Hard City

by Clark Howard

  From the side of the ring, the timekeeper yelled, “Ten seconds!” Myron put Richie’s mouthpiece back in and patted his cheek. “Okay, go get him, Richie!”

  The bell rang. Richie and Willie Wakefield met in the center of the ring and touched gloves over the referee’s outstretched arm. Then the referee stepped back and Richie moved at once toward Willie, to get a headstart on the chase that he hoped would again end with Willie pinned on the ropes. He found out at once, to his complete surprise, that it was not going to be like that.

  Willie Wakefield did not back up.

  “Come on, boy, let’s fight,” Willie said around his mouthpiece.

  With Willie standing his ground, Richie attacked his body with both hands while Willie pasted Richie’s face and head with stinging blows that were not orthodox hooks or crosses or jabs, but were simply punches, such as might be thrown in a wild streetfight.

  Richie worked Willie’s body, ripped the uppercut, which connected solidly, snapping the fighter’s chin up, and then threw the right cross. Willie pulled his head back an inch, the punch missed him, and he countered inside with a left uppercut of his own. Richie’s head snapped this time, but he was not hurt; he moved back to Willie’s body, digging punches, as Willie resumed snapping punches to Richie’s face.

  Richie tried the uppercut-right cross combination several more times, but the right never connected; Willie Wakefield was simply too alert, too resourceful, too quick. Halfway through the round, Richie felt a burning sensation at the inside corner of his right eyebrow, and seconds later there was blood running into the eye itself. He kept fighting, kept punishing Willie’s body and occasionally getting in a solid punch to the chin or cheek, but he was not hurting Willie Wakefield and they both knew it. Willie, meanwhile, seemed to be seeing how many angles he could hit Richie’s face from, as he snapped left-right combinations in abounding numbers, making Richie’s face feel as if it were swollen so tight that it would burst at any moment. For the first time since he had begun fighting, Richie was glad to hear the final bell sound. This was one time he did not want to fight all night.

  In the corner, Myron swabbed out the half-inch cut next to Richie’s eyebrow and with his thumb pressed in a dab of styptic powder to occlude the cut and stop the bleeding.

  “I lost, didn’t I?” Richie asked dejectedly.

  “Probably,” Myron replied candidly. “If you did, it ain’t the end of the world.”

  “End of my undefeated streak,” Richie said, blinking back tears, both from the astringent Myron had used on his cut and from the disappointment lacing his emotions. “I should’ve trained harder last week,” he muttered. “I shouldn’t have worried about her. She sure as hell never worried about me.”

  “Who are you talking about, your mother?” Myron asked sharply. “That ain’t no way to talk. She couldn’t help getting sick.”

  “She ain’t sick, Myron,” Richie blurted out. “She’s a junkie.”

  Myron stared solemnly at him, their sad faces close together. “Oh. I see.” He nodded slowly. “Well, that ain’t the end of the world either—”

  In the center of the ring, Willie Wakefield was being announced the winner and was coming over to congratulate Richie on a good fight. Richie stood up to meet him and they clasped their gloved hands together.

  On the way back to the locker room, Richie got more pats on the back than usual, even when he won, and many of them were from the black fans there to support their club, not his.

  It should have made Richie feel better, but it did not.

  Back at Midwest A. C. later that night, helping Myron put their equipment away, Richie felt as lowdown as he ever had in his life—or so it seemed to him at the moment. His unbeaten record was gone. Life, he was sure, would never be the same. Myron, however, was not concerned about that as much as he was about Richie’s earlier revelation that his mother was a drug addict.

  “I always thought there was something funny about your family situation,” the trainer admitted. “What about your father, is he an addict too?”

  “He don’t live with us,” Richie replied. His thoughts were in such disorder at the moment, he was not certain how much and what to confide in Myron. “I don’t even know where he is,” he added, hoping that would eliminate his father as a subject of conversation.

  “Has your mother tried to get help for her illness?” Myron asked.

  “Illness?” Richie grunted disparagingly.

