The whore, sweaty, eye blacked, legs spread, breasts slouching from the heat, looked more embarrassed than McBride. She wanted to cover, but she didn’t move. Fresh in her memory was that punch to the eye.
“For heaven’s sake, man,” Beems said. “Cover yourself.”
“What the hell you think we’ve been doin’ here?” McBride said. “Playin’ checkers?”
“There’s no need to be open about it. A man’s pleasure is taken in private.”
“Certainly you’ve seen balls before,” McBride said, reaching for a cigar that lay on the table next to his revolver and a box of matches. Then he smiled and studied Beems. “Then maybe you ain’t&. And then again, maybe, well, you’ve seen plenty and close up. You look to me the sort that would rather hear a fat boy fart than a pretty girl sing.”
“You disgusting brute,” Beems said.
“That’s telling me,” McBride said. “Now I’m hurt. Cut to the goddamn core.” McBride patted the redhead’s inner thigh. “You recognize this business, don’t you? You don’t, I got to tell you about it. We men call it a woman, and that thing between her legs is the ole red snapper.”
“We’ll not conduct our affairs in this fashion,” Beems said.
McBride smiled, took a match from the box, and lit the cigar. He puffed, said, “You dressed-up pieces of dirt brought me all the way down here from Chicago. I didn’t ask to come. You offered me a job, and I took it, and I can untake it, it suits me. I got round-trip money from you already. You sent for me, and I came, and you set me up with a paid hair hole, and you’re here for a meeting at a whorehouse, and now you’re gonna tell me you’re too special to look at my balls. Too prudish to look at pussy. Go on out, let me finish what I really want to finish. I’ll be out of here come tomorrow, and you can whip your own nigger.”
There was a moment of foot shuffling, and one of the elderly men leaned over and whispered to Beems. Beems breathed once, like a fish out of water, said, “Very well. There’s not that much needs to be said. We want this nigger whipped, and we want him whipped bad. We understand in your last bout, the man died.”
“Yeah,” McBride said. “I killed him and dipped my wick in his old lady. Same night.”
This was a lie, but McBride liked the sound of it. He liked the way their faces looked when he told it. The woman had actually been the man’s half sister, and the man had died three days later from the beating.
“And this was a white man?” Beems said.
“White as snow. Dead as a stone. Talk money.”
“We’ve explained our financial offer.”
“Talk it again. I like the sound of money.”
“Hundred dollars before you get in the ring with the nigger. Two hundred more if you beat him. A bonus of five hundred if you kill him. This is a short fight. Not forty-five rounds. No prizefighter makes money like that for so little work. Not even John L. Sullivan.”
“This must be one hated nigger. Why? He mountin’ your dog?”
“That’s our business.”
“All right. But I’ll take half of that money now.”
“That wasn’t our deal.”
“Now it is. And I’ll be runnin’ me a tab while I’m here, too. Pick it up.”
More foot shuffling. Finally, the two elderly men got their heads together, pulled out their wallets. They pooled their money, gave it to Beems. “These gentlemen are our backers,” Beems said. “This is Mr. —”
“I don’t care who they are,” McBride said. “Give me the money.”
Beems tossed it on the foot of the bed.
“Pick it up and bring it here,” McBride said to Beems.
“I will not.”
“Yes, you will, ‘cause you want me to beat this nigger. You want me to do it bad. And another reason is this: You don’t, I’ll get up and whip your dainty little ass all over this room.”
Beems shook a little. “But why?”
“Because I can.”
Beems, his face red as infection, gathered the bills from the bed, carried them around to McBride. He thrust them at McBride. McBride, fast as a duck on a June bug, grabbed Beems’s wrist and pulled him forward, causing him to let go of the money and drop it onto McBride’s chest. McBride pulled the cigar from his mouth with his free hand, stuck it against the back of Beems’s thumb. Beems let out a squeal, said, “Forrest!”
The big man with no teeth and black eyes started around the bed toward McBride. McBride said, “Step back, Charlie, or you’ll have to hire someone to yank this fella out of your ass.”
Forrest hesitated, looked as if he might keep coming, then stepped back and hung his head.
McBride pulled Beems’s captured hand between his legs and rubbed it over his sweaty balls a few times, then pushed him away. Beems stood with his mouth open, stared at his hand.
“I’m bull of the woods here,” McBride said, “and it stays that way from here on out. You treat me with respect. I say, hold my rope while I pee, you hold it, I say, hold my sacks off the sheet while I get a piece, you hold ‘em.”
Beems said, “You bastard. I could have you killed.”
“Then do it. I hate your type. I hate someone I think’s your type. I hate someone who likes your type or wants to be your type. I’d kill a dog liked to be with you. I hate all of you expensive bastards with money and no guts. I hate you ‘cause you can’t whip your own nigger, and I’m glad you can’t, ‘cause I can. And you’ll pay me. So go ahead, send your killers around. See where it gets them. Where it gets you. And I hate your goddamn hair, Beems.”
“When this is over,” Beems said, “you leave immediately!”
“I will, but not because of you. Because I can’t stand you or your little pack of turds.”
The big man with missing teeth raised his head, glared at McBride. McBride said, “Nigger whipped your ass, didn’t he, Forrest?”
Forrest didn’t say anything, but his face said a lot. McBride said, “You can’t whip the nigger, so your boss sent for me. I can whip the nigger. So don’t think for a moment you can whip me.”
“Come on,” Beems said. “Let’s leave. The man makes me sick.”
Beems joined the others, his hand held out to his side. The elderly gentlemen looked as if they had just realized they were lost in the forest. They organized themselves enough to start out the door. Beems followed, turned before exiting, glared at McBride.
McBride said, “Don’t wash that hand, Beems. You can say, ‘Shake the hand of the man who shook the balls of John McBride.’ “
“You go to hell,” Beems said.
