Warrior Angel

by Robert Lipsyte

  Just to be here, thought Sonny.

  “Of course,” said Starkey. Where did this kid get his confidence? “Sonny’s going to sleep here, help keep the place up, just like he did when he was starting. He has to prove his sincerity.”

  Johnson blinked. “That right, Sonny?”

  Sonny nodded.

  Johnson asked, “What about you?”

  Before Starkey could answer, Sonny said, “He stays here, too.”

  Johnson took a step back and looked him over. “Never seen this before,” he muttered, and Sonny knew everything was going to be all right.

  12

  IT WAS MORE THAN Starkey had ever imagined, just the two of them, sitting on ring stools at a spindly card table, under a single naked bulb in the middle of the gym. They were eating barbecued ribs that Horace had sent over from his restaurant. Sonny ate the ribs carefully, turning them almost delicately in his big hands as he nibbled around the bone. Starkey tried to copy Sonny, but his fingers were not as nimble and the ribs slipped in his hands.

  So close to Sonny that he had to remember to breathe. He tried not to stare. Sonny’s face seemed softer than in the poster on Starkey’s bedroom wall, his jawline not so bony. There were small scars around his eyebrows and mouth. But his eyes were as deep and dark as they were in pictures. The teeth picking at the meat on the ribs were large and white. His knuckles were scuffed.

  There were a million questions he wanted to ask, but Sonny seemed closed up into himself, focused on eating. Athletes are like that, Starkey remembered reading somewhere, able to zone in on whatever they were doing and shut out distractions. They miss a lot, but they get the job done. A Warrior Angel is a kind of athlete.

  “So what’s a Warrior Angel?” The rib, dripping sauce, was poised at Sonny’s lips.

  Thinking out loud again, Starkey. Now you better think fast. Another defining moment. But this may not be the time to go for it. Be cool, be steady.

  “We help people.”

  “How?”

  “Support them in their strengths, protect them from their weaknesses.”

  “What’s that mean?” Sonny’s brow was wrinkled. He looked like he wanted a real answer.

  “If you’ve got a killer left hook, learn how to use it even more effectively. If your chin’s weak, learn how to protect it.”

  “Trainers do that.”

  “Right. Now take that beyond boxing, to the whole person.” Starkey thought, Easy here, don’t want to spook him. “Say you’re good at setting goals and never quitting till you get there. It’s important that you set the right goals or you’ll be off wandering on worthless journeys. Say you’ve got a tendency to be negative. You need to be reminded of positive things.”

  Sonny nodded and went back to the rib.

  Well done, Starkey. When you are cool, you are in control. Could have babbled on and blown it. But the fistful of pills he had swiped from the Family Place wouldn’t last forever, even at the half dosage he was taking. To stretch it out I’ll have to cut back to a quarter dose soon. Then the Voices will start drifting back. Got to get the job done before I run out.

  Sonny glanced up. “What job?”

  “Getting you ready for The Wall.”

  Sonny seemed to like that. “You told Johnson you had a plan.”

  “Mind and body. Both have to be in better shape. For starters, this is the last dinner of ribs till after the fight.” Starkey loved the easy authority in his voice. The Archies would be proud. “The Wall wasn’t prepared for you last time, took you lightly. He won’t make that mistake again.”

  “It was a war,” said Sonny. He put down a half-eaten rib and wiped his mouth. “I was pissing blood and seeing double for a week. And I was ready last time.”

  “Not so ready,” said Starkey. “You were distracted. All the stuff on the Reservation. Remember, somebody tried to shoot you. That can take you out of the zone.”

  Sonny nodded. He was listening!

  Starkey felt an electric surge. He was getting through. “Rocky’ll get your rhythms and combinations back, and we’ll work on focusing your head. Turn on the lights. Clear out the fog.”

  “You think I’m a head case?”

  Careful, Starkey. “I think you let yourself get down, the same way you let your conditioning slip.”

  Sonny nodded. “I felt like I was digging a hole, couldn’t stop digging the hole, just getting deeper and deeper in.”

