The Dog Fighter (4 page)

In 1945 during World War II in the north of California I worked in the Bracero Program as a laborer. For an entire year in the farm town of Burnridge I worked on a prune farm. In this small town I encountered the first woman I was with without having to give her money. This woman was the wife of a Mexican I worked for who also labored for the Americans but spoke English. Her name was Perla. I did not care for the husband but I believed then that I cared very much for his wife and so much that I would do anything for her. She worked as a waitress in a café for Mexicans. After work and late into the night I drank coffee instead of beer or whiskey just to watch her wipe counters with steaming white cloths. Her hands dry from washing dishes. Her fingers long and delicate. The other waitresses giggled behind the counter and smiled over their shoulders at me. Once one of the other waitresses came to take my order but Perla hissed at this girl and then came to stand before me smiling as if nothing had passed between them. I spoke to no one but her. And then it was only.

Café por favor.

Nada más?

Por favor.

Late one night on my way to the café I stopped to comb my hair in the reflection of a front window of a hardware store. In the light of a streetlamp the windows of the other two story buildings and the redwood trees of the plaza were tall and dark in the window in front of me. The lights of the signs for the pharmacy and a clothing store dark around the plaza. A glowing white gazebo. Inside the hardware store a lamp shut off at the back. Then a young man came toward the front fixing his tie. He looked up to check himself in the reflection of the same window I was before but on the inside and there he found my eyes staring back at his. My hands making neat his blond hair. His hands at my neck. I startled him but then he smiled. We were two men preparing themselves to meet their women. At this time of my life I was working and earning money and I was taken with a woman. I thought little of Mexico and nothing of my father. If I spoke I chose not to speak in my grandfathers whisper. But still when this young blond man on his way to see his woman locked the door behind him he checked it twice. Then he nodded good night but said nothing. He did not look me in the eyes. Even as we had mistaken one for the other as the same. Both of us making ourselves handsome for the ones we wanted to impress. Later after walking Perla to her home I returned to that hardware store and threw a brick through the window. I have always enjoyed the sound of shattering glass.

It was some time before I was able to bring myself to speak to Perla about more than coffee. But when I finally did I made up stories about my family. My life. I told her things I had heard the men I worked with say to each other. I told her so much that was not true that when I told her my mother was dead this also felt like a lie.

At night after her work her husband did not come to walk her home to where they lived with many other Mexicans at a bend in the river to the east of the town. So I did. Perla and I walked slow and when I first kissed her we were below a railroad trestle. The light of the moon on the water and steel trusses. Some weeks later when I took her in my arms for the first time she kept her eyes closed from me. But I did not think this was important then.

She had led me to their small building. Her husband was gone north for the apples in Washington. We went in through the back and only after she believed everyone was sleeping. In the hallway with one light Perla searched for her keys in her purse and then placed her finger to her mouth and smiled. In the bed she shared with her husband she traced her fingers along my back as I lay with my face in her pillow awake but dreaming. She made jokes about how I did not fit into the bed. Later she spoke of how he hit her. Of putting makeup on her bruises. How smart he was never to hit her in the face. Of the other women he told her he loved more.

I do not love him. Perla said to me after we were together again that night.

This wife who in the sweet perfume of her bed one afternoon was to beg me to kill her husband. Pictures of them framed looking down on us from the walls. My eyes closed growing angry when I imagined him hitting her. Making love.

I want to be with no one but you. She said. Do you not believe me?

When her husband returned a month later Perla and I met down the Russian River on the bank of a creek that let into it. She washed his clothes and mine and while they hung from limbs or spread out to dry over bushes we were together on a quilt she laid over the sandy bank beneath some willow trees. Her husband playing cards somewhere or drinking someplace she said. A large bruise on her thigh she did not want me to see. The purple of the prunes we had picked in August and September. Yellow at the edges. Perla tilted her neck so that her face was to the sky. The clouds passing in the dark of her eyes she had opened now but not to look at me.

Why do you never look much at me? I asked her then. I kissed her ears so that she shivered. Soap bubbles reflecting clouds floated on the surface of the creek water emptying into the river.

I cannot think of anything but how much I hate still being with him even when I am with you. She told me.

You are still with him? I asked.

He forces himself on me.

Then we will leave. I said.

