“What is it?” he said.
“Work called,” she said.
Everyone sat outside while Daniel dialed out from the yellowed, wall-mounted phone in the kitchen. Murray had tried to talk Madelyn into helping gather up soilbound horseshoes in a nearby pit that had not seen action in a long while. The kid would not go. She sat in a chair near the old man and listened close. Daniel started speaking to someone and then it was long time before they heard him speak again.
“Sure,” he said. “Yep.”
Quiet again. Sound of a chair shifting on the hardwood.
“I bet you will,” he said, and then a few seconds later the receiver clacked into the cradle.
He did not come out to the decking so Sarah stood and went inside. He sat there at the kitchen table and watched her cross the room. Weary eyes and weary soul beneath. He sat very still and eventually he crossed his arms and exhaled hard. Sarah stood beside him and her fingertips circled the fine hair of his neck.
“What happened?” she said.
“They got no work for me anymore,” he said.
“Just like that? They do you that way?” she said.
He didn’t answer.
Sarah reached back and pulled another chair close to his. Then she sat and leaned in. He looked up at her the once and then stared blind at the wall. She took hold of his forearms with both hands.
“It’s okay,” she said.
He nodded.
“I mean it.”
When he didn’t answer she got up and shoved the chair back and sat sidesaddle in his lap, her arms over his shoulders. He had his eyes closed. She put her forehead to his and leaned back. He looked at her.
“This is bullshit,” she said. “It won’t beat us.”
He shook his head.
“We never quit.”
“No.”
“Say it.”
“I won’t quit.”
She hugged him close but he held her weak so she reset and pulled him in rough. There he got his arms around her and nearly squeezed the life out of her and stood up with her like she weighed nought and set her down on the floor. He let go and his right hand lingered at her waist for a moment and then he went past her and out through the kitchen door. He stood there long enough for Murray to hand him a beer and then he trod heavy down the porch stairs and found his daughter out on the grass. She’d been walking it in circles and he put his arm around her and spoke to her as serious as he ever had before. The way he might speak to any of the others. Her heart beat near his shortrib. Daniel loosed her and trod toward the river alone. Downed the beer as he walked. When he got close enough he pitched the bottle sidelong into the bay where it spun and skipped and then dug the surface and stopped. The bottle bobbed once and then took water over the lip. Sunk its neck under and went down into the deep.
Daniel could feel the truck tires clipping seams in the bridge lanes. The window rumbled against the back of his head and he tried to wedge a sweater in there but he gave it up to keep the cool glass to his scalp. He started to drift but snapped to all at once, his hands slapping upholstery and doormolding. His nose was clogged and his jaw hung. Sarah kept an eye on him in the rearview mirror. Madelyn rode in the passenger seat and every few minutes she’d turn around in the seat.
“What’s going on up there?” he said.
Sarah and the girl each looked at the other.
“Did you just take a sharp left and a right or is that just me?”
“I might’ve swerved for a porcupine,” Sarah said.
“Bridge-porcupine?”
Sarah nodded.
Daniel pushed himself more upright. Far as he could manage. His arms lay limp at his sides for a moment and then he collected them over his stomach. He blinked hard.
“What’s wrong with dad?” Madelyn said.
Sarah wrinkled her nose up, switched lanes.
“Lots,” she said.
Madelyn studied her father close.
“Are you okay?” she said.
He gave her a thumbs-up. Then he peered out of the window at the mess of woods and waters and roadways, the commotion of it all, not any of it enough to distract from the goings on in his skull.
Sarah kept taking measure of him in the rearview mirror.
“What’s the damage?” she said.
“You’re looking at it,” he said. “It ain’t good.”
Monday morning came and he got up to walk the girl to the end of the road where the school bus stopped. She asked him what he’d do. If he’d train. He said that he’d have to beat the pavement for another job. The girl kicked roadgravel as they neared the stop.
“If you go back to the fight gym, can I come sometimes?” she said.
