The Chief

by Robert Lipsyte

  Sonny jabs, on him now, another hook drives Viera against the ropes. Two good hands and the fight is over, but Sonny has to get too close for a short punch like the hook. Viera lunges and scrapes the left eyebrow with the laces of his glove. It opens the cut.

  “Take him out, now,” Alfred is screaming, and Sonny surges forward, he’s got Viera on the ropes, pounding him with his left, ignoring the blood and white stuff oozing over his eye and down his face. He’s going to win, he’s going to win!

  But suddenly, an instant before Iron Pete gets smelted, the referee plunges between them and waves off the fight. He points to Sonny’s bloody eyebrow. He holds up Viera’s arm. If he didn’t, Viera would fall down.

  And that’s it. A technical knockout for Viera. TKO. I’d score it a TRO, a technical ripoff.

  Jake is screaming and Alfred is screaming, and a voice that sounds a lot like mine is screaming, but Sonny just shrugs and walks back to his corner, his shoulders slumped.

  It’s over.

  Maybe it’s all over. Seventeen fights in two years, win thirteen, lose four, every loss a hometown heist. That’s no record for a future champion of the world. It’s the record of an “opponent,” a nobody who’s good enough to put up a decent fight but not good enough to win the big ones.

  The crowd is chanting, “I-un PETE, I-un PETE,” as Viera dances around the ring flexing the eagle’s wings. Sonny vaults the ropes and rushes off to the dressing room. We scramble to get Alfred back into the chair. Usually we have to clear a path for Sonny through the crowd. But this time no one bothers him. Sonny’s invisible.

  Maybe that’s the last bad sign.

  Hang it up.

  3

  THERE’S A CAR WRECK and a stabbing ahead of us, so we sit in the emergency room for an hour before a nurse takes a close look at Sonny’s eyebrow. She shrugs, makes a mark on her clipboard and walks away.

  “So this is where it ends, in an all-night blood hole in a dead-end town.” I don’t realize I’m saying it out loud while I tap it into the laptop.

  “Write it down if you have to,” says Alfred, “but shut up.”

  “Leave him alone,” says Sonny.

  Alfred wheels around. “Now you want to fight?”

  “He did the best he could,” I say.

  “I hope not,” says Alfred.

  “Don’t matter now,” says Sonny.

  “Hi there. You okay?” The TV producer marches in and leans over to peer at Sonny’s eye. “You were jobbed out there. I hope we weren’t part of the problem.”

  “’S okay,” says Jake. “He’s a professional.”

  “Was,” says Sonny.

  She gets it right away. “You’re not going to quit?”

  “Announce my retirement on your show.”

  “The way you were fighting tonight, you might as well quit,” she says. “You started too slow. You didn’t bring the fight to him until it was too late.”

  “What makes you think you know so much?” I ask, trying to get some sneer into my voice to hide the tremble.

  “I’m a producer. I know everything.” Her smile makes my liver quiver. “The deck was stacked. You had to knock Pete out to win. Ever since the fishing rights case around here, the locals’ve had it in for Native Americans. Think they had something to do with closing down their factory.”

  “Always be something,” says Jake. “Got to overcome it. Learn from it.”

  “Sonny learned how to fight one-handed tonight,” she said. “What happened to the right? Broken?”

  “Don’t want that in your movie,” says Alfred.

  “Hey, I’m easy.” She smiles. “I might like to shoot your next fight.” As the desk nurse passes us again she calls out, “You know, we have a hurt person here.”

  “Everybody in here’s hurt, honey,” says the nurse, popping out her words as if she’s snapping gum.

  “But not everybody comes in with the media.” She flips open her wallet and shows the nurse a card. “Would you call your supervisor please, before I call my camera crew?”

  The nurse scowls at her and marches away, but a doctor shows up a few minutes later. “Yes? Sonny Bear?” he says to her.

  “I’m Robin Bell, Doctor…”

  “Dr. Gupte.”

