La Tumba de Los Perros

Mexico, 1978

Dust. Heat. Shit. Empty tin cans and old circus posters torn and blown by the dry wind across desert sand. An abandoned gas station harbored an untold count of burned and overturned cars, even a tractor.

I came to the outskirts of a town, seemingly without a name. A wide spot in the road devoid of attitude. Smashed houses. Dirt shacks really, occupied one side of the road. Once white, but now dusted red by the eternal winds and an unmistakable patina of age. The windows showed nothing but faded cloth of various kinds. Underwear flying in the breeze. The crumbling patios revealed rusty re-bar poking out of the whole unfinished business. And beyond that, just more. All of it apparently right on the cusp of crumbling back to earth and finding it's way back out to sea...

It was an empty room. Spacious by some standards. The romantic Mexico with wailing mariachis, animated women and aromatic primitive foods was nowhere near here. That Mexico might as well be a million miles away. The only sounds that came to me were the low whisperings of the wind. The high desert sound of corrugated tin rubbing and clanking against itself came from above. The only woman I had any dealings with was Alejandra, the landlady that came around half drunk every day and collected the rent. And seemingly in empathy with her drunkenness my appetite for anything had gone the same way hers had. Disappeared. Well, the alcohol came to an end as it always does, so I reckon it was time to go have a look around.

Alejandra warned me about Paco. Leaning on the doorjamb with a cigarette she told me he had been loose and wild all his life. In fact, she intimated that he was at this point probably crazy. A lunatic dog without any restraints whatever. There were no dogcatchers in this town. Most likely no police either. The evening sun stabbed at me from under the low clouds and bathed the dirt streets with a golden red light that made me think of old velvet and chamomile. Waves of it. And I thought of Paco again. A crazy cur stuck in a ruin from the 20th century swathed in velvet and a sea of chamomile. It would be easy to lose your mind in a place like this. Clouds of flies, almost thicker than smoke undulated in the air around me. The reek of the alley clung to my skin like a mist. A shaky voice called out a warning. Above me in a window an old man is leaning out with a finger pointing back up the alley behind me. I turn around.

Paco was big but skinny as a rail. A travesty of the typical Mexican dog.

His bony appearance reminds me of those old cartoons where the cannibal feast is being entertained by an orchestra with crude bone instruments. The old xylophone ribcage resounds while whitey sweats it out in a pith helmet and a big black pot.

I have no idea where he came from but now he stood there heaving his big chest up and down trying to catch his breath. There was no tail. Where the left eye should be was just a black slit all gummed up with dusty slime and flies. His entire head seemed crooked somehow, there was no symmetry to it. The thin yellow fur covering this creature yielded frequently to what looked like hundreds of scars, some still pink and sunburned. Probably the result of numerous bouts with the unlimited number of coyotes always present on the edge of mankind. We stood there entirely quiet and had a good look at each other. I could feel the old mans eyes on my back but he said nothing. I looked down at my tired buffalo-hide Noconas, the gaping seams looked right back at me. Just the other day I had been contemplating leaving them by the side of the road. Sure glad I didn't. The seconds ticked off steadily, almost forcefully. The only sound was the drone of millions of flies.

He came for me in a sideways wobbly dash but with a look in his watery eye that was steady on the prize. My throat I presumed. My stomach, already sour from the cloying heat and flash liquor sent me a reminder of its hateful existence. Acid coated the back of my mouth. But I didn't run.

Lucky. Paco lunged too soon and by instinct I already had a foot in the air. My boot heel hammered its way into his mouth, I could tell it hurt. Before sliding past me I managed to give him a kick in his right hip, this time with the toe first. Neither one of us made a sound. Flies humming.

The dog turned around and backed himself up against the wall, I moved up against mine. Again he charged at me, but this time limping. I'd got him good the first time. The tactic had changed. Now he rushed at my boots low, almost crawling. The yellowed teeth closed around my left foot. My right heel came down on his eye. The result was instantaneous, like an electric shock. When he scrambled backwards I took two steps forward and tried to impact his throat, to impair his breathing capacity. The lumpy head swung up and seemed to be all teeth bathed in a froth of spit and blood. No success. Impasse.

Again, time seemed monumental, seconds epic in scale. There were no fences to jump, no doors to hide behind. Nowhere to go. It was just Paco and me out here. The heat, a wild and crazy animal, and a sick drunk hurting badly for a fix.

Along the wall lay a pile of rotting cabbage leaves. The gassy weedy smell had been in my nostrils for a while but I had ignored it. I peeled a leaf off the pile and put it in my mouth. The response was immediate, everything fought its way out and landed between my feet. Paco was watching this with an icy stare and abruptly came for the boots again. I shuffled my feet and kicked him in the snout. Retreat.

Another leaf went in my mouth. Again, vomit flew. While keeping eye contact I bent over and scooped up a handful of puke and threw it in his direction. Then another. He just stood there, stiff and ugly, then lowered his head and started to eat it. Pretty soon it was all gone, devoured. The big mongrel took one last look at me and turned up the alley. At the corner he stopped to mark his territory and deposited a short squirt on the crumbling bricks. I had taken care of that little formality long ago. My pants were wet from the crotch on down.

When I walked in, everyone in the cantina stopped what they were doing, cards stopped over the tables. Silence. I made for the bathroom. It was all the way across the floor. The cloudy water that emerged when I opened the spigot felt good on my face. I got rid of the taste of acid and booze from my mouth and emerged from the little tiled room to a field of wrinkled brown faces. They couldn't keep their eyes off me the same way a sunflower will never turn away from the sun.

I threw a damp, sticky bill on the bar. The barkeep eyed me suspiciously before grudgingly taking my pesos. He poured whisky to the brim of a chipped glass and shoved it and the change all the way across the counter almost onto the floor. "This town is not for you." he said without looking at me. With my back to the bar I put the glass to my lips only to find the whisky watery and with an acrid smell coming off it. It was heaven though. As soon as it touched my tongue the familiar shiver that signaled relief snaked it's way around my heart and gave it that sweet caress only familiar to a dying man. As for the barkeep, I was pretty sure he was wrong.