Stories (2011) (64 page)

Henry, his weak leg failing to respond, tumbled out of the
wagon onto the bridge, which was now under a foot of water. He got hold of a
sideboard and pulled himself up, helped Tina down, reached up, and snatched his
cane off the seat.

Clement and the others jumped down, started hustling toward
the end of the bridge on foot. As they came even with Henry, he said, “Go on,
hurry. Don’t worry none about me.”

Tina clutched his arm. “Go on, woman,” he said. “You got
young’uns to care about. I got to free these horses.” He patted her hand. She
moved on with the others.

Henry pulled out his pocketknife and set to cutting the
horses free of the harness. As soon as they were loose, both fool animals
bolted directly into the railing. One of them bounced off of it, pivoted, made
for the end of the bridge at a splashing gallop, but the other horse hit with
such impact it flipped over, turning its feet to the sky. It pierced the water
and was gone.

Henry turned to look for his family. They were no longer
visible. Surely, they had made the mainland by now.

Others had come along to fill their place; people in wagons,
and buggies, on horseback and on foot. People who seemed to be scrambling on
top of water, since the bridge was now completely below sea level.

Then Henry heard a roar. He turned to the east side of the
bridge. There was a heavy sheet of water cocked high above him, and it was
coming down, like a monstrous wet fly swatter. And when it struck Henry and the
bridge, and all those on it, it smashed them flat and drove them into the
churning belly of the sea.

6:14 P.m.

Bill and Angelique Cooper, their buggy half-submerged in
water, saw the bridge through the driving rain, then suddenly they saw it no
more. The bridge and the people were wadded together and washed down.

The bridge rose up on the waves a moment later, like a
writhing spinal column. People still clung to it. It leaped forward into the
water, the end of it lashing the air, then it was gone and the people with it.

“God have mercy on their souls,” Angelique said.

Bill said, “That’s it then.”

He turned the buggy around in the water with difficulty,
headed home. All around him, shingles and rocks from the roofs of structures
flew like shrapnel.

7:39 P.m.

“Lil” Arthur, as he floated toward town, realized it was
less deep here. It was just as well, the rain was pounding his boat and filling
it with water. He couldn’t bail and paddle as fast as it went in. He climbed
over the side and let the current carry the boat away.

The water surprised him with its force. He was almost swept
away, but it was shallow enough to get a foothold and push against the flow. He
waded to the Sporting Club, went around back to the colored entrance. When he
got there, an elderly black man known as Uncle Cooter let him in, said, “Man,
I’d been you, I’d stayed home.”

“What,” “Lil” Arthur said, “and missed a boat ride?”

“A boat ride?”

“Lil” Arthur told him how he had gotten this far.

“Damnation,” Uncle Cooter said. “God gonna put this island
underwater ’cause it’s so evil. Like that Sodom and Gomorrah place.”

“What have you and me done to God?”

Uncle Cooter smiled. “Why, we is the only good children
God’s got. He gonna watch after us. Well, me anyway. You done gonna get in with
this Mr. McBride, and he’s some bad stuff, ‘Lil’ Arthur. God ain’t gonna help
you there. And this Mr. McBride, he ain’t got no sense neither. He done beat up
Mr. Beems, and Mr. Beems the one settin’ this up, gonna pay him money.”

“Why’d he beat him up?”

“Hell, you can’t figure white people. They all fucked up.
But Mr. Beems damn sure look like a raccoon now. Both his eyes all black, his
lip pouched out.”

“Where do I change?”

“Janitor’s closet. They done put your shorts and shoes in
there. And there’s some gauze for your hands.”

“Lil” Arthur found the shorts. They were old and faded. The
boxing shoes weren’t too good either. He found some soiled rags and used those
to dry himself. He used the gauze to wrap his hands, then his dick. He figured,
once you start a custom, you ought to stick with it.

7:45 P.m.

When Bill and Angelique and Teddy arrived at their house,
they saw that the water had pushed against the front door so violently, it had
come open. Water was flowing into the hall and onto the bottom step of the
stairs. Bill looked up and saw a lamp burning upstairs. They had left so
quickly, they had forgotten to extinguish it.

