Out across the moonlit acreage he imagined the river and he saw the boat coming toward him. He saw the flags and the smoke rose into the stars and the land parted and moved in waves and he saw the ghostlike figures moving across the deck and leaning over the rails of the balcony. He touched his fingertips to the window pane as the riverboat came closer and he listened and hoped to hear someone call his name and then as the black waves pushed higher and crashed upon the shores of Maryann’s backyard he saw that the boat was not slowing down and it made a great mechanical roar as it pulled to the left and tossed waves against the backyard and against the house and then it was gone.
He crossed the room and picked up the duffel bag. Tucked it under his arm. Sat down on the edge of the bed.
Out there was the world and he wanted to belong to it in some way he could not explain to himself or anyone else. And he vowed right then if he ever found the people who put him out of the car in a diaper he’d hurt them. Not the mother and father who put him out but the people because that’s what they were. Sorry ass people. He had many times tried to give them faces. Stared at himself in the mirror and worked to construct the images of those who created him so he may recognize them one day. At a gas station or in a grocery store. And when he saw that moment in his mind he was grown and strong and he walked over to them and said hey it’s me and before they could answer he had put fists to their faces and hands around their throats and as he imagined it now he squeezed the muscles in his forearms and his jaw clamped tightly and he felt the familiar surge of hate.
Maybe she is on my side, he thought. Unaware that Maryann had been awake below him listening to his moving about. Sitting on an antique trunk at the foot of her bed in a t-shirt and sweatpants and tennis shoes expecting him to make a run for it. She sat listening and ready, as if there would be a race to whatever answer he believed there to be on the other side of the door.
He was quiet as they drove to school. Taunting in the hallway and in the line in the cafeteria and the steady chant of lesbian boy that had been taken up now by the entire sixth grade. The rughaired boy no longer punching in places that made an immediate mark for a teacher or a principal to see but instead hitting in the lower back or in the ribs where it would take days for the bruise to show. Hitting Jack when he was standing at his locker or washing his hands and he never saw it coming.
Maryann had been to the school four more times in the past three months and she had talked with his caseworker and the school counselor. But the rughaired boy’s father had shrugged it off as boys being boys and then added he didn’t know people like her were allowed to have kids anyway.
When Maryann made the final turn and the school was in sight she pulled over on the side of the street. Up ahead buses were unloading and kids stood under aluminum awnings and waited for the bell to ring.
“Maybe he won’t be here,” the boy said.
She didn’t want to make him go in. She pulled out into the street and drove around the block and parked behind the school gym.
“Today, Jack,” she said. “Whatever you have to do to get him to leave you alone, you do it.”
He shifted in the seat. “I can’t,” he said.
“You’re going to have to.”
“I can’t.”
“I know you’re scared.”
“It ain’t that,” he said and he began to break up. Little shakes in his chin and he put his hand across his mouth to stop it.
“What is it then?”
He choked it back. A couple of quick sucks of air and eyes squeezed tight. She let him be until he got it together and then without looking at her he said I’m afraid if I do anything bad they’re going to take me away from you or you’ll tell them you can’t do it no more. That’s what they always say. They can’t do it no more and I don’t want that to happen this time. I don’t want to go nowhere else so I can’t do nothing bad so you and them will think I ain’t worth it.
She wanted to get out of the car and drop to the ground and roll around crying but that would have to wait until she got home. Instead she grabbed his hand. She held it and told him to look at her and then she promised no such thing was going to happen. No such thing, Jack. I swear.
Her words made it inside him and he seemed to pull himself up off some emotional floor. He nodded. Sat up straight. She drove around the block and pulled into the dropoff just as the bell was ringing. When he got out of the car he slammed the door in a way he hadn’t done before.
A blanket of clouds and damp air and the boys and girls moved about the playground in hooded sweatshirts and denim jackets. He watched the rughaired boy in the monotone morning and waited for the right time.
The right time came when the rughaired boy and his friends moved to the slide. They stood together at the ladder and slapped at one another and then one pulled a tennis ball from his coat pocket. The boys spread out and tossed the ball to one another and then the rughaired boy told one of them to stand out in front of the slide with the ball. He did and the others took turns climbing the ladder and going down the slide and trying to catch the ball as they raced toward the bottom.
Jack crept closer to them until he was near enough to make a run. He watched while the rughaired boy waited his turn and he felt as if he were burning inside as he began to flex his fingers. The rughaired boy ascended the steps of the ladder and Jack moved. One step toward the slide and then another and then just as the rughaired boy sat down at the top Jack broke into a run and his bottom foot hit the slide and in two great strides he was to the top and his fist went into the face of the rughaired boy. The boy’s head snapped back and then Jack hit him again and this time his body tumbled in a slack flip and flopped onto the mulch covered ground.
It happened quickly and confused the others but he was not done. He jumped from the slide and then knelt over the rughaired boy and with one hand he held him by the ear and with the other he busted the boy’s face into snot and blood. Others began to shout and adults raced toward the playground and as they pried Jack away and dragged him toward the school building he was screaming in a fierce and shrieking voice, I hope you’re fucking dead.
