What I did was snatch the guy’s ponytail with my left hand, doubling it over in my fist and yanking back hard like I was bringing a big dog to heel, which forced his chin to tilt up. Then I torqued my hips and came round with the dynamite right, whipping my torso to propel my fist with all the juice my body could generate.
The punch struck the big man dead in the middle of his face. The sound was like two flat rocks spanked together. Everyone in that warehouse leaned back—it was like an explosion had gone
bang
in the ring.
For a second the whole world sat still: me with that grimy handful of hair, my fist flattened against the big man’s face. If you could have frozen that image, you would have seen my curled fingers resting flush with the poor guy’s eye sockets, his nose having turned into mash.
The big man let out a muffled moan, spraying red spittle. His hands came up in search of blood or pity, I couldn’t tell. And I reached down inside, crushed that tiny voice in my chest pleading for mercy, cocked my fist and drove it into the guy’s face again.
That was it. The man’s body hung slack, back bowed, held up by my hand in his hair—he looked like a dead shark on a dock with a gaffing hook sunk into his snout. I lowered him to the floor gently as I could, then found my chair and sat. The ice bag hit the back of my neck. Blissful cold washed down my spine like water trickling in a downspout.
“You got lucky,” a voice hissed somewhere to my left.
I blew at the fringe of blood-grimed hair plastered to my rapidly ballooning hematoma and thought,
You got that right, buddy. I’m the luckiest man in all Creation
.
Two men dragged the big fellow away by his heels like hunters lugging a dead bear out of the woods. My next opponent warmed up across the ring. As predicted, he was young and thin, with whiplike arms and legs that, if they were attached to a woman, you’d say went on for days, took a break at the knee and went a few days more. He had the empty, edgeless gaze of a psychopath.
Bovine took my right hand in his own. “Is it …?”
“Broke? Yeah.”
“I’ve got some cortisone.”
“Just leave it be.”
Before we got to it the kid stuck his hand out, wanting to shake. Bad sign: it meant he saw this as pure business, which meant he wasn’t any kind of dick-swinger. Drinkwater had found a pro. For him this was punching a clock. This particular shift, his job was to put me to bed. Thankfully I got the sense he’d do no more than was needed to reach that goal—but he
would
finish me.
The first shot impacted the mouse on my forehead with the mathematical precision of a laser-guided missile. The kid followed it up with a smart jab to my nose and another to my mouth. I reeled. My nose was so packed with blood I couldn’t breathe; my lungs emptied through my mouth in a ragged hiss, air singing over my newly chipped tooth.
The kid slipped in blood falling from my face. Lowering my chin, I threw a punch that came up over my shoulder and tabbed the kid where his collarbone met his neck. The concussive
smack
travelled up to the rafters, making the pigeons take flight.
The kid’s knees buckled and he backed off shaking his head, the
glazed look in his pale brown eyes turning into something far more feral and crafty.
I shook my head too, droplets flying off the tips of my blood-quilled hair. How many pints did a man have in him? It felt like I’d bled out a few pints and swallowed another: my gut was heavy with the iron-tasting stuff that flowed down the back of my throat.
Our heads clashed with accidental violence. The shockwave of bone on bone telescoped around my skull, a high ringing note like an air-raid siren. Rocking on my heels, I threw a hopeful uppercut but nobody was home to receive it. A left cross stung in reply. Next a body blow landed like a mule kick and once again siphoned the air from my lungs.
I pressed forward on instinct. A brutal shot sheered off my jaw. The kid’s fist slammed the hematoma, again, again—he kept tagging it like some asshole pressing an elevator button. The mouse had swollen ridiculously: its Cro-Magnon curve dominated the crest of my sight.
I closed in and hit him twice to the body, intending to crush his liver and rupture his kidneys, bear-maul this kid and put him
down
. I cornered him against the sawhorses but my punch swung through clean air, missing horribly, and next I was face to face with a jeering man in the crowd. A fist slammed into my ribs and sent bile burning up my throat. Turning, I was met with a right that tabbed me flush. Black lights flash-popped before my eyes and I was falling backwards into a wonderful coolness that felt like ever-tumbling water, so cold, so sweet and—
I was in a cave. The ground was black and granular. A tree. No top, no bottom, roots braiding in both directions. A slit in the tree’s bark. A man’s face appeared in it. He unfolded himself from the tree with great care, like a contortionist from a glass box. Small, so goddamn small, his skin a pale translucence. He was incredibly old; just looking at him, I felt
my eyes dry in their sockets. The man dug a hole. Sometimes his shovel blade made a sound like hissing snakes as it bit into the ground; other times, it sounded like raindrops. When the hole was finished the man cocked his head calmly as if to say:
Well, son, it’s your choice.
