Breaker

by Richard Thomas

  “Mikey, don’t think I’ve seen your father around at all. Not lately.”

  Mikey squints his eyes, opens his mouth, and then shuts it.

  “Beat it, you two—winter’s coming. Weatherman says we might get a few inches today. Some lake effect, maybe.”

  They turn their bikes around, heading the other way, out of the alley and pointed southbound, in the direction of their apartments.

  “And boys?”

  They look up.

  “Don’t let me catch you bothering Natalie again. She’s off limits. Find something else to do, somebody else to bully. Got it?”

  They nod once and take off, Gino glancing back over his shoulder, squinting again, as if he isn’t quite sure what happened, or what he saw.

  “Thanks, Ray,” Natalie says, picking up her bike, before looking up at me in the window again.

  “Be more careful, okay? Those guys are bad news.”

  Natalie nods and manages a small grin, brushing off her coat and stuffing her hands back into her pockets.

  “Just gotta run up to the corner for some milk,” she says.

  I turn my eyes back up to the graying sky, the wind picking up as the sun slips behind the ramshackle tenements and brownstones alike. The sky is filled with dirty cotton. I wasn’t lying about the storm, the snow.

  “I’ve got an extra gallon, Natalie, why don’t you come up and get it—and save yourself the trip. It’s getting dark out.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  I duck my head in and close the window. I light a cheap vanilla candle in the kitchen to mask any odors that linger, a pan with bacon grease congealing on the stove—and this time when she knocks, I answer.

  Chapter 3

  I have a temper—it’s one of my many gifts. A lifetime of abuse has left me damaged, but that fracturing of my spirit, that need for vengeance, the desire to pass it on—it pushes up from inside and slides across my flesh, eager to find a new place to land. I know right from wrong, but sometimes I just don’t care. So I’ve found a few ways to release the pressure that builds up over the course of hours, days, weeks, and months. Today it’s the Blue Line to the end of the world; more specifically, Rosemont. Then it’s the 221, Wolf Road, to a warehouse tucked into an industrial park, surrounded by decrepit bungalows, skeletal oak trees, and miles of concrete void of emotion.

  I stand naked in front of the full-length mirror in my bedroom, studying my pale flesh—the bruises, welts, and scars traversing my skin. It’s going to be cold today, so I slip on a faded pair of green long underwear, a long-sleeve shirt, and thick wool socks. Over that I put on baggy gray sweatpants and a dark blue Chicago Bears sweatshirt—just one more sign of my mental instability. A black knit hat, and then it’s a beige hunting jacket, lined with red plaid, and a pair of worn-out leather gloves. I hide in this outfit, even though my head nearly touches the doorframe, dark sunglasses allowing me some privacy, my height hidden when I’m sitting down on the el train.

  It’s dark out now, and if I’m lucky, I can slip out of the building without attracting any unwanted attention. What I do at night, the way I return, covered in scrapes, bloody knuckles, and a swollen face, it’s better if I don’t have any witnesses, an audience. And that Natalie, she’s always around, doesn’t miss a thing. Makes me wonder what’s going on in her apartment that she needs to pay me so much attention. Anything to escape, I guess, I know how it is—easier to live vicariously through others than to deal with your own mess.

  I leave one light on in the kitchen and slip out the front door, keying the lock. I smell something cooking next door, classical music drifting to me from behind Natalie’s apartment door, onions and garlic simmering, and it makes my stomach growl. Can’t eat now—no vomiting on the canvas.

  Bundled up, I head north toward the Logan Square el stop, passing one brownstone after another. In one window, there is a family sitting down to eat pizza, up a little late, laughter around the dining room table, two animated teens regaling their parents with their adventures out in the world today. A man in black stumbles out of the iron-gated home and turns toward me, head down, fists deep inside his coat pockets. For once, I give way, taking a step to my right, the figure emanating a heat, a sorrow, that causes me to take a short breath, holding it in, and then a long exhale that makes my head spin.

  There are things in this world that are far worse than me—I know that. I cannot stay solidly in the shadows, nor can I take the full gaze of the sun. It is an uncomfortable existence, one that is marred by dreams that shift into nightmare—what was here, now gone; what was pure, now soiled.

