The Big Bout Read online

  As if on cue, Freddy drove a crushing straight hand right flush into the face of his opponent, which even with headgear on felled the fighter. He hit the canvas and didn’t get up.

  It was an impressive punch, but one he’d have a very difficult time getting through the guard of a skilled boxer. And he’d probably get a taste of the canvas for even trying.

  “Dammit Freddy,” Saul yelled. “I told you to stop doing that. You’re gonna run out of fighters willing to spar with you, and then what?”

  “Clip’ll always climb in with me,” Freddy said.

  “See?” Saul said to us. “He’s good, right?”

  “Knocked hell outta his sparring partner,” Clip said. “Ain’t no denying that.”

  After helping the fallen boxer up, Freddy ducked between the ropes, climbed down from the ring, and walked over to where we were, using his mouth to unlace his gloves as he did.

  Unlike his sparring partner, Freddy wore no headgear.

  “Clipper Jones,” he said. “Nigger, you lookin’ like a bag of bones up in them clothes. Nobody feedin’ you?”

  Actually, Clip had begun to fill out a little lately––probably the result of Miki’s cooking. If Freddy thought he looked bad now, he should’ve seen him just a week or so back.

  Rivulets of sweat snaked down Freddy’s dark, muscular body in long serpentine trails, and his breathing was slightly elevated from exertion. His gray boxing trunks were damp but not soaked through and he appeared to have on no socks beneath his boxing boots.

  “Freddy, this is the fella I was tellin’ you about. Meet Jimmy Riley.”

  He extended his gloved hand. When I tapped it with my left, he noticed for the first time I was missing most of my right.

  “Saul, you crazy Jew bastard. Quit clownin’ around. Shee-it, bringin’ me a one-armed bodyguard. You’re a funny man.”

  Freddy finally managed to get the gloves off, which he promptly grabbed by the wrist ends and began tapping his leg with.

  “Freddy, it’s no joke. He’s who we’re hiring to––”

  “Oh, 'cause a nigger’s life only worth half a––”

  “It ain’t like that,” Saul said. “You know that. I’m always looking out for you. Come on. Clip’ll tell you.”

  “Nobody tellin’ me anything that’ll convince me to hire a one-armed bodyguard.”

  “Freddy, shut the fuck up,” Clip said. “Jimmy the best I ever seen––better than any two-armed motherfuckers you can find. He who I’d want guardin’ me.”

  “Yeah, well, you ain’t got no shot at the title, do you?”

  “You ain’t got much of one from what I just seen,” Clip said.

  Freddy looked at me. “What you think? He right?”

  “About you, yeah. You’re fast and you got punchin’ power, but those’ll only get you so far.”

  “I meant about you,” he said. “Wasn’t askin’ no one-armed white boy for boxin’ advice. Don’t care what kind of war hero he is.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not the best. Not even close.”

  “He said you the best he seen, but he only got one eye. And it ain’t so good, I guess. Who the best you’ve seen?”

  “Pinkerton named Parker and a shooter named Burke.”

  “Get me one of them,” he said to Freddy.

  “He can’t,” Clip said. “They no longer with us. Know why? ’Cause Jimmy here pine-boxed ’em both.”

  I honestly had not thought of that when I said their names. It wasn’t something I was proud of. In fact, the way in which I had killed one of them was among the lowest things I had ever done. It was a source of shame and embarrassment. My response to his question had just been an immediate and honest one––they were the two best shooters I had ever seen.

  “Now, your dumb ass was gonna get both of us risking our lives to protect you and find out who behind this for . . .” He turned his head slightly toward me. “How much were we gonna get for this shit?”

  “Five dollars a day,” I said.

  “Five fuckin’ dollars a day,” Clip said.

  “Plus expenses,” Saul added.

  “Plus expenses,” Clip said. “And that ’cause I was doin’ it for you and Jimmy was doin’ it for me, but you too stupid a nigger to see what you bein’ offered.”

  Clip turned to leave and I followed.

  “You only got three eyes and arms between you,” Freddy yelled behind us.

  Chapter Six

  “Nigger know better,” Clip said.

  We had just emerged from the Bay High gymnasium and were walking toward the car, which was parked on Harrison.

  The traffic was still wartime heavy, even during the holidays, and down the way, random servicemen in uniform were walking along the sidewalk toward downtown.

  “He wasn’t wrong,” I said.

  “About?”

  “Anything. We do only have three arms and eyes between us.”

  “I meant––”

  “You’d act the same way if he’d’ve brought a one-armed man to be your bodyguard.”

  “He know better than not to trust me.”

  I nodded. “There is that.”

  As we neared the car, I noticed another one, a nondescript black Ford, pull up and park on the corner.

  Above us, the fronds of planted palm trees clacked together in the coldish December wind.

  “From what I saw, he’s no threat to the belt,” I said. “Why would anyone who knows anything about boxin’ think he is?”

  Two men got of the car and headed toward the gym. Even from a distance it was obvious the men were enormous, even elephantine in every way.

