Roy's World

by Barry Gifford

  “You’re a great listener, Roy,” he said. “It will pay off for you in the future.”

  “Pay off how?”

  “If you listen carefully, you can figure out how a person’s mind works, how they think, then you know what you’ve got to do to get them to pay you.”

  Roy’s father often dropped him off at the gym when he had business to do downtown. He’d make a contribution to Armstrong’s Retired Fighters Fund and press something into Derondo’s hand and know they would keep a close eye on his son until he returned.

  “Did you ever have a vulture head?” Roy asked Derondo.

  “Only seen ’em in pictures and the movies.”

  “There’s vultures in the Everglades.”

  “Don’t take to snakes and gators, Roy, and I don’t want snakes or gators takin’ to me. I don’t go into the ’glades because I can’t figure how those creatures think, or even if they do think. Did you know that in ancient Rome soldiers rode two horses at a time, standing up?”

  Henry signaled to Derondo and he got up and went over to the larger of the two rings where Henry was talking to a small, well-dressed man wearing a Panama hat. Standing above them leaning down over the top rope was a lean young guy with boxing gloves on. Roy pegged him as a welterweight in the making, a few pounds shy, sixteen or seventeen years old. Derondo nodded his head while Henry spoke to him, and when Henry stopped talking Derondo walked around to the other side of the ring, slipped a sleeveless sweatshirt over his T-shirt, let one of the ring boys grease his face then wrap his hands before fitting on the gloves and fastening his headgear. The kid in the ring began bouncing around, shadowboxing, getting warm. Derondo climbed through the ropes, did a few deep knee bends, practiced a couple of combinations and uppercuts then motioned to the kid.

  Roy went over to ringside and stood near Henry and the man wearing the Panama. Derondo outweighed the boy by twenty-five pounds, so Roy knew he would not throw any hard leather. For the kid’s part, it was not unexpected that he would be faster both with his hands and feet. Neither Henry nor the man in the hat, who Roy figured was the boy’s manager, said a word for the first minute, then Panama shouted, “No baile! Pégale!”

  Roy understood that Panama wanted his boy to prance less and punch more. The kid could not get inside on Derondo, who took whatever the boy offered on his arms and shoulders and did not himself do more than feint and tap. Printed in cursive in gold letters on both sides of the boy’s black trunks were the words El Zopo. Suddenly, Derondo threw a left hook off a jab that landed flush on the kid’s right temple. The little welter tilted onto his left leg and froze for a moment like a crane or heron in the shallows before toppling over and landing on his left ear. Henry jumped into the ring and he and Derondo bent over him. Panama stayed put while Henry and Derondo helped the boy to his feet.

  Roy looked over at Panama and examined his face. He had a thin, dyed black mustache, almond eyes with pale flecks in them and no chin. Roy thought the man resembled a small monkey, a marmoset. When Panama walked around to where Henry and the ring boy were talking to the kid, Roy went back to the bench and leaned against the wall.

  A few minutes later, Derondo came and sat down next to him. He had removed the headgear, gloves and sweatshirt and sat still, staring straight ahead for several seconds before saying, “I tell you, Roy, if I’d had a decapitated vulture head I could have told you that kid has no future as a fighter.”

  Roy’s father picked him up an hour later. When they reached the bottom of the forty-seven steps Roy asked him what el zopo means in English.

  “Deformed. A deformed person, like in a sideshow. Why?”

  “A boxer had it written on his trunks.”

  “Did he look weird?”

  “No, he looked okay. He was just a kid. He was sparring with Derondo Simmons and Derondo knocked him down. I don’t think he meant to.”

  Roy felt safe walking on the street with his father. There were always a few stumblebums on 7th Street outside Henry’s; people who had lost their way, his dad called them.

  “All fighters get deformed sooner or later, son. You don’t need a crystal ball to tell you that.”

  “Or a vulture head,” said Roy.

  I Also Deal in Fury

  “Then that greaseball actor shows up, and guess who’s with him?”

  “What actor?”

  “Guy with black, curly hair was in the picture where the giggling creep pushes the old lady in a wheelchair down the stairs.”

  “The actor pushed the woman in the wheelchair?”

  “No, the other one, the cop. He’s got the rich kid’s wife with him, the brunette the queer actor falls for so he drowns his pregnant girlfriend.”

  “The same movie?”

  “No, another one.”

  “I don’t go to the pictures much. I get antsy. Half of the show I’m in the lobby smokin’, waitin’ on Yvette.”

  “I Also Deal in Fury, you didn’t see it?”

  “No.”

  “Anyway, they don’t want nobody to know they’re in Vegas together, but after ten minutes it’s all over town.”

  “What did they expect?”

  “In for the weekend.”

  “They want privacy they go to the springs, get a mud bath.”

  Roy was sitting next to the men on a pile of unsold newspapers waiting for his father. It was three-thirty in the morning and his father had said he’d be back at the liquor store by three. Phil Priest and Eddie O’Day were keeping an eye on the boy.

  “You okay, kid?” Eddie asked. “Your dad’ll be here soon.”

  “Here,” said Phil. “Take it by the grip.”

