by Patrick Lane
Back in the house, she put the different plants on the counter, chopping them up and then crushing them with a hammer. She cooked them slowly into a thick paste, adding at the end a dust of charcoal she’d bruised from the nuggets of burned boards she found in the barrel by the shed.
While the paste cooled, she boiled willow bark with black pepper, letting them seethe into a tea. As it boiled, she tore pieces of clean cotton from the nightie she’d brought from home. Then she poured the tea into a glass and carried it upstairs with the pot of paste and the cotton strips. Tom was asleep, but she woke him and took his injured hand, creaming the poison out in a steady, rolling press, then spreading the grey paste of herbs onto a film of gauze and laying it across his palm. She bound the poultice, tying it down and cinching it with the strips of cotton. She tried to make him drink from the glass, lifting his head and dribbling the tea into his mouth, but it ran out the corners and down his chin as he tried to swallow. He turned his face away, his body shivering, smiling a little, and closing his eyes. She put the glass down beside the bed. If he woke again, he’d drink from it or not. She leaned toward him and whispered: I implore you.
She remembered one time when her baby brother, Pete, had been sick and her mother had brought him through a fever. I implore you, her mother had said as she sat by her brother’s bassinet.
I implore you, Marilyn said.
21
in the vault of the barn, swallows wheeled below their empty nests. The roof, its main beam seized and strung by the years, curved down on itself in the sun. The beam was bent with age, wrung with its resistance to the wind and snow, rain and sun, the deep pull of the earth upon whatever had raised itself above it. The rafters attached to the beam sprayed out like a bird’s feathers stretched. Light prickled through the cracks and crannies of the slant roof, shooting scattered needles across the timbered floor. The huge room shone golden against the grain of the grey pillars and studs that held the edifice still, insistent, up.
Billy and Art Gillespie, the extra man Billy always used, had gotten to the farm early, Carl nowhere to be seen, so they’d taken their dogs down to the kennels at the back of Carl’s house, Billy leading Badger, and Art with Chance. When the dogs were safely caged, Billy and Art went back for the schooler dogs, bringing them to the temporary pens Carl had banged together a few days ago with pig-wire and cedar posts. They went back to the truck then, the heater on against the morning’s chill, drinking coffee from Art’s thermos, the two of them waiting for the sun to break over the mountain and for Carl to come up from the house. They’d sat there and talked about the possibility of a storm coming late in the day, about past fights and pits, the different dogs coming in from out of town. Billy had said he supposed Carl’s wife was off visiting her brother again down in Omak. Art had laughed and told Billy she’d taken off yesterday. She doesn’t mind him raising dogs, Art said, she just doesn’t like seeing them fight.
Billy’s truck backed up to the barn doors, Carl driving, craning his head out the window as he nudged the tires against the planks in front of the barn. Billy stood in the early light, watching Art as he cut the yellowed twine on the last two bales at the back of the barn. Art and Carl had been working with forks and rakes, covering the worn floor six inches deep in straw. The bales had filled the barn back in the days when Carl’s father eked out a living there, felling trees and blowing stumps with black powder to clear the quarter section Carl now sowed with oats and alfalfa. His father had dropped from a stroke thirty years before when he was scything a crop, his tractor broken down and no money to fix it. Carl said he had followed the crows to his downed father. He’d been Catholic, but Carl had said he’d always wanted to be buried with the dogs in the meadow behind the house. When he did die, the church had its way and Carl, just a kid then and intimidated by the priest, put his father in the cemetery. His mother, Baptist to the core, had wanted her husband anywhere else so long as it was in a place where dogans didn’t pray over him, but she’d been unable to say or do much one way or the other, bed-ridden as she’d been with pleurisy and glad to be left alone. She was dead now too, and Carl had told Billy more than once he regretted listening to the priest and putting his father where he did, separate from his dogs and far from where his mother was eventually laid to rest.
