by Leslie North
She wanted to rush out to the street and invite the crocodile and the wildebeest to tag-team on the arrogant man in front of her, but she rarely gave into the satisfaction of such carnal thoughts. Her greatest weapon was her brain and her voice.
“I know for you the sad reality is that people speak with their fists, not their minds. So maybe I’m your first mindfuck. But don’t ever, ever insinuate I’m some white-girl-come-to-the-projects do-gooder who puts self-interest above the kids under my care.” Maggie backed away, palms raised, the sweetest smile on her face she could muster. “Just keeping it real, champ.”
Her stomach muscles eased. She put a little extra bounce into her retreat because victory in verbal sparring had been her high since she leveled a misogynistic capitalist wannabe on a competing university’s debate team and inspired the audience to a standing ovation for the first time in the history of the event. Of course, she hadn’t used profanity. But when in Rome and all that.
The high did not last long.
Back at the youth house, she unloaded the final materials for Roosevelt’s model in the corner of the Victorian’s great room. She had everything he needed: glass tiles cut to specification, tiny-leaf ground covering, irrigation tubes, electronics for lighting and moving components, high-grade fishing line, and enough miniature-gauge figurines to spark the imagination. All she needed was Roosevelt.
She held vigil over the materials that embodied Roosevelt’s future until the hour stretched late and a niggling thought took hold—a prevailing sense that her mouth may have alienated her last, best ally in reaching him.
Henry crouched, his hands poised inside padded air mitts, his eyes focused on Roosevelt’s facial cues. Kid gave away how and where he was going to hit every time, like a blinking neon sign of intent. They’d have to work on peripheral perception. For now, it was about overcoming whatever demon had crawled up inside him today.
“Ten jabs, let’s go. Alternate mitts.”
Left. Right. Left. Like swatting at a swarm of wasps.
“Half-tempo. Go for accuracy. Extend through your shoulder. Pivot at the waist. That’s your secret power.”
Roosevelt’s jaw set. His punches squared up to the mitt’s inner target at a slower cadence.
“Chin down. Look at me out of the top of your eyes. Don’t want to open up to your opponent.” Left. Right. Left. “Good. Ten more.”
The kid’s leveling blows against the nylon padding at Henry’s palms caused him to stutter-step back. Roosevelt’s mouth gnarled into a twisted line Henry didn’t recognize.
Henry stopped him with a “Ho-ho” and a fallback. It was late; the gym was largely empty. Henry had foregone the promise of a warm, sexy ring-girl’s legs wrapped around him in favor of spending the evening with Roosevelt. The kid had come in amped about something. It had taken Henry an hour to work Roosevelt out of his own way enough to talk.
“Spill it, man,” said Henry. “What’s got you so jacked today?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit. You got problems out there, you leave them out there. No place for anger inside the cage.”
Roosevelt shook his head and stared at the windows, out into the city.
Henry fetched the painted red mini-stool from outside the cage. Some of the old-timer boxers called it “the potty.” Henry called it “the confessional.” Guys getting their asses handed to them sometimes needed a place to fall, something reassuring beneath them. Never ceased to amaze Henry what shit they confessed when they were up against their limitations. He set it on the mat’s center logo.
“Sit.”
Roosevelt shot him the stink-eye.
“Sit.”
The kid lowered himself to the stool. Henry lowered himself even more and settled on the mat.
“A long time ago, I made a mistake. I let my anger do the talking for me. But life turns on a dime.” Henry snapped his fingers. “Faster than that, I found myself staring out the wrong end of a jail cell. Ain’t always coming back from that.”
The rising and falling of Roosevelt’s chest evened. He no longer pushed back at the world beyond the window; he was present, full-on eye contact.
“You know what my mentor said? ‘Lucky break, son. All that is.’ He said, ‘Your fists are deadly weapons. You don’t know how and when to use them, you’re no different than a kid packing a nine millimeter.’ I could have killed a man that day, Roosevelt. The choice has to be there. Always. It has to be there. You ain’t nothing without that choice. That goes for in here and out there. Don’t ever use your hands unless your opponent is sparred off for that and knows what’s coming or unless there’s no other choice. And even then, there’s always a choice, man. You got me?”
