The Dog Fighter (23 page)

But the other businessmen? The poet asked.

I looked him in the eyes for a moment before answering.

They complain about Cantana in the same voice that you do. I said.

We have him scared maybe? Guillermo said to the poet.

No. The poet disagreed. El Tapado is too smart for that. He knows that to stay to the shadows only creates more mystery about him. It only makes him more powerful in the eyes of the people of Canción. He wants them to believe he cannot be bothered by us.

Those men in the plaza. I asked. The ones lying on the canvas. Were they with us?

No. Guillermo shook his head. I do not know who they were.

Maybe I should ask Ramón to introduce me? I suggested.

No. The poet said. He will suspect you. We must be patient. This is a game he is playing. But one we can play also.

Several days after this in the middle of the night there was a great explosion in the mountains above Canción. An entire hillside settled over the road the men had been constructing for the businessmen. Small fires on the tractors could be seen from the streets of Canción. They burned throughout the night. A dozen sleeping workers died in the explosion. When I met with Guillermo and the poet after this I asked them nothing of the attack. The young men in the salon were in high spirits. But this lasted only until word came that three more young men were on display in the plaza. Naked and dead. Their mothers crying over the bodies. The fathers vowing revenge not on Cantana but on those responsible for the increasing attacks.

They have said nothing of the Americans? Guillermo asked me growing impatient.

No.

He cursed. We are losing time.

One day down on the malecón a large crowd gathered to watch as two new large tractors were unloaded from a boat to replace those that had been destroyed two months earlier. I stood in this crowd listening to the men and women tell stories about how the police had come to their homes in the night searching for their sons. Fathers and grandfathers were beaten for information that led nowhere. No one knew anything. In one of the stories I heard of the men who stormed into homes and destroyed belongings the man described was Vargas. Of this I am almost positive. I wondered if this is what I was to do for Cantana if I was to be asked to work for him. I could not.

At the compound with Jorge and Javier was the only time I ever felt at peace and even then I did not yet know what to think of Javiers relationship to the old men. Jorge knew nothing of his young lovers involvement in the attacks. And just as Javier had this over me with her and the old men I had this knowledge over him with the dentist.

During Javiers time at the compound when he was injured Jorge would sit for hours when there was no one in his chair to pull teeth from. Reading with Javiers ankle in his lap. I thought back upon these times often. Javier would let his fingers coil the dentists hair as the dentist focused on his reading. Occasionally reading to us both aloud. Or I listened to the stories from my room while I did sit ups on the floor. I lay on my bed and lifted the light chair over my chest with my injured hand. The words of a poem the poet had given me scrawled across the bottom and legs.

Crumbling is not an instants act. A fundamental pause. Dilapidations processes. Are organized decays.

Much had changed between us all.

One night late I remember sitting with Javier and the dentist in the back room. Jorge had been reading to us from the newspaper. Javier had fallen asleep with his head in the lap of the dentist. I sat in one of the couches listening to the stories Jorge read. Some gentle music played on the Victrola. The light golden on the dull horn. The curtains the color of dark red wine. With all that surrounded the dentist. With all that was asleep in his lap. I mumbled to him interrupting his reading.

You are a very lucky man señor. He set down the newspaper to his side. Looked at me over the rims of his eyeglasses. You have many good things in your life here.

I do. He said. But it has taken me a long time to recognize this. Javier has taught me much.

Your mother is very special to you as well.

Of course. She is my life.

But you keep Javier from her?

She would not understand.

I understand. I said.

Do you?

I think so.

Forgive me for saying this my friend. But I do not think that you understand.

Without looking in his eyes I nodded.

May I ask you something? I said after a moment.

Please.

Is Javier your only love?

The poet looked down to see if the young thief was sleeping. Javiers eyelashes flickered with dreams.

No. The dentist answered in a quiet voice. When I was your age I was engaged to be married to a beautiful young woman.

Really?

Yes. The dentist smiled. My mother arranged this. My father had died when I was very young. His family was very wealthy and so my mother did not have to marry again. I was afforded a very good education. I was very fortunate.

This was in Canción?

No. Michoacán. My mother brought me to Canción after this young woman died.

I am sorry.

No reason to be sorry. I was not in love with her. Her father was a wealthy landowner. Our families were more to be married than we were. She and I would sit for hours in my mothers garden when we were young. I spent many hours listening to her talk. She was very intelligent. Very beautiful. Strong temper. But still I felt nothing for her. Are you not going to try to kiss me? She asked me many times. Disappointed by my lack of interest. Questioning her own beauty. Still I did not try to kiss her. I could not tell her that I did not love her. She had many men who wanted her hand. But none that would keep themselves from her as I did. And so she loved me. Not men better educated or with more money than me. Not men who would confess a love for her. Is that not what we all want? For others to love us regardless of whether or not we love them?

I do not think so. I answered.

I used to think it is this way. But now I have known a unique love. A complete one. Now I do not know what to believe. And I am fine with that.

The dentist rested his hands on Javiers shoulders. He toyed with the ends of the sleeping thiefs fingers.

How did she die? I asked.

Jorges voice quieted some as he continued.

