That’s one mean cut, he said. I’ll tell you what. I’m going to call somebody for you. She might help your boy out.
Carney nodded and thanked him. The man told them to wait.
It might be a while. But don’t get no doctor. Just mess that up.
This got Jude wondering. The doctor on call had given him a compress and ice but had left with Jerome.
Sad about that boy, Carney said and sighed.
Maybe an hour later Jude was brought back from dozing by the slipping of the cold pack. Carney had fallen asleep in his chair, chin to his collar, and now he woke and muttered, To hell with it, sonny. He spit in a Coke bottle and was standing when the hard clatter of a woman’s shoes echoed in the concrete hallway. She came in from the flickering dark, big and brown. Her nose was as beaked as a Cherokee’s. She was eating a hot dog and halfway across the room she appeared to see Jude all at once. She threw the rest of the hot dog in the trash.
I guess I’m here for you, she said. She glanced from one man to the other. She reminded Jude of his matronly aunts, though younger. Her lips were full, paler than her skin, and apart from a coarse, undyed smock, she wore baggy pants with a pleat down the front and a string of beads. Her look was serious and at the same time like that of the hippies who were appearing everywhere.
Carney pinched fresh chew and watched as she removed Jude’s compress. Though Carney had occasionally voiced opinions on who ran what, who were the minions, the bosses, the landed interest—blacks, Italians, Jews—his racism had been tempered to respect by half a century of boxing. Jude wasn’t surprised that he would trust her.
When does he need to fight again? she asked.
Next weekend, Carney said. What you planning on doing anyway?
Poultice. She spoke evenly as if to the wound. I think I can have him mostly ready by then.
How much?
People pay what they can.
All right. Hell, you just do your best.
Her name was Louise, and that week she treated Jude’s cut. She carried satchels and jars of oil in a purse woven like a basket. Her hands, though as large as a man’s, were careful. Three times a day she brought a fresh poultice prepared in linen. She massaged the edges of his wound, each touch like peeling a scab, the ragged flesh relaying sensation along his jaw and the back of his neck. A little pale and watery blood ran past the corner of his eye. He was silent, listening to her breathe. She spoke only to forbid him any activity other than walking.
Nights he wallowed in insomnia. He watched TV until programming gave way to black-and-white bars of various shades and emitted a shrill whistle. Occasional car lights shone through from the street. He recalled his grandmother who’d worked in the fields then dressed for church, her big hands awkward on the folds of her apron. Once when Louise was spreading ointment, he took the wrist of her free hand. Her strong nostrils curved. She stepped back, and he let go. He realized that she was younger than he’d thought.
A few days before his next fight he asked her for something to help him sleep. It was the first time he’d spoken.
Tu parles français? she said in a strange accent. She was looking at him.
Oui. He spoke hesitantly, not sure how his voice would sound now in French. He hadn’t talked much to begin with. Du Canada, he heard himself mutter, not sure where this was.
Beaucoup de monde parle français ici, she said. Her voice had a hop in it as if she wanted to sing. Mais tu ne vis pas ici, n’est-ce pas?
Non, pas ici, he said. En … Georgia.
La Georgie. C’est triste pour toi. De ne plus parler … j’imagine.
As she made him the tea, she said a few things about the language she’d learned from her parents. Later, soon after she left, he was drifting below shadows and vague peaked shapes like cathedrals and trees. At some point he was in his childhood kitchen though the light through the windows was that of the landscape beyond the cargo doors when he’d leapt, when he’d first crossed south with Isa-Marie. There was a glimpse of her sitting on the edge of a bed, a piece of cardboard on her knees as she pieced together bright magazine clippings to make a word he hadn’t bothered or been able to read. And again night. A dream of her bones and the field where he’d lost her. A dog rooting in weeds. He was running. Men in blue jackets lifted flashlights through the dark to find him. When he returned to the ring at the end of the week, his wound was a tender, grainy line. He scanned the crowd and saw Louise. He’d have to fight at least two more times to win the tournament. Though he was stiff from inaction and Carney worried for his undefeated record, Jude felt calm. Carney had suggested they let this tournament go, but Jude had refused. He struck gloves. His opponent was long armed, young, hefty for his age. Jude watched the looping hooks, guarding his wound. He played the young man around the ring, jabbed and dipped and knocked him out cold in the second.
