We Were Kings (27 page)

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Dorchester Avenue, Dorchester

IN THE DIN
of the bar, Dante heard two men arguing toward the back of the room. He walked through the smoky haze and in an end booth found Cal drunk at a table. He was yelling and had his finger pointed at some guy's face. He was also smiling in a cocky manner, his face dark with stubble and his cheeks flushed with drink. Dante hadn't seen Cal look so thin since he came off the ship from the French field hospital in '45. Around the table, there were a few older Irishmen with pinched faces and a young man sitting with his back to Dante.

The man Cal was arguing with stood about six foot four and had wide, sloping shoulders; he was a barrel-chested laborer who weighed about two hundred and forty pounds, all of it solid as stone. His hair was orange and thick and curly with bushy sideburns that covered his cheeks and jaw and went down his neck. His eyes were a dark blue in his sunburned face.

“We'll take on this narrowback to get my boy in shape for his fight in two weeks,” he said, “but my boy don't fight for nothing.” At this, the men around them became excited and began hollering odds.

Dante realized it wasn't the older man that Cal wanted to fight, but the kid. The mountain of a man was his father. He could see that the kid was thin and wiry, a neck corded tightly with lean muscle—it was a neck built to take a punch. The hair was ginger like his father's and cut so close to the scalp that knotted scars on his head were visible and gleamed palely under the lamplight. And the kid already had a reputation—he had a match with a ranked fighter at Florian Hall in two weeks. Dante could hear the animated talk about the kid's left, which had already KO'd a dozen men.

Another man came over to the table and gave Cal and the boy each a shot, which Cal downed immediately. The other shot sat untouched next to the kid's full beer. More words were exchanged, and men came from their bar stools and gathered around the table, digging out crumpled ones and fives and giving them to a man who'd taken it upon himself to act as bookie. The winner of the match, he announced, would get a share of the overall pot. Dante lit a cigarette and moved closer to the table.

The kid was no more than nineteen and had a mouth missing half its teeth and a nose that had been broken and improperly set. He was wearing heavy wool slacks and a shirt far too large for his slight build. Somebody from the bar hollered, “Take it outside,” and the father and kid stood and were followed by nearly a dozen men. The kid's father, towering over everyone else, led the way to the back door, his arms swinging loose at his sides.

Dante stepped in and grabbed Cal's shoulder. It appeared to take Cal a few moments for his eyes to focus. A look of bewilderment passed across his face.

“Dante! What you say?”

“Don't waste your time with it, Cal.”

“They're saying he's one of the best out of the west of Ireland,” Cal slurred. His breath was sour and hot with whiskey. “He's been training the last four months in the Catskills. Going to fight Scarpelli at Florian Hall. I want a piece of him.”

He grabbed the cigarette from Dante's fingers, brought it to his mouth, and took a few hauls off it before staggering slightly and following the dozen men down the hallway to the back door. Dante had no choice but to go after him.

The lot behind the bar was a wide slab of cracked and crumbling concrete. A chain-link fence bordered one side. Four garbage cans sat brimming with fetid trash. A light above the doorway and an alley streetlight were the only illumination. The dozen men moved into a circle of sorts. One of them, the bookie, pulled aside a wooden crate and sat down heavily on it.

The kid took off his shirt, tossed it to the ground, and raised his fists, showing large, scarred knuckles.

Some of the crowd were shouting at the kid in Irish, urging him on, while others called out bets and Cal listened as the odds grew against him—“Five on the kid,” “Another two on the Paddy,” “He's gonna fuck that gimp up,” “All in for the Mick”—and then he shut it out and focused on his breathing and his feet, always breathing and always moving, and feeling the strength in his bad leg from all his days working the bag for hours, from his limping runs in the morning along the docks and the Fort Point Channel, and now the sharp snap and pop in his wrists and fists as he jabbed and struck the kid two stinging punches to the face and was surprised that the kid took it, had even seemed to nod at him before dancing back.

