by Marks, Leon
Saul gives me a half-hearted smile.
I don't want to hurt Saul.
He must be close to seventy. A full head of white hair crowns his head. Sad brown eyes observe me in a thin face. He points to another stool.
I sit.
"Coffee?"
"Please."
He creaks out of the chair, pours me a cup.
"Thanks." It's fantastic.
"So here we are," Saul says.
"Here we are."
"There is no other way?"
I have been carrying Saul for a month now. He knows it. He appreciates it. His bakery can't compete with the Starbucks shops spouting like weeds in this town. He thought he could. Thought all his place needed was a facelift. The banks didn't see it his way. So he paid a visit to Johnny Del Negro. We know where that got him.
Saul savors his coffee.
I do too. I'll miss this place.
"I'd always planned on leaving this joint to one of my sons. Maybe it's good they are not here to see this."
Two sons. One he lost in a car accident. The other to drugs. Saul knows all about the hurt business.
"It will look like an accident?"
"Yes." Simple really. A blown-out pilot light on his stove, allowing gas to fill the kitchen, until one of the other lights ignites. Happens every day. Too bad it happened on a Saturday, people will say, or else the building might have been saved.
We finish our coffee in silence. Then, out of habit, he washes them in the sink. Puts them on a rack to dry.
I can't help but smile.
He takes a last look around. How many mornings has he spent here, starting long before the sun rises? How he must have busted his ass. He pauses in the doorway, turns to me with a face used to losing things.
"Everybody gets in over their head, Saul. It'll be okay. Plans never work out."
His eyes are wet. I turn away before he does.
I'm careful. Need this to look just right for the insurance company. Just enough grease to coax the fire to the most flammable sections of the shop. Doesn't take long. I replace the batteries in the smoke detectors with dead ones.
After, I watch from across the street, chew on a cigarette. I can't help but think of my father, of his store. A little corner grocery in Brighton. I wait until I can see the smoke billow in the windows before I take off.
I haven't spoken to my father in a decade, give or take. He had cause not to see me. Doesn't make it right, but he had cause. I don't particularly miss him anymore. Don't miss the smacks, the punches, the spankings, the whippings. Still, I wouldn't mind seeing him, so I could rearrange his smile with my fists.
I grew up big and mean. Just like my dad. Juvie helped with the meanness. I was a bad kid, now I'm a bad man. Born bad? Who knows? Who cares? What's the blame game gonna do for me? Doesn't make much difference how we got here. Here we are.
The last time I saw my father, my last image of him, he was driving my little brother to the hospital—Nick's forehead bashed in and bloody, courtesy of me, the aluminum bat I'd had in my hands. I don't really remember what he said or did. My temper's always been on a hair trigger.
I do remember the noise. Metal on skull. Still hear that noise from time to time. Occupational hazard.
I escaped from juvie on my first day, went home. Tried to. My father's voice loud and crazy and drunk from upstairs. My mother at the kitchen door, pressed cash into my fist, pushed me out the door. My other two brothers looked at me like chickens look at a wolf.
Like I said, there's all kinds of ways to hurt someone. I was learning.
Back to juvie. Where else could I go?
They had this Golden Gloves program for kids like me. A healthy outlet for violence, they said. Hurting and getting hurt. Not sure which I enjoyed more.
Because I deserved to get hurt.
For putting my little brother in a coma.
He's still in a coma.
I see him once a week. Saturday evenings. My family knows not to come then.
The first time, a social worker brought me, right to the door. Told me to go in, visit.
So pale. So thin. His forehead had healed but it was like I could see cracks under the skin, the bruised brain beneath the bone.
That hurt.
Worse than any beating I ever got.
The next time hurt just as bad. It still stings, just like the first time. Maybe worse. Watching him grow, like some kind of ugly, exotic flower in a greenhouse. His skin vampire white now. The color of everything else in that awful place.