Goddam, Carney said. That was boxing, sonny. That wasn’t fighting. That was boxing.
He was so happy he took out his chew and flung it down so he could speak. Jude looked around. Louise appeared later. She dressed his wound again, expressionless. She wasn’t blond or lovely, but he’d wanted to impress her. He closed his eyes.
Ça va? she asked.
Oui, he said. Oui.
The next day he won the tournament though his cut opened and she came from the audience to treat it. They were in the locker room, Carney meeting with sponsors. The poultice she applied smelled pungent and made him faintly nauseous.
She seemed to be smiling. When she finished, she became inexpressive again. Alors, she said, tu vas rentrer en Georgie. Her irises were threaded with orange. He reached from where he sat and took her hand. They stared at each other. He let go and she left.
When Carney returned, he wanted to pay her. He didn’t even have a phone number.
Dammit, he said. What’s the meaning of these people just wanting to help? He sighed and sat and talked about Jude’s career. By the end of the year, he said, you could be fighting Ali. He paused and seemed to think. Ah, that woman will come back later.
She arrived at the motel after midnight in a rattling Ford truck, the headlights shining unevenly against the folds of the curtains. Jude got out of bed.
Je peux entrer? she asked. Her hair was drawn tight in a bun with a few sprung curls. She neared, her brow at the level of his chin. He knew nothing about women. He hadn’t paused from work or fighting for the usual rites of boyhood. She lifted her chin and placed her lips on his. She was such a formidable woman he hesitated. With her eyes on his face she kissed him. She stepped back, watching him, curiously, like a girl again. Then she began to unbutton her shirt. Her sloping breasts made her vulnerable. She lay on the unmade bed, palms up, shoulders back. The bedsprings crunched like beer cans as he joined her. She reached up to hold his big, sad face.
Jude had been relieved to get home to Georgia. Nothing had been stated between him and Louise. She’d left at dawn and he’d lain awake much of the night. There was something unsettling in the calm he’d felt with her. He knew he wasn’t supposed to desire her or even this world, these rundown neighbourhoods, though there was sunshine enough.
Back home, Carney told him it was time to work the professional circuit in earnest, and Jude agreed. He saw boxing as his only means of completing this journey that he’d never wanted to begin. But before the tenderness had left his wound, a newfangled club outside New Orleans offered him sponsorship and full salary. At first Carney wasn’t interested, but when he sniffed the money and heard his juicy part, he said, Hell yes, then sold everything, house and equipment. He and Jude headed south and took up in the guest suites.
The owner and mastermind of the club was Bill Watson, a businessman who’d dabbled writing sports for a conservative paper with limited circulation and had only recently meddled in training —in hopes, he liked to say, of saving American boxing. He was stocking his ranks with respectable men who’d fought for big schools, but he felt the need for someone sensational, an active fighter, a figur
ehead, and not only did Jude impress with his unbeaten record but he was, quite simply, Watson said, White. Watson didn’t suspect a Catholic past or a fake name. Cleft palate, Carney told him when Jude spoke, no better explanation for that rough accent.
The plan, Watson told them, is to attract cultivated people to the sport. We build a gym with the most hightech equipment, we bring in up-and-coming names, and we’ll have respectable people involving themselves. Otherwise we’ll lose the tradition. The Negroes and the wops will take over. Jude listened to the dumpy, moustached man who paused often to primp his suit. After describing his philosophy, Watson gave them a tour of the Complex, a warehouse with several rings, racks of chrome-handled weights, bright blue punching bags, benches and mechanisms with levers.
We have the material here, he told them, to work every muscle in the human body.
Attached to the wall was a padded helmet hooked to hydraulic pistons.
Stick your head in this, Watson told him.
