I traveled a lot, naturally, but home was in Houston. A buddy in real estate got me a good deal on a house on a bayou in Morgan’s Point. I took up sailing and every chance I got I was out on the bay in my boat. I’d have to say things were pretty fine.
Then out of the blue I get a phone call from Rita. She’d seen me ref a fight on TV, then tracked me down through a magazine sports guy in L.A. She was in town and wondered if maybe we could get together for dinner, talk about old times, have some laughs. Well yeah, sure. Talk about surprised. It’d been more than eight years. I was nervous as a kid as I drove to meet her at a steak house in Galena Park. She showed up in a cab, looking swell. She smiled big and warm when she saw me, gave me a tight hug, a kiss on the mouth. Turns out things had soured for her in L.A. It was practically a closed club out there, she said, strictly who you knew and who you blew. She’d been in a couple of “minor productions,” but her agent was straight from hell and she finally realized she was never going to get a break, not out there.
I didn’t bring up the skin magazine or Lila’s Luscious Love. What for? That was then, this was now. She was just passing through, she said, on her way to Atlanta to interview for a TV job. After dinner I drove her to the hotel and she asked me up for a drink on the terrace and a look at the great view she had of the city. One thing led to another. I wanted to sing after we made love. Next day she packed her bag and went home with me.
Over the next month I pulled out of a couple of fights just to stay home with her. We sailed, had picnics, went to the movies, talked a little, fooled around a lot. I’d say I was falling in love. Then one night we’re in a restaurant downtown and Mato shows up with his crowd. Sends a bottle of wine to our table, then comes over, all smiles and damn-small-world, long-time-no-see, how-the-hell-are-you. Wearing a white silk suit, Rolex, tie that probably cost two hundred bucks, his hair longer now, styled. But he looked fifteen pounds over the limit, and I figured he’d play hell making the weight for his next fight. He was in town for an athletic-shoe commercial they were shooting at the Astrodome. Get together sometime, he says, shaking my hand so-long and winking at Rita. It wasn’t till then I saw how she was looking at him, and my chest suddenly felt hollow.
I told myself it wouldn’t happen again, but I was just whistling. All the following week she already seemed more like a memory than somebody real and right there with me. I went off to Biloxi to work a fight, feeling empty, knowing she’d be gone when I got back. She was. Left a note on the fridge: “It was fun.” Fun. Not long afterwards I saw a picture of them in the papers. She was hanging on his arm at some charity thing in New York.
I wouldn’t say I got over it.
Two months later Mato signed to defend against Caballo Galvez in Vegas and I was picked for third man. I didn’t want a damn thing to do with Mato, but I figured he’d somehow be getting the best of me if I turned the job down, so I took it.
There were two other title fights on the card that night—flyweight and junior lightweight—but Mato’s was the main event, and the place was standing room only. Galvez was a brawler out of Guatemala who’d won his last seven by knockout and had come up the rankings like a rocket. He was no palooka, and Mato had his work cut out this time. Rita was at ringside with a bunch of Mato’s high-roller pals. She wore diamonds and a black dress cut to here. She gave me a smile just like Mato’s, and when I didn’t smile back she laughed.
The crowd was almost all Latino, but except for a bunch of Guatemalans up in the cheap seats Galvez didn’t have a friend in the place. As he made his way to the ring, you could hardly hear his tico-tico music on the PA for the booing. This was Mato’s crowd and the cheers shook the walls when his people escorted him from the dressing room with the Rocky theme blasting out of the speakers. He made his customary strut around the ring with a fist raised high, blessing the faithful with that arrogant smile. We go through the booing and cheering all over again when the announcer makes the introductions—I got the usual good hand and gave the crowd a wave and an Ali shuffle—then they closed around me in the center of the ring for last-minute instructions. “Good clean fight,” I tell them. Mato smiles at me and gives Galvez a wink. When he’d heard Galvez owned a women’s cosmetics business in Guatemala, he started referring to him in the papers as Chiquita, and Galvez was red-eyed fury.
