Heinrich looked forward to the dogfights every month, sitting on the back porch and watching the men wrestle the animals and train them on mutts lured in from the city wilds. Somehow he knew that what he was watching was wrong, but there was some thrill in containing the excitement as he watched, suppressing the desire to get up from where he sat, howl with the dogs, growl and cheer and gather up the blood, rub it warm between his fingers. It made his face hot. His secret joy.
He’d get as close as he could to watch the beasts tumble and dance and snap in the chicken-wire ring before someone noticed him and pushed him away. One time they’d let him tie the rope harnesses for the bulls, loop the slobbering, panting beasts and attach the truck tires they dragged around and around the yard, building muscle, each dog like a miniature ox within weeks—massed, veined.
Sunday would stay inside during the training sessions, refusing to look out the windows, squealing and covering her ears at the sounds. She had watched once when John Boy and Uncle Mick had cut a new dog, clipped his ears off neatly with a pair of shears, making an uncatchable monster of it. It’s better for the animal, John Boy explained as he heated the shears with a cigarette lighter. They get cut off or they get ripped off in a roll. Uncle Mick stood nearby with a fat white terrier struggling between his legs, filing teeth. Sunday turned gray and threw her guts up in the garden. Everyone laughed.
On fight night Bear was the escort, the encourager, the showman. The more people they could bring to the event, the happier Caesar would be.
Heinrich’s job was to dart into the apartment blocks, houses, buildings, knock on the doors, thrust out his chest and say, “Good evening, sir. Your ride is here.” Sometimes the men he talked to peered out their doors, saw Bear in the car and nodded. They’d grab their coats and follow the boy out. Sometimes they came out without their coats, leaned on the passenger side window and squinted into the darkness of the vehicle.
“Who’s in?”
“Ricky’s got a couple of good rollers. Going to play Sharky’s big brute from December.”
“What happened to Old Mark?”
“Two broken legs.” Bear didn’t look at Heinrich. “Rug accident, I heard.”
“Treacherous, those rugs. The Persians, I hear.”
“Won’t have them in my place.”
Laughter. The men tossed their coats into Heinrich’s arms. Or they’d wave the big man away with promises for next month. Heinrich would clamber back into the front seat as the car rolled away, asphalt moving beneath his feet. By the time the sun set, the pickups were finished and they headed back to Abercrombie Street into the crowd that lined the pavement. Bear didn’t need to push his way through. People parted for him. Heinrich struggled forward before the sea of legs and hips and skirts and feet closed on him. Caesar was at the basement door, talking to Uncle Mick about the dogs.
“That it?”
“Yeah.”
To Bear, “That prick. Fishburn.”
“Had a quick look. Not home. Boy went round the back. Nothing. Stuff’s still there.”
Caesar glanced down at Heinrich. The boy chipped paint from the doorframe with a fingernail.
“Send your little sidekick round there tomorrow. Pass on my disappointment and get what’s outstanding.”
Bear nodded and thumped the boy’s shoulder. Caesar glanced again at the boy, creased his brow, the faintest twitch of furry gray eyebrow.
The big man led him downstairs. The noise was rushing up from below as Heinrich descended into the dark, it was going past his ears and spiraling upward—stomping feet and cheering and laughter and the smashing of glass. He could hear screaming. The birds. There were mixed fights before the dogs—cocks and sometimes a ferret, a pair of teenagers with a rivalry of some sort. There was no music while the fight was on. It drowned out the cracking of bones and the splatter of blood and the smack of flesh on the concrete. But now and then between bouts someone struck up a guitar, trying to soak up some of the money going around.
Heinrich could barely see anything from the floor of the basement. He was swamped by backsides and elbows. As Bear shifted forward, he grabbed onto his coat, allowing himself to be pulled through. It was getting to be a shameful thing to do—the constant need to scramble between people or have a path cleared for him. A couple of nights earlier he’d been moping around the greenhouse, scrubbing pots with barely any enthusiasm. Bear had had enough.
“The hell’s got your goat?”