When the kid came close again, Cal surprised him by quickly moving to his side and using an uppercut to open him up for a roundhouse to the kidneys. He felt the kid's abdomen contract under the blow and he knew he'd hurt him, and when he came in again he knew he had him. But this time when he swung the kid moved faster and popped his head back with two straight left jabs before he could cover up, and then the kid came in fast on him again, evading, jabbing, and then pulling back, and then again a third and fourth time, sticking and shifting, sticking and shifting. Within a minute Cal knew he was in over his head, and he tried to focus his thoughts on defensive jabs and lunges just to set the kid back on his heels so that he might get some time to breathe and set himself properly.

Repeatedly, the kid landed his shots, and none of them glancing blows. As fast as Cal tried to counter, he wasn't fast enough to evade the kid's punches and the kid easily outmaneuvered him.

His bad leg did him little service now; he had almost nothing to push off when he jabbed. It caused him to be flatfooted in the moment before he punched, costing him speed and power. And this slight hesitation was a clear sign to the kid that Cal was setting up the jab, which he now had to deliver with a lurching lunge. Cal knew this, and what made it worse was the kid's range—he had arms on him like long tree limbs. His jabs continuously sent Cal's head snapping back on his neck.

Quickly, Cal grew tired and he leaned against the kid, held him until the boy forced him away with an uppercut or a straight arm to the solar plexus. Cal, breathing heavy, tried to slow things down by moving and blocking, countering the kid before he had a chance to set up for the combinations Cal quickly learned he favored.

The kid was as good with his right as he was with his left and whenever Cal forgot the left, the kid made him pay. Whenever he could avoid getting hit, Cal repeatedly struck the kid's left biceps and the kid would jackrabbit backward and come in a bit slower the next time, more cautious, but after six savage blows to his left arm, the kid could barely lift it and then only in a defensive manner. As a weapon, it seemed next to useless but in one moment, as Cal was moving back, the kid's left seemed to come from nowhere and it momentarily stunned him and turned him blind. He stumbled, shaking his head, and knew that if he couldn't cover up or gain some time to recover, it would be over.

Cal lowered his hands, made himself even more defenseless, as the lights of the alley and the sounds of the shouting men bounced in the cave of his skull—he fought to hold on to something concrete and squinted to focus his eyes as the kid took the bait and came in for the kill. At the last moment Cal dived forward low and hard like a wrestler and threw his arms about the kid, held on as the kid tried to shake him off. But this time he didn't have the strength to force Cal's arms off. Cal lowered his head into the kid's chest and pounded his ribs and kidneys with punches, and the kid fought to get away, and Cal fell almost eagerly into the blindness that enveloped him. In this place, the alley and the clamoring men were gone; even the kid was gone. There was no pain, barely any sensation of the physical world at all, although he was aware of his body still continuing to function—to do what it did—like a machine.

Ash fell lazily in the sky. There was a moon somewhere up there but he couldn't see it. The heat he felt was the heat of flames. The tarmac was oozing thick and soft beneath his feet, holding him, making movement slow. Lynne was screaming, her hair and head ablaze as she ran through their apartment. He saw her launch herself out into space, hands grasping at air, and then he saw her plummeting and there was nothing that he could do but watch, watch as the firemen doused her body with water, and then there was only the black and twisted carcass steaming in the center of the street.

In darkness the ash covered him, muffled all sound, although he was barely aware of his flesh being struck and of him striking flesh, the heft and resistance of it against his fist, of hipbone and solar plexus, the hard grind of heads against each other, skulls cracking, of the kid's breath loud and rushing in his ear. He couldn't save her, had been the one responsible for her death. And now Owen, his body lowered into the earth in the same place where Lynne lay.

Pressing his head against the kid's chest, he could feel the boy's heart through the thick muscle—it was tripping like a double bass drum—and Cal sensed his desperation. Cal brought his head up under the kid's chin, catching him hard, and he tried to pull away again, but Cal stayed with him, throwing hooks, glancing blows that nonetheless stung and had the kid backpedaling but too slow and Cal wrapped him up again, butted him above the eye with his head as bettors howled and shouted, and he battered his body as if it were a punching bag.

The kid was trying to move away, push Cal's hands off him and get some space to counter, but Cal wouldn't let go. He bulled and held and struck and butted and then he had forced the kid all the way to the chain-link and he laid against him there, breathing heavily, feeling that if he stopped, he might just puke up his heart. He lowered his shoulders and planted his legs and leaned into the kid as if he were pushing a car along an incline and pounded his ribs with left and right hooks.

