Tattoo the Wicked Cross

by Salas, Floyd;

  The colored guy moved in and jabbed twice. The second jab caught Dominic with a soft pat on the forehead, and he charged like a street fighter, with little strategy, but so carefully concealed behind his guard that all of the guy’s punches bounced harmlessly off him.

  In close, he threw a barrage of roundhouse hooks with blurring speed and drove the guy, staggering, toward the ropes. But the guy kept sticking out a long jab, gamely trying to keep Dominic away, trying to get enough room between them to use his long arms to advantage. But Dominic kept driving inside, and, in anger, the guy tried to shove him back with both of his gloves, pushed at the charging body, exposed his head, caught three punches in succession, fell back against the ropes and dropped to his knees.

  Aaron cheered with the crowd until his voice was hoarse, cheered until the half-conscious boy was helped down the stairs and until the last of the applause finally trailed off, then clapped by himself for a few seconds, and then stalked around the ring with Dominic, shared the victory of that indifferent conqueror, who waited for a challenger, while taking deep breaths to catch his wind, sweat glistening in a knobby line down his backbone and sheening the matted hair on his chest.

  Occasional shouts and claps of admiration broke the slow passage of the accumulating minutes until Dominic, well rested, stopped by a red post, and placed his gloves on the upper rope, as if offering proof they were only gloves.

  But nobody challenged him.

  He stalked about the ring once more, swinging his arms, loosening up, and stopped by the red post again.

  Nobody challenged him.

  He placed his gloves on his hips and shook his handsome head in amused disgust.

  Still nobody challenged him, and Aaron was proud, for Dominic was a duke and they were buddies.

  But a beckoning, curving gesture of Dominic’s arm bewildered him. Dominic then lifted the top strand of the ropes and beckoned again, and all faces turned toward the hillock and a murmur of disbelief and amusement arose from them and rippled over Aaron in embarrassing waves.

  Dominic beckoned again, smiled, and Aaron, with his eyes fixed on the ring post, started down the hillock. Boys fell back and made a straight path to the ringside for him, where—dwarfed by the khaki figure of the man—he took off his dungaree shirt and climbed up the steps and through the ropes with trembling legs.

  He shoved his hand into the padded tunnel of a glove, but he was so nervous his thumb caught in a wrist fold and he had to withdraw his hand and reinsert it. He dug down into the glove’s folds again until his fingers pressed against its tip and curved around a bar of padding. The familiar smell of sweat-worn leather soothed him a little, and when the laces were tied on both gloves, his wrists bound, and his fists snugged into compact balls, he was able to fall, without thought, into his habit of loosening up before the bell.

  He hopped up and down on the canvas mats, conscious of their seamed dips and creases, dropped into a squat and bounced up, did it again, kicked his legs, cracked his knee joints, shuffled around the ring throwing mock punches, walked around swinging first one arm and then the other in windmill motions, stopped and spun his head in dizzy circles on the ball socket of his neck, reversed the spin, stood stock-still for a moment to allow his head to clear, and got stage fright all over again.

  “Take it easy, champ,” Dominic said, walking past, speaking out of the corner of his mouth. “Just a workout. Just a workout.”

  But the bell turned him around with his guard up and froze Aaron’s attempt at a smile. He couldn’t even feel his legs, didn’t know if he moved, saw a formidable shape shuffle toward him, saw a purple glove reach out … but tap his glove in a symbolic handshake, and all his fear was gone.

  He circled Dominic without a trace of stage fright, with confidence in his classical boxing style, with his trunk erect, elbows against his midriff, upper arms hugging and protecting his body, forearms two parallel gateposts, knobbed by clenched gloves, face a beveled incline from his brow to his chin, hidden between his chest and left shoulder.

  He shuffled forward gracefully, feinted a jab at Dominic’s head, dropped into a jackknife over his right hip, stuck the jab with a “pat-pat” into Dominic’s gut, and skipped lightly backwards on his toes, easily evading Dominic’s ponderous, tanklike shuffle. He heard the crowd murmur and knew he looked good, for countless afternoons in a professional gym watching Stanley and other fighters train and the experience of boys’ club bouts had produced what the pros called “class.” He felt good, too. The man approved. Stanley would approve. John and his father and even his mother would have approved.