When I turned eighteen, a boxing manager offered to sponsor me. I was undefeated as an amateur. Had won the amateur belt the year before. I was always good at hurting people. He made me better. Could I have been a contender? Was I the next great white hope? Probably not. My trainer was a sweet guy. Al. A sweet guy in a sour world. He owned a gym in Dorchester, just off Dot Avenue. It was a shithole, too cold in the winter, too hot in the summer. Place hadn't been painted since Christ was born.
I loved it.
Al was like a father to us orphans and castaways. All collected from family services. There was a half-dozen of us, sometimes ten. We trained just like those ninjas I used to watch on Saturday afternoons. Al was the master, we were the grasshoppers, the gym was a temple of pain. Push-ups and sit-ups and jumping rope, punching bags, punching each other, getting punched, running in the cold, in the heat. Every day a battle. I miss those days. Maybe you heard of a few of us. Al would land the occasional title fight, in Vegas or Atlantic City, once or twice in Madison Square Garden. Never had anyone win a belt, but he tried to get us all a shot.
He never told us about his wife getting cancer. About the medical bills. But all of a sudden we were fighting more often, fights Al never would have taken before, guys way out of our league. The knockouts piled up, we all got familiar with the sensation of waking up on canvas. You could see it weigh on Al. His wife's illness and the guilt over the fights he was taking. He got in over his head.
I had a fight at the Taj Majal, in Atlantic City. Some dude from California. The Calabasas Kid was his handle. The scouting report was that he was big and fast, a dude on the rise. The report on me? Young and dumb and watch out for that right hook.
Al was quiet as he taped my hands. I could smell the gin on his breath. He wouldn't look me in the eye.
Enter Johnny Del Negro, with some hulk of a flunky.
"What's up, Al?" I said.
He backed away, still not making eye contact.
I recognized Johnny from the neighborhood. He'd been in the gym a few times. Nobody was ever happy to see him.
"Frankie Long Legs," he said. A joker's smile on his face. "You look ready to kick somebody's ass."
I was, but I kept quiet.
"About that." He pulled a stool over next to the table I was sitting on. The muscle he came with stayed back, made with the hard looks.
I mirrored them right back.
He chuckled, indulgent. His name was Hank. Hank the Tank.
Johnny Del Negro cleared his throat. "We're gonna need you to go down in the third round."
"Who the fuck is we?"
Johnny sighed, his eyes seemed to ask, Do we really need to do this? "We is me. And your manager over there."
"Al, what the fuck?"
Al stared at his shoes.
"Don't be too hard on him, Legs. Goddamn medical bills have a way of piling up. And people call me a shark."
"Medical bills?"
"He didn't say anything? Poor guy's wife's got the cancer. Cut him some slack."
Al's eyes were closed now. A hand on his temple like he suffered from a migraine.
"So, kid." Johnny waited for me to look at him. "You go down in the third, or else..."
"Or else what?"
Johnny looked at Hank. If cruelty had a smell, Hank reeked of it. "Or else my man here has to pay somebody a visit."
Hank grinned.
"How about he pays me a visit right now?"
Joh
nny shook his head. "Not you, Legs."
We all looked at Al, who looked about as sad as a man can look.
"I think we're done here, Hank."
Before Johnny left, he turned and held up three fingers. Then turned his hand into a gun and pointed it at Al.
We didn't speak again, Al and I. He finished wrapping my hands without making eye contact. The closest thing to a father I'd had in the last five years. Sold me out. I understood why. Still hurt. We walked to the ring like two men headed to the electric chair.
The Calabasas Kid made a flashy entrance. He danced and strutted like a peacock, punching the air. The crowd got worked up. I bounced lightly on each foot, rolled my head to loosen my neck, felt the pops and cracks. Shook my arms. Watched the Kid mug for the fans.
In the front row, Johnny and Hank watched. Johnny caught my eye and smiled.
My heart pumped hot lava through my veins. I shook with rage.
We touched gloves at the center of the ring.
"Ready, punk?" he said.
