Pound for Pound

by F. X. Toole

  Bing!

  He woke near midnight and rang for the nurse. Some patients loved the effects of drugs, but he hated the woozy feeling.

  Dan said, “You got anything to eat this time of night?”

  “Fruit. Apple. Orange.”

  Dan said, “I got to take a leak. Do I need one of those bottle things?”

  The nurse said, “You’re okay to use the toilet, if you want.”

  Dan got out of bed. He was unsteady. He checked the incision, which had closed, but was still partially soft instead of hard with scab. He turned to the nurse.

  “Is this hole in me closed for good?”

  The nurse said, “Barring complications.”

  Dan said, “When will Doc Kogon be in?”

  “Someone will check you again at four a.m., and then again between seven and eight. You doctor will also be in later, since there was a problem.”

  Dan said, “When’ll that be?”

  “Before he starts his procedures tomorrow, say around one or two?”

  “I want to leave now.”

  “No.”

  She gave Dan some kind of capsule to swallow with water. He tried to figure out a scheme for the next day. The fight was at two. Kogon wouldn’t be in until one at the earliest. No good. Dan got fluffy. He crashed before he had a plan.

  He was woozy again at four, but alert when he woke at six a.m. He checked how hard the scab was and if it was dry. For breakfast, he ate cereal and an apple, and drank chamomile tea because they wouldn’t give him coffee. A fuzzy-cheeked intern did an examination at seven.

  “Looks good, old fellow.”

  Dan said, “You talkin to me or to my dick?”

  The intern blushed and got out. Dan rang for a nurse, then began to dress. A grumpy, bleach-blond nurse came in. She was losing her frizzed hair but had great-looking legs. She stopped cold when she saw Dan in his pants.

  “You get back in that bed this instant!”

  Dan said, “I don’t mean to be a pain in your you-know, but please tell those in charge that I’m outta here.”

  The nurse said, “Sir, you could break open.”

  “I’ll buy some Kotex.”

  “Kotex? You can’t just get up and leave, clown, we have to inform your physician!”

  “He’s already worked it out.”

  Chapter 17

  The right side of Dan’s groin was black and blue. Walking to the parking lot, he felt like he had a groin pull. He fired up the truck, then set the thrombin pack beside him on the seat. He purchased a box of Kotex maxi pads on Melrose, then stopped on Robertson for pastry and strong coffee at a French bakery. He finished at nine o’clock, then stayed on Robertson down to 10 East. When he hit downtown, he veered onto 5 South. Two hours later he was at the hotel in Del Mar.

  The fair was in full swing when Dan and Earl and Momolo pulled into the parking lot at eleven-thirty.

  Sweetly, politely, Momolo said, “You have the proper equipment and the necessary medications, am I correct?”

  “Pardner,” Earl said, “he’s got the whole world in his hands.”

  Momolo was a Christian boy from a missionary school that had been destroyed by civil war. He got the reference and smiled.

  The bright, overhead sun made for short shadows. The breeze off the rolling breakers a mile away kept the temperature in the mid-seventies.

  Food stands were set up. Smoke and grease mixed with the smells of oregano and cilantro and garlic and ginger and cinnamon. Italian, Texas barbecue, Thai, Mexican, a coffee stand, Greek, corn on the cob, cotton candy, fish and chips, lemonade, ice-cream parlor, and Mom’s Pies.

  The horse crowd was there, Western and English. There were families of every color, speaking many languages. Surfers, dopers, old folks, military, teenagers in Future Farmers of America jackets. A cheap carnival was up and running, and the Ferris wheel was turning. The boxing ring and folding chairs for a thousand had been set up in the middle of the vacant acreage outside the apricot structure of the old racetrack. Dust from the massive parking lots moved with the breeze through the narrow valley.

  Earl and Dan sniffed the food, while Momolo checked in with the Boxing Commission doctor. Momolo returned to say there was some kind of problem, his eyes moving from left to right.

  Earl said, “What kind of problem?”

  Momolo said, “I am not clear on this. We are to see the official.”

  Earl said, “Best see Jolly Joe.”

