Taking On Lucinda

by Frank Martorana

  “Yeah. Road work. Work up to twenty miles at a trot behind your truck.”

  “No problem. I can handle that,” Bo said as the prospect of a sit-down job while the dogs did all the work appealed to him.

  “Okay then, go to it.” May-May swung his arm in a large arc, indicating that he intended to watch his kennel man in action.

  For the next hour, he observed carefully as Bo proceeded with daily chores at his lethargic pace. Young pups were fed dry commercial food as before. Then Bo threw several kittens into each pen containing several older pups. May-May watched with satisfaction as the hungry pack swarmed onto the prey and ripped the hissing kittens apart.

  “They’re getting blooded good now,” May-May said with a smile. “No stalling when the kitten goes in. They’re right on it.”

  Bo said nothing, just rubbed his hands on his thighs, venting nervous energy.

  They moved into the largest room in the barn, a storage area capable of holding at least three tractors with implements. Now, instead of farm machinery, it housed the mature fighting dogs in a bank of kennels along a back wall and a cat mill in the center.

  May-May surveyed the room. “Pain in the ass bringing all this stuff inside, but we couldn’t risk it outside anymore. Not with all the police sniffing around.”

  “It’s your own goddamn fault,” Bo said.

  May-May wheeled to face him. “The hell it is!”

  “Well it is.” Bo held his position. “You didn’t have to kill Tammy. She wasn’t gonna tell nobody nothin’. And if you hadn’t, we wouldn’t have all these cops around.”

  May-May pushed his face so close to Bo’s that his beard brushed the front of his lean hireling’s work vest. “That’s bullshit, and you know it. She already talked. She talked to the good doctor. I got wind of it, and I asked her. She tried to, but she couldn’t lie to me.” May-May shook with rage, spitting the words at Bo. “She admitted to it finally. She said I wasted all our money on dogs and gambling. Hell. Told Kent because he was a person who likes animals. She didn’t mean to get those FOAM people or the cops in it. Bullshit.”

  “I think she was telling you the truth.” Bo tried to sound confident. “She really didn’t mean to stir up no trouble.”

  “Well, what the hell did she figure would happen?”

  “I don’t know. Tammy is—was—a nice person. She didn’t like what we are doing. Me and you both know that. She probably just figured Dr. Stephenson would be someone she could talk to about it.”

  “You listen to me real good, Bo. Nobody. Not Tammy, not my brothers, not you. Nobody is gonna mess up my shot at making it big with these dogs. You understand me? ’Cause if you don’t, you might get clubbed in the head and found under a tractor wheel too.”

  “I’m not saying nothin’ to nobody.”

  May-May took a calming breath and stepped back. “That’s good. Because if I go up the river for fighting dogs, you’ll go with me. Neither of us wants that. Right?”

  “No way.”

  “So let’s get back to it. Show me what you’re doing with the dogs in the keep.”

  The sound of a car crunching gravel up the driveway interrupted their conversation.

  “Who the hell?” May-May said as he headed toward the door to check it out. He watched a Lincoln Town Car pull up to the house. A solitary passenger disembarked and May-May’s face spread into an astonished grin. “I’ll be damned. It’s Lester Ross himself.”

  He hurried to greet him. “Lester. Why didn’t you say you was comin’?”

  Lester was still in somewhat of a pout about having to detour to Jefferson. “I didn’t know I was coming till this morning.”

  “Well, welcome to Jefferson, New York, home of this year’s national dogfightin’ championships.” May-May beamed.

  Lester smiled weakly. “As you can guess, that’s why I’m here.”

  “I figured.” May-May scanned Lester up and down, noting his tailored suit and cordovan boots. “You ain’t exactly dressed for it, but do you want a tour of our operation?”

  Lester sighed and then shrugged. “Why not?” He could tell May-May was dying to show him.

  “Step right this way,” May-May said proudly. Then as an afterthought he asked, “You want a beer or something to eat?”

  “Think I’ll pass. I had some on the plane.” Lester glanced at his watch. “And I’m booked back to Austin in three hours, so I don’t have a lot of time.”

