door. A woman stood in the light of a doorway. Her face a hideous mask as she cursed the men. She held the folds of her skirt in one hand and a handful of paper pesos in the other. A strap of her dress fell from her shoulder. The men laughed and like boys pretended to run from the woman. Their gestures absurd. Their laughing bringing only more anger from her. I slowed my steps but the woman was still in the door yelling as I approached. But then another woman gently took her by the arm back into the house. When the door closed the street was dark again. The men were gone and I was alone.

I passed farther into the city. The streets became more dark where some of the electric lamps and their glass coverings had been broken by boys throwing rocks. The shards crunched beneath my steps. The slender poles held the shattered bulbs like long stemmed glass flowers. Sharp dark petals. The salt water had dried on my face in a sandy grain. I stopped before a wall where the paint of the words Cantana a la chingada! was still wet to the touch. The young men had been busy. Not far from this I threw a pebble at the ratty hide of a dog sniffing at a drunk sleeping drunk against a wall. The bottoms of the mans feet black and hard and splitting at the skin in the heel in even darker crevices. I wiped the paint from my fingers onto his pant leg and then realizing what I could have done to the man I rubbed the pants together until it thinned away. He did not stir.

The streets grew more and more narrow the farther I walked from the plaza mayor heading south the long way to the dentists. I had not slept in what felt like nights but I was never tired after the fights. There were fewer stones but more of the hard packed dirt of the streets with ruts from refuse carts and old dried mud prints of burros and pigs. Thousands of tiny chicken scratches. I walked up a small knoll and then down into a small square where night birds sang in the trees. At the end of the square under the electric light of a cantina door I saw Vargas. A fugitive from what none of us ever learned. His chin on his chest he leaned toward the wall with the palm of his hand flat against it to support him while the other was holding himself as he urinated. He whistled but the notes came unevenly from his lips. Wet from drinking and glistening in the faint light. He shuddered when he finished.

Hombre. I called out to him. Your mother would be very disappointed in you for behaving in this way.

Chinga tu madre. He answered without looking over his shoulder at me.

I smiled because I expected this type of answer from the fugitive. But to joke with him I said.

Say that again my friend and I will take your tongue from your mouth and feed it to the dogs.

Come try. He laughed. I offered him my hand and he clasped it like an old friend. Is it raining? He leaned back to check the sky and lost his balance before catching himself against the wall.

I have been swimming. I said.

Why did you not come to the cantina tonight? Cantana asked about you.

He was with you?

I wanted to ask the fugitive if she had been with Cantana but I could not think of a way to do this without revealing my love. I never asked about the women the businessmen kept or those that the other dog fighters were with. To do this now I knew I would only provide Vargas with information I did not want him to have about me. Fortunately he did not wait for my answer.

Let me ask you something. He smiled. How come you never leave for home with any of the women? Everyone is always wondering this. How come he never leaves with one or two of the women on those big arms? We know he is shy. And quiet. But everyone suspects that you are a maricón. Are you a maricón dog fighter?

The fugitives breath was heavy with the smell of alcohol. His hair and face greasy and shining from the smoke of the cantina. When he smiled his missing tooth made him appear a little sad. He was unshaven and the round of his chin was raised back and to the side so that he had to look at me from the bottoms of his eyes when he said this. It had been a long while since I had taken offense to a man standing across from me looking at me in this manner. Few had done it and those who did did not do it for long. But at that moment in time I was just up from swimming in the bay. From losing myself in the warm salt water until I lost myself in her. Still though Vargas laughed until his laugh was false and only intended to provoke me. But I did not give in to this. I knew that she would not want me to. I had promised her that this time of my life ended when I first glanced upon her. And I thought that if anything here was Vargas standing across from me as myself testing me. My shadow was over him although our light the same.

Maybe I take other women home? I tried to smile. Maybe yours wait for you to pass out and then they come to me for the satisfaction you cannot give them?

But the fugitive only laughed again. He knew that what I said was not true. He laughed until I knew that he was making noise only to provoke me and to wake those around us. The thrill of fighting shivered through my arms. I found myself warming to it.

You are a liar. Vargas said suddenly. And I think you are a maricón. But you are a good dog fighter. And tonight for that I will let you live.

Thank you my friend. I showed him my teeth by stretching my lips back in a hideous smile. You are very kind.

Now help me home. He said.

