I could tell by her face that the effort hadn’t been successful. “When was the last time you ate?”
“I’m not hungry,” she said. I was going to tell her she had to keep her strength up, a line I’d heard my mom use in the kitchen at New Horizon with newcomers, but it felt token.
On the hospital loudspeaker, a calm voice said, “Code six in room three-thirteen. Code six in three-thirteen.”
In the hallway, nurses rushed past, followed by a sprinting doctor. I’m not sure Khajee noticed. “Last night,” she began, “when he was awake. He wanted me to help him get dressed. He said we were going to be late for the train. Isn’t that the weirdest thing?”
“I guess,” I said. “Maybe he’d had some sort of dream.”
“Maybe,” Khajee said, looking out the window. “Do you think it means anything?”
I could tell she really wanted this to have significance. “I don’t know,” I told her. “Could be he’s ready to go? Like to heaven. Is that a comforting thought?”
Her eyes swung up to mine, and there was a mixture of surprise and frustration. A nurse in polka-dot scrubs rushed into the room. She stopped when she saw just us and said, “Where’s the code six?”
Without turning to her, Khajee said, “Room three-thirteen.”
After the nurse left, Khajee pulled out her phone and checked something. “I tried calling the apartment last night. It was almost midnight and you didn’t answer. Do I want to know what you were doing?”
The truth was that I’d been out with Grunt again Saturday night. We’d picked up some supplies at a Lowe’s and delivered them to an apartment building super, stopped by a liquor store and bought two cases of bourbon, filled up the van and a plastic red tank of gas at a Sheetz, a handful of errands like that. In Boiling Springs, Grunt went into a firehouse, and I sat in the van alone for an hour. On my cracked MP3, I listened to an entire Rolling Stones album, Emotional Rescue. Down in Dillsburg, Grunt used bolt cutters to break through the chain-link fence at a used car dealership, then handed me a knife. Together we sliced the tires of two dozen cars, silently crossing the darkened parking lot. I didn’t even ask why. When we finished, he took that red tank and poured gas around the office trailer, then handed me a packet of matches. I looked around then ignited one, tossed it to the glistening ground. Flame rolled like a wave rushing toward shore, along the asphalt and up the vinyl side of the building. I turned to Grunt and he was already walking steadily toward the van, so I followed. As we drove off, I didn’t even look back at the results of my handiwork. With all this on my mind, I looked at Khajee and said, “Me and Grunt went bowling.”
Her smile was crooked. “You’re a terrible liar.”
“Lying and front kicks,” I said. “It’s good to know where I’ve got space for improvement.”
“Speaking of which,” Khajee said. “I forgot to ask if you tried the wall yesterday.”
“I didn’t make it to the top yet, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“That’s not what I asked. Did you try?”
“Yeah,” I told her, a bit defensive maybe. “I try every time I jog that route.”
“Results come from effort. Right effort leads inevitably to right results. Wrong effort leads to wrong results.” She said these words staring at Than.
“That’s part of Buddhism?” I asked.
She nodded. “Sort of,” she said. “But it’s also common sense.” Now she turned to me and held my face with her eyes. “Whatever you’re doing at night. It has to stop.”
I looked over at her uncle. I had no idea what treatment like this cost. “I’m doing the same thing you are, working for a guy I don’t like to earn money I need.”
Khajee shook her head. “You’re digging yourself deeper into something I’m trying to crawl out of,” she said. “That’s a big difference.” I considered her words, and she went on. “Than. He wouldn’t want this. You have to know that.”
My eyes dropped to the oxygen tank, and I wondered again how long it’d been since she ate anything. Her cheeks looked gaunt. I stood up. “It’s lunchtime,” I told her. “Want to hit the cafeteria?”
She nodded her head and stood. “Actually that sounds good. But for me, it’ll be breakfast.”
One silent elevator ride later, and after wandering around the café-style cafeteria, we sat down across from each other. I had a bottle of water and a chicken salad. Khajee went in a different direction. “Who drinks coffee with pizza?” I asked. “Let alone black?”