  “And this is Sonny Bear.” She grabs Dr. Gupte’s sleeve and tugs him over to Sonny. “He’s a professional boxer, he will be on television, and we’re concerned about septic conditions in his eyebrow. The skin needs to be debrided right away, and we have to have small, tight stitches, not much lip. Can you do that?”

  “Of course. Please come this way.”

  Alfred winks at Jake, who shakes his head. We follow Sonny and Robin back to the examination room.

  Dr. Gupte and a nurse clean out Sonny’s eyebrow, but when the sewing needle appears I’m out of there. I’m leaning against a wall outside the room, taking deep, queasy breaths, when I hear, “You, too?”

  She’s leaning against the other wall. The skin of her thin face is very white, a sharp contrast to her black hair and to the sprinkle of freckles over her nose. She looks younger, nicer.

  “I can’t stand the sight of blood,” I admit.

  “That’s tough for a fighter’s writer.”

  “The sight of Sonny’s blood, really. There hasn’t been a lot of it. He’s good, not like tonight.”

  “What happened? Why’d he start so flat, as if he didn’t care?”

  I don’t want to get into that, so I ask, “What’s your film about?” These TV types love to talk about their projects, especially if you call them films, which makes them feel like Martin Scorsese.

  “Well, it’s about boxing, of course, but it’s also about small-town America and ethnic pride and tribalism and the rites of manhood….”

  “Sounds like you haven’t figured it out yet,” I say. “I guess if you shoot enough, something’ll develop.”

  Her face gets darker as the blood comes back. Not so nice, but more interesting. “What exactly do you write,” she asks, “ransom notes?”

  “That’s cute.” I decide there’s no point being enemies. “It was supposed to be a book about Sonny becoming the youngest heavyweight champion in history. Two years on the title trail. But we’re sort of running out of time. He’s nineteen years old; he’ll be twenty in January.”

  “Who’s your publisher?”

  “Don’t have one yet.”

  “Has anyone seen any pages?”

  “I have to turn in the first few chapters next week to my new advisor.”

  Her eyebrows arch. “You’re in college?”

  “I’m trying to get an independent-study semester to finish the book.”

  She looks interested. Her eyes flick over me, leaving warm trails. “Where do you go to school?”

  Just then Alfred rolls out with Jake. Sonny is giving Dr. Gupte and the nurse his autograph. Robin hurries over to be with the star of the show.

  4

  WE TRAIL ROBIN’S OLD BMW to an all-night diner just far enough out of town so that we get some strange looks, but nobody hassles us. We settle around a table.

  “So what’s the story with you guys? Where are you…”

  “Old story,” says Sonny. “Skip it.”

  “No, I’d like to hear it.”

  Sonny grunts, stands up and stalks to the video games in the front of the diner.

  “All you need to know,” I say, “is that Elston Hubbard is fighting in Las Vegas in two weeks, and if he wins, he’ll get a shot at the title.”

  “I know that, I read the papers. So what?”

  “Two years ago, Sonny was supposed to fight Hubbard for the Gotham Gloves championship. He would have beaten him, but he was declared ineligible.”

  “Drugs?” She’s making notes, which annoys me. It’s my story.

  “No. He fought some smokers—they’re like pro fights, only…”

  “I know what smokers are,” says Robin, annoyed.

  “They found out about them at the last min
ute and disqualified Sonny because he wasn’t an amateur. Hubbard went on to win the Olympic gold medal and here we are, picking up meatball fights in nowhere towns.”

  I suddenly realize I’m doing all the talking. Jake’s eyes are closed; he could be sleeping, he could be going into the Moscondaga “little death,” he might just be resting his eyes. Alfred has wheeled off to the bathroom. He’ll be gone for a while. After a long, tough day the tubes and plastic bags that catch his wastes could be backed up, or at least tangled.

  “You’re kind of an interesting group,” says Robin. Her pen is poised over her notebook. “How’d all you guys get together?”

  “That’s another book,” I say. I notice that one of Jake’s eyes is open a crack. “Ask Jake—it goes way back.” His eye shuts.

  The waitress bustles up. I can do this order in my sleep: deluxe burgers for me and Sonny, sausage and eggs for Jake, dry toast and tea for Alfred. Win or lose, always the same food after a fight. Robin orders yogurt and coffee.