  “But you jumped out, Sonny.” Starkey swallowed his excitement. All the years of therapy paying off—I should be a shrink. “You shook loose of Hubbard, came back here.”

  “You helped me do that.”

  Starkey felt almost dizzy with the intensity of Sonny’s stare. They were eye locked, nothing else happening in the world but the energy flowing between them.

  Suddenly Sonny stood up, so quickly the stool toppled over behind him and ribs scattered on the table. Steel shutters snapped down over his eyes. “Better get some sleep.” He marched across the gym and piled three mats in a corner. He yanked off his running shoes.

  “There’s a couch in Johnson’s office,” he said. “Up at six.”

  He wrapped a big towel around himself and sank to the mats. He pulled his knees to his chest and was asleep before Starkey pulled the light cord.

  The couch was old and stained and smelly, there were hard spots and soft spots, and it took Starkey a while to burrow his body into a groove. But he was too excited to sleep right away. He had made the connection. Sonny was listening to him. And he’d stayed cool.

  But Sonny was going to be tough. The way he had suddenly jumped up to end the conversation. A warning bell had gone off in his head when he had felt Starkey getting too close. Was it about accepting help from someone else? Maybe he had a fear of becoming vulnerable to someone else, and then abandoned, the way his mother had dumped him on the Res for months at a time.

  Maybe that’s too simple, the quickie, Family Circle Jerk explanation. I’ll need to get to the real Sonny. And then maybe he’ll open up so I can save him.

  I’ll have to take it easy bringing him to that point. Starkey remembered once going fishing with Stepdad, who kept lecturing him to reel in firmly but slowly or the fish would snap the line and swim away. He’d listened to what Stepdad said and kept jerking on the rod all day long so the fish could break away to freedom.

  He’d have to play Sonny slowly to bring him into the boat.

  After a while the lights of a pink dawn bled through the dusty windows of Donatelli’s Gym. On the Harlem street below, a garbage truck ground up metal to a chorus of drunks.

  Sonny kicked over a metal bucket. “Let’s go, Warrior Angel.”

  Through gummy eyelashes Starkey saw the clock over Johnson’s desk. It was just five-thirty. He staggered out and watched Sonny wash his face and head in a mop sink, then shake off the water like a dog.

  “We’ll get coffee and oranges at Kim’s.”

  “Not even six,” said Starkey.

  “Best time to run, before the car fumes.”

  “You want me to run with you?” Maybe I can do it, he thought. I wasn’t kicked off the cross-country team for being too slow.

  “You’re on the bike.”

  13

  ONCE SONNY FELT the heat rising up his legs, the blood running free through loosening muscles, he could imagine toxins draining out of his body and the darkness slipping out of his mind. He always felt better when he was running, best of all on a crisp morning when the run was the start of a training day. He had a plan, he was in control. He knew what he was doing.

  He could hear Starkey, hunched under his backpack, wheezing along behind him on the battered old gym bike, towels and water bottles in the basket, squeaking along a slalom course of garbage and broken bottles and ruptured concrete on the fifteen blocks down to Central Park. His steering was a little erratic, but he was pedaling steadily enough to keep up.

  Been a while since I had someone I liked on the chase bike behind me, he thought.
A long time since I opened up the way I did last night. Warrior Angel? More like the president of the Sonny Bear Fan Club. That’s cool. Just be careful. These touchy-feely types like to get into your head, and once they get in, they’re hard to get out. They want to wake up all the sleeping dogs, make you think about all the things you don’t want to think about.

  He thought about Alfred. Be hard to just pick up the phone and call him.

  The sounds of the city faded as they moved deeper into the park. The horns and the sirens and the car alarms grew distant. There were moments he could imagine himself back on the Res. When Jake was alive.

  Someone else he didn’t want to think about.

  “Angel!” He waved Starkey alongside and grabbed a plastic water bottle out of the bike basket. “How you doing?”

  “Fine,” Starkey gasped. Sonny lifted the bottle to hide his grin. “How many…miles…you run?”

  “Don’t know. Forty-five minutes good, like a twelve-round fight. You need to wear that backpack?”

  “I do.” He said it sharply, a flicker of panic in his eyes.

