Stories (2011) (60 page)

“Sayin’ I should run?”’

“You run, it gives Beems face, and you don’t take a beatin’,
maybe get killed. You figure it.”

“You ain’t doin’ nothin’ for me. You’re just pimpin’ for
Beems. You tryin’ to beat me with your mouth. Well, I ain’t gonna take no
beatin’. White. Colored. Striped. It don’t matter. McBride gets in the ring,
I’ll knock him down. You go on back to Beems. Tell him I ain’t scared, and I
ain’t gonna run. And ain’t none of this workin’.”

Forrest put his hat on. “Have it your way, nigger.” He
turned and walked away.

“Lil” Arthur started inside the house, but before he could
open the door, his father, Henry, came out. He dragged his left leg behind him
as he came, leaned on his cane. He wore a ragged undershirt and work pants. He
was sweaty. Tired. Gray. Grayer yet in the muted moonlight.

“You ought not talk to a white man that way,” Henry said.
“Them Ku Kluxers’ll come ’round.”

“I ain’t afraid of no Ku Kluxers.”

“Yeah, well I am, and we be seein’ what you say when you
swingin’ from a rope, a peckerwood cuttin’ off yo balls. You ain’t lived none
yet. You ain’t nothin’ but twenty-two years. Sit down, boy.”

“Papa, you ain’t me. I ain’t got no bad leg. I ain’t scared
of nobody.”

“I ain’t always had no bad leg. Sit down.”

“Lil” Arthur sat down beside his father. Henry said, “A
colored man, he got to play the game, to win the game. You hear me?”

“I ain’t seen you winnin’ much.”

Henry slapped “Lil” Arthur quickly. It was fast, and “Lil”
Arthur realized where he had inherited his hand speed. “You shut yo face,”
Henry said. “Don’t talk to your papa like that.”

“Lil” Arthur reached up and touched his cheek, not because
it hurt, but because he was still a little amazed. Henry said, “For a colored
man, winnin’ is stayin’ alive to live out the time God give you.”

“But how you spend what time you got, Papa, that ain’t up to
God. I’m gonna be the Heavyweight Champion of the World someday. You’ll see.”

“There ain’t never gonna be no colored Champion of the
World, ‘Lil’ Arthur. And there ain’t no talkin’ to you. You a fool. I’m gonna
be cuttin’ you down from a tree some morning, yo neck all stretched out. Help
me up. I’m goin’ to bed.”

“Lil” Arthur helped his father up, and the old man, balanced
on his cane, dragged himself inside the shack.

A moment later, “Lil” Arthur’s mother, Tina, came out. She
was a broad-faced woman, short and stocky, nearly twenty years younger than her
husband.

“You don’t need talk yo papa that way,” she said.

“He don’t do nothin’, and he don’t want me to do nothin’,”
“Lil” Arthur said.

“He know what he been through, Arthur. He born a slave. He
made to fight for white mens like he was some kinda fightin’ rooster, and he
got his leg paralyzed ’cause he had to fight for them Rebels in the war. You
think on that. He in one hell of a fix. Him a colored man out there shootin’ at
Yankees, ’cause if he don’t, they gonna shoot him, and them Rebels gonna shoot
him he don’t fight the Yankees.”

“I ain’t all that fond of Yankees myself. They ain’t likin’
niggers any more than anyone else.”

“That’s true. But, yo papa, he right about one thing. You
ain’t lived enough to know nothin’ about nothin’. You want to be a white man so
bad it hurt you. You is African, boy. You is born of slaves come from slaves
come from Africa.”

“You sayin’ what he’s sayin’?”

“Naw, I ain’t. I’m sayin’, you whup this fella, and you whup
him good. Remember when them bullies used to chase you home, and I tell you, you
come back without fightin’, I’m gonna whup you harder than them?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And you got so you whupped ’em good, just so I wouldn’t
whup yo ass?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, these here white men hire out this man against you,
threaten you, they’re bullies. You go in there, and you whup this fella, and
you use what God give you in them hands, and you make your way. But you
remember, you ain’t gonna have nothin’ easy. Only way a white man gonna get
respect for you is you knock him down, you hear? And you can knock him down in
that ring better than out here, ’cause then you just a bad nigger they gonna
hang. But you don’t talk to yo papa that way. He better than most. He got him a
steady job, and he hold this family together.”