It was a street fight from the opening bell. Galvez was even more of a puncher than Mato, so Mato did his best to box him—using the jab, circling one way and then the other, weaving, keeping his distance. But the Guatemalan had been around the block too and knew all the tricks, including how to cut off the ring. He cornered Mato at least once in every round and forced him to slug it out. They were butting in the clinches, thumbing, using elbows, shoulders, rabbit-punching, you name it. Both corners kept getting on me about the other guy’s dirty tactics. I wasn’t blowing bubbles that night.
At the end of the fifth, they were in a corner and still punching after the bell, so I grabbed Galvez from behind and pulled him back—and when I did, Mato gave him a shot to the head. Galvez was so enraged he had to be wrestled back to his corner by his seconds. His fans were hollering bloody murder but Mato’s crowd easily drowned them out. I put a finger in Mato’s face and said I’d take a point next time. Just loud enough for me to hear, he said, “Goddamn, I guess that’ll make us even,” and smiled his bastard smile. He raised a fist at Rita as he went back to his corner and I couldn’t help looking her way. She gave me a look and a smile, blew him a kiss.
Something twisted under my chest bone and felt about to break. I could hardly breathe. I felt like I was smothering in a red haze. I stood in a neutral corner during the one-minute break and thought about nothing but breathing in and out.
Mato was a hair ahead on all three judges’ cards when the bell rang for the next round, but I don’t remember the first minute of it. I was dancing around the fighters and looking alert, but all I was really seeing were the smiles I’d gotten from Mato and Rita. All I was hearing was Mato’s “that’ll make us even” over and over in my head. Then I heard Mato grunt in pain and everything pulled into focus.
Galvez had him against the ropes and was banging him with body shots, trying to make him drop his hands so he could get at his head. The Guatemalan had pure murder in his eye—but he was too wound up, punching too wild. Mato countered with a flurry and got away from the ropes. But I could see he was tiring, the high life was catching up to him. He was flat-footed now, not moving as quick as before. They were fighting toe-to-toe, trading wicked shots, spraying sweat off each other’s head with every punch. The place was going crazy, Mato’s fans screaming for him to kill Galvez, kill him. Whoever said the real beast in the arena is the crowd knew what he was talking about.
With a minute-and-a-half to go Mato landed a hard combination, then tried to take Galvez’s head off with a right hand from the floor. But he missed—and Galvez countered with a monster hook that buckled Mato’s knees. Mato tried to cover up but the Guatemalan gave him two hard shots to the kidney to bring his hands down and then drilled him with a straight right that staggered him back into the ropes.
Now Galvez had him. He tore into him like a crazy man, punching with both hands as fast and hard as he could. He was just whimpering with rage. They say he landed 48 head shots in the next nine seconds. Mato’s hands dropped and his head was snapping every which way with the punches but Galvez had him pressed to the ropes and wouldn’t let him fall.
The crowd was on its feet and howling, some of them already yelling “Stop it, stop it!” I gave a quick look at Rita standing at the ring apron directly under the fighters and looking up in horror, her face and hair getting spattered with Mato’s blood.
Through the quivering roar I heard them yelling, “Stop it! STOP IT!”
Stop it, hell. A towel came flapping into the ring but I made like I didn’t see it and let Galvez go on hammering.
I didn’t pull the Guatemalan away till Mato’s cornermen came tumbling through the ropes. As Ma
to slid down the ropes to the canvas his eyes were nearly shut but looking my way. I like to think he was still conscious, that he could still see. That he read my eyes.
The place sounded like a zoo on fire. Rita was looking a little loony. I wanted to give her a big smile, a wink, blow her a kiss. I never knew what became of her after that. Never much cared.
Mato died on the table. I caught a lot of heat, of course, in the press, on TV. A lot of stuff questioning my judgment. And the commission suspended my license.
But that was pretty much it.
I’d have to say it’s all about even.
TEXAS WOMAN BLUES
“Doom is the House without the Door.”