  May-May looked disappointed. “Too bad. Well, let’s make the best of it. In this barn are our dogs in the keep.”

  Lester followed May-May back into the soft light of the old barn. Bo, hearing them enter, uncurled himself from the cage he was leaning into.

  “Bo, come over here,” May-May said. “You remember Lester Ross, don’t you?” He explained to Lester, “Bo here’s my hired man. He works our corner too.”

  Bo’s eyes narrowed, his lips drew back in a flat grin. He gently stroked the scar on his right temple. The other two men did not catch the rancor in his soft bass voice. “Oh, I remember Mr. Ross, all right.”

  Lester swelled at the black man’s servile address. “How you know me, son?”

  Bo seemed flustered for a moment but then caught himself. “From the fight we went to in Texas.”

  “Oh, right. You handled that Little Jake dog, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, sir, I did.”

  Lester looked back and forth from May-May to Bo. “Not to be too critical,” he said with a concerned tone, “but I hope you boys can put on a better showing at the nationals.”

  “We qualified, didn’t we?” Bo reminded their guest with more bite in his voice than necessary.

  “Shut up, Bo. You keep your place here with Mr. Ross and let me do the talking.”

  Bo slipped into his Jim Crow mode, but his gaze was like one of the pit bulls, fixed on Lester Ross.

  “As a matter of fact, Lester, I was just going over our training technique with Bo. How about a little demonstration?” Without waiting for an answer, he signaled to Bo. “Get Scorpion.”

  Bo stepped to a cage and pulled out a mature black male whose wide head was accentuated by powerful biting muscles that bunched like fists in each jowl. His protruding lower jaw displayed a row of pearl-white teeth and gave him an air of stubbornness. His vacant eyes seemed to have come to terms with life’s struggle.

  “I guess Scorpion here will be Little Jake’s replacement. He’s the best we got. I always said he could outfight Little Jake anyway.”

  May-May eyed the dog. “He better have more grit than Little Jake ever did. Else we might as well put a bullet in his head right now. Save us a lot of trouble.”

  Lester nodded.

  “No. We don’t need to do that,” Bo said. “This boy will fight. You can believe that.”

  “What’s he weigh now?”

  “I’m not sure. Haven’t had him on the scale for a week or two.”

  “Take him over, let’s see.”

  The gladiator dog seemed not to care or even notice as Bo dragged him across the floor, lifted him by his harness, and suspended him by a hook that dangled from the scale. All three men watched as the needle on the rusty dial rotated three quarters around, vibrated, then stopped.

  May-May spit between his boots. “The son of a bitch is up to fifty-eight pounds! I entered him at fifty. Somehow, between now and fight time, he’s got to shake eight pounds.”

  “We can do that. No problem.” Bo grunted reassurance as he lifted Scorpion down.

  “Don’t you take no chances. You work his ass off,” May-May said, watching Lester’s reaction out of the corner of his eye.

  “He’ll show you a workout,” Bo said. He dragged him toward the cat mill.

  He snapped Scorpion’s harness to the end of a spoke, left the room momentarily, and returned stroking an orange tabby c
at.

  The scent of a cat locked the attention of every fighting dog in the place. Automatically, their ears flattened against their heads. All eyes fixed on the animal they had been programmed to kill.

  Scorpion became a raving demon intent on destroying the bundle of orange fur. Bo secured a leather thong around its tiny chest and dangled the feline from a spoke in front of Scorpion. It swung inches out of his reach as he lunged against his harness.

  “Let ’em go,” May-May said.

  Bo released the wheel, and Scorpion charged into an endless race around a tiny track to catch his wild-eyed, hissing prey.

  Soon, saliva dropped from the dog’s gaping mouth. He huffed grunts of exertion as all four legs strained to close the last few inches between jaws and cat flesh.

  May-May and Lester looked on with satisfaction as the dog played the absurd game of chase.

