Pound for Pound

by F. X. Toole

  The crowd bellowed and roared and crowed, Mick and Mex together, but Cooley heard only Shortcake yelling for him to finish Garza off.

  “Get him, Danny, put him asleep, baby, one-two hook to the body come back hook to the head knock him out le’s go home! Do it!”

  The ref waved the fighters together. Cooley knew he had to get Garza, knew it because his body had turned to broken glass inside, knew that he could never go the distance hauling the damage Garza had done to him. Garza, demoralized himself, couldn’t understand what was holding Cooley up.

  The bell rang, ending the round. Both men coughed from deep in the chest. As Cooley wobbled to his corner, he thought again of the rolls of dimes.

  Cooley sat on his ring stool and said, “Somethin’s wrong, Cake, somethin’s hard in those gloves.”

  Shortcake said, “Boy, you been hittin him more than he been hittin you.”

  Cooley said, “Look at me and look at him. Gotta be somethin inside the gloves.”

  Shortcake yelled at the ref, said Garza had loaded his gloves, said he wanted Garza’s gloves cut off. He knew the ref wouldn’t delay the fight, would think he was trying to steal some rest for his fighter, but he wanted the complaint on the record.

  The referee scowled. “I been doin Cooley a favor lettin it go this long, right? Now take that packin outta his nose, you think I didn’t see it? “

  Shortcake squatted back in front of Cooley, “Muhfuh,” he said, and picked out the cotton. “You got to fight him, kid.”

  Both fighters made it to the fifth, and both were used up, but it was Cooley who was broken and lumpy and turning blue in spots. He couldn’t believe Garza was breaking him down. Cooley knew he was the better fighter, knew that he hit harder. He’d known that Garza was no chump, but he also knew that his own style should have sapped Garza’s will, should have siphoned off his wind, should have stolen Garza’s ability to hang. Yet here they were, in round number five, and it was Cooley who was sucking wind, it was his five-and-six-punch combinations that had been stolen. He knew that he should have stopped Garza by now, but he hadn’t, and now all he had left to go on was tit.

  They were halfway into the fifth when Cooley was turned sideways by a left hook to the body that frightened him for the first time in his fighting life. He felt more bones creak and shiver, and the stabbing pain of the rib that was already broken caused him to groan. He instinctively dropped his right hand in an effort to protect his body, but then a hook to the head landed and he heard the bones breaking at the outside of his right eye, the sound like a cracked claw. Sweat and blood from his nose headed sideways again, and so did the vision in his right eye. The white area of the eyeball turned crimson from internal bleeding, and the eye and right side of Cooley’s face swelled immediately, looked like a sweet potato had been slipped in under the skin. Pain tore through the eyeball and the shattered socket and into Cooley’s soul. Blind in one eye, Cooley fought on, as fighters who are fighters will, fought a brown shadow and a smear of black hair, but Cooley’s legs were almost gone and he knew he had only seconds left if he was to win.

  Garza had forgotten defense early on, and Cooley was able to catch him with a liver shot that made Garza keen. Cooley thought he might still win if he could catch that liver again, but another Garza left hook from Cooley’s blind side broke more bones in the eye socket. Cooley sagged, caught himself. Because of the busted rib, he had to use one glove to lift the other up to protect the socket from more damage. But he also covered part of his left eye in the process, and was clearly unable to see the punches Garza was throwing at him. The referee slid in to stop the fight, and Cooley dropped to one knee as Garza raised both hands in victory. The Cavazos rushed in to lift the Lobo Tejano into the air.

  The side of Cooley’s face continued to swell, looked like something dead alongside a country road. His cut man sat him on his ring stool, wrapped his head in the icy wet towel from the bottom of his ice bucket. The glove attendant removed Garza’s gloves, then removed Cooley’s, and left the ring. Cooley was exhausted, almost in shock, but even before the ring announcer could proclaim Garza the victor, Shortcake yelled for the ring doctor. Shortcake also called to the referee and demanded that Garza’s hand wraps be inspected. The ref waved Garza over while the Cavazos were still cutting off the wraps. Shortcake and the ref examined them.

