The gypsys curse, p.16
The Gypsy's Curse, page 16
Muscle threw a stool into the corner, leapt over the ropes, and dragged Pete over to it. He poured everything in the water bottle over Pete’s head. Muscle lifted Pete’s old skinny chest so he could breathe. He slapped him gently, kneeling in front of him.
It went five more rounds and Leroy never was able to take him out, which I kept hoping he’d do. Instead, he just beat the living Jesus out of Pete, Pete smiling all the time, even after he began to bleed from the mouth, and Muscle shouting to him from the corner and working on him between rounds. Aristotle and his players enjoyed the shit out of themselves, like dogs on a gut wagon. For Al’s part, he rang the bell and counted at the knockdowns—four of them. Bless his old heart, the nigger’s head was like a rock, solid bone from ear to ear. Still, it was a sorry enough show.
That night, Hester went home with Aristotle. After Pete and Leroy went to take showers, she said: “I need to see Daddy and Momma. Ari can drop me by.”
“I sure can,” said Aristotle.
And then they left, straight for that goddam sponge boat and a fuckathon.
“Mr. Muscle ain’t a bad corner man,” said Pete, his mouth swollen so that I could hardly tell what he was saying.
We were sitting at the table. Al had cooked steak and potatoes. He’d made a bowl of soup for Pete. But nobody was eating very much, except Leroy, who was slashing at the bloody steak with his knife and spooning great gobs of mashed potatoes into his mouth.
“I figure a month of that and I’ll be ready,” said Leroy, gasping around a mouthful of steak, “to go a ten-rounder.”
“Mr. Muscle ain’t a bad corner man,” said Pete.
Pete’s eyes looked like they had been painted on, dulled and stunned. I don’t think he knew where he was. Russell Muscle had hugged him after the fight and told him goddammit he’d given it everything. That was all Muscle was interested in, giving it everything. A psychopath who’ll end up cutting some woman’s titties off someday.
Leroy said: “Yes sir. Boy oh boy! One month of that and—”
I slammed the table with one hand and with the other one said: “A month of that and Pete’ll be dead.”
Leroy looked at Al. “What’d he say?”
“It don’t matter,” said Al.
I said: “Right! It doesn’t matter. Your stupid asses mean nothing to me one way or another.”
Al sat there with his elbows on the table and finally said: “Why do you hate us?”
Sometimes I wish I could scream. Sometimes I really do wish I could scream. But all I could do was drop off my chair and go climb up in my bed. I snatched up a novel and opened it and couldn’t read a word. It all ran together, I was so mad. It might as well’ve been written in Russian.
I thought Hester would come back early but she didn’t. I lay in the bed while the lifters who work out in the evening came and went, listening to the Olympic bars crashing into the platform on the other side of the wall from where I lay. Then I watched the moon stretch shadows across the brick wall on the other side of the alley.
Sometime during the night—I don’t know what time it was—I took the flashlight down and went into the room where Al slept. Pete and Leroy were lumps in twin beds on opposite sides of the big bed where Al lay, the sheet pulled away from his chest, his skin damp and the color of granite in the bad light coming from the window. I rapped him on the hip and then turned the light on my hand.
“I don’t hate you,” I said, and then put the light on his mouth. He blinked against the light and waved it away. I kept it on his mouth anyway.
“Hester explained it all to Al,” he said.
“What?” I said. “Tell me what she said.”
“We can do things,” he said. “All of us can do things.”
“Is that what she said?”
“Al’s not finished yet,” he said.
“I know you’re not finished,” I said.
“Take the light out of Al’s eyes,” he said.
I took it out of his eyes. I put it on my hand. “I don’t hate you,” I said; “you’ve got everything wrong.”
I went back and lay on the bed and waited. I heard her—felt her—on the stairs. I felt her all the way through the gym. I felt her come across the kitchen and saw the dark shape of her stand beside the bed. She took the flashlight down. She turned it on.
“Do you want me in your bed?”
“I told Al a while ago that he had everything wrong,” I said. “I think you’ve got everything wrong too.”
“I had to see Daddy and Momma.”
“Yes,” I said.
She was getting out of her clothes. Then she was beside me in the bed. Her long terrific body. Her legs. God, her legs, ending there in her lap.
“How long you going to have Leroy beat up the nigger?” I said.
“I didn’t tell him to beat him up.”
“He’s an old man,” I said. “Pete’s an old man and you’ll kill him.”
“I won’t kill him,” she said.
She’d started. She’d started and I couldn’t stop her, didn’t want to stop her. Everything went out of my head. Nothing mattered at all except where she was losing me. And I was being lost, I really was, if you can understand that. Maybe you can’t. It’s a hard thing. Some men will never know. But those who know know, and know that I can’t explain it.
The next day was the Fourth of July and the gym was closed, but Leroy beat up the nigger anyway. Pete went down about four times in six rounds. Aristotle was in the nigger’s corner because Muscle didn’t show up, it being the Fourth. Aristotle and his players got to the gym so early that Leroy had to get out of bed and go down and let them in. We were all going together to Clearwater Beach Celebration.
