Caleb

by Charles Alverson

  At the sound of the bell, Prince Zulu came tearing out of his corner and, before Caleb was even fully standing, launched a murderous blow at Caleb’s jaw. It landed with a terrific sound, but Caleb felt almost nothing. He cocked his head at Prince Zulu as if to say “is that the best you can do” and pushed the prince away as if he were a troublesome small boy.

  “Put him away, Caleb,” cried a voice from the crowd.

  “Hell, throw him away.”

  For the next two minutes, Caleb, drawing on his defensive skills, made a thoroughgoing fool out of the smaller man. Whatever vicious punch or combination of punches Prince Zulu threw at him, Caleb caught them with his gloves and didn’t even try to hit back. As the prince began to appreciate the skill Caleb was showing, he became more desperate in his efforts to hit Caleb. At one point, Prince Zulu swung so hard—and missed—that he threw himself off his feet. Caleb picked him up with exaggerated concern.

  From then until the end of the round, the prince was like an infuriated wasp trying to make an impact on the hide of a water buffalo. Caleb held him off with ease, and after each flurry, he reached out and tapped the prince dismissively on the forehead with a big glove, adding insult to injury. At the bell, the crowd was delirious with joy, and Prince Zulu slouched back to his corner, apparently seething with frustration.

  “You know, Tom,” he told the victor of the last bout as he was sponged down, “it’s a good thing we’re just having a good time out there. I don’t know if I could hurt this yokel. He’s really good.”

  “Well, you have to start hurting him eventually, Cass,” Flynn said. “It’s in the script.” The bell sounded.

  Round two started the same way round one ended, with Caleb making a fool of the visiting champion. Then, after the prince threw a vicious roundhouse right that missed so completely that it spun him around, he gave Caleb a slight nod. The next time the prince rushed at Caleb, he found himself met with a straight right that took him right off his feet and dumped him flat on his back. Prince Zulu lay there seemingly stunned.

  Hogan strolled to the middle of the ring and didn’t start to count all that fast. The crowd was at least two counts ahead of him and baying like the hounds of hell when Hogan got to “six, seven, eight.”

  But if the bettors in the crowd were counting their winnings, they stopped suddenly when, at the count of nine, Prince Zulu slowly got to his feet and faced Caleb, shaking his head in confusion. He didn’t shake it long, because Caleb reached out with a left that sent the Zulu reeling back toward his corner. For the rest of the round, Caleb pursued the middleweight, hitting him at will but failing to put him down. At one point, Prince Zulu was forced into doubling up completely with his gloves and forearms protecting his head. Caleb was just winding up to knock him into the middle of next week when the bell rang. The crowd doubted that the Zulu prince could even make it back for the third round.

  As Caleb was resting from the exertion of throwing so many punches, Hogan drifted over to his corner. “You ready, son?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Caleb.

  “It don’t have to be a full three-minute round,” Hogan told him. “I’ll give you the signal.”

  At the bell for round three, Prince Zulu did not seem keen to leave his corner. He stood there, his glistening face dotted with white lotion to stop the bleeding, and peered uncertainly at the giant slave. Taking his cue, Caleb motioned at him elaborately with both gloves, as if saying, Come on out and play.

  When Prince Zulu didn’t respond, Caleb shrugged his great shoulders and stalked forward. But just as he got within firing range, the prince’s gloved fist snaked out and caught him smack between the eyes, making a loud noise but not doing much damage.

  Nonetheless, Caleb staggered back, covering up, and Prince Zulu swarmed after him, delivering a blizzard of blows to Caleb’s arms, gloves, and shoulders. As sound effects, the punches were very effective, but they hardly hurt Caleb. In fact, it was a welcome rest. But finally, tiring of looking at the inside of his wrists, Caleb opened up just in time to receive a murderous uppercut from Prince Zulu. The glove missed by a hair, but its stiff laces raked the side of Caleb’s face with a sharp sting. Caleb didn’t think it was overdoing things to fall straight back as if the uppercut had landed.

