Leroy’s Revenge
Animal lovers, don’t read this.
(Page 3 of 3)
“No secret,” he smiled. “I just breed best to best. Now, knowing what is best, that’s a gift. I can’t tell you about that any more than Sugar Ray could tell you how he boxed. The best performers aren’t necessarily the best dogs, that’s just one quality. You look for everything from performance to pedigree to conformation to the way a dog holds his head when he pees. ’Course, gameness is everything in a fighting dog, and you’re not gonna know that until you see him scratch for the first time. I’ve heard it said that if fanciers had millions of dollars like horse people we could come up with the perfect fighting dog, but I haven’t heard anyone claim they’ve come up with the perfect race horse yet.”
I asked him about the familiar story, how he tested a pup by cleaving off one of his toes, then cleaved its head if the dog wasn’t game enough to suit Maynard standards.
“Naw,” he said, pouring two more drinks. “That’s an old story. I did it once or twice when I was getting started. I’m a businessman. A man growing corn doesn’t burn his fields because a few ears aren’t sweet. I raise dogs, I don’t kill them. Best to best, that’s the secret of a Maynard dog.”
“Some people think this is a cruel sport,” I said, understating the position as much as I dared.
“I guess it’s cruel as anything else in life,” he said, after considering the question from all sides. “These dogs only have on purpose in life, that’s to fight.” Fanciers are not long on philosophy. They accept what they do with the same lack of introspection that they accept war and General Motors. Their sport is part of their life.
The October sun came through the Winnebago window, overexposing the pastiche of fanciers around the hay bales. From the swell of the crowd it sounded like a hell of a fight, then I realized it was Crater and Stout doing the cat number.
The cat number is traditional at dog fights, much like clowns at a circus or halftime bands at football games. What they do is throw live cats—which they buy for 50 cents a head form the city pound—to assorted dogs who aren’t fighting that day but who need exercise, self-confidence, and a show of affection. J.K. and his daddy use cats for training. Some handlers claim you shouldn’t run a dog, but J.K.’s daddy runs all of his beasts, using a homemade device consisting of an axle and crosspole on which he can leash one dog and one cat. The leashes are measured so the dog can chase the cat till doomsday and never catch up, which he usually will attempt to do. If a dog has worked well, J.K.’s daddy will toss him a reward—the cat of his recent ordeal. A cat who has had a run-in with a pit bulldog is something out a of a wax museum—a statue frozen in terror, eyes wide with disbelief, front claws arched, fangs bared in a silly, final grin.
Several wax museum cats lay in the grass around the hay bales. Marvin Tilford’s little boy walked by, swinging a dead cat by the tail.
It was a few minutes after 2 p.m. when Stout and Annabelle brought Leroy down from the trailer. They had changed his name to Tag. If he made it through the day, he would be Leroy again. He would return triumphantly to El Paso, but for now he was Tag, a dog with no past and an unenviable future. Tag looked more like a walking anthill of petrified Jello than any animal that might come to mind. He had so much scar tissue that you couldn’t tell what part was the original dog. J.K.’s dye job was blatantly atrocious; it looked as if Leroy had been tie-dyed.
“He wants Cajun Rules,” J.K.’s daddy told Marvin Tilford, who by previous agreement would referee the match.
“Yessir,” Marvin said.
“He says, if you see a turn, call it. But let them maneuver. Don’t let the handlers push their dogs out of corner. Check the handlers… make ’em roll up both sleeves, and make sure they taste their dogs’ drinks. No sponges…no towels…all the handler can take in the pit is his dog’s drink and a fan to fan him.”
“Yessir,” Marvin said.
When the handlers had carried the dogs to the pit, Mr. Maynard walked over and examined Leroy’s teeth.
“Nice animal,” he said. “Good head.” If he thought the markings curious, or observed the stubs of two toes, one so recently cleaved the skin hadn’t grown back, he didn’t let on.
“Let’s roll,” he told Marvin.
Both dogs scratched hard out of their corners, and Bully took the lead, going low, forcing Leroy to bite around the nubs of gristle that had once been ears. Christ, he was strong. But there was no doubt Leroy was his daddy’s boy; he just kept coming. “It’s gonna be a long afternoon,” Crater said. Unless you have more money than you can possibly afford riding on the outcome, a dog fight is about as interesting as a college wrestling match: the beasts hit, lock on, and hold fast, in endless repetition. The fight quickly settles into a test of strength, endurance, and gamenesss. Even the blood takes on a surrealistic quality after a while, like ghost shadows in a hall of mirrors.
After 45 minutes—when Marvin Tilford called the first pick up and broke the dogs apart by forcing his hickory wedge between their jaws and twisting counterclockwise—it was still impossible to say who was top dog.
