by Neal Pollack
I could be Jehovah or any other body. Not like there was someone to tell me different. I got off the bus at State and trekked it two blocks south to the clinic for my checkup, then down to the old-school pharmacy on Superior to refill my many prescriptions. I left feeling truly like a savior in spite of the name on my health card. Arcadia I am not. I pulled the blue cloth from my pocket and brought it to my nose. It smelled like the bum, stale and musty, slightly sour with sweat and urban rot. But hidden deep in that stink was a sweet flower blossoming.
My prescriptions took up a ten-page stack of printouts from the doctor's computer. The pills came prepared in a plastic, everything plastic, slotted box, one small compartment to correspond to each day of the coming month. I don't know how I managed to keep up with them, Jehovah the meek, the persecuted, the resolute, the vigilant. I gazed up at the time on a digital display clock outside the Holy Name Cathedral, then at my plastic, everything plastic, watch and made my way to the next meeting, muscling to the back of the bus, pilot switched off in my little drug bag. Today, I would need it no more. My name was secure.
I was spot on time to the abandoned church, where I used to spend my nights and many days before the old folks' home took me, the state footing the bill. Tristam wasn't there. I took my day's meds sitting on the concrete steps before the boarded-up former door. I'd been waiting for the kid for nearly an hour when the nausea and pain kicked in, so I crept through the space between the halfkicked-through boards over the church's front door. I laid down in the dark of the vestibule in communion with the Saints, the wind and whine of the expressway now a fading memory, nothing present but the pain; I concentrated, pinpointed all my holy energy on a flash behind my eyelids and soon enough fell fast asleep.
When I woke the nausea was still present but the pain had subsided. "Tristam," I called out, expecting the kid to be conked out there somewhere near me in the dark. There was no answer, but I listened and could hear above the low outer din of his breath coming in long, slow gasps.
"Motherfucker," I said, crawling dazed toward the sound. Nothing. I punched what I took to be his leg, and a voice I didn't know boomed calmly through the cavernous dark.
"Who are you now?" it said. I got to my feet.
"Jehovah?"
Then a scrambling broke out and I was forced down onto my back, tackled. Tristam laughed through the darkness.
"Gotcha," he said.
"Goddammit, boy," I said. Tristam giggled and giggled on, and when finally I got a look at him, when he turned the flashlight on and I could see, I divined from the glare in his eyes and his slurry voice that he was fucked.
"I was just kidding, old man," he said. "Don't look so damn mad. You got the shit?"
"I'm holding," I said.
"Oh ho ho. Well, hand it over."
"I mean, you ain't getting anything until you hold to your side of things."
He sorta held there, held the flashlight pointed upward, held his body tensed in that brief attempt at comprehension of my words. And then when he fished through the muddled bank of connotations and meanings in his head, when he got what I was saying, I guess, he lunged at me, raising the flashlight high in the same motion as if to bring it down on my head. I caught his hand, and any fear the young man may have mustered in my head quickly turned to righteous rage. I wheeled out the only thing of particular strength I had anywhere near, the pilot, and in the gloom wheeled it around and caught Tristam on the side of his head. He fell hard to the ground, the flashlight rolling from his hand and coming to rest with its beam shining right in my face.
"You never wait for me to answer," I said. "What's my name, motherfucker? What is it?" He didn't answer. "You call me Jehovah, you hear? Jehovah."
I crawled over him and brought the pilot down on his head again and again and again. Tristam didn't move. I may have hit him ten times, twenty times, but I know I stopped, the pilot now an unrecognizable mass of cracked plastic, everything plastic, and other parts. I crawled from the vestibule and into the sanctuary, where the light penetrated the empty window spaces above, stripped as the place was of its old stained-glass windows, lighting on the old wooden altar, where I knelt and prayed for the first time in years, through it all the murmur in my head telling me that the fraud of the act was just that, a fraud, that I was praying to myself, that I alone would determine the route to salvation.
