by Pete Dexter
"You know what I’m saying, here, Nick," he says. "I don’t want them so busted up I got trouble with Theresa, but outside of that.
Nick gives him the money back. "It’s ten dollars a month if they like it," he says, "just like anybody else."
Nick says that, but there are only half a dozen regulars—most of them cops—who pay. It costs Nick two, three hundred dollars a month to keep the place open.
"Nicky," he says, "I don’t want ’em to like it. They got fucking pizza, they got television. They already got enough shit they like."
He puts the bill in Nick’s shirt pocket and pats his chest. "They don’t have to win no Golden Gloves," he says. "Just teach them some balls."
And then Phillip Flood leaves.
The kids stand dead still in the middle of the room, holding their gym bags, the tall one watching everything at once. The other one, Phillip’s kid, looks bored. Or looks like he’s trying to look bored.
Nick feels the money in his pocket, feels a hundred dollars changing the gym.
"You want to try this?" he says.
* * *
He wraps Charley’s kid’s hands.
The other one sits down in front of an old television set by the toilet and adjusts the wire hanger Nick uses for an antenna, and watches the dance show from West Philadelphia.
Nick remembers the name now, Bandstand.
Charley’s kid looks at his hands after Nick wraps them. That first time, it’s like letting them hold a gun.
Nick pulls a pair of sixteen-ounce gloves out of the locker and he ties the kid’s laces, and then takes another pair out and has the old man tie his. The gloves are faded and worn, and tufts of horsehair stick out of the seams. Nick holds the ropes and the kid climbs in the ring, smiling at the feel of the mat. The other one, Michael, looks up from the television set a moment, his mouth half open, and then he smiles too. A different kind of smile.
"The first thing let’s do," Nick says, "punch me right in the face. As hard as you want."
He drops his face even with the kid’s and offers him his cheek.
The kid looks at him a moment, then at the gloves. Then he moves his hand, almost slow-motion, until it touches Nick on the line of his jaw. Nick smiles at him. Most kids, they’ll hit you in the face with a hatchet if you let them.
"You can hit harder than that," Nick says.
The kid nods.
"C’mon, I want you to hit me a good one."
The kid drops his hands.
"It’s all right, I’m used to it."
The kid seems to think it over. "That isn’t how you do it," he says quietly.
"It’s how you learn," Nick says. "You remember that colored kid took your shoes?"
The kid nods.
"Pretend like that was me."
But he sees the kid doesn’t want to hit him.
"I’ll tell you what," Nick says, "let’s just move around here a little bit, and when you see a chance, you waffle me then."
The kid likes that better. He holds up his hands and follows Nick around the ring. Nick taps him on the forehead once in a while, getting him used to the feeling; the kid doesn’t seem to mind. Nick hits him a little harder, then offers the side of his face for the kid to hit him back.
He throws a punch—not as awkward as he was outside—and Nick is surprised at its weight.
He ducks underneath the next one and the kid stumbles into him, and there is a noise as his face cracks against Nick’s shoulder. Nick steps back and drops of blood are falling off the end of the boy’s nose.
Nick waits to see what he will do. If the blood makes him mad or scared. The kid blinks tears and wipes at his nose with his forearm, then puts his hands back up and begins following Nick around the ring again.
Except for the blood running into his lips, there is no difference in him at all.
Nick notices his cousin has forgotten the television now and is watching the ring. He looks interested in the blood.
"That’s good," Nick says. "Now you just do that same thing but step toward me .... "
The kid does what he is told. He wipes at the blood with the sleeve of his T-shirt and tries to step in behind his punches. He is not a graceful kid, but he is stronger than he looks and he listens, even with a mashed nose, to the things Nick says.
Nick throws punches that stop just as they touch his face, giving him the feeling. He doesn’t flinch. Nick watches carefully, and he doesn’t flinch. He just moves slowly around the ring, his right foot trailing the left, following Nick wherever he goes.
