“No, I ain’t seen him yet. Some of us have been too busy workin.”
That is what I said as I shrugged Uncle Boog’s slimy, cold grip from off my neck and pulled away, answering the question that he had posited at the end of the last part of the story. You know, about building the ring where dogs would fight.
Meanwhile, Gopher Lewis had got back into his blue and white three quarter ton Chevy, and he drove it across the Pour-Off parking area, up and over the grassy berm, and into the field on the other side where only the top of the truck could be seen from where Uncle Boog and I were standing. When Gopher came back across the sandy hillock, the infamous fighting dog, The Tiger, was trotting in front him. The dog pulled Gopher on a six-foot leash made of shiny chrome log chain that was fastened to a wide, black leather collar with two inch sharpened spikes set evenly around it. He had his tongue out and his nose in the air. If a dog can smile, I’d say this dog was a grinner. He was in his natural element.
Gopher quick-stepped in his bandy-legged fashion behind the prancing dog as they both came up to the pavilion. Then, Gopher pushed open the one unfastened oak pallet of the arena we had built, took The Tiger’s collar loose, and turned him into the fenced in oval area beneath the bright brooder light. The animal looked like the gladiator that he was. The American Pit Bull, from what I read later because my interest was piqued, is about eighteen to twenty inches high at the shoulder and weighs up to about 85 pounds. This black-gray creature, though I had no real means of scaling, was no taller than twenty inches, but his weight had to be closer to a hundred, maybe a hundred fifteen pounds. His big ol’ shovel-shaped head was topped by two folds of skin that might have been ears once but had been gnawed or cropped down to nubbins. I don’t know which, could a been either. His shoulders and chest were broad and muscular, and his ribs were covered by faint orange stripes that had provided someone the notion for his moniker. The muscle rippled in wave-like motion from the tail end of his body to near his nose as he strutted around the dusty oval, sniffing now and then at the bottom of a pallet. He had short dark ribbons of bare gray skin striped all over his body in groups of two or three, scratch and tooth scars that told a story of a lifetime in pits nowhere near as fancy as this one, and his tail, what was left of it, was like a thick gray thumb sticking out of his spine just above his butthole. A young woman, whose name I know but dare not tell, walked up, leaned over the fence, and cooed at the dangerous dog like he was a puppy. He trotted over and reared up on the pallets, balancing on his powerful back legs. The unidentifiable woman grabbed his slobbery face in her hands and stuck her nose right up to his, reassuring him that he was a good, good dog. No doubt, he was a good dog, but he had a good sense of what he was there to do, and the woman’s insincere affection held his interest for less than a few seconds. He quickly dropped back down to all fours and began studying the pit in which he would fight, checking all the gaps in the pallets, and pissing on some of them. He finally walked to the middle of the dip in the dirt and stood looking around for the foe whom he was to kill or who was to kill him. Do you wonder if a dog knows that he could die in a fight? I just thought of that. I wish someone would explain that to me. Anyhow, without a ready opponent and the means to cut loose with all his violent and deadly talents, The Tiger was already bored and frustrated. Noticing The Tiger’s agitation at finding nothing with which to hold a mortal combat, Gopher opened the gate, whistled, put the collar back on the disappointed dog, and let The Tiger lead him back toward the truck out in the field.
Now that I had experienced the thrill of being introduced to one of the night’s gladiators, I turned my attention to a growing crowd that had sort of magically appeared as my attentions were vested elsewhere. There weren’t many cars in the Pour Off parking area, but apparently people were parking in the field on the other side of the hump and walking over, probably because they saw Gopher do it. It didn’t take me long to surmise why Ozzie Plimpton might not have been too pleased with having kids around at this big event. In the sparse light of ever encroaching darkness around the pavilion, I noted a deputy sheriff, out of uniform, but easily recognizable. A hospital administrator leaned against the front of a new F150 with his arm around a teenager who was not his wife and who was, herself, supposedly committed to another person a whole lot closer to her age. I saw the editor/owner of one of the local newspapers, a drinking and a laughing with several employees of a local bank who probably rode down here together, and, then, much to my alarm, the boy’s high school basketball coach came walking over the sandy berm from the field on the other side.
When I first saw the basketball coach, a sense of terror struck at my heart like I’d been shot with an arrow in the chest. I almost took off running. I did not play basketball and had no intention of it in my senior year of high school, but what if he told my football and baseball coach? Those two sports meant a lot to me, and being here, well, it was just goofing off. I didn’t give a damn about dogfighting then, and I still don’t, and I never will. I could have been with my regular boys hanging out on some other creek bank a drinking cold beer and a flirting with the flock of girls who usually gathered up with us on most Saturday nights. This here mess of extra work interspersed with moments of do nothing leading up to something I had no idea if I would even enjoy was not worth losing my starting position in either of my favorite sports. Uncle Boog, who has a sense for such things, saw the expression of concern covering my face and noted who I was looking at with my eyes wide.
