The Giant

by Jonathan Mary-Todd

  Luc promised.

  Once Mr. Chilton had gone to his quarters, Luc set down the water dish and the tray of biscuits. When the kangaroo didn’t come near, Luc began to crumble a couple of biscuits in his hand. He sat on the ground and nudged himself toward the joey. As he got closer, he opened up his palm.

  At the sight of food, the joey inched its way to Luc, tramping across the floor on all fours instead of hopping. It reached Luc’s palm and sniffed around, then nuzzled its small snout into his hand.

  When it had eaten all of the crumbs, Luc crumbled another few biscuits. The kangaroo lapped up water in the meantime. They did this until every biscuit was gone.

  As late afternoon drew near, Luc’s stomach settled, but he still felt very tired. He put a towel over his window’s curtain bar to block out the sun. Rather than lie on his bed, he sat back on the floor, a few feet from the joey, and leaned against the wall.

  “Dors bien, mon ami,” he said—Sleep well, my friend.

  With the towel across his window, Luc wasn’t sure how long he’d slept for. A quarter of an hour or well into the evening? He woke with a start to stiff banging on his door.

  Light from the hallway soon filled the room as Mr. Hardt shoved his way inside. Mr. Chilton followed, several steps behind Hardt, manically dabbing the sweat on his brow.

  “I’m here for what’s mine,” Hardt said. “Get up. Grab the animal. And come with me.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Mr. Chilton spoke to Luc in a warm, bouncy tone that said nothing was the matter. He also continued to sweat, spouting out droplets until his handkerchief was useless.

  “First thing, Luc, is to not get upset,” Chilton said. “I’m sure you feel that I’ve misled you, and I can see why. But sometimes one has to make difficult choices, you see, for the benefit of all.”

  Luc turned away as Chilton stepped closer.

  “I’ve spoken to Mr. Hardt, and he’s been very understanding about this whole ordeal,” Chilton continued. “He’s a man of the world, remember. I’m sure he’s made a few rash decisions in his time!”

  Chilton chuckled at that and looked to Hardt, who did not return the laugh.

  “We’re very lucky, Luc,” Chilton said. “He’s willing to turn the other cheek. But you must cooperate now. It’s his animal, after all. His business! I’m sure you can appreciate … If you want something of your own, we can see about that. Perhaps we’ll tether one of those dogs …”

  “Enough, Chilton,” Mr. Hardt said. “Is your boy going to give me the kangaroo?”

  Mr. Chilton nudged Luc as Luc faced the corner, both of their eyes on the joey.

  “Go on, Luc,” Chilton said. “Let’s help the man.”

  The animal had woken when Luc did, when Hardt had thrust open the door. It stirred in its spot on the floor, eyes wide to capture the hallway light. Luc thought of a bear trap snapping shut.

  “Up, up! Mr. Hardt is being very patient, Luc.”

  Luc scooped the kangaroo into his arms. It did not bite or scratch him like before.

  “There we are, there we are,” Mr. Chilton said.

  Luc stood up with the joey, but he couldn’t meet Mr. Chilton’s eyes. Chilton asked him if he had anything to say to Mr. Hardt, and Luc did not.

  “Well, all’s well that ends well. That’s what I say,” Chilton said.

  “There’s also the matter of the damaged cage,” Mr. Hardt replied.

  “Not to worry, Thomas, not to worry,” Chilton said. “That will come out of Luc’s earnings, of course. Which I suspect are on the rise. This is all to our shared benefit, really. Think of it: The Boy Who Can Bend Iron. Mr. Mayflower will be asking for Luc at the Woodrat seven nights a week, soon enough!”

  As Luc stepped into the hall, following Hardt and Chilton, his tall shadow blocked the light that had carried over into his room. He looked back once into the dark, and Mr. Chilton scolded him to keep moving.

  “Now, Thomas, about the matter we discussed earlier,” Chilton said. “Your search for investors. I do hope you won’t hold this against us. It’s only a hiccup, I’m sure, on the path to a fruitful partnership…”

  The men’s voices filled the hallway, but they drifted past Luc. Other things seemed louder: the creaking of the boards under his boots, an occasional murmur from the joey. Luc lowered his head and followed Hardt and Chilton down the flophouse stairs. The heat had lasted into the early evening.