  Sonny stomps back. “Got any quarters? Don’t even have a bill changer here.”

  “All the quarters you need in Vegas,” says Robin.

  Alfred wheels back. “What am I missing?”

  “You should go to Las Vegas and make Hubbard fight you.”

  Jake’s eyes open.

  Sonny snorts. “What kind of TV shows you make? Fantasy?”

  “That’s what Muhammad Ali did,” says Robin. “Made so much noise they had to fight him. It’s all publicity and connections.”

  “Just what we don’t have,” says Alfred.

  “You’ve got to make your own publicity and connections. Marty’s got a big mouth.”

  Sonny looks at her as if she’s crazy and Alfred rolls his eyes, but Jake says, “Keep talking.”

  “Well, what’s Sonny’s big selling point? What makes him different from every other wanna-be champ?”

  “The Indian card doesn’t always play,” I say. “You media types may love Indians, but out in the boonies…”

  “We’re talking big-time media now, New York, L.A. Stories in USA Today, on CNN, then the Times and the networks.” Her dark eyes were snapping. They’re all out there in Vegas looking for things to write about. The champ is boring, Hubbard’s a lox, and after you’ve seen John L. Solomon do his Yiddish shtick, it’s over. They’d love a real live native warrior.”

  The food comes and I say, “So what do we do, ride out to Vegas on our pinto ponies and threaten to scalp Hubbard if he won’t fight us?”

  “I’m serious,” she says.

  “So are we,” I say. “You may think this is kind of cute, hustling Sonny like a lounge act, but he’s no sidewalk Indian, he’s got the blood of the Running Braves….”

  Sonny drops into his seat. “C’mon, not you, too.”

  “Running Braves?” The eyebrows almost touch her hairline. “What’s Running Braves?”

  “Forget that,” says Alfred. “You got a plan?”

  “Not really, I just think you guys have to go out there and make things happen. Put yourselves into play.” When the food comes, Robin grabs the check. “When you’re champ, you’ll owe me.”

  “Don’t save your appetite,” says Sonny.

  “If you get off your butt, you’ll make it,” she says. “Because in your heart you really want it.” She bores right into Sonny with those dark eyes. “You’ve got the killer instinct, Sonny, and what looks like a helluva left hook. You fought hurt and you would’ve put him away, without a right hand, without a left eye, you still would’ve won, if the referee hadn’t stopped it to save him. If you can do that, you can do anything you want.”

  Nobody is breathing at the table. Alfred and Jake look at each other, then at her. Sonny glares right back at her. “How come you think you know so much?”

  “My grandfather was a fighter, and I used to go to the fights with my dad, watched a lot on TV.” She looks at her watch. “Gotta push.” She gives each of us one of her cards. “Let’s stay in touch. Don’t sign any exclusive TV documentary deals till you check with me.”

  We watch her march out of the diner, her boots pounding a drumbeat.

  “Vegas,” says Sonny. He laughs the nasty little defensive laugh he uses like a jab to keep people off balance when he isn’t sure what’s going on. He looks at Jake. “Maybe the Hawk’ll fly me to Vegas.”

  “Maybe so,” says Jake. “You got to listen to women. The Creator gave them special sight.”

  “She didn’t look like a Clan Mother to me,” I say.

  Jake’s eyes narrow. “Don’t get in the way, Martin.”

  “Let’s go.” Sonny stands up.

  “I’m not done yet,” says Alfred.

  “Wake up,” says Sonny. “We are done and gone.”

  5

  PROFESSOR MARKS WAVED the four chapters I had faxed him. “Witherspoon does Hemingway.”

  “You liked it?”

  “Hated it.” He threw my pages across his little office. They hit the wall and cascaded to the floor like a waterfall. Paperfall?

  I sucked air. It was like taking an uppercut to the cup from Iron Pete.

  “You’re writing dead white male.”

  I mumbled, “At least I got one out of three.”

  “Sit down, Mr. Witherspoon. Grab yourself. We need to talk.”

