Doom Fox

1

Joe 'Kong' Allen's lifelong stepfather massaged his shoulders and said, 'Son, this is your first big one. Watch your temper!'

The opening bell of the main event heavyweight bout clangs feebly in the smoke-choked din. Joe's shaved bullet head shimmers beneath the inferno of ring lights like a black mini-pond. He shuffles his six-six juggernaut of steely muscle toward his older, crouching, weaving opponent. Joe's left jab blurs as it drums violently against the choirboy face of the bobbing target.

Joe's father ruefully shakes his greying head as he watches a handsome lemon-hued dandy prance down an aisle with a ravishing sloe-eyed beauty awiggle in a tight pink dress.

A corner of Joe's eye snares the comely couple as they seat themselves at ringside. Recklessly, he swivels his head to stare, for an instant, at them. His mouthpiece flashes starkly in his brutish face as his heavy blue lips pop agape in flabbergast. He scowls to see the rosebud lips of the Creole late-teener shape, 'Good luck, Big Bro.'

Her companion, a relative of Joe's opponent, shouts, 'Take care of business, Cous!'

'Reba took Melvin back again. She lied again!' Joe screams mutely to himself.

Freddie, his mulatto opponent, scalpels a red rill across Joe's nose with a left hook. Then he pops a right cross against Joe's jaw that blinks his eyes. The crowd explodes bedlam to see the underdog pretty boy let the monster's blood. Freddie grunts ferociously as he rams in close and hammers lefts and rights into Joe's solar plexus.

A drunken hag screeches, 'Knock out the ugly sonuvabitch, Doll Face!'

Joe clinches, gasps savagely, 'I'm gonna run you back up your mammy's pussy, Bitch Face.'

Freddie whispers, 'No way, Kong Ugly Ass! Say, ain't your mamma a fucking gorilla? And by the way, eat your heart out, Big Bro. I know you ain't hip to the latest. Cous and Reba is planning to tie the knot.'

The burly referee hollers, 'Break! C'mon, break!' He steps in to separate them.

Freddie flees with a smirk. Joe lunges to attack, his face hideous. Freddie back-pedals and slips Joe's storm of hooks and jabs with deft moves of the head. Freddie cutely hitches his candy-striped trunks as he dances and jabs Joe's wounded nose. Joe traps him in a corner, pounds his midsection and face with both fists. Freddie's mouthpiece sails to the canvas. Freddie gouges a thumb into Joe's eye and clinches. The referee retrieves the mouthpiece and parts them at the bell.

Joe drops his arms and is turning away when Freddie loops a hard right to Joe's temple. The blow splatters blood on Joe's white satin trunks from his leaky nose. As the referee moves between them, Joe whirls and bombs a right hand to Freddie's jaw. The impact is like the pop of a Saturday Night Special. Freddie crashes to the canvas, motionless on his back, his jaw crookedly askew.

Joe slips through the ropes to the arena floor. He spits out his mouthpiece and bares his teeth as he strides down the aisle toward the dressing rooms through a strident gauntlet of boos, beer cans, and profane heckling. He goes through a door into a corridor leading to a row of dressing rooms. He pauses near his dressing room to rip a poster off the wall depicting him in hideous caricature looming above a crowded arena in the manner of the movie 'KONG' threatening a city.

He enters his musky dressing room, leaps to sit atop a table. He makes monster faces in a cracked wall mirror. Self-hatred ambushes him. 'Hey Big Bro, you gotta be the ugliest nigger in L.A.' he flogs himself aloud.

His torch for Reba sears him. He remembers his pain and rage, his wild hopeless palpitation for Reba through the years at Manual Arts High School. He relives visions of Melvin, Pretty Melvin, the fickle humper, the dapper campus god, cruising with Reba plastered against him in his low-riding purple chippie-catcher. He remembers how the lovers' frequent break-ups sent Reba to him for solace, how each time his secret dream, to move from Reba's play big bro to her main squeeze, had to be deferred when Melvin swooped to reclaim her.

Joe sheepishly averts his eyes when his father and his ancient trainer, Panther Cox, come into the room to silently remove his gloves and scissor away the bandages from his hands. He leaps from the table after his father attends to his damaged nose. He strips and steps into the shower. They smoke cigarettes and ignore him as he dresses himself in forest green gabardine, his favorite color. The handsome, mocha tan face of his stepfather is bleak with disappointment as he furiously puffs his cigarette.

