Blood and Sawdust

by Jason S Ridler

  “You okay?” said a giant Tim Horton dude, shoving a mop in a wheeled bucket toward the mess. His face was wide, and he had a strange, innocent look in his face. Malcolm figured the guy had something wrong with him. Retarded, Down syndrome, something.

  Malcolm flexed his hands. The pain stayed but the warmth vanished. “No, but thanks for asking.”

  “Okay.” He started washing the floor before him, smiling. “I can get you another.”

  “No, no. That’s cool. Thanks. I should split. Almost used my fifteen minutes.”

  “No, you have five more and fifteen seconds and you can have them all back if you get a new coffee.”

  “Shit. You’re good with numbers.”

  Larry mopped, nodding to a rhythm only he could hear.

  Malcolm smiled. A couple of circuit players had buddies like this. Autistic? Was that what they were called? Kind of out of it, like punch-drunk veterans, but wicked smart when it came to certain things. Shit. Maybe Larry was an Einstein trapped in an old Palooka’s body. Cleaning up his miserable mess for minimum wage. Talk about getting the shit end of the stick.

  “Hey, retard, take our order!”

  In the far corner were a handful of teens in assorted idiot wear. Some had on basketball jerseys for US teams tugged over sweaters. Others had shitty Mohawks and very obviously store-bought rugged wear, complete with pre-faded jeans and custom made tears and rips. Rich kids playing poor. What the fuck was this world coming to?

  Larry snorted but kept doing his job.

  “Hey, you deaf as well as stupid? We want to place an order.” The leader was a shaved head acne case. Blackheads riddled his cheeks like a shotgun blast of a million BB shots.

  Larry’s face crinkled. “You have to line up for orders.”

  “I don’t take orders from zombie retards,” said the shaved head assclown. The gang cackled. Larry kept moping and the whole shop got quiet as people packed up their stuff and left or stared at the bottom of their cups. “Now get over here and take our order.”

  “You four better leave,” said a fat man in a moustache behind the corner.

  “Or what?” said the cue ball. “You going to sick Larry on us to eat our brains?”

  “Pretty sure he’d starve.” Malcolm said.

  Fuck. It just slipped out. This was dumb, dumb, dumb. He couldn’t afford to make enemies or cause attention but he had and holy shit were cue ball’s eyes locked on him.

  “You say something, skid?”

  Too late. The guy had the look, the one that said he wouldn’t let go of this conversation without a fight. Verbal or otherwise. No pulling back now. Malcolm’s spine stiffened at the jib. Yeah, he was poor, but it only hurt when some richy asshole took notice. He snorted. “You deaf as well as retarded? I said he’d starve if he had to eat your brains. I bet you don’t have two IQ points to rub together. And if you did, you’d probably eat them.” Mild chuckles came from some of the street folk and others holding their coffees with thick fingers and smiling at the floor.

  The skinhead stood and the Mohawk said. “Easy, Barrett. We got shit to do.”

  Barrett shrugged off the Mohawk’s hand. “You calling me out, skid?” He was bigger than Malcolm in height and width, but his hands looked soft. Strong, but soft. No tears on the knuckles, no swollen fingers. He was a big mouth in a big body.

  Malcolm shook his head. “No. Not going to waste my time with some suburban shithead dressing like the poster boy for the Aryan nation.”

  “Both of you,” said the manager. “Get out. Now. Or I’m calling the cops.” He punched his cell phone. More than three digits. The non-emergency number, most likely, since the shit hadn’t hit the fan. Yet.

  They locked eyes, Malcolm and Barrett, while Larry the Mop master cleaned things up.

  “You first,” Malcolm said.

  “Hello,” said the manager. “I’d like to report a disturbance at my business.”

  That was enough to usher the three out of their seats, dragging Barrett by his unwrinkled leather jacket. “Better watch your step, skid.”

  “Better learn to read, moron.” Malcolm pointed to the sign above the cashier. “Your fifteen minutes is up. Go find somewhere to waste your time. I got shit to do.”

  Barrett’s eyes kept on Malcolm as they left, and Malcolm smiled wide while giving him the finger. The door closed and his gang headed west on Princess street, thankfully in the opposite direction of the library, Malcolm’s next time-killing destination.

