Pound for Pound

by F. X. Toole

  Dan also told the kid about Earl and Momolo and how he had several Mexicans working for him. He also mentioned that he’d been out of the game awhile, but didn’t say why, though he did explain briefly how he’d come by Barky in El Paso.

  Chicky said, “I like that ol’ dawg.”

  Dan said, “And he talks Spanish better than English.”

  “No.”

  “Talk some lingo to him.”

  “Naw.”

  “Say somethin in his native tongue.”

  “Dame la patita.”

  Barky sat back and held out a paw.

  Chicky took it, and shook it, and doffed his Stetson. “Well, if that don’t beat all.”

  Dan hemmed and hawed. Against his better judgment, he blurted out what he’d been bubbling to say. “I got to clear this with Earl, so maybe I’m talking too soon, okay?”

  Chicky didn’t understand, but said, “I guess.”

  “What I’m getting at, is that you could work for me and Earl in the shop.”

  “I’m a country boy, Mr. Cooley.”

  “You could learn a trade so you’d make a good living outside boxing.”

  “Outside? I don’t have no inside.”

  Dan said, “You will if you train with Earl and me.”

  “You joshin, Mr. Cooley?”

  “I’m serious,” Dan said, his mind racing ahead, gamboling now, having fun as things suddenly fit as tightly as a wrapped hand in a fighting glove. “You could work part-time in the shop. Say twenty hours a week so you could rest and train. Ten dollars an hour, under the table. That’s two hundred a week to start, clear. You could take over my room here, no rent. If you’re not happy in six weeks, you’ll have a thousand dollars in your pocket to go back home on, plus what you already got. But you gotta run in the morning, five days a week. After work, you train in the gym five days a week, plus a light workout on Saturday.” Dan hesitated. “You turn out to be a flake, I give you a free week’s pay just to get rid of you, and you’re outta here quick as you came in.”

  Chicky smiled. “What if I ain’t no flake?”

  “I don’t see you like that or I wouldn’t be talkin to you. See, I have to hedge here a little, because I can’t tell the future. But if you’re happy, Earl and me’ll be happy. You’ll get fights that are matched right, and you’ll start to make money once we get you up the ladder a ways.” Dan hesitated briefly. “I got to say this. At any time, either side can pull out, no questions, no hard feelins. That sound okay to you?”

  “Yessir.”

  “If you stick, whether you get a title shot will depend most on you, but also on a thousand other things neither one of us can think of right now. But you’ll have somebody in your corner who’s got some juice and who gives a fuck about you, I can guarantee you that. But if you screw around, this ain’t Santa Claus Lane, and you’re outta here.”

  Chicky said, “Goshees, all a this is comin outta nowhere, Mr. Cooley.”

  “Like I say, I got to clear it with Earl in the morning.”

  “Where do I stay tonight?”

  “Four Seasons, like I said before, or you can bunk with Barky in my room up those stairs.”

  “Where’ll you sleep?”

  “I got my house a few blocks over.”

  “You got clean sheets upstairs?”

  Dan drove home. He opened all the doors and windows to air the place out. He pulled the bedspread back and fluffed the pillows. He washed up, removing the wrapper from the new bar of soap on the washbasin. He closed all the doors, but left some of the windows open. The crucifix was still on the wall. He thought he’d taken it down. He began to take off his shoes.

  Chapter 32

  Dan and Earl sat in their office drinking coffee. Chicky waited in the customers’ lounge downstairs.

  Dan said, “Believe me, this is some kid, so if you don’t have nothin against it, I thought we could take him on. He could run with Momolo at the golf course, and they could give each other sparring once we fatten the kid up.”

  Earl was happier than he’d been since before the death of Tim Pat, but he didn’t feel he could show his hand yet. “Well, it sounds all right, maybe, but it’s a big step, what with me workin and trainin Momolo alone. I’m not so sure I could make time for someone else.”

  Dan said, “I was thinkin that I could start doing my regular work in the shop again, and the kid could drive the truck part-time, somethin like that, work clean up, you know.” Dan hesitated, then jumped in with all four feet. “That way I could train him, instead of you havin to do all the work.”

