The Dog Fighter Read Online Free PDF Page B

of her eyes she had opened now but not to look at me.
    Why do you never look much at me? I asked her then. I kissed her ears so that she shivered. Soap bubbles reflecting clouds floated on the surface of the creek water emptying into the river.
    I cannot think of anything but how much I hate still being with him even when I am with you. She told me.
    You are still with him? I asked.
    He forces himself on me.
    Then we will leave. I said.
    He will follow.
    I am not afraid of your husband. I told her honestly.
    I cannot be with you as long as he is alive.
    Now you are.
    But that is different. I am not as happy as I can be. Imagine how I will be able to look at you in the eyes and smile when he is gone.
    I needed nothing more than to hear this from her.
    Several nights later the bar for Mexicans in Burnridge was musky with the stink of workingmen who did not often wash. I had drunk there many times before I found Perla in the diner wiping down the tables. The music was loud and filled with cries in Spanish. I spoke to no one and the men in the bar pretended to ignore me. It was a game we played. This was sometime after midnight. When I knew that it was its most busy. The hands of the men in the bar cut and hard. Old mens faces gnarled as prunes after drying. Workingmen great distances from their families. Drinking.
    At the back of this room the husband sat playing cards. I ordered a whiskey and after drinking it I took the small glass with me. Earlier in the evening I had waited under the railroad trestle by myself drinking whiskey and feeling how it was to be in the muscles of my forearm that night. In my hands. Close to the side of my leg I undid the switchblade of my knife. The husband smiling over his cards at the other men when I approached. Then the men at the table and many of those in the bar turned to the sound of shattering glass in the corner. I sank the knife into the husbands chest. When they turned to see him dead they leaped back as if the table were with flames. The husband remained sitting looking down at the handle. After the glass shattered only the husband and I heard the sound of the knife enter his chest. Warm blood came over the blade when I twisted the handle and soaked his shirt. He smelled of Perlas perfume. With his eyes looking into mine wondering who I was doing this I bent over and spit at his feet and whispered the last words he heard. Whispered them in my grandfathers hiss.
    Tonight your wifes eyes are mine alone.
    Cigarettes and spilled glasses covered the table the husband sat before dead. His fingers rested delicately like a womans on the handle of the knife. The other dangled at his side. His eyes had gone black as oil I had seen used to harden sand roads in the desert of Coahuila. I left excited. My hands shaking some I buried them in my pockets. The men in the bar stumbled into falling chairs and loud voices. Each others arms. The music continued to play and smoke escaped at the top of the door into the night. Outside two men shoved one another in the street. Another laughing on the ground drunk.
    I spent that night along the creek under the willow tree where Perla and I had met in secret and planned her husbands death. Without a fire in the cold I slept little. I thought much of the husband dying in my hands. I said the words I had whispered to him over and over in my head like I had done before killing him. Then I whispered them aloud into the damp branch shadows moving closer to me soft in the wind. I began to think of what I was to say to my father now that I knew I could kill not only beasts but men.
    For several days and nights I stayed by this creek. I ate around the mold of bread and kept cheese under a moss covered rock where I knew it stayed cool. I drank water from the creek and slept near fallen logs decaying with the sweet smell of insects and nesting mice. Perla and I had planned it in this way. But when I returned to the building by the bend in the river where she lived with her