The Dog Fighter (19 page)

When I witnessed his hand move in an intimate caress I refused to believe he had known her. I considered standing and placing my hands on his warm ears and breaking his neck. But I was not ready to die without knowing her. It was easier to think that he had never known her. I convinced myself of this to prevent myself from attacking Cantana and being killed after I did. The poet had taught me if anything to be smarter. To be patient for my time. So when he touched her like this she sat erect under his touch and it thrilled me to see that she was uncomfortable. She was beneath his hand but away from him also. She could feel my eyes on her and this was a game she played sliding from him to let me know that she loved me. And when his fingers would move to adjust to the pressure of her moving from him he would follow her. Knowing I think why she moved from him. The fighting happened in the ring in front of us but I only watched his hand placed in the small of her back and her moving from him. And in all this all my hatred for Cantana and all my love for her lived.

It was during the fugitives fight that the yelling men turned their backs on the ring. Over the rooftops of Canción black smoke rose from the direction of the hotel. There were several fires. The yelling men pushed toward the edge of the rooftop but careful not to cut their hands on the shards of glass along the tops of the walls hidden some by the bougainvillea vines. The black smoke of the fires captivated us all. Fighting his dog while no one was watching Vargas looked strange in the ring when I turned to him. He was alone. I realized then that the fighting of dogs does not exist without an audience. The fire at the hotel the same.

Many of the businessmen clenched their teeth in anger when they saw the smoke. Pointed in the direction of the fire and waved their hands. The businessmen took the mistresses by the arm roughly as if they were threatened but responsible for the fire somehow also. One of the women refused to be pulled in this way and she slapped at one of the businessmen. I wondered if this was the one who had punched Vargas. The businessman hit this woman in the face then. His hand closed. She went to the ground holding her eye. Several of the yelling men stepped toward this but Elías was there between the yelling men and the businessman with his revolver.

My eyes went to find her. Also to see the reaction of Cantana. But they were gone from the rooftop. Ramón gone with them. Vargas was alone in the ring and only the ragmen witnessed him kill the dog and they now were bent over the blood on the floor with their backs to us all mopping hungrily.

After I dressed quickly I went to the hotel to see what the fires were from. The throats of two guards had been slit and their rifles stolen. The tractors used for moving the earth to make the swimming pool and terraces for sunbathers had been set on fire. A woman came down from her window across the way and was speaking quietly to a man next to me of what she had witnessed.

They climbed onto the backs of the machines and attacked the wires to the engines with the claws of hammers. She said. Then they poured something on machines and threw matches onto this. They ran laughing.

You should tell the businessmen what you saw. The man said to her.

Why? She asked. So they can torture me when I tell them the truth. That I do not know who the young men were? That I saw only shadows in this moonlight.

Down the crowded street the men and women had come carrying buckets of water. Some men encouraged them to stop and set the buckets down. The reflection of flames danced in our eyes. The buckets made it no farther. Children used the water to splash the dogs snarling and barking at the machines. The light of the fire from the burning tractors cast the shadows of the boys watching from their canoes tall and lean across the black bay. I looked for the poet and Guillermo.

Businessmen who came from the fight were ordering a group of workingmen to throw the water on the machines. One of the businessmen put his hands on the neck of one man who was not running. While choking this workingman the businessmans suit jacket tore. A crease of narrow lightning down his spine.

Throw the water! He cursed.

But the man could not stand. Police wrestled back men crowding the businessman with his hands around the one mans neck. Other businessmen watched this. Their hands empty. The hands of the one businessman with the torn jacket grew from the neck of the man whose body was trying to stand from his knees where he was choked down to.

Off to the side of this commotion the bodies of the guards were covered by a woman with canvas sacks I once used to carry sand for the cinder blocks. The dead mens skin had paled some in the moonlight. But more from the dark slits in their throats. Like when a fish is brought from water. Not far from this painted on a concrete column at the corner of the hotel in red paint were the dripping words.

Viva Canción!

Words that burn slowly around the wood of a door up its walls and into the roof before the building collapses into itself and as the last flames exhaust themselves slowly. Looking at the words in the light of the burning tractors I remembered seeing them painted on the body of the young man to mock him more already naked hanging from the scaffolding. I had been blind to so much of Canción then I was so taken with images in my mind only of myself and her. For all of its peace and beauty Canción was at war. The businessmen constructing their dreams in the daylight they shared with los Cancioneros also dreaming but different dreams.

First it will overshadow the cathedral. The poet had said. Soon enough the city itself.

That night on more and more walls the dripping words appeared. On many of these walls those who owned them or lived behind them refused to paint over them. Stories of young men striking from shadows only to disappear.

These young men they speak of are stronger than us all. The poet would say to me. We are blind to think we have no place in this war. Foolish to believe that we are an audience.

Lightning cracked above. Thunder collapsing over the bay. The man next to me looked to the sky and said to the woman who spoke quietly.

If it rains then God does prefer Cantana.

But it did not rain then. The tractors burned until late in the night. Smoldering until late in the morning of the next day.

 

I
was eager to hear what Guillermo and the poet had to say about the newest attack on the hotel. But Guillermo was busy at the back of the salon talking in whispers with the crying mother of the young man that had been hanged from the hotel scaffolding. The poet took my arm and we walked in silence to the knoll across from the cathedral. There I asked the poet if this was the mother but he answered no. I did not believe him but I did not think the poet lied to me and so I did not ask him.

