Stories (2011) (59 page)

The other young man was slight and a dandy. This, McBride
assumed, would be Ronald Beems, the man who had written him on behalf of the
Sporting Club.

Everything about Beems annoyed McBride. His suit, unlike the
wrinkled and drooping suits of the others, looked fresh-pressed, unresponsive
to the afternoon’s humidity. He smelled faintly of mothballs and naphtha, and
some sort of hair tonic that had ginger as a base. He wore a thin little
moustache and the sort of hair McBride wished he had. Black, full, and longish,
with muttonchop sideburns. He had perfect features. No fist had ever touched
him. He stood stiff, as if he had a hoe handle up his ass.

Beems, like the others, looked at McBride and the redhead
with more than a little astonishment. McBride lay with his legs spread and his
back propped against a pillow. He looked very big there. His legs and shoulders
and arms were thick and twisted with muscle and glazed in sweat. His stomach
protruded a bit, but it was hard-looking.

The whore, sweaty, eye blacked, legs spread, breasts
slouching from the heat, looked more embarrassed than McBride. She wanted to
cover, but she didn’t move. Fresh in her memory was that punch to the eye.

“For heaven’s sake, man,” Beems said. “Cover yourself.”

“What the hell you think we’ve been doin’ here?” McBride
said. “Playin’ checkers?”

“There’s no need to be open about it. A man’s pleasure is
taken in private.”

“Certainly you’ve seen balls before,” McBride said, reaching
for a cigar that lay on the table next to his revolver and a box of matches.
Then he smiled and studied Beems. “Then maybe you ain’t . . . And then again,
maybe, well, you’ve seen plenty and close up. You look to me the sort that
would rather hear a fat boy fart than a pretty girl sing.”

“You disgusting brute,” Beems said.

“That’s telling me,” McBride said. “Now I’m hurt. Cut to the
god-damn core.” McBride patted the redhead’s inner thigh. “You recognize this
business, don’t you? You don’t, I got to tell you about it. We men call it a
woman, and that thing between her legs is the ole red snapper.”

“We’ll not conduct our affairs in this fashion,” Beems said.

McBride smiled, took a match from the box, and lit the
cigar. He puffed, said, “You dressed-up pieces of dirt brought me all the way
down here from Chicago. I didn’t ask to come. You offered me a job, and I took
it, and I can untake it, it suits me. I got round-trip money from you already.
You sent for me, and I came, and you set me up with a paid hair hole, and
you’re here for a meeting at a whorehouse, and now you’re gonna tell me you’re
too special to look at my balls. Too prudish to look at pussy. Go on out, let
me finish what I really want to finish. I’ll be out of here come tomorrow, and
you can whip your own nigger.”

There was a moment of foot shuffling, and one of the elderly
men leaned over and whispered to Beems. Beems breathed once, like a fish out of
water, said, “Very well. There’s not that much needs to be said. We want this
nigger whipped, and we want him whipped bad. We understand in your last bout,
the man died.”

“Yeah,” McBride said. “I killed him and dipped my wick in
his old lady. Same night.”

This was a lie, but McBride liked the sound of it. He liked
the way their faces looked when he told it. The woman had actually been the
man’s half sister, and the man had died three days later from the beating.

“And this was a white man?” Beems said.

“White as snow. Dead as a stone. Talk money.”

“We’ve explained our financial offer.”

“Talk it again. I like the sound of money.”

“Hundred dollars before you get in the ring with the nigger.
Two hundred more if you beat him. A bonus of five hundred if you kill him. This
is a short fight. Not forty-five rounds. No prizefighter makes money like that
for so little work. Not even John L. Sullivan.”

“This must be one hated nigger. Why? He mountin’ your dog?”

“That’s our business.”

“All right. But I’ll take half of that money now.”

“That wasn’t our deal.”

“Now it is. And I’ll be runnin’ me a tab while I’m here,
too. Pick it up.”

More foot shuffling. Finally, the two elderly men got their
heads together, pulled out their wallets. They pooled their money, gave it to
Beems. “These gentlemen are our backers,” Beems said. “This is Mr.—”

“I don’t care who they are,” McBride said. “Give me the
money.”

Beems tossed it on the foot of the bed.

“Pick it up and bring it here,” McBride said to Beems.