He will follow.

I am not afraid of your husband. I told her honestly.

I cannot be with you as long as he is alive.

Now you are.

But that is different. I am not as happy as I can be. Imagine how I will be able to look at you in the eyes and smile when he is gone.

I needed nothing more than to hear this from her.

Several nights later the bar for Mexicans in Burnridge was musky with the stink of workingmen who did not often wash. I had drunk there many times before I found Perla in the diner wiping down the tables. The music was loud and filled with cries in Spanish. I spoke to no one and the men in the bar pretended to ignore me. It was a game we played. This was sometime after midnight. When I knew that it was its most busy. The hands of the men in the bar cut and hard. Old mens faces gnarled as prunes after drying. Workingmen great distances from their families. Drinking.

At the back of this room the husband sat playing cards. I ordered a whiskey and after drinking it I took the small glass with me. Earlier in the evening I had waited under the railroad trestle by myself drinking whiskey and feeling how it was to be in the muscles of my forearm that night. In my hands. Close to the side of my leg I undid the switchblade of my knife. The husband smiling over his cards at the other men when I approached. Then the men at the table and many of those in the bar turned to the sound of shattering glass in the corner. I sank the knife into the husbands chest. When they turned to see him dead they leaped back as if the table were with flames. The husband remained sitting looking down at the handle. After the glass shattered only the husband and I heard the sound of the knife enter his chest. Warm blood came over the blade when I twisted the handle and soaked his shirt. He smelled of Perlas perfume. With his eyes looking into mine wondering who I was doing this I bent over and spit at his feet and whispered the last words he heard. Whispered them in my grandfathers hiss.

Tonight your wifes eyes are mine alone.

Cigarettes and spilled glasses covered the table the husband sat before dead. His fingers rested delicately like a womans on the handle of the knife. The other dangled at his side. His eyes had gone black as oil I had seen used to harden sand roads in the desert of Coahuila. I left excited. My hands shaking some I buried them in my pockets. The men in the bar stumbled into falling chairs and loud voices. Each others arms. The music continued to play and smoke escaped at the top of the door into the night. Outside two men shoved one another in the street. Another laughing on the ground drunk.

I spent that night along the creek under the willow tree where Perla and I had met in secret and planned her husbands death. Without a fire in the cold I slept little. I thought much of the husband dying in my hands. I said the words I had whispered to him over and over in my head like I had done before killing him. Then I whispered them aloud into the damp branch shadows moving closer to me soft in the wind. I began to think of what I was to say to my father now that I knew I could kill not only beasts but men.

For several days and nights I stayed by this creek. I ate around the mold of bread and kept cheese under a moss covered rock where I knew it stayed cool. I drank water from the creek and slept near fallen logs decaying with the sweet smell of insects and nesting mice. Perla and I had planned it in this way. But when I returned to the building by the bend in the river where she lived with her husband she was gone. I broke a window to get in and once in her bedroom I punched holes in the empty walls where the picture frames once hung. My hands bloody from breaking the window. When a neighbor came to her apartment I beat him until he did nothing more than groan lying on the floor. That night I went looking for the ghost of her husband. Yelling his name down brick alleyways and into the dark of windows that held my reflection.

One of the sheriffs deputies of Burnridge that arrested me was a short but strong young man with a blond mustache and serious blue eyes. I fought five deputies before he hit me in the back of the head with his revolver when I was not looking. He leaned against the bars of my cell picking at his teeth with the end of a key. I sat on the floor and held the knot in my head but I smiled at him and then he smiled back. His teeth straight and white and the most perfect in my memory.

I bet that smile will be the end of many men. He spit on the concrete floor at my feet. And then I bet it will be the end of you.

Because the man I killed was another Mexican the case was not looked into. For breaking into the empty apartment I forfeited the money I had and was only deported. On the train returning to Mexico I rubbed the palm of my hand with my thumb remembering how sweaty my hand slipped down the handle of the knife. I was surprised how easily the blade had entered the husbands chest. For three years I had spoken only a handful of words and most had been wasted on Perla. But in that time work turned a young mans body into a more terrible strength.

At the age of nineteen I returned to Veracruz. In Tijuana I bought a bus ticket and in the noise of the engines I said over and over in my mind.