—EMILY DICKINSON
I
SUGARGIRL’S DADDY
1
Dolores has been living with her aunt and uncle for six months when the letter comes from her father. Everybody can see it’s from him because of the Texas Department of Corrections envelope. Aunt Rhonda hands it to her like it’s some run-over thing off the road, her face all squinched up. Dolores takes it to her room and closes the door.
The letter is written on institutional stationery. The information in the spaces at the top of the page has been provided in a large ball-point scrawl. Further down, the words of the letter stagger in the same unpracticed hand between the hard straight lines of the page.
TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS
Date 10/22/66 Inmate No. 1099 Name Buckman stock Unit Ellis To Dolores stock Relation daughter RFD, St or Box No. 380 Bowie ave City Raymondville State Texas
TO THE PERSON RECEIVING THIS LETTER
All inmates’ mail is opened, censored and recorded by OFFICIALS. Inmates may receive not more than three letters a week from any one person on their correspondence and visiting lists. These letters must be limited to two pages. You may use one sheet and write on the front and back if you wish. Please address the inmate by name and number. If these rules are not observed the letter will be returned to the sender …
Dear sugargirl
I’m sorry I have not writen to you untill now. They told me awhile back Hannah past away. I been meaning to write you and tell you how sorry I am but, I have been at a lost for words. I am so sorry sugargirl. I guess you dont believe me but, I loved your moma very much tho I guess I din’t show it too good sometimes. I can’t think of anything to say, to make up for the pain and the heart-ache I caused her, and you too. All I can say is I’m awful sorry. Please try not to think to hard of me sugargirl I know I was’nt much of a daddy or a husband either one. Sometimes I feel like cutting my own throat for the no-count I am. I figgure god’s making me pay back for that more than for what I did to that fella in Houston. I wish I could be with you now, sugargirl taking care of you like a good daddy ought but as you know I got what they call a prior oblagation. (ha ha). I hope your happy and doing good in school. They told me your living with frank and Ronda I’m glad to hear it. I never got to know frank real good for a half-brother but he’s always seemed a good old boy and I guess ronda’s alright too. Be sure and mine them and be a good girl. By the way do you think you could send me a litle money. I’d sure be greatful. I’m always running out of cigs and stuff. Even in this place you got to have some money ain’t that a hoot. Just a few dollers would help a lot. It gets a little irratating in here sometimes but I guess thats why they call it a prison huh. (ha ha.) Well I guess that’s all for now. Please write, Your father.
p.s.—happy birthday sugargirl!!! Sweet sixteen and never been kissed huh? (ha ha, not hardly huh.) I wish I had a present I could give to you.
pp.s—please excuse my bad writting.
There is no signature. Directly below the last line of the letter is a stamped circle the size of a fifty-cent piece enclosing the word “CENSORED.”
She tells herself to throw the letter away, now, right this minute. Instead, she reads it all the way through once again, slowly, from letterhead to final misspelled word.
He says he’s sorry. Says it right there in his own jerky handwriting. Says it … four times, all told. But the first time’s just sorry he hasn’t written to her. And the next two are sorry momma’s dead. Only the last one’s sorry about how he treated momma so bad. And her too, he says, though try as she might she cannot think of a single time her daddy ever mistreated her.
But she has no trouble remembering how he treated momma, and the recollection fills her with a sudden fury. Cut his own throat for being such a no-count, hell—there were bound to be lots of folk who’d be happy to do the job for him, herself included.
She is instantly appalled by the ferocity of her vindictiveness. Lord, girl, why feel so … hateful about him?
Because. Because he was a lowlife drunk and a damn whoremonger who was so god-awful mean to momma is why.
Yeah, well … but he was never mean to you, was he? Never even raised his voice at you, did he?
She recalls that voice now as clearly as if she’d last heard it five minutes ago. It had made her shiver when he hollered at momma, but oh it was such a sweet voice when he sang. Back in the good old days he used to sing to her at bedtime almost every night. “Goodnight, Irene” and “Red River Valley” and “Hush, Little Baby.” And on the long drives back to Alice from the beach at Mustang Island in the yellow Roadmaster the three of them would harmonize on “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” She always loved singing the part that went, “merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.” She’d always been sunburned and sandy and a little tired, but the way daddy and momma would look at each other up in the front seat and stroke each other and make each other laugh made her feel better than anything would ever make her feel again.