  They headed for Commissioner Johnson, who sat at a makeshift desk ringside. José Maximiliano “Jolly Joe J. J.” Johnson was the son of a Mexican mother and a black man from Houston. He weighed close to three hundred pounds, and had a smile as big as his ass. His round head was shaved, and his midnight eyes laughed whether he was eating or in a fight. He was known alternatively as Jolly Joe and J.J. He had his mama’s straight black hair, and spoke passable Spanish with his daddy’s Texas drawl. He liked working with Earl and Dan, saw them as stand-up guys who played straight with their fighters. He called Dan “Big D.”

  When he saw them, he said, “Say, Soff! Happenin, Big D?”

  Everyone shook hands the old-fashioned way.

  Earl said, “What’s this business with my man Momolo here?”

  Jolly Joe said, “That right, bro. You fight fell out.”

  Earl said, “Say what? Our opponent was talkin shit in Mexican like he was Marco Antonio Barrera!”

  Jolly Joe spread his hands. “His trainer called in a hour ago sayin once his boy thought about your African, he up an’ run to mama.”

  Dan said, “Where’s mama live?”

  “Way the hell down Ensenada someplace.”

  Earl said, “The promoter get us a stand-in?”

  Johnson said, “We bof tried, even if I ain’t supposed to get into it. But it too late for locals in you weight, an’ too far down here for nobody else.”

  Momolo looked like he was going to cry. “I still receive my compensation, do I not?”

  Dan shook his head. “See, the deal’s not made until you actually sign the contract. Fallouts are why lots of promoters don’t let prelim boys sign until just before the fight. That’s in case something like this goes down—so they don’t have to pay the fighter who does show. This promoter is usually able to put together solid fights. That’s why me and Earl took the chance on him. Promoters’ll even try for if-come with ten-round fighters, if a boy’s hungry enough to go for it. It’s not just you.”

  Dan could see that Earl was pissed about the fight falling out, and that Momolo had already spent his purse.

  Momolo said, “These are crafty fellows.”

  “Yeah, they are,” said Dan. “But they got to cover their asses, too. See, there was a time when fighters who lived a long way off would cash in their plane tickets, and that could cost promoters big bucks. That way, the bunko punks could collect, and never have to fight.”

  “Would the authorities not arrest them?”

  Dan shook his head. “What promoter’s going to sue somebody in another state, much less another country?”

  “The boxing life is a treacherous one. My father warned me.”

  “Yeah,” Earl told him, “but it’s the only life where you can become champion of the world.”

  “Yes,” said the African, “that is of importance.”

  Jolly Joe Johnson had seen it happen too often in his twenty years with the Commission, and for twenty more as a fighter and a trainer.

  He’d begun as a successful middleweight at 160, fought in the amateurs when Dan was already a pro. But he realized that his place in boxing was outside the ropes, not in. When a low-level Commission job opened up, he grabbed it, then worked his way up. The California Commission under Johnson was ranked with Nevada and New York. Jolly Joe’s personal file on boxers started the day he began work for the Commission, and contained the records of every fighter in every fight since, national and international.

  Anytime some manager or promoter tried to bullshit him about
a boy’s record, J.J. would smile, his black eyes merry. “My man,” he’d say, “I’m big like a elephant, an’ I remembers like one.”

  Now, gazing calmly at Dan, Earl, and Momolo, Johnson scratched his ass, then wiped sweat from his jowls with a clean white handkerchief. “You boys takin off, or you gon hang around like civilized folk?”

  “I don’t know about these two, but I’m headin back to town,” Dan replied.

  “Why should we stick around for nothin?” Earl asked.

  Jolly Joe said, “Hail, there’s always somethin when friends socialize. Don’t all got to be bidness.”

  Dan started laughing. “J.J., I broke your code a long time ago, you don’t know that?”

  J.J. said, “What shit you talkin, man?”

  Dan said, “You’re a cheap-ass mooch, that’s what I’m sayin. Notice that I didn’t say a shameless mooch.”

  Johnson brought his fingers innocently to his bouncy chest. “Mooch? Me? A man of my station in the community?”

  Dan laughed and said, “Oh hell, why not? I’m gonna take you out to dinner, J.J.”