With a snort, Bess bolted. The buggy jerked forward, hit a
curb, and the harness snapped so abruptly Bill and his family were not thrown
from their seat, but merely whipped forward and back against the seat. The
reins popped through Bill’s hands so swiftly, the leather cut his palms.

Bess rushed across the yard and through the open doorway of
the house, and slowly and carefully, began to climb the stairs.

Angelique said, “My lands.”

Bill, a little stunned, climbed down, went around, and
helped Angelique and the baby out of the buggy. The baby was wet and crying,
and Angelique tried to cover him with the umbrella, but now the wind and rain
seemed to come from all directions. The umbrella was little more than a wad of
cloth.

They waded inside the house, tried to close the door, but
the water was too much for them. They gave it up.

Bess had reached the top landing and disappeared. They
followed her up. The bedroom door was open and the horse had gone in there. She
stood near the table bearing the kerosene lamp. Shaking.

“Poor thing,” Angelique said, gathering some towels from a
chifforobe. “She’s more terrified than we are.”

Bill removed the harness that remained on Bess, stroked her,
tried to soothe her. When he went to the window and looked out, the horse went
with him. The world had not miraculously dried up. The water was obviously
rising.

“Maybe we’ll be all right here,” Angelique said. She was
drying Teddy, who was crying violently because he was cold and wet. “Water
can’t get this high, can it?”

Bill idly stroked Bess’s mane, thought of the bridge. The
way it had snapped like a wooden toy. He said, “Of course not.”

8:15 P.m.

The fight had started late, right after two one-legged
colored boys had gone a couple of rounds, hopping about, trying to club each
other senseless with oversize boxing gloves.

The crowd was sparse but vocal. Loud enough that “Lil”
Arthur forgot the raging storm outside. The crowd kept yelling, “Kill the
nigger,” and had struck up a chorus of “All coons look alike to me”—a catchy
little number that “Lil” Arthur liked in spite of himself.

The yelling, the song, was meant to drop his spirits, but he
found it fired him up. He liked being the underdog. He liked to make assholes
eat their words. Besides, he was the Galveston Champion, not McBride, no matter
what the crowd wanted. He was the one who would step through the ropes tonight
the victor. And he had made a change. He would no longer allow himself to be
introduced as “Lil” Arthur. When his name had been called, and he had been
reluctantly named Galveston Sporting Club Champion by the announcer, the
announcer had done as he had asked. He had called him by the name he preferred
from here on. Not “Lil” Arthur Johnson. Not Arthur John Johnson, but the name
he called him, the name he called himself. Jack Johnson.

So far, however, the fight wasn’t going either way, and he
had to hand it to McBride, the fella could hit. He had a way of throwing short,
sharp punches to the ribs, punches that felt like knife stabs.

Before the fight, Jack, as McBride had surely done, had used
his thumbs to rearrange as much of the cotton in his gloves as possible.
Arrange it so that his knuckles would be against the leather and would make
good contact with McBride’s flesh. But so far McBride had avoided most of his
blows. The man was a master of slipping and sliding the punches. Jack had never
seen anything like that before. McBride could also pick off shots with a flick
of his forearms. It was very professional and enlightening.

Even so, Jack found he was managing to take the punches
pretty well, and he’d discovered something astonishing. The few times he’d hit
McBride was when he got excited, leaned forward, went flat-footed, and threw
the uppercut. This was not a thing he had trained for much, and when he had, he
usually threw the uppercut by coming up on his toes, twisting his body, the
prescribed way to throw it. But he found, against all logic, he could throw it
flat-footed and leaning forward, and he could throw it hard.

He thought he had seen a bit of surprise on McBride’s face
when he’d hit him with it. He knew that he’d certainly surprised himself.

It went like that until the beginning of the fourth round,
then when McBride came out, he said, “I’ve carried you enough, nigger. Now you
got to fight.”

Then Jack saw stuff he’d never seen before. The way this guy
moved, it was something. Bounced around like a cat; like the way he’d heard
Gentleman Jim fought, and the guy was fast with those hands. Tossed bullets,
and the bullets stunned a whole lot worse than before. Jack realized McBride
had been holding back, trying to make the fight interesting. And he realized
something else. Something important about himself. He didn’t know as much about
boxing as he thought.

