Like a lot of rural towns in Minnesota, East Bethel claimed a small population—about thirteen thousand—yet a lot of size, approximately forty-eight square miles of lakes, wetlands, farms, and prairies. We found it thirty minutes north of the Twin Cities along Highway 65. We hung a right on Viking Boulevard and followed Buckman’s vague directions more or less northeast until we came upon a small farm house at the top of a gentle rise. The house was surrounded by acres of brush, sun-packed dirt, and prairie grass. Just beyond the house was a large pole barn, and beyond that was the beginning of a thick forest. There were no plowed fields anywhere that I could see, no pens or corrals for animals. But there was a suspiciously large group of cars parked along the narrow county blacktop, and even more cars that lined a quarter-mile dirt driveway leading to the farm house.
“Think we’re in time for the show?” I asked.
“Try to blend in,” Schroeder said. “Kick the dirt, spit a lot.”
We parked on the blacktop at the end of the line of cars. Schroeder left the doors unlocked and the key in the ignition. He popped the trunk, found a weathered knee-length duster, and put it on. “Who are you supposed to be?” I asked. “Jesse James?” He didn’t say. There was a leather gun case in the trunk. Schroeder unzipped it and pulled out a short, black, boxy, and extremely ugly Heckler & Koch MP7 submachine gun. It was about thirteen and a half inches long, weighed four and a half pounds, and fired a thirty-millimeter-long bullet. The Germans designed it to pierce high-quality body armor. Like mine. Aficionados classified it as a “personal defense weapon.”
Schroeder checked the forty-round magazine and slapped it into the pistol grip. “Too bad you’re not paying me by the bullet,” he said. I didn’t know if he was joking or not.
Schroeder hid the MP7 beneath the duster. “Give me a couple of minutes,” he said.
I watched as Schroeder cut a diagonal path across the field to the top of the dirt driveway, then past the driveway toward the barn. I started following as soon as I lost sight of him.
Moving along the driveway, I passed a man with a wooden, wedge-shaped tool in his hand standing next to a battered pickup truck. He didn’t see me at first because he was busy kicking a pit bull that he held by a leash with the other hand. A blanket had been draped over the animal’s head. I stopped, and he grinned at me.
“Damn cur,” he said. “Ain’t got no fight in him. Gotta toughen him up.”
I thought how much I would like to “toughen” him up, but my inner voice admonished me. Keep your eyes on the prize, it said.
I continued along the road until I came across three rottweilers chained to a stake in the ground between the house and the pole barn. They were agitated and angry. I circled them cautiously, well beyond their reach, and walked up to the entrance of the barn. I expected to be stopped—I remembered what Buckman had said about secrecy and suspicion, and besides, didn’t they charge admission to these things? But there was no one at the door. Instead, I found forty, maybe fifty men— white, black, Hispanic, Asian. Many were dressed like guys who worked outdoors, others in suits and ties. I was surprised by how normal they all seemed.
Most of them were hovering around a twenty-foot ring deep inside the barn. The ring was empty; I didn’t know if we were late or early for the fight. I went searching for Schroeder. I couldn’t find him, and then I did. He was standing in a corner of the pole barn where someone had set up a half-dozen folding tables surrounded by folding chairs. There were two metal tubs filled with ice and beer behind a counter built from saw horses and wooden planks; the planks supported a dozen bottles of hard liquor and a cash box. The man behind the cash box was doing good business. I moved toward the makeshift bar, and Schroeder moved away. As we passed each other he whispered, “The reader.”
Sure enough, I found a young black man dressed in a dark blue hoodie sitting at one of the tables. He had a shaved head, a close-cropped beard and mustache, a silver hoop hanging from his left ear, and a silver tooth that he sucked while reading a paperback edition of The World of the American Pit Bull Terrier by Richard Stratton. There were several other black men in the bar area, and I wondered how many of them were on his side.
I sat at the table in front of him, my hands in my pockets. He looked up from his book. “Wan’ sumpthin’?” he asked.
“Dogman-G?”
He sucked on his tooth, then closed his book, using his finger to hold his place. “I know you?” he asked.
“Word is that there’s a contract on some pinhead named McKenzie.”
As I was speaking, a black man took up position behind Dogman-G’s left shoulder. Another black man took the seat at the table to my immediate left. Both of them looked like they weren’t sure what to do with their hands.