StiltMilt returned and spotted the huckster raking in dough. "Man, somebody's gotta break up that shit." Milt's eyes had gone all frosty, like a banker's. "That boy is bustin' in on our income." He sipped his beer. "And didn't Bigjack say that he cut the kid's people low on the concession deal? Ain't this T-shirt shit strictly verboten?"
Verboten. That was the one German word Milt had picked up on our trip to Berlin. Course, we weren't in Deutschland very long —it only took the Grinder one minute and change to goosestep all over the German champ's title aspirations. But it wouldn't have mattered if we'd been in Berlin a whole month—Milt would have never got past that one word. No matter where he went, he was the kind of guy who was always face up with a whole hell of a lot of NO. Any language, any place.
But I had to agree with him about the huckster. We were supposed to be making money tonight, not Sweetmeat. He was just an opponent, a kid who'd come out of nowhere during the long hot summer with a string of first round KO's. Sweetmeat was the kind of adversary who sounds good to the public but really isn't a match for a seasoned pro, physically and financially speaking.
Before StiltMilt could argue, I traded the Bijan for his half-eaten hot dog. Then I shoved through the crowd of kids, jammed the youngblood against a cement pillar, and smeared his face with dog and mustard and pickle relish.
I licked some mustard off his ear. "I'm with the champ's entourage," I whispered. "You get your small-time hijackin' huckster ass out of here before I eat you all up."
The youngblood rabbited. Lucky for me. If he would have shown some backbone, I would have been forced to discover just how weak I'd become in the year since the Bonegrinder's last title defense.
But the bluff worked and the youngblood was long gone, and that made StiltMilt happy. He grabbed the youngblood's abandoned Sweetmeat T-shirts and tossed them to the kids, laughing that same hyena laugh. "This boy's gonna lose," he announced, his voice singsong and cocksure. "Y'all get this sorry shit for free."
"That's right," I said. I jostled one of the kids and stared down at his round black face, his little knotted fists. I saw anger and defiance — riot-bred — but then I pulled him closer and watched his face twist and close up like the petals of a flower that fears the night.
Fear. It was like a jolt of good brandy rocked off some slant-eyed grocer. I pressed a twenty into the kid's palm. "You don't want to be a loser, little brother. Now, you be a winner and go spend some jack at the Bonegrinder's stand."
The private box was pretty damn nice. Seats with red velvet cushions and crystal ashtrays set in mahogany armrests. A bar with brass railing and a bartender with a gold-capped grin. Big screen tube for the instant-replay action. Pretty damn nice, and since we were the first to arrive we had it all to ourselves for the time being. Not counting Melani in the Bijan, of course.
StiltMilt got another beer and sent the bartender after peanuts and a couple more hot dogs. "Heavy on the mustard," he said, laughing, shooting me his patented evil eye.
We settled in and watched the crowd through my binoculars while we waited for the prelims to start. A wild cross-section of humanity swarmed around the ring. Pimps and gangstas done up in leather finery, bankers and politicians dressed in conservative pinstripes, women who looked like pure wetdream goddesses: that was what you saw at ringside. All around them crowded the city's masses. There were folks who'd come to see a real celebrity (the Bonegrinder), and there were others who'd come to see a fight, and there were some who'd come just for the violence — the same ones who'd torched the ghettos and learned the power of the match, the fist, the knife, and the gat.
Once you feel that kind of power, you can't stay away from it. It becomes the only sustenance your body will accept. It's ten times worse than any other Jones, and there's no way to go cold turkey.
The shrinks got that one right. Psychology Today. I subscribe. I've been reading anything and everything since I can remember. I can tell you how damn near anyone thinks. But I've been living too, if you want to call it that. I understand the big ugly machine grinding behind the shrinks' words better than they do, because I'm a mechanic and they just ride in the damn thing.
Violence as energy. Tell me about it.
That night, you could smell it. Sneaking around the scent of beer and peanuts and hot dogs, the air was sweet with the perfume of anticipation and at the same time sour with the stink of nerves and sweat-stained money about to change hands.
