Taking On Lucinda

by Frank Martorana

  She took the nickel-size electronic wafer that was the remote control, reviewed the location of its various function buttons, and slipped it into her jacket pocket. She took a deep breath, released it slowly, and reminded herself that the whole hideous affair would be history in a few hours.

  Testosterone gushed like toilets flushing, pouring into the bloodstream of every man in the place, when Aubrey stepped into Kolbie’s Tavern. Two dozen pairs of eyes reflected all nature of lewd thought as they stared at the sleek motorcycle mama. She maneuvered to the bar like a Harley through heavy traffic. Instantly, Jerry was across from her.

  “I’ll have a Southern Comf—” She caught herself midsentence. “Gimme a Coors.”

  Disappointed, Jerry’s expression sank to its usual blandness.

  “I’ve got that one, Jerry.”

  Aubrey turned toward the voice and found herself staring dead-on at May-May’s bearded hulk near the end of the bar. It was like a kick in the stomach. She stifled a grunt and gave him a flat biker smile— tight lipped, no teeth. He returned a schoolboy grin and for a second her fear turned to nausea. As casually as she could, she scanned the room, searching the blue haze for Rodman. No luck. She turned back to May-May.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Maylon. Folks call me May-May.” He seemed grateful for a distraction. The interminable wait for the go-ahead call, Aubrey guessed.

  “Thanks for the beer, May-May,” she said, toasting him with it.

  “You’re welcome, ma’am.”

  “Ma’am? That would be my mother. I’m Tina.”

  “Okay, Tina,” May-May said. He stared at her openly, his dark eyes drifting slowly from her face down to her motorcycle boots. “You from around here?”

  “Nope.”

  He tugged at his beard. “You work around here?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Where you from?”

  She shrugged. “A lot of places. Albany last.”

  May-May cocked his head, continued to study Aubrey-cum-Tina. “You sorta look familiar.”

  Aubrey’s heart beat like it would fracture her ribs. She pushed out a weak laugh and shook her head so that the bangs of her wig fell to conceal more. She braced her elbow on the bar and distorted her face with the heel of her hand. “I don’t know how I would be.” A rough woman peeved at such a callus inspection.

  Within minutes, several other men found excuses to congregate at the bar. May-May shifted, keeping himself between Aubrey and the newcomers. A bantam guarding his new hen.

  “What you boys up to tonight?” she asked. “Just gonna hang around and make Mr. Kolbie rich?”

  May-May said, “Hell. Any other night we might think about doing just that, but not tonight.”

  “Oh, yeah? What’s so special about tonight?”

  “We’re gonna make ourselves rich, not Kolbie.”

  Aubrey looked unimpressed. “Really? How’s that?”

  “Gambling.”

  “Shit. Nobody gets rich gambling.”

  May-May set his bottle down hard on the bar. “They do if they got the inside track on what dog’s gonna win.”

  “What’s dogs got to do with anything?”

  “That’s what we bet on.”

  Aubrey gave him a confused look. “Dogs? Like racing?”

  “No, not racing,” May-May said. “Fighting.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “We bet on dogfights. Pit bulls. To see which one can take the other.”

  “Sounds kinda weird to me.”

  “It’s exciting, watching them go at it, and all. Man, how they do chew each other up. Especially when you train them yourself.” May-May paused, relishing the thought. “It’s a good feeling watching them fight till they can’t go no more, just because they got loyalty to you. Makes a fella feel like he’s right out there fightin’ with his dog.”

  Aubrey reeled with revulsion but willed herself to stay in character. “You mean you guys train dogs to fight each other?”

  “Not just any dogs. Pit bulls. They’re the best fighters, and we fight ours against ones from all over the US.”

  “Well, that I’d have to see to believe.”

  “Matter of fact, we got a really big fight going tonight.”

  At that moment, the pay phone rang, and all conversation ceased as Jerry picked up the receiver.

  “May-May, it’s for you.”

