Pit Bull

Jack Purse thought his father's plan to get his recently foreclosed farmland back by fighting his last pit bull was a sign the old man was losing his grip on things. No one was going to bet against a dog that always won. It was as simple as that.

The pit bull at Jack's feet, a medium-sized black dog with yellow eyes, shook his head, rattling a swivel heavy enough to hold a bear. Alligator had a dry, acrid stink that never washed off, no matter how many times Jack swam him in the lake.

"Muzzle that dog," his father, Dexter, said from his seat in an armchair by the big mahogany wheel. Their river boat was moored to the shore of the oxbow lake the Corps of Engineers had created by cutting a channel to straighten a loop in the river.

"He won't bite me," Jack said and petted the top of the dog's head.

Alligator looked up. Jack was never sure about him. He always carried a wedge-shaped breaking stick in his belt, just in case the dog latched on to someone and he had to pry his jaws loose. Yet he let the dog sleep in his room on a rug beside his bed.

"I ain't worried about you," Dexter said. "He bites one of my neighbors, there'll be a lawsuit. You put the muzzle on him now."

Jack thought about telling the old man to go to hell. But instead, he put the muzzle on Alligator. The dog endured, as always, in silence. Jack seldom heard him make any sound. He stroked Alligator's head, the coat smooth beneath his finger tips. No puncture scars or ragged ears.

Alligator's ears stood up, and the dog looked toward the open door of the pilot house. Earl Blackmon walked into the cabin but stopped when he saw Alligator. He and Dexter had been rivals in dogfighting for years. He looked the picture of a gentleman farmer: polished boots and a seersucker suit with a blue tie. He carried a book with a green cover under his arm.

"Don't worry, we got him muzzled," Dexter said.

"You're smart," Blackmon said. "That's a crazy dog. What comes of breeding fathers to daughters. Got a strong bite and good moves but no gameness."

"He's dead game," Dexter said, the words coming out of his mouth so slow Alligator raised his head to hear.

"Hell, Dexter, you don't know that," Blackmon said.

The only way to find out if Alligator was dead game was to fight him to the death and see if he held on even after he was dead.

Dexter said, "You got the dog that'll beat him?"

"Would if you let your boy work my corner."

"He don't like to work in the pit." Dexter paused. "Pretty, though. Women like him just fine."

"Don't be so hard on the boy," Blackmon said, smiling.

"I'll take Alligator back to the truck," Jack said.

"Stay right there," Dexter said. And then to Blackmon, "See, I can't even get him mad. We used to have some good fights. Could always put him on the ground; still can."

Jack wished he had one of the frags he'd used in Vietnam in his hand right now so he could toss it to the old man. That would be a sweet way to watch him die.

Dexter continued, "Take that dog on home. I've got work to do here."

Jack left the cabin. At his truck, he took the muzzle off Alligator. Sometimes he could tell just by the way the dog carried his tail that it was safer to keep the muzzle on. It was when his eyes glazed over, a smoky-white film over the gold surface, that he became dangerous. The dog had never tried to bite him, but Jack knew he would give no warning when that day came.

He drove his truck away from the boat, the tires bouncing in the ruts, raising twin plumes of dust. He crossed the levee and went past the row of catfishermen's shacks. A little man with a beard, cleaning a shotgun on the hood of a truck, stared but did not wave. Now the land was perfectly flat, scored by geometrical rows of cotton and soybeans, all belonging to owners who lived far away from the delta.

Jack stroked Alligator, looking into those yellow eyes that never looked away and smelled his stink. He knew the dog was indifferent, content to eat and sleep and wait for his chance to grab hold and never let go.

•

Jack saw the vet's blue truck pull into the yard. He walked off the porch and followed the truck around to the back, where the gravel driveway ran under a sign:

Top dog kennels home of fighters that fight and win or die trying

"Come give me and Squirrel a hand," Dexter said to Jack as the vet got out of his truck.

The cat mill, with its long weighted arm and cage, in which Dexter kept a Halloween mask of a goblin as a lure instead of a cat, was empty. The gates to the runs for pregnant bitches stood open. Dexter had sold off his dogs, 50 in all, to raise cash and avoid feed bills. Only Alligator sat beneath the shade of his shelter.

"What's going on?" Jack asked.