“He’s a janitor.”

“That’s more than you is.”

“And you hold this family together.”

“It a two-person job, son.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good night, son.”

“Lil” Arthur hugged her, kissed her cheek, and she went
inside. He followed, but the smallness of the two-room house, all those bodies
on pallets, his parents, three sisters, two brothers, and a brother-in-law, all
 made him feel crowded. And the pigeons sickened him. Always the pigeons. They
had found a hole in the roof, the one that had been covered with tar paper, and
now they were roosting inside on the rafters. Tomorrow, half the house would be
covered in bird shit. He needed to get up there and put some fresh tar paper on
the roof. He kept meaning to. Papa couldn’t do it, and he spent his own time
training. He had to do more for the family besides bring in a few dollars from
fighting.

“Lil” Arthur got the stick they kept by the door for just
such an occasion, used it to rout the pigeons by poking at them. In the long
run, it wouldn’t matter. They would fly as high as the roof, then gradually
creep back down to roost. But the explosion of bird wings, their rise to the
sky through the hole in the roof, lifted his spirits.

His brother-in-law, Clement, rose up on an elbow from his
pallet, and his wife, “Lil” Arthur’s sister Lucy, stirred and rolled over,
stretched her arm across Clement’s chest, but didn’t wake up.

“What you doin’, Arthur?” Clement whispered. “You don’t know
a man’s got to sleep? I got work to do ’morrow. Ain’t all of us sleep all day.”

“Sleep then. And stay out of my sister. Lucy don’t need no
kids now. We got a house full a folks.”

“She my wife. We supposed to do that. And multiply.”

“Then get your own place and multiply. We packed tight as
turds here.”

“You crazy, Arthur.”

Arthur cocked the pigeon stick. “Lay down and shut up.”

Clement lay down, and Arthur put the stick back and gathered
up his pallet and went outside. He inspected the pallet for bird shit, found
none, stretched out on the porch, and tried to sleep. He thought about getting
his guitar, going back to the beach to strum it, but he was too tired for that.
Too tired to do anything, too awake to sleep.

His mother had told him time and again that when he was a
baby, an old Negro lady with the second sight had picked up his little hand and
said, “This child gonna eat his bread in many countries.”

It was something that had always sustained him. But now, he
began to wonder. Except for trying to leave Galveston by train once, falling
asleep in the boxcar, only to discover it had been making circles in the train
yard all night as supplies were unloaded, he’d had no adventures, and was still
eating his bread in Galveston.

All night he fought mosquitoes, the heat, and his own
ambition. By morning he was exhausted.

WedneSdaY, SePtemBer 5,
10:20 a.m.

Telegraphed Message from Washington, D.C., Weather Bureau,
Central Office, to Issac Cline, Galveston, Texas, Weather Bureau:

Disturbance center near Key West moving northwest.
Vessels bound for Florida and Cuban ports should exercise caution. Storm likely
to become dangerous.

10:23 a.m.

McBride awoke, flicked the redhead, sat up in bed, and
cracked his knuckles, said, “I’m going to eat and train, Red. You have your ass
here when I get back, and put it on the Sportin’ Club’s bill. And wash
yourself, for heaven’s sake.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. McBride,” she said.

McBride got up, poured water into a washbasin, washed his
dick, under his arms, splashed water on his face. Then he sat at the dresser in
front of the mirror and spent twenty minutes putting on the Chinaman’s remedy
and combing his hair. As soon as he had it just right, he put on a cap.

He got dressed in loose pants, a short-sleeved shirt, soft
shoes, wrapped his knuckles with gauze, put a little notebook and pencil in his
back pocket, then pulled on soft leather gloves. When the redhead wasn’t
looking, he wrapped his revolver and razor in a washrag, stuffed them between
his shirt and his stomach.

Downstairs, making sure no one was about, he removed the rag
containing his revolver and razor, stuck them into the drooping greenness of a
potted plant, then went away.

He strolled down the street to a cafe and ordered steak and
eggs and lots of coffee. He ate with his gloves and hat on. He paid for the
meal, but got a receipt.

Comfortably full, he went out to train.