  “Fucking suburban shits,” Malcolm said, dropping his single digit. His neck snapped when he heard a slap. Then another.

  A handful of rheumy-eyed coffee junkies were clapping their hands. He smiled, shaking his head.

  “Thank you,” Larry said, still mopping. “But they still had ten minutes.”

  “Not if all they came in here to do was give you grief,” Malcolm said. “Then they get no minutes.”

  “Okay.”

  He left the shop, somewhat amazed. Then smacked his head. It was still stupid, stupid, stupid, but he couldn’t smack the smile off his face. It felt good to push back, even if it was only by shooting shit at a bald jackass.

  CHAPTER TEN

  EARLY AFTERNOON SUN bled through the fringed edges of the smoke-stained curtain covering the window, and for the love of all that was good in the bleeding universe, Milkwood was still awake. He wasn’t hungry. He wasn’t tired. He wasn’t even itchy. Insomnia for the undead is a quiet kind of hell and it had him by the short and curlies.

  An image ran through his head for hours. Milkwood’s pasty right hand being lifted in victory, the kid’s dream coming true. But there were no cheers, no hurrahs or huzzahs, but instead a rain of laughter, the call of fixed, the branding iron he’d feared ever since he managed to claw his way into the circuit from doing “bum fights” in Toronto, and then…a few gunshots. Maybe even enough to put him down for good. And then those vultures would descend on the kid and tear him to savage shreds. No matter how good he was at acting hurt, making it seem like he was on the ropes, there was no strategy he could concoct that made it plausible for him to win the first match of the tourney, let alone the last one.

  Good intentions and a bad plan, Milkwood thought. I’m going to get us both killed.

  Faaaantastic.

  The TV was busted, so he was denied the joy of having Phil Silvers or Lucy and Desi distract him. Even the whores and Johns and fellow travelers were either spent or gone or asleep. He sighed and hit the lamp, and then dug into the last book he’d scored from the used book fair in BC before heading back East, hopping to the NYC circuit and then getting stuck in this damned home town.

  It was a pamphlet more than a book. An address by eminent British historian D. C. Watt. Milkwood well remembered having his ass handed to him in first year history at York, and the pains the professors took in proving their latest class of high schoolers didn’t know shit about shit. And it almost worked. Milkwood figured he’d drop out, move back to Kingston, and work with Oscar in the book trade until he died surrounded by books…

  Then he read Watt. The Immediate Causes of the Second World War. Not some boring socialist tome or RAH RAH RAH right wing tract. Watt was objective. Clear. Well written. Pro. He made him believe in that quote Herman Hesse had said in that cure-for-insomnia novel The Glass Bead Game.

  “Studying history, my friend, is no joke and no irresponsible game. To study history we must know in advance that one is attempting something fundamentally impossible, yet necessary and highly important. To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning. It is a very serious task, young man, and possibly a tragic one.”

  Boy, had that sung like a siren song to a bookworm who only wanted to research long dead battles and strange people from lost ages. Watt tapped a nerve Milkwood wasn’t sure he’d had, but once tapped it was strong and vibrant, just like Watt’s thesis. You had to understand everyone from their own POV, not throw your own biases against th
e past and see how those people fail to measure up. You had to get your boots on the ground in the past and try and look forward when the future had yet to be written.

  You had to do it for the heroes and the villains. For in everyone’s head, they think they’re rational and doing the right thing.

  Milkwood chuckled, flipping through the pamphlet. I wonder if Kudor is having such nostalgic epiphanies? Nah. Probably fucking the brains out of a gaggle of circuit candy like a Roman general in the wake of his triumph. Me, I’m being eaten by doubt and second thoughts and the best distraction I can come up with is a dusty address from some historian that few talk about anymore.

  As the sound of future laughter preyed on his mind, he blew the dust off the pamphlet and read it in gulps. A quote snagged his attention.

  This is not the story of men whose actions are determined by large, impersonal forces. The forces are there, but the stuff of history is humanity. Impersonal forces only figure in this narrative in so far as they formed part of the perceptions of individual actors. History is lived through and, for the fortunate, survived by people. Their actions, their failures to act. Their hesitations, their perceptions, their judgments, their misunderstandings, misperceptions and mistakes act and interact upon each other across political, social and cultural divisions.