Billy leaned against the barn, staring out into the first of the sun, and thought about what Art had told him earlier that morning, when they’d been sitting in his truck, gazing at the lakes in the distance and talking dogs, Art going on about Chance and how he thought his dog would win its fight against Mike Stuttle’s pit bull. Art told Billy his nephew was a dog man too. He’d been helping Art with the training, working with Chance when his shift at the station was over, building the dog up on the treadmill. Billy had forgotten about Art’s nephew being a corporal in town and asked Art what was new down at the detachment. Art said his nephew had been over the night before and had talked about the usual stuff, a fight at the Venice Café, some kids picked up for drag racing on Main Street, a young woman with a baby coming in to complain that she couldn’t find her husband, and an anonymous tip alerting them to a possible break-in at some old man’s house up on Priest Valley Road.
Billy knew more about the so-called break-in than he’d let on. The day after the party on Ranch Road, he’d seen Joe down at the pool hall. They’d shot some stick, Joe ranting about people who thought they were better than anyone else. Joe went on about the Starks, how it was always the same with Eddy, him thinking he could do what he pleased, the whole family acting like they were a whole lot better than everyone else. Billy had listened, saying little or nothing. He was still mad about what Eddy had done, Lester Coombs getting shot and having to go back to Vancouver and him having a pistol held to his head. Joe said it was about time Eddy Stark got taught a lesson, and he’d figured out a way to do it. Billy asked him how, and Joe said he knew about a secluded house up on Priest Valley Road, so he’d passed on a rumour to Wayne that there was money to be had there, the old man who owned it out of town visiting a sister at the hospital up in Kamloops. Joe said he’d told Wayne to be sure to mention it to Harry, because he knew Harry would be sure to tell Eddy all about it too. Joe told Wayne to keep quiet about where he’d got the information from. What Joe didn’t bother saying to Wayne was that the old man’s grandson had once told him that ever since his grandmother died, his grandfather never left the house. Joe said that evidently no one had seen much of the old man in years, but for the kids who delivered food and sundries from Olafson’s every week. Christ, he’d said, if Harry and Eddy broke into the guy’s house they’d get one Jesus scare and maybe a nice little run-in with the police too. Billy had gone along with the scheme, but he wasn’t sure about it now. Eddy Stark was a fuck-up, yes, but Joe getting the police involved didn’t seem like such a good idea any more.
Billy had asked Art if there had been a break-in, and Art said the police hadn’t received a call from out there, but the Sergeant had gone to the house later to check on things and found that the old guy who lived there was nowhere around. His nephew had said the funny thing about it was there was no sign of a break-in, but the Sergeant reported he’d seen a little blood on the floor in one of the rooms. Billy had heard Jim Garofalo that afternoon at the Venice Café talking about how the police had asked him if he’d seen anything going on at the old man’s house the night before. Jim said he’d told the Sergeant he’d seen two cars leaving late and one had looked like Eddy Stark’s green Studebaker.
It had been Joe who’d tipped off the police. Now the old man was missing and they’d found blood there. Billy knew Eddy Stark never carried a gun, but he also knew he had Lester Coombs’ pistol. Something must have happened out there, but what exactly was anybody’s guess.
Billy rubbed his back against the wall, scratching his shoulders on the rough boards. He looked to the west where a few wisps of high cloud were threading across the sky. The field sloping down in front of the barn was empty, but soon enough there
’d be cars and trucks there, men and their dogs, and the day would start. He glanced over as Art and Carl came out of the barn. They looked like they were done with spreading the straw. They stood in front of him by the doors, the two men leaning forward, hands hanging from their wrists as if their bodies were about to break into some kind of stumbling run if Billy would only give the command to do so. Carl and Art could hardly wait for things to begin. They’d been fighting their dogs at smaller pits around the valley, working them hard on lesser animals. To them, Billy’s pit was the high end of the summer circuit. Carl, especially, had said how proud he was Billy had chosen his place again to hold the fights. Billy knew both men wanted time to hurry faster, wanted the sun to move higher above the pines so everything could begin. They’d worked with their dogs for a long time, the fight in the pit today one more measure of their animals’ worth. Billy listened to them talk about their dogs’ fighting prowess, but Billy knew dogs would fight whether they were in the pit or not. They always had, they always would. It was in their nature.
