“You want me to be your man in that prelim fight. Your boxer.”
“Don’t care if you win,” said the pudgy banker in the lantern-lit farmhouse. “Don’t care if you lose. All we care about is that you fight, that you make it go the distance, and that you climb out of the ring alive with enough left in you to do the job.”
“Getting out of the ring alive seems like a good idea,” said Gene.
“We’re good idea men,” said the banker. “The question is whether you got the guts and the smarts to be one, too. You can say no, walk out of here right now. If you’re dumb enough to tell anybody what’s what, we’ll call you crazy and a liar. They’ll believe us, not you.”
“This hard world is hell on liars.” The black-haired man reclined on the couch, made a show of keeping his eyes on Gene and the .45 automatic on his lap.
“How is it on crazies?” said Gene.
“Depends.” Norman Doyle didn’t smile.
“What if they have to carry me out of the ring?”
Doyle said: “Don’t bother to wake up.”
The hophead beside Gene looked at nobody.
“So what’s it going to be?” said the banker. “Yes or no?”
“Never happen.” Gene shook his head: “Forget about whether the heist would work, the crime thing isn’t what I do.”
“Then you can say goodnight and leave,” said the toad. “Your Billie girl will drive you back to that charming boarding house. Say goodbye to her, then, too. She’ll be leaving town.
“You see,” continued the toad, “there’ve been expenses. Bringing Doyle up from Butte. Guaranteeing debts Harry incurred ‘round the state. He was the one who knew of your fondness for his sister. She’s a hell of a woman. A fine worker. But schoolmarming and waitressing won’t settle Harry’s debts. Bankruptcy foreclosure from the people Harry owes is permanent. So if our scheme ‘never happens,’ then Doyle will drive her to Butte so she can work buying her brother’s lifeblood a few dollars at a time in an establishment whose proprietor I happen to —”
Gene was on his feet, the folding chair spinning behind him before he knew it, but not before Doyle’d filled his hand with the .45.
“You did this whole thing!” he told the banker.
“Let’s say I brought elements together for a successful business venture,” said Taylor. “Now you choose. What do you want that business to be?”
The black hole of the .45 watched Gene’s heart. The banker watched his eyes. Harry Larson slumped with his face in his hands.
His sister stood behind him. Gene saw her soft cheek he’d never touched now scarred by a wet line.
Must have been deep into the twenty-first century before he said: “Who do I have to fight?”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Doyle.
“No,” said Gene, “I guess it doesn’t. How long do I have to get ready?”
“Seven weeks and change. You fight on the Fourth of July.”
“That’s not enough time.”
“Make it be,” said Taylor. “Inspired local sponsors ‘found’ Doyle to manage you. The mayor’s sending an offer. Accept it. Also, cultivate your mustache: in your pictures, that’s what we want people to see and remember, for your sake. Tomorrow, Billie will fetch you out to the old Woon ranch. The four of you will live there while you train.”
“One of you might be able to run away for a while,” said Doyle. “I’d catch you, but you’d have a while. But the three of you . . . easy pickings.”
“I have enough running to do for the fight,” said Gene.
“Good,” said Taylor. He raised his whiskey glass: “And good luck . . . champ.”
She drove him back to town. They didn’t talk. The envelope with the offer from the mayor was in his mailbox. Gene scrawled OK, signed his name, and gave the clubfooted desk clerk two bits to deliver it. Gene settled his tab through the morning and stretched out on his last honest bed. Trains clattered through town on the tracks fifty yards from where he lay, but he let them go without him to clean forests and seaside towns.
Billie picked him up after breakfast. The highway snaked through erosion-farmed prairie spreading sixty miles west to the jagged blue sawtooth range of the Rocky Mountains. That highway beneath heaven’s blue bowl sky led to Mexico. She turned left off that oiled route, put the Rockies at their backs as they followed a graveled snake trail. The farmland became hilly with the breaks for the river named Marias after some woman in Meriwether Lewis’s life. Gene thought Lewis was damn lucky to be able to do that for her.
The peeling Woon house and barn stood against the horizon at the end of the road.
“There’s two bedrooms upstairs, one down, and a room in the barn,” said Doyle as he came off the front porch to where Gene and Billie parked. “I got the downstairs where I can hear the screen doors creak. You’re upstairs, palooka, the woman, too. Hophead is in the barn.”
Doyle led them into the barn, where the oven air was thick with the scent of hay and manure. Flies buzzed. A black horse whinnied from a stall. A heavy punching bag hung down into the open other end from one beam, while another dangled a speed bag. Dumbbells waited on a table next to boxing gloves, rolls of tape, and five pairs of canvas shoes.
“Taylor guessed about your size,” said Doyle. “We’ll get other stuff if you need it.”
“I’ve got my own shoes and gloves for the fight.” Gene picked up a pair of sneakers. “These’ll work in the meantime.”
From ten feet away, Doyle said: “So what now?”
“You got a knife?”