  I dropped into a broken old armchair. I made fists but put them between my thighs. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to throw him through the window or cry. I could do both.

  “Mr. Witherspoon, what you wrote was not the voice of a nineteen-year-old urban Black male.”

  I wanted to say, “How you know, home-boy?” but I couldn’t get anything up past the Styrofoam cookie in my throat.

  “The information in your story is excellent. It reeks with the credibility…”

  “I was there!”

  “…of journalism. This is not a course in journalism. You are applying for an independent study for creative writing. Creative writing! This is destructive writing. Who is Sonny Bear?”

  “He’s a nineteen-year-old half-Moscondaga, half-white…”

  “Stop right there. I can read the sports pages. I can rent the Rocky movies. Why should we care about him? Why are you with him? What does it all mean? I need more from you. I hope you’ve got more to give.”

  The phone rang. He gave me a meaningful glance that was supposed to nail me to the chair, and he picked up the phone. “Bob Marks…Hey, Theron, how are ya?…Now that’s good news…. What are the numbers?…”

  He got into a heavy-duty money discussion and I checked him out. Medium-sized white guy, close to my father’s age, mid-fifties, balding, pot belly, wearing zipper jeans, no-name scuffy sneakers, and a blue work shirt. Drab cool. I knew he’d written some novels and screenplays but I couldn’t remember any of them. There was some reason he came here to be writer-in-residence but I had forgotten it. Maybe he was dying or a plagiarist or just losing it. Dying would be okay. I hated him very much.

  He hung up the phone. “My agent. Sorry. Okay. Why should I care about Sonny Bear?”

  “He’s an interesting character struggling to find his identity, to find the world he belongs in.”

  “So what? I’ve heard that before. From Native-American writers who tell it better.” He peered at me over his half glasses. “What do you, an African American raised in the postliterate hip-hop era, have to say about this?”

  I took a deep breath. Trying to get permission for a semester of independent study was harder than trying to get into college in the first place. Grown-ups hate to set you free. I had to give them samples of my writing and beg two deans and three professors. I thought I had it nailed. I felt it all crumbling around me.

  I sucked it up, then threw my best punch. “I hope, Professor Marks, you’re not saying that because I’m Black I can only write about the Black thang.”

  He honked at me, that nose laugh some whites have. I hate it. “Don’t try to mau-mau me, Witherspoon, I’m no Ivy League tenure hack h
anging in for his pension. I’m a pro writer, a wordslinger between books and marriages, and I’m here to goose up the program and then ride into the sunset before anyone can shoot back.”

  What a pompous jerk. But all I said was, “My project has already been approved.”

  “By someone who is no longer with the university. I don’t think this is a proper independent-study project. Or maybe you’re not doing it right. Either way it doesn’t work for me. It’s got no heart, no grit. You love Sonny Bear? You believe in his quest? It reads like you’re just along for the ride.

  “Does boxing stink? Who’s this guy in a wheelchair? I don’t get a sense of Jake. This foxy TV producer, Robin Bell—sounds like a phony name to me. Does she make you jealous? Do you think she’ll get between you and Sonny?”

  “What’s that got to do with the story?”

  “That is the story. Otherwise, who cares, another guy wants to be heavyweight champ, so what? I want to be heavyweight champ, we all do, but most of us quit. He will too, probably. So will you. I liked when you thought about your book before you thought about Sonny. That was real.”

  The phone rang again. I thought about just walking out. It was green outside his window. I’d never been here in the summer before. It was hot in his office. Small office for a tiny talent. Books everywhere. Some had his name on them. Queen Bea. The Runaround. Bronze Cannon Wrecks. Never heard of any of them. Pudgy little opponent writer, had to get a college job because his books don’t sell.

  He finished his phone call. “If you want to borrow any of them, feel free.”

  “Thanks. I’ll wait for the TV movie.”

  He smiled. Yellow teeth. “Now that’s good, that’s grit. Sarcasm works. Okay. First thing, you keep dropping these Indian tidbits along the way. What’s the ’little death’? Who are the ’Running Braves’? What’s ’the Hawk’ mean?”