I was.
He came in fast.
I came in faster. I remember his eyes. Surprised, confused, then scared. Then closed. Knocked out in the first round. Inevitable chaos. The overwhelmed crowd buzzed, someone struck the bell over and over again, the ring filled with trainers. I tore off my gloves, hopped through the ropes and went after Hank.
Johnny Del Negro watched as I tenderized Hank's face, until I wiped the grin off it, until his left eye was swollen shut. Then I turned and looked at the spooked, silent audience, fully prepared to take every one of them on.
"Nice fight," Johnny said.
A couple of guys dragged me back to the ring. Some medics attended to Hank.
Al tried to talk some sense to me. I shoved him away. Marched back to the dressing room alone.
Johnny Del Negro waited for me there. He didn't look upset, more like puzzled. I figured he was there to shoot me. I didn't care. I gave him his chance.
"Put some clothes on, Legs."
I started to get dressed.
"Well, you cost me some money tonight. Cost Al some money."
"You bet on the wrong guy."
"Looks that way." His smile was just an excuse to show his teeth. "But you got me wondering."
"About what?"
"Can you control that temper of yours?"
"What do you want?"
"Maybe I could use a guy likes to hurt people, who's good at it. Maybe you help me out, we forget about what Al owes me."
"I'm listening."
Because of the incident with Hank, I couldn't fight in Boston anymore. Lost my fight card. No more sanctioned bouts. I didn't have a lot of options.
That's how I got mixed up with these people. The wrong people. The wrong crowd. I don't mean guys that smoked, or drank, or did drugs. I don't mean naughty people. Bad people. Bordering on evil. You do what you have to do. Or what you think you have to do. No difference.
At first, I just rode shotgun on Johnny's house calls. Looked scary. Applied pain when needed. Pretty soon, he let me fly solo. Saturdays, I visited the deadbeats who didn't pay up on Friday.
It paid well.
I was good at it.
Apart from the occasional Saul, I enjoyed it. What can I say? So many different reactions to pain. Everyone has a different threshold. Felt like it was my mission to discover people's limits. Find out what hurt them the most.
My father, when he smacked me with his belt or his hand or his fist, used to say this hurt him more than it hurt me. Not from where I was sitting. Much better to dish it out than to take it. Ask my brother.
The third time I visited my brother, I finally spoke. Told him I was sorry. One of my counselors told me that was important. I sat next to him, took his little hand in my paw.
And I had this eerie vision. My brother surrounded by a bunch of neighborhood punks. I knew them. I'd picked on every single one of them at one time or another. They were laying into my brother, making fun of his cheap, hand me-down-clothes—a lot of them mine, passed down through all my other brothers first. Teasing him about our ugly mother, our drunk father. I could feel my brother's terror and rage.
I let go of his hand.
How come you never told me?
I'm telling you now. A ghost's voice, the sound of my brother as a child, healthy, happy, in my head.
There were six of them, in a circle around him.
My third stop of the day is a personal errand.
His name is Reggie Hanson. I've known him since we were kids.
He doesn't see it coming. The uppercut into his solar plexus. Takes the air right out of him, he goes limp as a sail. Then I go to work on his knee. With a tire iron. Don't feel bad for him. Don't you dare. He has it coming.
He screams. Like a bitch. Finally those contorted sounds turn into a word.
"Why?"
I'm dressed all in black, from my boots to the balaclava covering my face. Don't want him to recognize me. I do my best Batman voice.
"Because."
He'll walk eventually. With a limp. Maybe a cane.
Reggie is the last of the six. The other five, like him, are in various states of disrepair, all with permanent reminders of how breakable they are. Reggie probably had it easiest, because he didn't do very much. Didn't do anything to stop it either.
My brother is in what they call a persistent vegetative state. Everything works except his brain. There's all kinds of articles about it. I've read most of them. Some claim he can hear it when you talk to him. Some say he can't. He has this thing, muscle memory. Put a deck of cards in his hands and he'll shuffle them. Spooky. I remember teaching him how to do it. Give him a fork or spoon and he'll feed himself, keep going even after the food's gone. Does he want more? Can he taste it?
