Stories of Breece D'J Pancake (14 page)

“So I thought we’d arrange a little match. Since you got boxin’ in your blood, I’d be willin’ to let you stand in. Loser pays for the truck—’course I’d be willin’ to do that, but I know you won’t lose.”

“I quit boxin’ five years ago,” Skeevy said, playing with the chain on the tailgate.

“You’re quick, boy. I seen you. Don’t even have to box. Just dance Gibson to death,” Corey laughed. “ ’Sides,” he said to Cally, “Skeevy loves to scrap.”

She giggled.

“Hell, scrappin’s different. This here’s business.”

Cally giggled again.

He looked to the pasture field where wind-pushed clouds were blinking the sun on and off. He spotted a holly tree halfway up the slope. His mother had always liked holly trees. He had never told anybody about his promise to her; he knew they would laugh.

“Two-huntert bucks,” he heard himself say.

Corey’s eyes grew white rims, but they receded quickly. “Half profit on the booze,” he bartered.

“Take it or leave it,” Skeevy said, watching Cally smile.

“All right,” Corey said. “Cally, you talk good to Jim. Get him to agree on Saturday.”

Watching her walk into the barn, Skeevy knew Cally could probably make Jim forget the whole thing. But he was glad for the fight, and began starving for wild meat.

“Where’s lunch?” he asked Corey.

In the pit, two light clarets rose in flapping pirouettes. Skeevy neither watched nor bet: newly trained cocks had no form and spent most of their time staying clear of one another.

“Lay off,” Cephus yelled. “Ain’t no need to make no bird fight. Break for a drink.”

For ten minutes, Skeevy and Corey were run ragged handing out bottles and making change. Suddenly there were no more takers, and they still had half a truckload.

“The Pursies ain’t buyin’ from me after last night,” Corey whispered. They loaded all but a half-case into the truck, and Corey took it back to his house.

Leaving the half-case unguarded, Skeevy walked to the pit to examine Warts’s bird, a black leghorn with his comb trimmed back to a strawberry. Warts had entered him in the main against a black-breasted red gamer. Skeevy watched as the men fixed two-inch gaffs to the birds’ spurs. The Punk stood by him, cleaning his nails with a barlow knife.

“What you want laid up, Benny?”

“Give you eight-to-ten on the red,” he said, his knife searching to the quick for a piece of dust.

“Make it,” said Skeevy. They placed their money on the ground between them, watching as the two owners touched the birds together, then drew them back eight feet from center.

“Pit!” Cephus yelled, and the cocks strutted toward each other, suddenly meeting in a cloud of feathers.

Warts’s rooster backed off, blood gleaming from a gaff mark beneath his right wing.

“Give me—” But before the bettor could finish, the two birds were spurring in midair, then the gamecock lay pinned by the leghorn’s gaff.

“Handle!” said the judge, but neither owner moved; they were waiting to hear new odds.

“Dammit, I said ‘handle,’ ” Cephus groaned. The birds were wrung together until they pecked, then set free.

“Even odds,” someone shouted. Benny leaned forward for the money, and Skeevy stepped on his hand.

“Get off!”

“Leave it there.”

“You heard. It’s even.”

“You made a bet, Punk. Stick it out or get out.”

The Punk left the money.

The birds spun wildly, and again the leghorn came down on the red, his gaff buried in the gamer’s back.

“Handle.” Cephus was getting bored.

The red’s owner, a C&O man from Purserville, poured water on his bird’s beak, and blew down its mouth to force air past the clotting blood.

“He’s just a Pursie chicken,” Skeevy grinned. Benny threw him a cross look.

Warts rubbed his bird to the gamer but got no response.

“Ain’t got no fight left,” Cephus grumbled.

“Don’t quit my bird,” the C&O man shouted, his hands and shirt speckled with blood.

“If I’s as give out as that rooster, I’d need a headstone. Break for a drink.”

“Pleasure,” Skeevy said to Benny as he picked up his money and returned to the half-case. After selling all but the two bottles in his hip pockets, Skeevy started out the door to look for Cally. Gibson stopped him, smiling.

