Vandal Love

by D. Y. Bechard

  One evening they walked the familiar lane between grown-up ditches and fields, a few pecans along the way, the shells of previous years in the gravel.

  I know you’re not happy, Jude, she said. I can feel it. You don’t hardly speak and I don’t expect you to, but … I am just trying to understand this. Is it because I’m pregnant—que je suis enceinte? Or is it me?

  He watched his shoes scuff in the dirt.

  Peut-être j’étais … I don’t know … just lonely, she said. J’ai pensé … I thought I knew.

  They came to a farm where they’d walked often. They passed the gabled plantation house at a distance. The night sky shone in the groomed pond. Near the barn he smelled horses and fresh alfalfa.

  She paused. I love barns, she said. It’s the lofts. I wished I had one when I was a kid.

  The bay doors were open. A horse nickered and stomped somewhere inside.

  Do you want to go up? she asked and looked at him. Her eyes shone. He regretted having ever met her.

  T’es trop grande.

  Non, she told him. Women used to do a lot pregnant.

  Just inside she found the ladder. She tested the rungs and began climbing. He stared at her thighs, then followed.

  The vaulted room was half-full, bales stacked along the ceiling. She lowered herself on one, and he sat next to her. If he’d never left Québec, he’d have been a farmer or a fisherman. He tried to think of what he was. A boxer. The muscles of his shoulders coiled.

  It’s normal to be afraid —c’est normal, she said. My grandmother once told me that accepting love or having a child is like accepting that you’re going to die.

  In the drone of sawing crickets something scuffed in the rafters, the sound followed by a resonant birdlike fluting. As she spoke she leaned close. She smelled of cut grass and the sweet soil in the roots of pulled weeds. Listening, he felt as he had leaving home, forcing himself towards a dream of sunlight that came only in flashes, knowing already that what he’d loved was dead. A pale shape moved in the air, and it took him a second to realize. It was an owl swooping, its spread wings catching the ambient moonlight. Louise called his name sharply. He struck out and the bird and his hand appeared briefly joined, and he struck again and it fell too softly onto the hay.

  Jude, she said and took his hand. Blood shone darkly on her fingers where she touched him.

  When he returned to the club and Carney saw the swelling hand, the torn meat of the palm and the gouged muscles, he just stared.

  Well, he said. I guess I was pretty close to retiring.

  They went to a doctor this time. After the sewing and the shots Louise gave her own treatment. Carney cancelled a few fights. Watson was concerned, his face red, the hair at his temples wet. The club hadn’t been drawing. Some thought it wasn’t competitive enough, others no more impressed with the white brutes than with the blacks.

  The next night Carney died in his sleep. It was probably his heart. Maybe a stroke, the doctor said. No reason for an autopsy. Jude felt cut loose.

  Those next days he stayed with Louise. He couldn’t grasp the loss of Carney, the only constant in his life for the last seven years. Carney had just appeared, ready to take him in. He’d hardly asked questions, yet had chosen Jude’s age and name, and neither of them had considered it—Jude desperate and half mad, Carney too used to the unexpected. Boxing, he’d once told him, is a world of what you can’t see coming. Here today, gone tomorrow and sometimes good things, too. You can’t make nothing happen. It’s all got to be in you from the start.

  But Jude had never fought for himself, except perhaps on that windy day when he’d met Boss at the clothesline. He’d fought for his grandfather or Isa-Marie or Carney, and now he wanted to understand what his reason was. He closed his eyes and tried to calm the pain in his hand, but he could grasp only loss, that he’d wanted to fill empty spaces. All that he’d loved had been there from the beginning and was gone. He saw no other choice but to fight and, fighting, to get himself somewhere where things were supposed to be better than before.

  Three days later at the club he answered the phone. A man with a Jersey accent asked him to confirm a booking. You got it in you, kid?

  Okay, Jude told him. Later, Watson, still sweating, offered to be his manager.

  Those Garden fights do pay, don’t they, he said. Both seemed to have forgotten the ballooning hand, the penicillin shots. Louise said it didn’t want to heal. There’s a spirit to everything, she told him, even cuts and scrapes.