A little while ago, I brought him a bat. I was curious. Sneaked it in under my coat. Placed it in his eager hands. He adjusted his grip, choked up a bit, then almost took my head off with a mighty swing, almost swung himself out of the bed. I had to pry it out of his hands, hands that kept reaching for it after I took it away.
I gave him a deck of cards. It seemed to occupy him.
I stop by Johnny Del Negro's pub. Tell him how things went down with the BC kid and with Saul.
"You better pray that insurance money comes in."
I already have. "It will."
"In the future take it easy on the co-eds, tough guy. I don't need to draw any more heat on my operation than I already got." He says it because he has to, but he doesn't mind a reputation for being heartless. Word will spread, he will benefit.
"Okay."
"Nice work, Legs. Get out of here."
He knows where I'm going. The one thing he doesn't crack wise about. Smart of him.
I can smell the sterile hospital scent even before I step inside. The people at the desk, the orderlies all know me, we nod at each other.
Today, I look closer at them. My brother's been here for years, just like they have. They've changed too, heavier, grayer hair, eyes a little sadder every time I come. I'm no different.
There are not a lot of happy stories inside the rooms in this facility, not a lot of smiles, or relief. Like a church, this place is full of quiet, desperate, unanswered prayers. But we keep hoping. Hoping someone will hear, someone will answer one.
I slide a chair over next to my brother's bed, sit. I take his hand, squeeze, he squeezes back just as hard. Harder maybe. I think about what I did to Reggie Hanson. My last errand for my brother. I wonder again, like always, Did I do what he wanted me to? My brother's breathing seems to get deeper, his eyes open wide, like always. I have no idea what he sees. No idea if he knows what I did, what I've done, for him.
Just faith. Maybe that's all we ever have.
I think back on that day, when we were kids. I was warming up before a game, in my team uniform. I tossed a ball in the air, took huge, Dwight Evans cuts at the ball, swinging for the fences, for an imaginary Green Monster. I had hit my first home ru
n the week before. I can still remember the feeling. That perfect moment: the ball, the bat, the swing, everything aligned just right, the ball going and going. Nothing quite like it.
But I wasn't connecting with the ball, kept missing or hitting it into the ground. Too eager. The more I missed, the harder I swung.
Nick made some comment, maybe grinned when he shouldn't have. Then the smack of the bat hitting him. The blood. The expression on my father's face. The truest, purest hurt I've ever seen.
After a bit, Nick lets go of my hand.
I lift the bat I brought in under my coat. My funeral coat. My skin tingles, my heart beats loud and strong, echoes in my head.
We've been practicing. I usually hold up a pillow after I hand him the bat. His swing has gotten better, a home run swing.
No pillow this time.
He adjusts his grip until his knuckles turn white. His jaw clenches. Any second now.
I lower my head. To the center of an imaginary strike zone.
Exhale.
Pray for the scent of Saul's bread when I wake.
Swing for the fences, brother.
AUTHOR BIOS
KEVIN GARVEY aka TheGARV, is a MMA ring announcer, commentator and blogger. His short fiction can be found on infectiveink.com and his own website, thegarv.com.
EDWARD HAGELSTEIN continues to spew out ugly, immoral fiction from a damp abandoned fallout shelter in Florida, where he lives an otherwise average life.
ROB HART is the class director at LitReactor and the associate publisher at MysteriousPress.com. He's the author of The Last Safe Place: A Zombie Novella, and his short stories have appeared in Shotgun Honey, Crime Factory, Thuglit, Needle, Kwik Krimes, and Helix Literary Magazine. He lives in New York City.
LEON MARKS writes fiction that explores darkness, crime and identity. He holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Fairfield University and teaches writing and communications at the City University of New York. More at www.leonmarks.com.