Jude did so.
Move it around.
Jude strained his head to one side. The pistons hissed.
Gives you a strong neck, Watson confirmed. Imagine what this could do for you in the ring. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his forehead.
Back in their suites Carney warned Jude, You stay away from those machines, sonny. They’ll slow you down. Stay fast, fight cool. Besides, I don’t trust a man who always wears a suit. Don’t make a damned bit of sense.
He admitted, however, that money was money, and Watson had offered more than a little. He confided in Jude that he had almost enough put away after the sale of his house to retire somewhere hot and quiet and live out his days in total boredom. Just better have a TV, was all he commented by way of redemption.
Training began the next morning. Jude’s picture was on a few posters, WHITE in bold print below. A reporter came by to get the scoop. He asked Jude if he thought this move would alienate him in the sports world, if he had personal issues with black boxers, if he had long-term political goals. Jude shrugged, scratched at his flesh-coloured hair, tipped his blunt head one way, then the other, and finally answered, I don know.
Good work, boy, Watson later told him. Silence is always the best reply. They’ll see.
That day a few local fathers paid so their sons could watch and learn. The slender boys with blond bowl cuts looked on in horror as Jude exchanged cracking blows with Red Benson, a man not unlike Boss in size, but more compact in build, his body having chosen the evolutionary strategy of eliminating neck and chin. Between rounds, Jude hawked and spat into the corner. Watson, seeing the strands of glistening mucus hanging from the ropes, told him, None of that, please. The plan, he said, is to elevate boxing.
An hour later Louise walked in.
Excuse me, Watson said, did someone send you?
Jude saw her and coldcocked his next opponent, a gangly investor in knee socks who’d come from Shrevesport and whose doctor had recommended more stimulating fitness than dressage and constitutionals.
Jude barrelled past Watson to meet Louise. They talked as if they’d always spoken casually, he in grunts, she in detailed sentences. She seemed younger, open. She told him she’d read about him in the paper. She asked if she could see him again. Oui, he said before he considered it. They planned to meet that night. Carney didn’t seem to notice, only freshened his chew, and Watson said, We’re trying to be role models here. A boy like you needs an image. You’ve got a career ahead of you in image. Boxing doesn’t last forever.
That night, waiting for Louise, Jude tried to make sense of it, the simple pleasure of being with her, the way she looked at him. He stayed silent when she arrived. She drove him to where she lived, a small house north of the city on a piece of wooded land between farms. The rooms were clean and open, herbs drying from the ceiling beams, books and jars on shelves.
C’étaient toutes les choses de ma mère —my mother’s things, she said. She told him her grandmother had been Creole and her father mostly Indian. She’d learned midwifery from her mother and grandmother, and French —un français bien différent, she added.
She paused, the persistent music of crickets and night insects filling the space. She told him that her mother had died not that long ago, too young, and that she herself had had to take over and do all those things she hadn’t felt ready for. C’est … she began, but not finding the word, finished in English—lonely, she said.
Later they went walking. She spoke of what her mother had taught, things she’d alluded to, unsure herself of a tradition already lost. He and Louise followed a sparse woods, ancient trees around a collapsed house, pecans and oaks immense. They came out from the trail to power lines, a swath through the countryside, the galaxy so bright they could see the cables high overhead. The thrum of electricity was that of the fields above his childhood home. She touched his corded wrist. They pressed onto the ground. Her palms turned up to starlight. He dug his fingers through grass and root, throwing up clods like a running horse.
Later she asked about his life. Her breasts touched softly against his chest, her hand on her belly. She closed her eyes as she listened. She was the first person he told about Isa-Marie, about her death and the journey south and not remembering what had become of her, and his wandering and even his dreams of her bones. He lay recalling the feeling of emptiness when he’d decided to leave, that wide gulf night on the mountain, fields and wind and standing against the cold. What had happened to that world and what should he strive for in this one? He saw the farm, the coast, the rugged sea. He wanted that simple work. He wanted Isa-Marie as when they were children, to carry her along the road and feel himself given over to this good. His terror was something he’d never known in the ring. Suddenly unable not to, he leapt up and ran. He rushed along the dusty lane between the fields and jumped a fence into a farmer’s yard. Behind a shed, barefoot and naked, he grabbed an axe and swung into the woodpile. The farm was silvery, moon shadows beneath trees. Blood buzzed in his ears. He didn’t want to stop now or think. He split until sweat released the heat from his body, until a dog barked and houselights came on, and then he ran away.