  The night after his injury she’d had a neighbour’s boy climb into the barn rafters and bring down hatchlings. There were three of them, covered in down. She fed them grubs. Jude sat on the couch and feigned sleep. He’d tried to make love once after his injury, something he’d wanted in the night, but his hand had throbbed and he’d stopped.

  Those weeks before the fight he didn’t train.

  You can’t box with this for at least two or three months, Louise told him. He looked at her fawn irises, her lips. Écoute —listen, Jude, don’t be crazy. You’ll ruin your hand.

  He studied his thick, corded fist. He couldn’t understand how anything had cut through. He took to not answering her. He went days without speaking.

  I was lonely, she told him. J’étais seule. I couldn’t let the girl in me grow up, and you looked scared and alone. I didn’t care you were white. Ce n’était pas important.

  She waited to see if he would reply. When he didn’t, she put his hand in a bowl of infusion and stood to leave.

  I have others in my life, she said. C’est assez.

  He’d never noticed anyone, but now that he was around more and the baby was due, the others became apparent, young black women, wiry men who passed without looking, as if they, like himself, couldn’t figure out why he was there.

  That Thursday, on the way to the airport with Watson, Jude gazed at the passing subdivisions near the city. There were a few clouds like strawberry blossoms in a deep blue sky and, on a cement driveway, a girl waving in the sunlight to someone he hadn’t seen.

  In New York he fought an Italian. The man attacked sloppily, had sticky feet. Jude didn’t use his right hand. His heartbeat alone made it ache. He dodged and jabbed. The commentators said that though Jude had a powerful left, did he think he could take a seasoned opponent with one hand? They said he looked like a man practising his jab in the gym. The Italian landed a few mean shots but Jude took these lightly. It had never occurred to him that someone might knock him out or really hurt him. When the scores were tallied, Jude had landed far more punches. The Italian was in sore shape, and the judges agreed that Jude’s was the stronger fight. The sportswriters claimed this insistence on the left was an act of defiance, of what, they couldn’t agree.

  During the match, Jude’s stitches had torn. Back in the locker room he was sick. The wounds that refused to heal had opened. He wanted to slow down. Carney had been right to die.

  Jude told Watson he would hang on to the money, maybe wait a year. Watson sweated, tried to make him see the possibilities of boxing left-handed. Jude barely heard, distant with pain. The next day, when he returned to the club, padlocked chains and signs from the bank were on the doors. Only a note, from Watson, that the club was ahead of its time: People aren’t ready for the plan. Watson had absconded with the money from the fight. As for what Carney had left, a few days after the funeral, his son, Champ, a flat face Jude had never heard of, had shown up with a truck, loaded everything and left. Jude agreed to his last fight. Later, in the booker’s office, contracts scattered on the desk, Jude struggled to make sense of all these words. He recalled Isa-Marie writing his name for him to trace, and he signed where he was told.

  The contender was Leon Brown, big bucks, another undefeated on the fast track to the heavyweight title. It was impossible to play him the way Jude had the Italian. After Jude took a beating in the first round, he tried to use his right but it hurt him more than it did his opponent. He felt the stitches split, the glove growin
g heavy. By the sixth round the referee was on the verge of calling it short. Jude’s face was swollen, his lips ruined, one eye shut, and Leon had taken just a few mean shots. Jude’s right shoulder was tired, the glove a solid weight on his hand. Only when Leon delivered five driving punches, his guard down because he was sure the fight was over, did Jude strike. The soaked glove was like a stone. Leon’s head snapped back. Blood ran along Jude’s arm, sprayed the audience that leapt up, unsure of what had happened, of who had died. Later the rumour was that Jude had struck hard enough to break his hand and Leon’s jaw. The papers picked it up. In the locker room the doctor cut the glove away as if it was something living, revealing the embryonic fist. Jude collected his money. It was more than enough.

  He’d been given painkillers and hadn’t eaten in days. Louise had told him the baby was a girl but he didn’t go look. The hatchlings were growing, lifting startled gazes at all who passed. What do you want to do now? she asked. The pills made his stomach raw. His throat burned each time he burped. Dormir, he said —just sleep. Her expression softened. From the way she looked at him she cared what had happened to his face.

  He stayed in bed, his hand plastered into a club. Sometimes she lay next to him though she soon got up to breastfeed or do chores or walk in sunlight. He didn’t approach the cradle with its mobile of beads and feathers.

