The Best of Lucius Shepard (54 page)

In
the clinch, that’s when he caught sight of the Alligator Man. The Cuban pulled
back his head, trying to wrench his right glove free, and the blurred oval of
his face sharpened, resolved into features: blazing yellow eyes and pebbly
skin, and slit nostrils at the end of a long snout. Although used to such
visions, hallucinations, whatever this was, Mears reacted in terror. He jolted
the Alligator Man with an uppercut, he spun him, landed a clubbing right high
on the head, another right, and as if those punches were magic, as if their
force and number were removing a curse, breaking a spell, the Alligator Man’s
face melted away, becoming a blurred brown oval once again. Mears’ terror also
grew blurred, his attack less furious, and the Cuban came back at him, throwing
shots from every angle. Mears tried to slide off along the ropes but his legs
were gone, so he ducked his head and put his gloves up to block the shots. But
they got through, anyway.

Somebody’s
arms went around him, hemming him in against the ropes, and he smelled flowery
cologne and heard a smooth baritone saying, “Take it easy, man! It’s over.”
Mears wanted to tell the ref he could have stood up through ten, the Cuban
couldn’t punch for shit. But he was too weak to say anything and he just rested
his head on the ref’s shoulder, strings of drool hanging off his mouthpiece,
cooling on his chin. And for the first time in a long while, he heard the crowd
screaming for the Cuban, the women’s voices bright and crazy, piercing up from
the male roar. Then Leon was there, Leon’s astringent smell of Avitene and
Vaseline and Gelfoam, and somebody shoved Mears down onto a stool and Leon
pressed the ice-cold bar of the Enswell against the lump over his eye, and the Cuban
elbowed his way through the commission officials and nobodies in the corner and
said, “Man, you one tough motherfucker. You almos’ kill me with them right
hands.” And Mears had the urge to tell him, “You think I’m tough, wait’ll you
see what’s coming,” but instead, moved by the sudden, heady love that possesses
you after you have pounded on a man for nine rounds and he has not fallen,
Mears told him that one day soon he would be champion of the world.

Mears
wonders if the bestial faces that materialize in the midst of his fights are
related to the pain in his head. In his heart he believes they are something
else. It could be that he has been granted the magical power to see beneath the
surface of things. Or they may be something his mind has created to compensate
for his blindness, a kind of spiritual adrenaline that inspires him to fiercer
effort, often to victory. Since his retinas became detached, he has slipped
from the status of fringe contender to trial horse for young fighters on the
way up, and his style has changed from one of grace and elusiveness to that of
a brawler, of someone who must keep in constant physical contact with his
opponent. Nevertheless, he has won twelve of seventeen fights with his
handicap, and he owes much of his success to this symptom or gift or delusion.

He
knows most people would consider him a fool for continuing to fight, and he
accepts this. But he does not consider himself a greater fool than most people;
his is only a more dramatic kind of foolishness than the foolishness of loving
a bad woman or stealing a car or speculating on gold futures or smoking
cigarettes or taking steroids or eating wrong or involving yourself with the
trillion other things that lead to damage and death.

As
he lies in that darkened room, in the pall of his own darkness, he imagines
attending a benefit held to raise his medical expenses after his secret has
been disclosed. All the legends are there. Ali, Frazier, and Foreman are there,
men who walk with the pride of a nation. Duran is there, Duran of the demonic
fury, who TKO’d him in 1979, back when Mears was a welterweight. The Hit Man is
there, Thomas Hearns, sinister and rangy, with a cobralike jab that had once
cut him so badly the flesh hung down into his eyes. Sugar Ray Leonard is there,
talking about his own detached retina and how he could have gone the same way
as Mears. And Hagler, who knocked Mears out in his only title shot, Hagler the
tigerish southpaw, he is there, too. Mears ascends to the podium to offer thanks,
and a reporter catches his arm and asks him, “What the hell went wrong, Bobby?
What happened to you?” He thinks of all the things he could say in response.
Bad managers, crooked promoters. Alimony. I forgot to duck. The classic
answers. But there is one answer they’ve never heard, one that he’s nourished
for almost two years.

