Rope Burns - [SSC]

by F. X. Toole

  “Hey, man,” said Hoolie, looking through the screen, “how long you been here?”

  “Couple minutes,” I said, shoveling rice into my face with chopsticks. “What’s up?”

  “We’re gonna take a little walk, it’s not too cold, and then maybe I’ll have me a little siesta,” said Hoolie as he and Policarpo came around the divider. “How come you don’t say hello or nothin, man?”

  “I was eatin. Didn’t see you.”

  “Yeah, we didn’t see you, too.”

  They stood there while I continued to eat.

  Policarpo said, “You don’t speak no ehSpanish, right?” ‘ Hoolie’s eyes flicked between Policarpo and me.

  I shrugged, kept eating. “About like the rest of the California gringos,” I said. “Cerveza, and puta, and cuánto—beer, and whore, and how much.”

  That got a laugh, and they left feeling satisfied. I went back for seconds, took my time, and chewed on the fact that I should be getting four thousand dollars, not one. There were 24-by-36-inch posters of Hoolie and Big Willie in the café. More were set up throughout the hotel. This was Big Willie’s fourth defense of his title, and he hadn’t looked good in his last fight. With his weight problem, and with Hoolie’s speed and boxing ability, it figured that Big Willie was due to lose his title. But he was a durable little battler who loved being champ, and under pressure he was mean. He was big in the back and shoulders and neck. He would have gained weight and regained his fluids since the weigh-in, and Big Willie could bang, even when he was tired. Of course Senor Julio Cercenar Bauzá was known to bleed.

  When I didn’t see anyone around that was connected with the fight, I went into the casino and checked the line. Big Willie was a three-to-one underdog because of his weight problem. That’s when I went to the nearest ATM and pulled some cash from three banks.

  I looked for someone who knew me from nothing. There were hillbillies and bikers and college boys. There were sorority girls and telephone operators and welfare mothers. Old people and young. Sporting types, squares, drunks, and junkies. All colors. None looked right, so I waited.

  I got a whore, a skin-and-bones Thai whore with frizzed hair, who was all knee bones, ankles, elbow joints, and skull. No ass left on her. She was maybe thirty but looked fifty. Nobody looked at her, neither males in lust nor females in sympathy. I wondered how she could make a dime much less pay the rent. I don’t know if she was a crack-head or had AIDS, but for sure she had lived hard in the night. She made me for a typical old john, someone who wanted to feel her, not fuck her. I told her what I wanted and that I’d pay two hundred. I told her that I’d be right on her tail, that if she made a run with my money, I’d stab her. She understood. What I did was slip her 15 one-hundred-dollar bills in an envelope, and had her lay it all on Big Willie Little for me at the Sports Book. I win the bet, I pick up a fast forty-five hundred. Afterward, I tailed her to a videogame room. She gave me my fifteen-hundred-dollar printout, and I gave her 4 fifties. She shoved them into her training bra.

  She said, “You no wan’ mo’? You no wan’ bro jo’? I goo’.”

  I gave the poor bitch another hundred and told her to go home. She squinted at me and gave me a tight little smile, maybe the first she’d given in a year, maybe her last ever.

  In my room, like I always do, I opened my aluminum attaché case and spread my goods out to make sure everything was there. But this time, instead of reaching for a new bottle of adrenaline, I unsnapped a flap pocket and took out an old bottle I knew had gone bad, an outdated bottle I hadn’t used from a couple of years before. I’d taped the lid so I wouldn’t make a mistake, but kept it for when I needed a backup bottle with a rubber seal that would hold. When I twisted off the thin metal cap and poured the old stuff on a tissue, it was a pale piss-yellow. I mixed a fresh batch of salve, as I always do, using Vaseline and adrenaline. It smelled right, but the salve I prepared was from the piss-yellow stuff, not the clear. The salve’s color wasn’t affected. Once I made up the salve, I diluted the remaining outdated solution with water to lighten the color. Under the ring lights, no one would notice, especially since it still smelled legit.