He kept walking.
“You used to explain it all to me, the techniques and everything. Then you just stopped.”
Daniel raised his fists to her so she could look close to the knuckles. To the scar tissue and mutated joints and bonespurs. None of it bothered her. When the bus coasted up the rise in the roadway he dropped his mitts and hugged the girl. Let her go.
“We can talk about this later,” he said.
The girl accepted that. The bus rolled to a halt and the door opened. Madelyn climbed the steps and Daniel nearly came forward to put his arm around her and carry her off the bus, take her back home with him. He shoved his hands in his pockets and watched the door unfold and pin shut. Dust whirled at his feet as the bus drove off. Grit in his nostrils. He spat into the tarmac and stared after the thing.
TWENTY-FOUR
There were four bodies laid out in the trailer. Three of them were brothers and the fourth their cousin. The last of a small band of hillbilly thugs and cooks who’d run afoul of Clayton’s new play for the area. They’d all been shot save for the biggest of them. He’d been cut through the neck with Tarbell’s stolen buckknife and his head turned a horrific angle when they piled him in the trailer. The men were killed outside in the hollow so as not to rupture the works in the trailer and blow them all to shit. Wallace had picked up all the loose casings from the property and pocketed them. He came back to the trailer and went in. Tarbell was near to the bodies, pissing on the upholstery. For a moment Wallace thought he was fixed to piss on the dead men and that would’ve been all that he could bear. Tarbell and Wallace were both covered in the blood of the biggest hillbilly. The blade had severed the artery and it seemed like all he had in him exited the body through that cut.
It took Wallace a long time to cool by the edge of the site. An old hut beyond that they’d used to meet the hillfolk for years even when they were thinned to just a few and these some of the last in that part of the country. Ages ago there was bushwhiskey brewed up there and that was all. The old hut still carried some of the jars and boiler parts, long wasted and filled with rust or rot. Wallace’s phone shook his jeans pocket. He tried to wipe his hands before he fished it out but there was not a clean strip of fabric on the man. He pulled the phone and bloodied up the buttons.
“How’d it go off?” Clayton said through the speaker.
“Like a fuckin’ plane crash,” said Wallace.
“What?”
“I’ve about had it with this shithead.”
Clayton just asked him if everyone was accounted for. Told Wallace to get a hold of himself. That it would get worse before it would get better, but, when all was said and done, they were set to change the way things were run up there forever. He asked if he could still count on the big man.
“I would lay down in traffic, you asked me to,” Wallace said. “But this motherfucker ain’t you.”
Clayton said okay and Wallace hung up the phone.
When they blew the trailer it was about as sophisticated as the way they’d dropped the bodies. Wallace had a rag jammed into a bottle of solvent and he lit the cloth and hurled it
from across the hollow. It flew a high arc and blew apart on the corner of the trailer where the near side met the roof. Carpeted half of the thing in flame. Had he overthrown just a touch more it might have skipped off and into the woods.
They were already running before the fire spread to the insides of the trailer. On and on until they were sucking air on the trail. They were a quarter-mile clear and the detonation sounded like a meteor touched down. Shook the ground underfoot and put heat to the air behind them. At the car, they could see a column of black smoke going skyward fast and linear. Wallace watched it for a few seconds and then he started taking his clothes off.
“Hey,” he said.
Tarbell turned. Looked at him incredulous. At the wingspan of the big man, black ink on brown skin over his chest and stomach and great patches inked solid at his shoulders and upper arms.
“Strip,” Wallace said.
“What?”
Wallace had his clothes and shoes in a garbage bag already and wore just his gitch and his socks. He tossed the bag over the car and it hit the dirt near to Tarbell.
“Put your bloody fuckin’ rags in there,” Wallace said. “Unless you wanna drive through town lookin’ like a goddamn nightmare.”
