The Dog Fighter (32 page)

He will be very happy that you have brought this. Mendoza said to Cantana. He has been down on the beach for two days now digging. Mendoza took the crate from me. How are you? He asked me.

Fine. I whispered almost. And you?

Busy. He indicated the dog behind him with its large head in the vice. Its eyes and tongue and tail the only thing moving. But good.

Is he down there now? Cantana asked and I came to as if from a dream.

Yes.

There was another then. One more that I would have to kill. I could not decide if I should kill these men together now or wait until I had judged the strength and size of the third man. Also I wanted to make sure there were no dogs out of their pens. I knew they would defend Mendoza and I did not have the claws or the heavy rug around my forearm to fight them. I had never fought the sharpened teeth. In all my time in Canción they had gone to Ramón.

Let us go and see his work. Cantana clapped his hands. I want to see this catch of his.

We followed Mendoza from the shed and down the narrow path toward the sand dunes. Grains thin in the wind along their delicate crests. I squinted my eyes. Scolded myself for not taking a file from the shed. A hammer. We left the dog with the bar pushed back in its mouth. Its tongue feeling around the rope at the corner of its molars. Whimpering.

Cantana and I walked looking down at our steps while Mendoza looked comfortably out over the horizon.

How do you keep the dog from gagging? The businessman asked Mendoza.

I do not put the bar so far back in their mouths. The dog trainer answered. When I first started this they would vomit on my boots. Pants. Todos.

I always thought that smell was your cheap cologne. The businessman chided his friend.

We saw the third man when we came to the top of the dunes. The he they had spoken of in the shed was a boy. The ten or eleven year old son of Mendoza. He sat on a boulder at the edge of the beach looking over the reflection of the sun on the sea. Throwing stones into the waves some distance away. The sounds of where we placed our steps hidden beneath the crashing waves. To the side of the boulder where he sat the boy had dug a large pit. He had left the shovel at the base of a great pile of sand to the side. I could not see what was at the bottom of the large pit because of this pile he had made. The vultures circled above. My heart went into my stomach at the sight of this boy. I would have to decide.

Ernesto! Mendoza called over the waves. Uncle Cantana has brought you a present.

The boy turned and leaped from the boulder and came running toward us. Cantana laughed a short laugh the laugh of a child himself again when he saw the boy smile. In the shade of the boulder the hipbones of a large old dog struggled to stand in the sand. He struggled and then decided better. His tongue hanging in the heat. Cantana gestured to Mendoza to hand him the crate. Never taking his sunglasses from the direction of the boy. Then the businessman knelt one knee in the sand and set the crate over his thigh. The boy stopped before him. Their eyes at the same level.

What do you say? Mendoza asked his son.

What is it?

Ernesto!

Thank you Uncle Cantana.

It is nothing.

Then the boy tore at the bow. The men smiled. Cantana set the crate in the sand and the boy wrenched back the slats using the ends of his small fingers.

You are going to get a sliver under your fingernail. Mendoza warned his son. Run for a hammer and bar.

But the boy chose not to listen. Instead he bit his lower lip and pried until he fell back into the sand when the slats came off in his hands. The men laughed. The boy sat forward and looked into the crate. The sticks of dynamite lay still and quiet and dangerous. The boy lifted one delicately.

Cuidado. Cantana said softly. Do you have what else we need? He asked Mendoza without looking from the boy.

In the shed. Ernesto go up and bring it down.

The boy sprinted up the path.

Come see what he has. Mendoza said.

Cantana and I followed Mendoza toward the pit the boy had dug. The dog in the shade of the boulder was harmless lying in the shade.

Ernesto looped chain around the tail to move it. Mendoza said to us. Then around the jaw and over the top of its head.

At the bottom of the pit a large whale curled with its mouth into its tail. It had died in the Pacific and washed onto the beach bloated and stinking. Curled now so splintered ends of its ribs pierced through the tough skin like baby teeth in the sun against the red muscle and blood. Cantana whistled in disbelief.

Dios mío. He struggled to light a cigarillo in the wind. Mendoza cupped his hands around the flame for his old friend. I never thought Mendoza to be a father of a son. This man who sharpened teeth. Thank you. Cantana said.

Can you believe he dug this by himself? Mendoza continued with much pride. Using the burros he moved the tail. And then the head. The tail and then the head again. Only little distances at a time.

He is very patient. Cantana said just below the sound of the sea.

I promised him we would help him cover it.

Dog fighter? Cantana looked to me.

I nodded.

I would do anything for my godson. Cantana clasped the mans shoulder.

Mendoza smiled at this. He gestured with his fingers for a taste of the businessmans cigarillo. Beyond this the sun lingered brilliantly on the crests of the waves. Filled the deep troughs with a turquoise colored shade. The skin of the whale was torn and scarred. Dried barnacles spotted its sides and tiny crabs moved awkwardly on claws in the water that had seeped through the sand into the large pit. The water made the dead whales blubber soft and loose where the chains had worked into it deeply. The smell was so strong I asked for one of Cantanas cigarillos.

How can he stand the smell? Cantana asked.

He says he does not even notice.

The wind had dried a light salt over the brow of the large ink colored eye that now saw nothing but still reflected light. This eyeball peppered with sand. A cluster of flies blown by the wind. The men stood with their backs to me. Unaware that I was sent to kill them. Mendoza handed the cigarillo back to Cantana and then pointed to a vulture with a crushed skull on the other side of the pile of sand.

He chased that down.

Ernesto? Cantana laughed.

No. The dog.

This one that can barely lift himself from the sand?

He pretended he was dead. Mendoza smiled with great pride. He did not blink the entire day. We stood above and watched the vulture hop up to him. He went to poke the dog in the eye with his beak and then the dog put the birds entire head in his mouth and crushed the skull.

