The Dog Fighter (8 page)

La lucha de los perros! Eduardo shouted. This is the fighting of dogs hombre!

Ramón hurried to his feet. Pushing the dog from him. The eyes of the drunk behind bloodshot and mad. He rattled the fence of the ring as if he wanted to be the one on the inside. Fear twitched in the slender muscles around Ramóns mouth and eyes.

As the yelling men cried for more Ramón swung wildly at the dog. Stopping only when he had fooled it into locking its jaws around the rug. Mendoza shook his head. But with the dog hanging from his arm Ramón shook the rug as if it were on fire. His eyes showing pain from the teeth. The dog hung limply with its eyes rolled back into its skull. Eyelids fluttering over pearls. Soon from under the rug a line of blood came to show on the back of the dog fighters hand. The sharpened teeth had gone through. When the blood lashed onto the concrete floor with each swing of Ramóns arm the ragmen stepped closer to the light from shadows wetting their lips. The dog weighed heavily from the dog fighters arm. He tried to make a fist of his gloved hand but ended up slapping the dog repeatedly on the head.

Pendejo! Use the claws! Eduardo yelled. He fights like a woman.

Trying feverishly to break from the dogs locked jaws Ramón stepped back and slipped on his own blood. The men cheered when he had fallen to the ground. Some of the businessmen stood in anticipation.

Now the dog has him! Eduardo clasped my arm.

Those businessmen who sat patiently watched the mistresses carefully from the corners of their eyes. Cantana seemed to not be watching the fighting at all. He brought his left hand from his pocket to light a fresh cigarillo. I did not understand then why he wore only the one glove. When Cantana finished lighting the cigarillo with great concentration he took his sunglasses down from his face and while keeping his eyelids closed cleaned the lenses of the glasses with a fine cloth from the inside pocket of his coat.

The yelling men returned my attention to the ring. Embracing on the ground the claws of the dogs hind legs dug into the skin above Ramóns knee. The yelling men laughed and cheered. Ramón screamed in pain. The mistresses hid their eyes from the bone showing white through the loose skin. But those mistresses who had seen the bone began to cry. The businessmen wrapped their arms around the womens shoulders and over their sweet smelling hair they made eyes at each other.

This was a small game the businessmen played. Waiting to see which of the women cried first and which would cry last because to put money only on the fighting of dogs was never enough for them.

The teeth of the dog went deeper into Ramóns forearm. The muscles in his handsome face had tightened into a knotted bunch. But something passed over his eyes still. For as much pain as there was he was aware. The pain does this I would learn. Strengthens your concentration.

The yelling men cheered as Ramón put his free hand under the dog and swiped at its neck. Stabbing it with the short metal claws. The dog snarled until Ramón tore free a fistful of throat. Then a loud gurgle came from within the dog as it unlocked its jaws and began to claw at the floor. Ramón dragged himself to the fence. His hands holding his bleeding knee. Across from Ramón the dog lay shivering. Blood came from its mouth deep from within its throat. Its nails scraping the concrete floor could not be heard with the men yelling who had bet on Ramón to win.

Behind the fence Mendoza shook his head. While watching the fight he had coiled the rope leash around his palm and elbow. He then turned from the ring as his dog searched with shocked eyes for air to breathe. Some men yelled because they had won and some laughed because they had lost. The warehouse shuddered.

Using the fence Ramón pulled himself to his feet. He raised his gloved fist above his head and the men began to chant his name.

Ramón! Ramón! Ramón!

Cantana put his glasses on and smiled. His eyes closed during the fight. Some of the mistresses peeked thinking the fight was done. Their mascara streaming black tears down powdered cheeks. Ramón hobbled over to the dog and then he jumped onto the head of the dog to crush its skull. Twice he did this with his face knotted in pain. Once after the dog was already dead. Slipping in its blood and waving his arms comically to keep his balance. The mistresses witnessed the moment clearly and it broke them in tears.

There were several more fights that night. All very bloody and real. When the last fight was done I walked behind the yelling men down the hill from the mine into the dark streets of Canción. Eduardo had gone with Cantana and some of the other businessmen and their mistresses to a cantina.

You should come with us. He said to me afterward. Find yourself a whore.