  Caleb lay there with legs and arms tucked up like a beached turtle, while Prince Zulu loomed over him. The crowd urged him to get up and save their bets, and Hogan, figuring it was all over, swiftly counted, “four, five, six, seven, eight—”

  But Caleb surprised both fighter and referee, and delighted the Camden crowd, by struggling to his feet at the very last second. With a shake of his head that sent a spray of sweat and saliva all over the packed ringside, Caleb clumsily began lumbering toward Prince Zulu, throwing a windmill of tired punches as he advanced.

  Retreating slowly to his corner, Prince Zulu warded off the showy but feeble punches and wondered what this country boy was up to. A wiser man would have taken that last count and been on his way home with twenty-five dollars. With his back against the improvised ropes, Zulu saw that as Caleb threw each punch, his head was wide open. After faking a panicky look left and right, the prince wound up and threw a straight right at the middle of Caleb’s forehead. The Zulu felt the painful jolt right up to his shoulder socket.

  The punch stopped Caleb as effectively as a freight train. Looking stunned, he dropped his gloved hands, spun around, and fell like a sack of grain toward the middle of the ring. The impact of his dead weight shook the platform, and a groan went up from the crowd. Caleb lay with his nose mashed against the boards and his head throbbing, listening to Hogan count him out. He did not even twitch. As Hogan and Tom Flynn carried Caleb from the ring, a disappointed member of the crowd spat in his face.

  37

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Jardine asked Caleb back at the wagon. After lying still for a long time in case anyone in the disappointed crowd was watching, Caleb managed to sit up at the back of the wagon with his legs hanging down. He kept his head bowed.

  “Yes, Master,” he said. “The prince didn’t hit me very hard. Most of the noise came from those special gloves they have. There’s something inside them.”

  “Is he really a prince?” Jardine asked.

  “I don’t know,” Caleb said.

  After a while, Jardine said there wasn’t much point in them starting back for Three Rivers that late in the afternoon. He’d met some friends, so he decided to spend the evening with them and get an early start the next morning.

  “You can sleep in the loft over the hotel stable,” Jardine told him, digging into his pocket. “Get the horses settled. Make sure they rub them down and give them a good feed, and then find something to eat.” He handed Caleb a silver dollar. “Don’t get yourself in any trouble, and be at the hotel at seven in the morning.”

  Caleb took the horses over to the hotel stable and followed Jardine’s instructions. When he was sure that the horses were being looked after properly, he climbed the ladder to the loft, threw a blanket from the wagon over a pile of loose hay, and lay himself down on it. The prince may not have hurt him much, but two fights in one day—one of them for real—had left Caleb feeling exhausted and bruised.

  It was fully dark when Caleb woke. The stable was deserted except for the night man, an old one-armed black man who lived in a little shack between the horse stalls. Caleb asked him how to get to the black side of town and then set out walking, his floppy hat pulled well down over his eyes to thwart recognition. When the paving began to break up and the street lights became sparse and dim, Caleb knew he was getting closer. Following the sound of voices, laughter, and the plinking of a banjo, he came to a shack with a large hand-painted sign that read RIBS. Through the opaque cloth over the windows, he could see dim lights and dark shadows.

  Just then the door to the shack flew open, and a man stumbled out, nearly falling over. Before the door could c
lose again, Caleb slipped in. He found himself in a bare room with four or five occupied tables and a long rough counter with several stools. Sinking onto a stool, he asked a fat man in an apron that had once been white, “How much for ribs?”

  “Fo’ bits.”

  “What do I get with them?”

  “Greens, beans, my special sauce.”

  “Okay. Beer?”

  “Ten cents.”

  “Okay.”

  When the big plate of spareribs got there, they were meaty and black with sauce, just the way Caleb liked them. The greens were too salty and the beans overcooked, but Caleb dug in like a starving man, washing down big bites with swigs of beer.

  “Another,” he called, plunking down the bottle on the bare counter.

  The fat man opened another beer. “What you been doing, brother? Digging ditches?”