He began at the docks. There were a number of men hard at
work. They were loading bags of cottonseed onto a ship. He stood with his hands
behind his back and watched. The scent of the sea was strong. The water lapped
at the pilings enthusiastically, and the air was as heavy as a cotton sack.

After a while, he strolled over to a large bald man with
arms and legs like plantation columns. The man wore faded overalls without a
shirt, and his chest was as hairy as a bear’s ass. He had on heavy work boots
with the sides burst out. McBride could see his bare feet through the openings.
McBride hated a man that didn’t keep up his appearance, even when he was
working. Pride was like a dog. You didn’t feed it regularly, it died.

McBride said, “What’s your name?”

The man, a bag of cottonseed under each arm, stopped and
looked at him, taken aback. “Ketchum,” he said. “Warner Ketchum.”

“Yeah,” McBride said. “Thought so. So, you’re the one.”

The man glared at him. “One what?”

The other men stopped working, turned to look.

“I just wanted to see you,” McBride said. “Yeah, you fit the
description. I just never thought there was a white man would stoop to such a
thing. Fact is, hard to imagine any man stooping to such a thing.”

“What are you talkin’ about, fella?”

“Well, word is, Warner Ketchum that works at the dock has
been known to suck a little nigger dick in his time.”

Ketchum dropped the cottonseed bags. “Who the hell are you?
Where you hear that?”

McBride put his gloved hands behind his back and held them.
“They say, on a good night, you can do more with a nigger’s dick than a cat can
with a ball of twine.”

The man was fuming. “You got me mixed up with somebody else,
you Yankee-talkin’ sonofabitch.”

“Naw, I ain’t got you mixed up. Your name’s Warner Ketchum.
You look how you was described to me by the nigger whose stick you slicked.”

Warner stepped forward with his right foot and swung a right
punch so looped it looked like a sickle blade. McBride ducked it without
removing his hands from behind his back, slipped inside and twisted his hips as
he brought a right uppercut into Warner’s midsection.

Warner’s air exploded and he wobbled back and McBride was in
again, a left hook to the ribs, a straight right to the solar plexus. Warner
doubled and went to his knees.

McBride leaned over and kissed him on the ear, said, “Tell
me. Them nigger dicks taste like licorice?”

Warner came up then, and he was wild. He threw a right, then
a left.

McBride bobbed beneath them. Warner kicked at him. McBride
turned sideways, let the kick go by, unloaded a left hand that caught Warner on
the jaw, followed it with a right that struck with a sound like the impact of
an artillery shell.

Warner dropped to one knee. McBride grabbed him by the head
and swung his knee into Warner’s face, busting his nose all over the dock.
Warner fell face forward, caught himself on his hands, almost got up. Then,
very slowly, he collapsed, lay down, and didn’t move.

McBride looked at the men who were watching him. He said,
“He didn’t suck no nigger dicks. I made that up.” He got out his paper pad and
pencil and wrote: Owed me. Price of one sparring partner, FIVE DOLLARS.

He put the pad and pencil away. Got five dollars out of his
wallet, folded it, put it in the man’s back pocket. He turned to the other men
who stood staring at him as if he were one of Jesus’ miracles.

“Frankly, I think you’re all a bunch of sorry assholes, and
I think, one at a time, I can lick every goddamn one of you Southern white
trash pieces of shit. Any takers?”

“Not likely,” said a stocky man at the front of the crowd.
“You’re a ringer.” He picked up a sack of cottonseed he had put down, started
toward the ship. The other men did the same.

McBride said, “Okay,” and walked away.

He thought, maybe, on down the docks he might find another
sparring partner.

5:23 P.m.

By the end of the day, near dark, McBride checked his
notepad for expenses, saw the Sporting Club owed him forty-five dollars in
sparring partners, and a new pair of gloves, as well as breakfast and dinner to
come. He added money for a shoeshine. A clumsy sonofabitch had scuffed one of
his shoes.

He got the shoeshine and ate a steak, flexed his muscles as
he arrived at the whorehouse. He felt loose still, like he could take on
another two or three yokels.

He went inside, got his goods out of the potted plant, and
climbed the stairs.

thurSdaY, SePtemBer 6,
6:00 P.m.

Telegraphed Message from Washington, D.C., Weather Bureau,
Central Office, to Issac Cline, Galveston, Texas, Weather Bureau:

Storm center just northwest of Key West.