  Phil Priest pulled a snubnose .38 out from inside his coat and handed it to Roy.

  “You ever handled a piece?”

  “Phil, you nuts?” said Eddie. “His old man won’t like it, he finds out.”

  “Be careful, kid,” Phil said, “Don’t touch the trigger.”

  “Is it loaded?” Roy asked.

  “You got always to assume a piece is loaded. And never point it at anyone other than you mean business.”

  “It’s heavy,” said Roy. “Heavier than I thought.”

  “How old are you now, Roy?”

  “Ten. How old are you?”

  “Thirty-two.”

  Roy’s father came in and saw Roy holding the gun. Phil took it from him and replaced it inside his coat.

  “Roy,” said his father, “go stand outside for a minute. By the door, where I can see you.”

  Roy slid off the stack of newspapers, walked out and stood by the entrance. He liked being up late and looking at people on the street. They were different than the people he saw during the day and in the evening who hung around his father’s place. Their faces were hidden even under the lights from the signs on the clubs and restaurants. Phil and Eddie came out of the store and walked away without saying anything.

  “Dad, can I come back in now?”

  Roy’s father came out and stood next to him and draped his right arm around Roy’s shoulders. He was wearing a white shirt with the long sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a blue tie with a gold clasp with his initials engraved on it.

  “It’s cooler out here,” he said. “Chicago gets so hot in the summer.”

  “Are you angry at Phil for showing me his gun?”

  A girl came by and stopped and whispered into Roy’s father’s ear. Her high heels made her taller than his father. She walked around the corner onto Rush Street.

  “What did she say, Dad?”

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “I helped her out with something the other day.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Anita.”

  “She’s tall.”

  “She’s a dancer at The Casbah.”

/>   “Dad?”

  “Yes, son?”

  “Are you still angry at Mom?”

  “No, Roy. I’m not angry at your mother.”

  “What about Phil?”

  Hour of the Wolf

  When he was eleven years old, Roy began waking up between four and four-thirty in the morning, four hours before he had to leave for school. His mother, her husband and Roy’s sister were asleep and so long as he kept to the back of the house he did not disturb them. No matter what the weather was, even if it was freezing or raining, Roy liked to go out onto the back porch to feel the fresh air and watch the sky. He could imagine that he lived alone, or at the least that this third stepfather did not exist. Roy had come to understand that his mother gave very little thought to how her bringing these men into his life might affect him. He knew now that it was up to him to control his own existence, to no longer be subject to her poor judgment and desperation.

  It was on a morning in mid-December when Roy was standing on the porch wearing a parka over his pajamas looking up at a crescent moon with snow beginning to flurry that he heard a scream. It came from the alley behind his house. Roy could not identify the sound as having come from a woman or a man. He waited on the porch for a second cry but none came. Roy went inside to his room and exchanged his slippers for shoes and went back out. He pulled the hood of his parka over his head and walked carefully down the porch steps, not wanting to slip on the new snow, and continued through the yard along the passageway that led to the alley. Flakes were falling faster, translucent parachutists infiltrating the darkness.

  Roy looked both ways in the alley but did not see a person. He stood there waiting to hear or see someone or something move. He was about to go back to the house when he saw a shadow creep across the garage door directly opposite his own. Instinctively, he retreated a few steps toward the passageway. The shadow was low and long, as if cast by a four-footed animal, a large dog or a wolf, although he knew there were no wolves in Chicago. What if one, or even a panther, had escaped from a zoo? But could an animal have emitted such a human-like scream? Roy knew that he should go back inside the house but his curiosity outweighed his fear, so he waited, ready to run should a dangerous creature, man or beast, reveal itself.

  A car appeared at the entrance to the alley, its headlights burning into the swirling snow. Roy watched the car advance slowly, listening to its tires crunch over the quickly thickening ground cover. As the vehicle came closer, he stepped back further into the passageway, wanting not to be seen by the driver. The car crept past his hiding place and slid to a stop twenty feet away. Roy could not see the car clearly enough to identify the make. Nobody got out. The car sat idling, its windshield wipers whining and thunking.

  Roy imagined the driver or perhaps a passenger was looking for the person or animal responsible for the scream. If so, why didn’t someone get out of the car and call out or look around? What if the object of their search were injured or frightened, unable to make its distress and location known? After a full minute, the car moved forward, heading toward the far end of the alley. When Roy could no longer see its tail lights, he walked back through the passageway to his house.

  His mother’s husband was standing on the porch holding a flashlight.

  “The back door was open,” he said. “What are you doing out there?”

  Roy remained at the foot of the porch steps, looking at this man he never wanted to see again. He could feel the snow leaking around the edges of his parka hood, water dripping onto his neck.

  “I heard a scream,” Roy said.

  “You probably had a nightmare. Lock the door after you come in.”

  The flashlight clicked off and Roy’s mother’s husband went inside. The snow let up a little but there still was no light in the sky. Roy sat down on the bottom step. It was almost Christmas and he knew that what he wanted was what he didn’t want.

