Brotherly Love (12 page)

Nick leans back into his pillow and sees it happen
again. He smiles.

Slappy looks at the table and then all the people
sitting around it in their church clothes and napkins; this is a man
who does not understand the uses of a fork. Not which fork to use,
but why use them at all.

"So, Nick," he says, "we got you a
fight."

Nick says, "Slappy, I don’t want no more
fights."

"One more, Nick. Somebody you already beat."

"I can’t fight nobody," Nick says, "I’m
not in shape."

Slappy says, "For this guy, you don’t need to
be in shape. Come on, Steve wants to see you."

Nick remembers the table getting so quiet he could
hear the icebox running in the kitchen. He doesn’t want trouble
with Steve Grazano, so he stands up and puts two chicken legs in the
pockets of his jacket and goes with him.

He remembers the look on Emily’s face.

Yes, she’s prettier now.

At Steve’s place he says the same thing: "I
can’t light nobody, Mr. Grazano, I’m not in shape."

But in the end, he’s got to do it anyway, and
before he leaves Steve says, "By the way, you got another one of
them chicken legs?"

So he gets his dinner too.

The fight itself.

He remembers a heaviness that was never there before
settling over him in the fourth round. He can see himself getting
tired, beginning to hold on to the kid. Del Conners is refereeing,
and he keeps slapping Nick’s gloves off when he holds, telling him
to fight, taking points. People booing; Nick never got booed in his
life.

Finally, in the seventh round, Del pries him off the
kid and says, "Nick, you don’t stop hugging this nigger, I’ll
stop the fight. I mean it."

And the kid says, "Nigger?"

And Nick says, "I don’t give a shit."

Del says, "I mean it, Nick."

Nick says, "So do I," and Del Conners stops
it right there and raises the kid’s hand.

"Who you calling nigger?" the kid says,
allowing his hand to be raised.

Del hid from him for two years, thinking he was mad.

Nick lies in bed, wondering why it makes him smile
now to think of the things that hurt him then.

He thinks it has something to do with the second half
of his life—that at the end, the only way dying can make sense is
if you feel grateful enough for what came before. He remembers the
nuns in the hospital in Atlantic City had a different idea. He was
there almost half a year when he was, what, eight years old? Nine?
Harry’s age. He imagines leaving Harry in a hospital for half a
year.

One of the nuns, an old woman with pale lips whose
hands shook as she reached for the thermometer, told him one night
that when he was sick enough he would long to go back home to God.
"It’s what sickness is for," she said.

And she was dead before he left the hospital.

He pictures her standing beside his bed, the shadow
that moves across the wall as her hand reaches through the pale light
for the thermometer. And then suddenly he is remembering the white
kids giving up their shoes in the street.

He wonders if they will
think of that someday and smile. He doubts that it will ever make
Phillip Flood smile. He puts himself in his place, imagining Harry
coming home without his shoes. Half an hour later, knowing he is
through sleeping for the night, he gets quietly out of bed and goes
downstairs. He makes himself a cup of coffee and waits for the paper.

* * *

T
wo days pass and the old
man is still in the gym. He ties the laces in Nick’s gloves before
he boxes; he holds the heavy bag that Nick hits afterwards.

Nick prefers to let the bag swing, but he allows the
old man his small jobs; he doesn’t want to be the one to tell him
that he’s in the way.

He avoids conversations. The old man spits when Nick
talks to him, trying to talk back.

Nick has begun to think that the old man knows
something about fighting. He’s never done it himself—his nose is
thin and straight and there’s no thickness in his eyebrows, and he
is the kind of old man that if he had fought, he would have been
hit—but he seems to know what he’s watching. There is a certain
impatience that crosses his face when a fighter is flat or tired or
lazy in the ring. He reminds Nick of a trainer.

When the old man watches, nobody gets the benefit of
the doubt.

Afterwards, when he sweeps
the floor, he will push the broom into the feet of the boxers as they
sit on the bench dressing. He makes an angry popping noise, and the
fighters move their feet.

* * *

A
in’t there a number you
can call," one of them says to Nick, "they come pick
somebody like that up?"

Nick is sitting near the window, watching the old man
pick up the pages of the
Evening Bulletin
that have drifted across the floor. He shakes his head. "I don’t
know what you’re supposed to do," he says.

"How long you going to let him stay?" the
fighter says.

Nick shrugs. "It’s pretty cold," he says,
"to put somebody out."

The door opens downstairs, and then closes. Nick is
expecting a trainer, an old guy named Louis Grizzert who’s got a
kid he wants him to work with. He stands up, his legs feel tired and
fragile from being outside in the cold all day working on engines,
and walks to the head of the stairs.

It isn’t any Louis Grizzert on the stairs, though.
Nick stands with his hands on the railing, looking down, and out of
the dark Phillip Flood rises into his life. Behind him are the boys
who lost their shoes to the colored kids. They are carrying gym bags.

Phillip Flood is wearing a tie and a suit and a
cashmere coat that drops to his knees. He looks up at Nick and
smiles.

"Nick, my man."

"How you doin’, Phil?" he says.

He tries to remember the last time he spoke to
Phillip Flood; he thinks it might have been the week he moved into
Charley’s house.

Phillip Flood takes the last eight steps in a sudden
burst, and then pulls off one of his gloves and reaches for Nick’s
hand. Out of breath.

Nick shakes hands, trying not to give Phillip Flood
his knuckles to squeeze. People were always squeezing fighters’
hands to show they were strong. Nobody considered how sore fighting
made them, not to mention working on engines.

Phillip Flood pulls him close, still holding on to
his hand, and hugs him. Nick feels the cold from outside and then the
shoulder of the coat against his face, and he is surprised at its
softness. He smells cologne.

"Nicky," Phillip Flood says, "I wanted
to thank you, what you did for my boys."

Nick pulls himself back and looks at the boys. The
taller one—the nephew—is looking around the room like he might be
interested. The other one is bored.

Nick shrugs. "We been there ourselves," he
says.

Phillip Flood lets go of his hand. "I don’t
remember nobody takin’ my fuckin’ shoes .... "

He looks at his son then, the son looks back.

"So what I was wondering, Nick, would you have
time to work with them a little . . . You know, show them something
for next time."

Phillip Flood brings his fists up on either side of
his face, imitating a boxer. His front teeth press into his lower
lip, turning it white.

Nick looks at the boys again.

"Those were big guys," Nick says.
"Sometimes you just give up your shoes."

Phillip Flood laughs and then puts his hand on Nick’s
back, guiding him toward the far side of the gym.

"Do me a favor here, Nick," he says
quietly.

Nick nods, not enjoying the feel of the hand on his
back.

"These kids are dead pussies."

"Those were big guys," Nick says again.

"They come home without their shoes," he
says, "I want them to come home bloody. I want them to come home
with their balls."

Nick doesn’t say anything to that.

"They got to learn how to handle themselves for
their own good."

Nick shrugs, thinking that is probably true.

Phillip Flood takes his hand again, and puts
something in it. Nick looks down and thinks for a moment that it’s
a ten-dollar bill. There are too many zeros, though.

"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.

* * *

H
e 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.