The bell rings, and Nick drops his hands, nods at the boy, and takes a towel that the old man has hung over the ring ropes and wipes the blood off his nose and mouth.
"How’s that feel?" Nick says, looking at his face. The bridge of the boy’s nose is swollen and starting to turn blue. Nick remembers the solid feel as he fell into him; the boy’s face didn’t slide left or right, he took the shoulder square on.
The kid nods.
"Does that mean it hurts‘?" Nick said.
The kid shakes his head, as if he doesn’t know.
"It’s all right to say it," Nick says. "If I bumped my nose like that, I’d say it hurts." Nick waits a minute, there is no answer.
"Then I’d get even."
He sees the beginning of a smile in the corner of the boy’s mouth. It’s there, and then it’s gone. "Put your head back," he says, "see if we can get it to stop."
The boy does what he is told; a nice kid, Nick thinks. A nice, polite kid. He looks at the other one, sitting in front of the television.
"You want to move around the ring for a round?" Nick says.
The kid looks at his cousin holding the towel against his face, the blood-soaked shirt sticking to his chest. "Are you crazy?" he says.
He looks back at the television. Nick doesn’t blame him, it isn’t for everybody. He likes that he said it. He climbs out of the ring, and looks at the television set too. He studies the dancers a moment, and sees Jimmy Measles.
"You see that guy right there?" Nick says, pointing with his glove, "he comes around here all the time."
The kid looks more interested. "Jimmy Measles?" he says.
Nick nods. "That ain’t his real name, but he lives right around the corner. He’s always out here in front of the place, practicing his dances."
The boy nods, but Nick sees he doesn’t believe him.
"So," Nick says, "you want to box?"
The boy shakes his head no; his eyes go back to the screen.
"Maybe tomorrow," Nick says, hoping they won’t be back tomorrow.
The kid never looks up. "Maybe," he says.
* * *
Phillip Flood comes back up the stairs an hour later. The boys are dressed in their street clothes; Peter’s nose is stuffed with toilet paper. Michael is watching cartoons—Bandstand is over now—and hardly notices when his father walks into the room.
"They do what you told them, Nick?" Phillip Flood says.
Nick sees that he is talking about his son, not his nephew. Nick looks at the kid in front of the television set. "Sure," he says.
Phillip Flood is smaller than Nick, and ten years older. The acne scars turn his face gray under the lights.
"He looks like he’s been to a birthday party," Phillip Flood says. Nick looks at him a long minute, thinking of the way he’d put the money in his pocket and patted his chest.
He doesn’t trust himself to answer. The gym is his, he built most of it with his own tools. The floor, the staircase, the ring. Everything but the wiring. Some of it was an accident, the way it turned out, but it was his. When it changed it was because he let it.
"He looks like he’s been to a fucking party .... "
Nick puts on a pair of six-ounce gloves and walks over to the heavy bag. He begins hitting it without waiting for the timer to start the round. His hands feel broken, but he hits the bag, over and over, until the pain spreads and dulls.
Phillip Flood watches him a moment
, and then turns back to his son. "Turn off the fuckin’ television," he says.
The boy leans forward and turns it off. "You got your mouthpiece?"
The boys follow Phillip Flood out.
Nick never looks up from the bag.
A minute or two later, the old man appears on the stairway holding a sack of groceries. Nick is surprised to see him there; he didn’t notice him leave. The old man is like that, though. He comes and he goes, and mostly he stays out of the way. Like an old dog.
He sees Nick at the heavy bag and sets the groceries down on the floor and hurries across the room to hold it.
Nick does not acknowledge the old man, or the sound that ends the round. He hits the bag until the pain in his hands is in his head, a dull ache. He hits the bag until the punches are useless, and then, in the middle of the round, he suddenly walks away from the bag and the old man, and throws the gloves into one of the metal lockers at the other end of the room.
"These fucking guys," he says quietly.