Tarbell stepped out of his shoes and dropped his pants. He took his holsters and pistols and put them on the hood of the car where Wallace had dropped his own. The buckknife and sheath atop them. He buttoned his shirt and loosed it. Wallace saw enough to turn him while the man stuck his shirt in the bag.
TWENTY-FIVE
He would take Sarah to work and then drive through town in the truck. Houses rebuilt and others gone to rot. New roads and subdivisions at the high side of town. River valley where the body of a local girl had been found. A debris-strewn promontory near the docks where a grain elevator used to be. Malls and superstores on the westerly edge of town atop forest where he’d rode and ran. Entire universes that he’d invented as a boy paved over, places now for plazas to squat and shit. He passed by with the truck seat half-buried in resumes, filled-out application forms, a tie that his wife had knotted though she knew he’d never wear it. Daniel pulled into near-empty lots in front of factories and jobsites and went to their offices to hand them papers. Secretaries and foremen took them like rubbish offered up by a child. He shook a hand where he could. If they would even take the thing. Some reacted to it like it was electrified. Everyone saw the scars on his face. Daily he’d drive the curving road by the southern lakefront until he got to factories that had windows blacked or boarded, shredded flags whipping at their poles. There he’d pull off the road and mount the curb and park at the base of a brokedown concrete pier. Daniel would walk out and sit at the pier-edge with his legs dangling and he’d watch the grey-blue baywater break and roll.
One Thursday morning Daniel woke up hungover and haggered and tried to prop himself up with coffee as he took Sarah to her shift. They said little on the drive and Daniel guessed she was annoyed by his condition. Just outside town she turned the radio quiet.
“Yesterday I heard your underwear drawer rattling,” she said.
“What?”
“I was putting the laundry away and found a phone in there. Guess who was calling?”
Daniel yawned into the crook of his elbow. He looked at her.
“You check it and see how I never answered the thing since I forgot it was in there?”
Sarah nodded.
“That’s the only reason you’re still breathing, honey,” she said. “Also, I got rid of the thing.”
Daniel slowed for a red light and when the car stopped he turned to her.
“I ain’t never going back,” he said.
Sarah narrowed her eyes on him. When she’d seen enough she leaned in and kissed him hard. He put his forehead to hers and held her there, fiddled with her ear with his thumb and forefinger. They sat like that until they heard the horn from the car behind them.
He came to the gym with sparring gear, legs already warm from running on hard dirt road and fieldtrail. Jung Woo would skip with him on the floormatting, sweat ringing his shirt neck, black hair matted down with rogue greys throughout. They rolled on the mats and Daniel controlled position from within Jung Woo’s guard, his heavy legs on either side, hips forever shifting while Jung Woo held Daniel’s wrists and looked to sweep or submit him. Daniel rolled with four-ounce gloves and he would bomb down and try to shuck loose and move out of Jung Woo’s guard to side-control, to mount. He made mistakes. He got caught in armbars, Jung Woo’s legs across his face and chest as he pulled Daniel’s arm back to his own chest against the natural bend of the elbow. If Daniel threw punches and didn’t get both arms clear he’d end up in a triangle choke with his head pinned by the crook of the Korean’s bent knee while Jung Woo hooked that leg’s foot under the other kneejoint, one arm and shoulder trapped there, and pulled Daniel’s head down until it went blue. Daniel had to tap, but once he didn’t and the world went dim and quiet and just before he went out Jung Woo let go of the hold. Daniel kneeled on the mat and wheezed. A vein had risen in the skin of his forehead. Jung Woo sat up in front of him and pointed.
“Next time you tap. You tap or you go out.”
Daniel looked up at him. He’d not seen the man angry before. Daniel croaked out something like an okay and then nodded the affirmative, head hung level to his shoulders as he held onto his own knees and hauled air.