You are a weak man. My voice once again that of my grandfathers whisper. Your wife and child died in your hands. And now you will die in mine.

Feeling the words deep in the muscles of my forearm to remind myself how easily a knife can end another mans life.

On the morning of the third day I found him. He wore tattered clothes and held a mud stained book tied with a leather strap close to his chest. For the entire day I followed him. Watched him argue with street vendors. A knife sharpener. Old religious women. Himself. His glasses were gone and he spent much of the day muttering or yelling and laughing and pointing at walls. The sky. He wore no shoes. At one time several boys less than half his size took the book from him and kept it. His words were not words when he yelled now but only yelling. They laughed wild and whistling. Swinging the book like some weapon above their heads. I chose to do nothing. They left him crying.

By night I followed him to where he was searching for food. He smelled of urine and the cuffs of his shirt were stained from digging through trash heaps. The flesh of his face ruddy like that of a workingman and not a doctor. I opened the blade of my new switchblade knife alongside my leg and he turned at the sound.

Anything. He begged.

But I gave him nothing. Not even his own death. I wanted my father to fear me but he did not recognize me when he turned with his scarred hands out in front of him. The burned out shadows of his eyes disappointed me. And there I left him for the last time.

Two

F
rom Veracruz I traveled north to Guadalajara and then more north and to the west to the sunlit city of Topolobampo on the eastern edge of the Sea of Cortés. In this city I learned of the need for workingmen to cross the sea to the small city of Canción to construct a large hotel there. In a dim room in Topolobampo a man with a pockmarked face sat behind a writing desk swatting at flies and promising me hard work on the hotel but good pay also and the chance for more work on the hotels and roads that were to follow.

First we need to fill the bones of this one. He spoke without looking in my eyes. Great things are happening in Baja. He said. You will tell your grandchildren one day that you were part of this.

In beautiful Topolobampo the night before I chose to take the ferry to Canción I witnessed an American fight a shark in a tank of water. I walked alone but with families toward the lights of a circus tent at the north of the city. The whites of the eyes of the children tainted beneath strung lights painted different colors. The paint curling on the bulbs above long eyelashes. At the entrance to the tent an organ grinder with one arm stood tall and thin with no emotion on his face. He wore a tattered blue coat with shiny brass buttons down the front. The cuff of the one sleeve pinned flat to his chest. He kept the organ pressed tight against his body to be able to crank the arm into its tune. Only I was tall enough to look down into his eyes.

Bienvenidos niños. He said flatly.

Ahead a man sat behind black painted wood dowels confined to some cell. After giving him my money I had only enough left for the ferry to Canción for the next morning. It was a foolish decision but I had seen posters of this blond American and the shark on the walls of Topolobampo and felt a great desire to see the fighting for myself. Into a cloth hallway I passed with the children and their parents. Framed paintings hanging from woven gold cord. The wood frames lightened by the sun carried on the backs of wagons traveling throughout Mexico. There was one of a blindfolded knife thrower. A man bound in chains underwater. The American with a knife clenched in his teeth. I stayed to the shadows at the back of the tent while the others found their seats. All of us excited by what was to come.

Soon the lights dimmed. Two young women walked into the center of the ring balancing on their tiptoes on heavy wood balls. Later there was much applause while a knife thrower threw his knives at one of these young women after the other had tied her to a wall and then placed the blindfold on the thrower to some music. In the bleachers children ate roasted peanuts their mothers helped crack from warm shells. Fathers yawned in the suffocating warmth of the tent.

After these acts two colorfully dressed young men and the organ grinder pushed a large glass tank to the center of the ring. Hazy water sloshed over the coping made of brass. At the sight of the shark the audience inhaled together. The organ grinder went to the shadows and soon the music from a dull needle set onto an uneven record played a scratchy waltz. The blond American came into the ring and circled the tank. He wore a robe of purple velvet. Walking slowly with the knife from the painting in his teeth for all to admire. The children in the audience looked to their mothers. The shark behind in its tank with its eyes dark pressed against the dirty glass. The wind off the sea outside ran fingernails along the canvas tent like ghosts of poor children begging to come in.

We watched as the American climbed a short ladder the organ grinder brought from the shadows. At the top of the ladder the American handed the robe to the tall one armed man and then lowered himself into the tank behind the shark. Above this a string of blue light globes made the Americans skin more pale than he already was. His hair white.

