Rare Lansdale Read online

  The big man with missing teeth raised his head, glared at McBride. McBride said, "Nigger whipped your ass, didn’t he, Forrest?"

  Forrest didn’t say anything, but his face said a lot. McBride said, "You can’t whip the nigger, so your boss sent for me. I can whip the nigger. So don’t think for a moment you can whip me."

  "Come on," Beems said. "Let’s leave. The man makes me sick."

  Beems joined the others, his hand held out to his side. The elderly gentlemen looked as if they had just realized they were lost in the forest. They organized themselves enough to start out the door. Beems followed, turned before exiting, glared at McBride.

  McBride said, "Don’t wash that hand, Beems. You can say, ‘Shake the hand of the man who shook the balls of John McBride."’

  "You go to hell," Beems said.

  "Keep me posted," McBride said. Beems left. McBride yelled after him and his crowd, "And gentlemen, enjoyed doing business with you."

  9:12 P.M.

  Later in the night the redhead displeased him and McBride popped her other eye, stretched her out, lay across her, and slept. While he slept, he dreamed he had a head of hair like Mr. Ronald Beems.

  Outside, the wind picked up slightly, blew hot, brine-scented air down Galveston’s streets and through the whorehouse window.

  9:34 P.M.

  Bill Cooper was working outside on the second-floor deck he was building. He had it completed except for a bit of trim work. It had gone dark on him sometime back, and he was trying to finish by lantern light. He was hammering a sidewall board into place when he felt a drop of rain. He stopped hammering and looked up. The night sky had a peculiar appearance, and for a moment it gave him pause. He studied the heavens a moment longer, decided it didn’t look all that bad. It was just the starlight that gave it that look.

  No more drops fell on him.

  Bill tossed the hammer on the deck, leaving the nail only partially driven, picked up the lantern, and went inside the house to be with his wife and baby son. He’d had enough for one day.

  11:01 P.M.

  The waves came in loud against the beach and the air was surprisingly heavy for so late at night. It lay hot and sweaty on "Lil" Arthur John Johnson’s bare chest. He breathed in the air and blew it out, pounded the railroad tie with all his might for the hundredth time. His right fist struck it, and the tie moved in the sand. He hooked it with a left, jammed it with a straight right, putting his entire six-foot, two-hundred-pound frame into it. The tie went backwards, came out of the sand, and hit the beach.

  Arthur stepped back and held out his broad, black hands and examined them in the moonlight. They were scuffed, but essentially sound. He walked down to the water and squatted and stuck his hands in, let the surf roll over them. The salt didn’t even burn. His hands were like leather. He rubbed them together, being sure to coat them completely with seawater. He cupped water in his palms, rubbed it on his face, over his shaved, bullet head.

  Along with a number of other pounding exercises, he had been doing this for months, conditioning his hands and face with work and brine. Rumor was, this man he was to fight, this McBride, had fists like razors, fists that cut right through the gloves and tore the flesh.

  "Lil" Arthur took another breath, and this one was filled not only with the smell of saltwater and dead fish, but of raw sewage, which was regularly dumped offshore in the Gulf.

  He took his shovel and redug the hole in the sand and dropped the tie back in, patted it down, went back to work. This time, two socks and it came up. He repeated the washing of his hands and face, then picked up the tie, placed it on a broad shoulder and began to run down the beach. When he had gone a good distance, he switched shoulders and ran back. He didn’t even feel winded.

  He collected his shovel, and with the tie on one shoulder, started toward his family’s shack in the Rats, also known as NiggerTown.

  "Lil" Arthur left the tie in front of the shack and put the shovel on the sagging porch. He was about to go inside when he saw a man start across the little excuse of a yard. The man was white. He was wearing dress clothes and a top hat.

  When he was near the front porch, he stopped, took off his hat. It was Forrest Thomas, the man "Lil" Arthur had beaten unconscious three weeks back. It had taken only till the middle of the third round.

  Even in the cloud-hazy moonlight, "Lil" Arthur could see Forrest looked rough. For a moment, a fleeting moment, he almost felt bad about inflicting so much damage. But then he began to wonder if the man had a gun.

  "Arthur," Forrest said. "I come to talk a minute, if’n it’s all right."