  Lost Monkey

  Secret Jones cleaned windows in rich people’s houses during the day and returned to the houses when he knew the occupants would be away and burglarized them. Secret worked alone and made a steady living. He lived modestly in a small apartment on North Avenue but took a two or three week holiday once a year, usually a luxury cruise to either Caribbean or Mediterranean ports-of-call during the fierce Chicago winters.

  Nights he wasn’t working, Secret Jones often stopped into Roy’s father’s liquor store to mingle with other characters who used the store as an unofficial meeting place. Secret was one of the few Negroes among mostly Italian, Irish, Jewish and Eastern European men who hung out at the sandwich counter, seated on stools nursing lukewarm cups of coffee, nibbling stale doughnuts and smoking cigarettes and cigars, or just stood around talking or pretending to be waiting for someone. The liquor store was in the center of the nightclub district and stayed open 24 hours. Roy’s father was usually there or in the vicinity from noon until four or five in the morning. Nights when he didn’t have school the next day, his father let Roy hang around “to figure out for yourself what bad habits not to pick up.”

  Secret Jones was one of the men Roy enjoyed listening to.

  “You know how I got my name?” Secret said. “My daddy was sixteen and my mama was fifteen when I was born and they wanted to keep me a secret, so that’s what my grandmama called me, Mamie June Jones, my mama’s mama. She was the one raised me. This was in Mississippi. My daddy bugged out before I could know him and my mama got on the stem and died of alcohol poisoning when I was four years old. How old are you now, Roy?”

  “Nine.”

  “I been on my own since I turned thirteen, after Mamie June passed. I come up to Chi on the midnight special with nothin’ but what I was wearin’, no laces in my shoes, no belt for my trousers. Thirteen years old stood in Union Station with nothin’ in my pockets, that’s for real. You’re lucky you got a daddy looks out for you. That’s what life is about, Roy, or should be, people lookin’ out for each other, whether they be blood related or not. Here it is 1956, ninety-one years since President Abraham Lincoln freed my people and there’s still places in this country I get shot or strung up I go there. Ain’t that a bitch! Same all over, some folks bein’ left out or rubbed out and nobody do anything about it.”

  “Quit cryin’, Secret,” said Hersch Fishbein. “It ain’t only your people catch the short end. How about my six million Hitler done in?”

  Hersch, Secret and Roy were sitting at the counter. Hersch worked days at Arlington Park racetrack as a pari-mutuel clerk and sometimes at night at Maywood when the trotters were running.

  “You hear about Angelo’s monkey?” Hersch asked.

  “The organ grinder?” said Secret.

  “Angelo’s my friend,” said Roy. “Dopo sits here at the counter with me and dunks doughnuts in Angelo’s coffee.”

  “Somebody stole him.”

  “Why would anyone steal Dopo?” Roy asked.

  “Sell him,” said Secret Jones. “Smart monkey like him. People pay to see him do tricks.”

  Hersch nodded and said, “A carnival, maybe.”

  “How’d you hear?” Secret asked.

  “Saw Angelo on Diversey, grindin’ his box. Had a tin cup on the sidewalk. ‘Where’s Dopo?’ I asked. ‘Disappear,’ said Angelo. ‘I can no passa da cup anna play at same time.’ ”

  “We should look for him,” said Roy.

  “Hard findin’ a little monkey in a city as big as Chicago,” Secret said.

  Roy went outside where his father was standing on the sidewalk in front of the store talking to Phil Priest, an ex-cop.

  “Dad, Hersch says someone stole Dopo, Angelo’s monkey.”

  Phil Priest laughed and said, “A wino probably ate it.”

  Roy punched Phil on his right arm.

  “Take it easy, son,” said his father.

  “You’ve got to do something, Dad. Angelo can’t make a livin
g without Dopo collecting coins and tipping his hat.”

  “I’ll see what I can do, Roy.”

  Roy remembered the time he was sitting at the counter doing homework and Angelo and Dopo came in and Dopo picked up a pencil and began imitating Roy, making marks on a piece of paper.

  “Dopo helping you,” Angelo said.

  Roy looked up and down the street. It was ten o’clock at night, not a good time to start hunting for Dopo. Roy would begin the next day asking around the neighborhood if anybody had seen Angelo’s monkey, although Angelo had probably already done that.

  Phil Priest took off and Roy’s father said, “If Dopo doesn’t turn up, the organ grinder’ll get another monkey.”

  “I don’t like Phil Priest, Dad. Mom says he was a crooked cop, that’s why he was kicked off the force. I didn’t like what he said about Dopo. It’ll take a long time for Angelo to train a new monkey.”

  Roy walked back inside. Hersch and Secret were arguing about the best way to fix a horse race. Hersch said you had to have the jockeys in your pocket and Secret said it was better to juice the nags.

  “None of the bums who hang around your dad’s store are on the level,” Roy’s mother had told him. “Some are worse than others.”

  “Why does Dad let them stay there?”

  “Those men are just part of the system, Roy. Being on the game is all they know, they grew up with it.”

  “I’m growing up with it, too.”

  “You won’t be like them,” said his mother.

  Roy’s father was still out on the sidewalk, talking to a man Roy had never seen before. The man walked away and Roy went out again.

  “Dad?”

  “What is it, son?”