  Sonny shrugged, then tossed the bottle back into the basket and surged ahead.

  After breakfast Sonny trained hard for two hours, finishing up in a three-round sparring session with Cobra Rasheed, a hard-punching light heavyweight. Cobra was training for a ten-rounder on the Hall undercard. If he won, he could move up in the rankings. If he won and looked good, he might even get a shot at the title.

  Cobra had a lot of attitude, which was okay with Sonny, but he was trying to show off by scoring on Sonny, which was not okay. He knew Sonny wouldn’t unload on him. It wouldn’t look right, the champ with a thirty-pound weight advantage. So Cobra played the baby-bully game. He was supposed to give Sonny a speed workout, help him ratchet up his quickness to stay away from the slow but heavy-hitting Hall. But he moved in to punch, popping a short right that snapped Sonny’s head back and pummeling Sonny’s ribs in a clinch. Sonny was able to smother the body shots by clamping his arms over Cobra’s and pulling him in close.

  “You okay, champ?” Cobra sneered.

  Sonny shoved him away.

  At the bell Johnson said, “This is for speed-work, Rasheed. Just box, don’t bang.”

  Cobra snickered. “Sor-reee. Didn’t mean to hurt the champ.” He winked at his trainers, who shook their heads in warning.

  Sonny felt an old stirring, and it felt good. Was the monster coming back? Been missing that old slugger. The Warrior Angel had been right to get him back to Donatelli’s.

  Cobra swaggered out for the last round flat-footed, ready to mix it up. But Sonny danced away, batting aside his jabs, skipping in and out of range until Cobra dropped his hands and snarled, “Someday this be for real.” His cornermen crowed at that, and Johnson shook his head. Sonny just kept moving until the bell rang, but he felt frustrated. He would have liked to rattle Cobra’s cage.

  “Hands too slow,” said Johnson, toweling him off. “Got to snap those jabs out.”

  “I’ll get on Rocky.”

  “Be with you in a—”

  “Let’s see what the Angel got.”

  Johnson looked dubious, but he shrugged.

  Starkey looked panicky at first, staring at the life-sized dummy. From forehead to waist its canvas skin was divided into numbered sections. The point of Rocky’s chin was marked 1. Seven was his right eye, 8 was his left. His nose was 3. The middle of his belly was 17.

  Starkey started slow, his calls tentative. “Jab…one. Jab…seven. Hook…nine.”

  Sonny felt impatient but wanted to give him a chance. It took a few minutes for Starkey to warm up, but then the pace picked up. “Jab, seven, jab, nine, right, thirteen.”

  Soon there was a logic to the calls, combinations that started with crisp jabs to put an opponent off balance, body shots to drive him back to the ropes, hooks to the head to put him away. The kid knew something about boxing.

  Sonny felt himself absorbed into the rhythms of the three-round flurries. He nodded encouragement at Starkey during the one-minute rests. “Way to go…pick it up.”

  After six rounds Johnson said, “Enough for today.”

  Sonny, breathing hard, dropped his arms and stepped back. For the first time, he noticed that trainers and boxers had formed a semi-circle behind him. Someone shouted, “Way to go, champ.”

  Sonny felt good. He was back.

  Cobra pushed out of the crowd, and said, “Dummy don’t have no arms to hit back.”

  Starkey said, “You’re the dummy with arms.”

  Laughter rippled through the gym. Cobra closed his fists, took a breath. He said to Sonny, “Your little brother got a big mouth.”

  Sonny glanced at Starkey, who looked proud of himself. You’re the dummy with arms was a line Marty Witherspoon had once used, Sonny remembered. It was in the book. So was a lot of information about Rocky, including one entire chapter on how to use the dummy to practice your offensive attack.

  So what, he’s read the book. Still, something felt a little creepy.

  14

  THAT NIGHT, WHILE they were cleaning up, Kim brought up Styrofoam containers packed with chicken, rice and beans, and salad from his takeout table. He fussed as he arranged the food on the table and left beaming as they dug in.

  Sonny seemed in a good mood, relaxed. He hummed over the food before he brought it to his mouth.

