The Best of Lucius Shepard

by The Best of Lucius Shepard (v5. 5) (epub)

  Lying there, he realizes he’s already positioned for the coffin, posed for eternity, and that recognition makes him roll up to his feet and begin his shadowboxing, working up a sweat. His sweat stinks of anxiety, but the effort tempers the morbidity of his thoughts.

  A tremendous billow of applause issues from the arena, and not long thereafter, Leon pops in the door and says, “Quick knockout, man. We on in five.” Then it goes very fast. The shuffling, bobbing walk along the aisle through the Wichita crowd, hearing shouted curses, focusing on that vast, dim tent of white light that hangs down over the ring. Climbing through the ropes, stepping into the resin box, getting his gloves checked a final time. It’s all happening too quickly. He’s being torn away from important details. Strands of tactics, sustaining memories, are being burned off him. He does not feel prepared. His belly knots and he wants to puke. He needs to see where he is, exactly where, not just this stretch of blue canvas that ripples like shallow water and the warped circles of lights suspended in blackness like an oddly geometric grouping of suns seen from outer space. The heat of those lights, along with the violent, murmurous heat of the crowd, it’s sapping—it should be as bright as day in the ring, like noon on a tropic beach, and not this murky twilight reeking of Vaseline and concession food and fear. He keeps working, shaking his shoulders, testing the canvas with gliding footwork, jabbing and hooking. Yet all the while he’s hoping the ring will collapse or Vederotta will sprain something, a power failure, anything to spare him. But when the announcer brays his weight, his record and name over the mike, he grows calm as if by reflex and submits to fate and listens to the boos and desultory clapping that follows.

  “His opponent,” the announcer continues, “in the black trunks with a red stripe, weighs in tonight at a lean and mean one hundred fifty-nine and one half pounds. He’s undefeated and is currently ranked number one by both the WBC and WBA, with twenty-four wins, twenty-three by knockout! Let’s have a great big prairie welcome for Wichita’s favorite son, Toneee! The Heat! Ve-de-rot-taaaaa! Vederotta!”

  Vederotta dances forward into the roar that celebrates him, arms lifted above his head, his back to Mears; then he turns, and as Leon and the cut man escort Mears to the center of the ring for the instructions, Mears sees that menacing face again. Those glowing eyes.

  “When I say ‘break’,” the ref is saying, “I want you to break clean. Case of a knockdown, go to a neutral corner and stay there till I tell ya to come out. Any questions?”

  One of Vederotta’s handlers puts in his mouthpiece, a piece of opaque plastic that mutes the fiery glow, makes it look liquid and obscene; gassy red light steams from beneath the black metal hulls that shade his eyes.

  “OK,” says the ref. “Let’s get it on.”

  Vederotta holds out his gloves and says something through his mouthpiece. Mears won’t touch gloves with him, frightened of what this acquiescence might imply. Instead, he shoves him hard, and once again the handlers have to intervene. Screams from the crowd lacerate the air, and the ref admonishes him, saying, “Gimme a clean fight, Bobby, or I’ll disqualify ya.” But Mears is listening to Vederotta shouting fierce, garbled noises such as a lion might make with its mouth full of meat.

  Leon hustles him back to the corner, puts in his mouthpiece and slips out through the ropes, saying, “Uppercuts, man! Keep throwin’ them uppercuts!” Then he’s alone, that strangely attenuated moment between the instructions and the bell, longer than usual tonight because the TV cameraman standing on the ring apron is having problems. Mears rolls his head, working out the kinks, shaking his arms to get them loose, and pictures himself as he must look from the cheap seats, a tiny dark figure buried inside a white pyramid. The image of Amandla comes into his head. She, too, is tiny. A doll in a blue robe, like a Madonna, she has that kind of power, a sweet, gentle idea, nothing more. And there’s Arlene, whom he has never seen, of whom he knows next to nothing, African and voluptuous and mysterious like those big-breasted ebony statues they sell in the import stores. And Leon hunkered down at the corner of the ring, sweaty already, breath thick and quavery, peering with his pop eyes. Mears feels steadier and less afraid, triangulated by them: the only three people who have any force in his life. When he glances across the ring and finds that black death’s head glaring at him, he is struck by something—he can see Vederotta. Since his eyes went bad, he’s been unable to see his opponent until the man closes on him, and for that reason he circles tentatively at the beginning of each round, waiting for the figure to materialize from the murk, backing, letting his opponent come to him. Vederotta must know this, must have seen that tendency on film, and Mears thinks it may be possible to trick him, to start out circling and then surprise him with a quick attack. He turns, wanting to consult Leon, not sure this would be wise, but the bell sounds, clear and shocking, sending him forward as inexorably as a toy set in motion by a spark.