Joe packs his working gear into a bag, moves with it in hand to the door, turns, gnaws his bottom lip, 'Papa, I'm gonna take a cab ... hey, did that jive nigger get himself together?' he says with a flippant inflection laced with concern.

Elder Joe sighs, 'Yeah, Freddie's all right. That was a sweet right hand ... too bad you threw it between rounds. You get yourself together?'

Young Joe nods as his eyes inspect the scabrous wall above his handlers' heads.

The black granite face of Panther Cox softens as he moves to jab Junior's shoulder. 'Damper your temper for the re-match and you're a cinch to K.O. that pussy in two ... sure you don't want me to drop you off at home?'

'Naw Panther, thanks but I got some private thinkin' and a run to make,' young Joe says as he opens the door.

Joe Senior says, 'Son, don't let that run take you past your mama's curfew. I ain't in the mood to hear Zenobia hassling tonight.'

'Me neither, Papa. I'm gonna cross fingers that she don't spot this beak.'

The trio laugh as they step into the deserted corridor resonated by the roaring of the crowd. Young Joe falters, trembles uncontrollably as a pastel vision materializes through an arena door.

Reba steps in front of Joe to halt him as his companions nod and move on to the exit doors. She clutches his sleeve.

'I'm sorry you didn't win, Big Bro,' she whispers in a smoky contralto.

His heart booms as he gazes down into the enormous hypnotic green eyes set deeply in the high yellow fawn face; framed by coruscating hair leaping in great voluptuous waves from the temples.

He finds his voice to croak fiercely, 'I'm sorry too, sorry I didn't break the nigger's neck. Oh yeah, congratulations if the rumor is true 'bout you gonna get married.'

She averts her eyes for an instant before she stammers, 'Big Bro, I uh ... didn't go back this time to Melvin because I really wanted to. Why it's been almost three months since I quit him the last time, since I even saw him, talked to him ... I'd been hanging up the phone on him dozens of times. Yesterday Daddy made me talk to him and take him back. I'm hip Melvin is rotten, no good ... except in bed.'

Joe sneers, 'Who you hunching? Shoot! That chippie crazy humper is sho 'nuff got you in a cross. He must have a wart on his tongue and a zig-zag dick. Girl, I pity you.'

'Please, Big Bro, don't be mad 'cause I broke my word for the zillionth time. But I got to marry Melvin.' She flutters a hand sporting a three carat stone under his eyes.

Joe yanks his sleeve from her grasp. 'Look girl, I ain't got no right to be mad if you married the Devil. I don't care if you screw that turd on Fifth and Hill at noon. I'm cutting you loose, Lil' Sis. You ain't none of my business no more. Get hip to that, girl!'

She sobs, 'Fathead! Can't you understand? I got caught ... I got a baby!'

He stares at her slack-jawed as she turns away to bump into Pretty Melvin coming through the arena door.

'Hey Sugar Mama, what's going on?' Melvin asks as his hand snakes in to caress a switchblade imprinted against the pocket of his yellow slacks.

Joe hurls his gym bag to the floor. His crouched frame twangs killer brute force. Joe's voice is ragged with emotion as he warns, 'Nigger, I dare you to pull your shank. Go on! So I can ice you! Take your duke outta your raise. Bitch Face!'

Melvin's delicate mouth twitches as he recoils and eases his empty hand from his pocket. Reba seizes his arm and tugs him through the swinging door.

Joe shouts to their backs, 'Pussy, you better treat her right! Don't you give her no grief nigger, 'cause I'll make your ass mine!' He presses his face against the door glass.

Tears well as he watches them walk away through the smoky haze to ringside. He goes to the street, whistles a passing cab to a stop for the trip to L.A. South. He waves at Panther Cox and his father leaving the parking lot across the street in Cox's new red Buick convertible.

Twenty minutes later he arrives to a light show of neon. He walks through a hubbub of honking cars and moiling people peacocking Central Avenue in summer finery. They are celebrating a salubrious July black ghetto Christmas. Saturday Night.

