by Aric Davis
It was an odd thing to listen to the crowd and music. Drunken teenagers were screaming for blood while the slow bass of the R&B kicked over them. Grooving and shouting mixed together with the sweet smell from Arrow and the reek of beer in the wind. Love and hate squashed in together. The crowd parted like rats on a sinking ship, and I saw Jeff.
He was already shirtless, well muscled but not overbuilt, constructed for time and speed, not muscles just for the sake of muscles. I watched him walk in alone, no handlers or friends to go with him. I gave the black kid a look. If he was impressed by Jeff, it wasn’t showing. The crowd was catcalling, yelling for their hero to spill blood, crying for death. Angry words from the mouths of babes. I plucked a match out of my pocket and lit it, and Arrow got the pot moving. I looked to the sand pit as the pretty girl I’d brought to the party got even more popular. If there was a referee, I couldn’t see him.
Jeff bounded around the sand pit like he’d just been loosed from a trap, bits of earth flying up from his feet, and when he passed in front of us, I could see that his hands were wrapped. The anticipation was building in the crowd. I could feel them growing together, swelling and ready to see a war—like I imagine Roman spectators looked when the handlers released the lions. A skinny little Hispanic kid I hadn’t seen came to the middle of the sand pit. They were reverent for him—aside from some coughing, a product of my pot I’m sure, there was total silence. He spoke.
“Tonight our main event, Jeff ‘The Executioner’ Rogers and Dewayne Walters. Gentlemen, are you ready?”
Both of them nodded, short little flickers of their chins. Someone tried to pass me a joint, and I shook my head. I’d come to see what the kid’s trip was, and now I wanted to see a fight. I was as ready for blood as the crowd was. I looked at Arrow; I could see she felt the same way.
Chapter 13
Jeff moved first, circling away from where he’d started. He had good footwork, nothing he’d learned on his own. I didn’t know about what else he had, but the kid moved like a boxer. Dewayne just eyed him like he’d seen a man dance before and wasn’t all that impressed by it then either.
Someone catcalled, “Kill him, Jeff!”
The crowd roared approval. Jeff flicked a jab twice and waded into striking distance. If Dewayne was scared, he didn’t show it; he just threw those big arms up and whistled one down the pipe on Jeff. Jeff took half of the punch on his forearm and ducked his head to miss the rest. Dewayne followed it with a sloppy hook. The jab was supposed to have hurt Jeff; the hook was meant to kill him. Before that hook had even left Dewayne’s shoulder, Jeff had hit the bigger kid with two hard body shots, and Dewayne staggered, throwing another hook. Jeff bounced away, came back in, and peppered Dewayne with three shots. I could hear them from where I stood, even over the crowd: two to Dewayne’s head, another hard shot to his body, all three with a sound like a man slapping a steak onto a counter.
If the blows hurt Dewayne, he didn’t show it. He lumbered off three punches of his own and came close on the second, a hard cross that Jeff was forced to eat on his arms. He responded in kind, attacking his larger opponent with a spray of shots that peppered him. Dewayne staggered after a crushing right, and the crowd screamed for their hero. I thought it was over then, that Jeff had won. I was wrong. The fight was just starting.
Dwayne may have looked hurt, but he wasn’t. Jeff was coming in for the kill as the big man bounced back and threw a straight right hand into Jeff’s breadbasket. Now they were both hurt. Jeff lowered an arm and staggered back. Dewayne’s corner was screaming for their fighter. Jeff managed to shuck and roll through the next few shots Dewayne fired at him, but the last shot in a four-strike combo connected hard. As Jeff bounced away, I could see the start of a nasty cut under his left eye.
Now it was Jeff’s turn. The punch to his midsection had hurt him badly, but the one to his face had woken him up. He came at Dewayne hard, winging punches that were meant to make his opponent cover up. Dewayne did, burying his face between his two massive arms, and Jeff grabbed the back of his head and leapt into the air, his momentum stopped when his knee crashed into Dewayne’s face. They froze like that for a second, and then Jeff’s feet were flat in the sand again. He leapt again, and another knee exploded on Dewayne’s face; I was shocked he was still standing. Jeff was smiling, grinning at all of us as he leapt for the last time. The last knee actually popped Dewayne’s head up from the shell he was ineffectively hiding in. Jeff let go, and the big man fell face-first to the sand. The fight couldn’t have been any more over if Jeff had shot Dewayne in the face. The sand around Dewayne’s face was black with blood as his friends helped him to his feet.
Jeff waited until the other man had stood. The crowd was already dispersing around Arrow and me. In the sand pit, Jeff shook hands with the man he’d bested, and Dewayne and his friends walked off to see about some repairs. I could see his nose canted at an angle it hadn’t been before. I looked at Arrow and found her staring at Jeff the way a starving man on an island would at a plate of ribs. I poked her in the side with my elbow. She looked down at me, the trance broken.
“Let’s go,” I said. “Lou will be ready for us soon.”
“Don’t you have to meet Jeff?”
“No. I’ll see him tomorrow.”
“Can I come?”
“I’ll think about it.”
