by Jack Tunney
His Chevy rolled to a stop at the pumps. Donny Wayne cut the engine and got out slowly.
He moved inside the garage, jacket pulled tight against the cold, with his eyes darting from side to side. He shut the door and gave me a smile.
I closed the register and came around the counter. “How’s it going, Donny Wayne?”
He shrugged, but his expression said everything. There was a look I recognized as fear and worry. I knew it well. It was the same one I wore when life didn’t work out the way I planned.
“Things didn’t go so good,” he said.
He shook a Marlboro out of the pack and fumbled to light it. “Really needed you on this job.”
I just shook my head. “I’m done talking about it,” I said. “Told you why I couldn’t do it.”
“It was a mistake to say, no,” he told me. “Really need you behind the wheel instead of the clown I found.”
“What happened?”
“It went bad,” he said. He took a deep drag on the Marlboro and shook his head. “Got inside the store okay, but we got into it with the manager. Guy didn’t give up the cash and we wound up clocking him with the butt of the thirty-eight.”
I stared at him. “You brought a gun?”
Donny Wayne returned my look. “Of course. No other way. Why else would he give up the cash?” he said. “Had to show him some heat.”
“Yeah, but a gun is different,” I said. “That makes it armed robbery.”
He shrugged. “The cops showed up,” he said. “They were on us so fast we didn’t know what happened. Didn’t get more than a block before the clown behind the wheel put us into a parked car trying to get out of the alley. I’m the only one who got away.”
“Thought it was an easy job?”
“Never figured it could go bad like it did,” Donny Wayne said. “Now I got the cops looking for me everywhere.”
I could have told him his luck would run out, sooner or later.
“I can’t go home. Those other guys didn’t know how to take a pinch. They started blabbing before the cops even got them in the back of the squad car,” he said. Donny Wayne stared me hard in the eyes. “I need your help. Hoping you can put me up here. Give me a place to stay until things cool out.”
I shook my head. “I can’t. This isn’t my place.”
“So let me hide out at your house,” he said. “I don’t need much space. Just a place to sleep and maybe get a meal. Nobody will even know I’m around.”
“I can’t do that,” I said. “I’d like to help, but I can’t.”
“You don’t even have to tell your landlady,” he said. “It won’t be more than a couple of days. Just long enough for Big Mike to sort through everything and help me.”
I knew it would be a long time before Big Mike stepped up. Donny Wayne was on his own, he just didn’t realize it.
My expression must have betrayed me. Donny Wayne’s mood darkened. “I’m not trying to upset the little apple cart you got here,” he said, taking another drag on the cigarette. “Just asking a buddy for help.”
“This is a small town,” I said. “It’ll be two seconds before someone says something, then it will be all over town.”
Donny Wayne tensed and his attitude hardened. I squared my shoulders to face him as he looked at the cash register, then at the bank bag beside it.
“Busy station, huh? Bet you got a stream of cars in and out of here all day,” he said. “Maybe you got some cash you can give me?”
“Don’t even think about it.”
“Why not? Wouldn’t be in this spot if you had just said, yes,” he said. “You would’ve driven the car. Wouldn’t have been caught. And if it went bad, you know how to keep your mouth shut.”
“This is your fault.”
I kept shaking my head. “No, it’s not. You and me both know that. You owe me.”
“I don’t owe you anything.”
“Maybe if the cops pinch me, I’ll have to tell them about you,” he said.
“Tell them whatever you want,” I said with a shrug. “I wasn’t there. I have people who can swear to that.”
Donny Wayne took one last drag on the Marlboro, then crushed out the butt with his shoe.
“Need money, Billy,” he said. “Shouldn’t have to ask for help. You need to move out of the way.”
“Ain’t yours’ to take,” I told him. “You’ll have to go through me.”
“Don’t think I won’t do it,” he said.
He started towards me, but I blocked his path. Donny Wayne tried pushing past me but I didn’t move. I wasn’t giving in. He took a step back, then shoved me hard in the chest with both hands. It was enough to move me back a step.
I straightened up and faced him again.
“Don’t do this, Donny,” I said.
He glared at me, then threw a sloppy right. Donny Wayne telegraphed the punch and I could see it coming a mile away. I moved, blocking that punch then the left he aimed towards my head. He was throwing wild punches, trying to connect with anything. He tried bullying me aside, and when I wouldn’t move he tried another right. I blocked that punch and buried a right in his gut that sucked the air out of him.
Before he could straighten up I socked him in the jaw with a right hand.
Donny Wayne dropped to one knee.
I stood over him, waiting for his next move.
He grabbed a wrench, and then worked his way back to his feet.
“Back away,” he said, waving that wrench. “Be a shame if I busted up that arm and you couldn’t fight on Friday, huh? Just give me the cash from the register,” he said, “and I’ll be out of here before you know it.”
“No,” I said.
Neither one of us moved back an inch.
Something changed in Donny Wayne’s expression. His face reddened as the rage he had been holding inside erupted and he exploded.
He swung the wrench at my head.