“How old am I?” the boy asked. Bear looked at him through his glasses, dazzling in the light of a candle over the tiny samplings in his hands.
“I dunno. Twelve? Thirteen? ’Bout eight when you turned up probably.”
“How old’s Sunday?”
“Bout the same.”
“She’s taller than me.”
“Heaven forbid.”
“I’m gonna end up taller than her, right?”
Bear had laughed, turning back to his work.
“There’s no telling.”
“I can’t be short.”
“There’s worse things to be.”
“Bear.”
“Look.” The big man turned, hung a huge arm over the back of the chair. “Being short’s not the end of the fucking world. A woman don’t mind if you’re short, long as you can fight, you got money, or you’re great in the sack. Work hard enough and you can get to all three, even. All right?”
“Yeah. All right.”
“Now shut up and get back to work.”
By the time Heinrich made his way to the front of the crowd the pit was empty but for two men half-heartedly sweeping feathers and bits of flesh from one end of the concrete ring into a heap at the other where the mess would lie with the shit and blood and piss of losing dogs, parts of other birds, a lump of shirt ripped from one of the teens. The winner’s owner climbed out of the pit with his bird under his arm, its feet struggling, wet and black. A couple of dogs were next. Heinrich watched the money pass hands all around him, names and notes scribbled on notepads buried in palms, men shouting across the pit and holding up fingers.
Two cages were lowered into the pit. The dogs were snapping, throwing themselves at the wire. Heinrich saw Sunday on the other side of the ring, talking to two men. One whispered in her ear, bent low, smiling. She was laughing in an odd, heavy way. Lopsided. She was still wearing that yellow dress but now it was higher than it used to be on her long gold legs and was caught up in a black wool sweater. She was barefoot on the beer-soaked floor. She hooted at the dogs, cheered. Bear’s hand fell on the boy’s shoulder and he jerked at the feel of the man’s beard on his cheek.
“Listen here.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m gonna say this once, and you don’t repeat it. See that man up there with Caesar? Don’t look just yet. Guy in the leather jacket. Blond. You don’t go anywhere near him, you understand?”
“Huh?”
“Don’t go near him. Don’t talk to him, don’t look at him. Don’t go anywhere with him, even if he tells you it’s okay with me. Get me, boy?”
“Why?”
“You know not to say ‘why’ to me.”
“All right. All right.”
“Good man.” The Bear squeezed his shoulder, thumped him too hard, made him wobble. Heinrich felt a strange shift in his stomach, a flush in his cheeks. Bear never spoke like that, like he felt something.
He snuck a look across the pit to where Caesar was standing on the stairs with a thick-headed blond man in a brown leather jacket. The two were talking, holding short glasses, looking at the crowd. Heinrich didn’t see anything especially threatening or interesting about the forbidden man. There was white and gray in his temples, smile lines cutting deep into the corners of his eyes. The man put his hand on his hip. A revolver. A cop. Heinrich tugged at Bear’s sleeve.
“He a cop?”
Bear gave him a look. Heinrich scratched his neck and turned back to the fight. He knew there were cops in the crowd. There were cops who passed things to Caesar sometimes, met him in the early hours in uniform, rode in the back of the car in plain clothes. Heinrich had never been afraid of cops. He knew to be polite to them, take their coats and hats when they arrived at the house, send the women to them straight away, bring them drinks. You don’t talk nothing but the weather, Bear had said. Sunny day, isn’t it? Cold out there, isn’t it? Warming up, isn’t it? That’s it. Get me? Heinrich wondered why this cop was different. But he didn’t wonder long. The cage doors were lifted and the dogs began to dance.
There was always a clear favorite. It was usually size, but tonight it was attitude—one of the dogs was obviously more afraid, and the fearful one is the one who fights harder, that doesn’t want to die. A dog that isn’t quiet and trembling before the door goes up, piss running down its back legs, bashing its head on the cage walls in terror at the sound of the other animal, isn’t a dog worth betting on. The one that makes the noise, makes the threats, gives a performance—that’s the one distracted, the one that doesn’t believe he can be taken down.