  The ref said, “You satisfied?”

  Shortcake said, “No, I ain’t, I wanna see them gloves.”

  The ref sent one of the Commission guys for the glove man with instructions to bring Garza’s gloves.

  Trini Cavazo said, “What the fuck is this shit, man, what you sayin about my boy?”

  Shortcake said, “Look at my boy face, that the shit I be talkin ‘bout, what you think?”

  Garza was announced the winner, and the Mexicans in the balcony began to hoot and to pegar sus gritos—”¡Ay-yai-yai-yaaaai!”—and to piss in their beer cups and shower them gleefully down on ringside.

  Garza’s gloves were produced. They were wet with sweat, but they were the same as new and neither had been altered, and both had clearly been used only once.

  Shortcake made a last try. “Ain’t no goddamn blood on ‘em.”

  The glove guy said, “I wiped it off, like always.”

  Cooley, the icy towel still around his head, was already thinking of a rematch. With only one good eye, he could see Garza’s gloves well enough from his stool to believe that Garza had won fairly. But he wouldn’t concede defeat—as he saw it, he had beaten himself. Given the fury of the fight, and the way he had covered up, if only for an instant, Cooley realized that he had thrown in the towel on himself, had accidentally signaled the ref that he was defenseless. He hadn’t meant to, had in fact believed that he could still win, yet he was the dummy who, in the blink-second of lost concentration and a broken rib, had forced the referee to stop the fight.

  That one moment would eat at Cooley. It would whack him more than missing his shot at the title. It would torment him more than having to retire from boxing. It was a nightmare he could never wake up from, and he would live the rest of his life brooding about being too soft for the hard game.

  Chapter 35

  Chicky’s plane landed at two-thirty p.m. San Antonio time, and he immediately called Greyhound for the Corpus schedule. The next bus wouldn’t leave for two hours, so there was nothing to do but head for downtown and wait.

  He took a city bus from the airport to the Main Plaza, the Plaza de las Islas. He stopped to pray for Eloy at the Spanish colonial Cathedral of San Fernando, where a marble sarcophagus held the remains of Travis, Crockett, and Bowie. Afterward, he thought about walking over to the San Ignacio Gym, where he’d won many of his trophies. He decided against it, because those pinches fuck brothers, Trini and Paco Cavazo, might be back from Houston, those hijos de la gran chingada puta madre, sons of the great fucked whore mother. So he strolled over to the bus station, sat on a bench, and tried to steel himself against the shock that might be in store for him in Poteet.

  Chicky’s bus left the blue-and-white Greyhound terminal in San Anto about the same time that Dan opened the first scrapbook. Before heading down to Corpus Christi and the Gulf, the bus would stop at the country towns of Floresville and Pleasanton, both big growers of peanuts. Eloy’s farm in Poteet was some sixteen miles down from Pleasanton, off of Highway 16 and at the end of an oil-soaked private road. Poteet was smaller than Pleasanton.

  A sign on the road read “Don’t Mess with Texas.” Chicky could feel in the air that he was getting close to home, and he began to remember little things and big. But mostly he remembered the day when things began to change, the day his grandfather was late coming back from the doctor. Chicky realized that he was almost back to where he’d started. Nonetheless, he thought back to how mortified he’d been when Dan discovered his connection with his sick granddaddy, the Wolf.

  “You come a long way, cowboy,” Chicky whispered.

  When el bus stopped at the Exxon station in
Pleasanton, Chicky put on his El Patron. There were no cabs, so he took Texas highway number 242 and lit out on foot. Poteet high school was some nine miles off, but it was on the way to his granddaddy’s farm, and that was a good six to seven miles more. Chicky figured he could make the high school in an hour if he humped, but it turned out that he didn’t have to walk. He got a ride from a weathered peanut farmer in a frazzled straw farm hat and faded bib overalls.

  They passed the Atascosa River, narrow and all but dry, and then the farmer headed down empty roads and let Chicky off at the high school. Chicky took off straight for the football field. Practice was winding down. Coach Oster waved him over. Though Chicky had been small for football, the thick, big-bellied old coach knew him as one of the hardest-hitting defensive backs who had ever played for Poteet. Hitting hard wasn’t something a Texas football coach forgot.

