Rusty Puppy Read online

  “Still don’t give a shit,” Leonard said.

  “And she was good at it. One of her clients, he ended up knifing her. Guy she was trying to get off. People, they’re shit, fellows. Me, I do some good things for the community, but I do it in a way that gets things done, not in a way where I beg for control or power to do something that protects citizens.”

  “Damn,” Leonard said. “I am getting teary-eyed.”

  “Shut the fuck up, nigger,” Sheerfault said.

  “Ease off of that,” Coldpoint said. “So, I made myself what I am today.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” Leonard said.

  Sheerfault poked him in the side with his gun.

  “My sister, Jewel, she was trying to live her life right, help people, but the people she was helping, they didn’t deserve it. Criminals all of them, and one of them killed her. You think life is about doing the right thing, but I say the right thing as the law sees it isn’t always the right thing. The end truly does justify the means.”

  “We agree on that, to some extent,” Leonard said.

  “And you, Mr. Collins. What do you think?”

  “I’m sorry. Did you say something?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Coldpoint said. “I just thought you should know my philosophy a little better. Maybe you can understand my choices.”

  “Nope,” Leonard said. “Not getting it.”

  29

  We took a little ride in the country. The moon had been sacked by some ambitious black clouds and it had started to rain. I thought, Oh hell, I’ve seen this movie, and it doesn’t have a happy ending. The shadowy trees on either side of the road looked like mountain ranges in the night. The headlights were foggy with mist.

  Coldpoint tooled us out to where the old sawmill road was, drove up it. All I could think about was that sawmill sludge in the pit out front and how flesh and bones dissolved in it like snowflakes on a hot skillet.

  There were other cars parked up there, and I could see a light seeping out from where the plywood covering was, and there was more light leaking out of the hole in the roof where the brave pine grew.

  “Get out,” Sheerfault said.

  They walked us to the plywood barrier. We could hear hooting and hollering inside, the sounds of something smacking something else.

  Bobo slid the board back, and we all went inside.

  A generator was humming, and a crowd was gathered around the fence with the pine in the middle. The generator was near where the great saw was. The generator was one of those boxy things you roll in on wheels. It was the source of the lights and had a long cable coming out of it that fit into another box with a lot of long, thick extension cords running out of it. The extension cords led to where lights were arranged on high racks that looked like old-fashioned TV antennas. They were placed primarily around the fencing.

  “Get up closer,” Coldpoint said.

  We did.

  “Give some room,” Coldpoint said to the crowd, and they moved aside. I noticed the handguns had gone back under their coats.

  When we could see what was going on, we saw two young men, teenagers, in the middle of the circle. They were wearing gloves, boxing shorts, and boxing shoes. They had on T-shirts that had a logo for the Camp Rapture Boxing Club. There was a solid-looking older man in the middle serving as a referee. He looked like he had gone a few rounds in his life.

  Across the way, standing behind the fence, were four sets of boxers, all dressed the same way. All of the young men were stout-looking and fresh-faced and nervous.

  “Camp Rapture Boxing Club,” Coldpoint said.

  Coldpoint seemed relaxed, not menacing at all. “That’s what we do here. They haven’t got enough money to train at the actual club all the time. Place shares with gymnastics and children’s tae kwon do. It’s not really an official club, that place. It costs to be there. Not much, but for most of these boys if they had to pay a quarter to fart, they’d have to burp. They train there, but the club is mostly T-shirts and a place to gather, so they train here too. We don’t charge. Two of these boys, ones in there now, they’re training for the Olympics. Fellow in the middle, that’s their coach. Maxwell Landing. He won a few titles in his time, nothing big, but he’s a good coach.”

  “I’ve heard of him,” Leonard said.

  I watched the two boys move around, and they were pretty good, though one kid had a habit of dragging his back foot; keeping it in the bucket, we used to say. He also had a habit of going too wide when he punched. The other kid was fast and circled, and had the most potential, but the bucket-foot kid could really hit.

  “So, you brought us at gunpoint to see the Camp Rapture Boxing Club?” Leonard said.

