Tuffy was kept in a dark cool cage in the old man’s room for the final hours just before a fight. Joe Lon spoke to him while Willard leashed him. Tuffy stretched, yawned, shook himself, and then seemed to hear the noise of the crowd outside for the first time. The short wiry hair rose on his shoulders, his ears got up, and a little slobber slipped spinning from his mouth. They led him down the hall to the back door and then through the dark to the ring of light where the bleachers and the aisles and all the open spaces under the bleachers were packed with men, women, and children. Their faces under the lights looked flushed and damp even though it was nearly forty degrees. Novella Watkins, wearing her little gold-gilt crown of snakes, sat in her place of honor at the head of the pit as was the custom after the beauty contest. Her daddy, a pig farmer, sat on one side of her and Slimey, one of the leaders in the rock band, sat on the other. Slimey still had on his sequined suit. A space opened up for Willard, joined now by Coach Tump, to get through to the pit. Joe Lon went to sit with his daddy just behind the barrier on the right side, not because he particularly wanted to sit with him but because his daddy kept a place there for himself and his friends and it was the only spot left to sit down.
His daddy glanced at him briefly. “How you feeling?”
“I’m all right.”
“You feeling all right?”
“I told you.”
“I thought you’d gone crazy shore.” He spit a long stream of tobacco juice and passed Joe Lon the bottle he was sipping from. “What the hell ails you, anyway?”
Joe Lon sat, refusing to answer.
“It’s just Buddy’s dick cut off got you upset. Enough to upset anybody. Hope they catch the sumbitch done it. But they won’t. Never do. Anybody worth a shit gits killed, they never find out who done it.” He leaned forward and looked around his son. “Evening, Elf. Things been lively, ain’t they?” Without waiting for an answer, he looked back to his son. “You got anything on the fight?”
“I got a dollar or two down.”
“I hope you didn’t give no odds. Tuffy’s got all he can handle with this sumbitch.”
“I don’t give odds on nothing,” said Joe Lon.
The other dog had been brought into the pit. He was straining and slobbering and snapping before he ever got onto the sand, bloodied now from earlier fights. His name was Devil and everybody there who had the slightest interest in dog fighting knew him. He carried more scar tissue than even Tuffy did.
This particular fight was Louisiana rules, which meant that a dog didn’t have to die. There was nothing compulsory about one dog taking a killing, although he could take his killing if he wanted to. Any dog that would face could fight. If he wouldn’t face, he was retired from the pit and the other dog was declared the winner.
Only one handler for each dog was allowed in the pit. Willard came down with Tuffy. Coach Tump stayed directly behind him outside the pit. The coach handed Willard a towel and a bowl of water. That was all each handler was allowed to bring into the pit. If it had been hot weather, he would have been allowed a fan to cool the animal down with at pickups. The dogs, held on opposite sides of the pit by heavy leashes, were allowed to slowly come together on the hard, packed earth until their foreshortened blunt heads were only inches apart. They were both straining, their eyes shot with blood, their nostrils flared, in an utter frenzy. Most of the crowd was standing, shouting bets at one another and screaming at the dogs. Novella Watkins was hollering her little heart out, stamping her feet and shaking her dainty fist, but even in her excitement, one of her hands kept returning to her head to check her tiny crown of snakes. Joe Lon saw Duffy Deeter across the pit in the stands. Hard Candy and Susan Gender were with him. The old man they’d kicked around at the bar, Poncy, sat between the two girls. They all looked a little out of control, except Poncy, who sat quietly staring at the ends of his fingers. Down in the pit, the referee stepped onto the sand. He was an old man, a tobacco farmer from Tifton. He was wearing brand-new overalls and a black felt hat. He glanced up at Big Joe, who nodded, and then across to the man from east Tennessee.
He looked to the handlers and said, “Are we ready to let’m roll, gentlemen?” They both nodded. The referee’s call had a high joyous lilt: “Let’m roll!”
The handlers slipped the leashes and the dogs met in the center of the pit. The impact as they came together had the sound of an ax in wood, a deep solid joining. It was impossible to follow what was happening as they rolled in the dirt, but when at last they stopped, Tuffy had been cut along the back and across the top of the skull. But it was Devil who was caught. Tuffy had managed to close on the side of his neck, not far enough under to get the jugular, but it was a mean, wearing hold. He closed his eyes and rode the other dog down. Devil was strong enough to regain his feet at times and lift Tuffy nearly clear of the ground but he couldn’t shake him and eventually they were in the dirt again.
They lay there for two or three minutes and then Tuffy shook Devil so hard that he shook himself loose from the hold and went flying across the pit. They both scratched in the dirt in an effort to join again, and when their roll stopped Devil was into Tuffy’s belly and Tuffy was into Devil’s haunch. They shook each other where they lay. Both dogs were slick with blood, but neither was pumping. As long as they didn’t hit an artery or a heavy vein, the blood didn’t really matter. The dogs never seemed to notice it. When the referee called for the first pickup forty minutes later, it was not at all clear which was the better dog. The dogs’ jaws had to be pried open with a hickory wedge before they could be handled.
Willard Miller took Tuffy, who was so fiercely mad his eyes were crossed, to the bowl, gave him some water, and washed the blood out of his nose; then he put each of the dog’s feet into the bowl.
The referee said: “Are you ready to let’m roll, gentlemen?” And the two dogs were back in the dirt again.
The second pickup was not until an hour later and it had been a brutal standoff match. Bets had been made and remade and made yet again. There had been several fights in the stands. One had been going on for the last twenty minutes and had worked its way around to the side of the pit. Bets were starting to be laid off on the two men rolling around in the dirt while the dogs were being handled.
“He’s pumping,” Willard said to Coach Tump. Tuffy’s rear right leg was pumping blood. He turned and looked over to Big Joe, whose face was passive. He nodded. Let’m fight.
But this time when the referee called to let’m roll, and the heavy leashes were slipped, Tuffy turned. He’d lost a lot of blood and it was still spurting from his back leg. He staggered as the other dog came across the ring. The referee called for a pickup. Devil’s jaws were pried out of Tuffy’s back. The referee was not sure of the move Tuffy had made, whether he had truly refused to face or not. The crowd was going crazy and their stamping feet on the boards of the bleachers rolled over the pit like thunder. The fight between the two men was over. One of them lay face down in the dirt. The other man hung over the wall watching the bleeding dogs.
When the referee had them face again, there was no doubt. Tuffy turned, but before the referee could declare the winner and have Tuffy withdrawn, Big Joe, the tails of his enormous black coat flapping behind him, had leaped over the barrier into the pit. He caught Tuffy against the boards. He and the crowd howled with a single voice while he kicked the dog to death.
***
Coach Tump sat red-eyed and hunkered over a yellow tablet of paper, a bitten nub of a pencil caught in his fingers. The little cheerleaders brought him steaming coffee in relays. It was very early but the snake teams were already forming up. Men, women, and children wandered about in front of the registration table where Coach Tump sat. It had been a wild calamitous night, with dancing and drinking and fighting and cars racing around over the countryside. Three more campers had been wrecked. Luther Peacock tried to do something about it all, even put two men in jail, but then he just gave up on it. There were too many people to try to do anything with.