God, it all smelled so good.
In the last year, the Bonegrinder had only given us a whiff of it once or twice. Teasing bastard, that's what he was. Every now and then he'd say, "StiltMilt, get my bag. JoJo, get my gloves. We're going to the gym." And then he'd work out a couple rounds with some bum, and we'd all watch him, salivating, eating up the speed and power and strength that for him seemed so effortless, and hoping all the while that he'd announce his return to the ring.
But he never did. Until that night on the penthouse roof, but he was drunk when that happened. It shocked him, though, and scared him something awful, because it was something that hadn't happened since we were kids. It put one hell of a dent in his ego, too, and I was real glad that it happened because it got my skinny ass out of that penthouse and into a fine, soft seat in a plush luxury box.
And man oh man was I ready to feed my Jones.
I thought about that night on the roof. The Bonegrinder and Hammer Jakkson—an old sparring partner who'd come to dinner — circling each other in the rooftop cage that had been home to the Grinder's pet panther until it took sick and died, everything dark except for the lights that glowed rheumy yellow from the city streets below. Barefisted jabs shooting out quick and fluid from licorice-colored arms, even though the two fighters were both pretty drunk. All of us outside the cage, our fists tight around the bars, watching. At first, our eyes wide, drinking in the beauty of the Bonegrinder's powerful combinations. But then he tired, and Hammer came on. One of his hooks split the Bonegrinder's lip, and Melani fainted as the Grinder sagged back against the bars, and all of us stood there, scared shitless because we suddenly realized that we were all scorched and empty and exhausted and we couldn't do a damn thing. All except StiltMilt, who was thinking right — he keyed the padlock, entered the cage, and pulled Hammer off of the Bonegrinder before he could do any real damage.
It was a close call. We all felt sick about it afterward, even though the Bonegrinder had orchestrated the scene just to torture us. It sure didn't work out like he'd planned it, though.
The Grinder was a scared pup that night. A stone punk with his back to the bricks.
The bartender returned with StiltMilt's food. Milt tipped him, settled back, gobbled the dog, and then started shelling peanuts, tossing them between lips smeared with mustard. After he ate a few he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Man alive," he said. "It smells great, don't it, JoJo?"
I nodded, knowing just what he meant.
A few other members of the entourage showed up. Chynagirl, Lester, and the Bonegrinder's little brother, who was known as Splint for some reason I've never really figured out. Each one of them wearing finery that had looked real sharp a year ago at the Bonegrinder's fight in Berlin, but now the clothes hung on them a little too loosely, and Lester's leathers smelled strongly of stale musk, which is about what you'd expect of the Grinder's punk snitch, anyway.
God, I hated Lester. We all did, because he was always running to the Grinder with stories about the rest of us. Always begging for attention. He'd been pathetic even in the best of times.
I stared at Lester, then at the others. For the first time in a long time I really saw them, and I thought of kids playing dress-up. I guess that was because I'd spent the last year bottled up with them and I'd learned how they really lived, day after miserable day. All of us crowded in that penthouse, hardly ever leaving, swarming around the Bonegrinder like hungry puppies fighting for a turn at a juicy teat.
Puppy dogs. That's what we were. Cute at first, but after awhile we
were just dogs, lazy and dependent.
Chynagirl: stretched out on the couch day after day, legs spread wide as the Grinder walked by, calling him a miserable faggot, just begging him to get rough with her. Lester: when I thought of him, I thought of the bedroom where he holed up with all those splatter videos, whacking his meat and getting off on the gore. And Splint: shit, even though it thrilled me at the time, I hated the memory of him smashing his hand through that glass-topped coffee table, hated the remembered sound of shattering glass and blood spattering the shag carpet.
After he'd done that. Splint smiled at us with glassy eyes. "Y'all don't have to thank me for it." That's what he said while Chynagirl picked the glass out of his hand.
Me, I barely spared Splint a glance after that little bit of a thrill wore off. I went back to my Psychology Today. My Freddy Nietzsche, and Lester's Freddy Krueger. Chynagirl's Art of War, which is really a big pile of useless Chinese shit when you look at life from my angle.