The plaza was empty and in our silence I listened for the voices of those singing inside.

I am going in there one day. I said finally to the poet.

Good for you. He answered.

You have never been in there?

A long time ago. When Guillermo and I first came to Canción we slept in the pews at night until the priest found us. He told us to leave. Told us to sleep on the beach. We were lucky he only found us sleeping.

What do you mean?

We stole coins from the feet of the statues. Or from the box where people pay to buy candles. We had nothing. The poet took a long drag from his cigarette. His eyes far off. Then he laughed remembering something. You should have seen how fat this priest was. He barely fit in the pews.

My father said to me once that if he was to go to church with my mother he would go only to a church where the priest was skinny.

Your father was a wise man.

You two would have had much to talk about I think.

Maybe.

The voices in the church came to us then from across the sunny plaza. Soft and beautiful. The words indistinct.

My father used to tell me that Jesus was the greatest daydreamer. I told the poet then. That what He taught was beautiful but difficult also. He said Jesus deep in His heart wanted to be the most famous man that will ever live. That He sat on the bank of some river thinking to Himself how He could put His name not in the voices of many but in the voices of all. God. He thought. My father said to me. Tell them you are the son of God. Who is more known than God?

Ninguno. The poet answered.

Yes. That is what my father said. No one.

There is a mosaic of Him in there. The poet said when the singing ended. I used to sit in the pews at night studying it while Guillermos snoring kept me awake. Thinking about what I knew then of the Bible. What I had seen in the Revolution.

Did you think much of the killing?

Constantemente. But I did not ask him to forgive me. I would have to ask those who are dead. The poet kept his eyes on the cathedral.

I was toying with small stones while the old man spoke. Throwing them and watching them skip over the stones of the plaza and come to rest in the light. Their own shadows stark as themselves.

In Veracruz. I said. There was a politician who was murdered when I was a boy. He was walking with his own son down the street. The son was some feet ahead. The men came up behind this man when he was watching his son look into a shop window. Thinking nothing probably. And then they stabbed him in the throat. The son saw this. My mother was very sad for this boy. But my father said over and over that the politician was a bad person. One who deserves to die. That his son would grow up in a better place. A place Jesus would have wanted him to. My mother was very upset with my father for saying this. Yelling at him about God and Jesus and my grandfather just laughing and scratching his head and playing dumb. But my father was very calm. He explained to my mother that Jesus was a selfish man maybe.

Your father said maybe? The poet asked me.

No.

Go on.

He said that Jesus was a selfish man for wanting all of us to believe in His ideas alone. To live in the way that He wanted while beautiful but difficult. That innocent people die for the better of us all.

But the politician was not so innocent.

No.

Then I do not understand what you mean. Maybe your father did not call the politician innocent.

The poet looked at me carefully. I had been talking much and was very excited to have him listening but I could not remember where the story was or why I was telling it. The poets eyes were very intense. He bit his cigarillo with his teeth and smiled at me.

Is that it? He said then.

I cannot remember.

I think maybe you have more thinking to do on this one.

I nodded. He stood and wiped the dirt from the back of his cotton pants. He stretched and yawned.

Let us go and see if the old drunk is good for a laugh today.

The poet had become more and more patient with me. I went on with stories like these more and more if only to hear myself think. Often he led me to believe he thought one thing about one thing and the next moment something else. Laughing at me for agreeing when then I was only disagreeing with myself. It was an engaging confusion.

You have a good heart dog fighter. He said more and more. And strong shoulders and good hands. But your mind is behind your body some.

I knew he was right. I was learning from the poems he gave me. I would tell him how much I enjoyed them and then he would tell me he did not like them very much at all.

But why did you give them to me then? I asked.

I thought it was important for you to learn them. If they were good for you then it does not matter that they are not ones I like.

I do not understand. I said.

Most of the time neither do I. He laughed. But it does not stop me from having my ideas though.

Guillermo was much different than the poet. What Guillermo said he believed in entirely. He would not hear others. If you disagreed he interrupted you and went on with what he had to say. Only the poet seemed to have some influence on the veteran. But how much I did not know then. The poet and Guillermo sat for hours in the back of the salon talking with themselves while the young men and myself played billiards.

Only the poet disagrees with Guillermo. One young man said to me. The rest of us listen to him in the way people listen to a priest.

When I spoke with the young men in the salon or the shop many times their arguments were only repeating what the veteran had said. They would laugh at me for stumbling on my words. Confusing my arguments. Most of these young men had never left Canción. Knew its streets only by name. I do not mean to say that by arguing with them I spoke often because I did not. But I listened more than they did. I went out and walked some before making my judgments. All these weeks with the young men and the poet and Guillermo I did not realize what I was coming into. What was for all of us. How my confusion and quiet would play into their games.

The only thing I was sure of was that I would not be able to survive long on these brief glimpses of her. That I needed a way to get to her. Something I could offer of myself or do that would take her from Cantana. But I was not smart enough yet to see what was happening in front of my eyes. I knew that I would have to be more patient than I had ever been but my body was caught with fever for her. Each fight while I was thankful for them because of how close they brought me to her only made my desire for her greater and more painful. I was convinced that with her I was to be sure of my words. My ideas.