Blood Game (8 page)

He kept thinking of Helen and how he still loved her and how he would always love her. All she'd asked was that he'd give up being a thief, and at first it had seemed easy, but after a few weeks he'd realized that that was all he knew and that working a time clock job was just never going to work.

He wondered now who he was crying for, himself or Helen. Probably both of them.

He had another cigarette. Gradually his tears stopped. He reached over to the nightstand and picked up the Navy Colt.

He pointed it at the wall and made a small popping sound with his mouth, imitating the sound a gun makes.

He wished it were tomorrow afternoon. He wished it were over with.

They started arriving early on Saturday morning. They came by train, stagecoach, buckboard, horse. They came in ones and twos and threes and whole families. They came from farms and factories and neighboring towns. The local newspaper would make note that one man had been four days traveling and had come better than two hundred miles. Many of them hit restaurants and hotels and the local YMCA, but the majority of them sought out taverns and pumprooms. This was the sort of occasion you started getting drunk for early in the day.

Out on the edge of town, where the bleachers had been set up and a large canvas ring was in the process of being erected, there were already more than three hundred fans who had come early for the best possible seats. It was not yet eight
A.M.
, and two men had already been arrested for drunk and disorderly and another for indecent exposure, the result of taking a pee behind a tree without noticing the fact that a family was having a picnic nearby. The temperature was nearing ninety, the humidity oppressive. Many of the police wore the tan khaki of the auxiliary policeman. These cops looked especially young, trying to swagger around with their hands on their nightsticks but not quite knowing how to do it without looking somewhat ridiculous. The pickets had arrived, too, ten ladies in crisp summer pastels bearing signs that read
BOXING IS IMMORAL
and
WE ARE NOT ANIMALS.
A reporter from Quincy spent an hour with them, making note of their various complaints and trying to hide his own delight over the fact that today he was finally going to see Victor Sovich fight.

Downtown at the train depot, all the taxis were taken up as well as the ten buggies the city had provided for the occasion. The latter were reserved for the gentry, the men who wore three-piece suits and derbies despite the heat, the ladies in lace and contempt. These people were dispatched to the small city's two best hotels, where they immediately proceeded to ruin the days of bellhops, desk clerks, serving maids, and other guests.

Even most of the people who claimed disinterest in the fight had to admit that the town had never seen anything like this. It was as if the place had been set upon by vandals. Every square inch of ground, it seemed, was being stood upon, sat upon, or claimed for later by somebody who'd come here to watch Victor Sovich. In three taverns downtown there were large photographs of Sovich behind the bar. As a joke, one man from Chicago got behind the bar and lighted a candle to Sovich, the way Catholics light candles to honor statues of saints. The prank got five solid minutes of applause from the crowd and free drinks from the bartender, who considered the man a real crowd pleaser and therefore good for business.

In the city park an additional contingent of churchwomen had gathered to decry fisticuffs in any form, but especially the form in which it was done for money.

Two more people got arrested, one for being with another man's wife, and the second for drunkenly believing he was Victor Sovich. For no reason anybody could understand, the man simply began punching his friend until said friend was unconscious and perhaps dead. He'd taken a bad, twisting fall, striking his head on the curbing on his way down.

It was not yet nine
A.M.

Guild said, “I'm not sure yet.”

He was having breakfast in the hotel restaurant with Clarise. She had just asked him where he would go when the fight was over. “How about you? Where are you going?”

She smiled. “I'm not sure yet, either.”

“We're quite a pair.”

The waiter came. He was sweaty and angry, his hair plastered in wet ringlets to his skull. It was hot in here. Management didn't want to open the windows because the black flies would get in.

“You're having a bad time of it, I take it,” Guild said.

The waiter, who was probably close to Guild's age, said, “They kept warning us about the fight and how the crowd would be and all. I thought they were exaggerating.”

“They weren't, huh?”

“Most of these people are drunk already.”

Clarise looked around. “You know, Leo, I think he's right.”

The waiter poured them more coffee. Its stream looked red in the morning sunlight.

“Well, by the end of the day, it'll be all over with.”

“Yes,” the waiter said with a certain theatrical flourish, “or I will be.”

“Stoddard's going to make a lot of money,” Clarise said.

“Stoddard and Sovich. I don't think Stoddard will be dumb enough to cheat him this time. I think Sovich would kill him if he tried.”

Her small, beautiful mouth wrinkled into a frown. “As long as Rooney doesn't make anything.”

“He gets so much per round. That's how these things work. If he can stay on his feet ten rounds he can make himself some nice money.”

“Maybe he'll get killed.”

Guild sighed and looked out at the room filled with stout men in suits and thick mustaches, at women in chenille dresses, at curtains that looked like golden waterfalls with sunlight blasting through them.

Guild said, “You've got to forget about Rooney.”

“That isn't very easy.”

“I'm not sure you'd want to see him get killed, anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Because there's a difference between wanting somebody dead and actually seeing them dead. No matter how much you hate them, you always start to feel a little sorry for them.”

“I take it you're talking about your bounty hunting now.”

Guild shrugged. “I suppose. You track them a few months and take them in, and by then you start to wonder if they are really guilty and what's going to happen to them in prison and what's going to happen to their families while they're gone.”

“I haven't met many people like you, Guild.”

“I haven't met many people like you, either, Clarise.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“Of course.”

“I just wanted to make sure.”

Guild reached over and put his hand on hers. “You know what you should do?”

“What?”

“Get on a train this morning and leave this town.”

“Why?”

“So you can break your tie to Rooney.”

“What tie?”

“Following him around, always waiting for something bad to happen to him. He's got you.”

“Got me? What're you talking about?”

“You hate him so much you can't let go of him. It's like being in love with somebody. You can't let go of him then, either.”

