Blood Sport

by Robert F. Jones

  And when the cop comes up to you, finally, his hand swinging tentatively near the pistol butt, you look at Madness and Madness looks at you, and you both start laughing uproariously as you grab the cop and pound his head against the curb and then, pulling the pistol in one easy, greasy gesture, as smooth as any signature your hand ever wrote while dismissing tomorrow’s debt to a flimsy credit-card chit, you or Madness, or perhaps both of you, blast the cop’s head into a broken pumpkin, except for his blue Irish eye that stares into the gutter. Freedom!

  So we drifted through that country on the Upper Hassayampa, my buddy Madness and I, killing whatever crossed our path, and killing it with impunity. The big meat critters froze at our approach, goggling, petrified. We walked right up to them, giggling, blessed, and patted them on the brow, aurochs and elk alike, before shooting them. Snakes lay quiet in our presence, flicking their tongues to taste our untoward odor. I came upon a bear that could have—should have—charged and tom me to bits. I walked right up to it where it stood frozen in appreciation of me and my Madness and scratched it behind the ears. I lifted its lips to study its teeth, laughing joyfully at their white, strong symmetry. I tugged on its mane and placed the muzzle of my pistol against its temple, growling obscenities and threats into its tick-swollen ear. But finally I spared it, for a laugh.

  Madness and I were delighted with the Dump. It brought back all the joys and giggles of that War—the last one we could love or envy. The one in which Four Freedoms implied a fifth: the freedom to kill in a good cause, with no regrets; the freedom to hate without reservation and kill in the same joyous mood, as we were killing now. We loved the faded posters, the naked, naive graffiti. We spent long evenings in the dark, musty barracks discussing girls we had known back then, with their bright mouths and pompadours and seamed stockings leading up to cunts that were actually fertile. We fondled the ancient weapons: Thompson submachine guns and Garands, Browning Automatic Rifles that had real walnut for their stocks and fore ends, bayonets heavy with stale cosmoline but, once cleaned, bright with a vicious purpose that pared away guilt—after all, they were meant for Nazis and Monkey-Men. And when the late few travelers came through, we killed them with a godlike joy, our nostrils twiching, swooning in the incense of burned gunpowder.

  I laughed when I killed the hippie. The fishhook trick was Madness’s idea, but I must admit I loved it. I laughed at the hippie’s outrage, his horror, at his pain, at the blood that filled his mouth—I admit now that it was an act of unconscionable cruelty, but after all, Madness made me do it, and he laughed harder than I did. And the kid was an enemy, an Enemy! A real, certified, honest-to-badness villain: otherwise why did he slink so fearfully at the sight of our weapons, cry so piteously when caught, protest so vehemently under torture, refuse so staunchly to reveal the whereabouts of Ratnose’s enclave? Why did he lisp with the hook through his tongue?

  Burning the Dump, killing another Enemy, then trailing the rest back into Ratnose’s country and killing a few more—all of that was joy unbounded, easy, natural. And the ride down the melting mountain. It never occurred to me to hide my track, to puzzle the pursuit that both Madness and I knew must now follow from Ratnose’s camp. Madness required a straight line to the cinder heap where he and I would make our stand and slaughter the savages, and we would have killed them to the man—we had it all figured out. I was halfway up the chimney in the back of the cave which Madness had pointed out to me, which I had known about from previous visits, when the skinny gunman shot his way in. Madness smiled at me in the dark, only his eyes and his broken teeth flashing yellow-white like some phosphorescent fungal growth, before he broke the skinny gunman’s neck with a single blow of his fist, and then bit off the skinny gunman’s ear for good measure—my buddy Madness worked well in the dark.

  Madness knew where they kept their horses. After throwing the skinny gunman down to them—that would keep them busy for a while—we headed down to kill the horses and the horse guards, Madness and I chattering away to each other as we ran down the lava slope, as unconcerned about silence as we had been about disguising our trail, knowing we were invulnerable as we had been with the bear. But then as I came round the rock, as I came round the rock and the kid was standing there, as I came round the rock and the kid jammed that rifle barrel in my chest and my hand slid around for the Luger to blast his lungs up through his nostrils, and my eyes hit his face, hit his own eyes, and—zip!—he was there again, alive, my son . . .

  Whoops, said Madness. I gotta split. My mother’s calling . . .

  And Madness was gone.

  And another voice piped up, a creaky old voice, calm, measured, dry . . .

