Fisticuffs

Mulak Reader - Fisticuffs

Nobody wants to publish a story about a fistfight between grown men, so this is another good idea that will never see ink. The scary part is that I know a lot of people who could be Junior’s owner.

FISTICUFFS

"I'd bet any amount of money that any dog, regardless of size, can beat any other dog on earth in a dog fight - just so long as he's under his own back porch."

Sam Clements
Amarillo, Texas

The pheasants in the Westover impoundment area don't stay near the road for very long—that's where all the hunters are. The state stocks them on Friday nights, and those that survive the Saturday morning barrage head into the outback swamp. There, because they don't mind getting their feet wet, they are safe from bird hunters, who do. Although they’ve spent their whole life in a pen, the birds soon figure out that nobody is going to put out a tray of Purina pheasant chow, and within a day or two they start eating weed seeds and dried-up blueberries. Soon it’s tough to tell them apart from the "See-you-later" type native pheasant.
             I knew all this only because of a rooster I chased out into that swamp several seasons back while I was cruising the edges for woodcock. While I was stomping around after the wing-hit bird and getting wet up to my wallet, I discovered the answer to the Saturday afternoon question of "Where'd all the birds go?" I flushed three more roosters and as many hens. They were out in the wet in droves.
Wednesdays or Thursdays are the ideal time for a swamp hunt. By then, the birds are getting cocky after a few days of rest and relaxation out in the friendly puckerbrush, and they've had some time to forget about being shot at. On such excursions the uniform of the day includes hip boots, which will keep you dry in the swamp so long as you stay on your feet. Toward that end a disposable wading staff is also a necessity—a broken hockey stick seems ideally suited to the purpose. For hunting in such adverse conditions, all available dog-power is pressed into service: puppies, veterans, and anything that will be another set of feet to beat the brush. Follow the stone wall along the hillside to the third apple tree, then turn left and head for the swamp.
             On this day I had thrown one back already: Sometimes birds raised in a pen develop a habit of flying straight up until they hit the overhead netting. This was one of those, and with no netting to limit his rise he leveled off at about 200 feet, long after I had committed my own classic mistake of failing to hold above a rising bird. He headed south, and might have flown to New Jersey as far all I could tell.
A terrible thing about hunting is that after a miss you are granted a protracted period of time in which to chew yourself out. I was doing that, and watching my steps in the ankle deep water when the dogs' bells went silent. Where? I stood still for a moment and heard something moving in the brush off to the right, but then I saw one of my setters pointing just ahead of me, and following her indicated direction, I could just make out my second dog locked-up on a piece of dry ground. I took a single step and the rooster came out fast and low, and unlike his buddy fifteen minutes before, this one knew where he was going and wanted to get there in a hurry. I had enough time to drop the hockey stick and grab the gun with both hands, but little more: The shot was a low quartering chance well out at maximum range. I used the back trigger and was pleasantly surprised when the bird fell cleanly.
             My younger setter brought in the rooster, and as I moved onto the dry ground to field dress the bird the noise I had heard in the brush turned into a hunter, also in hip boots. I waved at him, and he waved back. His dog, a black lab, sniffed around where the rooster had been, then came over and tried to take it from me.
             "Hang on there, black dog!" I laughed and held the bird away.
             The other fellow ambled toward me. "Junior!" He yelled. He was stern, but his dog paid him no attention. In camouflage, Junior's owner seemed to be a duck hunter who had also figured out a way to shoot a few pheasants. He wasn't old—25 or 30—but he had a new beer belly. I say "new" because he hadn't yet figured out how to keep his shirt tucked into his trousers.
              A moment later, when my older setter wouldn't hold still for his lab's cold-nosing, his dog growled and snapped at her. My setter scrambled away, and Junior went after her.
              "Hey, grab your dog." I said, and stuck my leg in front of the lab. The other fellow still ambled. While I waited for him to collar his dog, the lab got into a growling match with my other setter.
"Yea, Junior's a fighter, aren't 'cha, boy—It would be a shame if he tore up that little pip-squeak of a dog of yours." He was grinning as he said this. He scratched the dog's ears and patted him on the flank, as if saying "Good job."
             Having one hunting dog fight another makes as much sense as if a Kentucky Derby race horse's owner arranged for a kicking fight with the horse in the next stall just to see who'd win. But Junior was a fighter. I assumed that what was meant by an "all-purpose" breed.
I waited long enough for the other guy to indicate that he was joking, then waited some more. Finally, I said, "It would be a shame, all right, because I'd have kicked your dog’s ass right into your lap." I think I may have even added, "You asshole."
             "Oh, you THINK you would have." He revved up his engine.
             It was my turn to affect a smile. "Why don't you tie your dog up over there and put your gun down and we'll see if I would have or not."
             I was 40. The advantage I had was that I knew I was 40, and Junior's owner still thought he was 18. He had made good use of his time since he passed legal drinking age, and outweighed me by 30 pounds even though I had a height advantage of 6 or 8 inches.