  This was certainly different from the night "Lil" Arthur had climbed into the ring with him. Then, Forrest Thomas had been conceited and full of piss and vinegar and wore the word nigger on his lips as firmly as a mole. He was angry he had been reduced by his employer to fighting a black man. To hear him tell it, he deserved no less than John L. Sullivan, who refused to fight a Negro, considering it a debasement to the heavyweight title.

  "Yeah," "Lil" Arthur said. "What you want?"

  "I ain’t got nothing against you," Forrest said.

  "Don’t matter you do," "Lil" Arthur said

  .

  "You whupped me fair and square."

  "I know, and I can do it again."

  "I didn’t think so before, but I know you can now."

  "That’s what you come to say? You got all dressed up, just to come talk to a nigger that whupped you?"

  "I come to say more."

  "Say it. I’m tired."

  "McBride’s come in."

  "That ain’t tellin’ me nothin’. I reckoned he’d come in sometime. How’m I gonna fight him, he don’t come in?"

  "You don’t know anything about McBride. Not really. He killed a man in the ring, his last fight in Chicago. That’s why Beems brought him in, to kill you. Beems and his bunch want you dead ‘cause you whipped a white man. They don’t care you whipped me. They care you whipped a white man. Beems figures it’s an insult to the white race, a white man being beat by a colored. This McBride, he’s got a shot at the Championship of the World. He’s that good."

  "You tellin’ me you concerned for me?"

  "I’m tellin’ you Beems and the members of the Sportin’ Club can’t take it. They lost a lot of money on bets, too. They got to set it right, see. I ain’t no friend of yours, but I figure I owe you that. I come to warn you this McBride is a killer."

  "Lil" Arthur listened to the crickets saw their legs a moment, then said, "If that worried me, this man being a killer, and I didn’t fight him, that would look pretty good for your boss, wouldn’t it? Beems could say the bad nigger didn’t show up. That he was scared of a white man."

  "You fight this McBride, there’s a good chance he’ll kill you or cripple you. Boxing bein’ against the law, there won’t be nobody there legal to keep check on things. Not really. Audience gonna be there ain’t gonna say nothin’. They ain’t supposed to be there anyway. You died, got hurt bad, you’d end up out there in the Gulf with a block of granite tied to your dick, and that’d be that."

  "Sayin’ I should run?"’

  "You run, it gives Beems face, and you don’t take a beatin’, maybe get killed. You figure it."

  "You ain’t doin’ nothin’ for me. You’re just pimpin’ for Beems. You tryin’ to beat me with your mouth. Well, I ain’t gonna take no beatin’. White. Colored. Striped. It don’t matter. McBride gets in the ring, I’ll knock him down. You go on back to Beems. Tell him I ain’t scared, and I ain’t gonna run. And ain’t none of this workin’."

  Forrest put his hat on. "Have it your way, nigger." He turned and walked away.

  "Lil" Arthur started inside the house, but before he could open the door, his father, Henry, came out. He dragged his left leg behind him as he came, leaned on his cane. He wore a ragged undershirt and work pants. He was sweaty. Tired. Gray. Grayer yet in the muted moonlight.

  "You ought not talk to a white man that way," Henry said. "T
hem Ku Kluxers’ll come ‘round."

  "I ain’t afraid of no Ku Kluxers."

  "Yeah, well I am, and we be seein’ what you say when you swingin’ from a rope, a peckerwood cuttin’ off yo balls. You ain’t lived none yet. You ain’t nothin’ but twenty-two years. Sit down, boy."

  "Papa, you ain’t me. I ain’t got no bad leg. I ain’t scared of nobody."

  "I ain’t always had no bad leg. Sit down."

  "Lil" Arthur sat down beside his father. Henry said, "A colored man, he got to play the game, to win the game. You hear me?"

  "I ain’t seen you winnin’ much."

  Henry slapped "Lil" Arthur quickly. It was fast, and "Lil" Arthur realized where he had inherited his hand speed. "You shut yo face," Henry said. "Don’t talk to your papa like that."

  "Lil" Arthur reached’ up and touched his cheek, not because it hurt, but because he was still a little amazed. Henry said, "For a colored man, winnin’ is stayin’ alive to live out the time God give you."

  "But how you spend what time you got, Papa, that ain’t up to God. I’m gonna be the Heavyweight Champion of the World someday. You’ll see."