Supposed to get some weather later today, said Carl as he brushed straw off his shirt. His head was covered in a beaked cap, streaked with rust and grease, the cap bill long ago broken in the centre so he could stuff it into his hip pocket. His overalls were tucked into his round-heeled boots. Art, beside him, had on his cowboy hat with the narrow brim, the sweat band made of braided leather with two bronze hawk feathers arched by the knot.
Billy told Carl and Art to get the pit set up. It was just gone eight and people would start arriving in a couple of hours. He swung the door beside him out against the wall, the hinges crying. Art stepped inside and placed his shoulder against the other door, forcing it against the uneven floor until it broke free of its bite against the sill. It swung out into the bright glare, the sun flooding in to form a square of light on the barn floor as swallows fled past them into the day.
Art dropped the tailgate of Billy’s pickup as Carl came up and the two of them pulled the first of the curved pit shells from the pile. The wood was a pale gold, the slats cut from oak somewhere back east. He had inherited the pit from his grandfather who had loved fighting dogs. He’d brought dogs and pit with him on his third trip from Portland, Oregon, to the valley back in the last century. Billy’s grandfather had followed the Okanogan Trail in 1865 that had led from Wallula on the Columbia River up through the Cariboo to the gold fields of Barkerville. He’d stopped at Father Pandosy’s Mission in the Okanagan Valley, and after hanging around for a couple of weeks, figured it was easier to live halfway between Oregon and Barkerville and reap the money coming and going from the Cariboo. Following him were cowboys and gold seekers, farmers and settlers, all of them believing the valley was God’s own country. He brought the dogs and the arena with him, he’d once said, for three reasons: he needed money, he liked gambling, and he loved dogs. It was his son, Billy’s father, who’d first brought pit bulls up from San Francisco to fight, back in the early Thirties. Billy often said he was half dog himself, raised as he was with them.
When the pit wasn’t being used, Billy kept it in a shed out behind his house. His dog-fighting implements were kept there too, the things he used to repair whatever injury an animal might have, and drugs he’d got from a married doctor he sold his little sister to for a weekend out at a line cabin back of Cousin’s Bay on Kalamalka Lake. He’d made the doctor pay for the indiscretion for years, having taken pictures of him at his pleasures. In his kit were all the things he needed to make a dog fight go more smoothly, to prolong a life, or make a death go easily. Billy knew by the time a dog needed to be put down, it took to dying with welcome ease.
They cleared the area where the pit would be, pushing the straw back with their boots. It took a little over an hour for the shells to be unloaded and bolted together, the assembled ring held down by lag bolts screwed through angle-iron into the wood floor. Then Carl and Art were on their knees stapling down carpet in the fifteen-foot ring. Its tight pile would give the dogs purchase when they fought. While they were working, Art started whistling an Elvis tune as he turned the socket wrench, and Carl smiled to hear it. That Elvis is a helluva singer, he said.
You got that right, Art replied. The wife loves him all to hell. He ratcheted down hard on the wrench until the nut closed tight to the washer. She says he’s great but, let’s face it, nothing beats Frankie Laine in the end.
Billy walked away and headed down to the kennels, the dogs in Carl’s runs beginning their hopeful growls and roars. Billy had an instinct for breeding animals who would fight to the death. Some dogs showed early, but that didn’t mean they’d mature into one that could stay the pit. He’d learned from his father and grandfather how to groom a good pit bull. He knew what to look for in a pup. He’d said more than once that it wasn’t just a willingness to fight that counted. A good fighting dog had to want to go past hurting to another place entirely. When Billy found one, he’d separate the dog from the litter, hand-feeding it until the dog imprinted on him. He trained all his best dogs by having them hang in the air from leather thongs, building them up to twenty hours without relaxing their jaws, running them on treadmills until their paws broke blood. He would set them early against schoolers, pushing his dogs past mauling and biting to killing.
