Biting the Moon (40 page)

“Oh, ha-ha.”

The road widened and smoothed out, and here were deciduous trees and undergrowth. It was as if the masquerade of openness stopped at the tree line. In front of them was a big white clapboard house, an old farmhouse, around which were parked a couple of dozen cars and pickup trucks and four-wheelers. There were outbuildings, the nearest being a massive barn. A couple getting out of their car headed for the barn, so Mary guessed that was where the dogfights were held.

Yet a strange silence overlaid the place. Every sound seemed amplified, from the voices of the man and woman going into the barn, to the crunch of gravel along which came another man, narrow as a hoe, no flesh on his bones, looking like stiff clothes walking. His face was stubbled with gray and his eyes were such a pale gray they looked colorless. He walked with a limp.

“Well, well, who have we here, pretty lady?” He braced his hands against the driver's door, and his beery breath rolled across the seat to Mary.

“You don't recall me?” Marie managed to keep the smile in place. “Buck Follett's wife?”

“Hey, good to see you. I'm Lonny Dewitt, if you remember. Where's Buck these days?”

“Well, he's here a lot, that's for sure. But right now he's in Chicago.”

The man with the beery breath looked across at Mary. “Hey. Tell me, how old are you, kid?”

“Eighteen. How old are you?” She did not look up from under the brim of her hat.

Marie laughed. “Oh, never mind her.” Mary could hear the bright smile in her voice. It must've really cost her not to spit in his face. “She's kinda bad-tempered. Always has been, even from a baby.”

“Well, whyn't you get outa the car and let's have a look at you?” he persisted.

Although no real threat was implied, Mary pretended to take it as one. “
What?
Take a look at me? Mister, you want me out of this car, you fucking drag me out.” In one of those perverse moments of wanting something that wouldn't do you any good, Mary thirsted for a gun. “C'mon, Marie. Let's get the hell out.”

Marie knew Mary was calling his bluff. “Whatever,” she said, as if bored with the whole episode, and started up the engine.

“Whoa!” The man held up his hands in mock surrender. “Now, don't go off mad, girls! We got to be careful around here, you know that. Just park 'er over there.” He slapped the hood of the Ford as if it were a horse he was spurring on.

They drove up on the grass—or what was left of the grass—and were locking up the car when another man came out of the house, its screen door creaking and banging behind him. He walked down the dirt path with a dog on a leash. When he passed closer to them, Mary could see the dog—a pit bull—had one ear missing and an eye that looked like mush. The man and the dog went into the barn.

Dewitt had come over to the car, apparently to “escort” them into the barn as if they were all there for a dance. Marie asked, “How many dogs you got today?”

“Six. That's usual. At least two of them's hell on wheels: Colette—that's the pit bull you just saw—and Dixie. Dixie's Bobby's favorite. That was Bobby Kruppa—this is his place—just went in with Colette.”

Colette.
Mary's expression didn't change, but she winced. What a name for that pit bull.

“Well, she's not
my
favorite,” said Marie, “because I haven't seen her fight. Let's see them.”

Dewitt stopped as if he'd been slapped. “You mean the dawgs?”

Marie had paused to light a cigarette and gave Lonny Dewitt the most withering look Mary had ever seen. “No, the damned cows. Of
course
the dawgs; that's what we're here for.”

“Fight's about to start,” he said whiningly, as he pulled the barn door open for them. “You can see 'em in the ring.”

Marie held the cigarette in her mouth as she rooted in her saddle bag and brought out a thick wedge of bills. Mary nearly choked. They appeared to be not ones or tens but hundreds. “You think I'm dumb enough to lay down bets without a look at these dogs first?” She snorted, blew a thin stream of blue smoke in his face. “You think that—well, you're crazier'n that poor blind bitch you're passing off as a champion.” With her thumb she riffled the edges of the bills as if they were a deck of cards.

A small muscle jumped in Dewitt's jaw. He was mad—Mary could tell he was mad as hell letting a woman make demands like this—but his eyes (that strange color of frost) flickered to the money. He just couldn't let that money walk out the door; it was probably more than all the others put together. His frosty eyes looked as if they could cut her, but all he did was mutter “Fuck” and motion for them to follow him.