  Less than ten seconds into the fight, goaded in equal measure by fear and hope, Mears feints a sidestep, plants his back foot and lunges forward behind a right that catches Vederotta solidly above the left eye, driving him into the ropes. Mears follows with a jab and two more rights before Vederotta backs him up with a wild flurry, and he sees that Vederotta has been cut. The cut is on the top of the eyelid, not big but in a bad place, difficult to treat. It shows as a fuming red slit in that black mask, like molten lava cracking open the side of a scorched hill. Vederotta rubs at the eye, holds up his glove to check for blood, then hurls himself at Mears, taking another right on the way in but managing to land two stunning shots under the ribs that nearly cave him in. From then on it’s all downhill for Mears. Nobody, not Hagler or Hearns or Duran, has ever hit him with such terrible punches. His face is numb from Vederotta’s battering jab and he thinks one of his back teeth may have been cracked. But the body shots are the worst. Their impact is the sort you receive in a car crash when the steering wheel or the dash slams into you. They sound like football tackles, they dredge up harsh groans as they sink deep into his sides, and he thinks he can feel Vederotta’s fingers, his talons, groping inside the gloves, probing for his organs. With less than a minute to go in the round, a right hand to the heart drops him onto one knee. It takes him until the count of five to regain his breath, and he’s up at seven, wobbly, dazed by the ache spreading across his chest. As Vederotta comes in, Mears wraps his arms about his waist and they go lurching about the ring, faces inches apart, Vederotta’s arm barred under his throat, trying to push him off. Vederotta spews words in a goblin language, wet, gnashing sounds. He sprays fiery brimstone breath into Mears’ face, acid spittle, the crack on his eyelid leaking a thin track of red phosphorus down a black cheek. When the ref finally manages to separate them, he tells Mears he’s going to deduct a point if he keeps holding. Mears nods, grateful for the extra few seconds’ rest, more grateful when he hears the bell.

  Leon squirts water into Mears’ mouth, tells him to rinse and spit. “You cut him,” he says excitedly. “You cut the motherfucker!”

  “I know,” Mears says. “I can see him.”

  Leon, busy with the Enswell, refrains from comment, restrained by the presence of the cut man. “Left eye,” he says, ignoring what Mears has told him. “Throw that right. Rights and uppercuts. All night long. That’s a bad cut, huh, Eddie?”

  “Could be a winner,” the cut man says, “we keep chippin’ on it.”

  Leon smears Vaseline on Mears’ face. “How you holdin’ up?”

  “He’s hurtin’ me. Everything he throws, he’s hurtin’ me.”

  Leon tells him to go ahead and grab, let the ref deduct the fucking points, just hang in there and work the right. The crowd is buzzing, rumorous, and from this, Mears suspects that he may really have Vederotta in some trouble, but he’s still afraid, more afraid than ever now that he has felt Vederotta’s power. And as the second round begins, he realizes he’s the one in trouble. The cut has turned Vederotta cautious. Instead of brawling, he circles Mears, keeping his distance, popp
ing his jab, throwing an occasional combination, wearing down his opponent inch by inch, a pale, indefinite monster, his face sheathed in black metal, eyes burning like red suns at midnight. Each time Mears gets inside to throw his shots or grab, the price is high—hooks to the liver and heart, rights to the side of the neck, the hinge of the jaw. His face is lumping up. Near the end of the round, a ferocious straight right to the temple blinds him utterly in the left eye for several seconds. When the bell rings, he sinks onto the stool, legs trembling, heartbeat ragged. Exotic eye trash floats in front of him. His head’s full of hot poison, aching and unclear. But oddly enough, that little special pain of his has dissipated, chased away by the same straight right that caused his temporary blackout.

