Appalachian Galapagos (17 page)

The trout were a secret. The river, threading through high fields of tobacco and foul plots of pig farmers, was virtually
unfished
, the locals seeing trout as beneath them and not even worthy of drift netting. Their scoffing made
Dicky
smile. Transplanted from New Jersey, he had a definite understanding of the Southerner's circular family trees and their inability to grasp concepts that they couldn't actually
grasp
.

Concepts such as the true beauty of a shimmering trout as it leapt from the churning cold depths of a swift stream, snapping its long jaws upon a wayward mayfly.

Concepts such as the glory of the cruel crawl through thorns and slapping branches to the perfect hole, the only way to sneak up on intelligent trout.

Concepts such as the geometry necessary for the perfect cast, bow-bent and snapping an underhanded man-made delicacy beneath the eaves of a low-slung magnolia that dipped its broad green leaves into the rippling water.

No. Southerners were bass people, sadly content with the laziness of a brain-dead fish that satisfied its curiosity of the world by trying to eat it.

Dicky
remembered watching a comedian one time on television. "You know how it is when you're walking up the stairs, and you get to the top, and you think there's one more step? I'm like that all the time." The remark was so simple, something he would have previously nodded at and forgotten. Simple, but it had become part of his life, now.

Elias was good, too good. Somehow, the old Vietnam medic had been able to saw
Dicky's
legs off below the knees and his arms below the elbows without much blood loss. Through the miracle of boiled pork fat, close knit stitches and sulfa,
Dicky
hadn't died. Still, the pain had been horrendous. His howls of agony and anguish made the answering cries of the animals penned nearby seem almost mute by comparison.

But his was a necessary transition—a metamorphosis that was at the crux of his agreement. It was only his concentration on retribution, his determined anger that had allowed him to pull through so that he could battle in The Pit in an attempt to kill the thing that had killed his best friend.

The Pit was six feet deep. Each twenty-foot-long side was bolstered by iron-hard logs, cured and tempered by the blood of hundreds. Above this, aluminum football bleachers provided space for the fans to watch. All of this was hidden beneath the old tin roof of a tobacco barn. The first time he'd seen the place he now called home, he'd been standing upon the top bench of the bleachers. He'd had legs then and The Pit had seemed so deep. Never again did he have that same vantage point, for not only had he been reduced to the perspective of a low man, but his domain had become the below, not the above.

His first opponent had been a possum, the white fur, pink nose and needle-sharp teeth so different from the roadside splat he was used to observing as he
whizzed
past in his pickup. Like a newborn foal,
Dicky
had stood, his weight resting on the flattened nubs of knees and elbows, each covered with a hard leather cap. Balance came and went, his face dodging the dirt every time he fell.

Through the pain and the confusion he'd heard the cheers of an audience rebounding off the metal of the roof. The air vibrated with their combined energy, each and every shout targeted at him, because of him. He shook with fear, the enormity of his decision finally realized. Blood, snot and tears had almost smothered his anger and quenched his drive, but after the possum latched onto the back of his thigh, tearing away painful chunks of flesh, defense became automatic. Darwin took hold and
Dicky
rolled using his superior weight to batter the animal into a stupor. The feeling he'd had when he'd finally gagged on the creature's blood, his teeth gnawing spastically upon the stringy arteries of the neck, was better than any sex.

Parting their way through the chest-high forest of
unhewn
tobacco, they finally found the river. Willy Pete's smile of anticipation was clear through his heavy mustache and beard.
Dicky
matched it and they shook hands. Willy headed North.
Dicky
went South. The river was a slow-moving slice through the land. Deep and in shadow from the oaks along the bank, pool after pool of murky water teased him with the possibility of
lunker
trout. The rain was a continuous splatter along the surface as the large summer drops hammered the water into submission.

Considering the weather, the added mud and vegetation running into the water from the banks filled with bugs and worms,
Dicky
chose a black rooster tail with a silver spinner. It was his favorite trout lure and only on rare occasions had it let him down. The lure simulated a treating minnow flashing its fear within the water and was a tantalizing treat for a trout. Alas, the murkiness of the disturbed river made the lure almost invisible. So, moving slowly along the bank,
Dicky
reconciled himself to enjoying the heavy musk of the wet foliage, the sweet tang of honeysuckle and the perfect solitude of a man conjoined with nature.

An hour later, soaked yet content, the first trout struck his line with a thunderous crash. His lightweight rig bent double. His feet slipped upon the rain-slick weeds and he fell to his side. His breath steam-
engined
. His heart all but stopped. It was on his knees that
Dicky
reeled in the first of a dozen twenty-inch trout. Holding the long glistening fish in his hands, he laughed aloud feeling only as a Hemingway character could as a man who had faced nature and defeated it.

The first fish changes the momentum of everything. Filled with optimism, prayers and the knowledge of generations, the fisherman moves faster, becomes more efficient. Increasingly critical of each cast, he guides his line into the places of mythology.

All this and more swept through
Dicky's
mind as he crept along the bank reeling in fish after fish after fish. Oblivious to the effects of the summer storm, he was a conqueror, master of the world and Fish God to his victims.

Giggling, his creel full of miracle fish,
Dicky
returned to the truck and awaited the arrival of Willy Pete.

And waited...

And waited...

