Half of Paradise (5 page)

Toussaint was badly hurt in the third round. Pepponi butted him in a clinch and lengthened the split over his eye. He could no longer see out of his left eye, and Pepponi’s right hand was outside his vision. His nose was swollen and the inside of his mouth was cut. He knew that he had lost the round.

In the corner, Archie wiped his face with a wet towel and worked on the left eye with a cotton swab. The taste of blood in Toussaint’s mouth made him faintly nauseated. He drank from the water bottle and spit it out. The fourth round was the last one. He would have to get Pepponi then, or it would probably be a split decision. Toussaint had the first two rounds on points, but Pepponi had the third and he would probably get the fourth.

Toussaint was unsteady on his feet as he came out of his corner. Pepponi hit him on the bridge of the nose. Toussaint feinted with his left and drove a right hook into his side, just below the heart. Pepponi dropped his glove and Toussaint hit him hard across the side of the head. It knocked Pepponi against the ropes. Toussaint pinned him in the corner and went to work on him. He hooked a right into the Italian’s jaw, and then he felt a bone snap in the back of his hand. The pain rushed up his arm through his body, and made his eyes water. It had cracked like a dry stick. Pepponi got out of the corner and came towards him punching. Toussaint held his right glove in front of his face and tried to keep him away with his left. Toussaint feinted with his good hand to make him drop his guard, and shifted all his weight onto his left foot and drove an uppercut straight into the Italian’s throat. The pain almost made Toussaint pass out. Pepponi spit out his mouthpiece and stiffened as he bounced off the turnbuckle and sank to the floor with his head and arms hanging through the ropes.

He couldn’t get up before the final count. The referee came over and raised Toussaint’s arm to the crowd. Archie climbed up on the apron with the robe, and sponged his face and chest. The Negro’s eye was completely closed. Archie draped the robe on Toussaint’s shoulders, and they left the ring and made their way down the aisle to the locker rooms.

Toussaint lay down on the rubbing table while Archie tried to remove his glove.

“Your hand is swollen up like a rock,” he said. He cut away the glove with a razor blade. The leather peeled back from the edge of the razor. “That punch may’ve ruined your hand for good.”

Toussaint put his left arm across his face.

“The ring doctor will be here in a minute. Is it hurting bad?” Archie said.

“It’s numb now.”

“I don’t see how you did it.”

“I didn’t think about it. I saw him coming and it was over.”

“You got a rough shake. Maybe I didn’t have your hand taped tight enough.”

“The tape was all right. When I hit him he pulled his head in and I caught him with the back of my fist.”

Toussaint’s manager came into the locker room. He wore his hair in a crew cut and dressed in a dark business suit and silk tie with a jeweled tie clasp, and there was a Mason’s ring on his finger. His face was ruddy and there was hair on the back of his hands.

“What happened?” he said.

“He busted his hand.”

“Let’s see it.”

Toussaint held it up.

“Where’s the ring doctor?” Ruth said.

“He’s coming,” Archie said.

“We’ll get an X ray at the hospital and see how bad it is,” Ruth said.

“It’s a compound fracture,” Archie said. “He’s bleeding under the skin.”

“I’m sorry, Toussaint. I had it arranged with the promoters for you next month.”

“He’ll get another chance. The money boys are watching him.”

“They thought you’d make a good drawing card to fight an out-of-town boy.”

“How’s Pepponi?” Toussaint said.

“He was all right after he got up. You just took the wind out of him,” Ruth answered.

Archie cleaned the blood out of Toussaint’s eye with a piece of cotton.

“Here’s what I owe you for the fight,” Ruth said.

“There’s a little bit extra to hold you over. Tell the doctor to send his bill to me.”

“I ain’t asking for no handout, Mr. Ruth.”

“I know you’re not. I always give a boy something extra when he gets hurt and has to lay off a while.”

Ruth tucked the money in Toussaint’s robe pocket.

“When your hand is all right come down to the arena and we’ll see what we can do,” he said.

