Stories (2011) (61 page)

7:30 P.m.

“Lil” Arthur ran down to the Sporting Club that night and
stood in front of it, his hands in his pants pockets. The wind was brisk, and
the air was just plain sour.

Saturday, he was going to fight a heavyweight crown
contender, and though it would not be listed as an official bout, and McBride
was just in it to pick up some money, “Lil” Arthur was glad to have the chance
to fight a man who might fight for the championship someday. And if he could
beat him, even if it didn’t affect McBride’s record, “Lil” Arthur knew he’d
have that, he would have beaten a contender for the Heavyweight Championship of
the World.

It was a far cry from the Battle Royales he had first
participated in. There was a time when he looked upon those degrading events
with favor.

He remembered his first Battle Royale. His friend Ernest had
talked him into it. Once a month, sometimes more often, white “sporting men”
liked to get a bunch of colored boys and men to come down to the club for a
free-for-all. They’d put nine or ten of them in a ring, sometimes make them
strip naked and wear Sambo masks. He’d done that once himself.

While the coloreds fought, the whites would toss money and
yell for them to kill one another. Sometimes they’d tie two coloreds together
by the ankles, let them go at it. Blood flowed thick as molasses on flapjacks.
Bones were broken. Muscles torn. For the whites, it was great fun, watching a
couple of coons knock each other about.

“Lil” Arthur found he was good at all that fighting, and
even knocked Ernest out, effectively ending their friendship. He couldn’t help
himself. He got in there, got the battling blood up, he would hit whoever came
near him.

He started boxing regularly, gained some skill. No more
Battle Roy-ales. He got a reputation with the colored boxers, and in time that
spread to the whites.

The Sporting Club, plumb out of new white contenders for
their champion, Forrest Thomas, gave “Lil” Arthur twenty-five dollars to mix it
up with their man, thinking a colored and a white would be a novelty, and the
superiority of the white race would be proved in a match of skill and timing.

Right before the fight, “Lil” Arthur said his prayers, and
then, considering he was going to be fighting in front of a bunch of angry,
mean-spirited whites, and for the first time, white women—sporting women, but
women—who wanted to see a black man knocked to jelly, he took gauze and wrapped
his dick. He wrapped it so that it was as thick as a blackjack. He figured he’d
give them white folks something to look at. The thing they feared the most. A
black-as-coal stud nigger.

He whipped Forrest Thomas like he was a redheaded stepchild;
whipped him so badly, they stopped the fight so no one would see a colored man
knock a white man out.

Against their wishes, the Sporting Club was forced to hand
the championship over to “Lil” Arthur John Johnson, and the fact that a colored
now held the club’s precious boxing crown was like a chicken bone in the club’s
throat. Primarily Beems’s throat. As the current president of the Sporting Club,
the match had been Beems’s idea, and Forrest Thomas had been Beems’s man.

Enter McBride. Beems, on the side, talked a couple of the
Sporting Club’s more wealthy members into financing a fight. One where a true
contender to the heavyweight crown would whip “Lil” Arthur and return the local
championship to a white man, even if that white man relinquished the crown when
he returned to Chicago, leaving it vacant. In that case, “Lil” Arthur was
certain he’d never get another shot at the Sporting Club championship. They
wanted him out, by hook or crook.

“Lil” Arthur had never seen McBride. Didn’t know how he
fought. He’d just heard he was as tough as stone and had balls like a brass
monkey. He liked to think he was the same way. He didn’t intend to give the championship
up. Saturday, he’d find out if he had to.

9:00 P.m.

The redhead, nursing a fat lip, two black eyes, and a bruise
on her belly, rolled over gingerly and put her arm across McBride’s hairy
chest. “You had enough?”

“I’ll say when I’ve had enough.”

“I was just thinking, I might go downstairs and get
something to eat. Come back in a few minutes.”

“You had time to eat before I got back. You didn’t eat, you
just messed up. I’m paying for this. Or rather the Sportin’ Club is.”

“An engine’s got to have coal, if you want that engine to
go.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” The redhead reached up and ran her fingers through
McBride’s hair.

