Fat City

by Leonard Gardner

  “You’ll work the tower again. Can your partner hustle?”

  “This kid’s a great athlete.”

  “We’ll send him with you then. Just watch out for your hands, kid.”

  The two walked to the idling Caterpillar and Tully climbed up the rungs of the narrow tower hitched behind it—a fifteen-foot metal cylinder, like a drainage pipe mounted on wheels, into which, having reached the top, he lowered himself until his feet were on the platform, his waist level with the mouth of the tube. He pulled up the long pole that leaned against it, held it under one arm like a lance, and the tractor and the tower lurched into motion. Bracing himself with a hip as he rocked and swayed, brushed by leaves, he swung the pole in a sideways sweep. With the first assault, Ernie, under the tree clearing nuts from in front of the Caterpillar’s metal track, yelled out in protest, his voice barely audible in the roar of the engine. Tully’s second blow sent down another bombardment of green-hulled walnuts. While Ernie shouted up at him, he laughed and flailed again at the tree. Another shower of nuts fell. Ernie covered his head, stooped, rose, throwing, and a nut rang against the tower. The driver motioned him forward. Ernie, his mouth working angrily, ran on to his position in front of the tractor, and Tully, belaboring the branches, saw him gliding in a swift and furious crouch, his hands, deftly knocking aside nuts, darting at times within inches of the advancing track. The crouching figure, the tractor and the tower all turned about the tree as one unit and progressed to the next tree in line. The pole crashed into the branches, Ernie was pelted, and Billy Tully was euphoric. Up near the green treetops in the swaying tube with a view of crawling nut-sackers dispersed over the ground, he wielded his stick with great energy.

  The tree-beating ended at noon, and Tully and Ernie joined the others crawling over the clods. Nuts banged into buckets, buckets were emptied into sacks. Covered with dirt, the two talked and scrabbled through the afternoon.

  “I’m just a damn fool wasting my time out here,” said Tully. “But you get in a bind. I got my responsibilities too. Don’t think I don’t. I got a woman on my hands and that means getting up at four and breaking your back all day. But if I can start fighting again that’ll be the end of that.”

  “Sure, you’ll be making some money anyway. You can sleep in the morning. Anything’s better than this.”

  “It’s not just that. I’ll flat-ass leave her.”

  He lifted a full sack and jogged with it to the truck. When his sore knees again dropped onto the dirt beside Ernie, he said: “All I need’s a fight and a woman. Then I’m set. I get the fight I’ll get the money. I get the money I’ll get the woman. There’s some women that love you for yourself, but that don’t last long. Ernie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Take care of that wife of yours.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “I envy you. That’s the truth, even though you got to break your back. I was married. I didn’t know what a good one I had. Don’t let anybody knock marriage, kid. You don’t appreciate it till it’s gone.”

  “It’s got its compensations.”

  “That’s a fact. That’s absolutely right. It’s got its compensations. I’d say that’s exactly it. You can’t get around that. I had it good but I blew it.” Rising up on his knees, Tully took out his worn wallet.

  “Good-looking,” said Ernie, studying the plastic-covered snapshots.

  “Redhead.”

  “She looks stacked.”

  “She was stacked, all right, and I let something like that get away from me. I tell you, if I had some money I’d send her a plane ticket tomorrow. What I’d like to do is get a couple of fights and rent a nice house. You want to go to the gym sometime? Maybe we could work out again, see how I feel. I was in bad shape last time. I mean don’t think I like doing this. You should of seen the house we had. New car. Everything.”

  And so Tully, relating the story of his marriage, crawled through the afternoon, separating nuts from clods until all nuts were the same hated one thrown forever into the bucket.

  18

  On the day Billy Tully and Ernie Munger came together through the door of the Lido Gym, a new period of energy began for Ruben Luna. He had been in a slump. Only Wes Haynes and Buford Wills were in training. With his wife and children Ruben felt such impatience that he rarely could look at them, his eyes shifting around them as though to lessen his weight of suffering. On Halloween he had been coerced into going trick-or-treating, his daughters, in masks and costumes, running on ahead to ring doorbells while he came along behind holding the hand of his sheet-draped son. From the shadows of the sidewalk he had watched their animation as they filled their paper sacks with candy, and he felt only the utter dullness of it all, the meaningless expenditure of himself that he was powerless to stop, begun imperceptibly long ago in the name of a love he could no longer feel. The more excited his children had become, the more constricted he felt, until it was as if his children and his wife, and the whole town with its porch lights on under a sky of drifting clouds, were conspiring against his life. To one neighbor, teasing with hands behind his back, Ruben bellowed from behind a shrub: “Are you going to give those kids that candy or aren’t you?” Soon he was not speaking at all. When his children ran across the street without looking, he said nothing.

  But with Billy Tully and Ernie Munger back in the gym, Ruben was charged with new purpose. He was imagining a local promotion, headlined by Tully, with Ernie making his professional debut in one of the preliminaries. Now that Ernie was married he would need money. Without it, Ruben was afraid he would again lose interest. It seemed better to risk moving him too soon out of the amateur ranks than to lose him entirely. When Ernie brought his wife to the gym, Ruben, seeing that swollen belly, felt his decision was right.

