by Rick Bass
“Helium balloons,” Jason said.
“It was a very disturbing thing to Pig-Eye’s opponents when he first stepped in the ring against them. They’d all heard about him, but he really had to be seen to be believed.”
“Like a zipper,” Jason said sleepily, but delighted. “He looked like a zipper. I remember.”
“Pig-Eye won fourteen fights in New York. He was ranked fifth and was fighting well. I went to a few of his fights, but then he changed.”
“He got different,” Jason cautioned.
“He stopped calling, stopped writing, and he started getting a little fat, a little slow. No one else could tell it, but I could.”
“He needed Dad for a trainer,” said Jason. In the distance I heard Killer nicker in his stall.
“He lost,” Don said, shaking his head. “He was fighting a nobody, some kid from Japan, and that night he just didn’t have it. He got knocked down three times. I saw tapes of it later. He was sitting up like one of those bears in a zoo, still trying to get on his feet for a third time, but he couldn’t do it. It was like he didn’t know where his legs were, didn’t know what his feet were for. He couldn’t remember how to do it.”
I thought about the ammonia and the chloroform handkerchiefs Don would sometimes place over my face when we were sparring. I wondered if every time he did that to me, he was remembering how Pig-Eye couldn’t stand up—how he had forgotten how to get back up. I thought that I surely knew how Pig-Eye had felt.
“The balloon,” Jason said. There was a wind in the trees, many nights, and so often those winds reminded me of that strange feeling of being both old and young, someplace in the middle, and for the first time, with no turning back.
“The balloon,” Jason said again, punching his father on the shoulder. “This is the best part.”
“Pig-Eye was crushed,” Don said, sleepy, detached, as if it were no longer Pig-Eye he was talking about. I thought again of how they had walked off and left that other fighter up in the Delta, the nameless one, sitting in the sawdust holding his broken nose. “It was the only time Pig-Eye had ever been knocked out, the only time he’d ever lost, and it devastated him.”
“A hundred and fifteen fights,” Jason said, “and he’d only lost one.”
“But it was my fault,” Don said. “It was how I trained him. It was wrong.”
“The balloon,” Jason said.
“He rented one,” Don said, looking up at the stars, speaking to the night. “He went out over the countryside the next day, his face all bandaged up, with a bottle of wine and his girlfriend, and then he took it up as high as it could go, and then he cut the strings to the gondola.”
“He was good,” Jason said solemnly.
“He was too good,” Don said.
All that summer I trained hard for New York. I knew that I would win my hundred fights. I knew that I could win them with one arm tied behind my back, either arm, if Don and Jason wanted that. But I wasn’t worried about my one hundred bar fights. I was worried about going up to New York, to a strange place, someplace different. Sometimes I did not want to fight anymore, but I never let anyone see that.
Jason was getting older, filling out, and sometimes Don let him ride Killer. We’d all have breakfast as usual, then Jason would saddle Killer. I’d wake the dogs and we’d start down toward the lake, moving lazily through the trees but knowing that in a minute or two we’d be running.
Don would sit in a chair by the shore and follow us with his binoculars. He had a whistle he’d blow to warn me when I was about to be trampled.
When the dogs and I heard the horse, the hard, fast hooves coming straight down the hill, we’d start to run. It would be almost six o’clock then. The sun would just be coming up, and we’d see things as we raced through the woods: deer slipping back into the trees, cottontails diving into the brush. The dogs would break off and chase all of these things, and sometimes they’d rejoin me later on the other side of the lake with a rabbit hanging from their jaws. They’d fight over it, really wrestling and growling.
All of this would be going past at what seemed like ninety miles an hour: trees, vines, logs; greens, browns, blacks, and blues—flashes of the lake, flashes of sky, flashes of logs on the trail. I knew the course well, knew when to jump, when to dodge. It’s said that a healthy man can outrun a horse, over enough distance, but that first mile was the hardest, all that dodging.