McBride reached across his chest and slapped the redhead.

“Don’t touch my hair. Stay out of my hair. And shut up. I
don’t care you want to fuck or not. I want to fuck, we fuck. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Listen here, I’m gonna take a shit. I get back, I want you
to wash that goddamn nasty hole of yours. You think I like stickin’ my wick in
that, it not being clean? You got to get clean.”

“It’s so hot. I sweat. And you’re just gonna mess me up
again.”

“I don’t care. You wash that thing. I went around with my
johnson like that, it’d fall off. I get a disease, girl, I’ll come back here,
kick your ass so hard your butthole will swap places with your cunt.”

“I ain’t got no disease, Mr. McBride.”

“Good.”

“Why you got to be so mean?” the redhead asked suddenly,
then couldn’t believe it had come out of her mouth. She realized, not only
would a remark like that anger McBride, but the question was stupid. It was
like asking a chicken why it pecked shit. It just did. McBride was mean because
he was, and that was that.

But even as the redhead flinched, McBride turned
philosophical. “It isn’t a matter of mean. It’s because I can do what I want,
and others can’t. You got that, sister?”

“Sure. I didn’t mean nothing by it.”

“Someone can do to me what I do to them, then all right,
that’s how it is. Isn’t a man, woman, or animal on earth that’s worth a damn.
You know that?”

“Sure. You’re right.”

“You bet I am. Only thing pure in this world is a baby.
Human or animal, a baby is born hungry and innocent. It can’t do a thing for
itself. Then it grows up and gets just like everyone else. A baby is all right
until it’s about two. Then, it ought to just be smothered and save the world
the room. My sister, she was all right till she was about two, then it wasn’t
nothing but her wanting stuff and my mother giving it to her. Later on, Mama
didn’t have nothing to do with her either, same as me. She got over two years
old, she was just trouble. Like I was. Like everybody else is.”

“Sure,” the redhead said.

“Oh, shut up, you don’t know your ass from a pig track.”

McBride got up and went to the john. He took his revolver
and his wallet and his razor with him. He didn’t trust a whore—any woman for
that matter—far as he could hurl one.

While he was in the can trying out the new flush toilet, the
redhead eased out of bed wearing only a sheet. She slipped out the door, went
downstairs and outside, into the streets. She flagged down a man in a buggy,
talked him into a ride, for a ride, then she was out of there, destination
unimportant.

9:49 P.m.

Later, pissed at the redhead, McBride used the madam
herself, blacked both her eyes when she suggested that a lot of sex before a
fight might not be a good idea for an athlete.

The madam, lying in bed with McBride’s muscular arm across
her ample breasts, sighed and watched the glow of the gas streetlights play on
the ceiling.

Well, she thought, it’s a living.

FrIdaY, SePtemBer 7, 10:35
a.m.

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

Storm warning. Galveston, Texas. Take precautions.

Issac Cline, head of the Galveston Weather Bureau, sat at
his desk on the third floor of the Levy Building and read the telegram. He went
downstairs and outside for a look-see.

The weather was certainly in a stormy mood, but it didn’t
look like serious hurricane weather. He had been with the Weather Bureau for
eight years, and he thought he ought to know a hurricane by now, and this
wasn’t it. The sky wasn’t the right color.

He walked until he got to the beach. By then the wind was
picking up, and the sea was swelling. The clouds were like wads of duck down
ripped from a pillow: He walked a little farther down the beach, found a turtle
wrapped in seaweed, poked it with a stick. It was dead as a stone.

Issac returned to the Levy Building, and by the time he made
his way back, the wind had picked up considerably. He climbed the stairs to the
roof. The roof barometer was dropping quickly, and the wind was serious. He
revised his opinion on how much he knew about storms. He estimated the wind to
be blowing at twenty miles an hour, and growing. He pushed against it, made his
way to the weather pole, hoisted two flags. The top flag was actually a white
pennant. It whipped in the wind like a gossip’s tongue. Anyone who saw it knew
it meant the wind was coming from the northwest. Beneath it was a red flag with
a black center; this flag meant the wind was coming ass over teakettle, and
that a seriously violent storm was expected within hours.