  He followed the men through Mrs. Maxwell’s room for hanging laundry, toward the building’s side exit. Mr. Chilton cringed as he peeked through the side door’s small, square window.

  “Oh dear,” Chilton said. “She looks like a savage on the warpath today.”

  “Who?” said Hardt.

  A moment later, Mrs. Maxwell entered through the back and halted at the sight of the two men in tattered suits.

  “Misters Hardt and Chilton! They very men I’ve been hoping to see. Would you happen to have the money for your lodgings? It’s past due for the both of you. But you know that.”

  Mr. Chilton cleared his throat. “Well, Edna, I believe Mr. Hardt and I are in similar positions in that—”

  “In that he’s a heel, and you’re the muck that’s stuck on it. Where is my money, you swindling—”

  Mrs. Maxwell’s mouth fell open as she glanced beyond Hardt and Chilton to the back of the room, where Luc cradled the kangaroo.

  “Mr. Hardt!” she said. “When I told you I’d let you lodge with those things—and I had a mind to point you somewhere down the street—we agreed they’d stay outdoors! Outdoors! Oh, the filth I’m sure you’ve tracked in here already! I charge a fair rate, I said, and I don’t expect any trouble—”

  “Boy,” Mr. Hardt muttered. “Take the creature to the cage.”

  Luc made his way to the side door and then out into the street. When Mr. Hardt and Mr. Chilton attempted to follow, Mrs. Maxwell grabbed them by the collars. Luc couldn’t make out what she said once she slammed the side door shut behind him.

  He stepped quickly around the corner toward the cages, adding to the time he would have away from Hardt and Chilton.

  Mr. Chilton got angry sometimes, Luc thought, but he had never lied before.

  Had Mr. Chilton lied before?

  “Luc!” Chilton’s voice rounded the corner from back by the side entrance. “Where are you, son?”

  The street that stored the cages was empty of people. Luc’s strides widened and then broke into a sprint. He huffed past the iron pens and onto another block completely, still holding the animal against his chest.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Luc had outrun the voices of Hardt and Chilton very quickly, but he continued to look over his shoulder. He stumbled out into the mess of Lafayette Street, trying to squeeze between the crowds of people as heads turned beneath the whimpering joey.

  For a moment, a few loose dogs ran to follow Luc and the kangaroo, then turned to chase a loose chicken. The many busy people of the Bowery filled Luc’s path, slowing his escape to a walk. Trudging along a series of storefronts, Luc knocked a barber pole off its hinges with a stray elbow. Calling out an apology behind him, he bobbed into another alleyway. A bed-sheet, hanging between windowsills, caught him across the face.

  When Luc peeled off the sheet, he saw Ian the trainer in front of him.

  Luc wrapped the cloth around the joey and tied two corners in a loose knot, hoping the animal would not run without him.

  “You’ve wasted enough time,” Ian said. “Give it here.”

  The trainer was shorter than most men who came to the Woodrat Club. Leaner than most men at the Woodrat too. The others puffed out around their chins, above their waists—bloat from too many mugs on too many nights. But there was a tightness to Ian. The scars and burns that ran across his skin described a fearsome kind of experience.

  Luc shook his head no. People trudging past the alley formed a wall at his back.

  Ian tipped his head to Luc to say he understood. He reached for the handle
of his hunting knife, folding his fingers around it, then let the handle go.

  “Most days I’d finish this real fast,” Ian said. “But I think I can teach you something.”

  He approached Luc like a crab, feet dancing from side to side. Luc swung first, too high, and Ian hammered his leg.

  Luc was on his knees.

  “Tall fella,” Ian said. “I’ve fought tall fellas before.”

  Luc tried to rise up, and Ian struck his leg again.

  “Thing is, most of you get to thinking that size is all you need. You never really learn how to fight.”

  He hurled a knee into Luc’s chin, and Luc stumbled backward. He felt Ian’s elbow strike the side of his head.

  “Your boxing club—those matches—you lot make a game out of it,” Ian said between blows. “And if you’ve only fought for sport? You haven’t fought.”

  Luc swung both hands like a club, and Ian hopped back a step to dodge them. A trickle of blood reached Luc’s eye, and he charged, half blind, and fell over. Ian began to work on his ankles.