  The doctor pokes his head into the desperate bustle of the corner and asks him where he is, how he’s doing. Mears says, “Wichita” and “OK.” When the ref asks him if he wants to continue, he’s surprised to hear himself say, “Yeah,” because he’s been doing little other than wondering if it would be all right to quit. Must be some good reason, he thinks, or else you’re one dumb son of a bitch. That makes him laugh.

  “Fuck you doin’ laughin’?” Leon says. “We ain’t havin’ that much fun out there. Work on that cut! You ain’t done diddly to that cut!”

  Mears just shakes his head, too drained to respond.

  The first minute of the third round is one of the most agonizing times of Mears’ life. Vederotta continues his cautious approach, but he’s throwing heavier shots now, head-hunting, and Mears can do nothing other than walk forward and absorb them. He is rocked a dozen times, sent reeling. An uppercut jams the mouthpiece edge-on into his gums and his mouth fills with blood. A hook to the ear leaves him rubber-legged. Two rights send spears of white light into his left eye and the tissue around the eye swells, reducing his vision to a slit. A low blow smashes the edge of his cup, drives it sideways against his testicles, causing a pain that brings bile into his throat. But Vederotta does not follow up. After each assault he steps back to admire his work. It’s clear he’s prolonging things, trying to inflict maximum damage before the finish. Mears peers between his gloves at the beast stalking him and wonders when that other little red-eyed beast inside his head will start to twitch and burn. He’s surprised it hasn’t already, he’s taken so many shots.

  When the ref steps in after a series of jabs, Mears thinks he’s stopping the fight, but it’s only a matter of tape unraveling from his left glove. The ref leads him into the corner to let Leon retape it. He’s so unsteady, he has to grip the ropes for balance, and glancing over his shoulder, he sees Vederotta spit his mouthpiece into his glove, which he holds up like a huge red paw. He expects Vederotta to say something, but all Vederotta does is let out a maniacal shout. Then he reinserts the mouthpiece into that glowing red maw and stares at Mears, shaking his black and crimson head the way a bear does before it charges, telling him—Mears realizes—that this is it, there’s not going to be a fourth round. But Mears is too wasted to be further intimidated, his fear has bottomed out, and as Leon fumbles with the tape, giving him a little more rest, his pride is called forth, and he senses again just how stupid Vederotta is, bone stupid, dog stupid, maybe just stupid and overconfident enough to fall into the simplest of traps. No matter what happens to him, Mears thinks, maybe he can do something to make Vederotta remember this night.

  The ref waves them together, and Mears sucks it up, banishes his pain into a place where he can forget about it for a while and shuffles forward, presenting a picture of reluctance and tentativeness. When Vederotta connects with a jab, then a right that Mears halfway picks off with his glove, Mears pretends to be sorely afflicted and staggers back against the ropes. Vederotta’s in no hurry. He ambles toward him, dipping his left shoulder, so sure of himself he’s not even trying to disguise his punches, he’s going to come with the left hook under, he’s going to hurt Mears some more before he whacks him out. Mears peeks between his gloves, elbows tight to his sides, knowing he’s got this one moment, waiting, the crowd’s roar like a jet engine around him, the vicious, smirking beast planting himself, his shoulder dipping lower yet, his head dropping down and forward as he cocks the left, and it’s then, right at that precise instant, when Vederotta is completely exposed, that Mears explodes from his defensive posture and throws the uppercut, aiming not at the chin or the nose, but at that red slit on the black eyelid. He lands the shot clean, feels the impact, and above the crowd noise he hears Vederotta shriek like a woman, sees him stumble into the corner, his head lowered, glove held to the damaged eye. Mears follows, spins him about and throws another shot that knocks Vederotta’s glove aside, rips at the eye. The slit, it’s torn open now, has become an inch-long gash, and that steaming, luminous red shit is flowing into the eye, over the dull black cheek and jaw, dripping onto his belly and trunks. Mears pops a jab, a right, then another jab, not hard punches—they don’t have to be hard, just accurate—splitting Vederotta’s guard, each landing on the gash, slicing the eyelid almost its entire length. Then the ref’s arms wrap around him from behind and haul him back, throwing him into ring center, where he stands, confused by this sudden cessation of violence, by this solitude imposed on him after all that brutal intimacy, as the doctor is called in to look at Vederotta’s eye. He feels light and unreal, as if he’s been shunted into a place where gravity is weaker and thought has no emotional value. The crowd has gone quiet and he hears the voice of Vederotta’s manager above the babbling in the corner. Then a second voice shouting the manager down, saying, “I can see the bone, Mick! I can see the goddamn bone!” And then—this is the most confusing thing of all—the ref is lifting his arm and the announcer is declaring, without enthusiasm, to a response of mostly silence and some scattered boos, that “the referee stops the contest at a minute fifty-six seconds of the third round. Your winner by TKO: Bobby! The Magician! Mears!”