  “Man,” Bo said. “Scorpion is definitely heavy metal, ain’t he? When he gets excited…”

  May-May swelled with pride. “Looks like a real fightin’ dog. Give him an hour and then let him eat that damn cat.”

  Lester’s spirits buoyed as he watched.

  May-May led the way over to the jaw rope that now hung by a large wooden pulley from a barn beam instead of the tree limb. The shredded piece of inner tube, sticky white with dried saliva, still dangled at the end.

  “How they doing with the rope?” Lester asked.

  “Some take to it better than others,” said Bo.

  May-May cringed. “But they all get to where they can hang a long while. Right?”

  “Most do.”

  Lester glanced nervously at May-May. “Most?”

  “Yeah,” Bo said. “Most of them, if I get them really worked up, they’ll hang for half an hour or so. Once in a while you hit a stubborn one who thinks he’s had enough after five or ten minutes.”

  Lester swatted the rope, sending it into an aerial snake dance. “Well, Bo, you can’t have that and expect to have winners too.

  “Bring out one of those stubborn ones and put him on,” May-May said, anxious to put Lester at ease.

  Bo fetched a dog they’d bought in Virginia. “Judas, here, he’s a good example. Likes the cat mill, hates the jaw rope.”

  “Set him to work on it,” May-May said as he loosened the end attached to a wall cleat and played out slack through a ceiling pulley.

  Bo stuffed the inner tube into a five-gallon plastic pail full of chicken entrails and clotted blood and withdrew it dripping. Then, holding the rope near the bottom, he began flogging Judas about the head with the blood-sodden remnant of inner tube.

  Lester stepped back to protect his suit.

  For the first few blows, the animal cringed. After that he held his ground until, angrily, he grabbed Bo’s whip in a vicious bite.

  “There we go,” Bo said, jerking the rope to test the dog’s grip.

  They shouted encouragement as May-May hoisted the future gladiator so that his hind toes just brushed the floor.

  Judas writhed like a hooked fish lifted from the water. His neck muscles flexed hard left then right, trying to tear enamel knives through chicken-blooded rubber.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” Lester said. “He’s got to be able to hold there at least half an hour.”

  Bo pushed his cap back, rubbed his scalp, and swallowed hard. “I don’t know he’ll go that long.”

  “It’s up to you to see that he does.”

  “How am I supposed to make him hold on, Mr. Ross?”

  May-May crouched to within inches of the dangling dog. “Egg him on. Encourage him. Keep him fired up.”

  All three men bombarded Judas with every order of verbal abuse and encouragement for close to half an hour, but in spite of it, they could see his resolve slacking, his grip slipping.

  “Goddamn it. He’s quitting!” Lester said.

  May-May loaded his cheek with a wad of scrap tobacco. Said nothing.

  Judas dropped to the floor.

  “Looks like egging him on ain’t working,” Bo said.

  May-May spit brown goo onto the floor.

  “I’ll show you how to fix that little problem,” Lester said. He turned to Bo. “Get me a piece of roofing tin. And do you have an electric fencer around here?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get them both then.”

  A few minutes later, Bo returned with the sheet metal and fencer. He noticed May-May had retrieved a length of wire.

  “What you gonna do with all this stuff?”

  Lester hastily attached one end of the wire to the fencer and the other to the sheet metal. “You watch and learn, Mr. Bo-Bo,” he said. “Plug this in.” He handed Bo the cord from the fencer as he slid the sheet metal beneath the jaw rope. May-May and Bo suddenly realized what their instructor had in mind.

  Lester cranked the amperage selector to maximum. “We’ll either toughen him up or kill him. Get him back up on the rope.”

  Reluctantly, Bo repeated the start-up procedure, and within minutes Judas was once again suspended. Except this time the electrified sheet metal roofing lay three inches beneath his hind feet.

  Lester switched on the fencer. “Son of a bitch comes down on that, and he gets juiced up one leg, across his balls, and down the other.”

  “Ouch.” May-May moaned and laughed at once. “That’d sure as hell make me hold on.”