"I told you I'd get my land back," Dexter said. "Alligator'll do it for me."

"Good luck on getting a fight," Jack said.

Alligator had been fought just twice. The second fight had happened because nobody believed the first--Alligator boring in under his opponent, then lifting and flipping the bewildered dog before the astonished crowd and catching him with those steel-trap jaws midway along the backbone, severing the spine with one bite.

"Earl thinks that Texas Firecracker dog of his can beat Alligator," Dexter said. "Firecracker dog outweighs him by twenty pounds. Earl thinks he's got the advantage." Then he turned to Jack and continued, "With you in the pit, we'd win for sure."

"I won't do it," Jack said.

"That land bought the clothes on his back," Dexter said, talking slow. "Now he won't help get it back."

"With Alligator, it won't matter who's in the pit," Squirrel said.

•

Jack helped them unload the equipment: a self-contained liquid-nitrogen refrigerator, milk as a semen extender, an artificial vagina and plastic straws for the storage. The A. V. had hollow walls filled with hot water to protect the semen from the shock of cold air and a collection tube at one end. The vet had brought along a hound bitch in heat to stimulate Alligator.

"We'll have Jack stimulate him while we hold his nose to the bitch."

"What you mean?" Jack asked.

Dexter laughed. "Why, give that dog a hand job," he said. "He likes you."

"I'm not doing that," Jack said.

Dexter said, "Boy, it's just a dumb animal. Nobody'll ever accuse you of liking nothing but women. Army had me do the same thing for my guard dog. Was a standing order. Did it once a week. Damn dog loved me for it."

"No way."

"Do like you're told." Dexter was talking slow and making Alligator's ears stand up.

"We'll bring him up close to the bitch again," Squirrel said.

"He's not interested," Jack said.

"It can't hurt," Dexter said. "Maybe he'll discover there's something in his life besides killing."

They brought Alligator's nose up to the whimpering bitch.

"You do it," Jack said to Dexter.

"Dog hates me," Dexter said. "You're the only one he likes. We sell enough gator juice and we're on our way to getting our land back."

"OK," Jack said. "But I don't want to hear about this next time I go to Greenville."

"Nobody'd think it was worth telling but you."

The two men struggled to hold Alligator. The dog did not kick or twist about, just moved steadily one way and then another to test their strength. Jack knelt beside him.

"Go ahead."

Jack massaged Alligator's penis, feeling the dog's heat. Alligator became excited, swelling to fill the artificial vagina as Jack guided him into it. Alligator trembled. The bitch began to howl.

"How long?" Jack asked.

Squirrel said, "For dogs it takes a long time."

"He don't have a drop in him," Jack said. "We're wasting our time."

"Don't you stop," Dexter said.

Jack really wondered why he was doing it and not the old man. Suddenly, Alligator began to come in short spurts, the milky-white semen trickling into the collection bottle at the bottom of the A. V. He smelled the sour scent of it, all mixed up with the stink of the dog. Then the smell of the last woman he had been with, a girl in a motel in Memphis, came out of nowhere, and he stopped.

"Don't stop now," Squirrel said. "You're doing beautiful. Dogs go a long time."

Jack put his hand back on the dog, and Alligator began to come again.

"We'll be able to make a thousand Alligators," Dexter said.

"Not that many," Squirrel said. "Maybe we can do ten bitches with what we done today."

"This boy's so good at it, we can do it once a week at least," Dexter said. "Took this long to find out what he does best."

"You'll never make enough money off this," Jack said. "Won't even be able to pay the taxes on the house."

"You let me worry about that. Just keep working that dog."

(continued on page 149)Pit Bull(continued from page 88)

Alligator continued to fill the collection bottle for what seemed to Jack like five minutes.

Then it was over. They put Alligator back on the cable while Jack went to wash his hands with the hose.

Squirrel checked the sperm content of a sample with a photometer and pronounced it excellent. Then they mixed the semen with the milk and cooled the mixture down to five degrees centigrade. Five hours later, they added glycerol to protect the sperm from freezing and placed samples in clear-plastic straws, which they sealed and stored under liquid nitrogen in the refrigerator.