Only a few feet from the big barn was a much smaller horse barn. When he pushed in the door, a wedge of light partially illuminated the stalls, and the dogs started barking. The place had been utterly dark. Mary counted eight stalls, with dogs in five of them. There were two more pit bulls in the first two, three terriers (she wasn't sure what kind), and, in the last stall, Jules and a caramel-colored puppy.

She nearly shouted with relief. It was all she could do to stand silently before the stall. Trying not to appear eager, she clung to the top of the stall door and watched while Jules got onto his feet, let out a tentative bark, and started wagging his tail. She looked swiftly down at the second stall where Dewitt was making noises as if he was trying to wind up the pit bull. But in a moment he moved over to Jules's stall to stand by Marie.

Anyone, thought Mary, even anyone as slow on the uptake as Dewitt, might be suspicious of that tail-wagging, that playful yapping. The puppy joined in, as if Mary spelled deliverance.
Oh, hell,
she thought, and looked at Marie, who certainly was on Mary's wavelength.

Marie turned on Dewitt, as if Jules's behavior were completely Dewitt's fault, and said, “You putting
this
dog in the ring?
This
pansy dog? What kind of operation you got going here, Mr. Dewitt?”

Dewitt looked at Jules and frowned. “I ain't never seen him act like that. That's a vicious dog—” He stopped suddenly as if that sounded false even to him.

“Oh,
please
.”

Immediately Dewitt changed his tune. “Well, but we got to have a few mild-tempered ones to warm up Colette and Dixie.” He smiled broadly and winked, as if he just realized the lewd implications of this remark. Most of his teeth were rotten, Mary saw.

“This poor excuse for a dog can't even fight,” said Marie. “So where's the sport in that?”

Mary kept her eyes on Jules and removed herself from the argument going on behind her. The Labrador stood gazing at her, the tail quiet now.
Why don't you hate me? I'm the one got you into this.
She wanted to say it aloud but was mindful of Dewitt behind her, giving whining answers to Marie's questions. Finally, Marie seemed satisfied that the fight was worth spending her time and her money at, and Dewitt led them out and back to the main barn.

The ring where the fights took place was fashioned of logs and posts, somewhat in the nature of a small corral, except this ring was surrounded by screening to close up any openings an animal might escape through.

It was lit by one old fixture, a metal-shaded bulb that hung from a long cord in the center of the dirt ring. Besides this light, there were lanterns on top of wooden barrels that lit the place but dimly. It was difficult to see individual faces for long, for the light shifted and shadowed them.

On the inside of the big barn doors a dour woman (possibly Bobby Kruppa's wife or sister, since she looked like him) was handling the bet money. People would pass the money along—and why did they trust one another?—down the line to her and she'd note it and send back a chit. She did this very quickly, could do the accounting for a lot of money in just moments.

Mary judged there to be perhaps thirty-five or forty people standing around the ring, talking, laughing, clearly eager for the show to begin. Most of them were men, but there was a scattering of women just as eager. There were what looked to be several teenagers, but older than Mary herself. No small children. A few elderly, like the old gent in the wheelchair beside her who had, with the greatest difficulty, stood himself up by fastening his cane on the top rung and pulling. Then he could support himself by leaning on the rail. Behind Marie and Mary a couple of middle-aged good ol' boys, shadow-bearded and loud, were passing a pint back and forth. Mary saw this when she turned her head, and the one behind her with eyes colorless as spit winked at her. Marie ignored them until one got a little too close, made a movement Mary didn't catch. Marie drove her elbow fast and sharp into his side. The woman beside Marie laughed and leered. She was too hefty to be pretty, even with the aid of layers of eyeshadow and mascara and bright lipstick on her bunched lips, which looked as if she were kissing a persimmon. Mary wondered if a word she had heard seldom but always strikingly—
slag
—applied here. Mary had little sexual experience—well, none (be honest!) beyond a few kisses and random samplings of warm flesh—and why in God's name, with the important job of getting Jules back, was she thinking of sex
now
? Then she realized there was an air, an atmosphere of hot breath and expectancy; it was not only the berry-faced woman or what the goons behind them were doing—not just the single gesture—but a collective heat, a charge of potency that seemed to hang above this ring of people waiting to explode.