  “Naw,” said a voice behind Caleb, “he’s been beating up Zulu princes. Gimme a plate of those and a bottle of that. Easy on the sauce.” Prince Zulu dropped onto the stool next to Caleb. “How’s your head, champ?”

  “It might stay on,” said Caleb. “You still here?”

  “I think so,” said the prince.

  “I thought you’d be long gone,” Caleb said. “That crowd didn’t look happy.”

  “The crowd never looks happy at the end of the day,” the prince said. “Hogan and the boys lit out for Hopetown soon as the set was struck, but I decided to stay here. Those Hopetown boys are mean. I’ll meet the show tomorrow on the way to Montgomery. Besides,” he added loudly for the benefit of the proprietor, “I wanted to get outside of some of Charlie’s ribs. My gut is almost healed from the last time.”

  They ate in silence for some time. Caleb sucked the last bone clean and pushed his plate away. A little later, Prince Zulu did the same. “Good as ever, Charlie,” he called. “You’ll make some man a fine wife. Two more beers for me and the champ here.” The cook plunked the bottles down with a growl and took away their plates. “It’s not the food that brings me here,” Prince Zulu said, wiping his hands on a large white handkerchief. “It’s the personality of the cook.”

  “You really a Zulu prince?” Caleb asked him, taking a drink of beer.

  “Well, I might be a Zulu and I might be a prince,” the other said. “Can you prove otherwise?”

  “Nope,” said Caleb. “What’s your name when it’s not Prince Zulu?”

  “Cass,” said the other, extending a surprisingly small hand. “Cass Clay.”

  Caleb shook it, saying, “Caleb . . . Staunton, I guess.”

  “You only guess?” Clay asked.

  “Well, that was my owner’s name up in Boston, but since I was sold south, I don’t much like to use it. Just call me Caleb.” He told Clay briefly of how he’d come to be sold south instead of being set free. “I was raised near to a brother with Staunton’s son,” Caleb explained, “but when he died, the boy sold me south rather than freeing me as his father promised.”

  “Cold. Very cold,” Cass said. “But it don’t surprise me. I’ve heard a lot worse.”

  “What’s it like being the only black with the boxing show?” Caleb asked him.

  “You get used to it. Like anything else. The closer you get to a big city, the better it gets. Whites in a dump like Camden can’t bring themselves to believe that a black man can ever be really free. The whole idea goes against the grain. If I wasn’t a prince, they’d have probably torn me limb from limb long ago. That and this.”

  Before Caleb could see where it came from, Clay had a bone-handled straight razor in his hand and had flicked it open.

  “Put that away, Cass,” Charlie called from the stove. “People be thinking that my pig meat is tough.”

  Just as suddenly as it had appeared, the razor was gone.

  “You use that?” Caleb asked.

  “When I have to.”

  “I’m going to be free,” Caleb said.

  The other man didn’t comment, so Caleb told him how he and Jardine were going to work the country boxing circuit until Caleb had the five hundred fifty dollars he needed to buy himself.

  “Hard way to earn money,” Clay observed.

  “Most of it will come from side bets,” Caleb said.

  “If you win,” Clay said. “And if you can trust your master. Think you can?”

  “I think so,” Caleb said. “But trust him or not, I’m going to be free.”

  “Then what?”

  “Going north,” Caleb said vaguely. “Looks like there’s going to be a war.”

  “I think so, too,” said Clay. “And soon. I’m heading north, too. I hear there’s a shortage of Zulu princes up there. Maybe I’ll see you.” He downed the last of his beer and got off his stool, slapping some money down on the counter. “Charlie,” he called, “this is for me and my friend, the champ, here. If I hear of you charging him even a penny, I’ll come back and put a royal Zulu curse on you.”

  “Okay, Cass,” said the cook without turning from the smoking stove.

  “Where are you staying?” Clay asked Caleb.

  “Over the stable,” Caleb said.

  “Free men don’t sleep in no hay,” Clay said. “There’s a little girl over this side of town who promised to bust my nappy head with a skillet if I ever poked it through her door again. I’m going to go find out if she’s a woman of her word. Keep punching, partner.” He shook Caleb’s hand and strode through the door.