It was late afternoon. Alligator slept in the shade of his plywood shelter. The sun came through the big windows of the porch, which Jack's mother once kept filled with plants. That was before she walked out on Dexter. Now the glass shelves were empty and the squat stainless steel refrigerator, which looked like a miniature space capsule, sat on a table surrounded by empty clay flowerpots.

Jack held a straw up to the light. Milk crystals had formed, sparkling in the sunlight, Alligator's sap locked in the ice, awaiting life at the pleasure of the old man. Jack shuddered at the thought of fierce dogs whose only love was battle, matched in a thousand pits.

•

Dumas, Dexter's trainer, made part of his living by catching rattlesnakes and selling their venom to pharmaceutical companies. He had not worked Dexter's corner for a long time, but in the old days he was always there during a tough fight. At the end of the barge he lived on was a row of cages where he kept snakes he was milking. Usually, he milked them and let them loose in the woods. He claimed he could find a particular snake any time he wanted.

Alligator trotted over and sniffed at the sacks. Then he backed off.

"They won't stick their tusks in you," said Dumas' wife, Carrie. "Afraid they'll get poisoned." Then she said to Dumas, "What you gonna do with all them snakes? You know they're not buying poison right now." And turning to Jack, she continued, "He's been milking snakes all morning. One of these days, he's gonna get hisself bit."

Dumas laughed. "Why, a snake would belly up in five minutes, he bit into me."

They put Alligator into Dumas' wooden skiff; he had built it himself out of cypress boards. Dumas took the oars and Jack sat with Alligator next to him.

"Get in there with the snakes and turtles," Jack said, and the dog went over the side without hesitation.

Dumas rowed up the lake at a steady pace. Alligator followed, swimming easily.

"We'll work him about a quarter of a mile today," Dumas said. "Won't overheat in the water."

Jack turned his back to Dumas and watched Alligator swim. He believed the dog would continue to swim until he wanted him to stop. Swim all the way to fucking China. There was not a thing that he would have to say to him. That was why Dexter wanted him in the pit.

Alligator was the most dangerous thing in the lake, worse than some 100-pound snapping turtle lying in the mud on the bottom. And it was all because he had hot blood running in his veins, not some thin, cold, watery stuff. He knew the difference between love and hate.

"That dog smells like a skunk," Dumas said.

"You could swim him all day long and he'd still smell," Jack said.

"He works good for you."

"Why?"

"Don't know. You raise him?"

"Nope."

"Some dogs just latch on to a person."

"I don't even like him."

Jack pulled him over the side and Alligator shook himself, spraying water on them. He sat in the bow and began licking himself dry.

"Sure you do," Dumas said. "He knows it. See how good he worked."

"Ain't going in the pit."

"I know. But fights are won in training."

"Then we'll train him good."

"How come your daddy wants to match him against the Firecracker?"

"Breeding rights."

And Jack told Dumas about the liquid-nitrogen refrigerator and the semen collections.

"He ain't that good. Twenty pounds is too much to give up. Won't be able to snatch up that dog and bite clean through his backbone."

"Then he'll lose. Dexter'll have shot his wad."

"Maybe so." Dumas paused, pulling on the oars, which creaked in the oarlocks. "What that dog needs is an edge," he said.

"How?" Jack knew that some handlers tried to cheat by putting poison or some bad-tasting substance on their dogs.

"I've been hired to train and handle a dog," Dumas said. "I don't plan on losing."

"Daddy'll be mad; Blackmon's too smart for any cheating."

"Well, we'll train him good. That's the best way."

Back at the barge, Dumas threw a rope with a piece of truck inner tube tied to it over the limb of a big oak. Jack had Alligator take the inner tube in his mouth. They pulled him up and let him hang suspended for a count often. Then they lowered him and let him pull on the inner tube before hoisting him again, the muscles in his neck bulging.

Then they fed him. It was commercial dog food out of a sack. Carrie poured broth over it, and Dumas added a liquid out of a small blue bottle.

"What's that?" Jack asked.

"Vitamins," Dumas said. "We used to think red meat was what to get them ready with. Learned we was wrong about that."

Alligator sniffed at the food and walked away.

Dumas said, "Tell him to eat."

"Go on, dog," Jack said.

Alligator returned to the bowl and ate in his usual unhurried manner.

"We'll swim him once a day for a while," Dumas said. "I want you to talk to him. Make a fuss over him. Pretend he's a girl you're sweet on."