  “Excuse me, Tina. This may be the call we’ve been waitin’ for.” May-May radiated self-importance as he swaggered to the phone and turned to the wall, guarding his privacy.

  The crowd waited, anxiously staring at May-May’s meaty shoulders and listening to his mumbling. After a brief conversation, he carefully replaced the phone on its hook, turned back to the crowd, and beamed a triumphant smile.

  Preserving the moment, May-May offered no explanation of the call. He stepped back to the bar and downed half a beer.

  “Come on, May-May,” someone in the crowd prodded. “Was that the word?”

  May-May let silence hold the room for a few seconds more and then said, “It was the call we’ve been waiting for, all right.”

  “What did the guy say?”

  “Said I could tell you the plan me and him set up if I wanted to.”

  The crowd began firing questions like duck hunters opening up on a flock. Aubrey displayed a half-interested gaze.

  “Is the fight on?” a ruddy-faced man in back asked.

  “Yep.”

  “When?”

  “When we all get there.”

  “Did he tell you where?”

  May-May scowled. “I picked where!”

  A version of “Then let’s get going!” came from several spots in the crowd at once.

  “Just hold on a minute.” May-May held up his hands. “We gotta make sure nobody follows us.”

  “How do we do that?”

  Like a kindergarten teacher, May-May said to his class, “We’re gonna have a convoy. Make sure you take your gambling money and load up.”

  A cheer rose.

  “Get your CBs turned on too.” He yelled a frequency to the dispersing crowd. “I’ll lead!”

  Aubrey put on the face of a little girl who had just been left out of a game of jump rope. She sat quietly against the bar as if expecting the crowd to leave without her.

  May-May cleared his throat to get her attention. Stuck out his chest. The bantam rooster again.

  She turned sad eyes toward him.

  “You want to ride along with me?”

  Aubrey fluttered her lashes. “With you? To the dogfight? I’d love to.” She grabbed her crumpled leather bag and headed from the bar with the top cock in the barnyard.

  May-May’s jacked-up pickup was polished so deep she could see her reflection even by the sparse light of Kolbie’s parking lot. The mammoth truck must have sucked May-May dry of every penny he didn’t spend on dogs and drugs.

  She reached up to open the door. It swung almost waist high. If it had not been for the chrome running board, she would have needed a ladder. She pulled herself up onto the seat and felt May-May’s clothes-stripping stare appraising her tight jeans.

  “I swear I’ve seen you before.” May-May searched for the connection that eluded him.

  “Oh, Jesus. We going through that again?”

  She sat close to May-May, hoping the tight angle would make it harder for him to study her, as the convoy snaked through the night. She felt his arm brush against her each time he reached for controls. She wanted to scream.

  She noticed another pickup to the right, where the highway teed with a dirt road. As they approached, May-May reached down and blinked his lights off then back on. The other truck reciprocated.

  “He’s one of us,” May-May said. “We got a few spotters out just t
o make sure there’s no tagalongs. This fight tonight is for the national championship. First time it’s ever been held in the east. We don’t want any mess-ups.”

  “National championship? Must be some important people coming.”

  May-May gave a grunt to indicate that was an understatement. “Some real big guys. Office types who run their own businesses and stuff. I’ll tell you, just ’cause you ain’t never heard of dogfightin’ don’t mean it ain’t happenin’. I’ve gone to some huge fights out west and down south. A lot of rich guys are into it. You’ll see tonight.”

  A voice crackled over the CB. May-May took his mike and signaled back that all was well.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said, dropping the mike into Aubrey’s lap. “We just went by another spotter, and I didn’t even see him.”

  On country roads lit only by headlights, it was impossible for Aubrey to tell where they were going. May-May led the convoy onto progressively narrower, more primitive roads.

  They passed another spotter, and May-May said, “I guess I better give him a call on the CB.” His tone was almost a warning.

  Keeping his eyes on the road, he slid his hand off the wheel and into Aubrey’s lap, where he had dropped the mike. He groped between her thighs.