Inside I felt an odd turmoil. This was mission accomplished, assuming Rhino would play along. Yet, Arrow liked Jeff—I could see it all over her face, and there was nothing I could do about it. We’d been to dinner just a few hours ago, and we’d connected—maybe just a little, but we had connected. It was a fight I could see no way of winning.
We slunk away from the party pit as carefully as we’d come. A lot of people were dispersing now that their bloodlust had been sated. I had an idea up my sleeve for Jeff. The problem had turned out to be entirely different than I had expected. It would take a bit of finagling, but nothing I couldn’t handle. Arrow and I didn’t talk on the way back to the cab. I was thinking and so was she, and I was glad I didn’t know the details of what she was thinking about—it was hard enough knowing the general drift.
Lou was right where I’d asked him to be. We piled in, and I told him to take us back to where we’d picked up Arrow. Lou grunted—I think it might have been the most he’d ever said to me. Arrow and I sat across the cab from each other. When were about halfway to the gas station, I gave her a look; she gave me one back, but it wasn’t all there. She was thinking about Jeff. We dropped her off, and I went home. I paid Lou and told him I’d be in touch. He rolled up the window and left. I went in the house and went to bed. I had a dream about a man hovering in the sky like he was flying.
Chapter 14
When I went to water the plants the next morning, more were ready for harvest. I pushed the thought aside and tried to push aside my dream. That one was poking at the back of my head like an ice pick, though.
I jumped on Amber’s Facebook account and messaged Jeff. “Hey sweetie, I saw you at the party, but you had so many people around you I felt shy! I’m NEVER a shy girl. I don’t know what came over me. Will you meet me at the same place this afternoon so I can tell you I’m sorry?”
If that didn’t work, nothing would. Got a message back; we were meeting at two. I had some work to do. I ate some eggs, the last in the carton, and hopped in the shower. It was Saturday, no camo necessary. I threw on a Hot Water Music shirt and jeans. Even when I get to pick, my clothes aren’t very exciting. I found the pot, starter pistol, and pepper spray pen in my pockets from the night before. I put them all back in the box, grabbed some money, and went out to my bike. I had a fleeting thought of calling Arrow but decided not to. I could always use a pay phone later if I changed my mind. I pedaled off into the world; I had to make a stop before I got my face-to-face with Jeff.
I wheeled over and got ready for some real bike riding. Where I was going wasn’t far enough in my mind to justify calling Lou, but it was close.
I heard, and again, Rhino just won’t talk about this stuff, that Rhino runs a special class sometimes. Shows kids how to fight adults. Shows them how to pull off an ear or blind you with a remote control or break a nose with one shot, maybe even how to tear stuff off of somebody. You know, the real wet work. It’s possible I went to a class like that, but I’m like Rhino, I don’t talk about that business.
When I got there, I parked my bike in the bike rack, no chain. At Rhino’s the word was different: your bike would get tore up if you locked it to the rack. There was no theft there.
I walked in. There was no bell over the door, but there were two plastic seats by it. I knew the game, so I sat down. I sat and watched guys roll on their lunch break. There were a couple who were good, a few who weren’t, and one guy giving the instructors fits—he looked like he might have been the one teaching them. It was a decent bunch for the lunch break. Rhino was off to the side, talking to one of his teachers and lauding the student who had almost buried his teacher in a triangle choke, a move where you force your opponent’s head into your crotch over their arm. You pull the arm and duck your legs, and they go to bed. Classic Brazil; I’m sure the original involved a knife.
Rhino looked over my way. I gave him a nod, and he nodded back. He tapped the instructor by him on the shoulder and pointed at me. I was either going to get bounced in a bad way or get to talk to my teacher. The instructor was wearing a gi, and he circled the outside of the cage and the ring, looped at the mats, and finally stopped in front of me. He said, “You need to speak?”
“I do.” He held a hand up and snapped. I could hear Rhino nod, I could feel it. The instructor he’d sent extended his arm and pointed ahead of him to the floor. He said, “After you.”
I nodded like I was supposed to and got walking around the facility. Rhino’s eyes had me on lockdown the whole way. They weren’t mean, and they weren’t nice. They were even. I felt like twin lasers were pinching into my shirt. Rhino has that way with everyone. If there is a better friend to troubled children, I’ve yet to meet him. I walked up to Rhino, and he gave a stern look, planted his hands on the carpet, and looked at me. He scraped his face and stood. He told me once that in Brazil there is no racism. The people there were so mixed a good woman could knock out three kids with the same man and get three flavors of coffee in no particular order. I walked over to my friend, spread my arms, and he hauled me off the ground like a bear. He put me down and gave me a look, up and down.
Rhino had been too old to make real money when the UFC had first started to make mixed martial arts a moneymaker. He’d fought professionally in vale tudo fights in Brazil and Japan, back when vale tudo still meant that anything goes. He’d trained fighters to be in the UFC and in the Japanese Pride Fighting events. Time had passed, but Rhino was still on top as a trainer; the real fighters knew him and what he was.
