earlier in the day.
Uncle Jolly?s Fillup ended that reverie. The place wasn?t hard to find. It would have been harder not
to find.
It looked like a Friday night football game. A country cop was directing traffic, most of which was
going down the same dirt road I went down. I followed the crowd about two miles through pine trees
and palmetto bushes to the parking lot. Through the cracks and peeling paint I could just make out the
sign: PARK HERE FOR
UNCLE JOLLY?S FILLUP.
A hundred cars in the space, at least.
I parked among dusty Chevys and Dodges, Pontiacs with high-lift rear ends, and pickup trucks with
shotguns in the rear window gun racks, and drifted with the crowd. As I passed one of those bigwheel pickups, the kind with wheels about six feet high, the door opened and the Mufalatta Kid stuck
his caramel-coloured face out.
“You take a wrong turn someplace?” he asked.
“What?re you doing here?” I asked.
“Just checkin? out the territory.”
“Me too.”
“Glide easy, babes. Strangers make these people real nervous.”
“What?s this all about, anyway?” I asked him.
“You mean you don?t know why you came all the way out here?” he said incredulously. “Shit, man, I
guess you are psychic. This is the dog fights, babes.”
It jolted me.
Dog fighting was the last thing I expected. Bare-knuckle boxing,
a porno show, a carnival, a lot of things had occurred to me when
I saw the traffic jam, but dog fighting was the farthest thing horn
my mind.
“Dog fighting,” he repeated. “Not your thing, huh?”
“Jesus, dog fighting. I didn?t know they still did that kind of thing.”
“Well, you do now, man, „cause that?s what it?s all about.”
“You going to bust this little picnic?”
“Me? All by myself? Shit. If I was that fucked up I wouldn?t have my life line. These people take
their sports real serious. You wanna die in a backwoods swamp in south fuckin? Georgia? If I was
you, what I would do is, I would hightail my ass back up the road and be glad you?re gone.”
“I don?t want to start a thing,” I said lamely.