  Under my gloves my hands are taped up, for warmth, sure, but to protect them as well. Tonight I will stand at the edge of the fights, tucked into a corner of the concrete bunker of a warehouse, and wait to be called. If they see me, they’ll never step into the ring. I am sometimes masked, and sometimes handicapped—one arm behind my back, blindfolded, or worse—all to make things even. I haven’t lost yet.

  The cold air fills my mouth, piercing my lungs, as the metal and greenery slides by on my left, parked cars on the right, streetlights sending globes of pale yellow reflecting off the puddles, the ice, the windows, and the darkness. Up ahead neon glows, the dull throbbing of bass emanating from bars and restaurants, laughter spilling out when a door is flung open. Red brick and iron girders, tall windows filled with fire and candlelight, glasses tilted back, hands grasping for purchase in the night, but nothing there for me. Too many times the room going quiet, too many times all eyes on me, the room full, starting to spin, nothing left for me.

  What to do, how to find my own kind?

  We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

  That would be my mother, Rita Nelson. And so many bridges, we’ve crossed them all—wood splintering under rotting rope, metal gangways over raging rivers, bricks placed one after another over concrete, nudged into place, an archway spanning the slippery, amorphous forest below. Some bridges were burned, some were left behind, too far to go back, some still waiting for a gate to lift, a key to be inserted into a lock, a password to be whispered into an eager ear.

  I shake my head and shrug my shoulders. Tensing up too soon, no time for this, have to stay loose. Hands out, fists into the air, punching the night, deep breaths and the el stop is looming, cars crossing back and forth, people rising up and out of the earth, heading home, the train beneath our feet vibrating, rumbling north, and I’ll be on the next one. I will retreat farther and farther into myself, until there is only a shell, a skeleton wrapped in meat, two blazing eyes focused only on destruction, my heart gone dead and cold.

  Predictions—the men will stand around with their notebooks and cigars, jotting down everything from the color of my piss to my weight to how shaky my hands are. Most won’t see me coming, but those in the know, they’ll bet heavily on me. Everyone likes Ray-Ray. Boom-Boom. Sugar Ray. When I step out of the shadows, the miscreants will cheer. They’ll scramble to put more money down, and the boy, the man, whoever waits in the ring, he’ll sneer, curl up his lip, lick his teeth, and feel his stomach clench. Nowhere to run, he’ll ask for more cash, his trainer pushing him back inside the ropes. And for once, the women will touch me, all hands on me as I climb out of the darkness, parting the sea of soft flesh, tentative tiny hands, their sharp nails leaving marks, reaching out to touch my cold, slick, pale skin, muscles twitching, as my legs propel me forward. I’ll suck in the perfume—lavender and musk, orange and vanilla, red currant and bourbon. And something sour lurks underneath it all—urine, vomit, and rotting meat. Head nod after head nod, the men with arms crossed, teeth clenched, for a moment my allies, but only for a moment.

  Chapter 4

  Natalie

  Next door to Ray, Natalie sits in her bedroom. The room is slowly evolving from a little girl’s to a young lady’s. She sits alone on her bed, surrounded by pinks and purples, talking to her stuffed animal, Jackie Puma. The little black animal is somebody she confide
s in, when her mother is quietly drinking herself to death in the kitchen and her father is nowhere to be found. Her door has a deadbolt lock now—she put it on herself, with the $6.16 she saved up babysitting a neighborhood kid. Much like the boys in the alley, she’s fifteen going on eighteen, learning to cook mac and cheese, remembering to take her vitamins, or drink a glass of orange juice in the morning, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches quick and easy, or sometimes just a slice of American cheese on white bread from Aldi. Out the door she goes, bundled up in long scarves and dirty gloves, leaving behind a silent apartment—off to school on her own, but searching the sidewalk for her neighbors and friends, eager to blend in with somebody—anybody. She never notices the white van.

  She watches Ray, never Raymond, because she sees in him something that she recognizes in herself—she sees the boy he used to be, before puberty and his growth spurt, before his light brown hair lost all of its color, fading to a light blond, almost white, as if scared to death from something it had seen. She sees a boy with a vivid imagination, a bucket of Legos turned into a castle, Matchbox cars in the dirt, a world built out of twigs, and mud, and desperation.