He tried hooking McBride, but McBride turned the hooks away
with his arms, and Jack tried his surprise weapon, the uppercut, found he could
catch McBride a little with that, in the stomach, but not enough to send
McBride to the canvas.

When the fifth round came up, Jack was scared. And hurt. And
the referee—a skinny bastard with a handlebar moustache—wasn’t helping. Anytime
he tied McBride up, the referee separated them. McBride tied him up, thumbed
him in the eye, butted him, the referee grinned like he was eating jelly.

Jack was thinking maybe of taking a dive. Just going down
and lying there, getting himself out of this misery next time McBride threw one
of those short ones that connected solid, but then the bell rang and he sat on
his bench, and Uncle Cooter, who was the only man in his corner, sprayed water
in his mouth and let him spit blood in a bucket.

Uncle Cooter said, “I was you, son, I’d play possum. Just
hit that goddamn canvas and lay there like you axed. You don’t, this shithead
gonna cut you to pieces. This way, you get a little payday and you don’t die.
Paydays is all right. Dyin’ ain’t nothin’ to rush.”

“Jesus, he’s good. How can I beat him?”

Uncle Cooter rubbed Jack’s shoulders. “You can’t. Play
dead.”

“There’s got to be a way.”

“Yeah,” Uncle Cooter said. “He might die on you. That’s the
only way you gonna beat him. He got to just die.”

“Thanks, Cooter. You’re a lot of help.”

“You welcome.”

Jack feared the sound of the bell. He looked in McBride’s
corner, and McBride was sitting on his stool as if he were lounging, drinking
from a bottle of beer, chatting with a man in the audience. He was asking the
man to go get him a sandwich.

Forrest Thomas was in McBride’s corner, holding a folded
towel over his arm, in case McBride might need it, which, considering he needed
to break a good sweat first, wasn’t likely.

Forrest looked at Jack, pointed a finger, and lowered his
thumb like it was the hammer of a revolver. Jack could see a word on Forrest’s
lips. The word was: POW!

The referee wandered over to McBride’s corner, leaned on the
ring post, had a laugh with McBride over something.

The bell rang. McBride gave the bottle of beer to Forrest
and came out. Jack rose, saw Beems, eyes blacked, looking rough, sitting in the
front row. Rough or not, Beems seemed happy. He looked at Jack and smiled like
a gravedigger.

This time out, Jack took a severe pounding. He just couldn’t
stop those short little hooks of McBride’s, and he couldn’t seem to hit McBride
any kind of blow but the uppercut, and that not hard enough. McBride was
getting better as he went along, getting warmed up. If he had another beer and
a sandwich, hell, he might go ahead and knock Jack out so he could have coffee
and pie.

Jack decided to quit trying to hit the head and the ribs,
and just go in and pound McBride on the arms. That way, he could at least hit
something. He did, and was amazed at the end of the round to find McBride
lowering his guard.

Jack went back to his corner and Uncle Cooter said, “Keep
hittin’ him on the arms. That’s gettin’ to him. You wreckin’ his tools.”

“I figured that much. Thanks a lot.”

“You welcome.”

Jack examined the crowd in the Sporting Club bleachers. They
were not watching the ring. They had turned their heads toward the east wall,
and for good reason. It was vibrating. Water was seeping in, and it had filled
the floor beneath the ring six inches deep. The people occupying the bottom row
of bleachers, all around the ring, had been forced to lift their feet. Above
him, Jack heard a noise that sounded like something big and mean peeling skin
off an elephant’s head.

By the time the bell rang and Jack shuffled out, he noticed
that the water had gone up another two inches.

8:46 P.m.

Bill held the lantern in front of him at arm’s length as he
crouched at the top of the stairs. The water was halfway up the steps. The
house was shaking like a fat man’s ass on a bucking bronco. He could hear
shingles ripping loose, blowing away.

He went back to the bedroom. The wind was screaming. The
windows were vibrating; panes had blown out of a couple of them. The baby was
crying. Angelique sat in the middle of the bed, trying to nurse the child, but
Teddy wouldn’t have any of that. Bess was facing a corner of the room, had her
head pushed against the wall. The horse lashed her tail back and forth
nervously, made nickering noises.