But I chose to be alone with the yelling men. The rain had passed for the night to the north and the air smelled clean of wet flowering cacti and the yellow petals of the herb damiana glowing under the full moon. The men talked of the fighting as I followed them along an uneven dirt road. Our footprints black in damp earth already dusty though in the warm air of Baja. The talk was mostly of Ramón. Praising his strength and the return he made from death when the dog was locked on his arm. Those who did not have money to bet did not talk of what was won or lost but spoke of the skill of the dogs and the fighters who killed them. They spoke of the fighters that had been seriously injured. Of one fighter who pulled the head of a dog free from a bite it had into his leg by burying his fingers in the ears of the dog and pulling against the inside of its skull. When this dogs jaws came away a tooth had broken off into the muscle of the fighters leg. The men laughed about this. Shivering. But that night all the fighters had won. The ragmen were left with the blood and mierda of dogs alone.

As we entered the city the lights of Canción were gold coins scattered over black stones rinsed of the sandy dust. Soon the businessmen passed in sturdy black American made automobiles. The mistresses fixing their makeup in blue mirrors. Their glowing teeth passing in the dark. I walked alone among the men as they made their way to the large plaza to drink in the cantinas. It was late in the night but the music was made stronger by our voices arriving. A single rain cloud passed overhead lightly sprinkling. The lights from the cantinas shone warmly on the undersides of the fig trees lining the large square.

I decided to drink one beer. I sat at a table by myself listening to one man tell another of the fighting. This man reenacted the fight with his entire body while other men interrupted from time to time to build on the action. The men who had not been at the fighting listened carefully to every word. While they spoke I expected Ramón to walk into the plaza with his arm hurt and his leg in bandages but his appearance clean and proud. The men repeated his name in his absence. They would have bought him cups of mescal or damiana or rum even and patted him on the back I imagined.

But Ramón did not come to the plaza. I realized that he did not need to. The men took him from the fighting with their words. They carried him on the shoulders of their stories. Sitting there alone I realized that it was myself I wanted to see come into the large square that night. To be the one the men praised for such great strength and ability. Soon I was drunk on their talk. I heard my own name in their words and voices. My victories were very great. My fights all very dangerous. The dogs all very intelligent and valeroso. The men in the cantinas and cafés went on and on talking about my fighting and the stories they told of me then they still tell today.

Three

I
would have to wait until the next full moon before I could stand across from the teeth as Ramón had done. In this time of anticipation my grandfathers voice was never so strong in me. I passed the days dreaming of how I was to kill the dogs. Of how the crowds would sing my name and carry my story to the plaza mayor. During the workday now I expected the other men to recognize who it was that passed among them.

He is the best of them. I imagined. No one is stronger or better skilled.

At this time I was a very lonely young man. And thoughts like these are fine company. They kept me from remembering that I was nothing more than a murderer and a bully. Quiet or not.

Still I did not know how to prepare for the fighting of dogs. Working at the hotel I improved my strength by increasing the loads I lifted. Once I won some money on a bet after I raised a skinny young man from Matamoros to the top floor sitting on a pallet of blocks. Each evening after work I swam with my canvas bag filled with rocks tied to my back. And in the mornings to the smell of dawn stove fires I searched for the dogs of Canción. I stalked them in the dim streets while lamps came on in kitchen windows. When the air was so still that sheet metal blades of the windmills moved backward. But more and more on these morning walks thoughts of my greatness were interrupted by words painted in red on the walls.

Canción por los Cancioneros! Cantana a la chingada!

I despised this mans name more than the man himself because I desired the fear he possessed in others. The attention he commanded from many.

After your first fight. I told myself. Your name will be known to all. You will no longer have to construct his hotel.

I spoke in this way to myself constantly. Only when I floated on my back in the calm water lost to the drifting did I allow myself to think.

Or maybe you will die by the teeth.

When I did encounter the dogs of Canción I studied how they fought one another. They were thin and wild and hungry and this made them very fierce. Children threw stones at their pinched sides. Their eyes dark and sunken. When they fought they snapped at each other from the shade of fallen walls where they rested weak with hunger. They tore into one another fighting in sandy lots littered with sharp coral and broken glass under their soft paws. Where paper trash had been made worn like paper money by the constant sun. Down by the docks over decaying mounds of fish innards I watched how they bent in half and showed their teeth. Growled and leaped. Twisted and snarled or whimpered and bled. In all the fights their movements the same and only for each was the death unique.

One morning early I allowed one dog to kill another where a fisherman had thrown the stomach of a dorado onto some warm dusty stones. The two dogs fought until one began to bleed from the corner of its eye. Other dogs seeing that one was injured and the other was exhausted came together against the exhausted one knowing that the injured one would retreat. Again and again they fought over the stomach. I watched as they tangled and the injured fell back. Snarling with the last of their panting breaths. I did not stop them but waited with the fisherman to see finally the one that was last to be seriously injured and therefore left alone to eat.