  They weren’t wearing signs that identified them as local muscle, but they might as well have. Both big. Both dressed in ill-fitting black suits. Both with dark, closely cropped hair. The body language of both that of bullies, of men on a mission with no regard for anyone or anything else.

  The massive men moved with the speed and agility of beached manatees.

  “He mostly play possum when he train in there,” Clip was saying. “Never know who watching. That was all just bullshit. ’Cept for the knockout. That for our benefit.”

  “He makes for a convincing possum,” I said.

  “Do, don’t he?”

  I nodded toward the two mammoth men nearing the gym. Clip turned and eyed them.

  “What happened to the gym?” Clip said. “It was just there.”

  “It’s behind them,” I said.

  Without saying another word, we both began jogging back toward the building.

  “Saul, how’s your nigger gonna fight if only one hand works?” one of the gargantuan guys was saying.

  The other had the fingers of Freddy’s right hand bent back to the point of breaking.

  “I could teach him,” I said.

  As both of the big men turned to look at me, I could see that they were twins.

  One of the giants and Saul were standing not far from where we walked in. The other, the one threatening to snap Freddy’s wrist, was over closer to the ring. Freddy’s trainer, a thin, quiet elderly black man named Gus, stood nearby.

  “Big bastards are twins,” Clip said. “Bet they blew the bottom out of they mama. I mean . . . gotdamn. No way bitch ever walk normal again.”

  “The fuck?” the big man closest to Saul said.

  “He’s referring to your size,” I explained, “and the fact that there are two of you and the toll that must have taken on your poor mother.”

  “She a big woman?” Clip asked.

  Before the big man could respond, Clip closed the distance between them, withdrawing his weapon as he did, and now had it pointed at his huge head.

  “You’re makin’ a big mistake, mister,” the man said.

  His voice was thick and slow and a little gargly––as if his vocal chords were being squeezed together by the fat in his neck.

  “Tell your brother to let Freddy go,” Clip said.

  His brother did it without being told
.

  “This is just business,” the big man said to Clip. “Got nothin’ to do with you. Tell ’em, Freddy.”

  “Yeah,” Clip said, “tell us, Freddy.”

  “I don’t know what the fat bastard talkin’ about,” Freddy said.

  We all stepped forward and converged around Clip, Saul, and the man who made Clip’s big gun look small.

  “What kind of business you in?” I asked.

  “We ain’t in business,” the other brother said. “But the man we work for is.”

  “Why doesn’t he want Freddy to fight?” I asked.

  “He does.”

  “Wonder what the fuck would come out of his fat head if I pulled the trigger?” Clip asked.

  It seemed a random question he was genuinely curious about at the moment.

  “Listen,” the twin without the gun pressed to his forehead said, “you do anything to either of us and you’ll bring down hell on your heads like you can’t imagine. Put your gun away. Let us walk. Nobody gets hurt today.”

  “Who do you work for?” I asked.

  “A very discreet man who doesn’t like drawing attention to himself,” he said.

  “That were true,” I said, “he would not employ you two.”

  “I really want to see what comes out of his head,” Clip said. “Think it be jelly or custard or just like lard?”

  “Tell them to let us go, Freddy,” the brother Clip was holding said.

  “Man, let him go,” Freddy said. “Let ’em walk.”

  Clip looked at me. “Did that sound like an order to you?”

  I nodded.

  “I just meant . . . Clip man, come on. We don’t need this kind of trouble.”

  “Oh, you prefer the kind where they break your hand?”

  “Clip, this some serious shit. You don’t understand. Please. Just let ’em go. Okay? Please.”

  Chapter Seven

  “We should be dead,” Lauren said.

  “We were,” I said.

  She nodded. “You’re right. Actually, we were.”

  What if we still are?

  Where had that come from?

  If we are, then we’re more alive in death than we ever were in life.

  She didn’t say anything else right away, and we just sat with the truth of it for a moment.

  We had just made love––something we were doing as often as possible these days––and were still in bed.

  I was leaning on the headboard, propped on a few pillows. She was propped up on me, her head lying on my chest, an arm draped around my waist. We were both smoking, sharing a cigarette back and forth like it was the last on the planet. She had pulled it from the nearest pack and I had no idea what brand it was. I just knew sharing it with her made it, like everything, infinitely better.

  Our lovemaking was so similar in so many ways, so different in others.

  We had always hungered for the other with an intensity and insatiability unparalleled in my experience. That remained the same. We had always made love as often as possible. That remained the same.

  We were the same, yet so different. We now bore scars, seen and not, that had altered who we were as human beings, as a couple, as lovers.

  Our first encounters were adulterous, unsanctioned, taboo. They were, by necessity, a secret, something stolen, something hidden, something all too brief and ultimately evanescent.

  Now we were a couple. Each belonging to the other entirely and exclusively. We were unrushed, yet never completely unhurried. Now it wasn’t others––husband, friends, society––but time itself that was a foe to our time together.

  But of all the things that were different now, the single biggest was our palpable gratitude for every single sacred second we were given, like so many gifts from a generous and beneficent God.

  “We’re living on borrowed time,” she said.

  “Isn’t everybody?”

