Novel Excerpt: “The Dog Fighter”

from The Dog Fighter, a novel by Marc Bojanowski
reprinted with permission from the author and his publisher
read the Void interview with Bojanowski here.

One.

In Mexico I fought dogs. I fought on a rooftop surrounded by bougainvillea and colorful shards of broken glass. Before the fighting I waited in a small room where bloodstained ragmen came hunchbacked from shadows to wrap my forearm in a heavy rug. Over my hand they placed a glove made to have metal claws. The leather of the glove softened with the blood and sweat of each fight and with each fight the claws were made more dull. When the ragmen finished wrapping the heavy rug they led me from the small room to a ring surrounded by yelling men. On these nights the ski of Canción darkened too slow for the eyes to see. The last of the sun always in the eyes and teeth of the dogs. Reflected into the ring from the broken glass buried in the walls. When the leashes were undone the yelling men stood shaking the metal fence of the ring. I crouched in silence and waited for the dogs to bark and show their necks. And then I tore at their necks with my claws. I let the dogs bite themselves onto the heavy rug so I could better put in their eyes with my thumb. Many times I snapped the bones of the small legs with my hands. I beat them in the heads with my fists. Once when a dog took me to the ground and went for my neck I caught her by the ears and dragged my teeth between his eyes to the end of its nose.

I was a young man when I fought dogs in Mexico. There were many dog fighters but none as great in size or as quiet. Then I was unsure of my words. But the fighting always was a language I spoke well. And the old men of Canción the men who have known fighting for as long as there have been dog fighters to admire placed upon me their most respect. These men spoke of my fights often and the stories they told of me then they still tell today. Of this I am sure.