  Two light jabs slapped against his gloves, told him the bout was really for fun, and he took advantage of the slow withdrawal of the last jab and jabbed quickly back, alternated with a jab to the face and a second jab to the stomach again, which went way in, surprised.

  Dominic smiled.

  Aaron smiled.

  They circled.

  He moved around until his face and body were in shadow and the sun was in Dominic’s eyes.

  They circled again, and Dominic bore in behind a spearing jab, throwing it three, four, five times, trying to corner Aaron, catching him twice with glancing blows to the head, missing the rest, but forcing Aaron to dance away.

  He zigzagged to confuse Dominic. His brogans barked against the mat. The crowd murmured again.

  Moving in, he feinted a jab at Dominic’s face and sunk a hard right hand under the heart. It popped when it connected and Dominic’s elbow slapped in a reflex action against his side.

  He nodded in approval, bore in again, caught Aaron against the ropes, and rallied with four, five, six, seven punches, wouldn’t let up, forced Aaron to fall inside the punches, forehead against the matted chest, leather burning one eye, nose stinging, the copper taste of blood on his lip, the shouts of the crowd in his ears.

  He shoved with all his strength until he felt Dominic start pushing back. Then, with one movement, he leaned to his side, hooked a glove under Dominic’s left elbow, pulled Dominic toward him, and spun the husky body past him into the ropes, jabbed to keep Dominic off balance, and skipped out into the middle of the ring.

  But Dominic came on, caught Aaron with a jab again and went into another rally: no bombs, just grazing punches. The smacking leather didn’t hurt and Aaron liked the burning contact.

  He fell into a huddle again, and when the rally slowed and stopped, he cut loose with both hands to Dominic’s belly and a left hook around Dominic’s guard to the chin, jarred it, twisted the mouth open.

  Dominic shoved him back, held him at arm’s length, caught him with a good right hand to the head and forced him to fall inside, where he clinched by pinning Dominic’s gloves under his arms.

  Dominic tried to pull them free, couldn’t, smiled.

  “Hah!” Aaron said, victoriously, and let go.

  They broke, circled each other for long seconds, each trying to figure a way to pierce the other’s guard. Aaron knew Dominic was too tired from the two rallies to try bulldozing right away, but he, himself, was too tired and wise to risk slugging. He knew what Dominic’s superior weapons were and respected them. The job of the mock warfare was to use his own weapons to Dominic’s disadvantage, without any attempt to hurt and with no expectation of getting hurt.

  He hopped in with a left jab to the face and a hook to the ear, skipped back out again, smiling, and danced around the ring as Dominic, smiling, chased him.

  Feet scraped loudly against the mats. Breath was heavy. Gloves weights. Aaron’s T-shirt was damp and clinging to him, but they kept stalking each other. Aaron connected with the cleaner, snapping punches, and Dominic caught him in close with more clubbing, inaccurate punches.

  They both showed their fatigue and threw fewer and fewer punches, and they were in the middle of an exchange, in which they more mauled and shoved each other than punched, when the bell rang, and they threw their arms around each other’s shoulders and circled the ring to catch their breaths, to the prol
onged clapping of the crowd.

  Sweat streaked down Aaron’s winded body. He wanted to throw the heavy gloves down and jerk his hot T-shirt off. But he felt good, really good, for the first time since he had been in the institute.

  A swell of clapping greeted him at every corner and carried him to the next corner and to the next swell of clapping. And when they had circled the ring once, Dominic raised Aaron’s arm as the winner. And the clapping exploded with cheering yells. And there was no longer any mother, no nightmare, no Buzzer, no, not even Barneyway.

  II

  The phonograph on the chapel porch played a swing band accompaniment to Aaron’s swaggering march through the crowd on the chapel lawn, to the nods of respect from colored guys, the grinning hellos from Mexicans, and the waves of white hands. But unlike Dominic, whom he followed and whose powerful shoulders served as a natural ballast for a muscular torso, his shoulders jerked and floated like half-inflated balloons upon the strings of his arms, and his swagger was a twisting motion of his body alone.

  “This is Jenson, man,” Dominic shouted over the blare of the loud-speaker, propped on the top porch step. “This is Aaron, Jenson,” introducing him to the blond guy from the dorm with the hooded eyes.