The old man stays where he is, staring at him, hugging the bottom of the bag, wondering if he’s still allowed to stay.
Before Nick leaves, the old man tries to give him a dollar bill.
* * *
They are back two days later, Phillip Flood leaves them in front of the gym.
Nick hears the deep sound of the heavy doors slamming and knows it’s a Continental or a Caddy. He goes to the window to see if it’s a colored lawyer, but it’s Phillip Flood’s boys, crossing the sidewalk beneath him.
Nick turns back into the room and sits on the window ledge, looking at his place. The old man has cleaned again this morning, swept the floors, scrubbed the ring, stacked all the gloves in one locker; the headgears and cups in another. Nick thinks he must get up before dawn.
He is standing on a small ladder against the far wall now, straightening the old fight posters there, most of them held in place for ten or fifteen years with thumbtacks.
Nick watches him work, his fingers touching the faces on the posters, slow and thorough, taking care of them as if he knew who they were.
Nick hears the boys on the stairs.
Charley’s boy comes up first; he steps into the room holding a gym bag and then moves to the corner, understanding the place is not his. Both his eyes are discolored. A nice kid, Nick thinks again.
The other one comes in behind him and drops his bag on the floor and moves in front of the television.
Nick feels a draft and walks to the head of the stairs to check the door. The short one has left it open. The heat is costing him a fortune.
"You’re Charley’s boy, right?" he says to Peter. He decides to go down later and close the door.
The kid nods.
"How’s the nose?"
He shrugs.
"The way it got squashed, I didn’t think you’d be back for a while." The kid doesn’t answer.
The old man makes a scrambling noise and climbs down off the ladder, moves it a yard to the right, and then climbs back up. The furnace comes on, shaking the room and filling it with a faint, familiar smell of oil.
Nick is suddenly as uncomfortable as the kid. "So," he says, "you gonna be a fighter?"
The kid looks at him a moment, considering that, and then he shrugs again. "I don’t think so," he says. The kid seems to take the question too seriously, as if what he’s going to be is already decided.
"You could," Nick says. He points to the posters the old man is straightening. "All those guys up there walked in the gym the first day just like you, and they weren’t champions then."
The kid looks at the posters, taking his time. Nick can’t tell what he is thinking.
"We could get you a couple of fights first," he says, "before Sonny Liston."
The kid smiles at that, not much of a smile, and Nick sees it turn before it disappears. "So," he says, "you want to move around a little today?"
Behind him, the television has warmed up and sound of the dance show from West Philly gradually fills the room. The old man looks down from the ladder and spits out words that Nick doesn’t understand. The music makes him angry.
* * *
Peter lies in his room at night, his tongue running over a lump in his bottom lip where he fell into Nick’s knee. He thinks of that moment, his own punch pulls him off balance and his feet cross and tangle and he falls through Nick’s gloves—Nick has reached out to catch him—and closes his eyes just before he hits the knee.
There is a hard bump, like a car running over a pothole in the street, and then a feeling that spreads from his lip to his chin, and then Nick is helping him up, smiling at him, telling him that biting knees is against the rules.
He lies in his bed and thinks of that, and in the dark he feels himself smile. He goes over it again.
He thinks of Nick cleaning the blood off his chin after the round, asking if he is sure he wants to be a fighter. He allows himself to imagine that now. Nick smiling at him as he cleans his face. He is bleeding in front of a thousand people and Nick is cleaning his face.
He goes to sleep thinking yes, that is what he wants to be.
* * *
In the evening, Peter’s aunt disappears into the kitchen to wash dishes, leaving him alone with his cousin and his uncle. The aunt is part of an indistinct balance in this house which protects him, and in her absence, he suddenly feels his uncle staring at him from behind.
He turns to meet the stare, and in the moment it takes his uncle to change his expression, to close the thought off his face, Peter has caught him. He doesn’t know at what.
It feeds him, to see his uncle afraid.