  “That’s what I said,” Myron declared. “That’s what it is—a sickness. Your mother needs medical treatment, just like for any other ailment.”

  “She was in a hospital and got cured once,” Richie told him, “but she went back on the stuff a few months later.” I gave her as much encouragement as I could, Grace Menefee had said. I couldn’t be with her day and night.

  “Why did she go back on it?” Myron wanted to know. Shrugging, Richie looked away. “There must have been a reason,” Myron pressed.

  “A caseworker from welfare seemed to think it was because she was alone and didn’t have nobody to help her,” Richie told him, continuing to look away.

  “By ‘help’, you mean encourage, give moral support, that sort of thing?” Myron asked.

  “I guess so,” Richie said, shrugging again.

  “Well, that means a lot sometimes,” Myron allowed. “But other people can do just so much for a person; after that, it’s up to the person. You sound like maybe you’re blaming yourself; are you?”

  “I keep wondering if maybe it was my fault,” Richie admitted, “on account of not being around to encourage her.”

  Myron shook his head. “I don’t think you ought to be too hard on yourself, Richie. A person’s gotta want to stay off dope. Best thing anybody can do is help somebody get off the stuff; then it’s up to them. Beyond a certain point, you can’t blame yourself.”

  When the equipment was put away, Myron as always took Richie to get something to eat. Richie was quieter than usual, not particularly over his loss now, but about what Myron had said. He had not ever really tried to help his mother get off drugs. And he wasn’t even planning to help her now; all he was planning to do was run away. It troubled him that he had never really talked to her about her addiction, never told her he would help, never told her he cared. All he had done was bitch about going to the drugstores, bitch about the money it cost, bitch about his own involvement—and then turn her in when he could not cope with the situation any longer.

  Maybe, he thought now, if he did things differently, if he offered to help her, if he let her know he could help her, let her know he wasn’t just a kid anymore, that he’d made it on his own for nearly a year, that he’d learned to box and won twelve straight fights before losing one, let her know that if she was willing to try, they could make it, the two of them, without finding his father, without having a Jack Smart or a Johnny Eaton or a George Zangara in their lives—make it together, just themselves—maybe that would work. He could go back to school and get a part-time job and she could get a job, and they could find a decent place to live, not fancy but not crawling with roaches and bedbugs either, and they could both help keep the place clean, and at night they could drink Coca-Colas and listen to the radio, and he would get good grades in school and bring his report card home to be signed instead of having Vernie sign it, and they could live like regular people. Just like—

  “You’re awful quiet,” Myron remarked.

  “Trying to figure some things out,” Richie said.

  “Think you’ll be able to?” Myron said. “Figure the things out?”

  Richie thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, I think I will.”

  “Think you’ll be able to keep fighting?”

  “I dunno,” Richie said. “I hope so.” He grinned slightly. “I’d like to fight Willie Wakefield again. But there’s some other things I gotta do first. If I can do both, I will. But I dunno.”

  When they finished eating and walked out onto Madison Street, My
ron said, “Listen, if there’s anything I can do to help you, you know I will. I’d hate to see you quit fighting. I don’t know what I could do, but if you think of anything, let me know. Okay?”

  “Sure, Myron. Thanks a lot.”

  Myron offered his hand and Richie shook it.

  “I’ll see you, Richie.”

  “Sure. See you, Myron.”

  The trainer shuffled off toward his streetcar stop and Richie went in the opposite direction, toward the bowling alley.

  Tomorrow, he had made up his mind, he would go see his mother.

  38

  When Richie woke up in the ladies’ lounge the next morning and looked at himself in the mirror, he was reminded of what his face had looked like after Walter Rozinski had beaten him up—except it wasn’t quite as bad. There was no crusted blood in his nostrils or caked on his lips; just one small scab on the half-inch cut at the edge of his eyebrow. But his eyes and cheeks were puffy and slightly discolored, making his face look like an old inner tube that had a couple pounds too much air in it.