  “You’ve got friends,” said Starkey.

  “Kim liked Jake. Reminded him of his grandfather back in Korea.”

  “You miss Jake?”

  Sonny shrugged.

  “What about Alfred?”

  “Got to call him one of these days.”

  Starkey felt a pinprick of anxiety. Sonny wants to see Alfred. Be careful, Starkey. Don’t forget that the Mission comes first. Saving Sonny, helping him reclaim his soul from the dark forces, means getting him back with his old friends. You have to guard against your own feelings. Warrior Angels must not be jealous of relationships among Live Ones.

  Keep talking, don’t react.

  “One thing I don’t get.”

  Sonny laughed. “Lucky, only one thing.”

  “Champs have people around them, bodyguards, entourages, posses to hang out with and do stuff.”

  “You’re my posse.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I know how to tape my own hands if I have to,” said Sonny.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “You can’t depend on people.” He made it sound like the slamming of a door.

  When the classic-rock station Sonny had tuned in played a Beatles song, Starkey tried again.

  “Beatles,” said Starkey. “Do you like being named after a Beatle?”

  Sonny shrugged. When he doesn’t feel like talking, Starkey thought, he just locks up. That was in The Book, too.

  Sonny glanced over a drumstick. “You read the book?”

  Here we go again, the out-loud problem.

  “I read the entire book six times,” said Starkey. “Some parts I read a dozen times. I underlined the Running Braves stuff.” He saw that Sonny’s eyes were narrowing, his mouth tightening into a hard line, and he tried to stop but couldn’t.

  “The Warrior Angels are sort of like the Running Braves. You try to help your people, too.”

  “My people?”

  “The Moscondaga Nation.”

  Sonny snorted. “Give me a break. Moscondaga Nation’s a joke. They spend most of their time fighting with each other. The old-fashioned Indians are waiting for the buffalo to come back and for the white man to go back to Europe. The new-fashioned ones are looking to sell out to the mob so they can get rich on a casino.”

  “And you tried to bring them together.”

  “Both sides treated me like a cracker until I was champ.”

  “So you feel more white than Indian?”

  “White people treated me like a Redskin until I got to be champ. That’s why the title’s crap, too. Doesn’t mean anything excep
t money. And Hubbard steals most of it.”

  “So why are you fighting?”

  “You got a better job for a mixed-blood high school dropout?” He glared at Starkey. “Maybe president of a dot-com?”

  Starkey decided to take a chance, see if Sonny had a sense of humor. “Sure. We’ll call it Dot Combinations. It’s just what you need.”

  It took Sonny a beat to realize Starkey was making a joke, and another beat to get the joke, but he laughed and reached out to cuff him lightly on the shoulder. “That’s a good one. Got to tell Marty.” He scowled. “Someday.”

  Starkey couldn’t control the little jolts, first of delight, then jealousy. Martin Malcolm Witherspoon, author of The Tomahawk Kid, was another friend who could be used for the Mission. Mr. Johnson, Alfred, Martin, one by one, bring them back to help save Sonny.

  And squeeze you out, whispered a Voice.

  Stay cool. Focus.

  He thought of the dog-eared copy of The Book in his backpack. “I know some of that book by heart. ‘The best of them could smell the breath of their prey….’”

  Sonny growled, deep in his throat.

  He couldn’t help himself—he plunged on. “Your great-grandfather was the last of the Running Braves; he was murdered by—”

  WHAP! Sonny’s big hand smacked the spindly table so hard that rice and beans jumped out of the Styrofoam boxes. “No Redskin crap.”

  “Not crap, it’s—”

  “That’s where you got the idea for Warrior Angels? From the book?”

  Starkey felt as though he’d been punched in the stomach, the breath wheezing out of him. “You…you think I made it up?”

  “Somebody made up the Running Braves, right?”

  “But they existed,” said Starkey. “Everything was made up by somebody. And the Creator made up everybody.”

  Sonny shook his head. “You sound like Jake. So, where you from?”

  “North of here.” Starkey jerked a thumb toward Upstairs. It was the first personal question Sonny had asked, and he didn’t want to scare him.