  Momolo looked outraged. This was the man who had just taken away his fight, and now Dan and Earl were going to buy him dinner? As they were leaving for the restaurant, Earl pulled Momolo aside and said quietly, “You know your Bible, so you gonna remember what it say about castin yo bread on the waters. Well, we gonna cast some bread and one of these days Jolly Joe give you a break. Forget the fight falling out. Happens all the time. We’ll give you a raise at the shop, make up for some of dat purse you would have gotten knocking that Mex on his ass.”

  They had a blow-out meal. Dan paid. But he did wince when Jolly Joe placed his order.

  “Let’s see. Baby-back ribs, beans, slaw, corn bread, sweet potato pie, an’ I’ll need some that peach cobbler wit a little vanilla ice cream, yeah, that ought to do it. An’, uh, I think I’ll have me one a them double lattes, too.”

  “You want a half slab of baby back, or you want a whole?” Dan asked.

  “Half? Half?” Jolly Joe laughed. “Damn, you chislin on me after all what I done of old Salt and Peppa? Half? Sheeuh, I want the whole slab, man! You didn’t know that?”

  Dan knew that fat was bad for arteries, but he ate barbecue anyway. He checked the incision several times throughout the day. There was some leakage at one point that he stopped with adrenaline. He covered it with a sanitary pad, but he never mentioned the incision to Earl, and Earl had the sense not to ask about the angioplasty. Later that day, when Dan called Kogon, the cardiologist said that he hadn’t been surprised by the way Dan left the hospital. Kogon liked the type As, being one himself.

  Dan saw Kogon two days later. He examined the crusted incision and then checked Dan’s heart. He said, “So far so good. Did you win?”

  “Fight fell out. I upset your people for nothing.”

  Kogon said, “At least you proved I do good work.”

  “Doc, I got a problem,” Dan said, his eyes scanning the Santa Monica Mountains. “I’ve noticed that I don’t care about anything anymore.”

  Kogon said, “You think it’s because of the angioplasty?”

  Dan looked back at the doctor. “Truth to tell, it’s been comin on. But when the fight fell out, I noticed that I wasn’t pissed. I wasn’t even disappointed. Nothin.”

  Kogon said, “It’s not uncommon, say, for bypass surgery to radically affect someone’s moods. Some go into serious depression and stay there awhile. Some break down crying all the time, men as well as women. Others come out of their depression quickly. Some experience little or no negative emotional effects. To a large extent, it depends on the individual—that and a number of variables, medical and otherwise. Some in cardiology attribute negative effects to the heart-lung machine. Others claim it is the trauma of the surgery itself.”

  Dan said, “Always an upside, always a down.”

  “But it’s also a matter of degree and duration,” Kogon said. “In your case, you might be experiencing a kind of hangover from the medication. It could simply be trauma, physical as well as mental. But I don’t think any of these things are likely in your case—not after the way you left the hospital. Dan, it’s mostly to do with you, not the procedure.”

  “So what am I supposed to do, roll over and die of the mopes?”

  “From what you and Earl have told me about your family situation, especially that tragic thing about your grandson, and now you learn you have heart disease, you just might need time to grieve and heal,” Kogon advised him. “An extended rest would not be a bad idea if you can afford it.”

  “I got the money,” Dan said. “But I never was one to quit.”

  “Resting and quitting aren’t the same. And you’ve got to rethink your lifestyle. Your chances of surviving depend on that. Whether or not you change—eat right, get plenty of sleep and reasonable exercise—depends on how much you want to live.” He wrote Dan a prescription for Xanax, 0.5 milligram. “Just make sure you stay in touch—in another week, then a month, then three, and then at least twice a year so we can catch any new obstruction.”

  Dan hadn’t mentioned his drinking. “What if I don’t keep in touch?”

  Kogon smiled. “It’s your funeral.”

  Dan didn’t check back with Kogon. His moods and energy fluctuated radically during the next three months. He hit the pit mentally, but when he took his pulse, his heartbeat wasn’t irregular; its rate kept up with his watch. He hardly ate. He took Xanax six at a time. He got out of bed to urinate and defecate, but he wondered why he bothered to get up at all, wondered what was so bad about sleeping in piss and shit. He’d go three weeks without a shower and a shave. He lost seventeen pounds. He was aware that he was drinking himself to death. He began to wonder why it was taking so long. He had no plan. He kept drinking.