  I used to think I had to heal everyone, she told him, not checking to see if he was awake or listening. When I grew up, things were bad, but we weren’t so poor. My grandfather —my mother’s father—had a lot of French blood. I think he chose my grandmother for her beauty. I felt guilty for not being raised like other coloured people. I didn’t feel coloured …

  He lay there. She went to the crib and lifted the baby, a bare tinge of honey. He felt something odd, a spark of memory, those summer days coming down from the fields into the cool shadow of the house so that he could see Isa-Marie in her room studying Bible passages. He waited for Louise to go out to the garden. At the crib he tried to control the trembling in his good hand. He lowered his swollen face. He wanted to touch his daughter, to bring his cheek to the calm, sleeping child.

  That night he got up. He dressed and went outside. His fist ached. He’d taken three painkillers. The summer dark was hot and impersonal. He wondered briefly where he could go and be just another man. Thinking of the tiny girl, he was afraid that he might stay.

  Fields were mowed and fragrant, and as he walked, the moonlit roofs of farmhouses and a few lights floated out across the dark. Eventually the road dipped to another. A dog ran to a mesh fence, huffing and half barking, then fled back into shadow. The moon set, stars filling up the sky. He entered the deep ruckus of the forest.

  Where would he be if he continued? Back to that wild self in the mountains? Again he tried to recall what his people had understood about this place. On his way to boxing matches, he’d seen dozens of cities, but his trips had been all bustle and rush and busy streets, and there’d been no way to stop.

  Above the thriving night sounds an engine chugged. At a slight rise, headlights fanned into luminous dark. He stood, conscious in stillness of humidity and the sweetness of bloom, the ranging shadows out along the road. The truck pulled close. A knocking came from within.

  Need a ride? a voice called with the rounded vowels of a black man. Jude opened the door. The cab light didn’t come on. He climbed inside. The truck pulled forward and after a while his eyes adjusted to the faint glow of the dash. The driver was thickset, his face fleshy and boyish. The truck hit a bump. The whole thing rattled. Seat springs creaked.

  Where you going so late? the man asked.

  I don know, Jude said—Mobile. It was the first reasonable city he could name, a place where he’d once boxed. His money and ID were in the trunk of his car.

  That’s a long ways away. Mobile.

  Jude stared ahead. He considered saying something about his daughter. The well of headlights stretched out before them.

  You okay? I seen your hand.

  I … Jude hesitated … I am wid a black woman.

  The man tilted his head. Sounds like a full-time job.

  They drove a while longer in silence until, as the truck rounded a bend, something moved at the side of the road. The headlights kicked back, catching in the folded shadows of antlers and a dark eye. Jude braced against the dash.

  Neither spoke as the man turned the truck around, one headlight dead, the other aimed into the ditch. He reached under the seat and took out a knife. They walked into the grass edging the road. The deer’s breath rasped in its muzzle.

  Somebody maybe will hit de truck, Jude said.

  One antler was shattered, and the man approached the other carefully. He was large but nothing compared to Jude. His eyes were golden under the headlight. He took the good antler and pulled the head back and cut the buck’s throat. Its eyes bulged. It tried to stand and died.

  If you knew how often this happens. Like the Bible be saying, he told Jude, his accent exaggerated now—like the Bible be saying, this is a rich and plentiful land, always sending me sweet food. He paused. And you with a black woman. What you running from?

  Whatever had been in the buck’s eyes was gone. The man crouched and lifted a leg. He worked fast, sawing. Then he rolled his sleeve and slipped his hand in. He jerked his arm upward hard. Intestines spilled out. The smell was familiar to Jude, like that of homemade soap.

  The man cleaned the knife, then stood and studied the buck’s shape in the weeds. Jude touched the warm metal of the truck. He thought of lying in damp grass beneath the power lines and the way Louise lay back and lifted her hips, and his stomach ached to think another man might see her body say so much.

  I am okay here, Jude said.

  Now listen, the man told him. He gave Jude a long look, then nodded to himself and bent to lift the deer. He was dressed in slacks and an oxford. He glanced up at Jude and waited. Together they put the deer in the back of the truck.

  He cleared his throat. I sure can’t take you to Mobile. I can take you just a ways. Sweat beaded on his upper lip.