Alligator got up and shook himself, a fine spray of water falling on Jack, the stink rising from the dog's damp coat.

•

Jack ran Alligator on the cat mill early Friday morning, the fight only one day away. People had come in for it from Texas and Louisiana, even from as far away as California. Dumas sat under an umbrella at the road to keep anyone from coming up to the house to get a look at Alligator. The dog pursued the fanged-goblin mask around and around.

"Remember he's fighting tomorrow," Dexter said.

"Dumas says a short workout don't hurt," Jack said.

"When you finish, I want you to put him in the house," Dexter said. "Next new thing he sees, I want it to be that Firecracker."

Alligator stopped working and Jack took him out of his harness.

"You afraid of him?" Dexter asked.

"I'm smart."

"He likes you."

"Likes killing."

"See that," Dexter pointed off across the fields, which stretched away perfectly flat toward a distant tree line. "Dog's gonna get that back for us." Then he turned back to Jack. "I want you in the pit."

"Won't be my fault he gets beat. Dumas says he can't give up the twenty pounds."

"Let me worry 'bout that." Dexter again stared out wistfully at the fields that he had lost. "Next spring, we'll be working that land."

Alligator tugged on the lead, looking out across the same expanse.

"Smells a rabbit," Dexter said. "That's why he needs to go inside until the fight. Wasting energy worryin' about rabbits."

Jack took Alligator to his room and settled him on the rug by his bed. He lay there staring up at the ceiling, smelling the stink of the dog and through the open window the early-autumn scent of barren fields and dead poplar leaves lying in heaps beneath the big tree by his window. A hawk hung in the high blue sky, turning in slow circles over the ditches and swamps.

More than once he had thought of shooting Alligator and destroying the frozen semen. That would end everything. But it was too easy that way. He had to see Dexter embarrassed before his friends. Or maybe ... maybe Dexter could make his crazy scheme work and get the land back. Land that would be all his one day.

Then, in Jack's mind, Alligator swelled up and took the land's place: His eyes glazed over with a milky film, muscles in his hind legs knotted and quivering, head twisting as he searched for where the big red dog lived.

•

On Saturday night, the people who were going to attend the fight met in the gravel parking lot of Bascomb's church, the moonlight shining off the tin roof, the barren fields stretching away to distant lights. A school bus would carry them to the fight. Once a person got on the bus, he could not get off or leave the fight until it was all over.

Jack followed in the truck with Dexter and Alligator. He felt the lump of the Air-weight .38 under his jacket. Dexter was carrying $10,000 to bet on the fight and had insisted that Jack go armed. The old man was carrying a .44-caliber derringer that had belonged to his father.

Jack and Dexter and Dumas had built the pit close to one of the rows of bleachers in the high school gym. It had plywood sides and a floor of green outdoor carpet. Dexter had taped scratch lines four feet from each corner. A dog would have to cross the line on signal, and any dog that shied away would be declared the loser. Wash-and-rinse tubs full of warm water had been placed behind each corner so the dogs could be washed before the fight.

They took Alligator out of the truck, the dog standing on the ground like an iron statue. He turned his head slowly and sniffed the air, locating his enemy.

"Knows he's gettin' ready to fight," Dexter said. "Muzzle him. Already goin' crazy." He turned to Jack. "You mind him. I'm countin' on you."

Jack slipped the muzzle on the dog, talking softly to him, but it did no good. The dog knew. And instead of the anticipation of a dogfight, Jack felt as he used to before football games. There was that dry smell of dying grass, the crickets chirping with a slower beat, and the night was cool.

Inside, people were standing about on a gym floor where just one night before, his neighbors had held a Halloween carnival. The smell of whiskey hung in the air. Dumas and Dexter both held leads attached to Alligator's collar. They tugged gently at them, afraid to do anything to set him off, and guided the dog slowly toward the pit.

The crowd fell silent as they crossed the floor. Alligator strained at the leads. Jack bent down and petted him, and it was like stroking a piece of iron. The dog's claws clicked on the floor, his paws slipping as he attempted to gain purchase on the waxed surface.