Before the Americans head went under he took the knife from his teeth but his hand failed him then. He did not have the knife secured and it dropped to the bottom of the tank. Falling over itself the blade flashing blue light. The audience exhaled together as the American and the shark began circling each other. The American hit the shark in the nose with his fist while treading water and trying to dive for the knife but stopped when the shark was near and biting at him but missing. Children wiggled from their mothers fingers trying to cover their eyes. Several times the American dove for the knife only to come up for air. Hitting the shark to keep it distant.

When he finally beat the shark back enough to be able to have the knife in his hand the American stabbed the shark many times in the side. Blood filling the tank like smoke. The American and the shark were lost in an awkward dance with the sharks tail pressed against the glass wall at the bottom of the tank when it was killed. Finally the blond American came from the tank to the yelling. He put his fists in the air. The blood washing clean from him. I left the tent as the organ grinder and the two colorfully dressed young men pushed the tank back to the shadows to the applause of small children.

By dawn the circus had moved from Topolobampo over difficult roads to some other city. I woke with the first of the sun and wandered to the vacant lot were the tent had been. My stomach empty and the smell of still water nearby made me feel like I was to be sick. In the bright sunlight of that morning a haggard old woman went through trash left behind by the circus. Down near the water the shark lay in a curled heap. Dogs had torn into its sides during the night. Pushing it until its tail was in its own mouth. The teeth missing strangely.

He took them before the fight. The old woman said when she came to me standing over the shark. He drops the knife on purpose. She said. To make it more exciting.

I stood quiet for some time looking at the shark with its tail tucked into its useless jaws. Flies swarmed above the gums frayed like blood soaked rag ends. But when I turned to ask the old woman how the American removed the teeth while the shark was still alive she was already gone.

 

I
n early August of 1946 I was nineteen years old when I crossed the Sea of Cortés to work on the hotel in Canción. The ferry was heavy with workingmen. Wandering men dangerous and wanted but nervous when the land disappeared and there was only sea. On the rolling deck the workingmen sat in the warmth of the sun. Smoking cigarettes and tossing the ends into the painted blue water. They drank warm beer and handed each other tortillas wrapped around beans. Chunks of musky goat cheese if they had enough money. Tearing jerked meat with their teeth and dirty hands. Some to pass the eight hour journey more comfortably brought sombreros and straw hats over their eyes low and concentrated on the sound of the water against the ferry until they slept. Several men hunched over the railing admiring silver fish that leaped over the waves like skipping coins.

At first the women stayed below from the drinking violent men. A child came running up the stairs and across the deck laughing knowing what would occur if he were caught but then disappeared into the black door leading down again grinning. Husbands came above to talk of the hotel with soft faced young men wanting wives of their own but who were never settled and always traveling for work. Some of these men young husbands themselves disappointed after leaving behind wives and children.

When the shore of Topolobampo disappeared from sight a drunk stumbled to the railing and vomited many times into the clear water. One man handed this man wine so that he would have more than bile to vomit but the warm wine only made him more drunk and more sick and soon he was unconscious in the hot sun with his face pressed to the cool of the metal deck. I chose to watch as several men dragged this drunk by his ankles into the shade. On his back they dealt playing cards and laughed telling stories about this mans past as if he were not there.

After several hours when most of the workingmen slept drunk the women came to sit on the deck in circles with pretty young girls protected between them. Their faces sweaty from the heat below. The girls braided each others long dark hair. Whispered behind cupped hands when they noticed the workingmen staring at them. The mothers huddled in the shade of the cabin while the husbands played with the children scolding them to keep their voices down. To not wake these terrible men.

By noon the leaping fish had gone. Sunk like coins. Few on the deck besides children were awake to watch the passage. The sound of the water reminded me of the creek where I lay with Perla in my arms. But this air smelled only of salt. Not of wet trees and fallen logs and her perfume. We were some distance now from the smell of dirt and rocks. Of land. In the quiet of the journey I was quickly frustrated by my remembering Perla. I chose to ignore that she did not look me in the eyes when we were together intimately. I was a fool to think that she had cared for me. That I cared for her enough to kill a man that I honestly did not know if he should die. I never saw him hit her. Never heard him say a word against her honor. And to have her betray me. I had let myself be made the fool. My relationship with her while I was not drinking and imposing my size on others had been a time of peace in my young life. So much that I did not think killing her husband something violent but necessary. I decided this feeling of peace had been because of her. Now I was not sure.