Jason shouted, imitating his father, cracking the whip; the sun rose orange over the tops of the trees, the start of another day of perfection. And then the cry, “The Lake of Peace!” And it would be over, and I’d rush out into the shallows, a dog on either side of me, tripping and falling, the lake at my ankles, at my knees, coming up around my waist, and we’d be swimming, with Killer plunging in after us, and Jason still cracking the whip.
Actually, there were two stories about Pig-Eye Reeves. I was the only person Don told about the second one. I did not know which one was true.
In the other story, Pig-Eye recovered, survived. Still distraught over losing, he went south, tried to go back to Don, to start all over again. But Don had already taken on another fighter and would not train Pig-Eye anymore.
Don rubs his temples when he tells me this. He is not sure if this is how it went or not.
So Pig-Eye despaired even more and began drinking bottles of wine, sitting out on the dock and drinking them down the way a thirsty man might drink water. He drank far into the night, singing at the top of his lungs. Don and Betty had to put pillows over their heads to get to sleep, after first locking the doors.
Then Don woke up around midnight—he never could sleep through the night—and he heard splashing. He went outside and saw that Pig-Eye had on his wrist and ankle weights and was swimming out to the middle of the lake.
Don said he could see Pig-Eye’s wake, could see Pig-Eye at the end of it, stretching it out, splitting the lake in two—and then he disappeared. The lake became smooth again.
Don said that he sleepwalked, and thought perhaps what he’d seen wasn’t real. They had the sheriff’s department come out and drag the lake, but the body was never found. Perhaps he was still down there, and would be forever.
Sometimes, as Jason and the horse chased me across the lake, I would think about a game I used to play as a child, in the small town in Oklahoma where I grew up.
When I was in the municipal swimming pool, I would hold my breath, pinch my nose, duck under the water, and shove off from the pale blue side of the pool. Like a frog breast-stroking, eyes wide and reddening from the chlorine, I would try to make it all the way to the other side without having to come up for air.
That was the trick, to get all the way to the other side. Halfway across, as the water deepened, there’d be a pounding in the back of my head, and a sinister whine in my ears, my heart and throat clenching.
I thought about that game, as I swam with Jason and Killer close behind me. I seemed to remember my dogs being with me then, swimming in front of me, as if trying to show me the way, half pulling me across. But it was not that way at all, because this was many years before their time. I knew nothing then about dogs, or boxing, or living, or of trying to hold on to a thing you loved, and letting go of other things to do it.
I only understood what it was like to swim through deeper and deeper water, trying as hard as I could to keep from losing my breath, and trying, still, to make it to the deep end.
The Wait
WE DRIVE through the city, through the rain, January: a man I’ve never met before, Jack, and my best friend, Kirby, still my best friend after twenty years. Jack and Kirby live in the city and are practically best friends themselves now. A dentist and a real estate appraiser. I drove three days and nights to go fishing with them—not just wade fishing, not sissy-pants shore fishing, but in a boat. Jack has a boat with a motor and everything.
I watch Jack as he drives. He looks serious, intent. He’s poor, even though he’s a dentist, because he’s got a wife and
three kids, and because this is not a good time in Houston, for dentists or anyone else. Jack’s boat is old, and the chances are good that something will go wrong with it today—if we even get out on the water. Kirby is not so poor. Both he and his wife work, and they have only one child, a little girl, who is also named Kirby.
We drive slowly through the thunder and lightning in downtown Houston. Tall buildings leap into the sky all around us with each lightning flash. We pass the building where Kirby works; we pass the building where his wife works. They look like high-rise jails to me, the shutdown of a life. I feel like an outlaw sitting in the back of the jeep, riding with two married men, the fathers, up front. I feel almost as if one of them is my father, and the other one of my fathers friends. In fact, I am a little older than both of them. It doesn’t help that I have never fished from a boat before.
It has been so long since I’ve been around anyone, man or woman, other than my girlfriend. We’ve separated. We have done this before, and I think we’ll get back together again, because we’ve been together far too long not to get back together.