  Luc spat and groaned as Ian continued to talk. “I’m doing you a favor, mate. Remember that. The other way’s the knife.”

  Through his blurred vision, Luc saw the kangaroo, still wrapped up in a bedsheet. He pushed off of the alley ground, shoving Ian against a wall with a stiff kick. The trainer croaked and wiped some spittle from his mouth. As Luc wound up for a haymaker, Ian leapt and grabbed Luc’s fist, using Luc’s own weight to bring him back down.

  Everything in Luc’s view seemed to lose its shape as Ian yanked his arm back, the whole of the alleyway bleeding together. A stinging heat spread over the joint at Luc’s shoulder while Ian pulled the arm harder and harder.

  “Stop!” Luc said. “Stop …”

  Ian released the arm and then patted Luc on the swollen joint. “There we are.”

  Luc lay still in the alley as Ian lifted up the kangaroo and made his way to find Mr. Hardt. Every movement revealed a new ache. Luc cursed himself for seeking mercy and wondered if he might have died otherwise. By the time he had hobbled, empty-handed, out into the street again, the blood on his face was dry, almost crumbly, and dark bruises had begun to show.

  Luc spent much of that night sitting in the dark in Mrs. Maxwell’s laundry room. He did not want to pass Mr. Chilton’s quarters on the way toward his own. He did not want to stay in the flophouse at all, but Mr. Chilton held Luc’s earnings, and Luc didn’t know where else to go. With the kangaroo, it had been easy to run. Luc had known that they had to get away. Alone, he could think of nothing to do but sit.

  Sometime late into the evening, Mr. Chilton stepped into the laundry space with slices of roast from that night’s supper. He gave the plate to Luc and told him to eat up—he’d be expected to fight the next week. Then he left the room.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The week moved slowly. Luc spent long stretches in bed. The few trips he made outside were at Mr. Chilton’s request. Running errands, mostly. Chilton told Luc each time to hurry or he’d have to explain himself later, though Luc would not have lingered anywhere for long. A shared suspicion shaded each exchange between the two of them.

  Most of Mr. Chilton’s attention went toward Mr. Hardt anyway. Hardt had not cut Chilton out of his plans after the kangaroo theft, not completely. Luc wondered if Mr. Hardt knew fewer rich men than he had claimed to know. He could hear Hardt and Chilton talking in the halls sometimes, talk he usually did not understand. But he didn’t believe Mr. Chilton would end up someplace much finer than the flophouse anymore.

  And yet Luc stayed. He felt tied to many things. Tied to the kangaroo, although he was afraid to go near it and risk another thrashing from Ian. Even tied to Mr. Chilton, in spite of it all.

  The rush of the Bowery calmed Luc. He wouldn’t step outside unless he had to, but he’d listen to the sounds from his window. Even in Quebec, Luc and the men had moved from place to place. It was nothing like Manhattan—nothing there like the street life that had become so familiar to him. And Mr. Chilton was the man who had brought Luc to the island.

  As the sun went down and the streets grew quieter, Luc would try to listen for the sounds of the joey. The animal’s cage was kept against the wall of another side of the flophouse, outside another row of rooms, and Luc was no more likely to hear the yawns of those rooms’ tenants. Even so, he tried, with much concentration.

  Few of Mr. Hardt’s talks with Mr. Chilton concerned the kangaroo. The animal was back with Hardt, and it was still not yet old enough to fight, so it seemed to have hopped quickly to the back of the man’s mind.

  The longest mention of the animal that Luc had heard related mostly to the repairing of its cage. After bemoaning the sale of Genghis’s cage, the spare, Hardt had found a shipbuilder at the Woodrat who’d been able to do the job. But the scoundrel kept trying to sell Mr. Hardt on one extra fix and then another! By the time the shipbuilder advised that Hardt get a new lock, Hardt said he might as well buy a new cage entirely, the way the builder was trying to line his pockets, and he dismissed the man. Mr. Chilton was sure the first round of repairs would be enough to keep the creature where it was, now that Luc had been disciplined.

  A knock sounded at Luc’s door, Mr. Chilton’s musical toc-toc-toc.

  “Luc? Are you in there, my boy?”

  Chilton entered wearing a smile that Luc had not seen for more than a week.