At least that's what I thought back then.
I haven't changed my mind about Splint and his bloody hand, though. Bloody paw, I should say. Christ. There's nothing in the world that I hate more than dogs. They'll watch anything. They'll chew themselves down to the bone. They'll even eat their own shit.
Dogs.
Like StiltMilt says: it takes one to know one.
The prelims started. Two white boys, both fat, flopping around like a couple of beached whales. It didn't do much for me, but the crowd seemed to get a charge out of it.
"Where's Bigjack and Carmilla?" StiltMilt asked.
"They'll be here," I said with more confidence than I should have shown. Bigjack was dependable, but Carmilla was a different creature entirely. I remembered the stunt she'd pulled a couple of years back in Zaire, and I didn't like to think of the trouble she'd nearly caused. Though it did charge the crowd and make the whole experience that much more satisfying. Even Melani, who had already started to tire of the fight circuit, had been juiced by that action.
I scanned the audience. Call it a premonition. And then I spotted Carmilla scuttling gracefully down the aisle like a spider sheathed in purple silk and black leather. I handed the binoculars to StiltMilt and pointed her out.
"Shit," he said. "Fuckin' Zaire all over again. I'll bet."
Hearing that. Splint got excited. "Oh, yeah, man. I remember that. God. The way she sucked on that rich bastard's little pinky at ringside, the way she bit it off at the fuckin' joint and spit his diamond ring right in his face — "
I looked up, but the bartender wasn't paying attention. I pointed at the man and put a finger to my lips, and Splint shut up.
"Shit!" StiltMilt said. "The crazy bitch!"
I stared down at the crowd. There was a swirl of activity near where Carmilla had been standing. I saw a black kid with his hand pressed against the side of his head, blood coursing through his fingers. He was screaming. A bunch of his buddies had a hold of Carmilla, and they were banging her head against the cement floor. Black kids, black T-shirts. Yelling and screaming. Watching. Carmilla's long hair coiled around her face with every smash the way a spider's legs convulse and close up around its body when it dies.
Even the two Pillsbury Doughboys in the ring stopped to watch, if only for a second.
StiltMilt said, "Bitch was trying to get them charged up. Bitch bit off the little fucker's ear!"
Bigjack was down there trying to break through the crowd. He couldn't do it, because another gang of boys grabbed him and hustled him down a ramp that led God knows where. And then the mob of boys who'd attacked Carmilla rose up as one and carried her toward the exit, and by the time the rent-a-cops made it down from another section the crowd was a roiling tangle, everyone on their feet craning their necks to see, and the boys and Carmilla had disappeared.
StiltMilt pointed. "There she is!"
I grabbed the binoculars away from him and focused on a shadowy section beneath the second deck. The boys had slammed Carmilla's dead body into a seat before scattering in different directions, and it had all happened so fast that the people sitting around her corpse couldn't do more than gasp and stare.
I looked at the crowd, saw how they looked at Carmilla, little boy ear still clamped between her dead Pepsodent smile. Milla's last little trophy, and she was holding on to it.
My mind toyed with the memory of the way the black-shirted boys had watched their friends trash Carmilla. Something more to that than met the eye.
"Damn," Splint said, interrupting my thoughts. "Do you think Milla's dead?"
He whispered it, but it was so quiet in the box you'd have thought that he'd screamed the words.
No one answered.
No one said a word, until Melani started screaming from inside the Bijan.
The bartender dropped a shot glass. He stared at the suitcase as he backed toward the door.
Chynagirl glanced at Splint and Lester, and they sprang at the guy and brought him to the floor. She turned to me. "It's going to be tough without Carmilla," she said. "If anything goes wrong, that is. I think we'd better let Mel out of the case, and I think we'd better do it right now."
StiltMilt protested. "That crazy bitch won't be no help, Chyna. She's just gonna cross our wires, and then we won't do the Grinder no good at all."
Chyna shook her head. "She's hungry. If she doesn't help us, she'll die. I think she'll decide to help us."