Doyle’s right hand snapped like a whip to drop a switchblade out of his sleeve. Light flashed between him and Gene, and with a thunk the knife stuck into a stall wall. “Help yourself.”
So I gotta watch out for that, too. Gene pulled the knife from the barn wood and cut his pants into shorts. Tossed the knife to the dirt in front of Doyle’s shined shoes. Gene took off his shirts, changed his work boots for the new sneakers, said: “Time to train.”
Working the oil rigs had kept him strong with endurance. That was crucial, but he’d need explosive power, too. He spent an hour working with dumbbells while telling Harry how to construct a flat bench for chest presses. He put a ten-pound weight in each hand to shadowbox. When his arms were on fire, he put on training gloves and moved first to the heavy bag, then to the speed bag. Gene’s arms were so heavy that even if he’d had his old timing, the twenty-minute display of tap tap miss he gave the watching Doyle, Billie, and Harry would still have been pitiful.
“Seems you’re working it backward,” said Doyle. “Skill stuff should come first.”
“Find out what skill you got when you’re at your worst.” Sweat covered Gene’s bare chest. “Then you know how much further you’ve got to make yourself go.”
“ ‘Pears to me you’ll be lucky to make it out of this barn.”
“I might not be the only one.”
“ ‘Least you talk like a fighter.” Doyle spit. “Woman: I’m hungry. Go make lunch.”
“Make your own lunch,” said Gene. “I need a spotter for road work and I don’t fancy your company or figure Harry can handle the heat.”
“Your job ain’t to figure, palooka.”
“Fine. You explain to Taylor how you chose to screw up me getting ready.”
“I explain nothing to nobody.” Doyle’d taken off his suit jacket so his white shirt showed dampness around the leather straps of the .45’s shoulder holster.
But you won’t push things too far, thought Gene. Not yet.
Doyle said: “I’m going to the house.”
As he walked away, Gene told Billie what he needed.
She bridled the black horse. Didn’t even look for a saddle. Swung herself up on its back, her dress swirling, hiking up past her knees. Her feet were bare, as were her legs that gripped the naked flanks of the black horse. Harry draped glass jars of water on each side of the quivering animal’s neck. Billie tapped her heels against the animal, and he carried h
er out of the barn, her round hips split evenly along the beast’s spine and rocking with the rhythm of each step. When she got into the sunlight, she turned back, gave Gene a nod.
Gene ran.
Out of the barn, through the yard, along the gravel road. Dust filled his panting mouth. Rocks stabbed the soles of his feet. He followed a wagon trail along the crests of the river breaks. A quarter mile and the house vanished behind rises and dips in the land. He dropped the strong set of his shoulders. Heard the clump clump of the horse behind him, the rattle of the glass water jars. A half-mile and he vomited, staggered, and would have fallen but somehow she was down on the ground beside him, holding him up as he wheezed and gasped and the world spun in bright explosions of light.
She poured water over him, made him wash his mouth and drink. “Can you do it?”
“Have to, don’t we?”
Billie touched his sweaty chest. His slamming heart made her hand twitch. “Thank you.”
“Have to run ten miles a day by end of next week.”
She got back on the horse. He stumbled along for another three minutes before he turned around and made his mind see him running back to the house. He wouldn’t let Doyle see him have to be carried back. Billie made Gene eat four scrambled eggs for lunch. Hosed him off behind the house. Laid him down on the bed upstairs while she unpacked his suitcase with his clothes, the canvas bag with his still supple ring shoes, blue satin trunks, and those blood-smeared black gloves. Before dinner she held his ankles while he did sit-ups until his midriff cramped at ninety-seven and he thrashed out of her control on the barn’s dirt floor. He sparred with the heavy bag and the speed bag and lost both times. She watched for the five minutes he hung swaying from a pipe by both arms to stretch out and give himself a whisker longer reach. She couldn’t tell that he’d tried to finish with a set of pull-ups and failed. Hosed him down again. Dinner was whatever and he ate it all, including the nighttime-only bone-building milk that could cut his wind. Upstairs, in only his underpants, he lay helpless while she sponged his face in the pickle brine he’d made Doyle get from town. Some trickled in his eye, but she was fast and put her hand over his mouth so his scream stayed muffled in the bedroom walls. She eased both of his hands into other bowls of brine: working the rigs had toughened their flesh, but every trick mattered. The brine stung in the dozens of cuts on his hands. He was too tired for pain.
“Would he do it?” said Gene. “Your brother. Make you ... let them force you into ...”
“Harry would hate that but he already hates himself. He’d shoot up and believe it was a trick of fate he couldn’t help and can’t help, something that’ll go away if we just get through it.”
“What about you?”
She turned away. “My mom died. My baby died. My brother’s all I’ve got left to lose.”
“There’s you.”
“You’re the only one who cares about that.” She shook her head. “Besides, they wouldn’t just kill Harry, they know he wouldn’t care. So they’d kill me, too, to prove the point to the world. At least if the two of us are still alive . . . we’ve got that.”