Roosevelt nodded.
“You gonna tell me who’s up in your craw?”
“My stepdad, man. He gets all up in my face. Wants me back at the house, not at Affleck-Martin. Wants me to quit school and work with him on construction, odd jobs, laying bricks, fixing clogged commodes, and shit.”
“And what do you want?”
“I got a little sister to think about.”
“What do you want, Roosevelt? You want to build bridges? That why we run toward a new one each morning and you tell me a hundred different facts about each one?”
He swallowed hard, his taut thread of composure breaking down with each word. “Most days I want to pound him into the ground for putting my mother there. She never could do anything right. She just gave up.” His eyes swam; he swiped away the moisture.
“Then you take that anger and you pound it into the pavement each morning. You do what you have to do to create that better life for you and your sister, but never turn that anger on anyone. Not me in this ring. Not your old man. Anger’s just gonna drive away your goals, man.”
“What happened to the guy?”
It took courage for Roosevelt to ask. The least Henry could do is shoot straight.
“His life changed forever because of me, because of my anger. I relive it every day, like a prison of the mind, ‘cause he has to live it every day.”
The gym settled around them. The last of the boxers bid him goodnight.
Henry raised his hand, the moment with Roosevelt broken. Maybe for the best. If he didn’t get out of that memory, he’d be trapped in it all night.
“You still owe me ten,” said Henry.
Roosevelt stood and moved the stool outside the cage.
“And do me a favor,” said Henry. “Check in with Miss Kavanaugh so she’s not over here all the time. Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Roosevelt’s punches tamed, focused. Henry cut the session short so Roosevelt could go back to Affleck-Martin, hear whatever news it was that got Miss Kavanaugh all fired up. He didn’t imagine it took much. Woman was lit most days, in more ways than one. Maybe that was okay. Fighting demons alone was exhausting. Everyone needed a little outer strength sometimes, even if it came in the form of a five-foot-nine firecracker instead of a strong right hook.
4
“Let’s ask this guy,” said Damon.
The middle-aged guy in a corduroy jacket with a visible hard-on exited the peep show next door. His steps faltered a bit.
“Nah, man, let’s just go.” Henry was already done with Damon’s quest for alcohol. The guy had been his best friend for three years, since junior high, but every damned day it was something to push back against his shitty lot in life—stealing, joyriding, selling dime bags, vandalism, mouthing off to people he had no fight with. Damon took care of Henry, gave him a place to crash when his old man liquored up, but the guy was a grenade with a pin pulled. Some days the cost of payback loyalty was too high.
“Excuse me, sir?” Damon could win a fucking Emmy for the way he could turn on the charm. He kept his distance a bit—the unwritten rules of the streets and all—dark night, dark kid. “Can I trouble you to make a purchase in here for us? Ten to keep if you bring us out some ninety-proof.”
The man sneered, the strong
distaste of a bribe, a punk kid approaching him, self-loathing, something, marring his features. He scanned the largely empty street, snatched the wad of cash from Damon’s hand, and disappeared inside the assaulting florescent glow of the all-night liquor store.
Bars and posters and licensing shit crowded the windows. Henry strained to see inside.
“Man, would you relax?” said Damon. “Like my grandmother right before she puts her social security check down for lottery tickets and a carton of Pall Malls.”
“Guy’s been in there too long. I ain’t got a good feeling. What if he told the clerk and the cops are on their way?”
“So we’ll wait around the corner.” Damon shoved Henry’s shoulder a bit. They play-fought all the way to the darkened alley. “Motherfuckin’ Bea Arthur, I swear. We need to get you laid, man.”
Damon paced the alley, alternating between the mouth where they had entered and the place where Henry became absorbed in pulverizing an empty beer can with his sneaker. On Damon’s second trip back, a string of curses unraveled from his tongue. He took off running in the opposite direction of the street—behind the store.