“Just me, so far as I know,” she answered.
I dug in with a plastic fork, and she started in on her droopy slice of pepperoni. “So have you been in contact with any of your teachers?” I asked.
“What’s the point? School isn’t really high on my list of things I’m worried about right now.”
“Sure,” I said. “That makes sense. What about your family?”
She chewed, swallowed, but looked like she didn’t understand.
“Back home in Thailand,” I pressed. “Isn’t there anyone else?”
“My home is on Third Street,” she said. “There’s nobody in Thailand, not really.”
I shoveled my salad around, flicked out a piece of lettuce that was brown on the edges. Khajee held her coffee cup on the table with two hands. “Buddhists don’t believe in death you know. Not in the way you do.”
“What do you mean?”
“For a Buddhist, existence is a long cycle with each individual struggling to attain nirvana — perfection. Based on your actions during a single lifetime, you generate karma, and depending on your karma, your consciousness comes back in the next life in a new form. You get to try again.”
“So like reincarnation?”
“Not exactly, but you’re in the right ballpark.”
I liked this notion of infinite new chances, always starting over fresh. And I thought for a while about the questions I had, trying to find the words to not be disrespectful. But then Khajee said, “You’re wrong about Sunday.”
“Wrong how?”
“You think you’ve got it under control. But you’re wrong, just like Marco. Working for that man, doing the things we do, it’s bad karma.”
I glanced around the cafeteria. There was an older couple a few tables away and a doctor looking at a laptop in the corner. No one was near enough to hear us. I pushed my plate to the side. “Where is Marco now?” I asked, sort of afraid of the answer.
Khajee sipped at her coffee. “Don’t know for sure. According to Blalock, Grunt broke all ten of his fingers and they loaded him on a bus heading to Chicago. He’s been exiled from the Eastern Seaboard.”
“Exiled for what?”
“Refusing to obey orders.” Here she leaned in too. “Every now and then, Sunday fixes a fight.”
I sat back, almost like the news was a punch I wanted to avoid. “You serious?”
She nodded deeply. “I don’t have any proof. But I’ve seen fighters do some strange things. Uncle told me that a guy like Sunday could make a fortune with the betting on those websites if he knew the outcome ahead of time. It all makes sense.”
“And Marco?”
“I think Marco wouldn’t play ball. Too much ego and not enough greed. He never told me anything, was sort of quiet like you. But I had my suspicions.”
I looked down at my plate, mostly empty. “You think I’m quiet?” I asked.
“You keep your secrets, that’s all I mean.”
This landed on me funny, and I didn’t want to let it stand. So when I finished the last of my salad, I said, “I don’t want to have secrets from you. What is it you want to know?”
She eyed me up, like she was deciding where to begin. “For starters, how come you hate hospitals so much?”
My mind flashed to the tumble from the monkey bars when I was five, the sharp pain in my arm, the emergency room X-ray, the doctor’s questions about the other bruises on my back and legs. Even at that age, I knew what my father did with his belt wasn’t right, but I t
hought I’d brought it all on myself, by leaving my wet towel on the floor after my shower or not finishing my applesauce at dinner or by wandering into their bedroom in the middle of the night, searching for the source of those angry sounds. Sitting on that exam table, feet dangling as the doctor wrapped my arm in a cast, I worried that I’d inadvertently betrayed my father. So I lied and answered, “From when I fell at the park.” I don’t know if that doctor believed me or didn’t want to get involved, but before we left, he talked to my mom alone in a room for a long time.
Khajee reached across the cafeteria table and touched my forearm. Her fingertips were warm from the coffee. “I’m sorry. I can see you’re getting upset again. I shouldn’t have pried.”
I put my other hand over hers. “Don’t apologize. I was just remembering this time when I was a kid. I broke my arm.”
“It was a bad experience at the hospital?”
“Sort of bad, yeah. But not bad like you’re thinking. Way worse was something else. Another time. Basically another part of the same damn story.”
“You can tell me if you want.”
