Blood Game (13 page)

He took the bottle and drank. The water tasted odd. He assumed it was from the well out here.

Finished, he handed the trainer back the bottle.

The trainer left.

Victor said, “Let's not talk anymore. Let me just hold you.”

“You don't care about my children, do you?” she said. There were tears in her voice.

Victor sighed. “This isn't what I need right now. You understand?” He paused, then spread his arms for her. At first she would not come into the circle he made for her. She stood and stared like a frightened animal. Her tears made her seem much younger and quite vulnerable. Victor found this very erotic.

More softly he said, “Come here. Please.”

“Will you say you love me?”

“Yes. If that's what you want me to say.”

“I want you to say it because you want to say it.”

Women were so simple, he told himself. All you had to do was shave and wear clean clothes and know when to tell them the right lies and they were yours.

So of course he told her that he loved her, and he told her that it was something that he wanted to say.

Her tears then were not of remorse but of gratitude. She thanked him in the same little-girl way she thanked him after they had made love.

But even as he held her, he was tiring of her. This would not be a long one. He liked them with some fight in them, and there was almost no fight left in her at all anymore.

The fight started at 3:43 that afternoon.

In all, 4,341 paying customers watched it. An additional one hundred policemen, army personnel from a nearby fort, and Mesquakie Indians from a reservation witnessed the bout.

In faces were pipes, cigarettes, cigars, and turdy lumps of chewing tobacco; in hands were soda pop, spafizzes, lemonade, and beer; on tongues were cheers for Sovich, curses for the colored man, and boos whenever the referee had the audacity to remind Sovich that there were, after all, rules to this contest.

It was ninety-four degrees when the fight started, and there was no wind. The latrines, filled with piss and feces, were rancid enough to spoil some people's enjoyment of the boxing match. The people in the confection tents worried that they would not have enough soda pop and beer to last the fight, particularly if the colored man surprised everybody and managed to stay upright for any length of time.

Occasional female faces dotted the crowd. These women generally fit into two classes—the girlfriends (as opposed to brides) of men who wanted to feel their girls were good sports, and the odd woman who had developed a genuine taste for the blood game. The former tended to squeal and bury their faces in a manly shoulder when things got nasty in the ring. The latter showed a silence and fascination stonier even than the men's.

The first round surprised everybody. Rooney did not do so badly. He did not do all that well, true, but he managed to avoid several uppercuts and to dance away from two hard right crosses Sovich tried to inflict on him. Once Rooney even managed to duck a bolo punch he saw only peripherally. Even the meanest of white men had to pay him begrudging respect for that one. If nothing else, Rooney's first-round performance implied that this might be, for a time anyway, something resembling a real boxing match rather than a carnival sideshow.

The second round immediately put the fight back in the sideshow category. Sovich threw three left hooks, each one of which caught Rooney square on the jaw. The second time he dipped to one knee and shook his wide, ugly head to clear it of cobwebs. With this, he brought the white crowd alive. They started yelling “Nigger,” and when whites yelled “Nigger,” the fight was only starting.

The third round was more even. Rooney landed two fair punches on Sovich's shoulders and one on Sovich's head. These blows did not seem to hurt Sovich especially, but they did infuriate him. Sovich had been hoping that the colored boy would have been set down for good by now. He rallied, of course, pasting Rooney with several powerful body shots, one of which lifted Rooney half an inch off the canvas.

By this time the temperature had risen to ninety-seven degrees. In the fourth round, Sovich took complete command again. Two ringing shots to the head and three quick kidney punches once more brought Rooney to one knee. For the first time the referee began seriously evaluating Rooney's demeanor and behavior. He paid special attention to Rooney's eyes.

In the fifth round, Rooney shocked everyone, most especially himself, by slamming a roundhouse right to Sovich's forehead and pushing him back into the ropes, where he followed up with some solid but not spectacular body blows.

Sovich got out of the round, but barely.