  Earl had to look the other way to keep from busting up. “What, you’re already cuttin me outta this deal?”

  “Hell no! You’re in fifty-fifty like always, I just didn’t want it to be too much for you, that’s all.”

  “He’s left-handed, right? Getting him fights won’t be easy.” Earl pretended to have doubts. “You think he’s worth it?”

  “Maybe you could switch him from left to right.”

  “But not if he don’t want to.”

  “Shortcake switched you to the right side,” said Dan.

  “I wanted to.”

  Dan felt dread. Maybe Earl was opposed. Dan couldn’t blame him, and thought about vodka for the first time in a while. “He’s a tough hombre, Earl, with one hell of a amateur record. And he’s as smart and nice as he is tough. I see grit in the kid, like in your dad.”

  Earl missed his daddy every day. Fucking Dan. The Irish could talk. Like the brothers, they could go to the body with words. Earl swallowed hard, but kept bobbing and weaving, countering with his own shots. “Lotta work, him bein a lefty and comin from other trainers, and all. What if he’s locked into his old ways?”

  “At least he can make a living if he stays with us,” said Dan, feeling it all slip away. “Or he’ll have the money to go back home, and still have some when he gets there. But suppose we catch a break and he gets to be somebody? You never know, right? Suppose he starts to cash in? Suppose he gets a title shot, maybe wins a belt? A title, that’s what all this’s about, for him and for us.”

  “How do we know he’s that good?”

  “We don’t. Not yet. But he can hit, Earl. Kid can crack.”

  “That’s a start,” Earl said, pretending to still hold back. “Where’ll he live?”

  “I already got him stayin in my old room.”

  Earl had to look away again. “Old room? So this is already a done goddamn deal?”

  “No, no, not if you don’t want it.”

  Earl couldn’t keep it in any longer. He slapped his thigh and busted out laughing.

  Dan said, “Ya fuck, ya, makin me dance, your own white brother.” Earl clapped his hands and laughed some more and held his belly and slid along the wall. Dan loved him.

  They went downstairs, where Chicky was waiting. Tired as he was from the night before, he had slept little. Barky had made things worse at five a.m. when he wheezed to go out to pee.

  Earl and Dan tried to look serious, but Chicky could see they were happy about something. He hoped to God that Earl saw something good in him, too.

  Earl said, “Why’d you say you were going back home?”

  “My piss-poor record. And money.”

  “Who’d you lose to?”

  “Black feller in Las Vegas who was eleven and zero with eight KOs. The other one, a Mexican supposed to be five and zero with three knockouts. Once I was in with him, I could tell he was way more’n that. Tony Velasco set the first two up.”

  “Setup is right,” said Earl. “Did the first two kick your ass?”

  “Hail, no!”

  Earl had to smile. “Where’d you do your farming?”

  “For my granddaddy in Poteet, that’s the strawberry capital of Texas.”

  “You think you’d like shop work?”

  “What with trainin with y’all, it’s soundin better’n better, yessir.”

  Earl extended his hand, and shook the gentle, fighter’s handshak
e. “Hard Knock’s got a new fighter.”

  Dan had returned to Los Angeles three months before Chicky shook hands with Tony Velasco. He wished that he had met the kid earlier, that he could have saved him from being fucked over. Well, they’d just have to make up for lost time.

  They went through the door at the back of the shop and entered the gym.

  “But there’s one more thing, since you’re stayin here. No girls upstairs,” Earl insisted. “Whores steal and nice girls squeal.”

  Chicky smiled at the idea of nice girls squealing.

  Earl said, “Not that way. To the police. Lawsuits.” Chicky frowned. He hadn’t thought of that. These old guys were no dummies.

  Dan said, “You got a steady girl?”

  “Not no more.”

  “If you get one, that’s your business,” Dan said, “and she’ll be welcome here to visit, but not upstairs.”