I could have thrown up a left to block the punch, but I knew it would shatter my wrist. I ducked and twisted to the side. The wrench caught me hard on the shoulder and pain shot through my body. For a second I saw stars. Then I caught my breath and straightened. I squared off and popped him with a one-two to the gut, then walloped him in the nose with an overhand right before he could get his hands up.
I could feel the bones in his nose crack when my fist landed.
I hit him with another right on the mouth.
Donny Wayne dropped backwards and wound up on his butt. His eyes teared. Blood spurted from both nostrils, sprayed the floor, and streamed down his face. The fight went out of him. I came forward with my fists clenched, ready to rip into him. Donny Wayne dropped the wrench and staggered to his feet. He backed towards the door, holding a hand against his bloody face. Blood splattered his white tee shirt.
He spit a glob of phlegm and blood on the floor.
“I can’t do no jail,” he said. “I’m not like you.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Means you’re a guy who grew up with nothing. Going to jail was no big deal,” he said. “A guy like me, I got too much to lose.”
I stared at him.
“We’re not the same,” Donny Wayne said. “I don’t have inside me what you do. I can’t go to jail.”
“Then go to the cops. Tell them everything,” I said. “Tell them that Big Mike was behind it and maybe they’ll go easy on you. Maybe they’ll give you a break.”
Donny Wayne shook his head. “Can’t rat,” he said. “They’d find me buried in some ditch in the Ozarks.”
“You can’t run.”
Donny Wayne blinked away the tears. He started saying something else, but the words got caught. He turned and ran out of the garage. I called after him as he got back in his car. He yelled something, but it got lost in the night as he revved up the Chevy and screeched out of the station.
I went back inside. My shoulder hurt. There was a tingling up and down my arm, but at least it didn’t feel like anything was br
oken. I counted the money from the register, entered the total in the ledger, then stuffed the bills in the bank bag. I wiped up the blood on the floor and took another look around before turning out the lights. I walked to the bank, keeping the bag tucked inside my jacket while I watched the shadows up and down the street.
A chilly wind whipped down Main Street and I pulled up my collar against the cold.
ROUND TWENTY-ONE
Mr. Roach smiled when he saw me on the front porch. He turned on the light and opened the door. The aroma of meat loaf almost knocked me off my feet. I saw Sally helping in the kitchen. She looked up and gave me a wave, and I felt my heart skip a beat.
Happened just about every time I saw her.
“We were wondering where you were,” Mr. Roach said, nodding inside. “Sally’s in the kitchen. We’re getting ready to eat.”
“Okay if we talk out here for a minute?” I asked.
Mr. Roach’s smile faded. He stepped outside and closed the door.
“Everything okay?”
I shrugged and felt a jolt of pain rip through my shoulder. He noticed my expression change.
“What’s up?”
In a few minutes I told him everything without taking a break to catch my breath. All about the job Donny Wayne and Big Mike set up, how it went bad, and about Donny Wayne showing up at the station, looking for money. Flat River was a small town, and people were quick to find out about other people’s business, even if it didn’t concern them. If somebody saw him peeling out of the station, it wouldn’t take long for the news to travel back to Mr. Roach.
I didn’t want any questions.
And I didn’t want my problems turning into problems for anybody else.
“Wanted to tell you what happened,” I said. “I didn’t want to get mixed up in that business, and I thought you should know that, too.”
“I appreciate that,” he said, nodding.
“Probably should have told you right away, but I wanted to handle it my own way,” I said. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
Mr. Roach took a moment before he spoke.
“Billy, you’ve only been working with me a couple of months,” he said. “But I think I know you pretty good. I know you had some problems up in St. Louis, but you were a real stand-up guy about it. You never hid from it.”
“I didn’t want you learning about it from anybody but me,” I said.
He leaned against the porch railing and stared into the night. “I don’t know what kind of guy you were before you showed up in Flat River. Maybe I wouldn’t have cared too much for the old Billy Flood if I ran into him,” he said quietly. “But the Billy Flood I know ain’t him. You’re a guy with honor and pride. Got a lot on the ball. I like you.”
“I appreciate that,” I said.
“And I trust you,” he said. “I know you’re a hard worker and an honest guy who cares a lot for my niece. You’re like a member of my family.”
And for the second time in a couple of days, he repeated what Sally told me.
“Father Tim would be real proud of you.”
ROUND TWENTY-TWO
“Only one way to fight this guy,” Muldoon said. “Go right at him. Hard. Don’t stop throwing punches until he’s lights out on the canvas.”
Johnny Diamond stood in his corner, arms resting on the ropes while his corner men whispered last minute instructions in his ears. Dark skin, Hollywood good looks, and a lean, hard torso. He looked cocky and confident.
I stared across the ring and blocked out the sound of the crowd. Focused only on what I had to do.
Anybody who knew anything called the St. Louis Arena The Barn. That’s exactly what it felt like, except the place was ten times bigger than any barn I ever saw. They said it could hold twenty thousand spectators. I didn’t know how many were there, but the noise they made was deafening.
It was louder than anything I expected.
Muldoon smacked my shoulder. “You listening?”
I looked up and nodded.