Blackmon and the Texas Firecracker, big and red, waited by the side of the pit. The Firecracker was unmuzzled and his trainer, Tudor, knelt beside him, the lead twisted around his hands. Alligator pretended not to see the other dog, but it was all Dumas and Dexter could do to keep him from pulling them right over into the enemy's corner. The Firecracker watched Alligator carefully but did not move. Jack picked up Alligator to prevent him from wasting any more energy.

A Texas man wearing a white cowboy hat and a sharp black tux had been chosen as referee. He directed them to wash down their dogs. He gave them two towels and a blanket apiece. The trainers washed down the opponent's dog. After they were done, Blackmon said, "Taste him."

"No, that's not in the rules, "Jack said.

"Was once," Blackmon said.

Dumas walked over from their corner.

"Washed him," Dumas said. "That's enough."

"What does the owner say?" Blackmon asked. "You have this old man taste the Firecracker."

"Go ahead," Dexter said. "We got nothing to hide."

So as dog men had done at the start of the sport in England, Tudor licked Alligator from head to tail. He concentrated on his ears, nose and hind legs.

"Don't taste like nothing but soap," Tudor said. He wrapped Alligator in a blanket and Jack lifted him. Alligator's stink had been brought out by the water. Squirrel was on the outside of the pit with a case of veterinary supplies. People in the crowd were making bets.

"One thousand on the black dog," a man shouted.

"You covered," the odds maker said. He looked up into the crowd, holding his arms above his head, and yelled, "Anybody else?"

More bets were placed. Odds were running three to one against Alligator. Dumas climbed out of the pit, leaving Jack alone with the dog. He took Alligator's muzzle off and removed the blanket, feeling him begin to tremble beneath his hands. Jack felt sick.

"Face your dogs, gentlemen," the referee said.

Jack wrapped both of his arms around Alligator and waited for the signal.

"Ready, gentlemen," the referee said, nodding to the timekeeper. "Release your dogs."

The dogs ran straight for each other, meeting in the center of the pit.

The Firecracker tried for a leg hold, submarining under Alligator as he went for it, but Alligator threw his own hind leg up on his back, and the red dog's teeth snapped at the air. The crowd gasped in approval. But immediately, as if at a signal, the crowd grew quiet, and the dogs fought in absolute pin-drop silence. Jack watched the muscles in Alligator's hind legs swell and heard the tendons make little popping sounds as both dogs stood on their hind legs and used their front paws like two wrestlers.

Jack went down on his hands and knees next to Alligator, encouraging him. Tudor bared his teeth and spit flew out of his mouth as he talked to Firecracker. Jack kept one eye on the little swamper in case he should come after him.

"Come on, baby!" Jack yelled.

Tudor retorted, "Do it to him, Firecracker!"

The red dog got a hold on Alligator's shoulder and pushed him to the carpet, shaking him hard. Finally, he tired and paused, allowing Alligator to break free and get a nose hold. He twisted and shook his head. But the red dog broke the hold.

Fifteen minutes had gone by, and both dogs paused for a moment, standing inches away from each other. The red dog turned his head and shoulders away from Alligator and then went for an ear hold and shook the black dog.

"There's a turn! A turn!" Dumas shouted.

The referee allowed them to pick up their dogs because the red dog had turned away from Alligator. But it was another ten minutes before the red dog lost his hold and the two were separated. Now the red dog would have to scratch, to see if he were willing to cross the line. Jack wiped the blood off Alligator's shoulder and checked his mouth for broken teeth.

"See, he didn't keep hold long," Dumas whispered to Jack. "Don't like the taste of him. Firecracker'll wear hisself out."

Jack wrapped his arms around Alligator hard, thinking it looked as if he had a chance of winning. The red dog did not seem to have his heart in the thing. The crowd continued to yell.

"Get ready," the timekeeper called.

"Twenty-five seconds, gentlemen," the referee said. "Face your dogs."

Jack held Alligator, waiting for the charge of the Firecracker.

"Red dog ready?" the referee said.

Tudor nodded.

"Let's go," the timekeeper yelled.

"Release your dogs," the referee said.

Firecracker shot across the pit with no hesitation. Jack waited until he was only a few feet away and then let go of Alligator, who submarined under Firecracker, twisting his head and going for a hold on a hind leg. But he missed, and then the red dog closed his jaws on Alligator's hind leg just above the hock. Jack did not hear bone cracking. Alligator got a hold on the red dog's shoulder, both animals now locked together, shaking each other until they both were exhausted. The fight was now one hour and a half old.