  “I ain’t likely to go fishin in that ol’ pond for a spell.”

  Earl winked at Dan. Both smiled.

  Chicky was so grateful and so proud to be working with Dan Cooley that he thought he’d bust his buttons. He wanted to call Eloy right off about the good news, but decided to wait at least a week, maybe two, for fear that he might somehow mess up large and get his dumb ass run off. How would he ever explain that one? Tony Velasco and Blond Darleen would be hard enough to talk about. He thought on it some more. Yeah, he’d come clean to his granddaddy about Velasco and his defeats—his three losses were sure to come out in the wash, anyway. But Blond Darleen’s dirty drawers he’d keep tucked under his Stetson.

  He fit right in to the shop, with Momolo and the other guys. This was the closest thing to family he had experienced since he’d left Eloy and the farm.

  Dan and Earl trained Chicky the way they had trained Tim Pat. They trained all their fighters the same way, starting with balance, movement, and how to torque ass for power. Because Dan was getting old, Earl worked the punch mitts. Dan was involved with everything else, especially movement, angles, and distance, but he also worked the mitts if Earl wasn’t there.

  Once Chicky’d settled into the routine of his new job, and the hump-busting training sessions in the gym, he began to believe in himself again, especially when he heard the pop, pop, BANG! his gloves made when he fired jabs and leads and hooks into the mitts, Earl calling the combinations like a drill sergeant.

  “Come off that hind toe! Do it! ‘At’s my baby! Do it again! Do it pretty for me!”

  Chicky found himself slipping punches, and catching punches, and countering punches, and suddenly understood that he was learning boxing from Doctors of the Philosophy of War. Dan taught him about breathing, too. It was hard at first. Chicky could coordinate it with the jab as he shot forward off the back foot, but breathing as he threw combinations flummoxed him. Dan walked him to a big bag. He instructed the boy to only slap, rather than punch, and to breathe and slap in slow motion with both hands, one after the other, four punches per combination.

  “Start with the head and end with the body, like this. Now start with the body like this, and end with the head. Breathe as you slap. Slow. Slow. That’s it. Do it slow until you can combine the timing and balance and slaps with your lungs, until it’s all one thing, simple as a yawn and a stretch.”

  It took a few days. Chicky practiced with the doorjamb in his room. Slap, slap, slap, slap. One night he got it. He ran downstairs, Barky on his tail. He went slowly, only slapped, and then he began to punch and to breathe, slowly at first, slowly, and then he let it rip, and then he punched for a solid five fucking minutes and knew he could punch for another ten. Sweat streamed from him, the best sweat of his life.

  “Hot damn, look at Chicky Garza now!”

  The next day he was breathing and punching, and never in his life had he worked so fast and with such force, never had he had such wind and legs. His body worked for him instead of the other way around. He was suddenly separate from and free of himself. Fifteen three-minute rounds, one minute rest between each. Aside from Earl and the mitts, his routine included the big and speed bags, the jump rope. It also called for sit-ups, five sets of thirty reps each. It meant he was working at the max, and he was losing four to six pounds of water weight during his seventy-plus-minute workout, about what he’d lose during a fight. He’d be up the next morning to jog through the wooded old golf course. He would shower afterward, eat a light breakfast, and then nap for an hour and a half. He’d lie around watching TV until time for lunch, and then he’d work off his meal in the shop until it was time to hit the gym again. After that, it was salad, chicken or fish, green vegetables, and either steamed spuds or brown rice—no salt, light butter. Fruit, sleep. Up and running the next day. Sunday he’d go to the park or the movies, or sometimes out to Venice Beach to watch girls. His Stetson and boots seemed to put off the local stuff. He didn’t understand that he needed a volleyball and baggy shorts. Or have bodybuilder bitch tits and strut, half whacked, with steroid-fueled rage. He understood the thongs up the cracks of babes’ asses, all right, but he didn’t know how to get those thongs down to their ankles. He’d think about Darleen, have to rearrange his shorts, and then head for a movie with lots of stunts and explosions. Fool movies. But they took him away from being lonely until he could set his mind back where it belonged.