“I’m sorry I got here so early,” said Aristotle, “but I’m nervous.”
We were waiting by the ring for Hester to come out with the kid. Pete was already up in the ring shuffling around.
“Aren’t you nervous?” Aristotle said.
“No,” I said.
“Don’t you want to know what Al’s going to do?”
“No.” I was lying. I’d stayed up part of the night thinking about the old bastard.
“He’s got something up his sleeve,” said Aristotle.
“He’s a silly old man,” I said.
“Well,” he said, “men lose their heads sometimes.” He gave me his picket-fence smile.
I looked up at him. “They sometimes lose their ass, too,” I said. The smile never wavered.
Hester came out with Leroy and we all watched him slam the shit out of Pete, who coached the whole time. Sometimes he coached himself. Sometimes he coached Leroy.
When it was over, while Aristotle and his players worked over Pete’s leathery face with an ice bag, I went over to where Hester was talking to the kid. She had her arm across his shoulders. Their heads were almost touching. She took her arm away when she saw me.
“Ask him why he’s doing this,” I said.
“What did he say?” said Leroy.
“Leave the kid alone,” she said to me.
“Will you ask him or not?” I said.
She looked at me blankly for a moment and then shrugged. “Sure,” she said. “I’ll ask him anything you want me to.” She looked at Leroy. “He wants to know why you’re doing this.”
“Doing what?” asked Leroy.
She looked at me. “Well?”
“Beating up the nigger,” I said.
“Beating up the nigger,” she said to Leroy.
The kid lifted his hands. He looked from her to me and back again. “Jesus, Marvin, I’m in training.”
“You’re not a boxer,” I said.
“You’re not a boxer,” Hester said.
“Of course I’m a boxer!” he said. His face was flushed. “What’s wrong with him, Hester?”
“I honestly don’t know,” she said.
There was no use going on with it. Aristotle and his enormous spiker came by with Pete between them. He turned his painted eyes on Leroy and said: “The lef got to come over the right. Over the right!”
The kid went over to Pete. He put his arms around Pete and hugged him. They looked at each other and smiled, Pete’s lips puffing over his blue gums.
“Thank you.” said Leroy.
“You gone be awright,” said Pete. “Awright!” They went off to the showers together, Leroy not holding Pete up but kind of guiding him. They kept talking as they went but I doubt Pete knew where he was. It was all instinct. He’d just been whipped again for the second time in two days. Even if he did have solid bone from ear to ear, he was still an old man.
I was about to say something to Hester when Al appeared in the doorway. He was in a tight, fake-leopardskin bathing suit that had a strap over the left shoulder. You couldn’t have bought such a thing. Hester probably made it. He stood spraddle-legged, his fists balled on his hips. I felt a vibration in the floor and looked back to see the entire volleyball team, including Aristotle, ranged in a line, clapping, and grinning, and jumping up and down.
Al stood still for a long time, and then, very slowly, he actually bowed.
“It’s time,” cried Hester, and raced for the stairs.
We all drove over to Clearwater Beach together. Pete sat in the back with Leroy and Al—Al in the middle—because nobody trusted Pete to drive. Pete was fighting a bout with a boy by the name of Sugarstick Johnson. You could tell by the way he bobbed and weaved on the seat and the way he kept psyching himself up to hang in with Sugarstick that this was a fight he’d really had somewhere back there in the long-gone days when he was a ranked welterweight. Ever since he and Leroy had come out of the showers, Pete had been fighting the bouts over that had finally made him number two in his division. He was having a hell of a time with Sugarstick. I turned on the front seat to watch Pete. Through the window in back I could see Aristotle’s minibus filled with his team right behind us. Players were hanging out the windows and waving. They were having great fun. Hester drove the old Dodge flat-out on the causeway to the beach, whipping in and out of traffic. But Aristotle hung right on our bumper.
“You better do something about Pete,” I said.
I didn’t know if Al had seen me when I spoke to him. Tiny drops of sweat stood on his gray face. Without turning his head, he raised one arm and put his hand on Pete’s shoulder, shook him gently, and pulled Pete against him, hugged him.
“Pete,” Al said. “Pete.”
Pete went quiet as a rabbit, dropped his fists, stopped weaving. But the fight went on. He never stopped talking.
“Sugarstick he cut. Wake to the cut. Wake to the cut. Don’t hurry nothing. Lef. Cross. Hook.”
Behind Pete, Aristotle was trying to put his bumper on the Dodge as Hester swung into the left lane to pass a truck. By the time we got off the causeway, traffic was solid in the streets. It couldn’t have been more than eleven o’clock, but the sidewalks were filled with children carrying balloons and eating cotton candy and popcorn and hotdogs, while their parents sweated and waved tiny American flags at each other. Hester seemed to know right where she was going. About two blocks from the Ocean Club, a platform, high and wide as a stage, had been built out on the beach. Hester pulled onto the sand. The minibus slid in beside her. Cars were parked every which way, some of them on the sidewalks.