  Uh, well, it seems we made a mistake, said Reason, clearing his throat and knocking the dottle from his briar. He adjusted his pince-nez and straightened his starched white doctors smock. Yes, it seems that it isn’t terminal after all . . .

  Oh, but it is terminal. Or at least, it will be very soon. Ratnose and I must have our little meeting, our tête-à-tête, our two-man encounter-group session from which only one of us will emerge even partially cured. Yet the prospect of our fatal confrontation does not frighten me as much as I thought it would. After all these years of worry, all those gum-footed nightmares in which his hideous face served as focus and catharsis, I find I rather like the man. Perhaps it’s because he is a charmer, literate, adept at putting one at one’s ease, the antithesis of brute rage or cowardly hysteria. Nor is he as ugly, in close-up, as he appears at long range. There is a quiet, calm, almost heroic quality to the way he carries himself. His eye is deep, and although it can roar black with scorn and purpose, more often it reflects a wise, umber amusement. The grit in his voice lends density to his words, as if they were boulders shifting on an ancient slope that has been prone to avalanche. Altogether a very imposing man. If I had friends, real friends, I would be happy to count Ratnose among them.

  At a deeper level, of course, I like him because I know I can kill him. Now that Madness has left me and Reason is again my hired consultant, I realize that I have matched Ratnose in cruelty, perhaps (in the business of the hippie’s tongue) even exceeded him. After all these months alone in the mountains, I am stronger than he, more thoroughly inured to pain and danger, quicker, darker, uglier. To be sure, he may very well be a better dresser, a better dancer, a better conversationalist in mixed company; but none of those factors will apply in the contest he has chosen to settle our fate, and that of my son. Because my son is my real weapon: my strength and my hope, the catalyst from and through which I can, and shall, draw all my skill when the moment comes. And more.

  Ratnose will die.

  44

  YES, THE FLY RODS—that was the brilliant stroke, of course. They were the best of the breed: H. L. Leonard rods, built of split Calcutta cane, tall and slim and elegantly balanced, their nickel ferrules snug as a hand in a velvet glove, the guides wrapped off impeccably in silk and finished with the sparest strokes of lacquer. Rods with backbone enough to bend the spirit of the strongest trout, yet with grace enough not to break it. Aristocratic rods, shaped carefully, calmly, lovingly by the sure though withered hands of dry old men in cozy workrooms, the teakettle piping on the stove, while through the riffles of memory there flowed again the fast, clear waters of streams now dammed and gone—Neversink, Esopus, Rondout—or else befouled past reclamation—Connecticut, Kennebec, Androscoggin: alive again in the taper of these rods, the long black shadows finning again over the gravel. Yes, the cryptic movement of the great, clean, sullen monsters, preliterate messages, translatable only through the subtle twitches and electric surges of the fly rod, and then at best inarticulate—inarticulable, like the dreams of dry old men in cozy workrooms.

  And of course, it was Ratnose’s notion. Pistols or knives? Pah! Plebeian! But a duel to the death between angling gentlemen (and here he snickered) using fly rods! That was more like it. That would be death with style!

  Ridiculous! snorted Tilkut. How could you possibly kill
a man with anything as small and innocuous as a trout fly?

  Flies kill men in nature, Ratnose rejoined. All it takes is the proper poison. And Ratnose had it: a gummy, resinous concoction extracted from the milky sap of the ketwai tree (a relative of the Hevea, or rubber plant). Before the advent of firearms, Hassayampan warriors had always dipped their arrowheads in ketwai, and some still used it on their knives. The sticky white sap was boiled slowly over a low fire until it turned thick and brown, almost black. Once it entered the bloodstream, paralysis swiftly ensued.

  Thus, the locale of the combat would be quite important. Ratnose had in mind a place high in the Altyn Tagh, where the Hassa and the Yampa flowed together to form the headwaters of the great river itself. The tributaries, fast and frigid enough to induce paralysis without the aid of ketwai, poured in whirlpool fashion down a monstrous, mile-deep granitic gullet known locally as the Suck Hole. The combatants would stand 100 feet apart—one in the Hassa, the other in the Yampa—facing each other across the whirlpool. They would be naked, so that clothing might not serve as armor against the poisoned flies, their only weapons the elegant, aristocratic fly rods. The aim, of course, was to hook the other man and then, as the paralyzing ketwai went to work, drag him into the grip of the Suck Hole. To preclude any desperate attempt at biting oneself free of the hook, wire-cored leaders would be used.