  Even though I’m no longer a trainer, I always walk off the size of the ring. I test to see how tight or loose the ropes are. I check how hard or soft the canvas is, which is to say how fast or slow it will be. I check the steps up to the ring, how solid and wide they are, and how much room there will be at ringside. This time I checked dick.

  It was a twelve-round fight, and it went off on time. Hoolie and Big Willie split the first two rounds, but Hoolie came on in the third and fourth. In the fifth, each fighter knocked the other down, but neither could put the other away. Hoolie had planned to fight Big Willie from the outside, to keep him at the end of his punches, but Big Willie was a bull and wouldn’t allow it, so Hoolie had to fight on Big Willie’s terms. The fifth was even, but at the end of the round, Hoolie returned to the corner with a small laceration in his left eyelid. I was quick into the ring and used just enough fresh adrenaline, along with pressure, to temporarily stop the flow of blood. I also used the phony salve, which meant there would be no coagulant continually working in the wound.

  Hoolie was winning the sixth easy. Near the end of the round, Big Willie countered, whacked Hoolie on the way in with a solid one-two, one-two combination to the face, the second left-right even harder than the first. Suddenly there was a deep cut above Hoolie’s right eye, and the cut in the eyelid was split wide open. The ref called time and looked at the cuts, but he let the fight continue. By the bell, Hoolie was seeing black from the blood and scraping at both eyes to clear his vision. Once he was in the corner between the sixth and the seventh, I cleaned the wounds with sterile gauze and applied pressure with both thumbs. Once the cuts were clean, I applied my outdated-piss adrenaline with a swab and went back to more pressure.

  Hoolie said, “You can fix it for me, right, homes?”

  “No sweat, man.”

  “You’re the best.”

  Because I had cleaned the cuts properly and because of the pressure I applied along with the swab, and because of the bogus salve I packed into the holes, it appeared that I had solved the problem. Policarpo and the other corner men were so busy giving Hoolie instructions and watering him that I could have used green paint and they wouldn’t have noticed.

  The bell for the seventh sounded. Big Willie and Hoolie fought like bats, each turning, each twisting and bending, each moving as if suspended in light, neither stepping back, and both wanting the title, both ripping mercilessly into the other. Both were splattered with Hoolie’s blood. The head of each fighter was snapping back, and the ribs of both were creaking as each unleashed his force. Big Willie suffered a flash knockdown, but he was up again by the count of two. As he took the mandatory eight-count, his eyes were focused on Hoolie like a rattler’s on a rat. The ref waved the fighters on. Big Willie stepped up and delivered a left-right-left combination, the second left snapping like it had come off a springboard. It would have destroyed most welterweights, but Hoolie grabbed Big Willie and held on.

  The bell ended the round, and I cleaned the wounds and applied more pressure, temporarily stanching the red flow. I used more piss-yellow.

  “I thought you fixed it, ese,” said Hoolie, his voice coming out small between bruised lips.

  “I did fix it,” I said. “But you let him pop you, so it opened up on me. Be cool. Go with the flow.”

  In the eighth, Big Willie looked exhausted, but there was no quit in him. He sucked it up and concentrated his shots on Hoolie’s cuts. Blood filled Hoolie’s eyes until he was punching blindly and getting hit no matter how he tried to cover up. People at ringside were shielding themselves from the flying blood. Big Willie saw the ruined flesh, and his heart jacked as his own adrenaline pounded through him. Walking through Hoolie’s wild punches, he drilled more shots into Hoolie’s blood-blind eyes. Two more cuts opened in Hoolie’s eyebrows. Veins weren’t cut, but blood pumped down, and the
fans were yelling to the ref to stop it. He called time and waved in the ring doctor, who immediately stopped the fight.

  Big Willie Little was declared the winner, and still featherweight champion.

  In the corner the doctor checked Hoolie’s eyes. By then I had used fresh adrenaline, which stopped the blood cold. The cuts were an inch and a half, two inches long, which is big-time when it’s around the eyes. But like I say, no vein was cut, and with the right stuff in there, Hoolie could have fought all night. Since Big Willie was sure to have run out of gas, and since I had no trouble stopping the cuts when I wanted to, I figure Hoolie should be the new champ. Except for me. Son cosas de la fucking vida.