“I’ll make you fight like hell,” he warned.

“Well,” said Skeevy, “anytime you get to feelin’ froggy, just hop on over to your Uncle Skeevy.”

“See you Saturday,” Gibson laughed.

Outside, he looked for Cally, but she was not around. He went down the farm road, across the blacktop, and up the hills toward his shack. When he topped the first hill, he could see rain coming in from Ohio; and looking back on the tiny people he had left behind, he could see Benny standing with Cally. He wondered if Benny would have to clean his nails again.

Trudy’s silence was building as he poured another bourbon and wondered why he gave a good goddamn. When he switched on the light, he disturbed the rest of a hairy winter-fly. He watched it beat against the screen, trying to get to another fly somewhere to breed and die.

“It ain’t like I’m boxin’ Joe Frazier…” He watched her cook and could not recall when she had cared so much about her cooking. “You done tastin’ them beans, or you just run outa plates?”

She granted a halted laugh, turned and saw him grinning, and broke into a laughing fit.

“I swan, you made me so mad…” she snorted, sitting.

“Ain’t nothin’ to get mad over.”

“Ain’t your fight, neither.”

“Two-huntert bucks makes it pretty close.” He had meant to keep quiet and send the money to Bund. For a moment he saw her eyes open then sag again, and he knew she was worried about the hospital bills. He went back to watching the fly.

Outside the rain fell harder, making petals in the mud. He saw his ghost in the window against the outside’s grayness and felt his gut rumble with the flux. Lightly, he touched the scar above his eye, watching as his reflection did the same.

He got up, opened the screen, and let the black fly buzz out into the rain. When he saw the deep holes the drops were making, he wondered if the fly would make it.

“Why don’t winter-flies eat?” he asked Trudy.

“I figger they do,” she said from the stove.

“Never do,” he said, going to the sink to wash.

Taped to the wall was a snapshot of a younger self looking mean over eight-ounce gloves. That was good shape, he thought, fingering the picture. Because it was stained with fat-grease, he left it up.

Trudy put supper down, and they sat.

“You reckon that money would do for a weddin’?” she asked.

“Maybe,” he said. “We’ll think on it.”

They ate.

“Did I ever tell you ’bout the time me an’ Bund wrecked the Sunflower Inn?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.”

In the stainless steel of the soup machine, Skeevy could see his distorted reflection—real enough to show his features, but not the scar above his eye. His mouth and nose were stuffed with bits of torn rags for padding, and breathing through his mouth made his throat dry.

“Too tight?” Corey asked as he held the bandages wrapped around Skeevy’s knuckles. Skeevy shook his head and splayed his fingers to receive the gray muleskin work gloves. He twisted his face to show disgust, and sighed.

“Well, you’re the damn boxer,” Corey said. “Where’s your gloves?”

Skeevy made a zipping motion across his lips and stuck out his right hand to be gloved. He knew it would hurt to get hit with those gloves, but he knew Gibson would hurt more.

A crowd had formed around Corey’s truck, and he had Ellen out there to guard it. She was leaning against the rear fender, talking to a longhair with a camera around his neck. Cally came out of the crowd, put her arm around the longhair, and said something that made Ellen laugh. Skeevy squeezed the gloves tighter around his knuckles.

When Skeevy and Corey came outside the crowd howled with praise and curses; the longhair took a picture of Skeevy, and Skeevy wanted to kill him. They cornered the diner and skidded down the embankment to the newly mown creek-basin. The sun was only a light brown spot in the dusty sky.

Jim Gibson stood naked to the waist, his belly pooching around his belt, his skin so white Skeevy wondered if the man had ever gone shirtless. He grinned at Skeevy, and Skeevy slapped his right fist into his palm and smiled back.

It was nothing like the real fight: Cephus rang a cowbell, Gibson threw one haymaker after another, the entire crowd cursed Skeevy’s footwork.

“Quit runnin’, chickenshit,” someone in the crowd yelled.

In his mind the three minutes were up, but nobody told Cephus to ring the bell. Six minutes, and he knew there would be no bell. Gibson connected to the head. And again. Cheers.