"Crunch that bone!" Tudor yelled to his fighter. "Want to hear it break."

"Running out of gas," Jack said to Alligator. "Hang in there."

"Red dog'll give," Dumas kept saying. "Red dog'll give." Then, in a whisper when Jack came close enough to the corner, "Won't like the taste."

Fifteen minutes passed, both dogs still locked together, each only occasionally shaking his hold. Jack knew that when Firecracker eventually gave up his hold, Alligator would be doomed by that injured hind leg, at the mercy of a larger dog.

Then the red dog relaxed his grip, allowing Alligator to twist free.

"That old man's putting poison on him!" Tudor yelled at the referee. "You watch him."

The crowd cheered and more money was passed. Alligator's hold slipped off and Firecracker turn faulted again when the smaller dog jumped for a hold on his upper jaw. Jack yanked Alligator out at the next opportunity. He sponged him off, Tudor yelling all the time to the referee, "Look out! Look out for the poison!" Dumas checked the hind leg. Jack massaged him. The fight was now about two hours old.

"Went clean through," Dumas said. "Bone's all right."

"You watch the old man, Mr. Referee!" Tudor shouted. "I want to taste their water." Tudor came across the pit.

"Go ahead," Dexter said, and Dumas handed him the pail. Tudor scooped up some bloody water in his palm and gulped it down, wincing.

"Drink the whole fuckin' pail," Jack said.

Tudor spit.

"Taste blood, that's all." Tudor yelled it across the pit to Blackmon.

The referee ordered them to face their dogs. Firecracker hesitated just for a moment before running across the pit to Alligator, and the dogs went at it again, covered in blood. The carpet was slick with it. By now the crowd had become as sluggish as the dogs.

Alligator's left ear was shredded and a stream of red ran down to his hind leg. He never hinted at turning away.

Firecracker scratched three more times, each time hesitating more than the last, before he shot across the pit toward Alligator's corner. Tudor kept complaining to the referee that Dumas was putting poison on his dog.

The fight came up on the three-hour mark. Both dogs were fighting in slow motion. Firecracker got Alligator down by using his superior weight and bit deep into his shoulder again, shaking him like a terrier would shake a rat until, exhausted, the red dog collapsed on top of him.

"Kill him, kill him, kill him!" Tudor chanted.

"Come on, baby, get up," Jack coaxed, his face not six inches from Alligator's head.

He smelled the sweet metallic tang of blood, the air around the pit heavy with it now.

"Got that red dog!" Dumas shouted. "Worn out!"

But Alligator did not look much better to Jack. The dog should be lying in some quiet place with a quart of Ringer's solution dripping into him.

Jack took one step to pick up Alligator, but suddenly the dog twisted beneath the big red dog, finding a chest hold, rolling the Firecracker over at the same time and shaking the larger dog as if he were a rat. The red dog wheezed and coughed as he attempted to breathe.

Then the Firecracker just quit fighting.

"That's it," Blackmon said. "You win."

"Alligator of Top Dog Kennels wins in three hours and ten minutes," the referee announced.

Jack took the breaking stick and stepped forward, but Dexter snatched it from him.

"It's not over yet," Dexter said. "God-damn, he's dead game."

Dexter knelt beside Alligator and stuck the tip of the stick into the back of his jaw.

"Pick up your dog, Blackmon," he said. "Alligator'll fight till he's dead. You'll see."

"They fight anymore, both those dogs are goin' to die," Blackmon said. "My dog's done fightin' today."

"Puttin' poison on that little dog," Tudor said, shaking his head.

"Shut up," Blackmon said to him. "It was a fair fight."

Tudor ran over and lapped at Alligator's water again. "Nothing, damn it," he said.

Dexter looked toward the crowd and said, very deliberately, "He'd be dead game. Damn red dog quit."

Jack realized then that Dexter had counted on Firecracker's beating Alligator. He wanted his dog to die still hanging on--that would have made him worth double at stud. "Dead game" was a holy incantation among pit-bull handlers.

Dexter twisted the stick to try to make Alligator let go.