Throw him in with the whale. Cantana suggested.

No. This old fish gets a spot on this beach all to himself. Mendoza said. Besides. I think the dog would tear off my arm before he let me have that dead bird. Let him drag it around for a while until it begins to smell also. I will have the boy boil it and feed it to those in the pens.

The wet nose of the old dog had been sprinkled with sand. Dozing.

Did you ever fight him? I asked Mendoza but Cantana answered for the trainer.

I once witnessed this dog kill a man after the man broke both of his back legs. The businessman then turned to Mendoza. Does he still do the trick?

No.

Are you certain? Cantana nudged the trainer.

Do not tease him. Mendoza answered sharply.

You need to show the dog fighter the trick.

No.

The dog. Cantana held up his hand before his mouth to lean and whisper more to me but Mendoza interrupted.

Not anymore he does not.

But then the boy with his chin pressed to the detonation box and arms full of wire came down the rocky path. He did not need to look at his bare feet he knew the path so well.

Papá. The boy called Mendoza. The dog is still in the harness.

Mendoza had gone to urinate by the boulder where the old dog lay.

He is fine.

Cantana knelt by the side of the pit. He whispered to the boy.

Does the old one still do the trick?

Papá says no.

Maybe later we will ask him. Okay?

The boy slid down into the pit until standing on the bulk of the whale his head was just level with the beach. The boy held a large knife in his hand.

Before the sun goes down. Cantana smiled.

And then with the knife the boy made deeps cuts into the whales side for the dynamite. His hands and bare feet slippery from the blood. The sand sticking to his legs. Cantana and Mendoza cut the wire and handed them to me to braid. The boy fixed the wire to the three sticks and then buried them within the great body of the whale up to his armpit. In one great cut above the eye so one stick rested against the skull. While I shoveled sand over the tail Mendoza ran the cable a safe distance down the beach. The boy looked up at me to help him from the large pit. If I broke his neck the grown men would be more fierce than I wanted them. But if I left the boy in the pit with the whale and killed Cantana first then Mendoza would not be so difficult. The boy could watch. If he escaped from the large pit he would be too scared to run. Or I could chase him down.

Do not forget the knife. Cantana pointed.

Ernesto gathered his knife in one hand and then held out his arm for me to take the wrist of. Mendoza was still some distance away stretching the cable. Cantanas neck very near to my hands. The boy looked up to me. In his dark eyes I saw myself grab the neck of Cantana. His tongue lolled and his sunglasses fell to the end of his nose and sand sank to his burning eyes sharp as glass shards. The decision as delicate as the memory we have to judge them on. But room enough in the world to hold them all. The deaths and births and murders the same. Even without us making them the world does not end with each one not done or done.

There was too much of my grandfathers voice in this killing. Too much of the poets betrayal and Guillermos passion. None of my own decisions were made until I reached out for the boys wrist and pulled him from the large pit. I tousled his hair. Because that is what you do to keep them from thinking something is wrong.

I decided to wait to kill Cantana until during the return to Canción. The boy did not need to see me become my grandfathers voice before him. That would die with me. And so we spent the next hours burying the whale under a mound of sand. All of us working together. Even the businessman Cantana with his soft hands using a shovel. And when we finished we lured the old dog growling using the dead vulture from his shade in the boulder down the beach. There Mendoza fixed the ends of the wires in the box and the boy put all his weight on the handle and the explosion was tremendous. A cloud of sand lifted into the sky and heavy steaks of whale meat splashed in the water.

We never needed to bury it! Cantana yelled laughing.

Mendoza and the boy were laughing also. I could not stop smiling.

The boy ran to the blackened pit. A large portion of the whale still lay at the bottom of an even larger pit now. The boy danced laughing around the open grave.

Mira. Cantana smiled his smile. Look at the boy.

By not killing the boy or killing in front of him I had decided on my own. And this was more than the voice of my grandfather or the poet had ever given me in all their advice and stories.

Before we left Mendozas Cantana sat at a table in the small stone house and called the boy to his side. He whispered into the boys ear. Then the boy turned to his father standing near the stove preparing food for his dogs after we had eaten and asked.

Can we please show the dog fighter the trick?

Mendoza looked over to Cantana who only smiled at the ceiling. Whistling. Mendoza took a towel from his shoulder and wiped his hands. He squatted before his son.

Will you feed the boys on your own tonight? He asked in a serious voice.

Yes.

Before dark?

Yes. The boys eyes smiled more.

And tomorrow?

Yes.

By yourself?

I promise.

Bring him in.

The boy ran from the room. Cantana gave a short laugh. Smacked the table with his palm flat.

If only you had a son of your own and no wife. Mendoza shook his head at his friend. Both men smiling. Oh how I would torture you.

Look at that boys eyes. The businessman said to his friend. This is no torture.

The boy returned to the room struggling to pull the heavy dog by the scruff of its neck. The old dog wheezed some. Mendoza sat in a chair by the table. He sat facing it. The boy pushed the end of the dog to sit so that he faced Mendoza some feet away.

Bring me the matches. Mendoza instructed the boy. Cantana shifted in his seat like a child. Constantly smiling. Standing on his toes the boy took down a greasy box of matches from a shelf above the stove. Now show him. Mendoza said.

The boy rattled the box in front of the dog and its tail began to wag some flat against the hard packed floor. Whispering some in the sand. Its ears perked and saliva showed at the corners of its mouth. The skin around the eyes heavy with age. Eyes dim but alive now some also. The boy handed the box to his father and stood back as Mendoza leaned toward the dog and said in a voice that was very much pretend.