Skeevy tried to go low for the sagging belly, made heavy contact twice, but was disappointed to see the results. He danced some more, dodging haymakers, knowing Gibson could only strike thin air a number of times before weakening. When he saw the time come, he sighted on the man’s bruised temple, caught it with a left hook, and dropped him. Then came the bell.

Skeevy felt a stinging in his eye and knew it was blood, but this was nothing like the real fight. This was crazy—Gibson wanted to kill him. Gotta slow him, he thought. Gotta stop him before he kills me.

Cephus rang the bell. Can’t believe that goddamned bell, he thought. What the hell is this? Can’t see shit. Chest. Wind him. He sighted on the soft concave of Gibson’s chest and moved in.

As he threw a right cross to Gibson’s chest, Skeevy felt the fine bones of his jaw shatter and tasted blood. Gibson did not fall, and Skeevy danced with the flagging pain. He went again with a combination to the temple. He wanted to tear the eye out and step on it, to feel its pressure building under his foot… pop.

As he went down he could hear Trudy screaming his name above the cheers. He lay for a time on the cold floor of the Sunflower Inn: the jukebox played, and he heard Bund coughing.

He rolled to his side.

Cephus threw water on Skeevy, and he spat out the bitten-off tip of his tongue. Gibson waited as Skeevy raised himself to a squat. His head cleared, and he knew he could get up.

W
ATCHING
little Lundy go back to sleep, I wish I hadn’t told her about the Mound Builders to stop her crying, but I didn’t know she would see their eyes watching her in the dark. She was crying about a cat run down by a car—her cat, run down a year ago, only today poor Lundy figured it out. Lundy is turned too much like her momma. Ellen never worries because it takes her too long to catch the point of a thing, and Ellen doesn’t have any problem sleeping. I think my folks were a little too keen, but Lundy is her momma’s girl, not jumpy like my folks.

My grandfather always laid keenness on his Shawnee blood, his half-breed mother, but then he was hep on blood. He even had an oath to stop bleeding, but I don’t remember the words. He was a fair to sharp woodsman, and we all tried to slip up on him at one time or another. It was Ray at the sugar mill finally caught him, but he was an old man by then, and his mind wasn’t exactly right. Ray just came creeping up behind and laid a hand on his shoulder, and the old bird didn’t even turn around; he just wagged his head and said, “That’s Ray’s hand. He’s the first fellow ever slipped up on me.” Ray could’ve done without that, because the old man never played with a full deck again, and we couldn’t keep clothes on him before he died.

I turn out the lamp, see no eyes in Lundy’s room, then it comes to me why she was so scared. Yesterday I told her patches of stories about scalpings and murders, mixed up the Mound Builders with the Shawnee raids, and Lundy chained that with the burial mound in the back pasture. Tomorrow I’ll set her straight. The only surefire thing I know about Mound Builders is they must have believed in a God and hereafter or they never would have made such big graves.

I put on my jacket, go into the foggy night, walk toward town. Another hour till dawn, and both lanes of the Pike are empty, so I walk the yellow line running through the valley to Rock Camp. I keep thinking back to the summer me and my buddy Eddie tore that burial mound apart for arrowheads and copper beads gone green with rot. We were getting down to the good stuff, coming up with skulls galore, when of a sudden Grandad showed out of thin air and yelled,
Wah-pah-nah-te-he.”
He was waving his arms around, and I could see Eddie was about to shit the nest. I knew it was all part of the old man’s Injun act, so I stayed put, but Eddie sat down like he was ready to surrender.

Grandad kept on: “
Wah-pah-nah-te-he
. You evil. Make bad medicine here. Now put the goddamned bones back or I’ll take a switch to your young asses.” He watched us bury the bones, then scratched a picture of a man in the dust, a bow drawn, aimed at a crude sun. “Now go home.” He walked across the pasture.

Eddie said, “You Red Eagle. Me Black Hawk.” I knew he had bought the game for keeps. By then I couldn’t tell Eddie that if Grandad had a shot at the sixty-four-dollar question, he would have sold them on those Injun words:
Wah-pah-nah-te-he
—the fat of my ass.