  Coach Oster shook Chicky’s hand and asked, “You need a lift, boy?”

  “Yessir,” said Chicky. This was Texas, and in Texas you talked Texas. “If it wouldn’t be no bother.”

  “Hail, no.”

  The coach blew his whistle, spots of brass showing through the worn chrome plate. He waved his players to the showers, then motioned Chicky over to his sun-bleached ‘82 pickup.

  Oster shook his head, said, “Big bad Wolf ain’t the same, son.”

  “No?”

  “Y’all’ll see.”

  They drove to Eloy’s peeling, white clapboard house. It was set between low trees and trimmed in layers of buckled green and strawberry red. It sagged at one corner, and one end of the big “Lobo Farms” sign out front hung loose from its rusted frame. Part of the sign depicted a smiling wolf in bib overalls standing upright in the faded reds and greens of a strawberry field, but now the wolf had become a dull gray. The front section of the picket fence was on its side. Prairie dogs had taken over the lawn. The barn door was closed, the chicken pen empty, and every other animal was gone as well. Eloy’s dirty 1964 Chevy flatbed, his first truck ever, was parked near the open side door of the house. Chicky stood at the door and called out, “¡Abuelito!”

  Eloy’s voice sounded weak as a poisoned cat. “Door’s open, ain’t it?”

  Coach Oster looked back to Chicky. “Wont some help with this here deal?”

  “I better handle it.”

  “I understand,” said the coach, a sigh in his whisper. “Ya’ll call me, hear?”

  “Yessir,” Chicky said. He hoped he could handle it, but wasn’t sure.

  Oster heard the doubt. “Maybe I better hang around, just in case?”

  Chicky said, “‘Preciate it.”

  Chicky walked in and Oster followed him. What was once as neat as a priest’s parlor was now strewn with newspapers and unwashed tin cans. This was not the place Chicky had grown up in, the place he had learned to keep respectable, the place where he had learned to scrub floors. The kitchen sink was full of dirty paper plates. Uneaten food had gone to garbage on the tile counter. Roaches scurried, and the place stank of black bananas. Fruit flies hovered like a lace fan, and the place smelled like death.

  “Grandpa?”

  “I’m here.”

  The voice came from the bathroom, located down a short hall. The floor tiles and those in the shower had always sparkled, but now the grout was gray and there was black mold halfway up the shower wall. Eloy sat on the toilet wearing long johns. His head was in his hands, his face had caved in, and his bent body listed into the wall.

  Between the toilet and the wall was a rusted old pink oval waste-paper basket. In it were several used syringes and six of Trini’s empty twenty-milliliter squat brown morphine bottles. They were Eloy’s last, and he was ready to die. He tried to flush the toilet, but didn’t have the strength. He smiled bleakly and with shame at Chicky, his gums showing instead of false teeth. He mixed Spanish with English, and Chicky answered him likewise.

  “Lost my teeth somewheres.” The whites of his eyes were a dull yellow, and so was his skin. His diseased liver had caused his feet to swell so badly that he hadn’t worn boots in weeks, forcing him to drive to and from the hospital in flip-flops. “I figure I’ve had about all the fun I can stand.”

  “How long you been on the stool?”

  “Been sleepin here is all I know. Can you get me to bed?”

  “I can he’p ya with him,” said Coach Oster, standing off to the side just in case.

  Chicky got the old man to his feet. He was emaciated except for a bulge in his stomach the size of a pumpkin. Chicky buttoned the flap of his grandfather’s soiled underwear, then picked him up, not needing Coach Oster’s help after all. Eloy didn’t weigh ninety pounds. His skin was flaky, and his sparse gray hair was greasy and long. Chicky eased the old man down to sheets that hadn’t been changed in months, then made the sign of the cross.

  “We got to get you to the hospital.”

  Eloy said, “I was in the Santa Rosa two weeks ago.”

  Chicky said, “Then what the dickens you doin back home?”