  Mears’ pain has returned, the TV people want to drag him off for an interview, Leon is there hugging him, saying, “We kicked his ass, man! We fuckin’ kicked his ass!” and there are others, the promoter, the nobodies, trying to congratulate him, but he pushes them aside, shoulders his way to Vederotta’s corner. He has to see him, because this is not how things were supposed to play. Vederotta is sitting on his stool, someone smearing his cut with Avitene. His face is still visible, still that of the beast. Those glowing red eyes stare up at Mears, connect with the eye of pain in his head, and he wants there to be a transfer of knowledge, to learn that one day soon that pain will open wide and he will fall the way a fighter falls after one punch too many, disjointed, graceless, gone from the body. But no such transfer occurs, and he begins to suspect that something is not wrong, or rather that what’s wrong is not what he suspected.

  There’s one thing he thinks he knows, however, looking at Vederotta, and while the handlers stand respectfully by, acknowledging his place in this ritual, Mears says, “I was lucky, man. You a hell of a fighter. But that eye’s never gon’ be the same. Every fight they gon’ be whacking at it, splittin’ it open. You ain’t gon’ be fuckin’ over nobody no more. You might as well hang ’em up now.”

  As he walks away, as the TV people surround him, saying, “Here’s the winner, Bobby Mears”—and he wonders what exactly it is he’s won—it’s at that instant he hears a sound behind him, a gush of raw noise in which frustration and rage are commingled, both dirge and challenge, denial and lament, the final roar of the beast.

  Two weeks after the fight he’s sitting in the hotel bar with Arlene, staring into that infinite dark mirror, feeling lost, undefined, sickly, like there’s a cloud between him and the light that shines him into being, because he’s not sure when he’s going to fight again, maybe never, he’s so busted up from Vederotta. His eyes especially seem worse, prone to dazzling white spots and blackouts, though the pain deep in his head has subsided, and he thinks that the pain may have had something to do only with his eyes, and now that they’re fading, it’s fading, too, and what will
he do if that’s the case? Leon has been working with this new lightweight, a real prospect, and he hasn’t been returning Mears’ calls, and when the bartender switches on the TV and a rapper’s voice begins blurting out his simple, aggressive rhymes, Mears gets angry, thoughts like gnats swarming around that old reeking nightmare shape in his head, that thing that may never have existed, and he pictures a talking skull on the TV shelf, with a stuffed raven and a coiled snake beside it. He drops a twenty on the counter and tells Arlene he wants to take a walk, a disruption of their usual routine of a few drinks, then upstairs. It bewilders her, but she says, “OK, baby,” and off they go into the streets, where the Christmas lights are gleaming against the black velour illusion of night like green and red galaxies, as if he’s just stepped into an incredible distance hung here and there with plastic angels filled with radiance. And people, lots of people brushing past, dark and shiny as beetles, scuttling along in this holy immensity, chattering their bright gibberish, all hustling toward mysterious crossroads where they stop and freeze into silhouettes against the streams of light, and Mears, who is walking very fast because walking is dragging something out of him, some old weight of emotion, is dismayed by their stopping, it goes contrary to the flow he wants to become part of, and he bursts through a group of shadows assembled like pilgrims by a burning river, and steps out, out and down—he’s forgotten the curb—and staggers forward into the traffic, into squealing brakes and shouts, where he waits for a collision he envisions as swift and ultimately stunning, luscious in its finality, like the fatal punch Vederotta should have known. Yet it never comes. Then Arlene, who has clattered up, unsteady in her high heels, hauls him back onto the sidewalk, saying, “You tryin’ to kill yo’self, fool?” And Mears, truly lost now, truly bereft of understanding, either of what he has done or why he’s done it, stands mute and tries to find her face, wishes he could put a face on her, not a mask, just a face that would be her, but she’s nowhere to be found, she’s only perfume, a sense of presence. He knows she’s looking at him, though.