Elias was a fisherman of sorts. The man seemed to always be trolling. Maybe that's why there were so many fish and so few fishermen. Elias owned most of the businesses in Jacob. The general store, the gas station, the bait and tackle and a diner all boasted the man's name. Before they'd gone fishing,
Dicky
and Willy Pete had browsed the lures, gassed up their car and filled their thermoses with the diner's bitter black coffee. They hadn't known it, but Elias had been with them from the start.
Dicky
wouldn't have been surprised if it wasn't from Elias that Willy had learned of the trout.

Hooked from the very beginning and we didn't even fucking know it.

Within the silent pain of his life between fights,
Dicky
thought of this and more.

The Pit, for it to exist at all, denoted a spectacular culture of silence within the hollows of the Tennessee Hills. The locals surely knew. Each tourist, each hitchhiker, each travelling salesman was at risk. The hunger the locals had for their favorite sport, camouflaged as welcome grins and mountain bonhomie, was an ominous echo of barbarism. The glorious savagery of Southern-style football, the October stratagems of baseball and the year round circular roaring of the NASCAR driver were but children's games to the people who had invented The Pit.

No hundred yard touchdown dance, no ninth inning grand slam could come close to the communal energy generated by two beings challenging fate and their own desires as they attempted to kill each other. The spray of blood, the stench of escaping fluids, the screams of despair and victory, all coalesced beneath the great tin roof, turning the locals into something primal, something old—something that was necessary to keep hidden, lest civilization become jealous.

And all of it came from Elias.

The man, his father, his father's father, all with the same name, had been Pit Bosses.
Dicky
had heard from someone that the custom had come from Old Europe, Elias' family barely escaping and reinventing themselves in a new America.
Dicky
knew The Pit was an old thing. It had to be. The emotions generated by the entire mechanism were too elevated to have been missed and discarded by history.

The fish had long ago gone bad, the convection of the trunk melting the ice and heating the fish. But the fish were the least of his concerns. Hours had passed, Willy Pete was nowhere to be found and
Dicky
was becoming more aggravated as he saw the investigation unfold.

The two deputies who'd finally arrived seemed extremely disinterested. One fat and one thin, they seemed more like inbred Laurel and Hardy parodies than bona fide law enforcement officers.

"Does your friend like to drink?" asked the thin one. His lips were curled around a matchstick. He spoke very slowly as if he was afraid that if he talked any faster, it would light.

"No."

"Doesn't like to drink?"

"Well, yes, but we weren't drinking today."

"You weren't drinking today," repeated the fat one.

"If he likes to drink so much, how do you know he didn't bring himself a bottle, drink it down and slip into the river?"

"I didn't say he likes to drink so much, I—"

"Does he like to do drugs?" asked the fat one.

"No, he doesn't like to do drugs."

"Not even a little pot? Everyone likes a little pot now and then." He grinned at his thinner partner, revealing a mosaic of yellowed teeth.

"I don't know," said
Dicky
.

"So he might have been getting drunk and doing drugs back in the woods and you'd never know it."

The accusation sent
Dicky's
blood off the scale.

"Did y'all ask permission to fish the banks?" asked the thin one.

"You know you should have asked permission. I suppose you didn't see the
No Trespassing
signs, neither? Around here we allow a certain kind of mountain justice. Mainly cause of big city drug dealers coming up and growing their devil weed. Then there's pig rustlers."

"Pig rustlers?" asked
Dicky
, his jaw dropping.

"Yep. Pigs are the lifeblood of most of the farmers up here. You steal their pigs, might as well be stabbing them in the stomachs."

The questions went on for another ten minutes. Inane and insane, the deputies sought excuses rather than fact. It was obvious they didn't want to find his missing friend or didn't care.

The Low Man had no name, at least none that
Dicky
knew of. At first, the only evidence
Dicky
had that he wasn't alone was the midnight howls, screeches of not quite human rage rattling the wooden walls that separated him from the next stall. Later, as
Dicky
healed from his own modifications, wounds tightly wrapped in gauze, flitting in and out of consciousness, he saw him....it. The only evidence of humanity upon the ruined features of the other stalking
pitfighter
was the head. As The Low Man plodded past on the callused stubs of half arms and half legs, he transfixed
Dicky
with a dead gaze, blue eyes to blue eyes, humanity a vague memory.

The Low Man was what
Dicky
would become. The Low Man was a survivor, a player in Elias's game who had beaten the odds and reigned as champion.
Dicky
felt dull respect for The Low Man, his victories demonstrated by the scars and the ruin. But
Dicky
held himself back. He watched The Low Man whenever he had the chance, for he knew, as an animal knew, that for
Dicky
to win, he and The Low Man would eventually meet.

By
Dicky's
third fight, he was no longer the stumbling foal that Elias had delivered from an upright life. No longer was his body merely an engine to propel a mouth. It was as if his training wheels had been cast aside, leaving him unfettered and able to improvise. Instead of rushing in and snapping wildly until his teeth connected with flesh, he learned to use his weight, his new balance. He learned to lean into his opponent. To butt heads, whipping his own around on his long neck and ending with a snap as the top of his head caught the tender flesh of his opponent. He learned how to bury his head into steaming
bowels
and chew until the digestion he tasted became his own, the long tendrils of his opponent's guts whipping as he propelled himself into a feeding frenzy.