The moment passes; the taste remains. His uncle opens a drawer looking for a cigar and then pushes open the kitchen door to say he needs a beer. The taste of the moment is still in Peter’s mouth later as he lies in bed waiting to sleep.
It tastes like blood.
His cousin sleeps down the hall, in the room that was his sister’s. The smell of cigarette smoke comes through the door, which is always closed. Beyond the door, his clothes are thrown across chairs, his posters are hung on the wall. He hides his cigarettes and magazines in places his mother cannot reach—she is too heavy to get on her knees and look under the bed, too heavy to climb on a chair in his closet.
There is nothing of Peter’s sister left in the room, but in his sense of the place, the room is still hers.
He lies in the dark, fingering a lump in his eyebrow, remembering another collision—this one with Nick’s head—that afternoon in the gym. It was as if a door had slammed shut, and in that instant he could feel the soft sleeves of the dresses hanging in his mother’s closet.
He hears his uncle in the hallway, walking quietly toward his door from the top of the stairs. His footsteps stop, and then the door opens. His uncle’s face comes into the room, pushed there ahead of his body, as if in a dream. Peter sits up in bed.
"Get dressed."
Peter smells the black, after-dinner cigar, and then, as his uncle comes farther into the room, he smells the beer. His uncle has been drinking alone downstairs, something he does more often now that he is having the trouble with the Italians.
Peter has watched him, sitting with a bottle or a glass in his hand, staring at the front door.
He pulls on his jeans and the socks from the day before and then ties the laces on his tennis shoes. His uncle watches him, swaying slightly, smiling.
"What are we doing?" he says. Thinking it is possible that he is taking him to the same place he took his father.
His uncle holds a finger against his lips and motions for him to follow. They are out the front door before he speaks again.
"You tell your Aunt Theresa," he says, "we’re dead."
Peter follows his uncle, liking the sound of that, to the Cadillac parked across the street, and gets in the front seat. His uncle lights a cigar before he starts the engine. The boy looks back at the house, at the dark window that is his room.
They drive east, cross
ing Broad, and then all the way down to Two Street where they turn left, heading north. His uncle looks at him twice during this trip, the last time as he is stopping the car. They are in the middle of a block; there is noise coming from a bar across the street.
His uncle opens the door and gets out. "Wait here," he says. He looks back into the car a moment, deciding something, and then says, "Get in the back."
Peter gets into the back seat. His uncle closes the door and crosses the street. He stops at a door next to the bar’s, and then opens it. He has his own key.
Peter waits, listening to the pitch of the voices inside the bar. A dog walks past, then a drunk. He is unnoticed, sitting in the dark of the back seat.
A light comes on in the apartment over the door, and then the curtains in one of the windows are pulled aside and he sees a woman looking down at the car. She lifts her hand to her mouth and then Peter sees the point of her cigarette glow red. The smoke rises like another curtain.
His uncle appears behind her. The boy sees him in silhouette, almost as a shadow. He sees him touch her.
The woman turns then and disappears into the room. In a moment, two men come out of the bar, arguing, one of them holding a bottle.
"I told you a hundred fucking times," says the one without the bottle. "How many fucking times I got to tell you?"
The other one does not answer. He stands in one place on the sidewalk, claiming it.
"You hear me? I ast you a fucking question, John. I ast you a fucking question, you say the answer, right?"
The man without the bottle moves closer as he says that, his right hand is a fist hidden just behind his leg, as if it were a weapon. The man with the bottle waits; and in the car, Peter waits too.
"I’m givin’ you one more chance," says the man without the bottle. As he says that, he takes a step closer, into the place on the sidewalk the other one has claimed. He lifts his hands, as if to sing.
"You’re my brother," he says, "so I’m giving you one more chance . . ."
And as he says that, the bottle arcs in the air and comes down across the side of his face. He staggers and turns halfway around, as if to walk away, but then turns back, lowers his head and charges.