  Within a short time, the already tired dog began to slacken his grip, until finally his toes brushed the deck. There was a short snap, like the sound of a matchstick breaking, and the air took on the smell of burned hair. Judas yipped through clenched teeth and tucked his feet up. But his jaws could not maintain their purchase. He touched the metal again, screeched loudly, and pulled up again.

  May-May smiled approvingly. “See, Bo? You gotta be tough if you want your dogs to be tough.”

  “Yeah. Well, he can’t hold on forever. Then what?”

  Lester stared at the terrified dog with the emptiness of one who had not an ounce of compassion for any living thing. “You let him land good and firm on all four feet so he gets an idea of what happens if he don’t hold on. Then you throw him in his cage to think on it.”

  At that moment, Judas’s tired jaws gave way, and he crashed onto the sheet metal. The electricity rattled up nerves overriding any voluntary impulses. His muscles froze in a high-voltage tetany.

  “Jesus, May-May, he can’t move.” Bo said.

  Lester watched the dog vibrate like a statue in an earthquake.

  “You’re gonna kill him, May-May!”

  A few more infinitely long seconds passed, and Bo had seen enough. He reared back and kicked the rigid dog hard in the chest, sending him rolling off the electric floor.

  Judas rose, disoriented and unstable, and then slunk back into his cage as if stricken by some strange beast.

  “You want to make them tough, not kill them, I thought,” Bo said, himself shaking.

  “See what I mean?” May-May said. “You’re not tough enough. He’ll be all right. And you can bet your ass he’ll hold on tomorrow, long and tight.” He laughed loudly and thumped his dismayed helper between the shoulder blades. “Thanks for the training tip, Lester. We’ll put it to good use.”

  Bo glanced over toward Judas cowering in the back of his cage. His Adam’s apple rose then fell. “I ain’t sure you did him any good.”

  After the training lesson, Lester and May-May headed to the house to talk business. Bo went back to his chores.

  Lester leaned against a post on the porch. He held the beer May-May offered but did not drink it. “Remember the business associate I mentioned to you before?”

  May-May took a long swig of his. “The one that wants to throw some money into dogfighting?”

  “Yes. Well, I was just talking to him. He’s put a lot of pressure
on us.”

  “How’s that? He ain’t backin’ out, is he?”

  “No. Not by any means. But he made it perfectly clear that he and his fellow investors will be watching the nationals closely. If he’s happy with what he sees,” Lester gave a thumbs-up gesture, “you and me are on easy street. If not, he’s out.”

  May-May smiled broadly. “No problem from this end.”

  “Good. That’s what I wanted to hear. We can’t have any mess-ups.”

  “I know that.”

  “We have to keep security tight. There will be a lot of opportunity for leaks.”

  “I’ve got it covered.”

  “And you’ll need to line up a really big arena. And safe. There’ll be a big crowd.”

  “I’m working on that.”

  “It’s very important. Don’t cut any corners.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Big and safe. And by that I mean secret.”

  Their conversation melted into a hideous discussion of recent victories in the underground world of pit bull fighting and other current events in the game.

  Eventually, May-May found himself standing next to Lester’s rented car as the Texan prepared to leave. “Can you imagine how the price of a good pup is gonna go up when pit fightin’ gets big?”

  Lester gave him a narrow-eyed grin. “Keep it in mind. You and me will be on easy street.”

  Chapter 21

  Kent hummed “Singin’ in the Rain” as he headed his truck home from the Red Horse Inn. Dinner with Aubrey and Barry had been wonderful.

  Misty rain made the leaves on the road as slippery as black ice, but he didn’t care. He took his time, no hurry. The cool night air coming in his cracked window felt refreshing. He stroked Lucinda’s head on his lap.

  He did not notice a set of headlights behind him until they were within what seemed like inches of his rear bumper. He tapped his brakes and adjusted his mirror. In response, the lights burst to high beam, illuminating the interior of his truck like midday.

  He slowed, opened his window to cut the wet glass glare, and turned to look behind. From the height of the lights and the rumble of the tires, the vehicle had to be a jacked-up pickup truck.