  Hoolie’s corner men were washing him down with alcohol and the doctor had stitched up three of the cuts when the promoter came in with Hoolie’s check. He was a big round Afrikaner from Johannesburg, with a walrus mustache and a huge Dutch gut. He had kind, wise eyes and seemed to float rather than walk.

  “Too bad about the cuts,” he said. “I thought Little was ready to go, there.”

  “I beat Big Willie’s fuckin ass my eyes don’t go,” said Hoolie, who was desolate from the loss.

  “You’ve got one of the best cut men I ever saw. Cool under fire, he was. I watched him. Did everything right.” He sucked on his mustache. “What was the grease from the little container?”

  I pulled out the flat plastic jar containing the piss salve. I unscrewed the wide lid. “Smell.”

  “Ahh, yes, good lad, you mix adrenaline right into the grease, yes? Keeps working, right?, during the round.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Tough break, Hoolie being a bleeder.”

  “Sure is. Listen,” I said. “I know it’s not my place, but I’m not going back to L.A. with these guys. I’m wondering if there’s some way they can cash out in the casino? So they can take care of me before they take off?”

  The promoter looked at Hoolie. Neither he nor Policarpo said anything.

  “I’ve got an IOU,” I said.

  Hoolie saw that the promoter realized something wasn’t right. He played dumb. “But once we cash the check,” he asked, “we can’t have the money transferred to L.A., can we?”

  “Certainly can. Like I previously explained, we can arrange the transfer of funds through the casino.”

  “Ah, yeah, I remember now. Cool.”

  At the cashier’s window, Policarpo counted out my money in English. “One hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred, five hundred.”

  As he handed the bills to me, I glanced at Hoolie, whose butter-flied eyes were telling me he’d never use me in his corner again. I love a guy who says he’s going to fuck you because you won’t let him fuck you.

  As I re-counted the first two bills in English, I decided to lay rotten eggs in Hoolie’s mind. Without a break, I slipped into singsong Mexican street Spanish. “Trescientos, cuatrocientos, quinientos. Correcto, mano—three hundred, four hundred, five hundred. Correct, my brother.”

  Hoolie remembered our conversation over my Chinese food. “Hey!, you speak ehSpanish?”

  Now I went into a guttural, old-man Castillian. “Pues, coño, but only if it’s to my advantage.” Pues, coño is what nailed it—well, of course, cunt.

  Hoolie blinked six times. Policarpo’s jaw flopped open. For the first time I saw fear in Hoolie’s eyes. Did I fuck him or didn’t I? they screamed.

  I left him standing at attention. I showered and packed and at two in the morning went down to the casino. I saw the last of the fight guys on their way out. I pissed away a fast fifty on the quarter slots to pass time. I knew Ike had watched the fight and would know that something had gone down. We would never talk about it. I waited until three o’clock and collected my bet, plus my original fifteen. I slept for a couple of hours, had three cups of coffee in the coffee shop, and then checked out.

  It was seven-fifteen when I eased the old truck into traffic. I listened to news for a while, then switched to a jazz station that was playing Jackie McLean. I headed home the way I’d come. There was more snow on the ground. When I looked into the hills, the countryside was like an old-timey Christmas card.

  When I got back to Collins, I pulled into Amy Jane’s. Pie was in the air. A good ol’ boy in a John Deere cap recognized me from the fight.

  “Buddy, you looked good on TV last night. Too bad about your boy, tough little booger.”

  “Real tough.”

  I ordered two pieces of lemon pie with my coffee, and then I found myself on the couch, sitting next to my father. He was leaning into our new radio, an inlaid, upright Philco with a magical green tuning light. It was June 18, 1941, at the Polo Grounds. Irish Billy Conn, the former light heavyweight champ, was ahead on points after twelve rounds with Joe Louis, the heavyweight champion of the world. Louis outweighed Conn by better than twenty-five pounds. In the thirteenth round Billy went for all the marbles and tried to knock out Joe Louis, the greatest puncher of them all. The Brown Bomber was hurt early on, and my father was yelling Gaelic at the radio, but Louis rallied late in the round and knocked Billy Conn out in 2:52 of the thirteenth.