A week or so after I killed the boy I stepped up on the bus, strident in my conviction, noble as the street itself as I paid the bus driver, murmuring "God bless," and turned to face the crowded interior.
"I am Jehovah!" I hollered.
I opened my bag, bowed, and flung a handful of baby-blue towels into the crowd. I pulled a flyer up to my eyes and began to read, "Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name … "
ALEX PINTO HEARS THE BELL
BY C.J. SULLIVAN
North & Troy
Alex Pinto shuffled down North Avenue. His head was bowed as he bumped into a young man coming out of Klecko's Hardware Store. "Yo, pops, watch where the hell you walking. Damn, old man. You don't own these streets."
Pinto kept moving. He didn't hear the guy. If he had, there might have been a confrontation. Pinto felt that the young men of Humboldt Park were too disrespectful. They had no sense of the neighborhood. They lived here to either be killed on these streets in some stupid and senseless turf war or to finally get a decent job and move to the suburbs. The neighborhood of Humboldt Park would never be home to them like it was to Alex Pinto. This was a place they came to because there was nowhere else for them to go. Humboldt Park was not only home to Pinto, it was the only place on earth he wanted to be.
The young today would never understand that. This was the video-game generation. Everything came too easy to them, so when they had to dig down and fight for what should be theirs, they had nothing to draw on. No sense of self or family. It was all about them.
They needed to be taught a history lesson. Like how when Alex Pinto moved into this neighborhood in the 1960s he had to fight Irish, Polish, and Italian toughs just to get to the store to buy milk and bread. Back then the Latins were considered cockroaches by the tough-ass white working class. When the Latins and blacks grew in numbers the whites moved away. White flight they called it. Then the fires started. And the gangs came. And slowly the neighborhood began to die. Killed by neglect from the city's power brokers and the young men with guns, knives, and drugs, with no sense of community or pride. But Alex Pinto would never leave Humboldt Park. It was where his memories lived.
He never got to explain that to the young man because Pinto wasn't on the streets of 2005 Chicago. His mind was busy
remembering a fight from thirty years before. He stopped on the corner as the fumes from the 72 bus blasted into his face. He thought he was inhaling the smoky air of the Chicago Coliseum. It was 1975 again. "Jungle Boogie" played on all the boom boxes on North Avenue. President Ford was on TV talking about his new federal program, W.I.N.—Whip Inflation Now. Jaws was the big hit at the movie theater on West Division. Everyone was talking about how the Arabs were becoming world players and had learned to dole out oil with a boycotting flare. Cars lined up on Cicero Avenue for an hour wait to get a full tank of gas.
1975 was a good year, at least for Pinto. All his hard work was finally paying off. All those runs in the early morning hours through Humboldt Park. All that time in Brick Gym. Jumping rope. Sparing. Working the heavy bag until his hands bled. He was finally catching a break. The Trib lauded him as a local fighter ready to battle for a championship belt in his hometown.
Pinto stepped off the curb and felt like his legs were once again twenty-five and full of taut muscle. He saw himself as a young Latin boxer about to make his mark on a city. Strolling down the sidewalk, he felt as if he was moving like a big wild cat. The people passing by saw a slow-walking gray-haired man with a face that had caught too many punches.
Pinto smiled as he remembered that after the 1975 fight—if he won—he was going
to hit Felicity Disco and meet up with his backers and the best of the local ladies. He would have a championship belt and the city would be his. Pinto passed in front of Kim's Grocery as the Korean owner cursed at a Mexican shoplifter running away from the store. All Pinto heard was the referee telling him the fight was over. He'd lost on a technical knockout. He never made it to that disco.
Pinto had fought well that night. At the end of the fourteenth round he was ahead on all the scorers' cards. Pinto knew it. His corner knew. The rabid crowd knew. In three minutes their local boy would be crowned the new light heavyweight champion of the world. Alex Pinto, the five-to-one underdog, was about to upset the legend of Bob Foster. And there was a lot of local money riding on Pinto. Chicago was about to have a big payday.