One time when they were driving back from the beach she asked momma if life was really just a dream like the song said, and momma told her, “Sometimes it is, honey,” and reached over and stroked the back of daddy’s neck as he drove along one-handed like always and held a cigarette between his teeth like it was a little prize cigar. “Can be a pretty sweet dream.”
Daddy had grinned around the cigarette and glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “That’s right, darlin, can be. Or can be a damn nightmare, you ain’t careful.”
“Buck Henry!” momma said, slapping at his shoulder. “Don’t you be telling her things like that! She’s just a little girl!”
Daddy chuckled and said, “She sure enough is. My little sugargirl, ain’t you darlin?” He winked at her in the rearview and they laughed together like conspirators. Momma looked from one to the other of them and shook her head, saying, “You two are so bad, I swear.”
That was way back when, she reminds herself, and she was just a child. That was back before he started losing jobs on one rig after another. Before he started drinking so hard and getting in so many fights. Before him and momma started going at each other so bad.
No, he never did raise his voice at her, but she remembers now that he did give her a sort of push one time. It was only a little shove and only that one time. But still. You wouldn’t think it would’ve slipped her mind so easy, considering when it happened and all. And considering she hasn’t seen him since. And anyway, it was just a shove, it wasn’t like he’d hit her or anything, for pete’s sake.
Yeah, right. But he sure enough hit momma that time, didn’t he? Hit her and worse. God damn him! How could he have done her like that? That low-down sorry …
Whoa now, girl, just hold on. Let’s be fair here. Momma did hit him first and that’s a true fact. In the face with a wire hanger, remember? And he was pretty drunk. Not that being drunk is any excuse at all because it’s not, even if momma used to let it be, back before the excuse just flat wore out. Just the same, it’s something to keep in mind, that he was drunk, because it’s a fact, and you have to keep the facts straight if you’re going to be fair.
That’s all she’s trying to do here, be fair.
Hardly a day goes by that she doesn’t think about the last time she saw her daddy. Hardly a day will ever
go by. A Sunday morning it was, as pretty as they come, the windows open wide and full of soft yellow sunlight, the blue curtains lifting lightly on a cool breeze. Church bells from down the street. Momma had made sugar-and-cinnamon doughnuts and a full pot of coffee for breakfast. (Her own cup had half-milk.) She was on the sofa looking at the funny papers while momma ironed clothes and hummed along to the songs playing low on the radio. Then here came daddy’s old pickup clattering down the street and roaring into the front yard and braking up a spray of dirt in momma’s new-planted flowerbed, his radio blasting out some Okie song before the engine shut off and the truck door banged and his big boots thumped up onto the porch. There’d been times before when he’d been gone a day or two, but this time it had been five days and nights without a word if he was dead or alive.
Back when she hadn’t even started going to school yet, he’d almost always be singing when he came home from the oil field at the end of the day. The clump of his boots on the porch would make her heart jump as she ran to greet him with momma already at the screen door and smiling. Sometimes the song he’d be singing was a little off-color and momma would blush and hiss, “Buck Henry Stock!” and gesture toward Dolores. He’d hug momma tight and pat her on the rump and then give Dolores a big handsome grin and say, “Well now, who’s that pretty li’l darlin?” He’d snatch her up and whirl her around over his head while she shrieked with delight and momma stood by with her fist on her mouth. He’d hug her so tight she could hardly breathe, but her heart would feel as swelled up as a birthday balloon. She loved the smell of him, the mingled odors of oil and sweat and tobacco and beer. And just barely detectable under it all, the hint of some fierce aroma like that of a flaring kitchen match. For the rest of her life in this tough Texas lowcountry, that mix of smells in a man will snag her like a lasso.
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