“You dogs,” he said. “You dogs stand easy.”
He wished he had thought to bring his whiskey. He didn’t particularly dislike this, but there was no pleasure in it either. It was simply necessary, like feeding a young savage boxer a lot of inferior opponents, opponents who had some skill but no chance, no real hope. It tuned the fighter, gave him a taste for blood and the killing blow, made him feel invincible. Big Joe had saved the old dog for this final sharpening of the son and future stud of the line. It never occurred to him to wish that it did not have to end this way. It always had to end this way and he had always known it.
He went carefully down the steps into the pit. Both dogs followed him down, but by now they were so excited that they closed at the top step and came into the pit locked together, their steel muzzles grinding. Big Joe watched dispassionately as the two dogs parted briefly, standing in the center of the pit now, heads together, their short wide bodies braced and waiting. Their eyes were locked and they balanced each other in a bright and ferociously insane stare.
Big Joe wondered, as he had more than once when dogs were about to stand to one another, what might be going on in their heads. Could dogs think? What were they thinking? Probably nothing. They weren’t men; they didn’t think; they fought.
There was a steel hook built into the wall on each side of the pit. He separated the dogs and fastened their leads to the hooks. Then he removed their muzzles, first slapping them hard twice with his heavy square-fingered hand to get their attention so they didn’t accidentally crush a finger or a wrist in their fighting frenzy. Once their muzzles were off Big Joe moved to release them, but Tuffy broke his lead and was across the pit and on his daddy in a blinding move full of slashing teeth and roiling dust and flying shards of bright slobber. The dog’s body, catapulting across the pit, had struck Big Joe on the shoulder where he had been kneeling beside Old Tuffy and knocked him halfway across the circle. He got up slowly and sat on the reinforced wall. Old Tuffy would not have had much of a chance anyway but fastened on the lead as he was made it a shorter fight than it otherwise would have been. It wasn’t more than forty-five seconds before Big Joe could see that he was already taking a killing. Tuffy was into his throat. The sound of blood was in his breathing as Tuffy settled in deeper and shook him now like a toy. Big Joe let Tuffy stay on as long as he liked, letting him chew his fill, until at last Tuffy backed off, gazed quietly and somberly at the slashed and bleeding body, and then trotted happily across the pit to his master.
Big Joe was deeply satisfied at the way Tuffy had peaked into condition. He’d feed him now, rest him good, and by fight time tomorrow night he would be as ready and savage as he had ever been. He led Tuffy back and put him in his cage. For a long time then he stood staring at the two grown bulls in the next cage. Finally, he chose one of them, put him on a leash, and led him back up to the house.
***
They had fought each other to an absolute draw on the bench, but they both knew that one of them would have lost if Duffy Deeter had not run out of weights. And neither of them was dead solid certain which of them it would have been. Duffy Deeter had gone with them up to an even three hundred pounds, which astounded them both and immediately changed their attitude toward him.
A hundred-and-fifty-pound guy who could get three hundred pounds on the bench was nobody to fuck with. It meant that somewhere there inside him was a little knot of craziness that made him pay the price. But it was not entirely enough to make them forgive him for weighing a hundred and fifty pounds. He was still a runty, second-string grunion. But a very strong grunion.
They’d left him at three hundred and then both got one final rep with three-twenty, which was all the weight Duffy had with him in the Winnebago. Joe Lon and Willard were fired up and when they found out there was no more weight they automatically faced off and almost went one on one against each other right there in the dirt and probably would have if it had not been for Susan Gender. Duffy Deeter had enjoyed it immensely and was hoping they might hurt each other, because while he admired them for turning out to be stud jocks instead of just looking like they might be, he could not forgive them for beating him. He wasn’t used to getting beat, even by men who outweighed him fifty or sixty pounds. So it was left for Susan Gender to stop them. She had been watching through the window with Hard Candy Sweet when Willard popped up off the bench and turned to face Joe Lon, whose response was to dip slightly, bring his elbows out from his body, and thrust out his thick corded neck.
“He’s gone strike a lick,” Hard Candy said happily.
“What? Which one?” said Susan Gender.
“Take you pick,” said Hard Candy. “They fixin to bust ass.”
But Susan got to the door first and cried: “Let’s go find us a tonk!”
Duffy and Poncy looked at her but Joe Lon and Willard only slightly shifted their bodies toward her, the smallest change in the position of their shoulders. But their eyes stayed locked on each other.
“Tonk,” said Willard quietly, not a question, just repeating the word.
“I want to dance!” cried Susan Gender. “I want to play the juke and eat a pickled pig’s foot. I want to drink beer and shake my ass.”
Now they turned together to look at her and stared with hostility at her head majorette legs straddling across the door frame.
“Ain’t no tonk in this county,” Joe Lon said. “It’s damn nigh fifteen miles.”
“Shit, boy,” said Susan Gender. “We got wheels.” She spread her arms and looked back into the Winnebago. “Duffy Deeter ain’t got nothing if he ain’t got wheels.”
Poncy, suddenly alive again in their young contentious voices, said: “I got a Porsche my own sef,” and two things happened at once. First, Poncy was sorry he had opened his mouth about his sweet expensive Porsche car, and second everything got very quiet and still while they stared at him. He had not meant anything by imitating, or trying to imitate, their grit voices. He’d only been trying to be one of the group. But he could see in their faces they had heard what he said as mockery. He tried to explain what he really meant but they wouldn’t hear it. Joe Lon and Willard each got an arm and led him protesting down the dirt street to where his car was parked.
“Hard Candy,” Joe Lon called over his shoulder. “Go with them, show Deeter. Blue Pines.”
“But I spose we gone already be drunk a beer by the time you git there in that Winnebago,” called Willard, “cause this sucker’s got a Porschie and I hear them things won’t do nothing but fly.”
They put Poncy in the back seat of his own Porsche and Joe Lon drove. The country was flat but the road was winding and Joe Lon one-handed the car through one tight turn after another, not bothering to use the gears but keeping it flat out with Poncy first outraged and then terrified in the back seat. Halfway there, Willard puked out the window, not much but enough for some of it to blow into the back seat where Poncy was trying to duck. Willard did it as easily as spitting. The stream slipped from between his lips, he blinked twice, and wiped his mouth with his hand.