Round Two
12
WHEN JACK FINALLY RAISED HIS HEAD FROM MARYANN’S BED the day was gone. An imprint of the quilt matted on the side of his face. A nurse had turned on a lamp while he slept and outside a thick and windless rain had settled in and drenched the Delta.
He slid the quilt up across her chest and said I’ll be back.
He then drove to the house. The rain was light but the western sky remained stonegray and menacing and promised more to come. Jack pulled into the drive and parked next to the potter’s barn. He picked up the dead body, the tarp slick and slippery but he managed to wrestle it into the truck bed.
He stood there in the graying night with his hands on his hips and he stared out across the plain, tried to imagine what he would say to Big Momma Sweet. His reckless nature told him to run. But he was beyond that. They had begun to come after him and would continue and he knew he was living in the immediacy of have to. You have to make some deal to get her to call off the dogs. You have to sell the antiques you put in storage or rob a convenience store or do something to find a few thousand dollars to make her believe you’ll come up with the rest. You have to survive because Maryann is fighting to survive. He felt the raindrops on his face and then he imagined her there in the bed, a nurse having turned off the lamp and the room falling dark and the beeps from the machine and her deepset eyes and the bottomless dark of her mind that all her memories had fallen into and though he knew she belonged to another world now he somehow believed she had waited for him. She had fought to keep her heart beating and her eyes opening and closing and opening again because she somehow knew he would be there when the moment came. And I am here, he thought. There is nowhere left to hide so you better hope like hell there is one deal left to make.
It had begun a hundred years ago as a trading camp for travelers up and down the Missi
ssippi River. Stables and a square hut sitting atop and anchored to railroad ties that held it in place when the waters rose. The camp along a thin strip of river vein that reached inland and was nestled in a clump of hardwoods. Out beyond the trees a field of sunflowers bloomed in the heat of summer and surrounded an old graveyard with leaning headstones covered in black grime.
Now a huddle of shacks stood around what was left of the original square hut. Out behind the shacks there was a metal structure with only a roof, the width and length of a high school gymnasium, where Big Momma Sweet housed her collection of payoffs. On one side cars, tractors, fourwheelers, trucks, cattle trailers. When they owed and didn’t have the cash, they offered and she took. On the other side of the barn four posts had been driven into the ground. The posts eight feet high. A chainlink fence wrapped the four posts in a shaky square and bleachers swiped from a junior high football field sat on two sides of the square. This was where they fought.
A cinderblock building stood at the edge of the barn. Stout and rectangular. A thick door on the side, locked with three industrial padlocks. Only one window and it was in the front. Iron bars covering it. The cinderblocks gray and written across the window in black spraypaint were the words THE PO HOUSE. This was where the bets were made on the nights of the fights. Where bulky men and serious dogs stood on guard as the money flowed.
Electric light glowed from the shack windows in the rainy night. In the shack closest to the muddy road a one man show kicked a drum and bent an E chord while a cluster of rowdy women held each other up and danced and hollered for him to play “Red Rooster.” Everydamnbody knows how to play “Red Rooster” and we ain’t got all night. He stopped in the middle of the song and said what the hell you got to do if you ain’t got all night. One of them said you ain’t nobody’s momma and a bottle of gin passed between them and he was sick of listening to it so he played what they asked for. They all hooted and one fell out drunk. Rain beat against the tin roof and the women shook their wide hips and slapped at whatever ass was within reach.
In another shack the cards were dealt. Three round tables surrounded by folding chairs and each chair filled. Coolers stacked with ice and beer nestled between the tables. A smokefilled room and a man with a thick neck and square head sat in the corner with the money. A pitbull lying in wait on the floor next to him, chained to the wall. Two other men with muscles and scars milled around the tables watching for slips or counting or any other twitch that would move them into action.
A four-room cabin stood behind the shacks on ten-foot stilts and watched over all. In the front room Big Momma Sweet sat on a stool smoking a pipe and sharpening a knife. Her meaty hands holding the bone handle and slowly sliding the blade across a whetstone. She held the knife up to a lowhanging bulb and squinted. Satisfied she set the knife on the table next to the others. A collection of knives she had taken off those who emptied their pockets for the grace of another day and others she found at gun and knife shows. Relics from the Civil War. Both World Wars. A double-edge blade with a swastika carved in the steel handle. Knives with handles made from elephant tusks and deer antlers and California redwood. Knives she kept sharp and shiny and allowed their glimmer to say much of what she wanted to say.
She rubbed her hands together and stood from the stool. A husky woman and her wild graying afro made a strange shadow against the paneled wall of the cabin. She plopped down into a recliner and sucked on the pipe. A long flowery housecoat wrapping her big arms and legs. She laid back her head and let the smoke drain from her lips and she listened to the rain and the muffled rhythm of the blues and the cries of the rambunctious women who moved along with it.
“You want something, Big Momma?” Ern asked. He stood next to the window and kept an eye out for headlights coming or going.
“Naw,” she said.
