Champion of the World

by Chad Dundas

  Boyd Markham was pushing his way through the sea of reporters, a fire-engine-red carnation pinned to the lapel of his best ringmaster’s suit. His silver mane of hair was oiled to a high shine and slicked back on his great lion’s head. He was flanked by two dour men in black suits, guys Pepper had never seen before, both of them wearing a dusty, stone-faced look that said they could only be lawyers or undertakers. The sportswriters moved back to let them pass, and as they came to the front, Markham opened his arms like he wanted to take the whole room into an embrace. Something tightened like a screw at the base of Pepper’s skull. It took him a moment to realize that Carol Jean was standing with him, her hair pinned up over a chaste black gown. She was staring, unblinking, at her own toes.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” Stettler sputtered, but his voice was lost in the din.

  “Will these fat cats stand idly by as this poor woman goes uncompensated after the terrible loss of her husband?” Markham said, sounding like a preacher who had waited a long time to get his pulpit. “A man stolen from her in the prime of both their lives?”

  Pepper looked over at Moira. She had moved forward and now stood squeezing a handkerchief at the fringe of the curtain.

  Many of the reporters looked confused and were whispering to each other, while others were just struggling to keep up with their shorthand. Pepper thought he saw the ringmaster flash a quick smile his way before his face flattened back into pious sincerity. One of the sportswriters who’d come to the hunting camp in Montana had also worked his way to the front.

  “What makes you think the Negro’s whore deserves a dime?” he called.

  Markham didn’t look at the man or acknowledge him in any way. Instead he dug a meaty claw into the inside pocket of his jacket and came out with a sheaf of paper folded into thirds. “I hold in my hand a service contract signed both by myself and Mr. Pepper Van Dean,” Markham said, leveling a finger in his direction. “It clearly elucidates that I am owed a fifty-percent stake of any earnings he collects through professional wrestling or any other like athletic endeavor.”

  “You unbelievable fuck,” Pepper said, putting his fists on the table and rising from his chair.

  He felt Fritz’s hand on him and sank back into his seat. The reporters were now in an out-and-out frenzy, trying to yell questions all at once. Markham rolled on as if they were flies buzzing around his head.

  “Having been contacted by the recently widowed Mrs. Taft,” he said, “my legal analysts and I request an audience with the promoters of this weekend’s farce. We demand satisfaction on her behalf. Might I suggest we retire to better-sequestered environs to discuss these rather delicate matters?”

  At the center of the stage Stettler stood gripping the lectern. He’d been joined by a couple of O’Shea’s goons, their heads pressed together as they conferred. All at once O’Shea’s men broke off from the stage, hopping down to usher Markham and Carol Jean out a side door while several of the reporters tried to follow.

  “Gentlemen,” Stettler said, holding up his hands for quiet. “We thank you for attending this event today. Our apologies for the unplanned outburst. We assure you it will be sorted out in short order and we look forward to seeing all of you ringside on Saturday night. It should be an interesting endeavor, to say the least.”

  As soon as he turned away from the crowd the smile died on his face. He crossed the stage to Pepper in two quick steps. “My suite,” he hissed. “Now.”

  Boyd Markham had helped himself to a drink and a small bowl of mixed nuts by the time they got to Stettler’s suite. Only Fritz came over to greet them as one of O’Shea’s goons let them inside. Carol Jean sat in an armchair, making a point of not looking at anyone. Stettler, Lesko and O’Shea skulked around in the far corner. Around the table, Markham’s lawyers had been joined by another group of men Pepper had never seen before. He assumed they must be lawyers who belonged to O’Shea and Stettler. They were engrossed by a series of papers they had set out in front of them.

  During the long walk up, a hard rock had formed between his shoulder blades. Moira climbed the stairs in front of him and he tried to focus on the backs of her shoes to keep everything from going red. When they got to the landing at the top, she turned and whispered to him that no matter what happened inside the suite, he needed to keep calm. Her eyes were bright and wet, but her gaze was steady. She was in full cardsharp mode now, he knew, watching everything with a calculated stillness that came just before the biggest bet of the evening.