I climbed into the hole headfirst. Wonderful, warm and comforting. A ball of light bloomed, becoming larger, larger …
I was slumped on the chair with Owe snapping a towel at my face. My skull felt like it had been cracked open and blowtorched. My ears were plugged as if I’d been swimming and water had packed into my ear canals. The kid stared at me from across the ring with a look of mingled respect and pity.
You dragged yourself up after being knocked down
, that look said.
But what’s the use when I’m just going to plant you again?
Bovine edged in on my right, a razor blade pinched between his fingers. “We’ve got to cut that thing,” he said.
He drew the blade along my forehead, slitting the bulging mouse. Blood sheeted down my face, blinding me. Owe mopped it, and Bovine swabbed the cut with Adrenalin—I could feel the Q-tip moving inside the pocket of swollen flesh—and painted it with Hemostop.
Owe leaned in. “Keep going, Dunk? You sure? You’ve fought like an animal, but this guy … this
guy
. It’s only money, man.”
Acid curdled in my gut.
Only money
. It’s always only money if you’ve always had it. I heaved myself up to meet the kid.
What happened next happened quickly, as things often do in fights. It was an accident, pure and simple: I stepped on the kid’s foot.
I was rabbiting in, trying to close the distance. The kid side-stepped deftly, his left hand coming around with awful intent. My right fist was fixed on a similar orbit, moving slower but with a lot more
oomph
. Coming forward, I stepped on the kid’s right foot. It
was nothing purposeful or planned. The kid’s fist collided with my ear, pinching a vessel threaded through the cartilage. My own punch landed solidly enough to knock him off balance. As he went back his left foot slipped on a patch of sweat, pulling him into an awkward splits.
His Achilles tendon tore. His left leg crumpled. The kid tried to stand. Instinctively, I offered my hand to help him up. I squinted down, wobbly on my feet—then withdrew my hand sadly and said, “You ought to stay down.” The kid followed my eyes. The tendon had ripped off the bone, wadding up around his ankle like a loose tube sock. He nodded.
A few of the kid’s buddies stepped from the crowd. They picked him up and carried him past Drinkwater, who stood with a painful, pursed grin on his face.
I didn’t dare sit down; my legs would seize with scalding lactic acid. My broken right hand had mushroomed to double its size. I shuffled my feet like a man near the end of an epic dance marathon and waited for the next fighter. When he appeared, I smiled—not that anyone would have noticed since my lips were fat as sausages.
“Holy shit,” Silas Garrow said to Drinkwater. “You sure you want me to hit this guy? Why not give me a feather—that’ll knock him over just as well.”
It had all started with a letter. It had arrived at the Kingston Pen in an envelope with a stamp of Chief Big Bear in full headdress—treaty stamps, they were called, dispensed only on reservations to card-holding band members. The envelope had been slit, its contents inspected by the mailroom guard. The return address had been scribbled over with a black felt-tip; all I could read was the band number, 159. The Mohawks of Akwesasne First Nation.
Greetings, White Devil! I trust you are keeping up with your daily beatings, and I hope you have found a sparring partner who is as happy to administer them as I was. As I am aware that other eyes than yours will read this, I will only say that rockin’ is my business, and business is GOOD. I hear that one of our mutual friends—Mr. Guzzlesoda, let’s call him—has had troubles as of late. Some sticky-fingered thieves took advantage of him. What a shame! When you get out, make sure you look me up. I’m always looking for spare punching bags. Until then, I offer a thousand hosannas in your name
.
Yours in Christ
,
Silas Garrow
The day after my release I’d walked up the street to the motel pay phone, fed coins into the box and dialled.
“Akwesasne Import–Export Holdings,” said a female voice. “How may I help you?”
“Silas Garrow, please.”
After a snatch of elevator muzak, Garrow picked up.