“What the hell's going on in there, Victor?” John T. Stoddard asked in the corner while they waited for the next round to begin.

Sovich's entire torso was heaving. “Must be the heat.”

“Do I need to remind you how much we've got riding on this?”

“You think he's going to beat me?” Sovich managed a smile that did not quite convince either himself or Stoddard of his skills at the moment.

“Forget about giving them a show. Just put him to the canvas. You understand?”

The bell rang.

“You understand?” Stoddard shouted into Sovich's ear.

“Yes,” Victor Sovich said, spitting a mouthful of saliva and blood next to Stoddard's shoe. “Yes, you son of a bitch. I understand.”

He rushed back to the center of the ring, determined to get the fight over with and soon.

Sovich felt angiy. He liked it when he felt angry. Such a feeling always proved good for him and most unfortunate for his opponent. Especially if the opponent was colored.

At the top of the sixth, Sovich landed two smashing rights to Rooney's stomach. Rooney dropped backward to the canvas, landing on his bottom.

The white crowd shouted, screamed, cheered, and stamped its feet. They wanted to see one hell of a lot more of this kind of action.

The temperature was now ninety-eight degrees.

The fight continued.

Reynolds watched the first five rounds and then began working his way toward the office, making stops at a beer tent, a beef tent, and a foul-smelling latrine. Sweating had kept him sober, kept him intent on the plan that now seemed not only ingenious but inevitable. Just outside the office door where Guild sat, Reynolds would collect papers and rags and set a fire. There being only one way out, Guild would have to come to the door to find out what was going on. Reynolds would then shoot him in the arm, sneak in during all the confusion, grab as much money as possible, and escape. He had spent most of the past half hour looking at a route for himself that ran adjacent to a railroad bed running east. A fast creek ran below a small forest of poplar and pines, and he could easily wade into the water and move unseen downstream.

Now he was getting almost excited about using a gun.

He found the rags and paper he needed in a storeroom in the back of the office building. He soaked these in kerosene that was also conveniently stored in the same room and then proceeded up to the front of the building.

* * *

“Your father's going to have a nice payday, son.”

“It sure looks that way.”

“Though the fight isn't going exactly as he planned, I bet.”

“No. I'd have thought Victor would have put Rooney away by now.”

“You can't always tell with colored people.” The gate man, one of the first people John T. Stoddard had hired in this town, touched his hand to the brim of his Stetson in a sort of half salute and then moved down the fencing to help out a man who looked both confused and irritated, standing half drunk in the heat and the hard white sunlight.

Stephen Stoddard turned back to the fight. At this point, midway in the ninth round, Rooney seemed as startled as any of the spectators. Not only was Victor Sovich not putting the black man to the canvas, he was beginning to lose the fight. Rooney had just delivered some slashing blows to the head and was now moving in with some heavy body punches.

The crowd did not know how to respond. It was as if a bishop had climbed into the ring and had begun singing dirty ditties.

It was very confusing. Rooney was supposed to be flat on his back at this point.

Stephen Stoddard wondered what Guild would make of all this. Guild usually had something interesting to say about nearly everything. Stephen decided to go tell him.

He wadded newspaper and rags into a single mass of flammable material and set it in front of the door.

He knelt next to it, taking a lucifer from his pocket as he did so. Calculating the direction the smoke would take, he pushed the material a little east of the door itself.

He struck the lucifer.

He sat back to wait for the smoke to start oozing beneath the door and for Guild to come out and see what was going on.

He had his gun drawn.

He was trembling so badly he had to hold his weapon steady with his other hand.

“What the hell you doing in there?” Victor's trainer shouted following the end of the ninth round.

“Heat,” Sovich managed to say.

“Heat my ass. Your arms are dragging. You got to keep them up. You got to keep him from hitting you. That's the problem, Victor. He keeps hitting you, and you're not doing a goddamn thing about it.”

The bell rang for the next round.