  He nodded to her and said that he would go easy, but as soon as they were inside, his rage bubbled up again and he tried to get ahold of Markham.

  “I should have known you’d come back begging for scraps,” he said. Fritz and Stettler held him back.

  Markham reared away, a stricken look on his face, nuts and salt spilling onto the carpet. “A fool never appreciates when his disgraces are his own making,” he remarked, as if repeating a prayer to himself.

  Even after Fritz and Stettler turned him loose, Moira held on to his arm to make sure he was settled. “I don’t know where you ran across this skunk,” she said to Carol Jean, “but I know he’s not looking after your best interests.”

  Carol Jean looked every bit the petulant child. “I just want what I’m owed,” she said.

  “You’re owed nothing,” Fritz said. “You’ll get nothing.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Markham said.

  He was right, and knowing it made Pepper want to go after him all over again. For an icy half hour they all sat in the hotel suite while the lawyers went over the papers, then another fifteen minutes while Stettler and Fritz followed the men in suits into a back bedroom, where he could hear their muffled voices going back and forth behind the door. The entire time Markham sat perched on a high-backed barstool like a great toad, leering at Pepper and refilling his drink each time he drained it. Lesko also watched him, nothing knowable in his flat eyes. Only Carol Jean seemed to have no interest in Pepper, Moira or in anything else in the room. She merely sat still, occasionally dabbing at the corners of her eyes with a handkerchief.

  “We could have done this another way,” Moira said to her. “You could have just come to me. We could have worked out a deal between the two of us.”

  “A deal?” she said, finally showing them the full fury in her eyes. “Would you say a deal between us would work out better or worse for me than the one these men had with my husband?”

  Every muscle in Pepper’s body tensed. Mixed in with his confusion and anger, he couldn’t stop himself from feeling sorry for her. He didn’t know exactly what Markham had promised Carol Jean, but he thought he understood a bit of what she was going through. He recognized the proud set of her shoulders, her boiling glare not quite covering up the pain beneath. He remembered what that was like. He knew how easy it could be to let yourself be taken in by the carnival barker’s smooth talk, especially when you had nothing else left to believe in. Markham had told her he could win the day for her. He’d told her he could get her a bit of money, enough to start over, and had done it well enough that she believed him. Sitting there, Carol Jean thought the terms they’d struck were legitimate, even though everyone else in the hotel suite knew Markham was just a swindler. She was just his new mark.

  “I know this has been hard for you . . .” he said.

  “Don’t pretend to know a thing about me,” Carol Jean said. “Three years I waited for that man. Visiting him in that awful place. I took his name. I lost my family. When he got out, I suffered his moods, his peculiar behaviors, his rages and spells. I stayed when he told me we were broke. I stayed after he stopped sleeping with me. I followed him to the middle of nowhere and gave him the prime years of my life, and now he’s gone and all of it means nothing. What would you do?”

  His response was cut off by the sound of the bedroom door opening. Stettler and Fritz exited, followed by their troop of
lawyers. Everyone stood as Stettler came to the center of the room like a world leader about to give a great speech. His ridiculous dyed hair tumbled into his eyes and he swept it away with the back of his hand. “I regret to report,” he said, “that Mr. Markham’s contract appears genuine. It’s a strongly worded agreement, to say the least.”

  “So,” Pepper said, rising from his seat. “What’s that mean?”

  “It means,” one of Markham’s lawyers said, “you owe our client restitution for damages and reimbursement for the losses he incurred after you left him in the lurch some months ago.”

  “Restitution?” Pepper said, the word jabbing him like a bone in something he was eating.

  “This is ridiculous,” Moira said. “It was Markham that abandoned us, not the other way around.”