             I told the dogs to sit. I would have liked to take off more than just my shooting glasses, but I thought it was more important to keep an eye on Junior's master. I watched as he tied his lab to a swamp maple and took off his camouflage parka. I saw him slip a loaded shell into his right hand—Evidently, he intended to end the fight with one punch. He glanced at me as he did, and saw that his secret weapon was a secret no more.
             It was show time. He turned and came toward me in the manner of a man trying to act quickly before he looses his nerve. He approached in a series of half-steps, keeping his left shoulder pointed in my direction so that he could launch a roundhouse with his right.
             I’m a great one for jokes about winning fights by having the other guy hurt his hand on the hard bones in my head, but I wasn't about to get into a sparring match with this chowderhead. I hunched my left shoulder as he swung, and stepped inside his punch like someone sneaking through a swinging door before it can close. One thing that working on the speed bag teaches—maybe the only thing—is to keep your hands high. I kept my hands high and hit him in the face three times, fast. He went down and the fight might have been over, except that he tried to get back up. In his fat man's struggle to get to his feet he dropped the shotgun shell he had been holding. The sight of it triggered something primordially infuriating in me and I hit him again as hard as I could. That uppercut sent him sprawling and hurt my right hand so that I couldn't close it for several days. I stepped towards him. He crabbed backwards, away from me. His nose was bleeding, and either he couldn't get up or didn't want to. "Go fuck yourself." he repeated over and over, as if it would make me go away.
             So now what? Unhappy people seek ways to get revenge on those that made them unhappy. Here's a guy who's not at all happy, and he has a shotgun and a mean tempered dog at his immediate disposal. Do I turn my back on him and hope he plays by Queensbury rules, and knows when enough is enough? (If he was that kind of guy, explain the magnum load of lead he was going to use to sweeten his punch?) Shoot his dog and throw his gun into the swamp? Be serious. Shoot him? Probably a better solution, but still not acceptable. The only real answer to the primary question was to act like it was me who lost the fight: I had to get out of there.
             My setters were confused: In the past, whenever I became angry it was safe for them to assume I was mad at them. "Heel." I said, and fled the swamp. I was clear headed enough not to want to give Junior's owner a direction to follow, so I headed not toward my truck but back to the 3rd apple tree. Once there, I paused only long enough to take the bells off the dogs. I left the swamp and cut to the right. I found that I couldn't breathe fast enough to keep up with my heartbeat.
             If hunting is something men do out of some primitive instinct, how far back does fighting go? I had just bloodied another man's face, ruined the rest of a day's hunt, hurt my right hand so that I doubted my ability to put the gun's safety off, and had run the risk of heaven knows what sort of revenge that yo-yo might decide to extract on me or my truck back on the road. All that, yet I felt elated! Maybe it’s me that’s the yo-yo. And why, in these situations, don't I ever consider alternate endings? What if Junior's owner was the last guy cut at the Olympic boxing tryouts, and was still angry about it. Or maybe he was the Karite kid grown up. Or—maybe worst of all—he was just a lousy fighter, but one that didn't know when to stop. I made some promises to myself as I followed the wall back along the hillside. Walking deliberately, I was back at the truck in less time than I would have thought possible. I got in and drove off.
             There is much talk these days against the kinds of dogs who make a living scaring the daylights out of people—Rottweilers and Dobermans and Pit Bulls. But instead of a specific breed, I'd like to see the public's concern directed at vicious dogs in general. I say vicious dogs because, by and large, they belong to vicious people. In all the years I was a newspaper boy it seemed I was bitten by dogs representing just about every breed, including lap dogs and several dozen varieties of mongrel. But I don't ever recall being bitten by a dog that wasn't owned by a mean-spirited person. Dogs reflect the personality and temperament of their owners, and that isn't always a compliment.
             It had been a long time since I was in a fistfight. Oh, I had my share when I was in college, and when you go to sea for a living there are times when resorting to the duce of clubs is an unavoidable necessity. But it had been a long time. I hoped then, and I still do, that that was the last one. To quote a line by Slim Pickins from a movie he did with Willie Nelson: "I'm gettin' too old for this shit."
So what's the moral of all this? Don't mess with Mulak's dogs?
             Well, other than that.
             We've come to the end of the story, and there should be some conclusion that we arrive at, after all. I really hadn't proven anything or convinced anyone of the error of their ways, not even myself. I'm sure Junior is still acting out his owner's fighting fantasies, and I can’t imagine Junior’s owner is a better person for his bloody nose, either. Should I have just walked away and ignored the fat guy’s challenge? There’s an adult part of me that says “Grow up!” That part argues that some of the alternate endings I should consider include litigation and other scary “L” words.
             But there’s another part of me that knows all about guys like Junior’s master. That part knows I'd do the same thing again.

This site was last updated 09/20/06