"Sorry, Milt," I said. "Chyna's right."
I reached into my jacket pocket for the suitcase key. Inside the case, Melani wailed like a Jesus freak caught up in the spirit.
Lester punched the bartender in the face, then slammed the man's head against the bar. "Get you for what you did to Milla, you bastard," he said.
My fingers shook and I couldn't get hold of the key. Lester was gone gone gone, his mind firing on circuits that didn't connect.
"Chill out, Les," Splint said. "The bartender didn't do nothing to Milla." Splint smiled at me. "Don't worry, we'll take care of him just the same, though."
Splint flicked open a switchblade. "Hey, Chyna, remember that movie we was watchin' with Lester the other night? Slice ‘n' Dice Degenerates? Y'know, the part where the nuts cut off the hero's — "
"Shut up!" StiltMilt pushed Lester and Splint out of the way and dragged the bartender behind the bar. "This man's out of it. And this ain't no time to be playin'."
Chynagirl grabbed my arm and shook me. "JoJo?" she said. "The key."
"Yeah," I said. "Right away."
We got Melani out of the Bijan and tied her into one of the plush chairs using our neckties and the sash from Chynagirl's dress. Mel looked awful, even worse than when we'd locked her in the case a couple hours earlier. She still wouldn't open her eyes, and she kept shaking her head back and forth like a patient in a psycho ward.
Cartilage popped with every twist, and her big moon of a skull seemed ready to break free and topple off her skinny neck at any second.
"I'm not helping him," she said. "He did this to us. He tried to kill us, and I'm not helping that dog at all."
Chynagirl bent close to Melani's ear, though I couldn't understand how she could stand to get so close to that mummy face. "The Grinder made a mistake," she said. "He knows that now. But he wants to make everything okay. He wants us to be strong again. That's the reason he took this fight — "
"No it's not!" Melani's head moved faster. "He took it because he's scared! He took it because Hammer gave him a beating, and he realized that he'll be in big trouble if he doesn't feed us!"
Splint grabbed Melani's chin and held her head still. "Open your eyes, bitch. Open your eyes and watch my brother fight. Otherwise, I'll cut off your eyelids and make you watch."
StiltMilt went at him, twisted his arm, and made him drop the knife. I stepped to the door; Melani managed to shift in her seat. Eyes closed, she turned her bony face in my direction, her big cheekbones jutting out like sharp rocks, and it was like she knew what was going on in my head.
"Y
ou know it's true! You know that the Grinder wanted to kill us! And you know that the only reason he didn't go through with it is because he realized how bad he needs us!"
"Chill!" Lester pointed at the squared circle below. "The Grinder's in the ring!"
I looked down at the Bonegrinder, my hand on the doorknob, and I know that it's impossible, but I swear that he was looking straight into my eyes.
The look gave me a real jolt. It was a look of pure terror, the same one that I'd seen in his eyes twenty years before in a back alley on the nasty side of the river.
We'd all been kids then, eight or nine years old. The Grinder was bigger than the rest of us, our leader. And then one afternoon someone a little bigger came looking for him, and the Grinder ended up in an alley with his back to the bricks.
The other kid was strong and fast, and he was beating the Grinder bad. It was vicious, a massacre, but it turned my blood into gasoline and when that gas hit the fire that had been burning in my brain for way to long...well, watch out. I remember how my heart clenched up like a fist when the Grinder dropped from a big left hook, and I remember how he looked straight into my eyes then, and how Melani grabbed my hand so tightly that it ached for days afterward.
Her fingers were sweaty. I felt a charge, like electricity, jolt though my body. Then I grabbed hold of Chynagirl's hand, and she took Lester's, and Lester took Splint's, and Splint took StiltMilt's, and Milt took Carmilla's, and Milla took Bigjack's.
And we all stared into the Grinder's eyes.
And when that happened, the Bonegrinder had a different look in his eyes. A regular fire. Gasoline, napalm, and hate and fear and anger. He got up, and he put that bigger boy in the hospital.
Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales Page 24