  “Champ, you mean,” Jenson said without warmth, although the slitted mouth suggested a sullen compliment.

  He lifted the speaker to the porch, turned it, muting the blare of the music, stepped down the stairs and reached for Aaron’s hand.

  “Champ! Kicked Dominic’s ass today.”

  The twinge of pain from his bunched knuckles reminded Aaron that Jenson got up at five in the morning to milk cows, and that he didn’t see Jenson until they had lined up for lunch-time count at the dairy.

  Frosted blue eyes glanced approval to Dominic.

  “He goes,” Dominic said, and Aaron was too flattered to work his numbed fingers.

  “What-a-ya wantta hear? Pick it, man,” Jenson said and stepped back up the stairs to the record’s final strains.

  “Some jazz, man. Something that jumps. I don’t wantta be sad.”

  “Go ahead, Tiger,” Dominic said and chuckled, and the scowling furrows and lines of his face softened, and Aaron wished it could always look as relaxed and then began to believe that this was possible.

  For he was getting a rep. Guys treated him with respect. Every word was a tribute and sounded like fine jazz. The grunting mother in the nightmare was like a scene in a black-and-white movie that he had already seen twice and no longer scared him. And neither the Buzzer nor Barneyway seemed much of a problem since Dominic had consented to let Barneyway play shadow to them, for Dominic was a duke, and when you ran with a duke, guys treated you good.

  “Hey, man. How about ‘The Seventh Street Boogie’?” Jenson asked, slipping the record onto the felted pad of the turntable, and he began to snap his fingers in two-beat time before the solitary bass of the piano began its climbing roll.

  A solo left hand straddled the keys, took a key’s step with the thumb, followed by the ring finger, and made its rocking way up and then down the bass, once, and, then, twice before Ivory Joe Hunter’s black right hand began to pick with one finger at the keyboard in a counterpointing melody, played coquette with it for a couple of bars or so and jumped into the music with all five fingers, followed by the brass, rhythm, and strings of the whole rocking band.

  Aaron’s response was a tap of his foot to the solo left hand, the nodding of his head to the climbing bass, the snapping of his fingers as the left hand started up for the second time, and then the swaying of his entire body in accompaniment to the counterpointing melody; and when the whole rocking band joined in and started blowing away at the repeated, pulsating, vibrating, beating melody, he thanked Jenson with the vital, charging heat of his blood, with the rhythmical sway of all his loosened bones, with the tingling energy that swept over his entire body, with joyous visions of a hundred spontaneous dance floors, between the counter stools and the tables in a hundred cafes, in which a hundred tight-skirted girls boogied toward him through the shimmering colors of jukebox rainbows with snapping hips and shaking breasts.

  “Go, Joe, go!” he shouted, and Barneyway started clapping his hands in time from his seat on the bottom stair. Several boys joined him. More boys stood and started tapping their feet. The boogie got louder and more wicked. A couple of guys started snapping their hips. Soon, all the guys were standing, tapping, shuffling, rocking, and Aaron was surrounded by a rhythmic bobbing of heads, a blue sway of bodies. Everybody was great, was a superman, a great pachuco, a boogie-woogie rocker, a King Kong Duke, with a thousand broads waiting for him at the gate, and there wasn’t no man, no institute, no mothers, no fathers, no outs, no misery, no blues, nothing but boogie, boogie, boogie!

  “It’s ‘The Seventh Street Boogie.’ Yeah! Yeah!

  “It’s ‘The Seventh Street Boogie.’ Yeah! Yeah!”

  A chubby colored kid began to soft-shoe down the sidewalk toward the porch, sanding his rubber soles upon the concrete with the easy swish of wire brushes on a snare drum. The sound captured Aaron and held his inspired attention before the swaying boys cleared the walk and he recognized Buckshot.

  Buckshot’s fat body rolled forward with effortless steps, fat belly and plump butt quivering with dancing jazz. He hopped into the air when the bass of the piano neared its lowest depth, seemed to hang suspended for a moment with one knee bent against his chest, balanced on the toe’s tip of the outstretched leg, then stomped his foot in mock anger right on time with the final bass note.

  “Yeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaah!” the crowd chorused.

