Soul Standard

by Richard Thomas

  My back screams as I sit up. “Who gave her money?”

  The chair groans as he plops down. “She said you weren’t going to be moving anytime soon, so she was grabbing it for you.”

  “No. She wasn’t grabbing anything for anyone.” I try to jump to my feet but just tip forward.

  He crosses his arms over his chest. “How the hell was I supposed to know?”

  I grab Tug’s collar with my broken-ass hand, yank him forward, which comes as a little more than a nudge. I enunciate very clearly, make sure he hears every syllable. “Why the fuck would you give someone else the fifty thousand dollars I almost got killed trying to win?”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have been fucking around with girls like that.”

  “I wasn’t—” I’m tired of saying it, tired of thinking it, just fucking tired. I collapse back into my chair, listening to the subtle sucking sound of my life imploding. The lingering crowd is a faint murmur. “Do you at least know where she went?”

  “She ain’t my problem, Marcel.” He smooths his already wrinkled shirt. “I don’t track what dick goes where.”

  Back in my quarters, I pull my supplies from the closet, shove them in my bag. Maudlin and angry or not, a tall bottle of rye will feel my wrath tonight. A vial of Avitene shatters when I grab it too hard. I drop the bag, press on my eye sockets until a rushing pressure overwhelms me, kneel to clean up my mess. At least one of us got out, Marcel.

  A shoe beside my hands. “I misspoke earlier.”

  I don’t want to ask but do. “About what?”

  “If nothing else, tonight says you have to be the best fighter in the City,” Sal says. “Goddamn that was a feat. Maybe you can take it like you used to. Dish it out, too.”

  “Yeah.” I laugh to myself, mentally running over my various wounds. “Not for too much longer.”

  “Nah,” Sal says. A clank behind me. An axe head beside Sal’s shoe. “Not for too much longer.”

  Blades of grass are beginning to peek through the snow. Thin trickles of water that’ll soon be full-on streams. The housed animals poke their snouts from the barn, tasting the crisp air. Winter’s losing its grip, spring bringing us back to life.

  I’d forgotten what a marked difference there is between the seasons. In the City proper, it’s scalding and dirty, then cool and grimy, then freezing and barren, then humid and dirty. Even the trees in the park can’t seem to get with the circadian rhythms and only the window-box flowers have the decency to die and clue us in to the natural world. Out here though, a man can breathe. Fresh air burns in my lungs, my capillaries soaking up all this unadulterated oxygen. The scent of wet hay and dirt, strangely similar to that beer the Irish woman gave me. I pivot down the sidewalk, watching for ice patches on my way to the Slaughtered Lamb.

  The bar is long and wooden. A smattering of tables around the room, each ringed by simple metal chairs. On the wall hangs a dart-board with no darts.

  I pull up to the bar, set my black briefcase at my feet. At least Sal had the decency to give me a briefcase instead of a bag that could double for a big purse. I wait for a moment to get the bartender’s attention, sift through the crowd. Picking out certain faces. Man with kite ears and a smashed nose, are you holding a liver that I need? Woman with a purple rope of scars twisting from below your shirt up into your hairline, will you be needing those feet? Half of me hopes this is Ezekiel’s neck of the woods and he pops in, maybe grabbing some bottles for his father. I could buy him a soda, relive that fight in acute details, feel it for at least another couple minutes. The makeshift ring in the corner brings a fierce longing from my gut. I flex my fingers, motion through two slight combinations.

  “What’re you having?” the bartender grunts, her teeth yellow and crooked.

  “Couple fingers of rye, you don’t mind.”

  She turns to the rows of bottles, pours one in a glass. Up on the top shelf is a purple valise, covered in dust. I ask for a couple ice cubes and lay down some bills. Someone says, Hey, Ma, how’s my tab? A bell rings out.

  “What’s with the ring?”

  She points behind me. “About to see.”