Ruth left the room. The ring doctor came in and put Toussaint’s hand in a temporary sling. He cleaned the cut over his eye and closed it with twelve stitches. Toussaint dressed without showering, and he and Archie drove to the hospital for an X ray. The intern said that he had broken several bones in the back of his hand and it would take a long time to mend. The intern set the hand in an aluminum brace that was shaped to the curve of the palm and fingers and didn’t allow any movement of the fractured bones. Archie drove Toussaint to his flat.

“Ruth meant it about you coming back to the arena when your hand is well,” he said.

“The doctor told me I got to wait six months before I fight again.”

“What about your job on the docks?”

“They ain’t hiring one-arm men to handle freight.”

Toussaint lived in a tenement building a few blocks from the warehouse district. He went up the narrow stairway through the darkened corridor to his room. The room was poorly furnished, and dingy like the rest of the building, with a tattered yellow shade on the window, a single bed with a brass bedstead, a wall mirror and a scarred chest of drawers by an old sofa that was faded colorless; the wallpaper was streaked brown by the water that seeped through the cracks every time it rained. He turned on the single bulb light that hung by a cord from the ceiling. He took off his sling to undress, and rinsed his face in the washbasin. He looked in the mirror at the row of black stiches across his eye; one side of his face was swollen into a hard knot. He showered, turned out the light, and went to bed.

Outside in the alley he heard drunken voices and the rattling of garbage cans. He looked up through the darkness and thought of his home in Barataria, south of New Orleans. He wondered if he would ever go back. A woman yelled for the drunks to be quiet. Toussaint rolled over in his bed and closed his eyes. He thought of himself on the deck of a trawler with the nets piled on the stern and the steady roll of the Gulf beneath his feet, the horizon before him where the dying sun went down in the water in a last blaze of red, the smell of the salt and the seaweed and the sound of the anchor chain sliding off the bow. He turned in his bed and couldn’t sleep. He remembered the tavern where they used to go after coming into port. It was a good place with a long polished bar and small round tables covered with checkerboard cloths. They served boiled crabs and crawfish, and you could get a plate of barbecue and a pitcher of draught beer for a dollar. It was always filled with fishermen, and Toussaint would stand at the bar and talk and drink neat whiskey from the shot glasses with water as a chaser.

The next morning he looked for a job. He tried the state employment agency first. The only jobs to be had were those of bellboy, bus hop, and janitor. He went to warehouses, trucking firms, auto garages, and was told that there was either no job to be had, or to come back when his hand had healed. The third day he went to a clothing store on Canal that had advertised for help in the stockroom. Toussaint applied and got the job. When he reported for work he was shown where the brooms, mops, dustpans, and cleaning rags were kept, and was told to mop the floor of the men’s and women’s restrooms. He left the store and looked for another job. A week passed and he found nothing. The landlord of his building asked for the rent, which took Toussaint’s last twenty dollars. He rode the streetcars and buses and walked over most of the city to find work. He went to a private employment agency. They said he might try cutting lawns; there wasn’t much else for a man in his condition.

Two weeks later he was sitting in the pool hall, reading the want ads in the newspaper. All the tables were being used. A man with a cigarette between his teeth sat down on the bench beside him. It was one of the hustlers who had tried to get him into a game the afternoon of his last fight.

“Out of work?” he said.

“That’s right.”

“See anything in the paper?” Toussaint looked towards the pool tables.

“I see you got a bad hand. Work must be hard to get.”

Toussaint folded his paper and put it on the bench.

“If you’re looking for a job maybe I can fix it up,” the hustler said.

“You run an employment agency?”

“I got a friend that needs a guy to drive a truck.”

“You drive it for him.”

“I make my bread in other ways.”

“Who’s your friend?”

“That’s him by the horse board.”

“I don’t know him,” Toussaint said.

“He don’t know you either.”

“Say what you got on your mind or go back to your friend.”

“He needs a driver and he figured you might want the job.”

“That ain’t telling me nothing. What’s he want to hire me for?”

“This is a special kind of trucking service. He don’t take on union drivers.”

“What’s he hauling?”

“That’s what the union asks,” the hustler said.

“And his drivers don’t ask nothing.”

“You got it.”

“I want to ask him some questions.”

“He ain’t used to it.”