  All right, said Tilkut reluctantly, as if he had a choice in the matter, but what about the selection of line? Would that be left to the individual?

  Ratnose laughed. Of course not. Both would use doubletapered, sinking lines. That way, the unfair advantage in speed inherent in a weight-forward, “shooting” fly line would be nullified. The highest premium would be placed on precise, economical long-distance fly-casting ability, as it should be in a combat to the death between angling gentlemen.

  And the choice of flies?

  Ah, that might just as well be a matter of individual preference. No special advantage or disadvantage would accrue in this regard, provided the combatant did not stupidly penalize himself with some gaudy, feathery, air-resistant and hence slow-moving abortion like an Umpqua Red Brat or a Coles Comet. Ratnose assumed that Tilkut would choose something small but flashy, something symbolic, a wet fly like the Grizzly King or perhaps the Silver Prince.

  Tilkut stiffened at the insult. No. He would rely on his old standby at this season, with its olive wool body and its dark ginger hackle and its wing of gray duck quill. The Cowdung was good enough for him; it suited the prey.

  Ratnose chuckled. For himself he would tie his own favorite of deer hair, cream and ginger. The Rat-Faced MacDougall.

  45

  The nearest ketwai tree was located a two days’ journey to the south of Ratnose’s camp, in a region of sandstone hills and hot springs draining into the Hassayampa. Runner was dispatched on his motorcycle to fetch the sap from which the poison would be distilled. He took Twigan with him. While he was gone, Ratnose and Tilkut tied their fatal flies in the bandit leader’s cave. Both were experts with vise and forceps, dubbing needle and hackle pliers, and both were willing conversationalists. Their dialogue, though technical and at times rambling, is nonetheless of some interest.

  RATNOSE: Pass me that peacock herl, will you please, Tilkut?

  TILKUT: Here you go.

  RATNOSE: Thanks. I think I might try a little more color in the body on this one. . . . You know, that’s a fine kid you’ve got there, Tilkut.

  TILKUT: Grumph . . .

  RATNOSE: He’s not a whiner, like so many of the punks that we get up here from Downriver. I don’t know what you’re doing down there anymore, but you’re sure producing a bunch of sniveling softies. Except for Runner, that is. The rest of them get up here and immediately start muttering about “They.” You know the song .”They want us to study, they want us to work, they want us to fight, and what do we get out of it? Old is all we get.” Or else: “They won’t let us fuck, they won’t let us smoke dope, they won’t let us lie around and dream, and still they envy us because we’re young.” Oh, they’re great at screwing and doping and dreaming, all right, but when I try to put them to work in between times, they usually take off. And lump me along with “They” at the next place they stop, I suppose.

  TILKUT: If the kid’s smart, he’ll keep that motorcycle going when he gets to the ketwai tree.

  RATNOSE: Why? I mean, why the hell should he? I’ve got nothing against him. I used him to bait you in, that’s all. Not his fault that his father loves him, or wants to avenge him. Most natural thing in the world, I’d guess. No, if he stays here he stands a chance to inherit the tribe. If you kill me up at the Suck Hole, my man Hunk takes over, and Hunk is getting a bit long in the tooth, I guess you’ve noticed. Hunk thinks the world of Runner, and when Hunk goes, Runner takes charge.

  TILKUT: Hand me that thread wax, okay?

  RATNOSE: It’s over there under the tinsel. But goddammit, Tilkut, you’re avoiding the issue—no pun intended. You assume because I want to kill you that I want to kill your son—or hurt him, anyway. Why should the one follow the other? I mean, however it happened, you sent me a fine kid, and I’ve made him better. I’d be a damned fool to throw that away, wouldn’t I?

  TILKUT: What is this, summer camp? I sent you a fine kid and you made him better—you sound like some kind of a pussy camp counselor. And why the hell should I want my kid to end up a bandit leader? What’s the future in that? Blood on his hands and a price on his head. When they come in here with planes and cavalry . . .

  RATNOSE: Forget it—they tried. It doesn’t work. This is Outlaw Country—always has been and always will be The one part of the world where the outlaw is regarded as an endangered species. “Live and let kill.” You knew that or you wouldn’t have brought him up here.