“I hope Sovich kills him.”

“Given Sovich's record, I'd say that that's at least a possibility.”

“I know how I sound, Guild. So hateful. It's not very Christian. But I can't help myself. My brother was a decent man.”

“I'm sure he was.”

She paused, stared out at the blue sky and the golden sunshine. “You really think I should get on a train?”

“Right now.”

“And go where?”

“Anywhere you can start a life for yourself.”

“But I'd always think about him. About Rooney, I mean.”

“But maybe after a while you won't think about him so much.” He looked down at the remnants of his over-easy eggs, sausage, and toast. With the last remaining slice of toast, he wiped up a long, juicy streak of egg yolk and jelly. It tasted wonderful. He finished this off with coffee. He picked up a toothpick and got to work.

Clarise stared down at her long, delicate hands. They looked dark against the white tablecloth. In the hard light you could see all the crumbs from breakfast on the cloth. They seemed the size of pennies.

“I'm scared,” she said.

“Of what?”

“Of not knowing where to go or what to do. At least trailing Rooney around gives my life a shape.”

“I still think you should take a train out right now.”

“You wouldn't be trying to get rid of me, would you?”

The waiter interrupted, saying, “We are supposed to ask all customers if they would mind giving up their seats when they're done with breakfast. The crowd in the lobby is out on the sidewalk and around the block.”

Guild shook his head. “No, I've got to be getting up to Stoddard's room, anyway.”

Clarise nodded, dabbed daintily at her mouth with a blood-red cloth napkin, and then stood up. She looked wonderful again this morning in a blue silk dress with a brocaded top. “I'll see you out at the fight this afternoon.”

“I still wish you were taking that train.”

“Don't worry, Guild. I can't shoot Rooney or anyone. You've got my gun.” She smiled at him with very white teeth.

He walked her out to the lobby. The place was worse than the waiter had said. Everybody was shoving. It was like being on board a sinking ship. He managed to kiss Clarise on the cheek. She vanished into the mob.

He had worked as a field hand until he was fifteen. Perhaps because of his ugliness, which was considerable, and perhaps because of his surliness, which was also considerable, the white people who ran the plantation had never considered using him in the house. His father and mother were in the house. His sisters and brothers were in the house. But not him. No, he went out into the sweltering fields, where they put the worst of them—as they defined the worst of them, anyway—those fit not for social skills or the subtle machinations of being a servant. He was fit only for stoop labor where his hands got bloody from pulling everything from turnips to cotton from the ground and where on a lucky day in the com he might have sex with a young girl.

He broke his first jaw when he was fifteen. A white man had watched as Franklin Rooney had at first resisted and then given in to the taunts of another black boy. Rooney went up to him and broke the boy's jaw with a single punch. How the boy had wailed. How the boy had backed away, terrified.

By age seventeen Rooney was a fixture on an eastern “colored” circuit of boxers. While the whites scorned him, as whites always did, the advantage to being a fighter was that it earned respect from certain types of black people, especially those who inhabited the taverns and brothels of Rooney's choice. Men feared him and women adored him. Sometimes even white women came to watch him fight, and there was no mistaking what he saw in their soft blue eyes.

But early on Rooney knew that despite his cunning, stolid body, his deft right hand, and a certain amount of ring skill, he would never be major. He watched other fighters, black and white, work their way up, but somehow it never happened for him. He stayed on the “circuit,” as folks called it, and watched as other men, lesser men, succeeded. He was told it was because he “just wasn't ready for it.” He knew it because he was so ugly, the nose too splayed, the lips comically thick, the eyes seeming to pop from his head. People who followed the fights wanted their man to look, if not heroic, at least decent. No matter what he did, Rooney couldn't look good. He fussed with his hair, he grew a beard, he had his teeth worked on, he took to wearing a gray cutaway and matching top hat. It didn't matter. No matter what you did to Rooney's face, you couldn't alter it. It was the sort of face that, no matter how long you stared at it, you never quite got used to.

He beat Jackson in '88 and Salivar in '89. He even beat a Chilean named Estafen. He awakened one day and noticed how gray his hair was getting. A few weeks later, fighting a plump kid he should have had no problem with, he nearly got knocked out. It wasn't that the kid was so good. It was that Rooney was getting so bad. Strength, endurance, quickness—by the time he was age thirty they had all left him. And they would never come back.

Wifeless, even finding few prostitutes who were willing to welcome him into their beds, he spent his life trying to make some sense of forces he sensed but could not understand. Why had he been bom not only colored but so ugly? Why were less gifted men promoted when he was not? Would he ever know anything remotely like a normal life? The other day, walking up the street, he'd noticed a small cottage surrounded by a picket fence. A man and woman had stood in the yard, hand in hand, watching a dazzling little blonde girl play with a calico dog. Rooney had almost been overcome by a feeling that started out envy but ended up sadness. Would he ever have a life like that? Ever?

“You know what we're looking for, Rooney.”

“I know.”

“We want a show.”

Rooney nodded.

“A good show, Rooney.”

Rooney nodded again.

“He hits you, you get up. Meanwhile, you hit him every chance you get.”

“You ever see Carter anymore?”

“Not anymore.” John T. Stoddard's eyes dropped, and Rooney wondered what was wrong.

“He head east?”

“I'm not sure where he headed. He—died,” Stoddard replied.

“Died?”

“In the ring.”

“Carter?”

“Had you seen him in a while?”

“Not for a while, no.”

“He'd started to get old suddenly.” Stoddard shook his head. “You know how it gets with fighters.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“He found this kid from Pennsylvania. This really strapping bastard.”

“A kid killed him?”

“Nineteen. But a punch you just can't believe.”