Hester turned on the seat and looked at Al. “That’s where the beauty contest’ll be held at one o’clock.”
We sat looking at the platform.
“What we gone do till one o’clock?” asked Leroy.
“Demonstrations,” she said. Aristotle and his players had come to hang in the windows of the Dodge. “There’s a karate expert who is going to break a block with his head.”
“Hot damn,” said Leroy.
“And a sword swallower and a fire eater,” Hester said.
“Better’n a circus,” Leroy said.
“What’s Al going to do?” I said.
“What did Marvin say?” said Leroy.
“He wants to know what Al is going to do.”
“What is he going to do?” asked Leroy.
“That’s a secret. I guess we’ll have to wait and see,” she said. “Right, Al?” She winked at him. Al didn’t look at her. I don’t think he heard her. He sat hugging Pete, who was still talking steadily. Al stared straight ahead.
We drew a crowd as soon as we got out of the Dodge. But I was used to it, except I never got used to it, if you can understand that. We went over to the platform, where, just as Hester had promised, a guy was sticking a sword down his throat and another guy was spraying his mouth with gasoline and spitting fire. Pete began bobbing and weaving—sparring—this time with somebody named Battling Kid Felix, and Al had to put his hand on him again to quiet him down. There was a man dressed like Uncle Sam talking to the crowd from a microphone on a little platform built just to the right of where Hester said the beauty contest would be. I sat down in the sand while Hester went over to talk to the guy dressed like Uncle Sam. She pointed back at us. Uncle Sam pointed, too. Then he was shouting into the microphone. We were too far away and he was shouting and I couldn’t tell what he was saying but I knew it was about Al and I felt a little sick sitting there in the sand beside Al’s huge varicosed legs, white and ridged as granite, while Aristotle’s volleyball players raced around us like children. The crowd pressed in tighter.
What happened next happened quick as an execution. That’s the way I remember it. Like an execution. Al stepped out into the center of the crowd and lay down in the sand. Two young boys came running from the back of the platform with thick boards in their hands. They put them on Al’s chest. Like they had spent all morning practicing it, the crowd parted and a bright red Ford Maverick with racing slicks came barreling across the beach toward us. When it was about twenty yards from Al, the slicks grabbed in the sand, and the car slowed until it was barely moving. The driver had on mirror sunglasses. He looked very young. He never hesitated. He drove his Ford right up on Al’s chest. I couldn’t move. I was looking at Al’s face. He had his eyes closed and he never opened them. But his mouth flew open and his tongue pushed out three inches.
Ten
It took Al three days to die. I never went to see him. Leroy’ll tell you that. Pete—for what it’s worth—will probably tell you the same thing. I couldn’t stand to go and look at him. I closed the gym and lay up in my bed.
Leroy stayed at the hospital except for once when he came home to change clothes—some nurse sent him because he was beginning to stink—and twice to get something to eat. He was always just starting to cry, or just getting through. He tried to talk to me but couldn’t. His mouth would break up into trembling and spit. Pete didn’t cry though. He smiled a lot and talked to himself and followed the kid to and from the hospital.
Hester came back that first day but didn’t stay.
“You don’t think I meant for that to happen,” she said.
“No.” I lay staring at the ceiling. She put her hand over my face.
“Cars are heavier today than when he used to do that,” she said.
“He used to do that a long time ago,” I said.
“It wasn’t my idea.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I don’t either,” she said. “The doctors say he doesn’t have a chance.”
“I don’t suppose so.”
“Are you coming to the hospital?”
“No.”
“Do you want me to come back here to the gym tonight?”
“Do whatever you want to.”
“All right,” she said.
I felt her cross the gym and go down the stairs. I lay around the gym the next two days trying to think. But I couldn’t. I didn’t work out and I didn’t shower and I don’t think I remember eating twice in three days.
Sometime in there the phone rang. I watched it across the room, feeling it in the wood. It kept ringing. There was nobody else in the gym. After it had been ringing a long time, I slid off the bed and went over and knocked it off the stand. I picked it up and put it to my ear. I could feel the voice in my skin. I jerked it out of the wall and put it back on the table. It could have been Muscle calling. It could have been anybody. That was the first time I cried. It shamed me.
I wished I could scream. I wished I could do something. But there was nothing to do but lie around and wait for Al’s mashed chest to kill him. And when it finally did, Hester came to the gym and offered to take us on the Parthenon. She insisted that Pete and Leroy and I go out in the Gulf on Aristotle’s boat. She said it was morbid to lie around the gym. Death, she said, was inevitable. She said the sun and the salt air would remind us we were alive. It was a tonic, she said.
“We all loved him,” Hester said.
I didn’t say anything.
“I loved him,” said Leroy.
“The heart be a knockout punch,” said Pete. “Wake low, come high. Cross wif a right to the heart.”
“Anyway, Aristotle here says we can go out for a day’s fishing in the Parthenon. He says it’ll relax us all,” Hester said.