  For the next hour, Richie ran cold water over a towel, squeezed it out, and spread it over his face to reduce the swelling a little. Ice would have been better, but he had none; since it was Sunday, the gym would not be open until noon for him to use the locker room. But the cold, wet towels helped considerably; by the time Richie heard the janitors start to work downstairs, his face looked much better. Cleaning up, he unfolded a complete set of clean clothes that he kept in one of his bowling ball lockers, and dressed.

  It was going to be good, he thought, to see his mother again, to talk to her and work things out for the future. He would catch her before she shot up, early enough for her to understand what he was telling her, to understand that his way was the best way, the only way, they could ever make it together. To show her his sincerity, later when she started needing her fix for the day, he would even go over to Lake Street and get the shit for her. Maybe, if there was room and he could get a cot somewhere, he would even move in with her while they figured out exactly how to go about getting her cured again.

  Dressed, hair combed neatly, clean handkerchief in his pocket as Miss Menefee had taught him, Richie gathered up his blanket, pillow, other clothes, and a paperback edition of Butterfield 8 by John O’Hara, whom Richie found easier to read than almost any previous author, and with everything bundled under his arm, went quickly and quietly to the locker room and stashed it in the two small lockers he still had. Going down the back stairs to the first-floor pits, he ignored the cleaning man pushing the polishing machine around on the alley, knowing that the man could not see him through the screens above the pits. At the farthest fire door, Richie eased down the locking bar and slipped out into the alley.

  Richie was hungry this morning, but he was afraid to stop for breakfast in case his mother left before he got there. He had no idea how she was living, but if she was shoplifting full-time she probably had to get started pretty early in the day, especially on Sunday, when there was a smaller selection of stores open. Instead of going for his usual full, hot breakfast at one of the drugstore counters, he trotted up to the Royal Blue market on the corner of Springfield, bought a dime peach pie and a pint bottle of milk, and sat on the curb eating while he waited for a streetcar.

  Everything was going to be all right, he told himself confidently. Things were going to work out now, he was sure of it.

  And he wasn’t going to have to find his goddamned father to make it happen, either.

  Getting off the streetcar at Homan Avenue, at the east end of the park in which he had sat brooding a week earlier, Richie walked down Madison toward the building where his mother was living. When he was halfway there, on impulse he turned and went back to a small drugstore on the corner. He asked a clerk if they had Evening in Paris perfume, and when she showed him a selection, he bought the smallest bottle for two dollars and fifty cents.

  “Girlfriend’s birthday?” the lady asked with a smile.

  “It’s for my mother,” Richie said. “She’s just home from the hospital.”

  “How thoughtful,” the lady said, putting his purchase in a bag. “I hope she’ll be all right.”

  “Thanks,” Richie smiled back.

  Walking down the street again, he was very pleased with himself for having bought his mother a gift. He could remember Jack Smart bringing Chloe bottles of Evening in Paris and how it always seemed to please her so much. Richie hoped that doing the same thing would impress her with the fact that he wasn’t just a little tagalong kid anymore; he could earn money and take care of himself just like a man. Even buy presents for people just like a man did.

  At the building he had seen his mother come out of, Richie stepped into the narrow entry and checked the names on the wall at the bottom of the stairs. He found “C. Clark” next to number 3-G. Climbing two long flights of wooden stairs, he walked down a seedy hallway with worn linoleum on the floor and an uncovered garbage can at one end. There was an odor of putridness about the place: empty wine bottles, dried urine, abided decay; Richie took no deep breaths as he followed the letters on the paint-peeling doors.

  At 3-G he stood close to the door and knocked softly. Swallowing, mouth suddenly dry, he waited; sweat surfaced under his arms. There was no answer and he knocked again, a little louder. After a moment, he called quietly, “Mother—” Still getting no response, he called, “Chloe—it’s me—Richie.” Putting an ear to the door, he heard nothing from the other side. He turned the knob, but the door was locked. It was such an old door that the doorframe was loose; he could see part of the bolt, see that it was unsturdily set and not all the way in its latch. Gripping the knob with one hand, Richie put a shoulder to the door where it met the frame, and applied gradual pressure. It came open easily.