“Don’t worry. He can’t tell anybody. They’d know he was here. He has more to lose being here than you do.”
I reckoned that was true, and this revelation eased my worries and emboldened me to a point where I was maybe even a bit foolish. I marched like a toy soldier on parade over to Uncle Boog’s truck got another cold beer out of the cooler, went around to the cab, found an open pack of cigarettes and a lighter in the crack of the seat, and lit the cigarette. On the way back to the pavilion with my smoking cigarette and open beer, I purposely strolled close to the basketball coach who had joined the newspaper guy and the bankers. He noticed me but didn’t wave. I held up the hand with the burning cigarette in it as a nonchalant, half-wave and walked on, taking a sip of the beer after the wave. I don’t know if he was looking, and I didn’t really care. I was testing. You know, how teenagers want to rebel, to see where the boundaries are, you know, just pushing? Pushing, against what, I still have no idea to this day even though I’m as guilty of it today as I ever was. Are you supposed to quit testing and pushing at some point in your life? I don’t reckon anybody ever bothered to tell me when to stop.
Anyhow, when I stepped back up under the pavilion, I noticed that somebody had been back at work setting up equipment. A rolling chalkboard had been placed on the concrete on the end of the pavilion toward the grill. The chalkboard was enough in the light and high enough that you could see it from anywhere under the pavilion. In front of the chalkboard, a table and chair had been placed, and Ozzie Plimpton was sitting in the chair. On his left on the table sat a tan-colored metal cash box with its slots half-full of different denominations, and on his right set a whole pile of writing pads and several pens, I guessed for figuring. I didn’t know what that might be all about. Then, it suddenly struck me what this whole deal was really about the whole time. It wasn’t about dogfighting. It was about gambling, about that ever illusive making something from nothing, taking a little money and turning it into a lot or, the most likely outcome, losing it all. How many people here and who would come later really cared about the competition of two gladiators, no matter the species? This wasn’t about sport at all. This made me feel queasy. Let me explain.
Maybe I’m just an older man transferring feelings back upon his younger self, and if I am, so be it, but people betting on the outcomes of a competition between two combatants or teams of combatants is one of the main reasons for the sorry state of humanity, and it makes me sick. All humans know from an early age that games, sport, combat, and even war are noble in their very essence. They test the talents of the competitors, their ingenuity, their preparations, and, ultimately, their will to survive. Successful competitors conquer the world of the game in which they participate, and the contenders accept the results. The contenders revel in the pride of victory, and they accept the humiliation of defeat. They feel the pain exacted upon them in both the practice leading up to the challenge and in the contest itself whether they win or lose. Some will live with the agony of defeat the rest of their lives. Even victors sometimes discover a life of physical and mental torment in their triumph, but they play the games and fight the fights even to the death because the warriors believe that the best man or the best side should win. They do not believe in fate, at least they do not accept it, but they have faith in themselves, in the practice that they endure, in the skill that they have developed, and in the talent given them by God, biology, or Nature. This is a real faith and not some rubbing of a genie bottle to get what you think you want.
Gamblers, however, can only make money when the underdog wins, so they root for the competitor with less talent, with lesser ability, and with less will to practice and prepare. They cheer for and sympathize with the losers. They hope that dumb luck will stick its foot out and trip the better contestant so that the weaker, the dumber, the less prepared participant comes out victorious, all so that they can make a few dollars. Sadly, for all of us, sometimes dumb luck does interfere like the gamblers hope and pray that it will, and it rewards their bad faith in the game by appearing to turn nothing into something. You know, Satan’s trick. This view of the wagerer, the desire to see the weaker prevail, bleeds over into everything we do so that only the underdogs are beloved. Winners take their chances of being scorned and hated for being the best and for actually having the desire to work at something so hard that they never lose. Everyone else is praised for doing the best that they can do, which, more often than not, isn’t very much. Anyhow…
I would like to suggest a new game for any person who decides to take up gambling on competitions of physical and mental prowess. Match up with another gambler and flip cards. The wagerer with the high card lives; the other dies. As you live or die, remember that a twist of fate is what you were hoping for when you wagered on contests of skill between two combatants and you bet on the underdog. You simply wanted dumb luck to be on your side. At least with a card flip, the only bad luck is when you lose. When two people fight, even if one wins, both lose a little bit of something that the gambler will never know or feel. You can believe in that.
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