“This ain’t no time to be daydreaming,” he said. “Smother his arms and don’t give him time to get off his punches. Take the fight to him.”
“I know what I got to do,” I said.
In the weeks Muldoon had been back in my corner, we talked about our strategy every day. Diamond was one of those guys who started slow and took a couple of rounds to find his rhythm. He didn’t know me and had never seen me fight, so that gave me an edge. We figured he would come out cautiously, see what I had, and then work into his fight. But while he was trying to find the range for his punches, I would be smothering his arms and banging his body. I wasn’t giving him an inch to breathe.
I wanted to test his will, and I was ready to take anything he had.
Johnny Diamond was a big Cuban guy, probably just as tall as me, with long arms and thin, narrow shoulders. Those shoulders made him look like somebody who didn’t have a lot of punching power. But he had a sneaky left, that right carried weight when he threw it, and his KO record had been pretty impressive through the years.
The guy was a pro. And a contender.
He didn’t get as far as he did on luck.
The ref brought us together in the center of the ring for last minute instructions. When they announced my name, I came into the arena to polite applause. Nobody knew me. Sonny Liston, Bert Whitehurst, and Johnny Diamond were the names people recognized, and fighters the crowd wanted to see. I was a nobody, but I wanted to change that by the end of the fight.
Diamond stared at me.
“You ain’t got nothing going to beat me,” he said. “I got this one in the bag.”
“Nobody told me nothing about that,” I said.
I went back to my corner and took a deep breath.
Muldoon and I figured he would use the angles to pick his spots, but we didn’t think he had the temperament to stay in my kitchen and take the kind of punishment I wanted to hand out.
We figured he would stay back and pick his spots.
I planned on pounding his body as hard and as long as I could.
At the bell, we came towards each other in the center of the ring. Diamond threw a left hook and missed with a right. I stepped in with a left to his chin, then followed with another left to his head, but Diamond shook off the punches and moved back a few steps. He waved a jab and slid to the side, flicking his left a couple more times. I’d heard about his jab. It could be lethal. He wanted to build distance between us, so he could land overhand rights and work in some uppercuts. I needed to bully my way inside and shorten that distance between us to fight my fight.
I went right after him.
“Don’t let up,” Muldoon yelled.
I fired a jab to the head. Diamond matched it with one of his own then tried a one-two that I blocked. I worked my left hook into his ribs, traded rights, and pounded an uppercut to the chin when I got inside his reach.
Sometimes you could read a lot into another fighter’s heart through his eyes, but Diamond didn’t give many clues. There was nothing there. I popped a jab on his cheek then tried an uppercut, but he came back with a big right hand and then landed a stiff jab to my forehead. It surprised me, but I kept moving forward, landing a three punch combo then a huge uppercut to his chin.
He hit me hard in the chest with a punch that felt like I got nailed with a concrete block. Then he grabbed my arms and pulled me close.
“Think you made some people mad and they making sure you don’t get no decision,” he sneered. “Only way you win, is if you knock me out.”
I pushed off. “So maybe I knock you out,” I said.
Diamond laughed. “That ain’t happening.”
We traded punches inside on the break. Diamond used his jab as a weapon, but I walked through it and started digging shots to the body. I got off a nice combination then worked over his kidneys. He kept moving backward and I followed him step for step, throwing punches from both hands. Each one connected, but nothing in his expression changed, no matter
how hard I hit him.
They were hard shots and a couple tested his chin. He got off one or two of his own punches, but I kept coming with bombs that detonated against his jaw. At the bell, the crowd roared with approval, and a few people stood to cheer. Johnny Diamond acted like my punches were no big deal.
I sat down on my stool.
“He says the fix is in,” I told Muldoon. “Says I won’t get a decision if it goes to the cards.”
“Don’t pay that no mind,” he said. “Stay focused on what you got to do.”
I sucked in a deep breath and nodded, then banged my gloves together.
The bell rang and I charged across the ring, hammering Johnny Diamond with both hands before he could get his feet set. He tried using his jab while he moved away, but I pounded a hard combination to the midsection, slid to the left, and worked an uppercut between his gloves.
His head jerked backward and I pressed forward, firing a one-two, then another uppercut. We traded a couple of shots on the inside before he moved away. I chased him across the canvas, cut off the ring, and nailed him with hard lefts and a nice right.
I heard a couple of ooohs from the crowd at ringside when my punches connected.
Diamond covered up with his elbows out and, when I worked close enough, he brought up an elbow and caught my face. I felt the skin above my eyebrow rip apart. Diamond didn’t miss a beat. He snapped his jab into the cut and the leather tattooed my skin. Blood streamed down my face and splattered the ring when I shook my head.
He fired another jab, but I shrugged it off and dug more punches to his body. Diamond got in a combination, but I kept throwing punches upstairs and downstairs, hitting him with both hands. I could feel the blood on my face. It ran into my eye, but I blinked it away and ignored the pain. When he pressed forward, I came at him with a right hand that was so hard it twisted his head back and forth.
He grabbed my arms and pulled me close, aiming his forehead for the cut, but I worked a right free and slammed it into his chin before he could connect.