  He switched from cheap bourbon to low-down vodka. Alcohol became Dan’s job. Earl continued to work a twelve-hour day, but still split the profits a buck for a buck. Dan sat Earl down.

  “You got to stop cuttin me in when I don’t work.”

  “I’m just waitin for you to make a comeback.”

  Dan sighed. “This ain’t gonna change, Soff.”

  Earl said, “You got too much goin for you to buy into that mess.”

  Dan shook his head. “Naw, baby, my black thoughts own my candy ass.”

  When Dan ran out of tranquilizers, he cleaned up and drove the pickup to Tijuana and bought five hundred pills from three different TJ pharmacies. He also bought Seconal and Nembutal, fifty each, out near the Auditorio, TJ’s boxing arena—fighting at the Auditorio was like going a hundred years into the past.

  On the Avenida de la Revolución, at gringo prices, he bought two Cuban Romeo y Julieta Churchills in an upscale tabacalero that stocked only Cuban leaf. For lunch, across from the Frontón Palace, he ate camarones al mojo de ajo, garlic shrimp in butter, and sopped up the thick sauce with freshly baked rolls. He washed lunch down with two bottles of Bohemia, ordered a snifter of Hennessey XO, then took his time smoking half of one of the monster Churchills. He arrived at the end of the long line of cars waiting to cross the border, half-whacked and still smoking the cigar. By the time Dan worked his way up to the front of the line, the border guard had already used his computer to check with the DMV for any outstanding warrants against him. Dan knew that if his truck was searched, and the pills were found, he’d be in deep shit. He didn’t care. But he went through the border check as easy as pie.

  Instead of heading back up 5 North through the city of San Diego and Orange County, Dan immediately exited the freeway in Chula Vista for a bottle of vodka. He took a long pull in the parking lot, and several more in quick succession, then maneuvered back toward the 5. But he gradually lost any sense of where he was headed until he found himself at the casino at the Pechanga Indian Reservation in Temecula, seventy miles north of the Mexican border. He and Earl and their boys had won four fights out of five at Pechanga, two of them main events. Dan fogged out. He nearly ran
into a ditch thinking how little those big wins meant to him now. As dust swirled up and around and through his stalled truck, he realized he was too drunk to drive home. He got a motel room and continued to drink. He flirted with the sleeping pills. He opened the kid-proof plastic orange bottles. He poured them onto the bedspread. He sucked eighteen, maybe twenty into his mouth. They were slippery as snot. He went into the crapper for a glass of water. He saw himself in the mirror, looked at himself closely in the blinking pink light of the motel sign. He spat out the pills, then flushed the rest down the toilet. He stomped on the little orange bottles. He was damned if he’d die like Marilyn Monroe.

  Chapter 18

  Dan woke up at four a.m., his heart banging off his rib cage. He didn’t know where he was. He called the front desk, and when the operator told him he was at the El Paraíso Motel in Temecula, he remembered all his wrong turns and felt brain-dead.

  The pink sign of the Paradise Motel blinked on and off. Dan heard the sound of a fist against flesh and bone from down the hall. A woman began to shriek. “Don’t spit on me there, don’t spit on me there!”

  Dan took a hit from the glass full of vodka next to his bed. As he fell back shuddering into the tangled bedclothes, the plan hit him fully formed—simple and crisp. Dan felt his forehead for fever. His hand was hot, but his head was cool. Sometimes madness brings a sudden clarity of vision and purpose. He had a perfect plan.

  No one would ever know, especially Earl. It was important that Earl never know.

  Dan slept fitfully and was fully awake when the sun came up at six. He took a shower, checked out of the motel, and went to a coffee shop for a big breakfast, his first food since lunch in TJ. He slipped vodka into his orange juice to slow down the tremor in his right hand. At seven-thirty, he used his cell phone to call his lawyer’s office. He left a message with the answering service for Robert Plunkett to meet with him at ten a.m. concerning an emergency.