Those next months Carney and Watson conspired to book a string of fights. Too many, Carney admitted, but said it would make Jude tough and no matter, there was money in it. To Jude it seemed he was fighting every American who weighed in at over a hundred seventy-five. A few had beer bellies. One was covered with burn scars and missing an eye, another fresh out of prison, his back tattooed with the lewdest naked women Jude had seen. All went down fast, though a few show managers bribed Carney to make Jude draw out the fights then finish hard.
Despite the cat-and-mouse matches Jude was relieved. He needed time. He saw Louise between fights. When he visited, she was waiting in a bright dress, a meal on the table, rice and gumbo and fried okra, fragrant shrimp soufflés. They ate for hours. She put some giddy music on and later they relaxed on the sunny bed. He liked the familiarity, the brassy stretch marks at her hips, the bud of keloid on her arm from falling onto broken glass when she was a girl. Sometimes she made him talk and his few words felt so exposed that he pictured the curé next to him. But on buses or airplanes to Vegas, Reno, New York, he struggled against her within him. Before each fight, he stared at the elegant women in the audience, though when he went into the crowd, everyone withdrew, even grimaced. Afterwards, in the locker room, he faced the mirror. His broken features held nothing of Isa-Marie or even Hervé Hervé, and, ponderously, he considered his ugliness and whom he should look like, a mother or a father. His rage and frustration hardly felt expended. The pipes in the wall groaned, and he realized he was clutching the sink, dragging it from the concrete fixtures, trying, it seemed, to hold himself in place.
Those months, when he returned to Watson’s ridiculous club, he reluctantly admitted his desire to see Louise. Though Carney kept the money from the fights, he’d bought Jude a side-swiped Falcon at the auction and had forked out a few dollars for driving
lessons. Jude used the car to go only to and from Louise’s house, crammed at the wheel. She spoke of her people, the journeys they’d made by or against their choice, of the mysteries that so many ignored and that ruled them. But one evening, back from an extended trip to New York, Jude saw that her belly had, as if in a day, grown round. He wondered how he hadn’t noticed. After lovemaking he again walked out on the road. He knew the way she opened and touched. She’d said she’d learned from her mother to comfort the dying as if they were children, just by holding and touching. The dying longed for their mothers, she’d said, and this had scared him, had made him wonder how he could long for someone he’d never known. What had happened to all those who’d left the village—aunts, uncles, his mother, his father even? When he was a boy, men had discussed towns in the States where everyone spoke French, where curés and businessmen lived as they had in Québec, just wealthier, better. It seemed he’d followed in their footsteps but had found nothing. He thought of the village, the St. Lawrence. That world had ceased to exist, though at times he recalled it so clearly, without him, that it seemed he was the one who’d vanished.
In the humid dark he followed slowly along the road. The seasons here confused him. It was another magic altogether, the warm winters, the hot, ugly summers. He no longer knew how old he was.
Louisiana–New Jersey–Virginia
1968–1970
It looks like Ali’s out of the picture for a while, Carney told him the next day—still stripped of that dang belt for draft evasion. But if you show good on your upcoming matches, we can probably risk putting you in with Joe Frazier. After that it’s history, sonny.
Jude hardly heard. He boxed but didn’t follow boxing. Carney said it would be the money he needed to retire. He’d become thin in recent months, the bones of his face prominent, his eyes yellowish. But Jude could think only of Louise’s belly, a line down it like that on a peach. The girl was gone. She was bright and strong and beyond his grasp.
Vandal Love Page 4