His trainer watched Sovich rise ponderously to his feet. He wavered, then wobbled as he put one glove on the ropes and started to walk to the center of the ring.

What the hell was going on here?

Guild, still seated at the rolltop desk with his feet up, thought he smelled something peculiar. Then he decided it was nothing more than all the combined odors, good and bad, of this afternoon.

The rags did not bum properly. Reynolds watched in frustration and anger as the flame reached the kerosene only to have it sputter out before any useful amount of smoke could be generated.

He snatched up the rags and ran back down the stairs to the storeroom for more kerosene.

The knock startled Guild, who had just been on the verge of falling asleep. He had started dreaming about the little girl he'd killed and was grateful to be awakened.

With his .44 in hand, he moved to the door and said, “Yes. Who is it?”

“Me. Stephen.”

“I thought your old man didn't want you in here.”

“You hear about the fight?”

Now that Guild listened, the crowd sounded almost surly. He wondered what was going on.

“Victor's losing.”

“What?”

“Rooney seems to be getting stronger and Victor seems to be getting weaker.”

“I'll be damned.”

“Let me in, Leo. I brought some lemonade for both of us.”

Guild shook his head and opened the door. He kept his .44 ready.

Stephen Stoddard stood in the open doorway with a pitcher of lemonade and two glasses.

“Figured you could use a break,” Stephen said. “Probably gets pretty boring in here.”

“I'm earning some decent money, kid. I don't mind it.” Stephen set down the pitcher and the glasses. He said ironically, “You changing your mind about my father?”

“Long as he pays me, I don't have any complaint.”

Stephen sat down, poured them lemonade, and sat back in a squeaking office chair. “If Victor loses, my dad may be ruined.”

“I'm sure he's been ruined before. He'll come back somehow.”

“Not at his age.” Stephen made a sour face. “There's just no way Victor should be losing.”

“Maybe Rooney's a better boxer than we gave him credit for.”

Stephen shook his head. “We watched him in three different towns, just to make sure he was the man we wanted. We figured he could give Victor a decent fight but he'd never win.” He shook his head again. “Now look.”

Guild sipped his lemonade and lighted a cigarette. He felt, as usual, pity for the kid and an inability to do anything about his pity. Maybe it would be for the best if the old man lost all his money. Maybe in doing so he'd have to cut the kid free.

Stephen said, “I told you about my mother.”

Guild nodded.

“What I didn't tell you is that I hired this ex-Pinkerton to find her for me.”

“Why now? After all these years?”

Stephen shrugged. “I suppose it's like a bad tooth, Leo. You never quit worrying about it.”

“So did this ex-Pinkerton find her?”

“Yes.”

“What's she doing?”

“Living her new life. Pretty happily, from what the detective said.” He paused. Sorrow filled his eyes. “She's got a lot of new kids.”

Guild sighed. “Makes you feel kind of bad, doesn't it? Knowing she started a new family and forgot about you?”

“Yes. Makes me wonder if she ever thinks about me or Dad at all.”

“Maybe you should try to look her up sometime.”

“She wrote me a letter.”

“She did?”

“Yes.”

“What'd it say?”

“I haven't read it yet.”

“Why not?”

“Scared to, I guess.”

“Probably be better if you'd read it, don't you think?”

“Maybe that's why I came back here.”

“Why?”

“So I could read it in front of you. Maybe you could help me with it. Afterward, I mean. If I get real bad or something.”

“Sure, kid.”

“I don't want to hate her anymore, Leo. I'm tired of hating her. It takes too much out of me after all these years.” He stared out the window. “Maybe she had a reason.”

“Maybe she did.” Gently, he said, “Why don't you open up the envelope?”

Stephen looked down at his hands and then brought his right hand to the inside of his coat. He took a plain white envelope from the pocket and set it on his knee.

“I'm kind of scared, Leo. I really am.”

“You want me to read it to you?”