But Bob Foster had other plans. He'd been champion for years. He was the best boxer the division had ever produced. He was smart, quick, and was always in a fight because he had a powerhouse right that gave him a puncher's chance. He sat on his stool staring at Pinto. Feeling his years. Angry that this kid had caught him unprepared. He thought this was going to be an easy fight. Figured Pinto was a rookie just happy to be in the ring with a legend. Foster saw a cocky young kid thinking the fight was his. He knew he had a short window to earn his redemption.
He came out in the fifteenth round and knew he had to knock Pinto out to keep his title. They met in the middle of the ring and touched their gloves. That would be the last time Pinto touched Foster. Foster hit him with a series of right jabs and left hooks that would have knocked out a lesser man. It was like Foster had set him up. Let him think he had it won. Pinto had boxed masterfully for fourteen rounds and now this. The crowd fell silent as Foster beat him senseless. It was like a force of nature had entered the ring. Pinto held onto the ropes as Foster punched him with sharp blows. The ref stepped in and ended the fight, perhaps saving Pinto's life.
On the corner of North Avenue and Troy Street, Pinto blinked up at sun and felt like he had just woken up. The August heat of the sidewalk was cooking the soles of his threadbare sneakers. As he looked at the Humboldt Park Library, he wondered how he'd got here from his Armitage Avenue boarding house.
He walked into the library and felt relief at the cool air pumping in from the vents. Pinto went to the microfilm desk, handed over his library card, and took out the August 1975 Chicago Tribune. He would spend this hot afternoon reading about the young man he once was.
After he went through August of 1975, and then March of 1972 when he won a Golden Glove amateur title, his eyes grew tired from the microfilm machine. Pinto decided to grab a magazine and sit in the lounge, where the regulars went. In the summer only the old were seen in the library. They were the ones who couldn't afford air-conditioning for those brutal August heatwaves. He grabbed an old Newsweek and nodded to a man he knew named Juan. Next to him was Olga. She always had a Sports Illustrated and read slow.
"Hey, champ, how you doin'?" Juan asked.
"Good, you ignorant Boricua. Don't you know you supposed to be quiet in a library?" Alex said.
"Used to be that way here. No more. This here is uncivilized times we living in. This is a horrible time to be alive. Especially if you're old," Olga said.
Alex nodded at her and sat down with a sigh. He read about an earthquake in Sri Lanka and his eyes grew heavy.
"Closing time. Come on, time to go."
Alex wiped some drool off his face and blinked at the security guard standing over him.
"What time is it?"
"Time to go."
Alex looked around the empty room and stood up on his shaky legs. He waved to the desk librarian and walked out to the rush hour of North Avenue. The air was a little cooler as he crossed the street and entered Humboldt Park.
When he hit the path he started to jog slowly. He'd do five miles today. He kept up his roadwork. He liked to think he stayed in fighting shape. Tomorrow he would work as a part-time janitor at Brick's Gym and after his shift he'd do some speed work and punch the heavy bag. He wouldn't be getting any more shots at a prizefight, but in this city it paid to stay in shape. Can't afford to get old and weak, he thought.
As Pinto jogged past the boat pavilion his body tensed as he saw a group of Spanish Cobras sitting on the benches. He knew all about these guys. Pinto had been a regular of the Latin Kings in the 1960s. Back then they stood for defending the Latins of the
neighborhood against the whites and the the Chicago Police Department, the toughest white gang of all. Once he got into boxing and the Kings got into dealing drugs, he put the gang life down.
But these Spanish Cobras were a bad gang that caused a lot of trouble in the neighborhood. They mugged, robbed, and sold drugs to their own. He kept his head down and wanted to just move past them.
"Hey, homes. You. The boxer."
Pinto slowed and looked at the young man approaching him.
"Yeah?" Pinto said, jogging in place looking at the man.
"I hear back in the day you were some fighter. My pops tells me you were almost champ. Long time ago. That you, Alex Pinto?"