  The man with kite ears and the smashed nose yells, pointing at another man whose shiny face looks shifted down to the right, like it hadn’t finished cooling yet when he stood. Burnt bad, seems, though I can’t tell if the gasoline splashed or was poured. Melted Face puts his palms out, looking down and shaking his head. Screaming blooms in the bar. Kite Ears steps between the ropes, keeps pointing at Melted Face, yelling the whole time. Four men grab Melted Face by various appendages, throw him under the ropes. He jumps to his feet, backs himself into the corner, hands still before his face. A small crowd converges off to the side, shouting bets with money in their hands.

  “This happens all the time?”

  The bartender wipes down a glass with a rag, sets the smeared glass on the shelf.

  A volley of shouts. Kite Ears is in the midst of battering Melted Face. The betting crowd shifts toward the ring, maybe hoping to be anointed with someone’s blood, and as they part, I catch the glimpse of a woman’s silhouette. A jawline I’ve traced a hundred thousand times in my head. A slash of hair I’ve tasted in my memory, lying on the couch healing shattered bones.

  I grab my briefcase and drink and swivel through the crowd, displacing those too transfixed by the melted face splitting open to move, sidle up beside her.

  “I got ten says the melted guy doesn’t make it another thirty seconds.”

  Carissa startles, writes a few notes in her flip booklet like I’m an everyday customer, slowly turns to me.

  “The odds aren’t so good on him.”

  “They never are.” I flick my head to an empty table, nudge her with the briefcase to say it’s not an invitation.

  We weave our way over like a grotesque, broken snake. Drinks clink on the table.

  “Looks like you’ve got a good gig out here.” I mime looking around the room, appraising it. “Seems you’re living the life.”

  “It’s okay.” She takes bird-like sips from her glass. “I—”

  “Why.” I don’t say it like a question, though it is one. It’s more than a question, though, trending toward inquisition.

  “Sal was—”

  “Why here?”

  She says something that’s lost under the shouting crowd. Kite Ears stands above Melted Face, blood streaks over his flattened nose, across his cheeks.

  “Things just happen like that, sometimes.”

  “Things happen,” I repeat.

  “Look, I never asked you to do anything. I’m not the one you should be mad at.”

  “You are not a garden,” I say. “You are the scorpion in my garden.”

  “You’re overdramatic.”

  “You’re—” I start to yell, but rein my voice in. Not that anyone would notice or care, not in a bar where three men are currently carrying the ruined body of a burnt man out of a ring. I just don’t want to let her hear me yell. I take a deep breath, lean in toward her, close enough that I can once again inhale her scent, her hair close enough to taste, to see if my memory is as distorted as I thought. “During the fight. What did Sal say to you?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Maybe.” I sip at my drink but it tastes of ash. “Did he tell you what he told me in the Gurney?”

  “He said it wasn’t a fight between two men, that it was Greek mythology transcending the heavens.” Her words come out in a rush, something pent up and scratching to get out. “He said that we were in the presence of something holy.”

  “Sal said that?” I feel a slight swell inside.

  “Sal said that.” She finishes her drink, fidgets with a shard of wood jutting from the table.

  I swallow more of mine, say that I didn’t know he could even read.

  “Nao me arrependo de nada.” She repeats it again, and though I don’t really know what she’s saying, I feel the blade of memory in my gut, feel her voice twisting through the Gurne
y, blanketing the street, carrying me through the nights.

  I dump the drink down my throat and throw the glass, shattering it on the bell. The crowd perks its ears, looks around. I stand up at our table, point at her and walk toward the ring. Murmuring snakes through the room.

  “Marcel?” she says. “Marcel, what the fuck are you doing?” Two men grab her forearms, gentle but firm. She kicks her feet, trying to knock down one of them. “What the fuck?”

  I set my briefcase at the corner of the ring, kneel by the bell. I crush the rest of the glass with my heel and roll my knuckles in it, then climb between the ropes. A current of electricity runs through my muscles. Chest expanding, fists hardening. My leg feels normal, regular, until I step and it buckles. I maintain posture, though, flex my fingers and throw a vicious combination. Blood flies from my hands, arcs through the air and splatters on the dirty floor of the ring, mixing with the stain left by the man’s melted face.

  The two escort her into the ring, another splitting the ropes for her. She kicks out again, but it looks half-hearted. I let my hands hang by my waist, imagine the ref giving his spiel that no one even listened to, the warehouse crowd dulling to a pinpoint focus.