I took a long swig from my water, then set it down. “This was the night the police took my father away, the night he beat my mom so bad I thought he killed her. This cop, a nice lady named Harrow, she sat with me at the hospital while they operated on my mom, and I worried the whole night she was going to die, that I hadn’t saved her.”
“That’s a lot of pressure on a little boy.”
It felt strange to be telling this story, but something about Khajee drew the words from me. “When I was finally allowed to see her, half her face was wrapped in gauzy bandages. I hugged her and asked when we could just go home. Harrow, she said something about helping us find a new home, making a fresh start. Something about this made my mom start crying, which was a mess because of the injuries to her face. I just kept telling her I was sorry.”
“What were you sorry for?”
I took a deep breath. Too much to explain that I’d had a vision of her getting beat that night but hadn’t been able to stop it. Plus, it was more than that. “I don’t know exactly. Maybe I felt guilty because I hadn’t protected her. Or maybe I felt guilty because I thought if she didn’t have me, she’d have left him long ago. I was pretty screwed up.”
Khajee thought for a while, drained the last of her coffee. “And when you fight, Mac, the anger that takes over? You don’t connect any of this to that rage?”
I didn’t like the answer, which came to me right away of course. But I stayed silent.
And she was about to say something more, but just then that polka-dot nurse came hauling into the cafeteria and ran up behind Khajee. “We’ve been looking for you,” she said. “It’s your uncle. Come quick!”
We skipped the elevator and sprinted up four flights of stairs, then down the long white hall. As we approached the open door, I was worried that we’d find the old man dead. I felt guilty for drawing Khajee away. But when we got to the room, I was shocked to see him sitting up in his bed. He was no longer wearing the breathing mask, and he turned to us. “Hello,” he said with a little wave of his hand, bright-eyed and smiling.
Khajee rushed in and embraced him. She said something in Thai and he said, “I’m not ready for that just yet.”
The nurse said she’d track down Dr. Ngoyo and left us alone. Khajee poured a glass of water from a pitcher and made Than drink some through a bent straw. He spoke to her in Thai and she answered. I couldn’t understand, but I was surprised to hear the energy in his voice. At one point, in the flow of sounds I couldn’t understand, I heard the word “Sunday,” and then, a minute later, “Santana.”
Than’s eyes widened at me, and he extended a shaky thumbs-up. “Santana’s a legitimate badass. Khajee must be rubbing off on you.”
“He’s not tiger tough,” I told him, and this made him grin.
Khajee said, “He’s fighting Badder tomorrow night.”
Than took this in, scratched at the stubble that had grown along his jawline. “He’s the kind of guy who thinks no one can beat him. Worst thing for him is making him doubt that.”
“Doubt,” I repeated.
Than nodded. “Like a crack in a dam. Hurt him early.”
This made sense to me. Coach Gallaher had cautioned me more than once that nothing was more dangerous than feeling invulnerable. He called it a Titanic mentality.
Than and Khajee beamed at each other and talked a little more. He asked about Roosevelt, and we assured him we’d been taking care of the dog. He wanted to know how school was going and she lied, saying she’d aced a chemistry test on Friday.
Dr. Ngoyo showed up and gave Than a once-over. He consulted a tablet and tapped at the screen, asked him a few questions. While he talked with Than, he smiled and patted his forearm. “I’m glad you’re feeling well,” he told him. But when he turned to leave, the doctor caught Khajee’s eyes with his own, and we followed him into the hallway.
He walked down to a nurse’s station and leaned onto the counter. “Just one sec,” he said as he entered something into the tablet.
Khajee grew impatient and asked, “When can I take him home?”
This stopped the doctor, who turned to Khajee. “Your uncle’s condition remains serious. I’d even say grave.”
Khajee tilted back into me. “But you saw him. You said you weren’t even sure he’d wake up. He’s totally himself. Laughing and —”
The doctor held up a thin hand. “I saw exactly what you did, yes. However the fact remains that his kidneys are failing. His lungs are in terrible shape and he’s still in severe respiratory distress. The breathing treatments have helped beat back the pneumonia, but that was only brought on by the terrible condition of his lungs in the first place. The sepsis is rampant.”