  “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” Aaron cried, dancing every step with Buckshot, anticipating every graceful quiver and effortless roll; and when Buckshot raised up, with an arrogant expression on his face, one eyebrow arched in a mocking, feminine manner, tan cheeks sucked in, lips pursed in a cupid-bow kiss, little pinkie beckoning, beckoning, the back of a hand on the hump of an out-flung hip, a sardonic smile playing over his pursed lips, brightening the brown eyes, he jelly-assed with him in a mincing, knock-kneed gait closer to the porch and called out:

  “Boogie, baby, boogie!

  “Boogie, boogie, boogie.”

  The piano rolled down deep again, and when it reached its lowest notes, Buckshot hopped into the air again, brought his right foot down with terrific force, but stopped it a scant inch from the walk, and gently tapped his toe.

  “Go ahead, baby! Go ahead! Go ahead!” Aaron cried, sharing that immense and beautifully controlled power.

  And as the brass joined in again, and a wild trumpet began to solo with shrill authority, Buckshot threw his hands in the air, scattered his fingers, and rocked up the walk with tight legs, top-heavy in the head, still sanding, his whole body quivering with exalted joy, his eyes as moist as melting chocolate, his mouth open in a silent cry of ecstasy.

  “Take us with you, Buckshot! Take us with you!”

  But when the band settled down to a journeyman’s beat, he began to sand like a train chugging up a track: bent back, bent kneed, head down, and double fisted. His lips puffed out. His eyes chinked. He became the man!

  “Oooooooooooh, Buckshot! Oooooooooooh, Buckshot! Tell us like it is! Tell us! Tell us!”

  He hopped into the air again and came down on the sidewalk with a loud smack, hopped up again, and came down harder, and as the band swung into a roaring, rocking jazz climax, he did it again and again, his face a mask of brutal anger and confident, self-righteous power.

  “Kill those punks, Buckshot! Kill ’um! Kill ’um!”

  Buckshot then jumped high in the air with the final, blaring measure, inspired by the cries, both knees tucked, and came down on the bottom step with all his weight and the explosive force of his heavy brogans in perfect time with the final beat.

  “Yeah! Yeah! Yeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaah!”

  Hand clapping smothered the final yells and pattered off in the upsurge of happy conversation, the shifting of the pleased crowd toward the
porch, and a melancholy blues number. And, panting, tan cheeks balls of sweat, Buckshot sat down on the stair between Barneyway and Aaron.

  “You were great,” Aaron said.

  “Thanks, man,” Buckshot said and, turning to see who had spoken, recognized Aaron. “Say, man, you were pretty great yourself this morning. I wouldn’t have believed you could go like that! You’re a future pro champ, man. You made this bad Dominic look easy.”

  He jabbed a finger at Dominic, who leaned against the banister.

  “Little man make you go, huh?”

  “Go-go!” Dominic said.

  “Little man make your broad, too, if you ain’t sharp,” Buckshot warned.

  “I’ll make your mama, if you ain’t careful,” Dominic countered, but without anger.

  “I’d make your mama, but you ain’t got no mama,” Buckshot said, leaning back on the stairs, exposing a sweat line under the gleeful expanse of his double chin, and thin slashes of facial shadow made Dominic’s silence seem threatening until he rhymed his challenge:

  “Now if you wantta play the dozens / let’s have some fun. / But I gotta dozen caps / for just your one.”

  “You can’t cap me,” Buckshot said, “’cause I come from way down West, / down by Third and Pine, / just as close as I can get / to the railroad line.”

  Aaron saw yellow SP buildings, rusty tracks, and the soot and grime that coated the old wooden houses at the foot of Pine Street in West Oakland. But although the cap was good and made him want to join the fun, he couldn’t help thinking that Pine Street, which was the roughest, toughest borderline by the bay among pachucos, was a good street to be from not to live on.

  Dominic had evidently expected a cap on his mama and he hesitated, and Aaron joined the contest, proud that his own neighborhood was on the opposite side of West Oakland, near town, proud that the tall, old buildings were owned and cared for by the people who lived in them, proud, too, that there was only a scattering of colored people, none of them poor.

  “I do my living up on Fourteenth Street, / on the corner of the block where the best streets meet.”