  38

  Well rested but as stiff as a plank door, Caleb was waiting in the wagon when Jardine walked down the wooden steps of the Camden Hotel at seven o’clock the next morning.

  “You look rough,” Jardine told Caleb. “About as rough as I feel. I ran into some old boys with a bottle and a deck of cards last night. They insisted that I try both.” When he saw alarm in Caleb’s eyes, Jardine added quickly, “Oh, don’t you go worrying. I’ve got two pockets, Caleb. One holds my money, and the other holds our money. I never reached into the second one.”

  “Besides,” he added as he climbed up on the wagon and Caleb slipped into the back, “I won. We didn’t need those old boys’ deck because the hotel had a brand new one, and I opened it myself. You don’t expect a share of my poker winnings, do you?”

  “No, Master.”

  “And,” Jardine added as he backed up the horses, “I don’t imagine that there’s anything left of that dollar I gave you, either.”

  “No, Master,” Caleb said.

  “I didn’t think so,” Jardine said. “Let’s go home.”

  When they got to Three Rivers, Drusilla was bursting with curiosity, but didn’t ask a single question. One look at Caleb told her that he hadn’t fared too badly, and she knew that he was as eager to tell as she was to hear. That night as they were lying in the double bed that Caleb had brought down from the attic, she went over his body in detail, admiring his fine collection of bruises. Caleb did his best to tell her exactly how each had been earned. She pushed hard on several of them just to hear him cry out.

  “That’s cheating, isn’t it?” Drusilla asked when Caleb had finished telling her about his match with Prince Zulu.

  “I suppose so,” Caleb said, “but it’s cheating white men, and nobody told those fools they had to bet against a professional boxer. I’m not sorry for any of them, especially the one who spat on me.”

  “The one I feel sorry for is Pompey,” Drusilla said. “What did he get out of being beaten up?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I don’t suppose you even bought him a beer out of that money Marse Boyd gave you.”

  “Nope. I didn’t see him.”

  “Did you go looking for him?”

  “No.”

  “You’re a hard man, Caleb,” Drusilla announced. “Or maybe you’re only determined. I bet you’ve still got that dollar.”

 
“Sure do.”

  “How much winnings does that add up to?”

  “Sixty-five dollars,” Caleb said.

  “And you didn’t buy me anything?”

  “No,” said Caleb, but he wished he had thought of it. He made a vow he would next time.

  “You trust Marse Boyd?” Drusilla asked.

  “That’s what Cass—Prince Zulu—asked,” Caleb said.

  “Well?”

  “I have to,” Caleb said. “I got no choice.”

  39

  Almost every weekend for the rest of the summer, Jardine and Caleb traveled to the fairs and shows within a thirty-mile radius of Three Rivers in order to take advantage of the boxing craze that was sweeping the county. After a couple weeks of Caesar’s begging, Jardine finally let him go along as Caleb’s corner man and boy of all work.

  Sometimes Caleb fought. Sometimes he didn’t. As word got around in the small world of county boxing, Caleb became well-known. He could no longer pose as a shambling oaf who could take on the Pompeys and even be offered odds. Many slave owners took one look at him and went searching for easier matches for their boxers. The fact that he had lost to Prince Zulu was a plus. Caleb couldn’t look too good. Some of the more gullible became convinced that Caleb was Prince Zulu. Some rash owners even offered their slaves to fight Caleb for nothing, just for the honor involved. Jardine wisely turned down these opportunities. Caesar, on the other hand, declared he would fight anybody for anything and privately began calling himself Prince Caesar.

  With careful choice of opponents and judicious betting, Jardine and Caleb’s winnings piled up. By the end of August, they had just over seven hundred and fifty dollars in the pouch, and Caleb had salted away twenty-seven dollars of his own. The fair season was ending, and both men knew that there wouldn’t be many more opportunities to reach Caleb’s target that year. The county fair at Shreevesville looked like a chance to get it over with in one go. Because the fair was a week long, the three men left Three Rivers on Monday morning and didn’t plan to return until the following Sunday.