  She is not afraid of Ray. But she should be.

  Her threadbare white curtains are dusty, drawn wide to let in more light, tears at the edge of the frayed fabric, snow-covered mountain ranges if you don’t squint your eyes and look too close. She also frequents the local thrift stores, finding brand-name clothes for pennies on the dollar, where she’s seen the angry giant looking at furniture, selecting anything dinged and torn, to match his disposition. And yet she sometimes hears him humming, singing a lyric here and there, and she can almost feel him smiling when he’s like that. It’s contagious. A few words are snatched out of the air—home alone, desire fire, dull soul, wet head. She knows it by heart now, and sings along to the ballad—softly to herself. It is comforting and familiar.

  She can feel his footsteps, if she concentrates, his heavy boots thudding around his living room, or out the back steps into the alley, or at his apartment door, the lock snicking shut, down and out, passing by her front door, her eye at the peephole, his gaze drifting toward her. Sometimes, when the moon is full, peeking into her bedroom, and she can’t sleep, she’ll head to the back of the apartment, a mirror image of Ray’s apartment, past her father asleep on the couch, empty beer cans and a smoldering cigarette in an overflowing ceramic ashtray. Past her mother snoring in her bedroom, where she lies on top of the sheets as if broken from a long fall—arms and legs akimbo, short shirt riding up, her panties black and lacy. Natalie will stand in the kitchen over by the window, in her nightgown and bunny slippers, and stare—listening for his return. More often than not, he’ll slink up the steps and glide by, covered in bruises, limping sometimes, muttering. Crying only once. In the morning she finds dots of red—blood coins left on the wood.

  Tonight, she hears him go, but misses him at the door, only a shadow drifting by, a hint of something musky and sour, a sharp note of something sticky and sweet. He is an aging grizzly bear lost in a forest, one ear with a bite out of it, his back hunched, fur falling out in patches, mange spreading across his damaged hide. He is a dying dappled mare that is bowed in the middle, slow and dense, chomping on hay, eyes rolling back up into its head, tail swatting away the flies. He is an ancient archaeopteryx, feathers falling to the earth below, gliding over the land, its wide shadow casting darkness and cold, a guttural caw, its talons sharp, swooping down to grab its struggling prey, whooshing by her, scaring off the wolves, as they slink back out of sight, her eyes glowing and filled with tears.

  She sees him, yes, she does.

  And he sees her, too.

  Chapter 5

  The Logan Avenue el stop is underground, not actually elevated at all—at least, not at this point. Soon the long snake of metal will push its way slowly uphill and emerge from the earth as if waking from a dream, seeking sustenance as its tongue wags in the air, sniffing.

  For now, I sit and rest. Sunglasses on, I retreat farther into myself, hiding in plain sight, and yet every woman that walks past me shifts her purse or bag to the other side, out of my reach, as the seats on both sides of me stay empty. They will remain empty for the entire ride—men in suits, boys in jeans all preferring to stand, tightly grasping a metal pole, eyes on me, never turning their backs. As if I might do something violent, stand up and tear my clothes to shreds, Hulking out on them.

  Could happen.

  It has before.

  As the concrete slides by, the brick buildings one after another, telephone wires stretching out to the horizon, it feels as if this is not my life. I am a toxic green phosphorous gas piped into a glass beaker, housed in a padded box, suspended in a cracked rib cage, waiting to be released.

  A little girl sits in her mother’s lap, her pink puffy coat turning her into a marshmallow, her striped hat holding a fluffy ball up top, one that keeps falling into her eyes.

  This is Rosemont.

  The train pulls into the station, highway on both sides, traffic shooting by, lights flying in all directions.

  This is a Blue Line train to O’Hare International Airport.

  This…is Rosemont.

  My stop.

