The Dog Fighter by Marc Bojanowski Read Free Book Online Page B

with an unlit cigar clenched in his teeth led the ferry through the narrow mouth that opened from the sea into the Bay of Canción. Half naked boys jumped from high rocks of the mouth calling to us. Dried by the wind from when they left the water to climb back to from where they jumped laughing nonsense words and curses. Some few masts of fishing and old oyster boats wavered above the docks ahead. The docks built of large sand colored stones quarried in the mountain range beyond. I noticed the clay brick and stone towers of the massive cathedral rising above the center of the city. Only the mountains then were more tall than the towers of the cathedral in Canción.
    Workingmen lined the rails of the ferry as the women hurried below for their possessions. One man pointed to the north end of the wide bay and called through the wind for the men to look where the hotel had already begun to take its great shape. The three stories were without outside walls then but surrounded by wood scaffolding. Steel bars for reinforcement pierced the concrete and cinder block sides. The empty hallways allowed the last of the days light and through these rose the wind moaning.
    It looks like some monster. One man said.
    Good. Answered another quick. Then I will not have to listen to you crying at night about how much you miss your wife.
    Men without shirts scrambled up slender wood ladders of the scaffolding but stopped when they noticed the ferry. We stared back. Our eyes so distant from each other they did not meet but the postures we let our bodies take were still enough to tell that we were judging one another.
    When the ferry docked the men that played cards on the back of the drunk rolled him into the water holding their laughter to not wake him. He came to the surface coughing. On the stone dock a short man with a muscular chest and a proud chin struggled to hold papers in that wind. He was well dressed and impatient looking. He cursed in front of the women without apologizing. This stocky foreman took the names of workers carrying their worn canvas sacks and baskets of woven maguey with handles coming undone. Those coming down the wood planks of the ferry held their hands in front of their eyes to shield sand blown by the wind. The workingmen stood in a line where I was a foot more tall than the man that was tallest. Meanwhile the short but confident foreman yelling at us to come to the hotel at dawn the next morning.
    If work cannot be found for you. He yelled. You will not be paid for having made the journey. At this he smiled and turned to leave.
    Most of the men from the ferry followed this foreman to a building near the hotel where cots were rented and the other workers slept. But with my sack over my shoulder I went to be on my own. Passing through the crowd with the wind I did not hear the toothless man sneaking behind me with his knife drawn. In the darting eyes of a pretty young girl before me I understood something to be wrong. I turned quickly and caught the toothless man by the wrist. The knife clattered on the stones. He fell to his knees holding his wrist above where his hand now dangled limp. The men left him crying on the ground hunched over himself. I smiled at the young girl and then walked on.
    When the wind had died some and the sun had lowered behind the mountains to the west the last of the day was warm in the blue and green walls now dark as night settled upon the city completely. The wind had taken the heat of the day. The humidity was not like that of Veracruz but the warmth a dry heat from the surrounding desert. The mouth of the bay choked with shadows of fishing boats and the boys in their canoes tiny alongside. Down an alley a record played from a second story window. I could smell meat cooking. Oregano and chili. Behind wrought iron fencing of a balcony a young boy in cloth diapers played with a rag doll. His hand balancing himself dangerously as his dimpled knees held him up unsteadily. I walked through