  Milkwood ruminated on his own hesitations, perceptions, misunderstandings, etcetera, lying in a hotel that stank of Lysol, bad sex, and disease while a cockroach skirted across the bed frame.

  He snatched it, tossed it in, and chewed. It burst with a sour flavour he’d come to enjoy, as he’d once liked El Cheapo BBQ chips. He chewed and closed his eyes. Behind his lids he saw his pudge-white arms raised. The little legs of the roach twitched and he bit down harder, releasing a jet of goo with a hint of warm blood. He swallowed it all, the image of victory and the body of the roach, and yawned.

  Eyes flittering in his old home town, he still felt a million miles away from his old life, and gaining some distance on his new one.

  He plucked a roach leg from between his teeth. “Maybe it was time for a punching bag to punch back.” He smiled, and sleep took him as he swallowed the last of the roach bits with a smile.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE LIBRARY WAS a squat and small, two-floor, red brick building, not too far from the hospital that needed the word BORING etched above it. Inside, it had that smelly warmth that libraries have, better than being outside but not by much. The seats and desks and tables scattered around the first floor were filled with an unusual number of dregs, students, and what looked like hippies who had come here to die or use the computers. It reminded him of Tim Horton’s without the rich folks in ski gear.

  Malcolm held open the bathroom door to make sure it was empty, then rushed inside to warm and wash his hands in the sink. Drying them, he noticed a box hanging from the wall in the shitter stall, plastic with official looking writing on it. And a biohazard sticker.

  Wiping away the sore lines on his hands from the busted mug, he looked closer at the box.

  Needles were crammed in it.

  Junkies?

  In a library?

  It made a kind of sense. Libraries were open to anyone, even the dregs and circuit betters Malcolm hung with, hovering around the internet computers. But even in Troy he’d never seen a crammed needle box. Kingston is one sad little piece of nowhere, he thought, tossing his paper towel in the trash. At least the junkies in Troy had their own park to rot in. Guess they weren’t big on reading.

  On the main floor, homeless folks waited for death in the warmth of cosy chairs near the window. Unlike the Emergency room waiting area, the place smelt like a hundred years of sweat had been pounded in the orange and black carpet. He hated it, and there were still hours to kill and cops and bald morons in newly minted shitkickers to avoid on the street. Thankfully, cops and Barrett were probably allergic to learning, so he was safe here as much as anywhere.

  Malcolm took a hardback chair at a study table, one hidden behind the stacks of books whose covers were fitted with dusty plastic wrap. He shoved the chair at a table, and sat. Damn thing was as comfortable as a upturned crate, but he’d learned his lesson from the Emergency room. Even a normal chair would be too tempting and the coffee was starting to lose its magic in his blood. He needed to stay awake. Needed to stuff away dreams of getting a solid PI or one-way tickets or anything other than focusing on the contenders Milkwood would face. Whatever Milkwood’s skill set, whatever his experiences, Malcolm knew the circuit—better than just about anyone. And if he let the tubby fighter go in blind, not knowing his foes, well, maybe all his…abilities wouldn’t mean shit.

  Malcolm had gotten lead tips on contenders from Skeetch, the only tipster Malcolm trusted because the OCD-betting freak was more a personal computer on circuit betting than a rumour monger. Malcolm took out his notebook, and looked at the names Skeetch had provided.

  Flip Haggerty. An old boxer and submission fighter who’d last won a tourney ten years before Malcolm was even born. A Vicodin addict, he had more scars than victories over the past year. Next to Milkwood, he was the leading no-account on his last leg who got lucky in the Jersey circuit with a doped-up youngblood champ who never kept his guard up. One right cross had earned him a chance on the fringe. Little problem here.

  Manuel Fitz. Straight edge Brazilian jujitsu master, almost at a near cosmic level, but his matches were often boring and thus not a big payday in the regular circuit. Rumour had it he had Nazi blood in him, but the last one to suggest it wound up with fewer teeth than most of the ground-pounders who ended up eating Manuel’s elbow on the mat…after he’d choked them out. From what Malcolm had seen, Milkwood could take the pain Manuel could dish out, and he couldn’t be knocked out with a reverse guillotine, but what if his forearm was snapped? Would it snap back? Did Milkwood even know any holds besides a hammerlock?