“Keep me posted,” McBride said. Beems left. McBride yelled after him and his crowd, “And gentlemen, enjoyed doing business with you.”
9:12 P.M.
Later in the night the redhead displeased him and McBride popped her other eye, stretched her out, lay across her, and slept. While he slept, he dreamed he had a head of hair like Mr. Ronald Beems.
Outside, the wind picked up slightly, blew hot, brine-scented air down Galveston’s streets and through the whorehouse window.
9:34 P.M.
Bill Cooper was working outside on the second-floor deck he was building. He had it completed except for a bit of trim work. It had gone dark on him sometime back, and he was trying to finish by lantern light. He was hammering a sidewall board into place when he felt a drop of rain. He stopped hammering and looked up. The night sky had a peculiar appearance, and for a moment it gave him pause. He studied the heavens a moment longer, decided it didn’t look all that bad. It was just the starlight that gave it that look. No more drops fell on him.
Bill tossed the hammer on the deck, leaving the nail only partially driven, picked up the lantern, and went inside the house to be with his wife and baby son. He’d had enough for one day.
11:01 P.M.
The waves came in loud against the beach and the air was surprisingly heavy for so late at night. It lay hot and sweaty on “Lil” Arthur John Johnson’s bare chest. He breathed in the ai
r and blew it out, pounded the railroad tie with all his might for the hundredth time. His right fist struck it, and the tie moved in the sand. He hooked it with a left, jammed it with a straight right, putting his entire six-foot, two-hundred-pound frame into it. The tie went backward, came out of the sand, and hit the beach.
Arthur stepped back and held out his broad, black hands and examined them in the moonlight. They were scuffed, but essentially sound. He walked down to the water and squatted and stuck his hands in, let the surf roll over them. The salt didn’t even burn. His hands were like leather. He rubbed them together, being sure to coat them completely with seawater. He cupped water in his palms, rubbed it on his face, over his shaved, bullet head.
Along with a number of other pounding exercises, he had been doing this for months, conditioning his hands and face with work and brine. Rumor was, this man he was to fight, this McBride, had fists like razors, fists that cut right through the gloves and tore the flesh.
“Lil” Arthur took another breath, and this one was filled not only with the smell of saltwater and dead fish, but of raw sewage, which was regularly dumped offshore in the Gulf.
He took his shovel and redug the hole in the sand and dropped the tie back in, patted it down, went back to work. This time, two socks and it came up. He repeated the washing of his hands and face, then picked up the tie, placed it on a broad shoulder and began to run down the beach. When he had gone a good distance, he switched shoulders and ran back. He didn’t even feel winded.
He collected his shovel, and with the tie on one shoulder, headed toward his family’s shack in the Flats, also known as Nigger Town.
“Lil” Arthur left the tie in front of the shack and put the shovel on the sagging porch. He was about to go inside when he saw a man start across the little excuse of a yard. The man was white. He was wearing dress clothes and a top hat.
When he was near the front porch, he stopped, took off his hat. It was Forrest Thomas, the man “Lil” Arthur had beaten unconscious three weeks back. It had taken only till the middle of the third round.
Even in the cloud-hazy moonlight, “Lil” Arthur could see Forrest looked rough. For a moment, a fleeting moment, he almost felt bad about inflicting so much damage. But then he began to wonder if the man had a gun.
“Arthur,” Forrest said. “I come to talk a minute, if’n it’s all right.”
This was certainly different from the night “Lil” Arthur had climbed into the ring with him. Then, Forrest Thomas had been conceited and full of piss and vinegar and wore the word nigger on his lips as firmly as a mole. He was angry he had been reduced by his employer to fighting a black man. To hear him tell it, he deserved no less than John L. Sullivan, who refused to fight a Negro, considering it a debasement to the heavyweight title.
“Yeah,” “Lil” Arthur said. “What you want?”
“I ain’t got nothing against you,” Forrest said.
“Don’t matter you do,” “Lil” Arthur said.
“You whupped me fair and square.”
“I know, and I can do it again.”
“I didn’t think so before, but I know you can now.”
“That’s what you come to say? You got all dressed up, just to come talk to a nigger that whupped you?”
“I come to say more.”
“Say it. I’m tired.”
“McBride’s come in.”
“That ain’t tellin’ me nothin’. I reckoned he’d come in sometime. How’m I gonna fight him, he don’t come in?”
“You don’t know anything about McBride. Not really. He killed a man in the ring, his last fight in Chicago. That’s why Beems brought him in, to kill you. Beems and his bunch want you dead ‘cause you whipped a white man. They don’t care you whipped me. They care you whipped a white man. Beems figures it’s an insult to the white race, a white man being beat by a colored. This McBride, he’s got a shot at the Championship of the World. He’s that good.”
“You tellin’ me you concerned for me?”
“I’m tellin’ you Beems and the members of the Sportin’ Club can’t take it. They lost a lot of money on bets, too. They got to set it right, see. I ain’t no friend of yours, but I figure I owe you that. I come to warn you this McBride is a killer.”
“Lil” Arthur listened to the crickets saw their legs a moment, then said, “If that worried me, this man being a killer, and I didn’t fight him, that would look pretty good for your boss, wouldn’t it? Beems could say the bad nigger didn’t show up. That he was scared of a white man.”
“You fight this McBride, there’s a good chance he’ll kill you or cripple you. Boxing bein’ against the law, there won’t be nobody there legal to keep check on things. Not really. Audience gonna be there ain’t gonna say nothin’. They ain’t supposed to be there anyway. You died, got hurt bad, you’d end up out there in the Gulf with a block of granite tied to your dick, and that’d be that.”
“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 Ya
nkees, ‘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 — 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.