The dogs were all very fast and vicious. But when I walked alone searching for them my name was in the sound of my steps on those stones. Over and over with each step on the voices of many. Only then was I not alone. I desired more and more the mistresses crying on my shoulder. To feel through expensive cotton shirts the cool weight of the businessmens rings patting me on the back. To have my name said in the same breath but before Cantanas.

As the fight neared I no longer slept easily under the stars. I was very excited about the fighting but I woke often from difficult dreams of my grandfathers voice leading me toward the sharpened teeth. I woke feverish to the hotel still and quiet around me. A cool breeze passing over metal tools warm from the hands of the workingmen. The wires of the scaffolding shrinking in the cool dark after the full sun of the day. Often when I woke from these dreams unable to sleep I sat with my legs dangling over the edge of the scaffolding. On certain streetlamps I fixed my eyes until their halos squared in a recession and came or went from me spinning. In the center of these squares of light I chose what was real and what could be with a focusing of my eyes. I was tired and this was an easy way to think that I could affect the world by moving my tiniest muscles.

I tried to empty my mind in this way before returning to my bedroll. But most times my thoughts would not let me rest. Before I drank to shut down my mind but I knew that if I began drinking again I would become weak and slow and lose. And so I never left the hotel for the cantinas but sat dangerously close to the edge of the scaffolding thinking for hours. Eventually my thoughts led to my father. Wondering if he was still alive in Veracruz. It was easier for me to blame him for my mothers death than to consider what my grandfathers stories had made me into. I refused to follow thoughts of my mother. It was easier to imagine my victories than think of my faults.

The moon grew slowly more full. One night there was a lightning storm in the east. The surface of the sea in that distance glowed with electricity. I thought of how thoughts come. If they are born within us new as we grow or born with us forever limiting our growth. Other nights I studied how shadows in the buildings of the small city changed with the days and weeks of the changing moons. I looked over the buildings that were nothing more than walled rooms and wondered how many men slept with their backs turned to their loves. I was shamed by my memory of Perla and how I had allowed her to mislead me. When I closed my eyes I saw the photographs of her and her husband on the walls of their room. Remembered them vividly at the corner of my eye. Her hair draped over my face and neck. Her forehead pressed to mine. Kissing the thin flesh along the insides of her forearms after she collapsed onto me. The small room was warm from our breaths before I left into the foggy mornings for work in the prune orchards. At night on the top floor of the hotel I no longer experienced dreams. I had confined them to my days. To forget her I thought of the dogs. And even though I was very tired after nights like these I lifted more and more with the crane to exhaust my mind. Dreading the sleeplessness that was to come.

Much changed late one night. Listening to the tiny waves wash onto the beach unremarkably I stirred from a half sleep to the sound of feet shuffling over the sandy concrete floor below. The breeze carried that faint sound to where I raised my head from my pants rolled as a pillow. I recognized the creaking of the scaffold when someone was climbing on it but then the wind died suddenly and I heard nothing. Some moments later the shuffling of feet returned. That and whispering.

Niños. I thought to myself and lay back down.

I rested my head on the pants again and listened for the waves. Some few minutes passed like this before an explosion of fire came up the stairwell. The sky blossomed white. Ridges of the citys rooftops were bleached bones of some skeleton disorganized by wind. The streetlamps a shade darker than that pale burst of light. I scrambled from my bedroll as the darkness returned some. Yellow and red flames burned along the top of the scaffolding at the wall to the north. My ears rang from the explosion. I had little understanding of direction. With my balance undone I struggled to put my pants on. I fell to my knee and saw that cracks had coursed through the floor. I heard chunks of concrete and metal falling beneath me and then the northwest corner of the hotel began to sink. The scaffolding at this end bending and collapsing onto itself until a cloud of concrete dust surrounded the hotel traveling through the empty rooms and hallways thick and sweet smelling from smoke. In the confusion I heard several voices cheering. I was in shock. Angry from being startled by the sudden explosion.