  “Checked myself out once me’n Doc Ocampo had us a sit-down.”

  “What’d Ocampo say?”

  “Same’s before. Que me han chingado el higado y el pinche corazón.” That my own liver and fuckin heart have screwed me.

  “You never told me,” Chicky said, looking away.

  Eloy shrugged his bony shoulders, tried to smile. “Son cosas de la vida.” He winked at Oster. “Coach, I wonder if you could dump that trash basket in the crapper for me? I think I got me a varmint loose in it.”

  “Glad to,” said Oster.

  When Oster saw the syringes and morphine bottles in the pink can, he understood why Eloy had asked him to remove it.

  “Don’t worry, Eloy,” Coach Oster said under his breath. “Chicky’ll never find out from me.”

  Oster dumped the bottles and the needles into a black plastic bag, and stashed the bag in the back of his truck. He reached for his can of Copenhagen, and figured it was best to remain where he was, but then he put the dip away and decided to go back inside. He winked at Eloy, and Eloy understood.

  Eloy said, “How you like trainin with Mr. Cooley?”

  “A lot.”

  “Psycho Sykes is up to eighteen and zero with eleven KOs,” Eloy said. “I been followin the boy’s career somewhat close.”

  Chicky said, “You’n me both.”

  “Got too big for welter. He’s fightin at one fifty-four now.”

  “Don’t I know it?”

  Eloy squinted, his yellow eyes dull. “What’s your record again?”

  “I’m nine and three, with six KOs. The three losses come before Mr. Cooley. I’m six knockouts out of nine with him.”

  “I told you he was good.”

  Chicky couldn’t shake the smell and returned to the bathroom. The reeking toilet was full of white feces and coffee-colored urine. Chicky gagged as he flushed the toilet, then opened the bathroom and bedroom windows for ventilation.

  Chicky gave his grandfather a sip of water. “Why didn’t you stay in the hospital?”

  “Because home is where my wife died.”

  Chicky thought of his Mamá Lola, her Indian eyes and nose, the copper in her skin. He lowered his eyes as he remembered how tenderly she had cared for him. Swinging his eyes back to Eloy he said, “But now we got to bundle you up good, and get you back to the Santa Rosa.”

  “No’mbre,” no man, the old man said. He looked away from the kid, then back again. “You really okay with Mr. Cooley?”

  Chicky nodded. “Next to you, he’s the best.”

  “Naw, he’s better’n me,” said Eloy. “He figured out who we was to each other, didn’t he?”

  “It was Coach’s call what did it.”

  Eloy said, “How long’t take him?”

  “‘Bout a minute, once Coach called you the Wolf,” Chicky said. “How come you didn’t tell me about how you knew Mr. Cooley?”

  Eloy evaded the question, wheezed out a snicker. “I got the Cavazos think
in you’re up College Station goin to A & M. They think you gave up el box.”

  Chicky said, “Ain’t you the slick old dawg.”

  “Wolf,” Eloy said slyly, “slick old Wolf. Game ain’t played out yet, rat?”

  Chicky locked hard on Eloy’s eyes, repeated his earlier question, “So how come you didn’t tell me about you and Mr. Cooley?”

  Eloy hacked, his lungs shot. “I wanted you goin to him clean, son, and I wanted him to take you on when he saw how good you are.”

  Chicky said, “That he did.”

  Eloy said, “How hard is it getting the right fights out there?”

  “Hard, now that I been winnin.”

  “I warned you ‘bout bein a lefty in the pros, rat?” Eloy watched as

  Chicky nodded, then said, “You still got a hard-on over that Psycho Sykes deal?”

  “Hail, yeah,” said Chicky, “and will have for a spell. But each dawg has his day, and rat now you’re what counts.”

  Eloy pointed to a card table on which there was a large package. It was amateurishly wrapped in shiny paper, and tied loosely with ribbons and a stick-on bow, all used Christmas wrappings saved from years before. “It’s for you.”

  “What is it?”

  “You’ll see later.” He pointed to a thick brown envelope sealed with clear tape that set next to the alarm clock.