  I am okay, Jude told him.

  The man walked around to the truck door. Throw a stone, he said as if singing, and you’ll hit an answer in Mobile. He looked at Jude before he got in. The single headlight cut up along the trees.

  For years Jude would recall walking that night home. He’d understood that whatever Honoré had dreamed would not be found here. He returned to the house. A photo near the crib showed Louise’s mother, chin lifted with pride or practised stillness, a braid on her shoulder like a bandolier. Because of the age or artificiality of the image her cheeks shone white.

  Louise was sleeping. He was careful. He went to the owl cage. With his good hand he opened it and took each soft stirring body and crushed it. He took the baby from the crib and wrapped her as gently as he could. He never considered that she would cry, and she didn’t. His hands shook and whatever steady pang of emptiness and loss faded and he was a huge gentle man holding her. He went to his car and started the engine and left.

  He drove through what remained of the night. The next day he stopped for milk and fed the quiet newborn. He couldn’t keep from looking at her. He was determined to take no risks. He would do it right this time and go where Honoré had told him. By morning he crossed out of Delaware over the long, low bridge to New Jersey. It was summer and cloudless.

  The first days were difficult. At a bookstore he bought everything on babies. Unpractised with words, he studied the pictures, mostly of women breastfeeding. Not knowing what Louise had called the girl, he named her Isa, and she watched him with indulgent, even patient eyes. He bought her formula and new clothes, pullovers with sown-on feet, a yellow sundress. He paid a woman at a daycare to help him, telling her his wife had died. He ended up staying in a motel until he found a house to rent in New Jersey, a few streets up from a good neighbourhood. Though the rooms were cramped, the paint was new, and he could carry Isa down and see the big houses wi
th their lawns and pools.

  The feeling of wonder never left. He’d soaked and stripped away his cast so that he could place her on his gnarled right hand that was almost as big as she was while he fed or cleaned her with the other. Often he thought back to that year in his youth when the aunt had come with her children to live with them, the feeling of joy and the expectation of joy. But though Isa remained a calm, watchful baby with eyes lighter than her mother’s, there were still the inexplicable weeping nights when he held her in his torn hands and sat in some too small chair not knowing when this pain would end. And there were the explicable cries too when he put her in diapers and accidentally jabbed her hip with the safety pin. One day he realized he didn’t know her birthday, and so he picked a date, sometime in the weeks before he’d taken her.

  Afraid of being found, he bought loafers, chinos and a blazer, and he lied to his neighbours about his name. Ey dere, he said, I am William White, which they, conscious of his absent wife, took for a makeover of Wilhelm Weiss or some such thing. He was even invited to a potluck. He held Isa and stood among his neighbours. One was a Hungarian, another a Pole, all awkward out of overalls. He drank a few, stared at the TV, said, Well okay, good night. He didn’t know he was supposed to bring a dish. They never invited him again.

  Though he had money enough, alone with Isa he tried to understand what would fill the years. Walking the wealthy neighbourhood, he saw men in suits heading for the train station on chilly mornings or returning, reappearing on the patio with sons and pigskins. Jude thought of the black man who’d picked him up in Louisiana, of that brief ride through dark woods. Jude hadn’t wanted much, only to carve out a life.

  That winter passed painfully slow. He bought a TV, a chair, a mattress. Isa was always in his arms, asleep as he watched episode after episode, as he tried to decipher books on how to raise her. The only instruction he didn’t follow was to visit the doctor. His fear of being caught outweighed this recommendation. Louise appeared in dreams. She smiled as if they’d always been together, or slept deeply with her palms turned up, as though dead. When he woke, the array of houses beyond his bay window looked like a child’s model circuited by an electric train. Often, nightmares of Isa-Marie’s lost bones mixed with others of Louise’s rage, the blue-jacketed men and weaving lights. She must be looking, must regret not having learned more than healing and midwifery from her grandmother. Briefly he wondered at giving birth. Louise was barely more than a girl, and he considered how she had suffered. He decided never to think of her again and gradually this lie against his emotions became truth and he didn’t. But at times the split nerves of old fights jangled in his body, and lingering in sleep he felt her fingertips on his forehead, healing that wound, holding him there.