This time, after Margie left, it was a little different. I felt alone right away, and also, I wanted to do something new, and I did not want to be in that house alone.
It wasn’t the usual list of griefs this time—not, Why don’t we get married? not, Why are you always traveling so much? not, Who was that woman who called? Those are the little things, the things that can be erased. Or if not erased, at least put aside.
This time, Margie said, she was tired. Just tired. A little frightened, but mostly tired. She went home, back to Virginia.
I did not want to be in that house alone. I just wanted something new. And after a while, that gets hard to find.
We listen to the crackle of the local AM station, the early morning fishing report. The roads are slick, and there are other cars out, so many other cars, but none of them are pulling boats.
Kirby and Jack lean forward and watch the road and sip their coffee. The rain is coming straight down, beating against the windshield. We all try to hear what the Fish Man is saying on his talk show. He is telling us the fishing has been poor to spotty the past few days. Kirby grins, but Jack scowls and says, “Got-damn.”
I don’t really care one way or the other.
In Texas young men and women are taught to believe the world can be tamed. It’s a bull that can be wrestled, and with strength and courage and energy you can lift that bull over your head, spin it around, and throw it to the ground. In certain parts of the world, and even in certain individuals, such a thought would be ludicrous. But in Texas I have seen the myth become truth, lightning strikes, men and women burning across the prairie of their lives, living fast, living strong. I have seen it, in my father, my mother, and others, and I feel like an imposter, not having any children to follow after me, even though I am trying to live one of those strong lives myself—fast and free, scorning weakness.
A bolt of lightning smashes down on our left, tingles the hair on our arms. Jack shouts in his fear, and Kirby laughs, leans back in his seat, and rolls the window down a little. A few flicks of rain blow in on his face, and on mine in the back seat. It feels good, and I crack my window a little too.
I mean, Margie takes care of me. Sometimes I get really wild, just run out of the house and up onto the mountain behind our cabin, just running. I’ll be gone all afternoon, lying up there on some damn rock or something, like a dog in the high mountain sun. When I finally come back, late in the day, she’ll be very quiet, and we’ll sit together and all will be real calm. What I’m saying is, she takes care of me. And I take care of her, I do. But it’s not enough, I think.
Not only are Jack and Kirby best friends now, but their wives are too.
“I dreamed you were in my garbage can last night,” Kirby tells Jack matter-of-factly. “I dreamed you were a raccoon, banging around in the garbage, sorting through my trash.”
“Uh-huh,” says Jack, seemingly amused at the thought of being taken for a raccoon.
There’s a metal box in the back of the jeep, a strange-looking box with small holes punched in the sides of it, and I keep imagining I hear grunts and clicks coming from it.
“What’ve you got in the box?” I ask Jack.
“A coyote,” he answers, without even looking back. Eyes on the road.
“No shit,” I say, happy that he trusts me enough, already, to bullshit with me. “Where’d you get it?”
Jack doesn’t answer, and I can tell that Kirby thinks we, Jack and I, are playing some sort of joke on him, one that he refuses to pick up on, and so the subject is dropped. But I can still hear something in that box behind me, something alive, moving around from time to time, occasionally making what sounds like spitting noises.
Near Galveston the night ends, and the flags on buildings are snapping straight out to the northwest, toward Montana, from where I’ve come. There’s a warm southeast wind, which is the best for fishing, and though we are still in the squall, Jack appears crazed by this good omen, rolling his window down, despite the rain, to smell it. He believes there is the tiniest chance that it will be raining on land but not out in the bay, that it will be wet and storming in one place, but dry and breezy at that place’s edge. As we start driving past the refineries, past the tidal inlets, Kirby and I begin to believe in his wild hope; we have only a few miles to go, but it’s true, the rain has slowed to a drizzle.
“We did it,” Jack says, delighted. “We fucking outran it.”