“I will not.”

“Yes, you will, ’cause you want me to beat this nigger. You
want me to do it bad. And another reason is this: You don’t, I’ll get up and
whip your dainty little ass all over this room.”

Beems shook a little. “But why?”

“Because I can.”

Beems, his face red as infection, gathered the bills from
the bed, carried them around to McBride. He thrust them at McBride. McBride,
fast as a duck on a june bug, grabbed Beems’s wrist and pulled him forward,
causing him to let go of the money and drop it onto McBride’s chest. McBride
pulled the cigar from his mouth with his free hand, stuck it against the back
of Beems’s thumb. Beems let out a squeal, said, “Forrest!”

The big man with no teeth and black eyes started around the
bed toward McBride. McBride said, “Step back, Charlie, or you’ll have to hire
someone to yank this fella out of your ass.”

Forrest hesitated, looked as if he might keep coming, then
stepped back and hung his head.

McBride pulled Beems’s captured hand between his legs and
rubbed it over his sweaty balls a few times, then pushed him away. Beems stood
with his mouth open, stared at his hand.

“I’m bull of the woods here,” McBride said, “and it stays
that way from here on out. You treat me with respect. I say, hold my rope while
I pee, you hold it. I say, hold my sacks off the sheet while I get a piece, you
hold ’em.”

Beems said, “You bastard. I could have you killed.”

“Then do it. I hate your type. I hate someone I think’s your
type. I hate someone who likes your type or wants to be your type. I’d kill a
dog liked to be with you. I hate all of you expensive bastards with money and
no guts. I hate you ’cause you can’t whip your own nigger, and I’m glad you
can’t, ’cause I can. And you’ll pay me. So go ahead, send your killers around.
See where it gets them. Where it gets you. And I hate your goddamn hair,
Beems.”

“When this is over,” Beems said, “you leave immediately!”

“I will, but not because of you. Because I can’t stand you
or your little pack of turds.”

The big man with missing teeth raised his head, glared at
McBride. McBride said, “Nigger whipped your ass, didn’t he, Forrest?”

Forrest didn’t say anything, but his face said a lot.
McBride said, “You can’t whip the nigger, so your boss sent for me. I can whip
the nigger. So don’t think for a moment you can whip me.”

“Come on,” Beems said. “Let’s leave. The man makes me sick.”

Beems joined the others, his hand held out to his side. The
elderly gentlemen looked as if they had just realized they were lost in the
forest. They organized themselves enough to start out the door. Beems followed,
turned before exiting, glared at McBride.

McBride said, “Don’t wash that hand, Beems. You can say,
‘Shake the hand of the man who shook the balls of John McBride.’”

“You go to hell,” Beems said.

“Keep me posted,” McBride said. Beems left. McBride yelled
after him and his crowd, “And gentlemen, enjoyed doing business with you.”

9:12 P.m.

Later in the night the redhead displeased him and McBride
popped her other eye, stretched her out, lay across her, and slept. While he
slept, he dreamed he had a head of hair like Mr. Ronald Beems.

Outside, the wind picked up slightly, blew hot, brine-scented
air down Galveston’s streets and through the whorehouse window.

9:34 P.m.

Bill Cooper was working outside on the second-floor deck he
was building. He had it completed except for a bit of trim work. It had gone
dark on him sometime back, and he was trying to finish by lantern light. He was
hammering a sidewall board into place when he felt a drop of rain. He stopped
hammering and looked up. The night sky had a peculiar appearance, and for a
moment it gave him pause. He studied the heavens a moment longer, decided it
didn’t look all that bad. It was just the starlight that gave it that look. No
more drops fell on him.

Bill tossed the hammer on the deck, leaving the nail only
partially driven, picked up the lantern, and went inside the house to be with
his wife and baby son. He’d had enough for one day.

11:01 P.m.

The waves came in loud against the beach and the air was
surprisingly heavy for so late at night. It lay hot and sweaty on “Lil” Arthur
John Johnson’s bare chest. He breathed in the air and blew it out, pounded the
railroad tie with all his might for the hundredth time. His right fist struck
it, and the tie moved in the sand. He hooked it with a left, jammed it with a
straight right, putting his entire six-foot, two-hundred-pound frame into it.
The tie went backwards, came out of the sand, and hit the beach.