The tension rose as Kruppa called out to Dewitt it was “about time” he got there. Dewitt opened one of the gates in the ring of poles and pushed the terrier in. The dog shook himself and looked baffled. Kruppa had a small brown bag, which his hand went to. He pulled out a kitten and, calling out,
Here goes, folks,
tossed the kitten into the ring. He let out a whoop.

Unable to stop herself, Mary backed away from the fence. Marie grabbed her arm, hauled her back.

She knew there was nothing she could do now but avert her eyes. The ring of people stomped and whistled as the kitten, now the object of both dogs' attention, and forced back against the ring, raised its hackles and spat and hissed as if it could fight back. The crowd cheered and egged on the dogs, shouting at them, whistling, hollering. The pit bull, Colette, was clearly a stupid dog for all its meanness, for it couldn't seem to make up its mind between the kitten and the terrier. When the terrier lunged at the kitten, the pit bull attacked. Both clamped down on the kitten, shook it furiously like a rag doll. It could as easily have been a bit of sacking, a bone, a branch. The faces of the crowd moved in and out of the shadows, lit for a moment by the swinging lamp and the lanterns on the barrels. Specks of blood flew out and fell in a red mist in the shifting light.

Nausea gripped Mary. Her body would betray her. To stave off the bile rising and burning her throat, she raged, went pretend-crazy. Her actions were hardly wilder than the whoops and screams of the watchers around her. The pit bull shook what was left of the kitten and tossed it aside. It was eager now for a go at the terrier.

As if she too were cheering Colette, Mary continued yelling, beating down the sickness, watching money still being passed to the sour-looking woman, who appeared to exercise no rules, was taking bets even as the pit bull had his jaws clamped around the terrier's throat. She watched Marie pull out that roll of bills, peel off a couple, and pass them along. The terrier, blood draining from its head, somehow miraculously got free of the pit bull, and that sent up more cheers. They were getting a fight for their money or, if not exactly a fight, at least a delayed death.

It was too much for Mary's mind to grasp; as if protectively, she started seeing things in slow motion: the pit bull gouged the terrier's
eye, sent it shrieking to the rails, where it tried to dig its way out underneath. It wasn't anything either dog could walk away from. No bell would send them back to their corners to be tended by their trainers, and death was the only referee. In and out of the dark the faces flickered like candles, a surge forward and then back. The surreal light that fell across these faces when they moved seemed to split them in two, the visible lit side like a half mask. The only thing keeping her standing was the ring itself, for she could prop her arms on top. Awareness came back in a blaze, as Kruppa took the dead terrier out of the ring and Dewitt came in leading Jules through the crowd.

I've got to watch this,
she thought.
No.
Another wave of nausea hit her. “Marie, I'm going to faint.”

“Oh, no, you're not,” Marie said in a low voice. “You faint and we're fucked. Stiffen up.” Marie put a hand on Mary's shoulder and squeezed. Hard.

Jules, who must have sensed the danger, would not be led; he pulled back, tautened the leash. Finally, Dewitt picked him up and carried him to the ring.

Then she heard a frail old voice nearby. “Lift me up, lady! Lift me up!” It came from the occupant of the wheelchair. “My name's Asa Stamper. I ain't heavy. Lift me up!”

Marie on one side, Mary on the other, they lifted the old man, who looked like the husk of a person, dried out and windblown. It was like lifting a bag of leaves. “Now just lean me on this rail, just put my arms up, and—there, that's right. I can't hear for all the yellin'. When's Mule goin' to be put in? That's my dog, Mule, raised him up from a pup. Orneriest dog I ever did see.” Asa Stamper kept on talking to whoever would listen or just the wind. “Wait'll Mule gets in there, he'll kick their ass!” Asa raised his fist and lost his balance and slid nearly to the ground before Marie caught him and put him in the chair again. He went on talking.

Kruppa brought in the ugly-faced black-and-brown bulldog. Far from being reluctant, it seemed eager to get into the ring. This was the one that, apparently, would fight Jules. Mary couldn't help the weakness; she felt giddy, put her head in her hands. Then Asa was yelling at her, “Girlie, lift me up! Lift me up! That there's Mule!”