Khajee’s body went kind of lax, and I held her by the shoulders from behind. “What are you telling me?”
“The same thing I tried to get across the other day. We’re at the stage where we can make him comfortable, but I don’t want to hold out false hope.”
“How can hope be false?” Khajee asked quietly, clearly not expecting an answer.
The doctor looked around the hallway.
I said, “He seems so alert.”
He nodded. “I’m not sure if this will help,” he said. “But sometimes, as a sort of prelude to the final stages, a patient like this gets a burst of energy. They seem healthy and even supercharged. In my experience, it’s best to enjoy their company during this period. You should go to him, okay?”
Khajee mumbled something and stepped out of my grip. She wandered back toward Than’s room, and I looked at the doctor, who said, “The truth can be a hard thing to accept. I just thought she deserved to know.”
I went after Khajee, who was leaning into the wall just outside Than’s door. She was crying softly, making no noise. When I got to her, she sniffled and stood up straight. She wiped at her eyes and said, “Doctors don’t know everything. He’s going to be just fine. A week from now, we’ll all be home.”
Even as she said these words, I could tell she didn’t believe them. She was just trying to convince herself. And I wished I could control my power to see what was to come, to peer into tomorrow and confirm her dreams. But in my heart of hearts, I knew that if I could glimpse the future, I probably wouldn’t like what I saw.
I understood when Khajee told me she couldn’t leave her uncle for my fight with Badder. She wanted to be nearby in case Than, who’d slipped away again, returned for another lucid spell. Monday afternoon, she’d bolted home for a songless shower, a change of clothes, and to check in on me and Rosie. “Don’t let Badder get your arm,” she warned me in the doorway of the apartment, a night bag slung over her shoulder. “He’s got some ferocious submission holds. I’ve seen him snap an elbow like a chicken wing.”
“He’ll never get past my front kick,” I boasted.
She shook her head. “You don’t have a front kick. But it’s true. He won’t be
expecting your lame version of one.”
“Total secret weapon.”
“Something like that. Use it wisely.”
“Will do, Boss,” I said. “The championship belt is as good as ours.”
“Don’t get cocky,” she snapped. Leaning into the frame, Khajee didn’t seem to want to leave. She slid one foot over the doormat. “This guy is dangerous for real. Sunday’s up to something.”
“Sunday wants to make money. And Badder doesn’t scare me.”
“Maybe being a little scared wouldn’t be a totally bad idea.”
I shook my head. “I’m not real good at being scared.” Some inner part of me laughed.
“For real,” Khajee told me, brushing a hand along my bicep and pulling me from the past. “Take care of yourself tonight.”
It was good that we’d cleared up she wasn’t looking for a boyfriend like me, or any boyfriend at all. Otherwise, I’d have interpreted her concern as something more than it was. “You too,” I said, pretty sure she might have a harder night ahead of her than I did.
On the far end of that Monday, I found myself standing over a sign collapsed in a patch of waist-high weeds. “28 Days without an Accident at This Worksite!” I wasn’t convinced that four weeks of safety was worth bragging about, and I wondered what the circumstances were that shut the place down.
Blalock had driven the two of us south into an industrial park with hangar-like buildings and no streetlights. At the end of a mile-long winding road we came to an isolated construction site, at the center of which was a partially completed building that looked to me like a gigantic Erector Set. There were four stories of I-beam girders stretching up into the sky but no floors or ceilings or walls.
Blalock went to find Sunday, and I checked out the fighting area. At the base of the structure, a foundation had long ago been dug into the earth. Like most basements, the pit was lined with cinderblocks. From two corners, bright lights on tripods illuminated the concrete floor, and cameras in the other corners angled down, waiting. Leaves and debris coated the pit, and one of Sunday’s cronies had scrambled down on a ladder with a Hefty bag to tidy up.
Brawler Page 18