“Get the fuck off him and start boxing, you bum,” someone hollered, and Cal raised his face wearily but he couldn't see through his swollen eyes, and he grinned, showing bloodstained teeth. He pressed the struggling kid against the chain-link again, drove his fist followed by his forearm and elbow again and again into the kid's face until he was no longer moving. He heard Owen's young daughter, Fiona, crying at the casket for the father who was never coming back. He saw Owen in the ground and the grubs already tunneling through the open half of his face and into his skull.
All this, Cal,
Owen said, and Cal stared into the darkness where Owen's face had once been, a darkness that made up the absence of skin and bone and flesh, and he saw maggots squirming there.
All this, for what? And if you're not to blame, then who is?

And then he and the kid were both falling, one beside the other. On the tarmac, small shards of glass piercing his palms, Cal crawled on all fours and then shakily rose to his feet. The crowd was staring at him in shock. The Irish had moved forward, closing off the circle, their bodies tense with rage. He saw the kid's father, his face red and trembling with passion, the big sideburns bristling.

“You cunt, you!” the man bellowed and he stepped forward, drove a fist as hard and big as a sledgehammer into Cal's cheekbone. The blow took him to the ground and his head bounced hard against the tarmac and then the father came for him again but three men blocked his way.

Blearily he saw the movement of feet as the crowd scuffled, and a donnybrook broke out—a blur of kicks and knees and fists and snarling mouths. It was the Irish against everyone else and the Irish driving everyone else out, fighting and pressing them into the street. Men cursed and threw bottles; he heard smashing glass and boots grinding the shards into the stone. Through the legs and feet he saw the young kid laid out on the ground, his face bloodied and his eyelids fluttering. Cal thought the kid looked at him, but he showed no sign of recognition. The kid stared at him dully and then he closed his eyes once more. There would be no fight at Florian Hall. The kid wouldn't be fighting in two weeks or even in two months and Cal wondered if he'd ever fight again.

“Get up!” Dante hollered, grabbing at him, trying to lift him amid the press of men. “Get the fuck up!”

He hauled Cal to his feet, and Cal, holding his head, bending low against flailing fists, followed Dante and they pushed their way through the crowd and back into the barroom, empty now but for two bartenders and an old man sitting at the far end of the bar, out of harm's way.

“I've called the cops,” the bigger of the two bartenders said. “You have to stay until they come.”

“The fuck we do,” said Dante, and they kept moving.

“They'll want to have a fucking word with you,” the other said and he came from behind the bar to block their way.

“I am a fucking cop,” Cal said, and he spit blood on the floor. “Get in our fucking way and you'll regret it.” That made the man pause but Cal could see by the look in his eye that it might not be enough. Then the old man spoke up. “Will ye look at the state of them. Sure they haven't had enough for one night? You should be more worried about the mob in the fucking alley.”

The bartender stared at Cal until they were at the door. “You're barred from these premises,” he called, “and if I see you in here again I'll take great pleasure in giving you the thrashin' of your life meself.”

They walked two blocks before either of them said a word. Cal waited until he had his legs back and his breathing had evened out. His leg burned; his ribs ached; sharp pains shot through his lower back when he breathed. He didn't want to look at his face but he could feel how swollen it was. He touched his mouth and cheeks tenderly. One eye had stuck shut but he didn't want to think about that. At the street corner he squeezed the bridge of his nose and, wincing, blew bloody snot onto the sidewalk.

Dante was watching him. “Did you get it out of your system?”

“Get what out of my system?”

“Whatever the fuck is eating at you.”

Cal stared at the traffic moving along the Avenue. Sparks from the wires above a passing streetcar arced blue in the night. Men and women talked and laughed as they walked the sidewalk; there was the smell of fried food and the lit neon of stores and bars. The sound of the Red Sox game coming from a second-story window. His skin was caked with blood, and he thought of Owen's description of the tarred-and-feathered murder victim. In his mind he heard the reverberating boom of the shotgun that had taken off half of Owen's face. The beers from earlier had soured in his stomach but the pain in his gut was from something else.