She turned back to him. “You know that. . . whatever you want from me, you can have.”
“I don’t want anybody to hurt you. I don’t want you to ever have to cry.”
Billie left the bedroom. He lay there with his hands in the bowls of brine. If the house catches fire, here’s where I’ll die. The bedroom door opened and she came in carrying a roll of blankets and a pillow. She made a bed for herself on the floor, took his hands out of the bowls, pulled a blanket over him, but then he was gone into a sleep beyond rest.
The next day was worse. And the day after that. Bone-thumping soreness. Muscles of rubber, lungs of fire. Half the time he couldn’t think straight as he lifted weights, tried not to trip and kept failing as he jumped rope. He’d hang from the pipe first thing every morning, drop down to bend and twist every way he could before Billie bridled the horse, filled the water bottles, and followed his stumbling run across the prairie. Heavy bag, speed bag, more rope, shadowboxing, then another run before dinner. Brine sponges and soaking. And always Doyle watching, hanging around, eating across from him and Billie, and when he wasn’t on the needle, brother Harry, who kept trying to joke, who talked of what a fight it would be, of how all Gene’s road work was building them streets of gold, a highway to heaven.
On the fifth night at the farm, Taylor sneaked out to see them.
“They found your opponent,” said the pudgy banker. “Eric Harmon. He’s got twenty pounds of muscle and two inches on you, and he’s only two years out of high school. Won the Golden Gloves down in Great Falls, and he’s got glory in his eyes.”
“He can have it,” said Gene.
“That’s right. As long as you don’t let him finish you off getting it.”
Taylor left them a radio and left them alone.
Training the next day was hell. And the next. Nights while he soaked his hands, Billie read Sinclair Lewis to him as music played on the radio downstairs where Doyle smoked and watched the door. Gene could readjust fine, but her voice was magic. He’d ask her questions. Knew she answered him with the truth, perhaps saying it for the first time in her life without qualification. About how her father bought her mother. About how Billie always knew she never belonged, not white, not Indian, not a man with power, not a woman with respect. How freedom only came when she lost herself in a book or at a movie or in a song on the radio. Or sometimes on a horse, galloping over empty prairie. How the only time she ever felt real was when she was teaching and some kid’s face lit up as he got it, whether “it” was the Pythagorean theorem or the glories of Rome. How she took pity on the fatherly man who begged to marry her, gambled that he’d at least keep her safe. How he gave her baby Laura, who fiercely stirred her soul. How daughter and husband died coughing while Billie watched.
Gene answered her questions, too. About how after the blood of Belleau Wood he’d rotated to England, where a sergeant gave him a choice of boxing or the front. The ring seemed saner. Learning to slip and bob and weave, combinations and counters and timing.
“And I found out that while I could do a lot, I was only truly good, really good, born in the blood special good for one thing: boxing.”
“Then knowing and having that makes you lucky.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you,” he said.
She said nothing. Blew out the bed lantern and lay down on her floor.
The next morning he ran clear and cool in his head, heard the horse trot to keep up behind him. He went three hills farther than he’d ever gone before and ran back without stopping. Took only one jar of water from Billie. He used heavier weights, did more sit-ups, made the jump rope sing and swirl. Slipped on training gloves. The heavy bag hung in the sunlit barn. Gene glided to it on feet that didn’t stick to the earth. He felt the rhythm of a breeze. Feinted once, twice —
Hit the heavy bag with a right jab that shook dust off the barn beam, a great slamming thwack that made the horse jump in his stall.
Gene turned and grinned at Billie. Saw her want to smile back, and that was something, almost enough. The heavy bag cried in pain for half an hour of his punches. He worked the speed bag like a machine gun. Doyle came out of the house, the leer gone from his face. Harry pranced around the barnyard like a chicken chirping: What’d I tell you! What’d I tell you!
And Gene breathed as a boxer.
That night Billie blew out the lantern on the bedside table, but instead of lying down on her floor, she stood there looking at him on the bed as moonlight streamed through the open window. The breeze stirred her hair and her long white nightshirt.
“You lied to me,” she said.
“That’s one thing I’d never do.”
“You said you were only truly good at one thing, at boxing. But you’re the best in the world there ever could be at this. At risking everything to save me. No one could do that better and there’s sure no one who would
ever want to.”
The bed floated in front of the light of her eyes in that shadowed room.
“Do you think we’re going to get out of this alive?” she whispered.
“Or die trying.”
But she didn’t laugh. Said: “Either way, just once, for one thing, I want to choose.”
“That’s what I want for you, too.”
She lifted the nightshirt off over her head like a white cloud floating away to let her bare skin glisten with the lunar silver glow. The bed squeaked as she knelt on it, as she lay beside him. He’d never been so afraid of doing the wrong thing. She took his right hand and pressed it on her breast, filled it with her round, warm, stiffening flesh, and he felt her heart slamming as hard as his as she said: “Everything I can, I give to you.”
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