In sparring he battered Jung Woo all over the ring. His footwork had come back to him day by day and he walked Jung Woo down and cut him off and beat him to the punch. If Daniel ate leather he didn’t seem to feel it. He kept his hands high and his chin down and threw with power. He found punches he didn’t think he’d ever had in the first place. Jung Woo threw kicks and Daniel checked them low and fired back, whipped his lower-shin against Jung Woo’s glove and forearm. Jung Woo reeled back and grinned black mouthguard. They worked from the clinch against the ringposts and Daniel handfought to get the Thai Plum, one hand clasped over the other behind the other man’s neck, and there he pinched his elbows together and ragdolled Jung Woo, stepped wide and flung him across the canvas, pulled him back to where knees could be landed if they’d been thrown. Daniel sprawled and stuffed takedown attempts, underhooked Jung Woo’s armpits, stood the man up and shoved him clear to throw hands at him again. After weeks of this, Jung Woo started to rotate out and send other men in on Daniel. No rest between rounds and fresh young fighters diving for his legs and ripping sly punches at the ex-fighter. He held his own.
Active fighters came into the gym to train with Jasper and Jung Woo, to spar on those the late afternoons. When they came in now they saw an ex-fighter beating the hell out of their training partners and teammates, their actual trainers. Some of the fighters knew Daniel and they knew his past and they would sidle up at ringside and watch him work. More than a few hollered at him to soldier on. Some had already started coming earlier to spar with the man and test themselves. They wore the minutes in blue-black bruise and knotted shins. Daniel calmed under the worst abuse. He never took a step backward unless he wanted to. The fighters skipped near to the ring and kept their hungry eyes on the man. They nodded when they saw something slick and cursed at the matting where their feet danced.
During an afternoon training session, a half-dozen fighters were watching Daniel hammer their like when another fighter came up. Six-foot-four with shoulders like an oxcart yoke. Flat-nosed and cat-eyed with a fade upside his huge head. He had little more than spiderwebs of scarring under his eyes. He had wrestled as a youth and moved north and boxed in Montreal and he went from gym to gym sopping up fight knowledge and technique, honing his weapons. Jasper liked him as a fighter. Jung Woo did not like him at all. But he rolled with the man anyway and wore a pumpknot at the back of his head for it.
The big man stood ringside while Daniel took two glancing shots and answered and sat his sparring partner down in the middle of the
ring, the ropes and ringposts shuddering when ass hit canvas. Daniel backed out with his hands high and let the other fighter up. The man shook his head and came forward. He was sitting again within seconds. The big fighter at ringside had only ever put that man down once in sparring. He rapped his knuckle against the shoulder of the fighter in front of him.
“Hey,” the big man said.
The ringside fighter turned and scowled but when he saw who stood behind him he quit his mean-mugging all at once.
“Johnson. What’s up man?”
The big fighter just cocked his chin toward the ring.
“Who in the fuck is that?” Johnson said.
TWENTY-SIX
He could see her silhouette flickering in the candlelit kitchen window. If she had heard the truck pull in she didn’t show it. She raised her hand to her mouth, a smoke there. She inhaled deep and let out. Her head bowed some. Daniel went quick up the front steps. The front door was open and when he tried the screen door it was unlocked. He walked in and let his bag down to the entryway carpet and went through to the kitchen with his shoes on. Sarah didn’t turn when he came into the room. She didn’t quit smoking either. Daniel moved opposite her at the table and sat. Her eyes were red. She had teartracks long dried on her lovely cheeks and they showed faint.
“What happened?” he said.
She didn’t answer. Just stared at him across the table. She seemed to be inventorying the new damage on his face, scrapes and swelling around his eyes and chin.
There was an open bottle of red wine on the table with maybe a flute worth left in the thick glassbottom. Daniel reached over for her half-full glass and took a swig. Taste of her lipgloss, the caustic taste of weed smoke in the claret. He slid the glass back over to her and she looked at it, stared at him tired. Daniel leaned back in the chair to where he almost toppled and got hold of the fridge door and pulled it open. He reached in and came back knuckling three beers. He shut the door and leaned forward to clatter the chair legs down again.
In the Cage Page 15