  “I’m afraid it’s your word against his on that aspect,” the lawyer said, “and the contract makes it quite clear. Mr. Van Dean’s no-compete clause bars him from performing with another outfit in any similar endeavor, athletic or theatrical, for up to two years. On top of that, there’s the matter of Mr. Markham’s losses at the box office after your departure, plus advance-advertising monies spent publicizing appearances with the Markham & Markham Overland Carnival that Mr. Van Dean failed to make. Plus the transport of Mr. and Mrs. Van Dean’s belongings back to New York, at considerable expense, plus the deposit and rent money Mr. Markham spent keeping rooms for you at the Hotel St. Agnes—”

  “Enough,” Pepper said. He could not contain himself any longer. He stormed past the lawyer and into the bedroom. The contract was laid out on a small side table and he went and stood over it, doing his best to look like he was seeing it for the first time.

  “Well,” Fritz said from behind him. “Is it your signature?”

  Of course it was, but could he tell them that? Could he explain what life had been like for them those years ago? How desperate they’d been when they lost the house? That they had no way to make a living? Could he explain to them that back then he would’ve signed anything Markham put in front of him if it meant a little money in his pocket? No, he couldn’t, and he wouldn’t. It would mean nothing to them. These were not men who dealt in real life. They dealt in contracts, in fine print and stipulations. When he turned to face them they were all standing in the doorway, the lawyers huddled in the background. Carol Jean and Moira had not left the sitting area, as if they both already knew the outcome.

  “You sons of bitches,” he said, to all of them. “How much will we owe?”

  “There will have to be a legal proceeding,” one of Markham’s lawyers said. “Ultimately, it will be up to a judge. But, given the circumstances, we feel justified in petitioning for approximately eighty-five percent of your earnings from the wrestling match, plus a share of the wages you incurred working for Mr. Mundt and Mr. Stettler in recent months.”

  Pepper ignored him, closing in on Markham again. The carnival barker looked like he wanted to suck his fat face all the way into his neck to get away, but he stood his ground.

  “This is you all over,” Pepper said. “You show up after all this time, shouting accusations and waving your papers. You never saw a headline you didn’t want to steal, did you?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Markham said.

  “This woman,” Pepper said, pointing at Carol Jean. “Hasn’t she been through enough? You’ve got the contract and she means nothing to you. But you couldn’t resist playing yourself off as the hero, could you? What is she? Your insurance policy? Make a big stink in the papers so O’Shea can’t sic his goons on you? Sing a song looking for sympathy so I won’t try to drag this out?”

  From the way Markham’s grin flickered across his face, Pepper knew he was right. “Drag it out?” Markham said, again sounding like they were two friends just shooting the breeze. “Pepper, we’re just talking about the worst thing that could happen here. Really, there’s no need for judges or courtrooms or a messy altercation in the press. As I was saying, I’m certain we can come to terms on a one-time lump-sum payment to settle this matter before the end of the weekend.”

  “Yeah?” Pepper said. “This ought to be good. How much?”

  Markham made a show of collecting himself, rocking back on his heels and standing up straight. “Seventy-five percent,” he said.

  “I’ll tell you what’s going to happen,” Pepper said. “I’m going to murder you. I’m going to kill you and I’m going to drag your fat body out where no one will ever—”

  “Mr. Van Dean”—this was one of the lawyers again—“I assure you, sir, your threats of physical violence—witnessed here by each of us—are not helping your case.”

  “You and I both know that contract is very real,” Markham added.

  Pepper said it seemed like they had very different definitions of what that word meant. He said if Markham felt, by some twisted bastardization of the truth, that he and Moira somehow owed him more than the five years of their lives they’d already given him, he was free to file suit in court. They would meet his challenge with everything they had, he said, and if Markham was that kind of man, they would let a judge decide what everyone was owed.

  “Seventy-five percent, eighty-five, whatever,” Pepper said. “But it’ll be slow going, and you won’t get a dime from me until the agents show up to take it straight out of my hands.”