  The first thing that hit him inside the door was a stench much worse than in the hall; it was pervading and foul, like a backed-up toilet in a public restroom. He saw his mother at once, lying on her back on the bed, dressed in a slip, a sheet covering her to the waist. Eyes widening in fright, disbelief, nausea, he went slowly over and stood by the bed. With two fingers, he tentatively touched his mother’s arm. It was rigid and cold. Her eyes were open, fixed sightlessly; lips, without color, were parted soundlessly.

  Steeling himself against the fear of the unknown, the incredulity of the moment, the repugnance of the scene, Richie forced himself to stand very still and shift his eyes away from Chloe. Looking around, he saw a typical cheap little housekeeping room: two-burner hotplate with dried food stains on it, discolored wall sink, small table with mismatched chairs, an old couch with its stuffing coming out of both arms, and the metal bed with sagging springs and a bare, grossly stained mattress on which his mother lay dead.

  With the same two fingers, Richie touched her arm again, quickly as before, as if to substantiate the stiffness and the absence of warmth found in his first contact. On the arm that he touched, below the inside of her elbow, was a spot of dried blood. Next to the bed, inches from his feet, he saw the rubber tubing, burnt spoon, book of matches, and needle. Shaking his head sorrowfully, Richie asked aloud, “Why’d this have to go and happen?” He took a step toward the foot of the bed. “I was gonna help you,” he said. “I had things all figured out. I wasn’t even gonna look for him anymore.” Moving around the corner of the bed, he stood at the foot. “We might could’ve made it, just the two of us. We might could’ve had a pretty good life together.” Around the other corner of the bed he moved, like a doctor talking to a patient, striving to be calm, rational, sensible, in the face of dreadful facts. When he was directly opposite where he had first stood, he asked one last time, “Why’d this have to go and happen?”

  The tears finally came, not in sobs but in steady, silent streams. Now he would never be able to help her. Never be able to make up for not being there when she came home from Lexington, never be able to show her that he had learned to take care of himself and was ready to start helping take care of her. Never be
able to show her that he could get something out of life for them, be somebody. With one plunge of the goddamned needle, one puncture of the fragile flesh, his mother had removed all the praiseworthy plans and purpose from his life, effectively reducing him in his own mind to a guilty failure who had given his mother too little, too late.

  For which his punishment was to be left a nobody, with nothing.

  The grimness of the thought made him shiver. That’s what he had and that’s what he was.

  Nobody.

  Nothing.

  The awful smell in the room was beginning to make him sick; Richie had the urge to hurry away and quickly run the block up to the park where he could breathe deeply without fear of throwing up. Then he remembered the bag in his hand. Opening it and the box in it, he pulled out the bottle and removed the miniature cork. “Look what I brought for you,” he said with a tearful smile. “It’s the kind you always liked, remember? Now you won’t have to smell so bad.” Carefully he put a drop of perfume here, a drop there, being sure to get the places he recalled Chloe herself dabbing—wrists, throat, earlobes—when he had spied on her and Estelle as they got ready to go out. Sprinkling the liquid liberally until he could detect its fragrance penetrating the terrible stench, he then recorked the little bottle and placed it in one of her hands, saying simply, “Here . . . .”

  After that, Richie was shaken by a great, hollow sigh from somewhere deep in the pit of himself and, suddenly feeling very weak, sat down on the floor and leaned back against the bed. The tears were still flowing and he began to sob a little now, quietly, with an occasional shudder.

  Drawing his knees up, he folded his arms over them and lowered his face into the opening they created. He continued to cry, and was still crying a little while later when two policemen came into the room.

  39

  Richie had been in the juvenile detention home for a week when one of the custody officers came into the big dayroom and shouted across the room at him, “Lady downstairs to see you! Get a pass at the visiting desk.”