There’s no one else out on the bay, though soon others will begin showing up, diluting the space with their presence. For now it is just us, and we get out and watch as Jack backs the trailer down the boat ramp into the water. Colonies of barnacles cling to nearby pilings, and there’s a little bait shop at the end of the dock, which is not open yet because the weather has been so bad, even though it’s early light, dawn, fishing time.
Towering above our launch spot is a huge billboard with the photograph of a dark-haired woman on it, perhaps the most beautiful woman we’ve ever seen; it’s one of those “Wanted: Missing Person” advertisements. She’s smiling on the billboard, and way above us like that, up in the windy, cloud-parting sky, she looks like a goddess, granting us permission to go fishing, to go out and play.
“HELP FIND RENEE JACKSON,” the billboard says, and I study the woman closely as I try to remember if I have ever seen her before, and then I think how the name sounds familiar. Perhaps she is someone I went to school with. But that is too long ago, it is old pork, stored in salt, gaps in memory, and there is only the future. I would like to help if I could—I would like to lift that bull too—but it’s all I can do to hope that Renee is all right, to give her my earnest, best hope. It is not a good feeling.
We’re lowering the boat into the water with a winch, the click-click-click of the wire cable spooling out. Kirby’s operating it. He’s been on a hundred fishing trips with Jack. I get the sack lunches that Tricia, Kirby’s wife, packed for all of us, and carry them down the dock and hand them to Jack, who is already in the boat arranging things, checking the fuel tanks and such.
“Tricia make these?” Jack calls up to Kirby, who’s about to pull the jeep and trailer away, to go park.
“Yep,” says Kirby.
“She’s so sweet,” says Jack.
“Would Wendy make a lunch like that for you?” Kirby asks.
“Hell,” says Jack, looking through the lunch as if it’s a discovery, “she didn’t even get up to say goodbye.”
Kirby is beaming, as if he’s gotten away with something.
Kirby and I climb into the boat. The first thing I notice is that there aren’t any life vests, and I can’t swim, but I’m not worried. I’m not going beyond the bay. I look above me at Renee Jackson, the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, and it seems, this early in the morning, having driven through the night and the rain to get here, a blessing to launch ourselves beneath her gaze. The wind whips at my windbreaker, an
d I feel my eyes beginning to blur and go to water.
“Hey, are you crying, man?” Jack asks, and I wonder if Kirby has told him about Margie and me separating. “It’s okay if you are, man,” he says. The engine has finally caught and is sputtering clouds of blue smoke out over the bay, giving off the summer-sweet smell of outboard fuel. Jack the dentist is another man now, down low in the boat, working the throttle, turning the wheel with one hand. He’s suddenly an outlaw too, the happiest one, and I think that’s how it always goes, how the longer you go without something, the happier you are when you finally get it. I think about how happy Renee Jackson’s parents would be if she were to show up at their front door today.
“I mean, it’s all right,” Jack says again, squinting at me in the weak light. Every raggedy cloud is fleeing, burning flame red above us as the sky begins to light up, though down here on the water it’s still dusky and gloomy, still foggy gray. “Kirby cried for half an hour after we lost a redfish last year,” Jack says. “I don’t mean lost it on a hook—I mean lost it, dead. She was a forty-five-pound female with eggs, and it took so long to land her that she wasn’t any good by the time we got her in. We tried to let her go again right away, but she just lay there in the surf, gasping, and then rolled over on her side. We worked with her for two hours before she died. For a while we thought she was going to make it,” Jack says. “She was as big as a dog. Two hours. What else could we do but cry?”
I have to turn away from the picture of Renee Jackson or I will cry.
“Hand me one of those Rolling Rocks,” I tell Kirby.
“Running like a fine watch!” Jack shouts, revving the engine.
An alarming thump shakes the back of the boat, where the motor is housed, followed by an even more alarming miscellany of piston noise and exhaust. Slowly we creep into the bay, following the lane of driven cedar piles into deeper water.