  Carissa stands in the opposite corner, legs trembling, eyes cold and black. Her olive skin is radiant still.

  I want to tell her to sing, to fill the air with stories of lovers and family, of impossible dreams seized and exploited. Of foreign cities she should’ve gone to, polished stages she should’ve lit up, dresses made of jewels that should have adorned her. I want to tell her to sing her grandmother’s songs to get me through another night, to make the street before a gambling parlor seem a little less rotten, to fill my head with music and rhythm for the hours in the gym, to score my punches with something lovely.

  Blood drips trailing behind me, tiny shards of light reflecting off the glass in my knuckles, I walk to the center of the ring.

  I don’t ask if she’s up, or if she’s in. I don’t really give a fuck. Beauty not shared will wither and die.

  III.

  THE OUTSKIRTS

  SPRING

  Golden Geese

  I used to be somebody—somebody important, I think—and now I sit out here in the loft of a barn, wet hay all around me, afraid to sleep in my apartment. That would be too easy, sleeping. Sleeping there. They’d be on me in an instant, with no remorse, no questions, nothing to say. I’m hedging my bets, slowly turning the cards over one by one, trying to fill an inside straight, trying to coast down a meandering river where the last red heart is waiting. I’m a pig farmer, of sorts. They leave me alone for now, but my time is running out. I’ve become expendable, I think.

  When it stops raining, which is rarely, and the cold leaves my brittle bones and an epileptic sun tries to dry the murky land, I take their offerings at the gate and give them what they need. We barter. I forget the names. Dark-skinned women hum to themselves, carrying burlap sacks overflowing with severed ankles that nobody wants as their soup bone. Hired muscle limps in—bruised and twitching—canvas bag filled with unwanted digits and yards of sinew. Long black cars lurk at the end of a short gravel road, hovering just beyond a faded white fence, smoke drifting out of the exhaust pipe, a trunk lip popping open with a dull click and yawn. I’m not ready to talk about the organs—or the girls. I’m not ready to talk about that.

  The time spent drowning my remaining nerves at the Slaughtered Lamb is just an echo of darker things I’ve done. Me mopping up the last of the spill. The rest of it hovers in the mottled flesh of the gray pasty sky, and I’m afraid to lift my head. Afraid to see it for what it is. I don’t want to know. I’ve had it removed, my memories altered. If it wasn’t for that last scuff mark, the last gnawing rodent, I’d wade into the slop and let them eat me alive. She used to be my daughter, Rebecca. She used to be my little girl. And then I sold her for some Juice.

  If you drive west from the City, letting the metal and glass fall away in the rearview mirror, eventually the concrete turns to paved roads and the blacktop shifts into gravel. This is where I am. I sold my car when I got here. Okay, I lost it in a card game, what’s the difference? I don’t have wheels, is what I’m saying. So I spend my time hiding in the peeling red barn, or out with the pigs, slinging slop. The house attached to the abandoned farm leans to one side, bricks slinking out of their mortar leaving gaps that buckle from the cold. It smells in the house, rancid and sweet. Dead flies line the windowsills. I don’t sleep there, never have.

  Down the road a bit is a concrete bunker, something that must have been Section 8 housing or maybe some sort of army barracks. It is simple and solid and it smells like abandonment, so this is my home base, this is my point of reference. But, yes, I sleep in the barn. The smell of the pigs, rich and rotten, comforts. Their wet grunts lull me to sleep, the dust of the hay dotting the moonlight like tiny fireflies, spinning motes whispering a culling song, pushing me closer to death. And on the nights when I can’t sleep, my head spinning with visions of my daughter walking away from me, I hunch in the cornfields among the half-buried space rocks and let their dull glow pull me under, placing my hands on their warm swollen shells. They’ve already infected me with their poison—there’s nothing I can do about it now. What prompted me to taste the black tar that oozed out of my eyes, my leaking nose? I don’t know. Curiosity, I guess. And it got me high. Very high. And that gave me a lot of ideas, ways to make money, to keep my hope alive.

  I’ll tell you about Rebecca, the girls, the organs—but not yet. I need a drink first.