Arthur stepped back and held out his broad, black hands and
examined them in the moonlight. They were scuffed, but essentially sound. He
walked down to the water and squatted and stuck his hands in, let the surf roll
over them. The salt didn’t even burn. His hands were like leather. He rubbed
them together, being sure to coat them completely with seawater. He cupped
water in his palms, rubbed it on his face, over his shaved, bullet head.

Along with a number of other pounding exercises, he had been
doing this for months, conditioning his hands and face with work and brine.
Rumor was, this man he was to fight, this McBride, had fists like razors, fists
that cut right through the gloves and tore the flesh.

“Lil” Arthur took another breath, and this one was filled
not only with the smell of saltwater and dead fish, but of raw sewage, which
was regularly dumped offshore in the Gulf.

He took his shovel and re-dug the hole in the sand and dropped
the tie back in, patted it down, went back to work. This time, two socks and it
came up. He repeated the washing of his hands and face, then picked up the tie,
placed it on a broad shoulder and began to run down the beach. When he had gone
a good distance, he switched shoulders and ran back. He didn’t even feel
winded.

He collected his shovel, and with the tie on one shoulder,
started toward his family’s shack in the Rats, also known as Nigger Town.

“Lil” Arthur left the tie in front of the shack and put the
shovel on the sagging porch. He was about to go inside when he saw a man start
across the little excuse of a yard. The man was white. He was wearing dress
clothes and a top hat.

When he was near the front porch, he stopped, took off his
hat. It was Forrest Thomas, the man “Lil” Arthur had beaten unconscious three
weeks back. It had taken only till the middle of the third round.

Even in the cloud-hazy moonlight, “Lil” Arthur could see
Forrest looked rough. For a moment, a fleeting moment, he almost felt bad about
inflicting so much damage. But then he began to wonder if the man had a gun.

“Arthur,” Forrest said. “I come to talk a minute, if’n it’s
all right.”

This was certainly different from the night “Lil” Arthur had
climbed into the ring with him. Then, Forrest Thomas had been conceited and
full of piss and vinegar and wore the word
nigger
on his lips as firmly
as a mole. He was angry he had been reduced by his employer to fighting a black
man. To hear him tell it, he deserved no less than John L. Sullivan, who
refused to fight a Negro, considering it a debasement to the heavyweight title.

“Yeah,” “Lil” Arthur said. “What you want?”

“I ain’t got nothing against you,” Forrest said.

“Don’t matter you do,” “Lil” Arthur said.

“You whupped me fair and square.”

“I know, and I can do it again.”

“I didn’t think so before, but I know you can now.”

“That’s what you come to say? You got all dressed up, just
to come talk to a nigger that whupped you?”

“I come to say more.”

“Say it. I’m tired.”

“McBride’s come in.”

“That ain’t tellin’ me nothin’. I reckoned he’d come in
sometime. How’m I gonna fight him, he don’t come in?”

“You don’t know anything about McBride. Not really. He
killed a man in the ring, his last fight in Chicago. That’s why Beems brought
him in, to kill you. Beems and his bunch want you dead ’cause you whipped a
white man. They don’t care you whipped me. They care you whipped a white man.
Beems figures it’s an insult to the white race, a white man being beat by a colored.
This McBride, he’s got a shot at the Championship of the World. He’s that
good.”

“You tellin’ me you concerned for me?”

“I’m tellin’ you Beems and the members of the Sportin’ Club
can’t take it. They lost a lot of money on bets, too. They got to set it right,
see. I ain’t no friend of yours, but I figure I owe you that. I come to warn
you this McBride is a killer.”

“Lil” Arthur listened to the crickets saw their legs a
moment, then said, “If that worried me, this man being a killer, and I didn’t fight
him, that would look pretty good for your boss, wouldn’t it? Beems could say
the bad nigger didn’t show up. That he was scared of a white man.”

“You fight this McBride, there’s a good chance he’ll kill
you or cripple you. Boxing bein’ against the law, there won’t be nobody there
legal to keep check on things. Not really. Audience gonna be there ain’t gonna
say nothin’. They ain’t supposed to be there anyway. You died, got hurt bad,
you’d end up out there in the Gulf with a block of granite tied to your dick,
and that’d be that.”