This young woman had an older brother. He and I became good friends. When I was not spending my time with him my mother made me spend time with his sister in the garden. You are to be married to this beauty. My mother scolded me. Convince her that you love her. I did not know this then but the money my mother had was not much at this time. The marriage was to benefit our side of the family by opening our land to her father for his cattle. The brother and I rode horses for hours and hours over the lands that would soon be joined. We hunted together and swam naked together in the mountain streams icy even then in summer. It was easy to fall in love with this young man. I fell in love with the voice he used to fill the silence between us. One day we lay naked on the warm rocks in the sun. We had been swimming. My eyes were closed. I felt his fingers lightly across my stomach. It was the most gentle touch and yet it moved me greatly. There were a thousand soft lips at the ends of his fingers. We made love then for the first time there. My lips met the lips of a lover that day for the first time in my life. We returned to those rocks often. But never once spoke of what happened anyplace but there. We did not try to stop ourselves for all the talk we heard about sin. We were too hungry for one another. Too hungry to discover ourselves in this way in each other.

This was not long before I was to marry his sister. She became very jealous of the friendship I had with her brother. One of the suitors who most needed the land that came with her marriage had suspected our love and told her of it. When she confronted me one afternoon in the garden I denied my love for him. Foolishly I tried to deceive her into believing that she was my love. She said nothing.

Not long after this she disappeared. For several days we searched the countryside for her. He and I searched together. But we never thought to search our place by the stream because it was our place. We thought it was a secret. But we could not keep ourselves from touching one another even in this time of great sorrow. We returned to the rocks on the stream. Her hair was beautiful on the surface of the water. Moved by the smallest movements of the wind. Her chest wedged against a rock. Turtles scooted off her back and slipped beneath the surface of the water. When I dove in to pull her out even though she had been dead for several days I thought I could save her. Even when her body was heavy with death. I touched her arm and her skin seemed to come from it loose. Like tissue paper left in the rain. We brought her onto the rocks and closed her sharp green eyes. Her brother crossed her hands over her stomach. He cried very hard. This is Gods way of punishing us. He said. We can never be together again.

I loved this young man and would have done anything to keep him. But I was not the one that lost a sister. He and I buried her in those mountains not far from the stream. We put heavy rocks over her body where no one ever found her. We did this so no one would know of our love.

But what about this other suitor? Did he not tell anyone?

He did not have the chance to. My love killed him. He slit his throat with a hunting knife. He left the knife in this mans chest so everyone would know who did it. And so they would suspect it was because this other young man had wronged his sister and this was his familys revenge. And after that he hanged himself. Believing that he had to join his sister in hell.

We both sat listening to the silence. To Javiers breathing.

Do you believe in God? The dentist asked me then.

I am not sure. I answered and then it was the truth.

The one who says that if you are as Javier and I are then there is no place in heaven for you? The one that says that if you die as my first love died then you will never see heaven?

I am not sure.

Let me tell you that this is a horrible thing. Think of this carefully dog fighter. This is a horrible thing to believe in. But I am lucky. Because each evening when those young men come to visit me. When we sit in the back room together unashamed of how we are listening to those records and dancing together I know heaven. I refuse to leave here just to go to hell.

You do not think you will ever die? I smiled at him.

No. I will not. He said this without smiling back. I am too strong and too old and too angry for death. If I die it will be only because my mother dies. I will leave with her. And there in heaven I will watch her give God hell.

I wanted to tell the dentist about my love. But Javier stirred.

I had a wonderful dream. He grinned. Rubbing his eyes with the knuckles of his fists. You were both in it.

The dentist smacked Javier on the knee.

Do not be dirty in front of our guest Javi.

 

I
n my room I imagined her standing at her own window. Lying in her bed with the cool of the breeze up from the bay closing her eyes. The fragrant smells of some garden similar to the beauty of the dentists. Her breathing the same as mine. Our air and thoughts the same. I lay on my bed and closed my eyes and when I awoke I remembered that it was not all a dream but a lie. I knew nothing of her for all my love.

Nightmares of the dogs came to me. I woke before the sun rose and walked down to the bay to swim angry with myself for making up these lies. She was the mistress of Cantana. I had been careless with my imagination. As a young man this was an easy way to be. She went with him at night to the cantinas and parties but only when he decided that it would be so for her. Cantana was not worth deciding such things. But neither was I with my imagination of her. Even for all my love. When I swam in the bay as the sun rose over the perfect blue water I swam past the mouth and into the Sea of Cortés. Past the coral and where the water cooled some and the waves grew. I decided to swim until I would be too exhausted to swim back. It will be easy this way. I will not have to kill Cantana. I will not betray the old poet as he has betrayed me. I will leave them to their war. When my arms were finished I let myself float raised and lowered by the waves. I let my feet fall from the warm surface to the cool beneath and then my entire body sank some until my head was under and everything was silent. I decided to swim down with my eyes shut and my hands reaching out for anything and the more I went the water was much cooler and the pressure on my ears tremendous. I did not have enough breath to return to the surface. But I did not mind because I was so determined to reach the bottom of the sea. But there was no bottom and no sound. I opened my eyes and they burned in that dark. I put my arms to my side. I was desperate for breath but calm. I would float to the surface by the speed of my own rising weight and if I made it in time it was because God wanted this.

I was like a child in this way so miserable for her. At night I let myself be satisfied with the imaginations of us together. But the mornings were very bad. In the small bed I was alone and only when I woke in the dark and went to the bay to swim into the mouth of the sea did I encounter some comfort. I was on the sand with my legs in the water and then diving into the waves enjoying that first touch of the sea around me. It was like sleep. I swam until my arms could no longer move cursing Cantana with one stroke and myself with another for allowing him the power he held over me and then swimming for the bottom of the sea. Then I began to challenge God. To give up and to see if He would come to me. Always I returned to the surface for that breath. Then to the beach and the small hidden city once again. In cheating death I was more alive. Born again into imaginations of her.