  I shove my hands deep in my jacket pockets, taking my dull leather and denim down the road. I pass the bunker, like it means nothing to me, on down to the Slaughtered Lamb. The sun fades into the horizon, and it’s early still, but I’m getting twitchy.

  When the wind pushes across the corn, it rattles the stalks, a gasping and wheezing drifting to me, tiny maracas humming their rhythm, and it makes me think of the babies. Shuddering, I shrug my shoulders, zip my jacket up a bit more, and put my head down. It’s starting to drizzle. Did it ever stop? I take a deep breath and my chest aches, arms trembling beneath faded flannel. In my head there are dark memories, which push the image of the Juice away—anemic and uncertain, a cackle filling my ears. I grit my teeth and walk into the neon, pulling open the door with a creak.

  “Trevor, babe, how you been?”

  “Hey, Ma.”

  She’s not my mother. Let’s be clear on that. I don’t know her real name, and maybe I did once. But we all call her Ma or Mother, or Mom sometimes, and that’s it. Maybe she’s eighty, maybe she’s closer to my age, still in her mid-life. Her teeth, the ones she has, are yellow and bent, but her brown eyes still sparkle in a certain kind of light, remind me that we all have a past.

  “How’s the tab? Got a little room on it?”

  “Let me check, sugar.” She slides me a draft beer. “That’s on me.”

  “Thanks.”

  Half-empty bottles of amber and clear cover the wall behind the bar. One purple bottle sits alone up high—but I try not to look at that one. It’s not much of a tavern, but it doesn’t matter. There are a handful of tables, chairs scattered around the room, their leathers dotted with cigarette burns, rips and tears, long gashes leaking stuffing onto the floor. There are dartboards with no darts, and a boxing ring back in the corner. Or at least there used to be a ring.

  “Ma, the ring,” I say. “What happened?”

  She wanders over. “Trevor, I wasn’t here. Couple weeks ago. Muscle on pretty.”

  I glance back over at the mess of rope and metal, canvas flat on the ground, stained and torn, nuts and bolts scattered across the floor. Broken glass sparkles in the dim light, the ripe stench of urine drifting to me.

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it. All I know is it’s done. Two meat-heads took it apart after they pulled the big guy out of here. I’ve seen a lot of Juiceheads hop into the ring, card games settled with broken knuckles and pints of
blood. You know how it is,” she says.

  “Yeah. Nothing new.”

  “But what he did to her, I can’t hardly find the words.”

  “Her?”

  “Didn’t know her name. She was a skinny thing. Olive skin, exotic. Pretty.”

  “Why didn’t she run?”

  “Not sure,” Ma says, leaning over and motioning me closer. Menthol and garlic floats from her lips, but I oblige anyway. “Heard he knocked her jaw clean off.”

  I sit back, my gut clenching. “That’s not possible.”

  I turn back to the flat canvas, the wall behind it dotted brown, slices of something running up the wall, a dent in the drywall, a circle of dried liquid speaking in tongues.

  “He was a big guy, but when they finally pulled him off of her, he was a kid, nothing left, hands bloody, dead eyes wobbling in his head.”

  I nod.

  “You get any shipments last couple of weeks?” she asks.

  “It never stops, sweetheart. You know that.”

  “Well, yeah. See what the hogs left you—he was a big guy, that’s for sure.”

  The purple bottle grabs my attention again, the liquid tide coming in and out, back and forth. She sees me looking and edges closer.

  “Trevor?”

  “Yeah, Ma?” My gaze still on it. A flash of white heat and my head snaps to the right, tiny needles crawling across my face, a warmth spreading to my neck. She’s probably left a handprint on my skin.

  “Quit fucking around,” she says, rubbing her right hand with her left.

  “Dammit, woman, I wasn’t…”

  “I know what you were doing. Cut it out.”

  The door swings open and a small man comes hobbling in. He’s wearing a gray sweatshirt and faded jeans, old tennis shoes held together with duct tape. His eyes never leave me as he works his way over. There’s something in his hands wrapped in cloth, or maybe parchment, that’s seeping liquid, dripping on the floor.