  Rain fell for days. The black surrounding fields, past which Ruben drove his family one Sunday afternoon, were stripped and mired. The rows where choppers, cutters and pickers had stooped through the heat of summer now were only austere lines converging in the distance. Ducks floated on flooded fields among reflected clouds, and through the day their formations were etched high over the city. Down his own street, under bare sycamore trees, his children waded in the gutter. Earthworms, disgorged from saturated lawns, lay drowned on the sidewalk. At night in bed he listened to the wind and the dripping from the eaves. Then there were days of dense fog, impenetrable to the lights of his Pontiac as it crept to the gym.

  Billy Tully was sparring now, between rounds leaning over the ropes, panting, his face red, his pulse visible in the pit of his stomach. Crudely painted on his leather cup, worn outside his trunks, was the head of a ram.

  “Looking great,” said Ruben.

  One day he called Owen Mackin, who had promoted at the Civic Auditorium since the days when Ruben had fought there himself. “Owen,” he yelled into the phone. “Ruben Luna. Luna. I got Billy Tully back in training. Billy Tully. In training. Owen, I’ll tell you what I want for him. A good tune-up fight.” He heard Western music from the jukebox in Mackin’s bar. “A couple good wins and he’ll be ready for the best. But right now I’d like somebody that’ll give him a good workout, give him back the old confidence. I don’t mean a bum. Maybe some kid ready for main events. What do you think?”

  “Tully won’t draw.”

  “He’ll draw fine. He’s a good clean athlete with a fine record. He’s got a lot of class.”

  “Maybe I could use him in a semi-final.”

  “A semi? Tully in a semi? He’s still got the old stuff. I don’t want him in a semi.”

  “He won’t draw.”

  “We can have a Stockton boy in every bout. I got a fine young welterweight for the opener. I told you about him.”

  “That’s how it stands.”

  “Munger.”

  “What?”

  “Munger, Munger.”

  “It’s too big a risk.”

  “Tully’s going to be sharp. Come down and take a look at him.”

  “How abo
ut Arcadio Lucero?”

  “Lucero?”

  “I can get him. When’s Tully going to be ready?”

  “Well, Lucero—maybe five or six weeks—Lucero, I don’t know. He’s a puncher. What I meant, you know, was a tune-up. Why should I put him in with Lucero when he’s just getting in shape? I mean if he had a couple good tune-ups first.”

  “I think I can get you Lucero,” said Owen Mackin.

  “Not that I doubt he can take him.”

  “He made friends here.”

  “Not that I think he’d ever nail Tully.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you, I think I can get Lucero.”

  “Wouldn’t be a bad win on the record.”

  “I could phone.”

  Ruben hung up thinking Lucero used to mean something and knowing he still did in Stockton. Two years ago he had knocked out Manny Chavez a few days before Chavez’s picture appeared on the front page with the story of his arrest for selling heroin to a federal narcotics agent. Lucero had returned to fight Mike Cruz, whom Gil Solis had brought out of retirement and then sent back to it with a few hundred dollars and a face already beyond worries of disfigurement even before that final one-round beating. These bouts had won Lucero fans, but Ruben knew the quality of his opposition. What he did not know was whether Billy Tully was any better than the others. Massaging him after his workout, Ruben mused over the firmness of his arms and shoulders. Tully lay face down on the rubbing table in the private dressing room—a windowless cubicle lit by an unshaded bulb and smelling of sweat and liniments, its rough board walls covered with posters of past bouts. Patiently Ruben’s fingers kneaded the knotted calves and thighs, wandering, pausing, concentrating at points across the white back, the tanned neck, sinking into damp armpits.

  “You asleep? How would you like to fight Arcadio Lucero?”

  “Uh. Fight Lucero? What for?”

  “I think you can beat him.”

  “I thought I was going to start out with an easy one.”

  “Lucero’s over the hill. You’ve still got the stuff. You let yourself get out of shape, that’s all.”

  “Why him?”

  “Thought it might be a good fight.” His hands grasped, rubbed, squeezed, rose to the taut cords at the base of Tully’s neck, finally came to rest and slid away.

  “That all?”

  “That ought to do it.” Ruben, arms tired, spoke in a brisk cheerful voice calculated to rouse Tully to his feet.

  “Didn’t seem like very much,” said Tully, his face still on the table.

  “That’s plenty. Get your clothes on before you get a chill.”

  Groaning, Tully struggled to his hands and knees.

  That night, after Ruben had gone to bed, Tully phoned. Standing in the dark cold hall, Ruben listened with chagrin.