I took the arm of the fugitive over my shoulder and we began to walk. He smelled of something I could not place then. He was not as heavy as I thought he would be. Vargas was almost as tall and as broad in the shoulders as myself but I was stronger. More of my weight was muscle. And in my fights the men of Canción agreed that I was faster and with more intelligence while Vargas was pure furor.

It was a good night tonight. He said as we stumbled. Damiana mescal vino. And the women. Dios mío. You would not have appreciated it maricón but the women tonight. He whistled. To silence him I considered mentioning his killing the dog without an audience but I chose not to provoke him further. The mistresses sat in our laps wiggling. Letting us smell at their necks. Y El Tapado. He brought his favorite mistress.

I stopped walking.

But I played a good trick on her. Vargas continued. When Cantana got up from his chair to piss I leaned to her ear and licked it. Everyone had a great laugh when she slapped me. And then laughed more when I took her by the wrist and called her a whore and spit at her feet.

I dropped the arm of the fugitive and stepped back.

Which woman was this? I asked him. My voice calm. My hands clenching into fists without my having to will them to.

The one that does not cry. Vargas smiled. The one whose lips are perfect for.

My knuckle split his bottom lip over his teeth. Immediately blood spilled down his chest soaking into his shirt. He staggered back against the wall but remained standing. The punch sobered him some. I saw this in the way his eyes opened. He shook the hit from his brain and without bothering to touch his lip to check for the blood he stepped toward me. But I had already stepped toward him. Our arms locked. I pushed him back to the wall when suddenly a flash of light erupted before my eyes. I could feel blood from my nose spill over my lips. Down the back of my throat. I fell to one knee on the ground. I remember that he kicked me then. I heard my ribs crack and I then had some difficulty breathing after this. But still I gained my feet and quickly threw my fists into his face and arms and neck. He did the same.

We fought blindly. In a dream where our arms moved impossibly slow. I concentrated on his horrible face. The world around this spun empty. We felt in the dark for each other. A corner of his lip had come free from his face. I felt the need to vomit but did not. We locked arms more and his breath came hot into my ears when we went to the ground. Holding one another fierce as lovers even. He smelled of lovemaking. That was the smell. And this infuriated me more. We pulled on one another to be above the other. He bit into my arm and I crumpled in toward the hot pain before leaping back. When I felt his hands around my neck slip on the blood from my nose I wrapped my own hands around his. I had never found it so difficult to fight. But then I was straddling him and banging his head against the stones of the street listening to the sound of his choking.

With my thumbs I felt his throat caving. His hands wrapped around my forearms to try to pull them apart but then he gave up and pounded on my chest and cheeks and chin. Between his punches I saw his eyes become large and glassy. I had choked men before and knew that this was when to stop but thought only that he had licked her. Had shared time with her. He had heard her voice and felt her touch when she slapped him. And then to call her a whore. To spit at the feet of my love. I refused to believe that she had known anyone but me. The two of us were together even just that night. We swam and made love in the bay. Rough waves of the sea made gentle by the coral break. The muscles relaxed in Vargas neck and I knew that he was almost dead so I released him. When he hit me in the cheek with the full of his fist I did not think but hit him square in the face. His head swung loosely on his neck. He fell back and cracked his skull on a stone and was dead. I fell over with my chest pressed to his face. Smothering the fugitive as I heaved for breath crying.

 

F
or two weeks after this night I did not leave my room at the dentists. Because I had not slept well for some time before this fight I fell ill. In my small bed I wandered through feverish visions as the room spun around me. When I breathed sharp splinters of broken ribs seemed to pierce my lungs. I gagged on snot at the back of my throat and coughed blood.

The dentist and Javier took turns sitting beside me in the wood chair. Speaking in soft voices. Candle shadows flickering across the walls of the room. But when the dentist and Javier were not in the room my grandfather pulled the chair screeching closer to lean over and whisper his hot breath into my ear.

You were made by me for this. I felt his lips pressed against my ear turn into a smile. You can never bleed my blood from you.

The dentist held a bucket for me to vomit in. Javier pressing a wet cloth to my brow.

Jorge.

No.

We need to call for someone.

He will recover.

Javier Guillermo and the poet stood at the end of my bed passing something to each other secretly behind their backs. I held out my palm flat. The fat boy Cantana with his knife lurked in the corners hiding absurdly behind the skinny limbs of the wood chair. Ramón set a handful of sharpened teeth into the palm of my hand. Then he looked into the palm of his own hand and his face was powdered white by giggling mistresses.