Free The Dog Fighter by Marc Bojanowski Page A

and of the perfumed mistresses of the businessmen crying for the fighters. With Eduardos stories of the fighting of dogs the candles on the tables of the cantina danced beautifully in shadows along the walls of my memory.
    The money is more than you have ever known. He clucked his tongue. If you are winning the men of Canción will carry you from the ring on their shoulders singing your name. And the women. He winked. They will lick your wounds.
    The fighting of dogs in Cancíon occurred each full moon. It occurred on the rooftop of a stone depósito built by the United States to store weapons when for three months in 1847 during el Intervención de los Norteamericanos their army occupied Canción. But to escape the rains of the late summer months the first fight I witnessed was held in the sheet metal warehouse of an abandoned onyx mine tucked in the hills above the hidden city.
    On that night rain fell sharply on the corrugated metal roof. The high steel trusses of the ceiling were lost to shadows. Thick tendrils of cigarette smoke escaped through small cracked or broken windows without screens. When I walked alone into the warehouse the crowd of yelling men surrounded a source of light that did not reach beyond the last man. I lingered in the shadows before pushing forward toward the twisted wood posts and metal fencing of the ring where bloodstained ragmen on their knees wiped furiously at the concrete floor. They wore no shoes and their tattered clothes were as dirty as the rags they used to clean the blood and mierda.
    The yelling men argued and placed bets. They ignored the ragmen in the ring with their noses so close to the floor with the wiping that their tongues seemed to dart out now and then to lick the slab still warm from fighting. While the yelling men pushed one another to see the ring better the businessmen sat near this but alone and alongside their mistresses in a section of wood benches. These men controlled the fighting. They arranged the various bets and supported the fighters they favored most. Their mistresses perfume sweetened the smoky warehouse. Painted lips glistened in the light and their moist eyes shone brilliantly. I recognized some of the yelling men from the work on the hotel. These men staring at the mistresses so that it made the women uncomfortable but the businessmen did not care because above all they enjoy most the jealousy of other men.
    Within the crowd several young men carried pencil stubs and pieces of paper and handfuls of paper pesos taking the bets of the yelling men. But only one young man dressed better than the others took the bets of the businessmen. As he crouched before the businessmen scribbling their bets he had the sleeves of his shirt rolled to show that he was honest. Dabbing the pencil on the end of his tongue as they put money now and then in his shirt pocket while he wrote. Nodding to them before moving onto the next. But the businessmen gave him no money for their bets. They operated the fighting and did not want to encourage the yelling men to run at them as a mob. The yelling men knew this and accepted it as a game the businessmen played with them sitting there on the smooth wood benches with their beautiful mistresses. This balance was delicate. One they never challenged out of fear and an overwhelming feeling of impossibility. The rings on the fingers of the businessmen gleamed where they were placed on the thighs of the mistresses. Gold necklaces and pearl earrings glimmered when the women brought their long dark hair from their slender necks. But all of the faces of the men at the fighting were greasy and red. During the fighting all the eyelids of the crowd opened wide like those who choke on their tongues. But still the yelling men were separated from the businessmen. And of all the businessmen only Cantana wore sunglasses. And only rarely did Cantana stand.
    That night I did not have to be told which of the businessmen was El Tapado that the