"Pinch his nostrils shut," Blackmon suggested.

Dexter put his hand on Alligator's nose. Suddenly, the dog let go and turned on him, knocking him to the carpet. Alligator twisted his head, finding a purchase underneath the old man's ribs, and began shaking, it all happening so fast no one had a chance to move. It seemed to Jack to take forever ... but he took three steps to his father and pulled the Airweight out of its holster.

He shoved the barrel into Alligator's ear. He pulled the trigger.

Instead of releasing, the dog shook Dexter harder than before. Jack shot again. Alligator kept on shaking, blood and brains splattered on the surface of the pit. After the third round, he finally lay still. They had to use the breaking stick to pry apart his dead jaws.

"Shit, sure enough dead game," someone in the crowd yelled.

Dexter looked real bad. He had turned the gray color of November soybean stubble and was barely conscious. Squirrel punched the Ringer's solution into the old man's arm and they carried him to the parking lot.

•

Dexter escaped with just two broken ribs. He had bet for Alligator to lose, and the entire $10,000 was gone. But people had heard about the semen stored under liquid nitrogen: The phone rang constantly with inquiries from breeders, owners and fans. Dexter talked to them from his bed, quoting prices and writing down orders in a green account ledger.

•

One afternoon not long after the fight, Jack was standing on the front porch when Dexter appeared carrying a military ammo box he used to carry shotgun shells on dove hunts.

"When you gonna start selling?" Jack asked.

"When I'm good and ready." Dexter wore a pistol at his hip. "Let's go for a ride."

"We going shooting?"

"Boy, you ask too damn many questions."

Dexter drove out across the levee and then to a ruined park Dexter had once built for the community. The roof of the arbor had fallen in and honeysuckle vines climbed up the sides. A jungle of weeds and small trees had grown up, much of it sumac whose leaves had turned blood-red. Jack followed his father, who carried the ammo box, out into the thicket, and they made their way out to the sand bar. Jack kept expecting to step on a snake. He gave up worrying when he realized he couldn't even see his own feet in the tangle.

When they came out of the jungle onto the sand bar, the river appeared wide and brown before them, the Arkansas shore thick with willows, whose leaves had mostly fallen off, leaving the bare trunks growing at an angle over the water. Dexter walked down to the water, the river making a sucking sound as it moved past the sand bar. He put the ammo box on the sand.

Dexter took the pistol out of the holster. It was his favorite .357 Magnum, and he offered it to Jack butt first.

"What are you waiting for?" Dexter asked.

"What?"

"Thought you wanted me dead," Dexter said. Jack looked off at the river. "Killing's easy. Living's hard. Thought you'd learned that off in the war."

The pistol in Jack's hand felt as if it weighed a thousand pounds, his arm hanging slack by his side.

Dexter knelt down and opened up the ammo box, its lid popping open with a clunk. He pulled out a handful of plastic straws.

"Can't let the people breed more crazy dogs," Dexter said. "Won't make enough money off the stuff, anyway. You were right."

"They're already ruined," Jack said.

He tossed the pistol onto the sand and took a straw out of the box. Holding it up to the light, he saw that the crystals were gone. Nothing remained but a milk-shake slush. He felt like shooting Dexter and was glad he had dropped the pistol.

"The land?" Jack asked.

"Lost."

The old man tossed straws into the river, one by one. They floated on the brown water, bobbing in the current.

Dexter said, "For the fish."

"How will you live now?"

Dexter picked up the ammo box and emptied the rest of the straws into the river. "Best way I can. Same way you will."

Suddenly, Jack embraced his father, hugging him as tight as he had held Alligator in the pit.

"Careful, my ribs," Dexter said.

A towboat pushing a string of barges came into view around the bend and gave a blast on its horn.

"Maybe I can find some work in Orleans," Jack said. "Offshore oil. That's good money."

"Go down there if you want," Dexter said.

The straws were gone now, floating down to the Gulf, and just the empty brown water and the towboat, approaching in the distance. It blew its horn again.

Together, they left the sand bar. Dexter had trouble climbing up the slope into the jungle, and Jack gave him his hand, pulling him up the slippery bank. He led Dexter into the dense insect-loud brambles of cane, briers and sumac, holding branches aside and breaking trail as they walked across the ruined park back to the truck.