  Aubrey stiffened, but willed herself not to move.

  May-May’s hand slid along her upper legs, ignored the tangle of spiraled cord, and came to rest flat and firm on the zipper of her jeans.

  She tightened her throat to stifle the scream. Shut her eyes. Her lack of resistance was tantamount to permission as far as May-May was concerned. “Maybe we should pull over for a little while. Let these others go ahead.”

  Aubrey grabbed his wrist and wedged his hand back up onto the wheel. “There’ll be time for that later. Right now you’re in charge. You got to get everybody to the fight.”

  As she repelled May-May’s exploring hand, her elbow struck a metallic bulge high on the man’s right hip. The shock of being so close to a gun drained her of blood.

  The truck continued deeper into the solitude of the rural night until finally May-May turned it onto a rutty dirt road. They lurched and pitched for half a mile back into the forest and pulled to a halt in front of a gigantic pole barn.

  “We’re here.”

  Aubrey squinted into the dark. “Where’s here?”

  “This is the lumber storage building for a sawmill.” He pointed into the woods. “Back down along the creek is the mill where they do the sawing. You can’t see it from here. The Indians don’t use it much anymore.”

  “Indians?”

  “Yeah. We’re on the reservation.”

  “Big building.”

  “We’re going to need it for the crowd tonight.”

  Other vehicles from the convoy began sliding into a hastily arranged parking area. As occupants disembarked, they joked raucously. Some began removing pit bulls from crates. Some began assembling portable washstands and stacking plastic barrels of water. All was done with the methodical efficiency of an experienced team. As they worked, a second convoy arrived. This group included more women and children than the first.

  Aubrey was genuinely impressed. “Wow! I guess there are lots of people.”

  “And there’s a couple more groups to come. There’ll be a record crowd. See all the campers and RVs? Those folks’ve come a long way.”

  She pulled the strap of her handbag onto her shoulder, aimed the patchwork at a mammoth motor home, and touched the remote in her pocket. She felt a tiny whir as she panned the vehicle’s length to include its California license plate.

  People with expensive rigs and wearing upscale apparel mixed boisterously with people in tired-looking pickups and tattered work clothes. She surveyed the burgeoning crowd for Dan Rodman without finding him and was soon distracted by the strange activities around her.

  A middle-aged man and two children bolted together a washstand. “What are they doing?”

  “Getting ready to wash their dogs.”

  “Kinda late for grooming, isn’t it?”

  “Not grooming,” May-May said, amused by her ignorance. “It’s part of the rules. All dogs get a bath in skim milk before they fight.”

  “Skim milk?”

  “Yep. It keeps anybody from cheating.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Some handlers try to put poison on their dog’s skin. Then when the other dog bites him, he gets paralyzed.”

  Aubrey grimaced. “You’re kidding.”

  “No, I’m not. Dogfighters call it a ‘rub.’ Usually it’s nicotine. And if you get caught using one, you’re in sorry shape.”

  “So why milk?”

  “Milk neutralizes it,” May-May said authoritatively. “And each handler gets the right to smell the other dog’s skin just to be sure.”

  “Imagine that.” She touched the remote control again. “What some people won’t do to win.”

  “Money talks. Come on. I’ll take you inside?”

  She let May-May lead the way into the pole barn. It had been cleared of lumber. The entire floor was covered with a thick layer of sawdust that damped the noise and freshened the air. The room was cavernous. A row of incandescent bulbs shed sparse yellow light around the perimeter behind professional-looking bleachers. High on the center rafters was a bank of fluorescent lights casting a painfully white glow onto a twelve-foot-square fighting pit. An ethereal greenish cast reflected from the carpet that lined it and boiled up over its two-foot walls.

  “Looks like somebody did a lot of work to get ready.”

  May-May scanned the full 360 degrees and got misty. “Yeah. Nothin’ good in life comes easy.”