“Don’t look like it’s gonna stop raining.”
“It ain’t. I can tell it in my kneebone.”
“I wish I had a dollar for everything your kneebone claimed to know.”
He moved over and took the stool and set it next to her. Cracked his knuckles and then ran his hand across his shaved head. “What you think happened to Skelly?”
“There ain’t no telling.”
“You think he was lying?”
“I think Skelly would tell you he was having dinner with Jesus if he thought it’d get himself a little more time.”
“You want me to go look for him?” Ern asked.
“No. Skelly can’t handle Jack. We both know that. Jack’s the one we got to look for.”
“Word’s out.”
“Word is out but I count two in Natchez who couldn’t get ahold of him and now Skelly.”
Big Momma got up from the recliner. In a silver bin in the corner she had her own beer and ice and she opened a can of Budweiser. Set the pipe in the windowsill and saw headlights and said here comes somebody else.
“Games are full up,” Ern said.
“Go on out and see. If there ain’t no seats send whoever it is in there with the women.”
This had been her spot for a dozen years and every walk of life had sat at her tables. Smoked her weed. Drank her beer. Bought her women. Men in coats and ties and men with badges and men with wives and men with big bankrolls and men playing with social security checks. Men who knew the rules before they got there and men who didn’t ask any questions. But she had not gotten her reputation by being lazy and nothing rolled into her place without one of her grunts going out and giving them the okay. Not if she had seen the vehicle fifty times. Not if it was her own kinfolk. So Ern walked out and down the stairs and into the rain to see who it was and the truck slid to a stop in the slick mud.
Big Momma watched from the window and heard the voices. Saw the headlights go black and the truck door slam and then saw Ern hustling up the steps. He came in the cabin and said it’s him.
She didn’t ask who. Only watched as Jack walked through the rainy night with a rolled blue tarp slung over his shoulder. He struggled up the stairs and followed Ern inside and then let out a great huff as he dropped the tarp onto the floor.
“Here’s your boyfriend,” he said and he bent over with his hands on his knees. Trying to catch his breath.
“Get that wet shit outta here,” Ern said and he took a step toward Jack.
Big Momma drew on the pipe. Walked a slow circle around the tarp and then she adjusted her bra against her big bosom. “That don’t look like your money to me,” she said.
“I don’t have the damn money. I did before this piece of shit got in the way,” he said and then he reached down and grabbed the edge of the tarp. He yanked it and the tarp unrolled and Skelly’s mangled body flopped onto the cabin floor.
“What the hell you think you’re doing?” Ern said.
“Look,” Jack said. He rolled Skelly on his stomach and put his bootheel on the branded dollar sign on the back of his neck.
“Don’t nobody give a goddamn about that,” Ern said and he snatched Jack by the arm. “You just walked up in here and tossed a dead man on the floor?”
Jack tried to yank his arm away but Ern held tight and said you better remember where you are.
“Turn him loose,” Big Momma said. “He ain’t never had no manners.”
Ern let go of Jack’s arm and the men stood close. Their noses nearly touching.
“Back off,” she said. “Both of y’all. Right now.”
Each man took a step back. And then Jack pointed his bootheel again at the brand on the back of Skelly’s neck.
“You think I don’t know how it got there?” she said. “But I guess you’re in luck. It’s raining tonight. Can’t get the fire going till it stops.”
“I’m just showing because you’re not doing that shit to me.”
“You ain’t the boss,” Ern said.
Big Momma shushed Ern. Took a box of matches from her housecoat pocket and struck one and held it to the pipe. A yellow flame rose as she puffed and outside the thund
er rumbled across the rainsoaked land.
“I can’t figure out if you’re getting braver or dumber,” she said. “But you have made the kind of entrance you ain’t in no position to be making.”
She nodded to Ern and he disappeared out the back door and then she told Jack to come on. He followed her out the front door of the cabin and they stood together on the covered deck.
“I had the money. Every nickel.”
“So where is it?”
“I lost it when that little motherfucker pulled a knife on me when I was giving him a ride. Truck turned over and by the time I came to it was gone. That’s all I know. Look at my goddamn eyes.”
“You look like a pile of shit bricks.”
“I know it.”
“And you don’t look capable no more.”
“Capable of what?”
She turned to him and poked her finger into his cheek. “Not a single damn thing.”
Down below a shack door opened and two men followed Ern out and over to the cabin. The three men climbed the stairs and then stood behind Jack on the other end of the deck.
“Most I ever let anybody get into with me was about ten grand. Know where he’s at?”
Jack turned around and looked at the men behind him and he imagined them dragging him into the night. Dropping him into a muddy hole. “I could probably figure it out,” he said.
“Only reason I let you get so deep is cause you made me some money when you was worth a shit. I ain’t never seen nobody fix a fight good as you. Even when everybody knew it was a setup it always came off different from what they was expecting. That was a good trick, but I don’t figure you got any more tricks left. Or else you wouldn’t have let that worm in there get to you.”
“What kind of price you got on me?”
“The kind that’ll get you chased down no matter where you go.”
The Fighter Page 8