  “It’s the end of your doldrums tonight, Luc, the perfect cure!” Chilton said. “I hope you’ve remembered you’ve got a match this evening.” He prodded at Luc until Luc sat up in bed. “Come on, now, come on! I’ve even arranged a fighterly feast!”

  Once seated in the dining quarters, Luc stared down at the London broil that Chilton had slid in front of him. Luc could have hidden the knotty clump of meat inside a closed fist, and he might have if Mr. Chilton hadn’t been staring at him so intently. Chilton’s eyes invited Luc to eat up, as if the thought of gloom dragging down Luc on a fight night was more than Chilton could bear. After all, there was money involved. Bits of gristle swam in a brown pool around Luc’s food.

  “We’ve got another twosome to contend with tonight, Luc, so you’ll need your wits about you at all times. A pair of brothers up from Baltimore, I hear. Wharf trash, no doubt. You’ll have to be twice as careful as with our friend Killpatrick!”

  At Killpatrick’s name, Luc thought of Genghis. Then, as he pushed slices of the broil across his plate, he began to think of his own face after the fight in the alleyway with Ian. Raw and pink and hot to the touch. For the first time, Luc had turned the mirror by the sink away as he’d tried to clean the wounds. One week ago. Spots of purple still covered his face like storm clouds.

  Lew Mayflower muttered Mr. Chilton’s name in response to Chilton’s lively “Good evening.” He looked up to see Luc’s battered face and lost control of his cigar.

  “Never you mind, Lew,” Chilton said quickly. “The life of a fighter, you know …”

  “No disrespect to the boy, but whatever did that, we’ll take three of ’em,” said Mayflower.

  Chilton’s reply was overlong, and cheers from around the club drowned out his punch line. Killpatrick stepped out of the circle, pounding a set of bloodied knuckles against his pale chest. Behind him, Oakley directed Silas and a couple of the regulars to drag Killpatrick’s opponent out of sight.

  One the other side of the circle, two strangers glared at Luc and Mr. Chilton. Lean, fit-looking, not much older than Luc. Brothers, maybe.

  The shouts for Killpatrick had turned to woozy murmurings throughout the bar, but the men turned silent as Oakley called out the next fight.

  “Williams and Williams—you’re up! Chilton—get the giant ready!”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Luc had boxed two men at once before. Often, in fact—Mr. Mayflower said the bouts drew big bets from the Woodrat’s gambling types. But the Williams brothers were the first to fight like a duo. One would step forward as the other stepped back, the s
lightly different sounds of the brothers’ grunts resembling the tick and tock of a clock. They didn’t tire out so quickly this way—many men would throw jab after jab at Luc and then be spent.

  Luc wondered how long it might take for the brothers to give out. He blocked some punches while others connected. A swipe across Luc’s chin from one Williamses nudged a tooth loose, unless it had been Ian that loosened it. At moments like this, when Luc was distracted, the other Williams would hammer at his torso.

  “Let’s see some pride, Luc!” Mr. Chilton shouted.

  Luc swung a fist out and threw an elbow back, not striking Williams or Williams, but clearing a few feet of space. The fight carried on this way for five minutes, maybe ten.

  As Luc took another blow to the ribs but failed to stumble or fall, a chain of boos began to fill the Woodrat Club. One man flung a handful of peanut shells into the circle, then scrambled away once Oakley noticed.

  “Chilton!” Lew Mayflower called out. “What’s the matter with your boy? These men are getting restless, and we have more fights tonight.”

  “Apologies, Lew, apologies,” Chilton said. “Luc! Enough pussyfooting!”

  The Williams brothers, startled by the jeers from the crowd, sped up their attack. They hit Luc in tandem, hoping to force him down. Luc raised his forearms, protecting his face while his sides absorbed the brothers’ knuckles. Half-formed thoughts floated through his head.

  The kangaroo.

  Ian’s burns and scars.

  The smells of the club—sweat and blood and spilled beer. So much human muck that men’s boots stuck to the floor.

  The kangaroo would grow up and live its life in places like this until it died.

  Ian had said that if you’ve only fought for sport, you haven’t fought. Luc had not known what the trainer meant. He hadn’t even let himself think it over. But as boos throughout the club got louder, Luc decided the words were true.