"Yeah, that's me."
"Damn. A pleasure to meet you. I'm Paco."
Pinto shook his hand and said, "Well, thanks, I got to go."
"Wait, homes. You want to earn some money?"
Pinto looked down on the ground. "How?"
"Doin' what you do best, homes. Boxing. We hold smokers out on Cicero. I'll pay you $200 you come out this Friday night. It's good. We tape it and sell tickets and take bets there. You will be a big draw. Big bets on you, papi. People remember you in the ring. You were a legend."
"Boxing? Really? Who am I fighting?"
Paco smiled at Pinto and said, "A guy about your age. You'll tear him up. Only thing is, you gotta bring your own gloves. You down?"
Pinto hesitated. That money was a week's pay for him. It would help. Get him some meat, fresh produce, and a decent bottle of wine. Maybe even a coat for the winter. But boxing? At fifty-five?
"I don't know. How come I never heard about this?" Pinto said as he moved his weight from foot to foot.
"Hey, it's our first smoker. Figured we start with the best and work our way down. Could be a regular gig for you."
Pinto looked at the benches. The other Spanish Cobras were smoking and yelling at a woman walking by. Paco kept his eyes locked on Pinto.
"So what do you say, homes? You down?"
"Give me the address. I'll be there."
"Cool, it starts at 8. Be there like 7:30. You're the first fight."
Paco handed Pinto a flyer and walked back to his friends. Pinto put the paper in his back pocket and continued his run. While he circled the lagoon he saw himself in the ring ducking a punch and laying his opponent out. That is how it will go Friday night. A guy my age stands no chance against me, he thought. I've kept myself in shape. I still have the tools.
Pinto finished his run and limped out of the park. He went to a small grocery store and bought a can of beans and a beer. That would be dinner. Under two dollars. He was keeping to his budget.
On Thursday Pinto woke up feeling good. He got out of bed and did a few jumping jacks. He shadowboxed as he reveled in the thought that he would fight once again tomorrow night. There should be some kind of senior league for old boxers, he thought. Tennis and golf had it. Why does age make you put down the things you love? Old men still had basketball and football leagues. Why not boxers?
Pinto spent the day at Brick's Gym on Mozart Avenue. He swept and mopped the floors. He tightened the ropes on the two rings. He held the heavy bag for a young lightweight. As he went about his chores he asked some of the young boxers if they'd heard of the smoker out on Cicero.
No one had, but they were young and had venues for their boxing skills. Pinto ate a bologna sandwich for lunch and read the flyer again.
THE JOKER SMOKER
SEE THEM FIGHT. SEE THEM BLEED. BET ON THE BEST. BOO THE BUMS.
ONE BEER AND ONE CIGAR
WITH $15 ADMIS
SION. 8 P.M.
NO GUNS AND NO KNIVES.
SUPPORT YOUR COMMUNITY.
THE SPANISH COBRAS BOXING LEAGUE
1991 CICERO AVE. IN THE OLD FLECK MATTRESS FACTORY
Pinto put the flyer away and went to the bathrooms to clean up that mess. As his day ended, Pinto put away his cleaning supplies and went to his locker to tape his hands and put on his boxing gloves.
He went to the speed bag and got a good rhythm going. The bag smacked the wood with a solid whack. Yeah, Pinto thought, I still got it. I can still make that bag sing. He went to a corner and bobbed and weaved while throwing multiple punches. That's how I'll take him out tomorrow, Pinto thought. I'll duck and come up and in. Body blows made young men want to quit. No way an older man can take the punishment I can still dish out.
When his workout was over he put his gloves in a bag and went into the office to see his boss, Mr. Rico, for his pay. Two hundred off the books. Enough to pay his rent and eat very lightly.
Pinto entered the office and saw a boxing poster announcing a fight of his from March 17, 1974. That night he knocked out "Irish" Danny Walsh.
"Hey, Alex, you still working out. Good for you," Rico said from behind his desk.
