Greg Iles - The Devils Punchbowl

Walt stands on tiptoe, pretending to base his decision on what’s happening in the pit. Genghis, the brindle, still has a lock on the foreleg of the black, and Mike has lost a lot of blood. The floor of the pit is viscous with it. Mike’s handler looks worried, and Walt senses that Genghis is about to try for his throat.

“I guess,” Walt says in a bored voice. “Hell, I’d rather be back on the

Queen

than in this dump.”

Ming takes his callused hand in her soft fingers and looks up at him with liquid eyes. “Or in hotel room, maybe?”

Walt swallows hard, trying to conceal how desperately he wants to be alone with her. Ming removes a cell phone from her tiny handbag, presses a key, and puts a finger into her opposite ear. Their driver had told them he couldn'’t wait outside, since a random bust was always possible. If that happened, they were to run into the nearby woods and wait until the police left, then call him on Ming’s cell phone. Because they'’re far out in the woods, Walt figures the limo is at least twenty minutes away.

Ming stands on tiptoe again, and he leans down. “Driver come back fifteen minutes,” she says. “Okay, Zhaybee?”

“That’ll do. This fight will be over by then, anyway. The black’s about had it.”

Ming peeks between some people in front of her. “Yes.”

Now all Walt has to do is pretend to be excited about cruelty and slaughter for fifteen minutes.

The black’s handler is shouting at Genghis to break off the fight. The other handler looks angry about this, but the fight’s being conducted under “Cajun Rules,” a code that strictly governs all aspects of a fight from the washing, weighing, and handling of the dogs to what constitutes a turn and a scratch—even the duties of the referee and timekeeper. Any dog handler with experience ought to know that Cajun Rules allow the handlers to yell at both dogs.

To Walt’s surprise, a sharp cry from Mike’s handler finally distracts Genghis, and Mike tears himself free, twisting away in a move that warrants a cessation of the fight. As Mike limps back to his corner on three legs, the referee calls a turn, signaling that the black has tried to break off the battle. Mike’s handler straddles his gasping dog, rubbing him vigorously after only a cursory check of the injured leg, which is almost surely broken.

“Get ready, Mike!” he yells, tossing a bloody towel aside. “You ain’t out of it yet. You got your second wind now. Get ready to scratch, boy!”

To scratch, Mike will have to limp across a line in the dirt four feet in front of him—within two seconds of the referee’s signal—then voluntarily engage Genghis, whose handler is struggling to hold him in his corner. Walt tries to imagine a boxing trainer encouraging a human fighter to continue with a broken, mangled shoulder. They don'’t even do that in UFC fighting.

“Let go!” shouts the referee, and the timekeeper begins counting. Before the second syllable dies in his throat, Mike limps out of his handler’s grasp and hobbles across the scratch line. Half the crowd whoops with approval. Across the pit, Genghis strains in his handler’s arms, almost mad to finish the battle. Mike hesitates at the center of the pit, then tucks his tail between his legs and starts to turn away.

“Goddamn it, don'’t you turn!” screams his handler. “Hit him! Hit! Hit!”

Mike looks back across the pit, then lowers his square head, charges across the bloody dirt and lunges at Genghis, seizing the brindle’s nose in his jaws. When Genghis’s handler releases him, Mike

tries to roll him over, but the broken leg prevents his getting enough leverage to do it. As the churning dogs wheel to one side, Genghis rips his nose free and darts out of Mike’s reach, then hurls himself bodily into the smaller dog, knocking him onto his back. Genghis leaps for Mike’s exposed throat, but Mike twists his trunk at the last instant, and the massive jaws bite deep into his chest instead. The crowd roars and stomps the floor in approval.

Genghis thrashes his head from side to side, grinding his jaws, widening the wound. A rush of blood soaks Mike’s ribs, glistening on the black coat, and for a moment both dogs stop moving. Genghis seems content to rest in this dominant position, his jaws locked in Mike’s chest, his tail held high. Mike gazes back at his handler with cloudy eyes, like a boy who has disappointed his father.

“Get up!” the handler screams. “You goddamn worthless sack of meat!”

At this furious cursing, Mike jerks weakly, his back legs paddling the air as he tries to wrestle free from the terrible jaws, but his effort only spurs Genghis to drive deeper into the wound. The brindle whips his head back and forth with monstrous power, flinging Mike bodily across the pit, and the crowd shouts in manic anticipation of the kill.

“Finish him!” yells a woman from the throng.

“Kill him, G! Gut that black cur!”

Walt’s stomach heaves, unable to tolerate the mixture of anger and disgust flooding through him. This is like standing in a room where prisoners are forced to fight or copulate for the pleasure of their guards. The Nazis did that, and the Japanese, and probably the jailers of all nations in all epochs of history. Walt knows men who have done it; he witnessed such a fight once at an army stockade. The specter of Abu Ghraib rises in his mind. The terrible truth is that brutality is part of human nature, and all the laws in the world can’t neuter it. That'’s the accursed nub of the thing. Some people in this barn probably think

he’s

obscene—a geezer on the wrong side of seventy with a delicate beauty hardly past twenty. Of course, they don'’t know that being with Ming is simply part of his job, just as being with Nancy had been. Although…the two aren'’t quite the same. Being with Nancy felt like work. Being with Ming feels like the first rush after a good shot of whiskey, dilated into a constant

state of euphoria. Ming is one of those rare women who draws every eye wherever she goes. Every man wants her, and every woman hates her because they can’t be her. Her very existence is an affront to other women’s efforts to attract the opposite sex.

But Walt doesn’'t want Ming for the reason these rednecks thinks he does. She’s beautiful, yes, and she radiates sensuality like a magnetic field. But for him the girl is a living door to the past: a time when he felt more alive to love than at any other time in his life. He can’t bear to think about Kaeko in this obscene place, but the pain of being forced to leave her in Japan returns with even the faintest memory. Walt had been so despondent that he’d gone half out of his head. He’d stopped thinking right, stopped paying attention, and that got men killed in Korea. If it hadn'’t been for Tom Cage, Walt would have died during the retreat from Chosin Reservoir.

Ming touches his arm, stands on tiptoe, and says, “We must go, Zhaybee. Now.”

“Is the driver here?”

She hands him her cell phone and points to a text message on its LCD screen. It reads GET OUT NOW. HELICOPTER SEARCHING FIVE MILES AWAY. HIDE IN WOODS. WILL CALL SOON.

As Walt reads these words, the referee calls a turn, which silences the puzzled crowd. There’s been no turn. Genghis is standing over Mike with his head still buried in the black’s chest.

“Folks,” cries the ref, “we may be about to get a visit from the sheriff. I designate location number four as the site to finish this battle, if Mike’s still game.”

The crowd begins to swirl around the pit like water around a drain, as people pick up coats, gather children, and toss beer bottles at the overflowing trash cans.