“I
traveled into the heartland,” he tells the reporter, “and when I got done
fighting the animals there, I came out blind.”

The
reporter looks puzzled, but Ali and Foreman, Frazier and Hagler, Duran and
Hearns, they nod sagely, they understand. They realize Mears’ answer is partly
a pride thing, partly intuitive, a summation of punches absorbed, hands lifted
in victory, months of painful healing, hours of punishment in the gym. But
mainly it is the recasting into a vow of a decision made years before. They
would not argue that their sport is brutally stupid, run by uncaring bastards
to whom it is a business of dollars and blood, and that tragedies occur, that
fighters are swindled and outright robbed. Yet there is something about it they
have needed, something they have chosen, and so in the end, unlike the asbestos
worker who bitterly decries the management that has lied to him and led him
down a fatal path, the fighter feels no core bitterness, not even at himself
for being a fool, for making such a choice in the folly of youth, because he
has forsworn the illusion of wisdom.

Mears
is not without regrets. Sometimes, indeed, he regrets almost everything. He
regrets his blindness, his taste in women, his rotten luck at having been a
middleweight during the age of Marvin Hagler. But he has never regretted
boxing. He loves what he does, loves the gym rats, the old dozers with their
half-remembered tales of Beau Jack and Henry Armstrong, the crafty trainers,
the quiet cut men with their satchels full of swabs and chemicals. He loves how
he has been in the ring, honorable and determined and brave. And now, nodding
off in a cheap hotel room, he feels love from the legends of the game returned
in applause that has the sound of rushing water, a pure stream of affirmation
that bears him away into the company of heroes and a restless sleep.

*
* *

Three
mornings later, as Mears waits for Leon in the gym, he listens happily to the
slapping of jump ropes, the grunt and thud of someone working the heavy bag,
the jabber and pop of speed bags, fighters shouting encouragement, the
sandpapery whisk of shoes on canvas, the meaty thump of fourteen-ounce sparring
gloves. Pale winter light chutes through the high windows like a Bethlehem star
to Mears’ eyes. The smell is a harsh perfume of antiseptic, resin, and sweat.
Now and then somebody passes by, says, “Yo, Bobby, what’s happenin’?” or “Look
good the other night, man!” and he will hold out his hand to be slapped without
glancing up, pretending that his diffidence is an expression of cool, not a
pose designed to disguise his impaired vision. His body still aches from the
Cuban’s fast hands, but in a few weeks, a few days if necessary, he’ll be ready
to fight again.

He
hears Leon rasping at someone, smells his cigar, then spots a dark interruption
in the light. Not having to see Leon, he thinks, is one of the few virtues of
being legally blind. He is unsightly, a chocolate-colored blob of a man with jowls
and yellow teeth and a belly that hangs over his belt. The waist of Mears’
boxing trunks would not fit over one of Leon’s thighs. He is especially
unsightly when he lies, which is often—weakness comes into his face, his popped
eyes dart, the pink tip of the tongue slimes the gristly upper lip. He looks
much better as a blur in an onion-colored shirt and dark trousers.

“Got
a fight for us, my man.” Leon drops onto a folding chair beside him, and the
chair yields a metallic creak. “Mexican name Nazario. We gon’ kick his fuckin’
ass!”

This
is the same thing Leon said about the Cuban, the same thing he said about every
opponent. But this time he may actually be sincere. “Guy’s made for us,” he
continues. “Comes straight ahead. Good hook, but a nothin’ right. No fancy
bullshit.” He claps Bobby on the leg. “We need a W bad, man. We whup this guy
in style, I can get us a main event on ESPN next month in Wichita.”

Mears
is dubious. “Fighting who?”

“Vederotta,”
says Leon, hurrying past the name to say the Nazario fight is in two weeks. “We
can be ready by then, can’t we, sure, we be ready, we gon’ kill that
motherfucker.”

