Gila Monster and the Order of the Dead Dog by Kevin Wikse

Kevin Wikse Gila Monster Dead Dog's Tale


I first heard about him while I was in Las Cruces. An old Apache knife fighter and Brujo, still honing his edge and blooding his hands in the desert. Based on a rumor, I spent a week trekking up and down the Rio Grande searching for him but learned from his friend in Mesilla I'd missed by a few months. It was in Lordsburg I caught up with him, a short and round man with eight or nine rattlesnake heads circling his hat band. 


He flatly denied he was who I was looking for. I wasn't buying it, so I lunged at him after a couple more protests that I should go away. He had a knife as fast as a rattlesnake's strike, the tip pressing firmly into the skin under my chin. I smiled as he rolled his eyes. He'd blown his cover. 


That evening, we shared a pack of Pall Malls and a 12-pack of Modelo in the alley behind his house as candles to Jesus Malverde and Saint Jude flickered in the darkening shadows. We told stories about hunting down our common enemy when he stopped abruptly.


"I will call you Gila Monster because you are tenacious and like to fight, but mostly because you are ugly," he said, staring off into the night sky. "I will show you how to walk the path of the Dead Dog, always on the warpath, always hunting. It will be up to you to keep up with the pack." 


He took out his knife, and we sealed our pact with blood. 


-Kevin Wikse

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