  “How’m I doin, Mr. Cooley?” said Chicky, turning away from the big bag at the bell.

  “Not bad.”

  “Not bad? You didn’t see me tearin it up?”

  “Yeah, I did. And you’ll do it better once we close that wide-assed stance of yours.”

  “I just don’t seem able to get the knack.”

  Dan smiled. They’d been working at it since day one. Dan knew how simple it all was—once you understood it. But some boys never would get it, even fighters who made it to a title. “Let’s give her another shot.”

  Dan waved Chicky into the ring, thinking he’d try to reach the kid by using different words, different moves, something new. He instructed Chicky to take his regular fighting stance, feet wide, and to stand midway between two corners of the ring, his left shoulder next to the top ring rope connecting the two. When he threw his straight left hand, it would slide along the top of the rope.

  “Good,” Dan said, facing Chicky. “The wider your feet, the shorter your reach.” Dan rested his open hand on the top rope. “Now go easy and in slow motion. Slide your left glove along the top of the rope and make contact with my hand same as if you was punchin.”

  Chicky stepped off his right, or front foot, but as always his back foot remained rooted in the same rear position. That meant that in order for Chicky to make contact with Dan’s hand, he would have to lean in and bend forward. With his head and shoulders down and stretching, it meant that Chicky’s upper body was out past the balance point of his right, or front knee, a problem that had deviled him from the very beginning of his boxing career. Stripped of balance, and his reach shortened due to improper mechanics, Chicky was unable to make contact with Dan’s open hand.

  “You’re too far away.”

  “Not when you do it right,” Dan told him. “Like I keep tellin you, the problem is that you’re stepping off on the heel of your front foot, instead of pushing off with the toe, or ball, of your back foot. Simple as that.”

  Dan instructed Chicky to rest his left glove on the top rope the same way Dan had rested his right hand. Dan, as a right-hander, made the move he’d instructed Chicky to make. Not only did Dan reach Chicky’s glove, but his fist moved six inches past it.

  “How the hell you do that?” Chicky asked.

  “Make the same move as before, only this time push off the ball of your hind foot as if you were jumping a puddle with a snake in it.”

  Chicky pushed and damned if both feet didn’t move forward on their own. “No snake bite.”

  “No snake bite,” Dan repeated. “Now, do it again, but turn your ass and left shoulder while you do. No reaching or leaning, just a little flexing of your fron
t knee as your weight shifts forward.”

  Chicky followed instructions. Not only did Chicky’s glove make contact with Dan’s hand, but it also shoved Dan’s hand back another eight inches.

  “Damn!” said the kid.

  “Now do it with your jab, coming off that back toe in the same way.”

  It worked again.

  “Now give me a one-two, rotating your ass and shoulders.”

  Chicky thought of the snake in the puddle. Both feet moved. Both punches landed.

  “This here’s magic, Mr. Cooley.”

  “I told you you’d get it. Now it’s practice. Repetition until you’re blue in the face.”

  “What shade of blue you want?”

  Dan had to smile. “Now let’s move around the ring. Use your back foot to move forward, your front foot to go back, your left foot to go right, and your right foot to go left.” Dan kept circling. “When you’re in position to fire, come off that back toe for me so both feet move. Soon you’ll be able to fight inside, outside, left side, right, any fookin side you fookin want.”

  These were the dreams Chicky had dreamed back in Texas. He could feel his life changing.

  “See, boxing ain’t street fighting where strength alone can make a winner,” Dan explained. “Boxing’s a game of little things, like the links in a bicycle chain. It ain’t about big or strong, it’s about speed times weight bein equal to force, not to strength. It’s about respect and heart, and all this comes from your mind and legs, not the muscles in your arms, and sure as hell not because you think you’re some kind of tough. Now the question is whether you can execute under pressure.”

  “I can execute,” Chicky said confidently.

  “I believe you.”

  And Chicky believed Dan. Everything his new trainer showed him how to do made sense. It worked, all of it.