“That
guy calls himself the Heat? Guy everybody’s been duckin’?”

“Wasn’t
for everybody duckin’ him, I couldn’t get us the fight. He’s tough, I ain’t
gon’ tell you no lie. He busts people up. But check it out, man. Our end’s
twenty grand. Like that, Bobby? Tuh-wenty thousand dollars.”

“You
shittin’ me?”

“They
fuckin’ desperate. They can’t get nobody to fight the son of a bitch. They need
a tune-up for a title shot.” Leon sucks on his cigar, trying to puff it alight.
“It’s your ass out there, man. I’ll do what you tell me. But we get past
Nazario, we show good against Vederotta—I mean give him a few strong rounds,
don’t just fold in one—guy swears he’ll book us three more fights on ESPN
cards. Maybe not the main event, but TV bouts. That’d make our year, man. Your
end could work out to forty, forty-five.”

“You
get that in writin’ ‘bout the three more fights?”

“Pretty
sure. Man’s so damn desperate for somebody with a decent chin, he’ll throw in a
weekend with his wife.”

“I
don’t want his damn wife, I want it in writin’ ‘bout the fights.”

“You
ain’t seen his wife! That bitch got a wiggle take the kinks outta a couch
spring.” Delighted by his wit, Leon laughs; the laugh turns into a wet, racking
cough.

“I’m
gon’ need you on this one,” says Mears after the coughing has subsided. “None
of this bullshit ‘bout you runnin’ round all over after dope and pussy while
I’m bustin’ my balls in the gym, and then showin’ up when the bell rings. I’m
gon’ need you really working. You hear that, Leon?”

Leon’s
breath comes hard. “I hear you.”

“Square
business, man. You gotta write me a book on that Vederotta dude.”

“I’ll
do my thing,” says Leon, wheezing. “You just take care of old Señor Nazario.”

The
deal concluded, Mears feels exposed, as if a vast, luminous eye—God’s,
perhaps—is shining on him, revealing all his frailties. He sits up straight,
holds his head very still, rubs his palms along the tops of his thighs, certain
that everyone is watching. Leon’s breathing is hoarse and labored, like last
breaths. The light is beginning to tighten up around that sound, to congeal into
something cold and gray, like a piece of dirty ice in which they are all
embedded.

Mears
thinks of Vederotta, the things he’s heard. The one-round knockouts, the
vicious beatings. He knows he’s just booked himself a world of hurt. As if in
resonance with that thought, his vision ripples and there is a twinge inside
his head, a little flash of red. He grips the seat of the chair, prepares for
worse. But worse does not come, and after a minute or so, he begins to relax,
thinking about the money, slipping back into the peace of morning in the gym,
with the starred light shining from on high and the enthusiastic shouts of the
young fighters and the slap of leather making a rhythm like a river slapping
against a bank and the fat man who is not his friend beginning to breathe
easier now beside him.

*
* *

When
Mears phones his ex-wife, Amandla, the next night, he sits on the edge of the
bed and closes his eyes so he can see her clearly. She’s wearing her blue robe,
slim-hipped and light-skinned, almost like a Latin girl, but her features are
fine and eloquently African and her hair is kept short in the way of a girl
from Brazzaville or Conakry. He remembers how good she looks in big gold hoop
earrings. He remembers so much sweetness, so much consolation and love. She
simply had not been able to bear his pain, coming home with butterfly patches
over his stitched eyes, pissing blood at midnight, having to heave himself up
from a chair like an old man. It was a weakness in her, he thinks, yet he knows
it was an equivalent weakness in him, that fighting is his crack, his heroin—he
would not give it up for her.

She
picks up on the fourth ring, and he says, “How you been, baby?”

She
hesitates a moment before saying, “Aw, Bobby, what you want?” But she says it
softly, plaintively, so he’ll know that though it’s not a good thing to call,
she’s glad to hear his voice, anyway.