  At the count of ten, I watched some of my father die. As he sat with his red face in his oil driller’s hands, my mother turned off the radio. We were to eat lemon meringue pie after the fight, my father’s favorite. I was able to eat a little piece, but not my da, though he tried. He fell off the wagon that night.

  I finished my coffee and paid the waitress at the table.

  “You didn’t eat your pie.”

  “Lost my appetite.”

  I fiddled with my spoon. I sat for a while looking at my knees. I counted my keys. And then I fished out an El Rey Del Mundo Robusto Suprema, a handmade maduro from Honduras that comes wrapped in white tissue. I’d fire up that spicy pup and smoke it down the highway for a good hour and a half, chew on it for more.

  By the time I got up to the counter, my appetite was back. I smiled the waitress over and ordered country—a deep-fried pork tenderloin sandwich, with pickles and chips, and coffee, all to go. She didn’t know what was going on, whup! And pies. Two gooseberry and two rhubarb. And two lemon, too. I like tart.

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  ~ * ~

  Black Jew

  W

  e was brought to Atlantic City to be the opponent. Opponent in the fight game mean the one suppose to lose. Opponent is what the promoter bring for the boy he think be good enough to be champion. Opponent be the one they use to build him a record. Promoter boy get to be a contender, he start getting big purses and maybe he get a title shot. He win a major belt, we talking money and the promoter in on the cut big-time. Things go right, promoter get the biggest cut of all, ask Don King, Bob Arum, the Duvas. It the same all over boxing.

  But they’s promoters out there that ain’t all bad. This the fight business. It about money, so they got to watch it, too. Like there was a time when a promoter would send a plane ticket to a fighter, and the fighter then cash in the ticket and then don’t show up for the fight. Promoter now send the kind of ticket you can’t get no refund on. See, fighters be dogs, too. But it good when you a fighter who got a promoter working with you. See, the promoter all the time be looking for ways to move his boy up while the same time he look for a edge so to protect him. Problem in Atlantic City be that we the opponent. Casino say we down 9-5 because Dashiki Jones a big hitter who come in blowing and punching like a baby Joe Frazier. Except the odds man don’t know we come to win.

  Name be Earl Jeter, but my friends call me Jeet. My boy Reggie Love go to Atlantic City to fight a elimination bout with Adolf “Dashiki” Jones. Dashiki camp think Reggie washed-up, otherwise they don’t take the fight. It important because the one who win the fight go on to fight “Cuba Kid Babaloo” for the USBA super-middleweight title. USBA ain’t a major belt, and we ain’t talking big money, but you win USBA and you ranked automatic. Reggie win it, he a contender again. His manager work with the right promoter, Reggie get a shot at the big m
oney, and Reggie want that big money. Me and Pats want it, too. But from the git, things don’t look right for us with Harvey Silvershade Promotions.

  First thing fishy, they fly me and Reggie into Newark from L.A. and get us there at two in the afternoon. But they don’t fly Pats in until six o’clock, on another airline. Promoter say he can’t get all us on the same plane, even though they make the fight two months ago.

  Right away, Pats say, “Look out, Jackie, they think this is our first time in the whorehouse.’’

  Pats the cut man, Pats Moran, he work with me from when I be fighting. He say I hit so hard I suppose to be in jail. Pats funny, call everybody Jackie. He know the game good as anybody. Worked with a gang of champions, made good money at it, too. Pats in you corner you don’t have to worry, everything be there you need. Pats and me so good together only me and him work the corner. Me and Reggie manager both like to have Pats along because Pats can talk, can handle things they get tricky. Me and Pats been with Reggie since before he go pro, since when he twenty-two. Reggie turn thirty-five in Atlantic City the day after the fight, Valentine’s Day, day he born on and the day his mama name him for. Reggie Valentine Love. People’s talking Reggie be too old, say he a shot fighter and suppose to retire. But Reggie a slick fighter, never been beat on, and he still fast. Reggie don’t see it his end time. Reggie bad.