  “I didn’t think you would have come otherwise,” Coldpoint said. “You got it all wrong, fellows. We’re trying to do something for the community. Sometimes we got to step on a few toes to do it, bend a few laws, but we get it done.”

  “Does this include killing a young man for taking photos and threatening his sister with your brand of law if she didn’t put out?” I said.

  “There are human failings in the mix,” Coldpoint said. He nodded at the boys in the ring. “We let them train here. We raise money for the club. In time, maybe we can get them someplace to train more regularly, not just a couple hours on Wednesday over at the recreation center, trying to find spots and time between the girls’ gymnastics lessons and the like. Get the poorer kids free admission to the club, get money off their minds and put boxing on it full-time for a while.”

  “You are such fucking humanitarians,” Leonard said. “And here we thought you were just assholes. Oh yeah, there was the gun thing, and threats from Bobo and the dancer. That doesn’t make things seem nearly as polite as you make out.”

  “Again, you might not have come,” Coldpoint said. “I wanted to nip this all in the bud before you got too worked up and started trying to pin that kid Jamar’s death on us.”

  “I’m no dancer,” Sheerfault said.

  “Hush,” Coldpoint said to him. “You see what’s going on here. This place, it’s not supposed to be used for anything. Supposed to be dangerous. But it’s what we got for free, so it’s where we come. Yeah, it’s illegal and I’m a cop. Building code, safety regulations, and all that. But they need a place to train for those who can’t go to the club, and for those who can, they only get two nights a week. We add to that.”

  “You’re just some sweet fellas helping some sweet kids,” Leonard said.

  “Exactly,” Coldpoint said, and gave me his magazine-model smile.

  We stood and watched the kids finish up. When they came out, two others went in, smiling at each other, lifting their gloves to touch, the referee giving them the signal.

  That fight was a good one, better than the two kids that were supposed to be up for the Olympics. Both had game and skill, both were fast and hit hard for their age and size.

  “And who are all these people?” I said.

  “Investors,” Coldpoint said.

  “In what exactly?” I said.

  “These boys. Their futures. We’re trying to get them to sponsor buying this old place, turn it into a boxing club. Some repairs would be needed. But in this crowd, there’s some real money, and a few people who work as carpenters and the like are part of it, and they could make it better with free labor, if we get them to believe in what we’re doing.”

  When the fights were all done, the boys filed out, and then the crowd followed. In time it was just me and Leonard and the three humanitarians. Bobo appeared to have gone to sleep on his feet, his mouth hanging open, his eyes glazed over.

  “Sheerfuck,” Leonard said. “We got a ring, and we got the time, how about you and me do it again? You dance the Charleston, and I’ll fight.”

  “I already proved what I have to prove,” Sheerfault said.

  “In a dance contest,” Leonard said.

  “Shit, burr-head, you don’t want me on your ass again.”

  “You afr
aid I’ll show you up? I was you, and it was me you had to fight, I’d worry too. Name-calling don’t break a bone, motherfucker. But fists and feet do. No pointing rules. None of the referee stuff.”

  “Seems like a good idea to me,” I said. “Sheerfault is so certain, here’s his chance for a repeat performance, but not on points.”

  “What do you think?” Coldpoint said, looking at Sheerfault.

  Leonard had Sheerfault where he wanted him, and in front of his asshole friends.

  “Sure,” Sheerfault said. “We can do that. But I’ll tell you, Leonard, we go in, when it’s over, you wake up at all, it will be in the hospital with a tube up your nose.”

  “Done got me trembling all over,” Leonard said.

  “No eye-gouging and no throat strikes,” Coldpoint said. “I’m going to insist on some rules. Gets too bad for one of you, I’m breaking it up.”

  “Don’t think it’s too bad before it is,” Leonard said.

  “For the record,” I said, “you got nothing to prove, Leonard. I know you can whip him, and you know you can whip him.”

  “Yeah, but he don’t know it yet,” Leonard said.

  Sheerfault said, “You know that’s right.”

  “And another thing, no gloves,” Leonard said.

  Coldpoint glanced at Sheerfault.