  “All right, I’ll fight Lucero if that’s the best you can do, and knowing you it probably is. All I want is a fight, and I think you’ve had your mind made up for you. But I don’t know about you. You never gave a shit about me and I don’t give a shit about you and you never will give a shit so why should I? That’s what I want to know. If you would of went to Panama—Ruben, I’m talking to you, goddamn it—if you would of demanded those expenses and done that one little thing everything would be different now. Do you know that? I know it, how come you don’t know it?”

  “Listen now, where are you, what’s the problem?”

  “What do you mean what’s the problem. What’s your problem?”

  “Now just hold on. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “You tell me. I’m doing all right.”

  The conversation trailed off into an exchange between Tully and someone else. He said goodbye, the connection went dead, and Ruben hung up.

  “Who was it?”

  “Tully. He’s been drinking.”

  Back under the covers, Ruben stared into the darkness, aggrieved that Tully could talk to him like that after all the care and attention he had given him, but aggrieved more at the thought of him drunk. That was a more personal affront, an act of spite. Heavy with foreboding, Ruben was confronted again by the same old frustration of his will, by the inevitable weakness he found in everyone, and for all his efforts could not root out.

  The next afternoon Tully was back at the gym.

  “You weren’t boozing last night, were you?”

  “I had a few. Don’t worry about it. I was just kidding around.”

  “You’re not going to get in shape if you’re boozing.”

  “All right, I know. You don’t have to go through that again.”

  “Booze is poison to the body.”

  “I’m off it. I’m not drinking. You got to break loose once in a while. I’m living with a lush—you know how that is.”

  Through the door of the locker room came sounds of dripping showers and the light bag thumping. “Get rid of her,” Ruben said, grave, convinced, uncompromising.

  “I know it. I’m going to. I know.” Tully’s shiny blue slacks dropped down his legs with a clink of change.

  19

  On the dusty floor of the closet was a clean square where the carton of Earl’s clothes had been.

  “Is Earl out of the bucket?”

  “Huh?”

  “Was Earl here?”

  “Earl?”

  “Did Earl come in here today?” Tully demanded, hanging up his jacket.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?”

  “He was just here long enough to get his stuff.”

  “Is that any reason for not telling me?”

  “I was just going to tell you. You only got in this minute. I didn’t have time to open my mouth.”

  “So how is he?”

  “All right, I guess. Didn’t have much to say. Picked up his clothes and left. So what’s wrong with that?”

  With strange anxiety Tully went to the gas plate, tearing open his package of round steak. “You tell him about me? What he say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “He remember me?”

  “I don’t know if he remembered you. What do you care?”

  “He remembers you well enough, that’s easy to see.”

  “He had to get his clothes, didn’t he?”

  “After he found out he couldn’t move back in.”

  “He didn’t mention moving in.”

  “What he come over for then?”

  “I told you—his clothes. He knew I was with you.”

  Tully struck a match and a high blue flame shot up from the burner. “How’d he know that?”

  “I saw him before.”

  “When was this?”

  “What’re all these questions? He came by the day he got out.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I guess I forgot.”

  “That’s a good one.” Tully placed the meat in the black encrusted frying pan, pushing in the edge of fat until the steak lay flat.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I heard what you said.”

  “Then why’d you ask?”

  “You think I’m lying to you.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You don’t trust me, do you?”

  “All I’m trying to do,” said Tully, now opening a can of peas, “is make us our supper.”

  “You’re so goddamn high and mighty.”

  “If I didn’t cook it we wouldn’t eat it.”

  “Nobody asked you to fix me anything.”

  “I know. You’d just as soon drink yours.”

  “If you don’t want to make me any, you don’t have to.”

  “I’m making it.”

  “You’d rather not.”

  “I got it right here.”

  “I don’t have to eat.”

  “I’m making it for you!” shouted Tully.

  “Then I won’t eat it if you feel that way about it.”

  “I want you to eat it! I’m cooking it because I want you to eat it. I ca
n’t eat all this food myself.” Dumping the peas into a discolored pot, he heard her voice again, quieter, sighing, resigned.

  “I didn’t say anything and you get that pissed off.” He made no reply.

  “Now he’s mad. He’s not speaking.”

  He turned over the steak in a noisy sputter and stood staring down at the peas until they were violently boiling.

  Through the first mouthful of rare meat he said, sitting opposite Oma at the table: “Eat your food before it gets cold.” In her hand was a tumbler of wine.

  “I don’t take orders from you.”

  “You need your protein.”

  “I’m not going to eat with somebody who talks to me like you do.”

  “You want to starve to death?”

  “That’s what you’d like, isn’t it?”

  Tully cut off another bloody chunk of steak before saying no.

  “That would solve everything for you, wouldn’t it?”

  “I just asked a simple question,” he said, chewing. “Go on, eat.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to eat. Maybe I don’t like how it’s cooked.”

  “All right, don’t eat it. Go hungry. I don’t care. That’s good food. I make you a good dinner and you don’t even appreciate it. So just forget it. I’ll put it away and eat it tomorrow.”

  As he reached across to her plate, she clutched it, crying: “I want it. I’m going to eat it.”

  “I don’t want you to eat it!” he shouted, pulling on the plate.