The air smelled dank and fishy. For a moment, Cline thought
perhaps he had actually touched the dead turtle and brought its stink back with
him. But no, it was the wind.

At about this same time, the steamship
Pensacola,
commanded
by Captain James Slater, left the port of Galveston from Pier 34, destination
Pensacola, Florida.

Slater had read the hurricane reports of the day before, and
though the wind was picking up and was oddly steamy, the sky failed to show
what he was watching for: A dusty, brick red color, a sure sign of a hurricane.
He felt the whole Weather Bureau business was about as much guess and luck as
it was anything else. He figured he could do that and be as accurate.

He gave orders to ease the
Pensacola
into the Gulf.

1:06 P.m.

The pigeons fluttered through the opening in the Johnsons’
roof. Tar paper lifted, tore, blew away, tumbled through the sky as if they
were little black pieces of the structure’s soul.

“It’s them birds again,” his mother said.

“Lil” Arthur stopped doing push-ups, looked to the ceiling.
Pigeons were thick on the rafters. So was pigeon shit. The sky was very visible
through the roof. And very black. It looked venomous.

“Shit,” “Lil” Arthur said.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Leave ’em be. They scared. So am I.”

“Lil” Arthur stood up, said, “Ain’t nothin’ be scared of. We
been through all kinda storms. We’re on a rise here. Water don’t never get this
high.”

“I ain’t never liked no storm. I be glad when yo daddy and
the young’uns gets home.”

“Papa’s got an old tarp I might can put over that hole. Keep
out the rain.”

“You think you can, go on.”

“I already should’a,” “Lil” Arthur said.

“Lil” Arthur went outside, crawled under the upraised porch,
and got hold of the old tarp. It was pretty rotten, but it might serve his
purpose, at least temporarily. He dragged it into the yard, crawled back under,
tugged out the creaking ladder and a rusty hammer. He was about to go inside
and get the nails when he heard a kind of odd roaring. He stopped, listened,
recognized it.

It was the surf. He had certainly heard it before, but not
this loud and this far from the beach. He got the nails and put the ladder
against the side of the house and carried the tarp onto the roof. The tarp
nearly took to the air when he spread it, almost carried him with it. With
considerable effort he got it nailed over the hole, trapping what pigeons
didn’t flee inside the house.

2:30 P.m.

Inside the whorehouse, the madam, a fat lip added to her
black eyes, watched from the bed as McBride, naked, seated in a chair before
the dresser mirror, carefully oiled and combed his hair over his bald spot. The
windows were closed, and the wind rattled them like dice in a gambler’s fist.
The air inside the whorehouse was as stuffy as a minister’s wife.

“What’s that smell?” she asked.

It was the tonic the Chinaman had given him. He said, “You
don’t want your tits pinched, shut the fuck up.”

“All right,” she said.

The windows rattled again. Pops of rain flecked the glass.

McBride went to the window, his limp dick resting on the
windowsill, almost touching the glass, like a large, wrinkled grub looking for
a way out.

“Storm coming,” he said.

The madam thought:
No shit.

McBride opened the window. The wind blew a comb and
hairbrush off the dresser. A man, walking along the sandy street, one hand on
his hat to save it from the wind, glanced up at McBride. McBride took hold of
his dick and wagged it at him. The man turned his head and picked up his pace.

McBride said, “Spread those fat legs, honey-ass, ’cause I’m
sailing into port, and I’m ready to drop anchor.”

Sighing, the madam rolled onto her back, and McBride mounted
her. “Don’t mess up my hair this time,” he said.

4:30 P.m.

The study smelled of stale cigar smoke and sweat, and
faintly of baby oil. The grandfather clock chimed four-thirty. The air was
humid and sticky as it shoved through the open windows and fluttered the dark
curtains. The sunlight, which was tinted with a green cloud haze, flashed in
and out, giving brightness to the false eyes and the yellowed teeth of a dozen
mounted animal heads on the walls. Bears. Boar. Deer. Even a wolf.