  Tension prickled through Malcolm’s nerves. Okay, he just has to stay on his feet with him, keep the hands banging. If it goes to the ground, things could get ugly. Or would he just stretched so bad it looked like a cartoon?

  He slapped his head. Focus, dude, focus. Next.

  Cyrus Sattari. Malcolm had caught him in the audience once in Boston in the Belly Wharf. Dressed like a movie star, big smile, deep tan, clothes that looked expensive and hid a body covered in scars from being a child soldier in Iran. He was a grappler and muay Thai asshole with no fear and was probably the only one people were betting could take Kudor in the finals. Normally, guys like this needed to be broken by jujitsu or wrestling, worn down and on their back, a grinding ground-and-pound assault. Somehow, Malcolm couldn’t see Milkwood using his hands and legs to tangle Cyrus’s arm in a triangle or a kimura without making the crowd choke on laughter. Maybe a rope-a-dope victory instead of a punching bag match? But how many times could he do that without the crowd raising an eyebrow? Keep going, Malcolm thought. Worry about this shit later. He won’t be fighting all of them. Just some of them. Prepare for each, but have some idea on how to mix it up.

  Next, Ron Sutherland. The only black man in the Tourney. He had the lowest centre of gravity of any fighter Malcolm had seen, trained largely in sumo and close protection self-defence by an Israeli commando he’d been friends with who had recently died in some war somewhere over in the Middle East. Rumour was. Sutherland was also ex-military, but no one said what kind, so everyone said he was ex-Delta Force, mainly because they seemed the most badass. While loudmouth ground-pounders claimed to be Navy Seals or Marines, Sutherland was almost Zen in his composure and barely talked trash and said nothing about what he’d done when he was in uniform. Making him more than likely the real deal. Muscled, but not cut. Strong, but proportioned. His victory over Jacksaw last year had driven the former favourite to sever-juice abuse after his neck surgery. There would be zero BS with Sutherland. No showboating, no playing to the crowd. Milkwood would have to make it quick or else no one would believe it.

  Frank Tomko. God. The worst kind of
fighter. Victory meant less than shit. For a chunk of change, he’d be DQ’d for stretching or breaking someone so they couldn’t compete for months, or just finding a painful way to kill the son of a bitch before the match got any heat. Tomko’s pain threshold was legendary. He rarely went down and was usually disqualified after breaking an arm or kneecap or busting an eye or tearing a groin. He’d take the shit heel purse then fuck off back to Oregon. He was a thug fighter that some rollers banked for their own perverse game of politics within the circuit, all bang, no grapple. Hard to get on his back but once there might be easier to ground pound.

  Next, Jeet Kusugi. He was only a name to Malcolm. The half Indian, half Japanese whirlwind had been destroying opponents in the west coast as a mixed judo and neo-Dravidian nightmare. Up until that moment, Malcolm had been excited to see this style in action, having only heard of it. Then he worried. Jeet was an unknown. Milkwood would just have to be damn good.

  Finally, there was Kudor. The freakshow knuckle brawl last night did not betray what the guy could do. He was a prison boxer and fighter, but someone had taught him disarming and submission techniques. Otherwise his skin would be shiv cheese. Strong, fast, he liked knockouts but allegedly he knew jujitsu and judo.

  Malcolm sat back, rubbing his temples until the strain of the moment eased, but was then hit with a smack of weirdness. The circuit was filled with bizarre people. Freak show fighters. Steroid machines that made Superman look like Malcolm. He’d seen more weird shit in the nine months he was running the bets for Rob than in all the cartoons and comics he’d once had…

  But Milkwood? He was the strangest thing he’d seen since the grey-faced bastard at the fair—

  Stay in the now, he told himself.

  He jotted down key points for each fighter, pro and con, and how best to counter them in general, and tried to think of what Milkwood could do. But it was taxing, trying to figure out what the guy had in his arsenal beyond strength, speed, and the capacity to eat punches like they were free peanuts. Malcolm’s energy sank and his mind wondered as the hour droned on, watching the homeless people and library staff shuffle back and forth.