The Dog Fighter (11 page)

That is a stupid reason.

My father spoke English. I admitted then. It has always been something I have wanted to learn.

I make money typing letters for people who cannot write their own names in Spanish. The poet answered.

You look busy. I responded quickly and the poet smiled at this. His gums were purple. The teeth he had black. He dabbed out his cigarette in an ashtray and lit another.

I do not want your money. He said.

Then I will buy you cigarettes.

I smoke very expensive cigarettes. He lied.

I can afford them.

What do you do for work to be able to afford expensive cigarettes? He asked.

I fight dogs.

After saying this I felt ashamed of myself. I had fought only one dog. The poet said nothing in response but licked his thumb and peeled a sheet of paper from a stack in a box nearby and fed it into a typewriter at his side.

Your first lesson. He spoke while beginning to type. Is to copy a poem of mine. You can write verdad?

Yes.

Where did you learn to write?

My father.

What does this father of yours do for work?

The poet lashing his long fingers over the keys with the cigarette smoke rising in his face. Forcing him to squint.

He was a doctor. I answered.

Was?

Yes.

What happened?

He is dead to me.

The poet laughed a short laugh.

You are a very serious young man dog fighter. Well. He said taking the paper from the typewriter with a wave of his hand. If your father were still alive to you he might have enjoyed this poem of mine very much. It is about the body. A little something I wrote for fun some years ago.

I copied the lines of the poem that night dozens of times. I sat on my bed and when the paper was gone I wrote on the bottom of the seat of my chair. Picking out the words I recognized and repeating them aloud in a quiet voice so the dentist and young men conspiring in the back room below would not hear me. It had been many years since I heard the words in English that my father had taught me. I had forgotten most of them but some returned beautifully over the page as I sounded them carefully with my clumsy tongue.

There once was a man from Nantucket

I wrote it again and again. Sounding each letter as best I could. Savoring them like pieces of fruit. Reducing them to nothing in my mouth like hard candy. Exhausted I slept easily that night and for years now whenever I have trouble sleeping I copy old poems by lamplight. Pretending the words are my own. Pretending that I am composing them for the world for the first time.

 

I
n my time in Canción I came to know many people. But the old poet was the one I spent the most time with. We spent many hours at his stall in the market where he typed letters for those who could not read or write. But mostly he drank beer and made eyes at the young women and girls walking with their mothers and grandmothers through the mercado. He spoke vulgar phrases to them in English without caring if they understood or not. But always his terrible smile told everything. One time I watched the poet spit at the feet of a young woman when she laughed at him for smiling at her with his small black teeth. Many women and mothers in the market yelled at the poet and many men wanted to fight him for the disrespect he gave to their women.

He is worse now that you are here. One of the old women of the market told me. He knows you will defend him.

Like my father the poet was a very intelligent man. Always he was teaching me of the history of Canción as my father had done with Veracruz.

Cortés himself landed on the beach here. The poet said. Even in the sixteenth century we were famous for our pearls. Some made it into the crown jewels of Spain. But even the great conquistador could not establish a settlement here and for centuries Baja was considered a desolate land. Only since the end of the First World War have we become much in the minds of anyone. American investors in particular. And that is because Díaz encouraged this.

I learned from the poet that during El Porfiriato American surveyors discovered veins of iron ore and entire mountainsides rich in gypsum graphite mercury nickel and sulfur.

Suddenly Baja was a land not so desolate after all. The poet said.

But Canción was always famous for its pearls. For its calm bay and neighboring islands that sheltered great oyster beds. Quickly the city became the main port of the peninsula. Busy with trade of pearls and later precious metals. But just before World War II disease ruined the oyster beds along the peninsula. Without the pearls to dive for many Cancioneros were forced to return to the mainland or venture there for the first time. The city although still very beautiful was now very poor.

We became happily forgotten. The poet said. But this was not to be for very long. American investors and their Mexican puppets were soon warming their hands over other possibilities for Canción.

When I arrived in the forgotten city men drank beer or damiana in the shade of cantina awnings talking of the war that had taken place in Europe and Africa and the Pacific. Of what we won with the Americans victory. Of what we would lose.

Much will change with the construction of this hotel. The poet told me. In war there is always a winner. And the winner will always want a place in the sun to relax.

Although the poet spit at the feet of young women who did not return his smiles he was more good than he let people know. Many in the market told me often of what a horrible man he was. How he looked at and treated women. About the way he spoke to them. They said that the old poet had never known love and that he never would. But I was the one killing dogs then and of me they spoke only with praise.

Often. The poet said. For these men who work on the hotel. Or the businessmen. Or people I do not like the look of. I type vulgar things in English when they are paying me to write letters to their mothers. But sometimes I write poems. People ask me to write about how poor they are. About the death of a sister or father. They want me to write to others for money. But these people they write to are as poor as they are. So I write a poem instead. I think receiving a poem without expecting a poem is something of a poem itself verdad?

The poet was always talking this way. Always he was reciting to me some of his own poems.

That love is all there is. Is all we know of love. It is enough the freight should be. Proportioned to the groove. You like that? He asked. Smiling sheepishly when I nodded speechless at such beautiful and difficult words. It is nothing really. Only a little something I came up with the other day.

If the poet was not speaking of poetry then he was speaking of women. Once when I was quietly writing out my lessons at his stall in the market he interrupted to ask me which part of a woman I prefer the best.