The collapsing corner settled. From the ground I watched the fire climb along the wooden beams and posts like skinny ghosts made of flames. Some mans shirt burned along the sleeve toward where the collar was hooked on a nail. I stood watching this when a group of men arrived shouting and carrying buckets. Soon we were filling the buckets with bay water and throwing it on the collapsed scaffolding before it spread to that which was still standing. When more men and women arrived we formed lines from the water to the fire. The water sloshing over the tops of the buckets and soaking our pants from the knees down. Yelling and hurrying the buckets along. Our fingers aching from the thin metal handles. I carried three or four at a time until there were enough men and women to take them from me. Boys ran along these lines smiling chased by dogs barking excited by being so near to something so dangerous. Something los Cancioneros would tell stories about in the years to come. Childrens eyes already remembering flames dancing on the surface of the sloshing black water.

At some point a stir of yells came just before the crashing of the last of scaffolding along the north side of the building. Fire and embers sifted down around us like hot snowflakes dying black. A man danced out from his burning shirt as boys pointed and laughed. Women thinking to wet the childrens hair. The scaffolding that had fallen was left to smolder on the ground when it all came to settle. Tiny fires were left to burn themselves out on the concrete floors and piles of slender iron reinforcement bars. A solitary palm down by the water burned like some enormous candle. The children watched this amazed. Wondering how the flames had reached it. Men and women wiped soot dampened by sweat from their noses and foreheads. Looked down at their hands. We stood judging the slouched corner of the hotel when two young boys came calling for us to follow them to a wall where written in fresh red paint were the words.

Cantana es un muneco de los gringos!

Putting out the fire had been instinctive. But now there was some shame in the eyes of many who read these words. Rumors spread of brave young men dressed in black throwing paint on the buildings owned by the businessmen. On the banks and storehouses. There were several other fires in Canción that night. A businessmans American made automobile was destroyed. Men and women whispered to one another of these young men carrying bags filled with explosives laughing high laughs like demons as they went through the city striking at Cantana and the other businessmen from the shadows.

At dawn looped wires glowed orange beneath the gray ash and charcoal. Workingmen who were not already down at the hotel from the dormitory arrived and we shoveled sand onto the smoldering remains of the scaffolding. We set aside those cordón logs and posts that could be used again. Architects and engineers arrived soon after with a number of the businessmen. The sun came above the mouth of the bay as it had each morning bright and full and without clouds. We shoveled and watched as the engineers inspected the walls. One workingman who coughed and spat dark blood on the concrete deck after years of working in gypsum mines in the north of Baja without thinking reached into the ash for the burned handle of a hammer. We laughed as he danced hunched over his fist. Flesh left on the handle of the hammer. The smell like spiced meat. The businessmen paused when they heard his cry but then returned to running their fingers over the cracks in the floors.

Just before noon a dusty 1932 black limousine came down a cobblestone street to the hotel. I had heard of this car often and of how it was brought to Canción on a boat from the United States some years before there were any automobiles in Canción. How three dozen men and sets of pulleys and fishing boat masts buried in the sand with concrete were needed to lift it from the deck of the boat. Cantana emerged from this limousine. His left hand in his pocket and his gloved right holding a thin black cigarillo to his lips. His sunglasses reflecting the scene before him. The businessmen and architects and engineers led Cantana around the base of the hotel and then up into it. In the stairwell coated in soot from the flames that had rushed up through it they took him to the top floor. He said nothing but listened closely to what they had to tell him. His face was without expression and his shoulders without tension.

A high corner of the lobby ceiling sagged some. Cantana ran his gloved finger through the soot where brass railings were to run alongside the wide staircase where a mural of the bay was to be painted. He came to stand looking over the edge of the sagging corner. Eduardo was with him. I could see that he was smoking nervously at the businessmans side. The other businessmen also very nervous. Noticing this Cantana put his cigarillo in his mouth and then with both of his hands he pretended to push against a column as if to push over the entire hotel from within. When he made this gesture several of the men placed their hands on him to stop. He smiled and laughed and patted them on the backs and pointed at them to let them know he had made some joke and then the men laughed but not easily.

Look how he plays his games when all the work we have done is destroyed. One workingman said.

Destroyed? Another asked. This is just more work they will have to pay us for.

Destroyed or not. They said. Cantana will find some way to profit from this in the end.

Before Cantana left the hotel in his limousine that morning he listened carefully to Eduardo while nodding his head. Then he followed the stocky foreman and several others down the street to where the painted words had dried on the wall. Cantana stood before the words just as an old man prepared to paint over them.

No. No. Cantana said in a soft voice to the old man. Let me. Cantana put his hand on the shoulder of the man. He stepped on the end of his cigarillo after dropping it to the hard dirt and then with the brush held carefully so as not to drip onto his glove Cantana said to the old man.