While the handlers were cooling off their animals, Crater and I walked down by the old Indian mound. You could feel the excitement bouncing of the limestone walls of the creekbed: it wasn’t watching the dogs that did it, it was being there, experiencing an almost-vanished culture of blood rites and a close familiarity with death.
Then we caught sight of Annabelle, coming out from behind some bushes, buttoning her pants.
“Damn,” she said, “I’m so nervous I almost wet my britches.”
“You think Mr. Maynard knows something?”
She shook her head: “I’d hate to find out. Old men like him can be real bad customers.”
“He didn’t say nothing when he looked at Leroy’s teeth.”
“That’s not what worries me,” Annabelle said. “Wait till his beast gets off on the acid.”
“What’s that suppose to mean?” Crater asked, squinting into the sun.
“Ask Stout.”
“I’m asking you.”
“We rubbed Leroy’s chest with acid,” Annabelle said. “Very shortly now Leroy’s daddy’s gonna take his first trip on LSD.”
Carter watched the light hit and fracture off the creek walls.
“Oh, me,” he sighed. “I get this awful feeling the center’s not holding.” Crater walked to his truck and got his gun. One of the fascinating things about Crater and his friends is the way they use the language. They are not educated, but they are amazingly literate.
At the second pick up an hour later, both dogs were bloody but strong. Bully’s handler whispered something to Mr. Maynard, but Mr. Maynard shook his head and the handler told Marvin: “Let ’em roll.” Leroy was bleeding from the chest and from the stifle of his left rear leg.
The battle was into its third hour when J.K. told his daddy: “His leg is starting to pump blood.”
“I can’t help that,” his daddy said.
“He’s making you like it, Leroy. You better eat!” Annabelle hollered out suddenly. At the name Leroy, both Stout and Crater felt for their guns, but Mr. Maynard didn’t blink.
“Work him, Tag!” J.K. yelled.
Bully was clearly the top dog now. Leroy was losing blood and weakening noticeably, but Bully was zonked far past the limitations of fatigue and mere dogdom. The ploy of the LSD was backfiring. The hair and blood in Bully’s mouth told him that he was a 60-ton gorilla at the Captain’s Table reciting compound fractions in a tongue not previously heard on this planet. “Stand back,” he said in his strange tongue. “This one will be for keeps.” He took Leroy down by the front leg and chewed on the stifle, shaking hard, lifting Leroy off the ground and working him against the pit wall.
“Goddamn it, Marvin,” Stout hollered, “keep ’em off the wall!” Marvin moved in with his hickory wedge, but before he could break the beasts Bully shook Leroy so hard he snapped off his hold and flew halfway across the pit. Then, by God, Leroy was on him, tearing at the soft part of his throat. This time Marvin called a pick up, which was the proper thing to do. Marvin had to help the handler restrain Bully and drag him back to his corner.
“Jesus, he’s pumping,” said Tarlton, the bicycle thief. “Don’t let ’em roll again.”
Marvin looked at Mr. Maynard, then at J.K. “You want to roll again?” he asked. J.K. answered by releasing his beast, who lunged straight at Bully and got him by the eye.
“No more pick ups,” Mr. Maynard said quietly. “Let ’em roll.”
“Let ’em roll,” J.K. agreed.
So that would be it—one of the dogs would have to die or quit, and it wasn’t difficult to project which it would be.
Three hours and fifty-eight minutes into the match, it happened. Bully was going for the chest, boring in like a jackhammer, when suddenly Leroy got a leg and flipped him easy as you turn a pancake. There was a wailing sound like echoes colliding, then Bully’s eyes froze over. He lay still as Leroy tore out his throat. Leroy relaxed his hold, sniffed his dead opponent, then limped over and licked J.K.’s hand.
“If that don’t beat all!” Otis Crater’s old daddy said as they stood over the corpse of the late, great Bully. “It’s like his old heart just gave out on him.”
J.K.’s daddy nodded, “Looks like he busted apart inside.”
“That’s just what happened,” Mr. Maynard agreed.
“If that don’t beat all!” Otis Crater’s old daddy said again.
Mr. Maynard walked over to his Winnebago and returned with a .44 magnum and a sheaf of $100 bills. “Here’s what I owe you,” he told J.K.’s daddy.
Mr. Maynard turned the cold scars of his eyes on Stout, then on the others, taking his time.
“I don’t know what you little bastards did to my dog,” he said, “but you’re the ones that have to live with it.”
He walked over to Leroy, patted Leroy’s head, then raised his .44 magnum to Leroy’s head and blew it off. No one moved or spoke a word.
“If you boys ever get to Phoenix,” he said, looking each of them over one more time, “look me up.”
My Library