Which part? I asked. Thinking out loud.

Which is your right hand! He yelled at me then. There! He slapped. If you need to have time to think then you do not know women!

I have known many women. I said.

The old poet leaned toward me with his eyes narrow behind the thick glasses.

Do not ever lie to me.

The poet sat back. This was true. Perla was the only woman I had known more than once and without having to pay.

Which part of the woman do you prefer? I asked to take his attention from me.

The smell. He said.

The smell? I tried to laugh.

Yes. That smell too. He smiled. But I mean the smell of a woman you love.

But that is not part of a woman. I argued.

The poet removed his glasses to clean them with a rag he used to oil his typewriters. He lowered his voice so that the women around us did not hear.

You have much to learn young man. The smell of a woman is the most beautiful poem. Unwritable. A woman may leave you for another man and take her face from you but you cannot know the face of a woman like you can remember her smell. She may leave you forever. She may die. But her smell will haunt you when she is gone. Like a blossom opening she comes. The time when you kissed her neck in the shade of a flowering tree. The smell of her soap. Of a perfume you bought for her. Sweat on your own body together. The taste of her left on your upper lip the morning after you make love. You can never touch the hand or the face of a woman after she is gone. But if you love a woman you discover the smell of her in many things. And in those things she surprises you forever. The poet came to the edge of his seat with his cigarette at the corner of his mouth. His eyelids closed and his hands wiping the glasses with the rag. Young man when you find a woman that you love do many things with that woman so that when she is gone from you you will have memories of her to surprise you in your every day.

I was quiet then. Because of how vulgar the poet often spoke of women in the market I did not tell him of her. I was afraid even with all of his talk of poetry and beauty that he would not understand.

After the smell. The poet said then putting on his glasses and smiling at me. I prefer the ass.

The market closed just after dark each night. In those first weeks without knowing anyone else the poet and I did much walking together. He spoke often of friends of his who spent their time playing billiards in the evenings. Of old men who knew me as a fighter and young men who appreciated the fighting and also wanted to meet me.

I would prefer not to. I told him. I prefer the calm of our walks. Of practicing English together.

You act like some young fool in love. The poet said but I was quiet.

In lamplight of small squares after dark I walked with the poet listening to his stories of Canción.

There was a poor man who lived in this building here. He once said about a stone wall destroyed by time. The door still stood but it was easy to walk around. This man loved his wife. The poet continued. He bought her cheap jewelry. Whatever he could afford. She knew how hard her husband worked. But one day she was bitten by a spider. Her entire leg went swollen. He wanted to take her to the doctor but she knew they did not have the money. I am fine she said. It will go away. But it did not. And finally when the husband did take his wife to the doctor the doctor had to cut her leg off.

Is that a true story? I asked him.

Yes. He said. I do not lie to you.

On our walks we passed old women bent over water pumps who whispered my name. Men chewing on toothpicks or standing in doorways recognized me by raising their chins. There were times when I suspected that the poet did not enjoy being alongside me for all the attention I won.

You must be careful now that they know you. He said. People will want things from you or nothing but to have their name said with yours. Some will want to be with you when you walk these streets only for the hope of having others recognize them with you.

What about you? I asked him.

Me?

Yes. You.

You are lucky to have me as your friend dog fighter.

Late at night when I was awake copying the poets poems in English the knocking came on the heavy wood door to the compound. I could not help but hope that it was her. But always it was the shadow of the dentist and someone I could not discern. The music from the back room that always followed this knock made me restless. As my second fight approached I was more and more anxious to encounter her again. The knocking only made me want to search the city at night even when I knew I was not to find her.

Along the malecón on these nights I passed a young couple kissing. Holding hands on the beach in the light of the cantinas with the laughter and music. One night I decided to walk toward the electrical station because it was a mile south from the outskirts of the city and I had not been there. I passed the depósito where we fought the dogs. It was dark with the windows boarded. Someone had thrown feed for chickens in the vacant lot where the businessmen had parked their American made automobiles. Not far down the street from this I walked into the light of an open window through the sheer curtains of which I could see a man in his undershirt sitting at the kitchen table while his wife worked at the stove. The radio was turned to a station from Ensenada. Neither spoke as the wife set a plate of eggs and flour tortillas in front of the man. She sat across from him at the table while he ate in silence. I stood in the shadows of a doorjamb across the narrow street from this watching them in their home. The man was bald but for some few hairs just above his forehead. When he was near to finishing his meal the wife rose and brought from the stove hot coffee. She set this in front of him while she sat and then he reached out with his free hand and set his hand on top of hers resting on the table. They sat like this for some time. Tired. The man finishing his eggs with his hand massaging the wifes hand.

At the outskirts of the small city the neighborhoods were very poor. The jacales were of mud and straw or some of wood planks and the worst of canvas. Women threw dirty water into the uneven alleyways. From behind a canvas tent I could hear a man or a woman coughing from deep within their chest. For as beautiful and peaceful as it was in Canción the city was not without its troubles. Near the electrical station there was a man in shadows bending over and standing up collecting his belongings from the ground. Then a woman came from the door of the building and threw more of this mans belongings onto the hard packed dirt. She cursed at the man as he gathered his clothes in his arms. I did not want to walk through this intimacy. I decided to return to my room at the compound in hope that the music was no longer playing softly.