  “Sure,” Sheerfault said.

  “I get through, Hap here will punch Bobo’s lights out,” Leonard said. “All two watts.”

  “Leave me out of this,” I said. “Bobo can keep his lights on.”

  “Lights?” Bobo said.

  “It’s an expression,” Sheerfault said. “I’ll explain it to you later.”

  “All right,” Coldpoint said. “You called it, Pine. What do you two need to do to get ready?”

  “I’m always ready,” Leonard said. “They pulled me out of my mama, I was ready for lunch and a fistfight.”

  30

  They stripped off their coats and shirts, and Sheerfault took off his ring and watch and handed it to me along with his coat and shirt because I was the closest to the edge of the fence. Leonard came over and gave me his stuff.

  “Leonard, you are a dumbass.”

  “Yeah, but I can fight.”

  Leonard went to the center. I folded the ring and watch up in Sheerfault’s shirt. The ring was a peculiar thing, a hefty silver skull on a thick silver band. I placed the shirts and coats on an apple box by the edge of the fence.

  In the center of the wire enclosure they stood ready. Sheerfault was a little heavy, but not fat. Just a guy with a light winter coating of meat. Leonard was not at his peak, but when he’s out of shape he’s in better shape than most.

  Leonard and Sheerfault began to move, circling at first, looking for a hole, meaning a spot where they could slip a punch through. Leonard held his hands a little low. It was a ploy of his, get you to think you could come in and find a spot to hit, and then up came the hands and he hit you. Also, higher you held your hands, more tired you got. Sheerfault had a more classic style, hands high. They both held their chins up; didn’t put them to their chests like boxers of old.

  Sheerfault faked high with his right hand and brought a round kick around to Leonard’s thigh, but Leonard turned his leg and slid off most of the attack. They circled some more, and then Sheerfault tried a similar trick on the other side, and that’s when Leonard closed.

  He hit Sheerfault two quick ones in the head with a motion so swift the blows sounded almost like one. Sheerfault ducked enough to take them on his forehead. That can be hard on bare knuckles. It can be hard on your head, for that matter. Neither seemed fazed.

  Sheerfault was swift and his hands came quickly, like flesh missiles. Leonard dodged a few, but the others hit, and that worried me at first, but then I realized what Leonard knew. Those hits, though fast, were arm hits, meaning Sheerfault didn’t put his body behind them, didn’t turn his hips in a way that generated power. This was what Leonard meant about Sheerfault winning on points. The touches would count in a ring fight, a controlled fight, but in a real fight, not so much.

  Sheerfault flicked again, and this time Leonard slipped inside and body-punched Sheerfault twice with the same hand, once in the solar plexus, once in the kidney. Sheerfault let out some air and tried to disengage, but Leonard wouldn’t let him, kept on coming, throwing his punches hard, hitting Sheerfault with most of them. Sheerfault couldn’t seem to get it together. Leonard had stolen his balance and every time Sheerfault tried to regain it, Leonard was there to steal it again.

  Sheerfault finally disengaged by managing to hit Leonard with a jab in the face that was a pretty good punch. It stunned Leonard a little, and that gave Sheerfault some room.

  Sheerfault dove in for a tackle, but as he grabbed Leonard’s front leg, Leonard threw his reverse leg back and dropped down on his belly, driving Sheerfault to the ground as he went. Then he hit Sheerfault in the nape of the neck with an elbow. Sheerfault lost his grip on Leonard’s front positioned leg, and Leonard swiveled like a trick rider and was on Sheerfault’s back.

  Sheerfault tried to roll out of it, but he wasn’t rolling anywhere. Leonard had his weight distributed just right, and then he had his arm around Sheerfault’s neck, positioning it in such a way that he didn’t have his forearm in Sheerfault’s throat, just his bent elbow. He was going for the constriction choke, what my dad used to call the Japanese stranglehold.