“Get off it, boy. He wouldn’t have sent you over here to hire a one-arm man unless he needed a driver pretty bad.”

“You’re cool, daddy.”

They went over to the man by the horse board. He was a well-dressed, light tan Negro with thick, rimless glasses. He looked like a Negro preacher, except for the glass ring on his little finger.

“This guy might want to be a truck driver,” the hustler said.

“Did Erwin explain it to you?”

“What are you hauling?” Toussaint said.

“You make an out-of-state delivery. I take care of the rest.”

“What’s the pay?”

“A hundred dollars.”

“I want two hundred if I’m carrying a blind load.”

“I don’t pay a driver more than a hundred.”

“Get somebody else, then.”

“A hundred now, and a hundred when you get there.”

“Where am I going?”

“You’ll learn that tonight. Erwin will give you the address of the warehouse.”

“Is this a one-man job?”

“Another truck will go with you.”

“What is it? Whiskey?”

“Give him the address, Erwin.”

The hustler tore open an empty cigarette pack and flattened it against the wall and wrote something on it in pencil. He gave it to Toussaint.

“Here’s your bread ticket, daddy,” he said.

“Bonham Shipping Company,” Toussaint read. “Are you Bonham?”

“Yes. I am. Pick up the truck at nine.”

“You ain’t give me the money yet.”

“He’s real sharp, ain’t he, Mr. Bonham?” the hustler said.

AVERY BROUSSARD

It was night and the moon was high, and Avery sat on a log in the clearing while Tereau took the coffeepot off the fire. Tereau was three parts Negro, one part Chitimacha Indian, and he made the best moonshine in southern Louisiana. No one knew how old he was, not even Tereau, but a Negro must live very long before his hair turns white. He had fought sheriffs and federal tax agents to keep his still, and some people said that he carried a double-edged knife made from a file in his boot.

Tereau poured coffee in their cups and added a shot of whiskey from the pint bottle he carried in his coat pocket. They were waiting for the bootleggers who were to slip through the marsh in an outboard and meet them. The mules and the wagon were off to the side of the clearing by the trees, with the heavy kegs of whiskey loaded on the bed. Avery took another shot in his cup.

Tonight ain’t a good time to be drinking too much corn,” Tereau said.

“What happened to the bootleggers?”

They’ll be along. There’s a lot of moonlight. They got to be careful.”

“Do the state police ever catch any of them?”

“Sometimes, but they usually get rid of the whiskey before they’re caught. It don’t take long to dump them barrels overboard.”

Tereau rolled a cigarette and handed the package of rough-cut string tobacco to Avery.

“Them bootleggers don’t take much chance,” Tereau said. “They’re always moving and they got nobody except the state police to look out for. I got to worry about federal tax agents. They never give up looking for my still. Every month there’s a couple of them wandering around in the marsh trying to find it.”

Avery laughed.

“They almost got me once,” Tereau said. “When I leave the still I run a ball of string around it in a big circle, about a inch off the ground. One day I come back and the string was slack on the ground. I snuck around to the other side and seen one of them tax people hid behind my boiler. I went and got my brother and two cousins and we brung the wagon up close to the still, then I sent my brother down to the tax fellow’s car. It was parked about a mile away on a side road. My brother stuck a match in the horn button to keep the horn blowing, and the tax fellow took off to see what the matter was, and while he was stumbling through the briars we took the still to pieces and loaded it on the wagon and moved the whole outfit to the other side of the marsh.”

“You crazy old man,” Avery said.

“I don’t see no old men around here.” Tereau puffed on the cigarette and flicked it into the fire.

“Why’d you want to come with me, Avery? You ain’t never been one to break the law,” he said.

“Since they took the farm I got nothing else to do. Breaking the law seems like a good enough way to pass the time.”

“If you don’t end up busting rocks on a work gang.”

“They never caught you.”

“That’s because I been at it a long time. My grand-daddy taught me all the tricks when I was a little boy. When he was a young man he sold moon to both the Confederate and Federal army, except he might have added some lye or fertilizer when he sold it to the Yankees. I hope you ain’t planning on making this your life’s work.”