The raging beast tonight was the smaller one, a caramel mix with a black snout, waxed up all over to make it hard to pin, two perfect pink scars where they’d clipped it long ago, a tail docked from birth. It wasn’t a new fighter and didn’t move like one. The other, some kind of charcoal thoroughbred, came out of the cage and was immediately driven back against it. Glances snatched from the corners of eyes, puffed chests, exposed gums, bouncing strides and thrusts of legs, and then the lunge, the roll, the frantic scratch of claws with no grip on wet cement as one backed the other into the corner, scrambled out, rushed up against another wall. The crowd was howling. First blood in three seconds.
Heinrich looked across the pit at the man he was forbidden to speak to, shouting in Caesar’s bent ear. Sunday was nowhere. The boy glanced back to see the thoroughbred’s right front foot stripped of meat to the pink bone, flapping flesh, hopping. It was pretty much half over in a minute. A limping finish. Smart bets were being paid already. The mutt got the big fellow’s throat and swung back and forth. Wet, squelching bites, the happy mumbled growling of a mouth washed with blood. Heinrich put his hands in his pockets and looked up at Bear. The big man was smiling, shifting notes from one hand to the other.
“Here you go, short stuff,” he said, flapping a note in the boy’s face. “Don’t lose it all in one pop.”
Heinrich grinned and pressed back into the crowd. Elbows and arses. He pushed, pulled, squirmed, shuffled his feet on the wet floor. A penny buried in grime. He reached down and scooped it up. Uncle Mick was there on the corner, arguing, pointing into the pit. He took plenty of tugging to bring around.
“Where’s Sunday?” Heinrich asked.
“No idea. Care less.”
“Take my punt on the next one?”
“Oh, Jesus. Yes, all right.”
The man snatched Heinrich’s note and stuffed it into his pocket. Two more dogs were being lowered into the pit. Heinrich had a quick look. Breathed the thick air. He searched for Caesar and the forbidden man. They were gone. Bear was talking to someone in the crowd.
“Hurry up, dickhead.”
“Sorry.” Heinrich chewed his lip. “All right. The black one.”
“All in?”
“Yeah.”
Uncle Mick nodded and folded his arms. Heinrich heard a familiar voice behind him. Caesar was drawing on his cigarette, the dogs in the cages forgotten, his eyes on the faces in the crowd. The forbidden man. The cop looked down at Heinrich. The boy turned back to the pit, straightened his jacket, cleared his throat.
“This Bear’s sidekick?”
“Yeah.”
“Who’s he belong to?”
“Search me.” Heinrich turned for a second, saw Caesar shrug. “Care less. Bear’s always bringing in stray cats. Been doing it for years.”
“Stray cats.” The cop laughed. Heinrich looked up at him. “Stray cat, are you, boy?”
Heinrich chewed his lip. A smile danced on Caesar’s thin scarred lips.
“That where the nigger girl came from?”
“Yeah, and others. I don’t know why he does it. Half the time he raises them up and they go wild on him. Break his bones.”
“They don’t bother you.”
“Now and then they bother me,” Caesar glanced down at the boy. Heinrich dropped his eyes. “Mostly he keeps them out of my way.”
“I don’t know how you stand it,” the cop said. “I hate cats. You know how to get rid of unwanted cats?” the cop asked the boy. The boy shrugged. “You feed’m to the dogs.”
The push was so unexpected, so light, that Heinrich hardly felt it. He reached up and touched the cop’s hands as they touched his chest and they felt gentle, warm even. He hadn’t known how close he was to the edge. There wasn’t time to make a sound before he hit the bottom of the pit. And then the air was out of him, his elbow split inside the jacket and leaking, his vision vibrating.
The crowd was screaming. The dog in the cage nearest to him in his ear, the sound making his eardrum pulse, too loud to be anything but a physical sensation, a punching of noise. Heinrich rolled. Blood and feathers on his palms. He wasn’t sure what of it was his. All he knew was that he couldn’t move as fast as he should have been able to. A weight had fallen over him and his limbs weren’t responding in time with his thoughts. Bear was on the edge of the pit, his arm outstretched.