Henry followed. The streetlamp above a warehouse loading dock illuminated a man running away full-stride, but no match for Damon. Damon’s illegal activity had only served to enhance the natural abilities he had displayed as junior high track and field 400-meter champ and A-team defensive back. He cut an angle that had the man tackled before the thief had time to shit his pants but not before he swung and connected a brown-bagged Vodka bottle across Damon’s face.
The bottle shattered. Damon’s cries boomeranged off the buildings and returned in a deafening roar of anguish. He clutched his face and sagged to his knees, screaming. “My eyes! My eyes!”
Henry knelt beside him, not knowing where to touch, what to do. Blood flowed like slick, black car oil through Damon’s fingers. Henry stalled, paralyzed, until Damon’s voice pierced the night again.
“Get that motherfucker. Make him pay.”
Henry glanced after the man. The tails of his suit coat flapped like pathetic batwings in the scant light from the street. Something snapped deep inside Henry, like a coil too tightly wound. Damon was the family he chose, and family avenged family.
He was up and running before his brain had processed the decision. Henry caught up to him just before he reentered the main street and horse-collared him back into the alley’s shadows. He pinned the pathetic piece of shit to the brick wall by his collar, sending sputtering chokes of vile alcohol fumes and spit from the guy’s mouth. Henry cocked his fist, his body already loaded, his mind already gone—back before, when he suggested they take off, back before, when a twenty-ounce bottle shattered his best friend’s face, back before his body lunged ahead of his actions.
A woman’s cry skewered his attention. “Noooooooo!”
He glanced toward the noise. A halo of curly red hair illuminated in the cone of white cast down from the streetlight above.
Henry bolted upright in bed, his heart jackhammering his ribs, his lungs gasping as if he’d been submerged in a dark pool for hours, days, years. His surroundings took their sweet-assed time creeping back—first the broken mini-blinds on the windows; the decaying yellow dial on the radio tuned whisper-low to Sol’s jazz oldies station that kept nightmares at bay most nights; the battered, white punching bags hanging like still ghosts in a cold meat market. He wiped the sweat from his face.
“Motherfucker.”
It wasn’t enough that the woman ambushed his gym and his thoughts in daylight—far more than any opinionated zealot had a right to—but now she was asserting herself in his nightmares, too? Steering clear of her was more than just self-preservation. Now, it was his goddamned sanity.
Henry picked Sunday. Seemed like a good day for absolution, though Henry wasn’t a religious man. Mostly, though, Henry visited Caesar’s Palace Laundry & Dry Cleaning—so named for the Bowe-Holyfield II thrashing in Las Vegas that began Emmanuel Bautista’s obsession with boxing—every Sunday since Sol died because he needed a sobering reminder of the anger lessons he spouted at every turn.
Manny’s favorite bear claw pastries in tow, Henry entered the shop, triggering the overhead bell to thonk against the door like a reindeer collapsed in a stupor. Sol’s best friend poked his head around a row of plastic-sleeved clothes, called Henry out by his last name—the only guy who ever called him Lorenz on a regular basis—and waddled to the front counter. Manny had been a Marine—9th infantry regiment in Vietnam. Henry knew no one with a bigger heart or a longer history of living with a disability than Manny, which made him the perfect guy to help without judgment.
Henry exchanged a handshake-bro hug combo with Manny that warmed him to his toes. It wasn’t Sol, but it was close.
“Haven’t seen you around the gym, my man,” said Henry.
“Been busy. Every washing machine in the city broken. Something. They all bringing their clothes here.”
Henry was happy for Manny’s success, in lots of ways. Manny had found the same kind of enduring relationship Sol had with Irma. Henry often wondered if it wasn’t something in the water back then—the permanence, the sacrifice that seemed to be leeched out of Henry’s younger generation. Add to that a successful business on the main drag that funneled downtown dwellers home each business day, killer prices, and a double drive-thru that promised a less-than-two-minute turnaround, and Manny became mentor gold to the kids at the gym. Unparalleled mental boxer, too.
“You’re going to put me into an early grave with these things.” Manny cupped his barrel-belly then dove inside the box and came up with a glistening, warm pastry in each hand.