“Import–Export, huh?” I said.
“We import lots,” Garrow said. “Teddy bears, Japanese soda pop. Why must you think so poorly of me, white man?”
“The big house hardened me.”
I sketched my idea for him. Garrow listened silently, then said: “It’s Diggstown, baby. It’s also just about the longest long shot I’ve ever heard.”
“Could you get yourself in?”
“Maybe. He generally invites tomato cans, doesn’t he? Hell, he invited you.”
“You’re a peach, Silas.”
“If I did this, I’d have to set this up so there’s no suspicion—that
man’s a lot of things, but a fool he ain’t. And anyway, what makes you figure you’ll make it past the first two?”
“That’s on me. If not, it’s an easy night for you.”
Silas considered it. “On the one hand, it would be shit for my boxing cred—losing to a banana-footed white devil. On the other hand, it’s not like Don King’s knocking on my door, right?”
So Silas made the call, asking Drinkwater to set up a fight. Drinkwater said he’d keep Silas in mind. A few weeks later I’d laid the trap—“
If that’s the kind of guy you think I am, why not make it all Natives?
” And Drinkwater walked into it.
“I’ll have to hit you,” Silas had warned me. “Not just to salvage a shred of dignity, but because we can’t give Drinkwater a sniff of this being a tank job.”
Silas skipped out of his corner lightly, crossing his legs over, making a full circuit around me where I stood rooted in the centre of the ring. Silas shook his head at Drinkwater, said, “Shouldn’t I be wearing an executioner’s hood?”
Drinkwater’s lips were pressed into a whitened line. “Just get it over with.”
Silas pumped out a few air-jabs, showing off his speed. I could barely raise my hands to parry them. Silas stepped back, scoffing, playing up his role, then hit me four times: right to the body, left to the body, right to the body, left to the forehead as he was backing away. The violence was sudden and the blows stung like bullets—either my body had stopped pumping adrenaline or I was too hurt for it to have much benefit. But Silas knew where to hit: the guts, the forehead. He avoided my knockout buttons—a liver shot might put me down for good, but anywhere else I’d survive.
I reeled from the volley, only selling it a little—it hurt like hell, no faking needed. The air-raid siren kicked up in my head; I took
a knee. Silas backed off. Drinkwater nearly stormed into the ring.
“Hit him,” I heard him cry. “Go on, quick! Keep at it!”
“Come on, Lem. He’s down. Standing eight-count.”
“This isn’t goddamn Vegas! Hit him and keep on hitting him!”
I gathered my feet but couldn’t quite find my balance: it was as if I was struggling in a fierce riptide. My body was approaching a cliff that my will couldn’t bridge—no amount of strength would salvage me, no guts or heart. I’d simply topple over. No shame in that, I guess.
Silas punched me in the belly the way a loanshark punches a deadbeat—straight on, no grace. I hinged at the waist, a long runner of bloody drool between my lips. When Silas pulled his fist away I was almost sad to feel it go. At least it had anchored me in a standing position.
The simple act of straightening my spine drained me. Silas slipped a punch past my skull, bringing our heads together.
“Make it real,” he whispered.
I did.
My left hand lashed into Silas’s ribs, then I tightened my right hand and brought it up into his chin. The impact was genuine. Silas’s eyes rolled back in their sockets. I broke another bone in my hand but that pain was no more than a sorrowful hum inside my flesh.
Silas went down on both knees like a man who’d been stabbed in the back, his hands clutching for the blade, then he fell face first onto the cement. His liquid snuffles filled the warehouse.
Drinkwater stared blankly at Silas Garrow, KO’d on the floor. He threw the white towel. It fluttered down on Silas’s back and I couldn’t tell if he was unconscious or selling it.
Ten seconds later, he hadn’t moved. The towel rose and fell with his deep breaths. The crowd stood dumbstruck. This was just the freshest in a long line of soul-sapping injustices.
I fingered Drinkwater as he shrunk into the crowd.
“My money, Lem.” I smiled, thinking it must be a sight to inspire nightmares. “Don’t make me get rough with you.”
I thought about the past eight years, the nights without sleep and the constant formless terror; I thought about Edwina because my mind was never far from Edwina; and I thought about cosmic fairness, how it is a mysterious commodity, but sometimes that great wheel really does come around.