I decided to end these thoughts by walking the deck of the ferry. I was a young man then thinking only of myself in ways I wanted others to fear me. To create and tell stories that held my name as my grandfather said they would. Soon I was drawn to laughter at the back of the ferry. A group of children crowded around a skinny toothless man who kept a pet scorpion in a mason jar. The face of the toothless man scarred by working in the sun. The gums of his mouth black but with shallow pink impressions where his teeth had once been. He held the mason jar at eye level for the children to admire the tiny yellow creature. They staggered back shrieking when the scorpion struck at their fingers touching the jar. At this the toothless man laughed delighted. Quickly I became jealous of his audience. Of how he possessed their attention.

When the mothers noticed me approaching they dragged the children by their small arms into the shade. Some husbands near a large box of hemp ropes and wrenches stood and crossed their arms. Some of the workers woke those who slept to witness the scene. The toothless man hurried to put the mason jar into his canvas bag but his dirty fingers struggled to untie a knot already undone. When the last child was gone I stood over the toothless man with my hand extended. My palm up.

Pendejo! A man hissed at the toothless man. Give it to him.

I held the jar to the sun. Turned it slowly. A drop of venom collected at the end of the scorpions stinger. Honey on a thorn. I had never before seen such a beautiful creature. It was something of my grandfathers dreams. My tongue tingled and if the workingmen had not been present I would have whispered to it.

She is beautiful verdad? The toothless man stammered his words. Holding out his grimy hand for the jar. I found her a year ago. I did not see her until she stung me. My arm went dead for a week. Before I kept her in a little box with some velvet. But in Pueblo I had to sell it to eat.

Knife tip sized holes were poked through the lid of the jar. I put my nose over these and the smell of the scorpion was a damp handful of black soil. In the reflection of the glass I enjoyed the audience that had gathered around me but some feet away. The toothless man looked nervously for help but those eyes he met only looked down. The older women crossed their hands over the chests of the children. Crossed themselves. Some decided to return to the heat below.

Her legs are not made for crawling over glass. The toothless man said but stopped when I unscrewed the lid slowly. I. He stammered. I.

To steal the toothless mans audience completely I handed him the jar and held out my hand. Children leaned forward. Eyes white and wide. They gasped when the scorpion staggered into my palm from the jar. My thighs shivered. This is when I felt most strong.

Fool. I heard a man say about the toothless man.

You would do the same. Said another.

The stinger at the end of the scorpions tail curled stiffly above its head. Almost to a vibration.

Count. I said then to the toothless man and the words were diamonds that cut the back of my throat having not spoken for a long time.

The toothless man gnashed his gums counting while I bent down to inspect the scorpion. My cheeks inches from its tail.

At the end of a full minute I moved my hand to carefully drop the scorpion into the open mouth of the mason jar the toothless man held. The scorpion slid along the glass walls to the bottom of the jar. I screwed the lid on tight. The toothless man began to breathe again. His shoulders dropping in toward his chest. I held the jar out for him to take but when he reached for it I tossed the jar over my shoulder into the sea. Three workingmen had to hold the toothless man back. He cursed at me. Spitting his words.

Let him be! A woman hissed. Her men looked to her and then to each other and then touched her arm to be calm.

I ignored the woman but smiled as the three men kept the toothless man held down. His eyes with tears. The muscles of his neck rose. Veins perfect for cutting. I knew they would not let him come to me.

Returning to the front of the ferry I slouched in the shade of the cabin and closed my eyelids to nap. I imagined the mason jar bobbing until the sun reflecting on its curved edge slipped beneath the surface leaving the light dull on the waves. Water poured in through the holes drowning the scorpion slowly. Its tiny floating body shoved against the lid. Clawing uselessly. The mist of waves broke over the nose of the ferry like glass shards cooling my cheeks. I held some trace of a smile still at the corners of my mouth for others to judge me by. For some time at the back of the ferry I heard the low sobbing of the toothless man.