His best was Badger, the dog never having lost a fight in four and a half years even though one ear had been torn off and the other wasn’t much more than a few rags of skin. Everyone knew he was fighting him today against Carl’s dog, King. Billy squatted by the kennel and put his hand through the wire to scratch the black dog’s neck. Badger could smell the pit shells on his hands and he whined and stretched, standing high with his nose questing the air for the smell of another dog arriving, the sound of a truck on the farm road, one he would recognize when he heard it, a pickup or modified horse trailer that only showed up for the fights. Billy leaned close to the cage, Badger’s nose poking through the wire. He saw no greater destiny than for a dog of his to die as it had lived. Meanwhile he’d stood the six-year-old at stud for four years, and the early pups, trained on treadmills and schooler dogs, had won fights all over the northwest. Billy had made better than three thousand dollars on Badger’s fights and another thousand in stud fees.
Moving down the kennel line, he appraised the dogs, the way they stood, the way they held their heads. After them were the schoolers he’d brought. Billy kept a supply of animals he’d bought out of the back door of the animal shelter for fifty cents a dog and no questions asked. He also bought feral strays from boys hired to catch them, as well as flawed animals from breeders who had no desire to raise worthless dogs. The schooling dogs never lasted long, and Billy kept up a regular supply for his own use and for others to bring their animals to so they could learn aggression and endurance. The schoolers were there so an owner could find out if his dog had the desire to finish. If it couldn’t, then it was sold off as a pet, used as a schooler itself, or was put down, the owner cursing the weak bitch it came out of.
The schoolers were in their pig-wire cages, legs shivering, some of them limping from injuries sustained in earlier matches. In a small run next to them was a rust-coloured dog that looked to be a mix of hound and pit bull. As he got near, the dog rose up and growled and Billy stepped back, looking at it more closely, surprised by its aggression. Carl usually brought his pups and yearlings over to Billy’s when he wanted to work them, but this animal looked like one Carl was using here. Carl had mentioned to him the other day that he’d bought a rough-looking, cross-bred dog for a couple of dollars from some hitchhiker he’d picked up a few weeks back on the road north of Armstrong. He said he was planning on using the dog when he started training his young pit bulls later in the fall, and this animal looked like it was the one. Billy stared for a moment at the animal as it chopped its jaws and growled low in its throat. Fuck you too, Billy said with a laugh.
He was paying Carl fifty dollars for the use of the barn. It was cheap at the price, but then he didn’t charge Carl for a
nything he might have to do for a dog if one of them got injured. Men who came to see the fight paid Billy five dollars to enter the barn to watch and gamble and thirty dollars for each dog they placed in the pit. It was up to Billy to call for the fight, to have the dogs set, to stop a match if a dog rolled, or to say, if there was doubt or argument, which dog won or lost, on the outside chance they refused to continue. Any betting done today would be handled by Joe. Small side bets were okay, but the odds were laid down by Billy. The gambling was his to run. If the day went well, he stood to take home better than five hundred dollars. There would be more if he used his amphetamines, depressants, and oxygen right.
He’d arranged with Lucky Johnson for blocks of ice, cases of beer, boxes of pop for women and children, and rye whiskey and rum for those who liked to drink their liquor hard. He’d keep the beer chilled in washtubs under the betting table. The hard stuff was sold by the bottle or glass. He didn’t bother to bring in food. Women usually brought potato salads, sausages, and hamburger with them in their hampers, chops and steaks if their men were flush. There’d be fires with marshmallows and hot dogs for the kids. People shared, it was their way. Carl had a home-built concrete block barbecue big enough to fry a quarter of beef on. No one had to go hungry and those who did would just have to drive to get what they wanted. The Queen Victoria in Armstrong with its take-out or sit-down chow mein and chop suey was only a few miles away down in the valley.