Henry laughed, but the reason for his weekly visits didn’t allow the lightness to sustain.
“How’s Caliban?”
“Sober. Mostly. Broke his eyeglasses a few days back. Says he sat on them, but I suspect he fell down on a bender. Can’t read the numbers on the hangar tags so I got him running the machines, cleaning up in the back.”
“I can send a few of the gym kids over to pick up his slack.”
“Nah, he’s good. Hard worker when he lays off the juice.”
Henry withdrew the envelope from his inside jacket pocket. He added two hundreds to the stash and pushed it across the worn countertop toward Manny.
“That should cover some new glasses, too.”
“Man, it ain’t right—him thinking I let him stay rent-free, giving him groceries, covering his physical therapy. Sometimes he gets emotional, you know. Breaks down. Tells me he’d be on the streets or dead if it wasn’t for my generosity.”
“You could rent that room for double and we both know it. Everything Caliban says is true.”
“You know I’d do anything for you, Lorenz. I made Sol a promise I intend to keep. But I draw the line at this business. It helped me put four kids through college, but there ain’t nothing left for me but what I make of it from here on. I can’t have Caliban showing up a drunken liability because of some guilt that ain’t even yours to carry. That man did this to himself. You didn’t lose him a wife and a house and a job and his kids. Ain’t no one thing do all that.”
So Manny has said. Every Sunday for eighteen months. They agreed Sol was a saint; they were far apart on this topic. Peter Caliban’s downward spiral started the moment Henry beat him to within an inch of his life in that alley.
“He going to AA meetings?”
“Most days. One of my customers from the Episcopal church up the way lets me know.”
Henry couldn’t stay. He didn’t want to linger. As much as Manny’s presence was like an ice compression to the swelling heat of loss that built inside him, seeing him compounded Henry’s wrongs. Manny was the savviest businessman Henry knew. Eighteen months ago, Manny spouted the same line as Chase and Marcus: you’re the last one on a sinking ship, my friend. Cut the losses Sol couldn’t. Go back on the circuit where you belong—back on top. Sol wouldn’t want anything less. Henry simply couldn’t let
go.
A prevalent theme in his life.
He said his goodbyes to Manny and crossed the street to an oasis of nature nestled inside one city block. Trees shed slivers of orange and yellow. Every Sunday after fetching donuts and visiting Manny, Henry settled on a park bench, hoping to get an eyeful of the man he had disabled. Somehow, it made the night terrors less frequent, less ball-busting. Even in an ass-hugging snow of winter, Henry waited.
Sometimes Caliban emerged and stood for a bit, staring up and down the street, squinting into the sun or scratching at the stubble on his cheeks. Henry wondered if he was looking for a black man with a permanent scar slashed across his face. He would never find him. Damon hung himself in a jail cell two days after being convicted of first-degree murder. Sometimes Caliban picked at the garbage from the deli next door and made Henry’s blood boil. The guy had more than enough in his pantry—Manny saw to that. Why the fuck did he insist on remaining in the gutter Henry had sentenced him to? Sometimes, he just leaned against the window ledge in the sun because his leg and back were so fucked up, his body couldn’t even get him to the goddamned bus stop two blocks away.
Today, however, nearly an hour to the moment from when Henry had settled on the bench, Caliban exited the handicapped-accessible apartment in which Manny had resided and now owned, but he wasn’t alone. A young woman looped her arm through his rather limp one—Henry had often wondered if the guy had a stroke because he had never before favored his arm—and kissed him on the cheek. This was new—someone who cared about Caliban. A daughter, maybe? The abnormal occurrence drew him like a bell to an opponent. Maybe if he knew there was someone, he could stop being that someone. He cinched his hood closer to his face and crossed back toward the cleaners. He didn’t think Caliban would recognize him—sixteen years, a haircut and an MMA career had a way of making a person nearly unidentifiable, but Henry wasn’t taking any chances. Plus, the alley had been dark. Henry knew, he remembered, because he visited it with alarming regularity—in person and in REM sleep.