  Sheerfault thought he was finally managing to rise a bit, pushing up with his arms, but that was Leonard’s ploy. He was making himself lighter by lifting up on the balls of his feet, giving Sheerfault a false feeling of accomplishment. As Sheerfault rose, Leonard clamped his legs around Sheerfault’s body and rolled on his back with a movement so quick it took us all by surprise. Now Sheerfault was facing the ceiling, his body in Leonard’s clamps. Leonard lay comfortably on his back, choking Sheerfault by squeezing his arms together and expanding his chest.

  Leonard didn’t cross his ankles around Sheerfault’s abdomen. He did that, Sheerfault could push down on Leonard’s ankles with his hands, even throw his own leg over them, and cause excruciating pain. Leonard dug his heels into Sheerfault’s thighs.

  Sheerfault tried to twist loose. He managed to slide Leonard a short pace across the sawdust flooring, but he couldn’t pull Leonard’s hands off. Sheerfault tugged to dislodge Leonard’s arms, without results. It was as if he were making a polite suggestion to a hungry python to loosen its coils, but pythons and Leonard didn’t play that way.

  I saw Sheerfault’s eyes roll up, and his feet wiggled desperately, as if pedaling a bicycle, and then Sheerfault’s arms dropped to his sides, as useless as a dead man’s dick. Leonard didn’t quit squeezing.

  “Let him go,” Coldpoint said.

  But Leonard didn’t let him go.

  “Bobo,” Coldpoint said.

  Bobo started for the gate. I put a hand on his shoulder, said, “Hey, look, she’s naked,” and pointed.

  Bobo looked where I was pointing, and I hit him in the jaw. I really brought that one by express train, but it merely made Bobo’s head nod.

  I stuck my heel into his thigh, way you would use it to push a shovel into the dirt. His leg went out from under him. I got my knee in his face a couple of times, jammed an elbow into the back of his neck. He went facedown in a scattering of dirt and sawdust.

  I walked around Bobo, through the gate, and into the ring. I bent close to Leonard.

  “You showed him,” I said. “Let him go.”

  “I don’t like him,” Leonard said, and squeezed harder, pushing in with his chest, his chin in the top of Sheerfault’s head.

  “I know,” I said. “But you want it so he remembers it.”

  “I want that?”

  “Sure you do.”

  “Silly me,” Leonard said. “I thought I wanted to kill the son of a bitch.”

  “If you get everything you want for Christmas, there’s nothing to look forward to.”

  “That’s true,�
�� Leonard said, let go and pushed Sheerfault off him. Sheerfault lay still in the sawdust. Coldpoint came through the gate and inside the fence.

  “You better not have killed him,” Coldpoint said.

  “He’ll come around,” Leonard said.

  Bobo was up now, staggering a little, starting through the gate toward me.

  “That’s enough, Bobo,” Coldpoint said. “Get out of there.”

  Bobo let that command move around inside his head like a blindfolded man in a new house. Finally he stopped and stood by the fence. He looked at Sheerfault, said, “Is he dead?”

  Sheerfault certainly didn’t look as if he were merely taking a nap. Maybe Leonard was wrong about him coming around.

  I sighed, grabbed Sheerfault under his arms, and pulled him up a little. I stuck my knee in his back, rubbed at the sides of his throat, rubbed down on his chest with my palms, bent him forward, hammered him a few times in the small of the back. He coughed and spat up a wad of blood and fell over onto his side in the sawdust, breathing heavily. His eyes came open, fluttered, closed again.

  Leonard stood over Sheerfault.

  “I was wrong,” Leonard said. “You don’t even dance that well, Sheerfuck.”

  I took Leonard by the elbow and we started toward the gate.

  “You took me by surprise,” Bobo said as me and Leonard went past him.

  “That was the idea,” I said. “Me and Leonard call it the elephant of surprise.”

  31

  They dropped us off by our car at the high school and drove away. Leonard had his coat under his arm. He was still heated up from having fought Sheerfault.

  “I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I don’t believe any of that shit about helping the poor kids have a place to train.”

  “They’re doing that, all right,” I said, “but that’s not all they’re doing. The idea that Jamar was murdered and Charm was sexually harassed just bounces off of him. He’s one of those guys think their misery in life makes them special. Allows them to justify anything they do and say it’s the best for the people. Jesus.”