Stories (2011)

  “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 Yankees, ’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, all 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.

  “Lil” Arthur got the stick they kept by the door for just such an occasion, used it to rout the pigeons by poking at them. In the long run, it wouldn’t matter. They would fly as high as the roof, then gradually creep back down to roost. But the explosion of bird wings, their rise to the sky through the hole in the roof, lifted his spirits.

  His brother-in-law, Clement, rose up on an elbow from his pallet, and his wife, “Lil” Arthur’s sister Lucy, stirred and rolled over, stretched her arm across Clement’s chest, but didn’t wake up.

  “What you doin’, Arthur?” Clement whispered. “You don’t know a man’s got to sleep? I got work to do ’morrow. Ain’t all of us sleep all day.”

  “Sleep then. And stay out of my sister. Lucy don’t need no kids now. We got a house full a folks.”

  “She my wife. We supposed
to do that. And multiply.”

  “Then get your own place and multiply. We packed tight as turds here.”

  “You crazy, Arthur.”

  Arthur cocked the pigeon stick. “Lay down and shut up.”

  Clement lay down, and Arthur put the stick back and gathered up his pallet and went outside. He inspected the pallet for bird shit, found none, stretched out on the porch, and tried to sleep. He thought about getting his guitar, going back to the beach to strum it, but he was too tired for that. Too tired to do anything, too awake to sleep.

  His mother had told him time and again that when he was a baby, an old Negro lady with the second sight had picked up his little hand and said, “This child gonna eat his bread in many countries.”

  It was something that had always sustained him. But now, he began to wonder. Except for trying to leave Galveston by train once, falling asleep in the boxcar, only to discover it had been making circles in the train yard all night as supplies were unloaded, he’d had no adventures, and was still eating his bread in Galveston.

  All night he fought mosquitoes, the heat, and his own ambition. By morning he was exhausted.

  WedneSdaY, SePtemBer 5, 10:20 a.m.

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

  Disturbance center near Key West moving northwest. Vessels bound for Florida and Cuban ports should exercise caution. Storm likely to become dangerous.

  10:23 a.m.

  McBride awoke, flicked the redhead, sat up in bed, and cracked his knuckles, said, “I’m going to eat and train, Red. You have your ass here when I get back, and put it on the Sportin’ Club’s bill. And wash yourself, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. McBride,” she said.

  McBride got up, poured water into a washbasin, washed his dick, under his arms, splashed water on his face. Then he sat at the dresser in front of the mirror and spent twenty minutes putting on the Chinaman’s remedy and combing his hair. As soon as he had it just right, he put on a cap.

  He got dressed in loose pants, a short-sleeved shirt, soft shoes, wrapped his knuckles with gauze, put a little notebook and pencil in his back pocket, then pulled on soft leather gloves. When the redhead wasn’t looking, he wrapped his revolver and razor in a washrag, stuffed them between his shirt and his stomach.

  Downstairs, making sure no one was about, he removed the rag containing his revolver and razor, stuck them into the drooping greenness of a potted plant, then went away.

  He strolled down the street to a cafe and ordered steak and eggs and lots of coffee. He ate with his gloves and hat on. He paid for the meal, but got a receipt.

  Comfortably full, he went out to train.

  He began at the docks. There were a number of men hard at work. They were loading bags of cottonseed onto a ship. He stood with his hands behind his back and watched. The scent of the sea was strong. The water lapped at the pilings enthusiastically, and the air was as heavy as a cotton sack.

  After a while, he strolled over to a large bald man with arms and legs like plantation columns. The man wore faded overalls without a shirt, and his chest was as hairy as a bear’s ass. He had on heavy work boots with the sides burst out. McBride could see his bare feet through the openings. McBride hated a man that didn’t keep up his appearance, even when he was working. Pride was like a dog. You didn’t feed it regularly, it died.

  McBride said, “What’s your name?”

  The man, a bag of cottonseed under each arm, stopped and looked at him, taken aback. “Ketchum,” he said. “Warner Ketchum.”

  “Yeah,” McBride said. “Thought so. So, you’re the one.”

  The man glared at him. “One what?”

  The other men stopped working, turned to look.

  “I just wanted to see you,” McBride said. “Yeah, you fit the description. I just never thought there was a white man would stoop to such a thing. Fact is, hard to imagine any man stooping to such a thing.”

  “What are you talkin’ about, fella?”

  “Well, word is, Warner Ketchum that works at the dock has been known to suck a little nigger dick in his time.”

  Ketchum dropped the cottonseed bags. “Who the hell are you? Where you hear that?”

  McBride put his gloved hands behind his back and held them. “They say, on a good night, you can do more with a nigger’s dick than a cat can with a ball of twine.”

  The man was fuming. “You got me mixed up with somebody else, you Yankee-talkin’ sonofabitch.”

  “Naw, I ain’t got you mixed up. Your name’s Warner Ketchum. You look how you was described to me by the nigger whose stick you slicked.”

  Warner stepped forward with his right foot and swung a right punch so looped it looked like a sickle blade. McBride ducked it without removing his hands from behind his back, slipped inside and twisted his hips as he brought a right uppercut into Warner’s midsection.

  Warner’s air exploded and he wobbled back and McBride was in again, a left hook to the ribs, a straight right to the solar plexus. Warner doubled and went to his knees.

  McBride leaned over and kissed him on the ear, said, “Tell me. Them nigger dicks taste like licorice?”

  Warner came up then, and he was wild. He threw a right, then a left.

  McBride bobbed beneath them. Warner kicked at him. McBride turned sideways, let the kick go by, unloaded a left hand that caught Warner on the jaw, followed it with a right that struck with a sound like the impact of an artillery shell.

  Warner dropped to one knee. McBride grabbed him by the head and swung his knee into Warner’s face, busting his nose all over the dock. Warner fell face forward, caught himself on his hands, almost got up. Then, very slowly, he collapsed, lay down, and didn’t move.

  McBride looked at the men who were watching him. He said, “He didn’t suck no nigger dicks. I made that up.” He got out his paper pad and pencil and wrote: Owed me. Price of one sparring partner, FIVE DOLLARS.

  He put the pad and pencil away. Got five dollars out of his wallet, folded it, put it in the man’s back pocket. He turned to the other men who stood staring at him as if he were one of Jesus’ miracles.

  “Frankly, I think you’re all a bunch of sorry assholes, and I think, one at a time, I can lick every goddamn one of you Southern white trash pieces of shit. Any takers?”

  “Not likely,” said a stocky man at the front of the crowd. “You’re a ringer.” He picked up a sack of cottonseed he had put down, started toward the ship. The other men did the same.

  McBride said, “Okay,” and walked away.

  He thought, maybe, on down the docks he might find another sparring partner.

  5:23 P.m.

  By the end of the day, near dark, McBride checked his notepad for expenses, saw the Sporting Club owed him forty-five dollars in sparring partners, and a new pair of gloves, as well as breakfast and dinner to come. He added money for a shoeshine. A clumsy sonofabitch had scuffed one of his shoes.

  He got the shoeshine and ate a steak, flexed his muscles as he arrived at the whorehouse. He felt loose still, like he could take on another two or three yokels.

  He went inside, got his goods out of the potted plant, and climbed the stairs.

  thurSdaY, SePtemBer 6, 6:00 P.m.

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

  Storm center just northwest of Key West.

  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 re
cord, “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.