  The room stirred with activity. A heavyset fellow in bib overalls and a snow-white beard manned a tote board and barked orders to a crew that was taking bets at a furious pace. High school boys wearing T-shirts boasting cynical slogans flirted with girls in tattered jeans while they set up grills for hot dogs and hamburgers. Two men arranged taps in front of a pyramid of silver kegs.

  At a long ringside table, a group of dogfighting aficionados sat in earnest discussion. A two-foot-tall bronze statue of a pair of pit bulls locked in mortal combat stood in the middle of the table.

  May-May saw Aubrey staring at it. “That’s the National Dogfight Championship trophy. Goes to the owner of the top dog.”

  Aubrey guessed the men were judges and that the statue weighed close to fifty pounds. She had it on tape along with May-May’s candid description. “It’s ugly, but it’s beautiful.”

  “To a dogfighter, there’s nothing ugly about it.”

  May-May was distracted by the approach of a stocky man with an expensive suit and rabid eyes. He gave Aubrey a smile that made her recoil and then stuck out a hand to May-May. “Well, Mr. New York,” he said, “looks like we finally made it.”

  May-May beamed and pumped the hand. “Sure does. It sure does, Mr. Ross.”

  “All is going well at your end, I take it.”

  “Not a hitch. I guess we can finally relax.”

  “A little, but don’t let your guard down.”

  May-May pointed to the judge’s table. “How are things going over there?”

  “Just a little hassle about the scratch line. One of them went and measured it. Five foot ten instead of six feet. Big deal.” He rolled his eyes, indicating he’d been through such matters before. “You know these judges. A bunch of prima donnas. Always have to find something wrong to make themselves important.” He glanced at the tough blond girl with May-May. “Who’s your friend?”

  May-May remembered his woman and slid his arm around her, pulling her in. “This here is Tina,” he said. “Tina, meet Mr. Lester Ross.” He made a sweeping gesture. “Mr. Ross is the one that mostly made this happen.” He winked at Ross. “With the help of a few of his friends.”

  Ros
s reached up and patted May-May’s shoulder like a good dog. “That’s right, May-May. I owe you a lot.” He turned back to Aubrey and slowly ran his eyes over her.

  “She’s a pretty thing, May-May.” As if it was good-natured teasing, he said, “When you’re done with her, I’ll take her.”

  “No, I think I’ll keep her.”

  Aubrey’s heart was pumping glue. She managed to mix a coy, flattered look with her biker smile and tried to think of a way to veer the conversation. To her utmost relief, a voice from the direction of the judge’s table beckoned Ross.

  “Gotta run,” he said. He wheeled around and headed for the table.

  “Who was that guy, again?” Aubrey asked, able to breathe and delighted she had tape rolling.

  “He’s the main organizer. Lester Ross is his name. Came all the way from Austin, Texas.”

  “Seems pretty high and mighty to me.”

  May-May snorted a laugh. “Lester may be a pain sometimes, but we’re sure glad he’s here. As a matter of fact, he’s working to see that dogfighting becomes a big sport in America.”

  As they walked away from the ring, she asked, “What’s a scratch line?”

  “It’s where the dogs have to cross to know if they’re still game. You see, when one dog is wore out, the ref calls time. Then the handler has three minutes to work on his dog and get him ready to go back in. When they put him back in, if he doesn’t charge at least to the scratch line, he’s out.”

  “A few inches make a difference?”

  “Rules is rules.”

  The bleachers were starting to fill up. Beer was flowing, and the crowd sounded more and more eager to get things underway.

  “I’m going to have to leave you for a while, Tina,” May-May said. “The fights are about ready to start, and I’m the official referee.”

  Aubrey tried to look impressed.

  With a hand in the small of her back, he guided her to a front-row seat. “Now, from here you’ll get a good view of everything. Believe me, it’ll be a night to remember.”

  Aubrey nodded weakly and took her seat.

  “Don’t worry,” May-May said. “When the fight’s all done, you and me can go out and celebrate. Just the two of us.”

  May-May strutted away. Aubrey scanned the crowd for Rodman.