  I stand up and the train car takes a collective breath—and holds it. As I pass the girl, I reach into my jacket pocket and pull out a tiny, plush Pokémon doll, something I found in Salvation Army for a dollar. I’d thought of giving it to Natalie, a totem to ward off the dark fates that spin around her fragile frame. This tot seems to need it more, snot running down her face, cheeks flushed, and ready to wail. It’s a little yellow guy, Pikachu I believe. Black-tipped ears top its fuzzy body, some sort of rodent or rabbit, maybe. It has red circles on its cheeks, just like the little girl. I hand it to her and she smiles, grabbing it quickly, her gaze running from my taped hands up my coat to my face and stopping there, lingering even, uncertain how to process it all. She blinks, and I think she’s going to start crying, throw it on the ground. Instead, she tucks the little animal in tight and plugs her thumb into her mouth, eyes slowly closing, and then shooting open again, as I wait for the doors to open. She drifts off to sleep, her mother unaware of our transaction.

  I move into the night. Having paid homage to the old gods, to whatever voodoo skips across my flesh, I breathe it all in—I drink it up.

  Doors are closing.

  I remember the last fight, the one I almost lost, the powder blown in my face under the dim yellow lights, the brass knuckles slipped out of a pocket, a slit, a sleeve, someplace hidden, three raps to my face as his shoulders dipped down, hiding the work, the butcher laughing, then the metal disappearing again.

  I push the memory toward the black again, letting it all slip away. My sister and her giggling laughs, face shining after a night out chasing one dangerous man after another. My mother rubbing Vicks on my chest, a fever running across my forehead, sweat trickling down into the damp sheets. My father stepping behind me, holding the baseball bat, the golf club, showing me the grip, the swing, the throw. Natalie skipping up the sidewalk singing a song that I’d been humming all day—not a care in the world, that girl, it seems.

  They’re mannequins, all of them—my family—empty and dead inside. The masks they all wear, I can see right through them.

  So I slip mine on as well.

  Chapter 6

  Train to a bus to a warehouse filled with desperation. This is my ritual, my release, and one source of my irregular income. Neon bathes me in a soft light, one heavy boot after another. I walk past McDonald’s, Jim’s Liquors, Taquería Dona Ana, and an EZPAWN, the last window filled with all kinds of shiny, distracting objects—watches, jewelry, guitars, and brass instruments. I slink toward a large metal structure that looks like an old airplane hangar. And maybe it was, a long time ago, a private airstrip or something.

  I tend to come in the back door, avoiding the crowds out front, the questions and probing looks. I’ll get plenty of that in a few minutes. I take
the sidewalk off to my right, past a row of hedges that line the property and up to a small metal door, just to the left of an enormous metal fan.

  I pull the door open and step inside, bracing myself for the heat and noise, but there is nothing here tonight. Just a few lights flicked on, running up and down the walls, and one long solitary bulb directly over the ring—a soft yellow glow emanating from the metal cage wrapped around it.

  “What the hell?” I mutter.

  I unzip my coat and take off my sunglasses. Maybe I have the wrong day. Hell, maybe I have the wrong week, the wrong bus, the wrong building.

  “Ray…Ray, over here.”

  Sitting next to the ring on a small wooden stool is Edson. He’s a shrinking elderly man, white hair shooting out in all directions, including his nose and ears. He’s polishing up something, rubbing oil into a pair of leather gloves, fast at work, a metal bucket by his feet. He turns and spits some tobacco juice into it and looks up at me, squinting from behind a pair of thin wire glasses.

  “What’s going on, Ed?”

  “You didn’t get the email, the text message, voicemail—none of that?”

  I scowl at him as I walk closer.

  “No, of course you didn’t, you’re neither man nor beast, caught somewhere in between, living in the woods, raised by wolves, limping back to your apartment when the moon finally goes to bed. Right, Boom-Boom? That about it?”

  “Something like that, I guess.”

  Edson’s eyes twitch a few times as he kneads the gloves, nodding his head.

  “Mixing it up tonight, old friend. Casper versus the Holy Spirit, a fight for the ages, no holds barred.”

  “What are you talking about, Ed?”

  “You’re Casper, right? Get it? Big white ghost?”

  “I get it, Ed.”

  “You like the money, right, Ray? Maybe up for a challenge, yeah? Something different? Tired of the riffraff and supermodels, my friend?”