“There are things that a man should not live through,” he tells me. “The death of a child is one of them. You might survive, but you’re no longer alive. So that day on the mountain, I couldn’t have cared less about what would happen to me. This was about something else.”
If Rose’s hand trembled, it was because it was one thing to make the decision to kill another human being and another to do it. That was the complicated thing. This wasn’t the first time that Rose’s inability to execute had prevented him from doing away with Sleepy Joe. He just could not pull the trigger. It was beyond his strength; his finger did not obey the order sent from his head. Should he just turn around, go back to where he came from? Have forgiveness? Or pretend none of this had happened and try to forget? Maybe that’s how things would have turned out, given human limitations. But dogs are different kinds of creatures. Rose was seriously considering backing out just at the moment his dogs made a completely different decision, and raced down the hillside as a pack, encircling the kneeling man. Rose, who saw what was happening from above, referred to it as “a vicious hunting scene.” His exact words.
The three beasts fell on the unsuspecting prey and corralled him, cold and contained, in the splendor of their rage. Their teeth were peeled back to the base of their gums, their eyes fixed on the victim, as if reading his thoughts, their ears pricked, registering even the slightest gesture; more wolves than dogs, more wolves than gods, not one false move, no fussing, no barking: the single lethal threat a low growl, sustained, coming from deep inside.
“What I’m about to tell you may sound weird,” Rose warns me. “But the dogs may have saved Sleepy Joe for the moment, definitely forcing me to lower my weapon. With my shitty aim, if I had happened to shoot, I could have missed him and hit one of the dogs instead.”
Sleepy Joe’s next move was a mistake, a dreadful mistake. He tried to run. He had been terrified of animals since he was a child and, faced with this pack ready to maul him, Sleepy Joe thought it best to run. And the dogs, which until that moment simply surrounded him without touching him, fully set on him with the worst intentions. Bare as he was, the man offered all that white meat on a platter. It very soon became a massacre, especially because of Dix, the bitch. While Otto pinned him to the ground and Skunko locked his jaw on Sleepy Joe’s neck, Dix clamped on a calf and twisted his leg this way and that as if trying to yank it off. There are dog bites and then there are dog bites. Some dogs are just biters; other are butchers, merciless, and they don’t stop until the victim is carved up. Dix belonged to this second category, and within minutes the leg was reduced to shreds. Rose believed he heard crunching of bones and cartilage, and could swear he could even smell the fear that paralyzed Sleepy Joe, making him pee on himself. So this is what it comes to, Rose thought. If they could see you now, Sleepy Joe, fucked by the rules of your own game, the same mindfuck you played with your victims, making the pain of body, torn flesh, gore, nothing compared with that inward cry of utter panic.
It was an almost mythical scene of superhuman violence and infernal beauty, as memorable as Actaeon devoured by his raging hounds, the heads of Cerberus spewing fire, or the saga of Nastagio degli Onesti as interpreted by Botticelli.
From his box of honor, like Caesar at the circus, Rose noted some revelations from human sacrifice, the clairvoyant terror emanating from the truth that is hidden in death, or something similar, the monstrous lucidity brought about by pain. He understood what Sleepy Joe had been looking for by opening such disgusting doors into the sacred, or the other way around, opening doors to the profane through the sacred. And what had been incomprehensible for Rose took on another color, as if suddenly and for a moment he looked at the situation from within, or crossed a threshold to be able to perceive certain things.
“Don’t ask me what things, because they have no names,” he says. “Things that passed though me like an electric shock and then dissolved, like the images of a dream.”
I ask Rose if he ordered his dogs to stop, for the release of the man he was about to kill. He is evasive in his response. “I’m not sure,” he says. “I doubt that after a certain time they would have obeyed.” I repeat the question, and then he admits that no, he never tried to stop them. They stopped themselves when the man gave up the struggle and froze. Then Rose, who had been standing at some distance, approached, the gun aimed at Sleepy Joe’s head.
“You may say I’m a coward,” he tells me, “and I won’t argue with that. But still, wounded and torn apart as he was, the guy was still a threat. He still inspired fear, perhaps even more than before, bloody as he was, with that bone hanging out of his leg.”
The dogs were done with their prey and took a few steps back, not breaking the circle or hiding their fangs, and something like a gurgle came out of Sleepy Joe’s throat. Was he asking for something? Mercy, or perhaps water? Rose thought it over. Give water to this vermin? He couldn’t bring himself to do it. Wasn’t vinegar customary in such cases?
“I have coffee,” he said, and threw him the thermos.
Sleepy Joe took a couple of sips and turned to look at Rose, his eyes staring as he tried to say something, but at that point the dogs’ growling drowned his words. Rose did not know how long this exchange was supposed to be, what, if any, things were supposed to be said. Drivel, really, while the blood ran out of Sleepy Joe’s leg and the dogs surrounded him and he stared up into the barrel of the gun. But Rose couldn’t quite finish it: he dared not kill the enemy, and that was extending this situation longer than necessary. Sleepy Joe there, wounded but alive, and the minutes passing, and Rose killing time because he did not dare kill Sleepy Joe. At one point, he was about to tell him that he was Cleve’s father, had the words on the tip of his tongue, but ultimately he didn’t. It disgusted him. Why stoop low with such a claim; the name of his son was untouchable, and to say it in front of his murderer would be to soil it. Best just to give this piece of garbage the coup de grâce and put an end to it. But Rose couldn’t do it.
The silence of the mountain, until then absolute, was suddenly shattered by the blare of sirens. They were far away but they made Rose shudder, because he was forced to face the reality of the situation. A shot would be heard clearly down below, drawing the attention of the police.
“As if my natural cowardice were not reason enough,” he tells me, “I had a new reason not to shoot: I did not want to attract the police. But then I realized that this factor was both against me and in my favor. And I made a decision, to set things up so others could finish off Sleepy Joe.”
Rose would take a few shots in the air, and from there, the key would be in the timing: with the Glock and the help of the dogs, he would keep Sleepy Joe immobilized until the police were almost there, and then step aside to let things proceed. Not too far-fetched a plan, so he shot once, twice, three times in the air.
And from that point began the surprises and necessary improvisations. First off, with the gunshots, the dogs scattered. Otto, Dix, and Skunko were good fighters, but unlike María Paz’s crippled doggie, these three would not qualify as war heroes. Secondly, Rose forgot a very important detail. Something he had neglected to do before the dogs fled.