  As he was talking, they all stood around looking at him. Moira had gone to stand by the suite’s main door, looking as white as death. Near the end of his speech, Markham’s other lawyer came and leaned one shoulder against the wall behind the carnival barker. He had his hands in the pockets of his slacks and a smug look on his face that made Pepper want to squeeze his neck until his eyeballs popped out.

  “Frankly,” the lawyer said. “If that’s the route you want to take, we may ask for all of it.”

  As soon as they got back to their room, Moira sank onto the love seat and tried to massage the ache out of her jaw. She felt shaky and ill, as if she hadn’t eaten, even though she and Pepper had wolfed down a big room service lunch just before the press conference. The fact that she’d been expecting something like this all along had done little to prepare her for the moment Boyd Markham came through the crowd with Carol Jean at his heels. After her encounter with them in the promoter’s suite, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to slap Carol Jean’s face or lend her a hanky.

  She didn’t have any time to dwell on it, as Fritz and Billy Stettler barged into the room before she and Pepper could get settled. Both men were still wearing their press conference suits, but Fritz looked shrunken and tired inside his. Stettler moved around the room with the hectic buzz of a drug user. He was a strange-looking fellow, with artificially colored hair and the puffed-up body of a man who had nothing better to do than exercise.

  “We’ll have to get our own account of it in tomorrow’s papers,” Stettler was saying, moving to one side of the room to examine a painting hanging over the bed.

  “This changes nothing, of course,” Fritz said. He’d lingered behind in the doorway, propping one hand on a little table like he was afraid he might keel over. “We still have our agreements, which everyone must continue to honor. Forge ahead and let the courts sort it out later, that’s what I say.”

  “Or just pay Markham out from your end and be done with it,” Stettler said to Pepper, who was sitting on the opposite corner of the bed, hands on knees.

  Fritz looked surprised by Stettler’s suggestion, but then he nodded. “That’s right,” he said. “I hate to sound callous, but this situation has very little to do with any of us.”

  “Far be it from you to sound callous, Freddy,” Moira said.

  “What I want to know,” Pepper said, half quiet like he was talking to himself, “is how he managed to get in her ear.”

  They all suddenly turned to Moira, and the surprise of it made her sit up straight. Up to that point the m
en had all but ignored her, as if she had no real part to play in their drama. Now, as their eyes all fell on her, she was angry. Did they think she was Carol Jean’s keeper? In addition to consoling the poor woman, was she supposed to have her on a leash? Guard her against salesmen, bill collectors and the odd carnival owner who might come out of the woodwork trying to bilk her?

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” she said, and it seemed to satisfy them, even though as she said it the pieces were falling into place in her mind. That morning, when Carol Jean hadn’t answered her knock, Moira had just assumed she must have wandered down to the restaurant. Late the night before she’d stopped by to find her in unexpectedly high spirits. She’d put on fresh clothes and was drifting around, inspecting the furnishings, offering to pour drinks, just as she would have done on any late night at the hunting camp. There was still sadness in her eyes, but at least she was back among the world of the living. When Moira commented on it, Carol Jean flashed a funny, embarrassed smile and said she knew things were going to work out. In the moment Moira took it for good news. Now she wondered if her instincts were slipping.

  Stettler had walked over to where Pepper was sitting. “You sure about all this?” he said. “It’s not too late to go back to the original plan. We do that? It makes everybody a lot happier. Maybe we can work something out, find a way to get you paid off the books in a way that fat fuck can’t touch.”

  A look of hope passed across Pepper’s face. “You would do that?”

  Stettler grinned and Moira nearly laughed to see how straight and white his teeth looked. Like a row of marble gravestones in his mouth. “Sure we would, Pepper,” he said, her husband’s name ringing artificial in his voice. “We’d do practically anything if we thought it would get you on board with us long-term. Wouldn’t we, Fritzie?”

  “By all means,” Fritz said, though he hadn’t moved from his spot.

  Pepper shook his head, chasing away a pleasant dream. “You heard Markham,” he said. “The non-compete runs two years. You could pay me under the table that long?”