Jouncing bosoms that poke and peep from gauzy cleavages ache Joe's starved scrotum. He ducks into the BLUE PIT BAR, a mecca for whores. A gamey meld of steamy crotches and clabbered perfume stings his nostrils. He seats himself at the crescent bar jammed with raucous whores, tricks and hustlers. Pimps perch and swivel necks, hooded eyes aglitter in leather booths along the wall like gaudily feathered vultures.

The voice of Dinah Washington, street cult princess of pathos wails 'Unforgettable' from a Seeburg jukebox spewing neon flame into the gloomy murk. After three double whiskeys Joe sits, alternately staring bitterly at his uncomely reflection in the back bar mirror, and darting doggish eyes at the connoisseur rearends and curvy gams of two mulatto barmaids inflating black satin leotards.

Joe leans to eavesdrop the contractual rap of a dwarfish mudkicker reclining her fat bottom on the stool beside him with a corncob pipe-sucking Popeye the Sailor-type white man at the bar beside her.

She says, 'Sweetie, I ain't gonna go three way with you for no sawbuck. You gotta gimme fifteen.'

He says, 'I'll spring for that if you can guarantee a tight back door and quim.'

Her big eyes flash indignation as she gives warranty. 'I got sanitary, tight, hot and sweet as bee pussy merchandise, Lover Blue Eyes.'

He shrugs, 'I'll try a ride ... I hope you took a recent crap.'

She grins, stands as she says, 'An hour ago, Lover Dong. C'mon, trail me.'

Joe watches in the mirror as the pygmy hooker leads her trick to the street. His eyes glue to the mirror as an apricot colored creature with a steepled mass of matching hair walks in and seats herself on the dwarfs vacated stool beside him.

'Hi Miss Fine. Can I buy you a drink?' he says with a heated quaver.

Her sly eyes trap his in the mirror as she lights a cigarette and purrs, 'Sure heartbreaker, you can buy a lonesome girl a taste.'

In the sorceress blue glow of the room, her face is Della Robbia angel fresh and innocent. Joe thinks, she's gotta be the finest chick I've ever seen, 'cepting Reba he amends. He decides to check out her frame and pins. He pays a barmaid for a planter's punch.

'I'm Delphine,' she says as she turns to straw sip the drink and gaze into his face.

'I'm Joe ... Allen' he says as he shoves several quarters toward her across the bar top. 'Wanta hear some sounds?' he asks as he dips his head toward the mute Seeburg.

She shapes a little girl lost smile as she spins off the stool to her feet with sinuous ease. Joe and the booth gallery of mack men ogle her crotch-revving curves as she prances regally to pop Joe's quarters into the Seeburg. Hamp’s 'Flying Home' blares from the box.

Sausaged in copper satin, she fires the blue haze back to her stool. 'Like that number, Joe?' she says as she sips.

'Yeah, and you too,' he says tipsily as he launches a hand against her escapist thigh.

'Don't be naughty Joe, so soon ... I don't know you at all.'

He says hoarsely, 'Look girl, I ain't trying to freebie you out of nothing. I'll lay some ends on you in front for some poony.'

She smiles contemptuously.

'Don't play me cheap, girl!' he exclaims as he rips his wallet out and flashes his ninety odd dollar bankroll.

She curls her lips. He unfolds a bank statement with a thirty-six hundred dollar balance. She hawk-eyes it before he shoves it and the wallet back into his pocket, and decides to play him to a tap-out.

Her eyes slit and rake him in ersatz pique. 'I don't sell my body! I'm no whore, Joe' she spits out as she swings her head to stare stonily into the back bar mirror. 'I liked you, Joe, right away ... I thought you were different ... but you're like all the other lousy dogs, thinking I'm just a hunk of meat with a hole, thinking they can screw me for money. Well, nobody has and nobody ever will. I'm a down on her luck girl. But a lady, Joe,' she pitches in a hurt monotone.

After a long moment Joe says, 'Delphine, I'm sorry I ... uh got down wrong ... why you come in here? I was forced to think you sold pussy 'cause this joint is 'ho stomping grounds.'

She faces him, eyes wide with grifter shock. 'It is!? I'm a stranger in L.A. I couldn't know ... had a hassle with my landlord. I just wandered in here for a drink and the company of noise and people to get my lonely self together.'

She darts an apprehensive look about the room. She leans close to Joe, shivers and stage whispers, 'Oh Joe, I'd like another drink but I'm afraid to stay.'