Rhino knew the game, and he knew the game I was working on. I was not a kid looking for a favor; I was here on business, and I wanted to talk. He waved at the man who’d walked me over, and that dude was gone. Rhino opened the door behind him, and I followed. I knew the gig. The door shut, and my focus was on him. He slid into a chair. Gave me a wave. I sat.
“Nickel. Where have you been? Long time.”
“I’ve been working, busy with a few cases.”
“You still have much to learn, my friend. You should not be such a stranger to jiu-jitsu.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Why do you come today?”
“I need to hire somebody.”
“Have you used anything we worked on?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
I thought about that. There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t use something I’d learned on the mats or in the classroom with Rhino; that was the kind of impact he had on a student. Once you started training, you never stopped thinking the way he wanted you to. He made people into steel out of flesh and bone.
“Caught a guy in a heel hook. He didn’t know the rules. Walks with a cane now.”
Rhino pushed his chair aside; I stood and did the same. I knew this was how it would play.
“Show me.”
I grabbed his shoulder and spun him so he faced away. Put my right leg between his and threw my weight against his shoulder. Rhino spun with me—he was letting me move him, I had no illusions about that—and we landed sitting in front of one another, his leg in my lap. I tucked his foot in my armpit and turned. Rhino tapped a drumbeat on my leg, and I let him go. It was a move he never would have given up to in the cage. If we’d been really fighting, not only would I have not been able to tap him out, we’d still be standing—Rhino was nearly impossible to get to the ground unless he wanted you there.
“He no tap?”
“No.”
Rhino stood and brushed himself off.
“You takedown sloppy. Submission is strong. Strong like man.” He smiled. “Not like Rhino, though.”
I shook my head. I would never be like Rhino.
“This man, he deserve it?”
We sat and I nodded, thought about catching the window peeper outside of an eight-year-old girl’s bedroom. Saw the bulge in his pants. Went to him with no fear; I knew he’d be weak. He was. I left him screaming, knee destroyed. The police found him there, didn’t believe a word of what he said about a little boy in all black who knew how to make a man feel like a pretzel. They found knives, a tool to cut glass with, some ether. It might not have been the night yet, he could have still been working up to it, but either way, he had it coming. Rhino clapped his hands together and said, “That’s good then, very good. Why you see me today?”
“I need someone strong in jiu-jitsu, but this person can’t look strong.”
He nodded.
“This person will need to be in a fight, maybe a couple of fights. The guy that he fights, he has good hands, walks like a boxer. No kicking, some Thai boxing. I don’t think he knows about the ground.”
“Does he have honor?”
I knew what Rhino meant. Would Jeff have a weapon? Would he know when a fight was over? I thought about the fight with Dewayne, Jeff watching to see if he was okay. I nodded my head yes, he had honor.
“When?”
“Today. Just a couple of hours.”
“Where?”
I told him.
“I have heard they fight there. Children, no training. This boy, he a good fighter?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“I can pay a thousand on it. If you get this boy to be the kind of fighter I think he can be, I get my thousand back as a finder’s fee.”
I took the money from my wallet and slid it across the table. He considered it for a moment and made the money disappear. He leaned back in his chair. Rubbed his hands together. He stood. I followed him from the room. We walked back to the gym. He led me to the ring, to a skinny man in a gi who looked just out of high school, working a man Rhino’s size. Rhino raised his eyebrows at me.
“Ricardo.”
I nodded. Watched him transition with his much larger opponent from a standing position into an arm trap that led to a submission. The kid moved like a snake, a boa constrictor. He was perfect.
Chapter 15
I rode my bike to Knapp, a long haul but that was alright; it would give me time to think
. I should have called Arrow but was glad I hadn’t. She liked Jeff; she might not like him as much after he lost. I stuck a matchstick in my teeth. On second thought, I really should have called Arrow.
I jumped off the bike. The remnants of a party were everywhere, including at least a hundred bucks in empties—the kegs hadn’t been enough. Not too much other trash though, and I had a feeling they left the empties on purpose; somebody will always stop to get a dime. I sat next to my bike and waited, hoping Ricardo would show up before Jeff, hoping Jeff would show up at all. A black pickup truck pulled across the field. Dually tires in the back, crew cab. Rhino. Ricardo got out and walked over to where I was sitting. He still had on his gi. He didn’t look nervous or excited. He just looked ready. The truck pulled off. I knew Rhino wasn’t going far; he’d want to watch.
Ricardo said, “You’re Nickel?”
“Yes.”
“Rhino says you’re good.”
“Not as good as you.”
“We should roll sometime.”
I replaced my matchstick and tossed the old one on the ground. Ricardo would destroy me if we rolled, but it would be good for me. “Next time I come by. You want to know anything about this guy?”
“Rhino told me what to do.”
That was good enough for me. We sat and waited, the sun flirting on the outside of the clouds, just peeking, not coming all the way through. We didn’t wait long.
The car was red, a little worn around the edges, a highschooler’s car. I knew it was Jeff before he got out. He parked next to the sand pit, and we walked over to him. I was in front of Ricardo. He was leaning on the car by the time we got there, staring at Ricardo and seeing right through me—and the ruse.