  TILKUT: Okay, yeah. I knew it, and I wanted him tougher; I wanted to see the test, having flunked my own when I was a kid. But that doesn’t mean I want him to end up a loser here in the mountains. Down below he can get rich, he can gain power, he can manipulate people and take more from them than their lives. It’s like domestic cattle: you’ve got to realize that by keeping them going you get more out of them than just by killing and eating them. And you’ve got comfort while you’re doing it— houses with central heating, woolen blankets, refrigerators, cars that smell like a million bucks, pâté de foie gras, the theater, silk suits and perfumed cunts, television—and sure, I know it sounds silly to you, but those things mean a lot to a lot of mean people. . . .

  RATNOSE: Too clever, Tilly. You put the lie to your argument with your own trite cuteness.

  TILKUT: Just trying you out, Ratty. Do you want some tea? I’m going to have another cup.

  [Tilkut rises from the vise bench, stretches, walks over to the tile oven where the crait pot is warming. Tree frogs are singing from the wooded slope across the stream. Only one bonfire is blazing in the dark down below. A few figures are gathered around it, wrapped in furs against the chilly mountain night. The kid they call Fric is playing his guitar. Tilkut pours two cups of tea and returns to the bench.]

  RATNOSE: I wish I had some good mandarin flank feathers for these wings, or some wood duck. A nice, healthy, prime drake in autumn plumage, when its faded a bit with the summer sun; that almost invisible sheen they get—you know?

  TILKUT: You don’t need those for your Rat-Faced MacDougall.

  RATNOSE: Oh, I’m tying flies for later. Once I’ve dropped you down the Suck Hole, I’m planning to spend the next month fishing. [Chuckles]

  TILKUT sucks his tea, grimaces, sulks, scratches his crotch.

  RATNOSE peers through a magnifying glass at the tiny fly in his vise. His eye is as big and as bright as an eggplant. The fly, up close, is a wonder of shifting colors and electric tendrils, the steel of the finely tempered #34 wire hook sending off explosions into the night.

  TILKUT: Who was that . . . girl, that went off with him on the bike?

  RATNOSE: Little flat-chested slope-head? Worn-out leather pant
s and a bear-hide cape?

  TILKUT: Yeah, that one.

  RATNOSE: Oh, that’s Runners old lady. You didn’t know that, did you—that he had a woman now? I suppose he kept it from you. Well, he would, I guess. We call her Twigan—means something like Horsefly in Hassayampan. You’ll get a kick out of this: she was my girl before Runner aced me out.

  TILKUT: Your girl! You mean one of your girls, don’t you? That’s another reason I don’t want my kid hanging around here. What you’re running here is nothing more than a fuck farm, like those damned hippie-dippie communes they have where everyone rolls around with everyone else, all covered in vegetable oil. What you’ve got here is a commonist society, and what’s wrong with commonism is that it’s common! It’s not one bit swell or special or different—it’s just plain common!

  RATNOSE: It’s an extended family, as opposed to a nuclear family. The nuclear family is passé.

  TILKUT: I understand what you mean about extended families versus nuclear families, and I must admit there’s something attractive about a loose, flexible grouping of like-minded people living together without all the nervous-making strictures and rigid roles that the traditional daddy-and-mommy-and-baby thing demands. But none of them seem to last—or at least, very few of them do. Not just because the people are lazy and undisciplined, but because they get bored; it’s too smooth, too gentle, too goddam benign! It’s like when I was a kid and I’d get to thinking about Heaven. An eternity of niceness! Well, I figured if I ever got there, I’d cut Choir sure enough, but even at that, what would I end up doing forever and ever amen? Fishing? That would pall a bit after the first eight billion lunkers, each one taken on the first cast with my three-foot, half-ounce ultraextrasuperlight rod with the half-pound tippet. Hunting? Look, you know it ain’t no fun if you hit ’em every time, particularly if they don’t run both ways, and I’m sure all the grizzlies in Heaven have rubber teeth. The same with everything else—sex, child rearing, business, art, philosophy, science: no conflict, no doubt, no collisions, no fear, no triumph, everything nice. . . . You know what really makes me want to puke, Ratnose? When a parent says to his child, “Make nice to the doggie, Gretchen.” Make nice to the doggie! And the little sticky soft hand dawdles away from the ripe smell of prunes turned to shit and awkwardly pats the dog on the head, and little Gretchen gets this nicey-nicey little baby-goo smile on her face, and everyone claps their hands. And the dog, Ratnose, the fucking dog He loves it! His tongue hangs out between those big white choppers and he goes huffa-huffa-huffa with his eyes squinched shut! Make nice to the doggie. Isn’t that what they teach us about everything?