  She thought about it, then began nodding––slowly at first, then faster. “You’re right. I guess they are.”

  Her dark hair was down, splayed out across my chest, and it swirled back and forth a bit as she nodded.

  “Everybody is,” I said. “Not everybody knows it. I didn’t.”

  “Me either. But now I do . . .” she said, her voice trailing off.

  “Me too.”

  “Now . . . I’m acutely aware of it. When I was dead to you . . . and you to me . . . I used to think . . . if I ever got the chance to see you again, to talk to you, to . . . to hold you . . . even for a moment, I’d . . . that I would never take it for granted, that I would know how fleeting, how fragile, how impossibly precious it was . . . it is.”

  Chapter Eight

  I was reading a recent copy of Ring Magazine when Miki ushered Kay Hudson into my office.

  I recognized her from the photograph that often accompanied her bylines. Kay Hudson was one of a very few female war correspondents––and one of the very best.

  Tossing the magazine on my desk, I stood to greet her.

  “I’m Kay Hudson,” she said, extending her hand across my desk.

  She hadn’t noticed most of my right arm was missing yet, so she had reached for it.

  I awkwardly extended my left over to find her hand and gave it an upside-down shake.

  “Sorry, Soldier,” she said. “I didn’t––”

  I waved off her apology. “No need to be. Have a seat, please.”

  “I leave you two to make arrangement,” Miki said. “I right outside if you need me.”

  With that she turned, walked out, and closed the door.

  “I’d like to hire you,” Kay said.

  “I’d like to be hired.”

  “A friend of mine is missing . . . I’d like you to find him.”

  I waited, nodding her toward telling me more.

  “The things I’ve seen,” she said, shaking her head, looking off into the distance, seeing something that wasn’t there. “You can’t imagine what people are capable of.”

  “I might be able to,” I said.

  Our eyes locked and stayed that way a moment, then she glanced at what was left of my right arm.

  “Maybe you can,” she said, returning her intense gaze back to me. “How bad was it for you over there?”

  “The worst,” I said. “Didn’t get to go.”

  “Oh. Well, what happened?”

  “I walked into a shotgun blast. What do you know about me?”

  She started to say something, then stopped. “Well, nothing I suppose. Why?”

  “Why hire me? What made you choose me?”

  “Can I be honest with you?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, “but I’d like to see.”

  “You’re the only . . . person in your profession in town.”

  “That was good,” I said. “Keep it up.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Keep makin’ with the honesty. I like it.”

  “Like I said, the things I’ve seen . . . the things we’ve survived over there . . . To make it home and then go missing . . . it’s just too . . .”

  “Who’s missing?”

  “Have you heard about the big boxing match that’s coming up?”

  “I’ve heard a thing or three.”

  “The man who is missing was supposed to be in it.”

  “Jeff Bennett?”

  She nodded. “He’s a colleague of mine. He and his wife both, actually. They’re pretty famous for being one of the few couples reporting the war together.”

  Gentleman Jeff Bennett was famous for being the world’s only boxing war correspondent, but was far more famous for being part of Jeff and Rebecca Bennett––a husband and wife team traveling the world and reporting the war.

  “The things Jeff and Becky and I have been through, have survived over there. I just can’t accept that he made it through all that only to come and have something happen to him here.”

  Chapter Nine

  When I opened the door to my office for Kay Hudso
n to depart, I found Lauren waiting for me.

  Instantly my day improved.

  She was alone in the reception area, seated behind Miki’s desk, legs crossed, hands folded, gloves and hat on the blotter, beautiful, elegant, even regal.

  I quickly introduced the two women and ushered Kay out so I could be alone with Lauren.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked after Kay was gone.

  “Yes, fine,” she said. “Just fine.”

  “Where’s Miki?”

  “You’ve got to start calling her by her office name,” she said.

  As part of her transformation and to help conceal her true identity and ethnicity, Miki had been christened Judy by Lauren, but it was too close to July––the name of our previous secretary––for me, and I had yet to start using it.

  “Judy is in the little lady’s room. She’ll be back in a bit.”

  She stood and we made our way into my office, leaving the door open until Miki’s return, both of us sitting in the chairs in front of my desk.

  “This is where it all began,” Lauren said, looking around the room.

  I followed her gaze around the office and joined in her revelry, remembering the two strangers-soon-to-be-lovers who no longer resembled us in any substantially recognizable way. So very much had happened, so much loss, so much pain, yet here we were beyond all reasonable expectation, beyond all odds, beyond even belief, the two of us still here, different yet similar somehow to the lonely souls we had been.

  “I feel so bad for those two young people,” she said. “Wish I could go back and warn them.”

  I thought about what might be different if we could warn the earlier more innocent iterations of ourselves.

  She noticed the magazine on my desk.

  “You reading Ring again?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  I had always loved what took place in the squared circle of the boxing ring––had even fought in some amateur bouts and done well enough to make me dream at a little––but from the moment I lost my arm I had lost all interest in boxing.

  Until now.

  Being around the gym, seeing Freddy spar, smelling the leather and sweat, hearing the bell and the instructions from the corner . . . I was hooked again.