  "There ain’t never gonna be no colored Champion of the World, ‘Lil’ Arthur. And there ain’t no talkin’ to you. You a fool. I’m gonna be cuttin’ you down from a tree some morning, yo neck all stretched out. Help me up. I’m goin’ to bed."

  "Lil" Arthur helped his father up, and the old man, balanced on his cane, dragged himself inside the shack.

  A moment later, "Lil" Arthur’s mother, Tina, came out. She was a broad-faced woman, short and stocky, nearly twenty years younger than her husband.

  "You don’t need talk yo papa that way," she said.

  "He don’t do nothin’, and he don’t want me to do nothin’," "Lil" Arthur said.

  "He know what he been through, Arthur. He born a slave. He made to fight for white mens like he was some kinda fightin’ rooster, and he got his leg paralyzed ‘cause he had to fight for them Rebels in the war. You think on that. He in one hell of a fix. Him a colored man out there shootin’ at Yankees, ‘cause if he don’t, they gonna shoot him, and them Rebels gonna shoot him he don’t fight the Yankees."

  "I ain’t all that fond of Yankees myself. They ain’t likin’ niggers any more than anyone else."

  "That’s true. But, yo papa, he right about one thing. You ain’t lived enough to know nothin’ about nothin’. You want to be a white man so bad it hurt you. You is African, boy. You is born of slaves come from slaves come from Africa."

  "You sayin’ what he’s sayin’?"

  "Naw, I ain’t. I’m sayin’, you whup this fella, and you whup him good. Remember when them bullies used to chase you home, and I tell you, you come back without fightin’, I’m gonna whup you harder than them?"

  "Yes, ma’am."

  "And you got so you whupped ‘em good, just so I wouldn’t whup yo ass?"

  "Yes ma’am."

  "Well, these here white men hire out this man against you, threaten you, they’re bullies. You go in there, and you whup this fella, and you use what God give you in them hands, and you make your way. But you remember, you ain’t gonna have nothin’ easy. Only way a white man gonna get respect for you is you knock him down, you hear? And you can knock him down in that ring better than out here, ‘cause then you just a bad nigger they gonna hang. But you don’t talk to yo papa that way. He better than most. He got him a steady job, and he hold this family together."

  "He’s a janitor."

  "That’s more than you is."

  "And you hold this family together."

  "It a two-person job, son."

  "Yes, ma’am."

  "Good night, son."

  "Lil" Arthur hugged her, kissed her cheek, and she went inside. He followed, but the smallness of the two-room house, all those bodies on pallets–his parents, three sisters, two brothers, and a brother-in-law–made him feel crowded. And the pigeons sickened him. Always the pigeons. They had found a hole in the roof–the one that had been covered with tar paper–and now they were roosting inside on the rafters. Tomorrow, half the house would be covered in bird shit. He needed to get up there and put some fresh tar paper on the roof. He kept meaning to. Papa couldn’t do it, and he spent his own time training. He had to do more for the family besides bring in a few dollars from fighting.

  "Lil" Arthur got the stick they kept by the door for just such an occasion, used it to rout the pigeons by poking at them. In the long run, it wouldn’t matter. They would fly as high as the roof, then gradually creep back down to roost. But the explosion of bird wings, their rise to the sky through the hole in the roof, lifted his spirits.

  His brother-in-law, Clement, rose up on an elbow from his pallet, and his wife, "Lil" Arthur’s sister Lucy, stirred and rolled over, stretched her arm across Clement’s chest, but didn’t wake up.

  "What you doin’, Arthur?" Clement whispered. "You don’t know a man’s got to sleep? I got work to do ‘morrow. Ain‘t all of us sleep all day."

  "Sleep then. And stay out of my sister. Lucy don’t need no kids now. We got a house full a folks."

  "She my wife. We supposed to do that. And multiply."

  "Then get your own place and multiply. We packed tight as turds here."

  "You crazy, Arthur."

  Arthur cocked the pigeon stick. "Lay down and shut up."

  Clement lay down, and Arthur put the stick back and gathered up his pallet and went outside. He inspected the pallet for bird shit, found none, stretched out on the porch, and tried to sleep. He thought about getting his guitar, going back to the beach to strum it, but he was too tired for that. Too tired to do anything, too awake to sleep.

  His mother had told him time and again that when he was a baby, an old Negro lady with the second sight had picked up his little hand and said, "This child gonna eat his bread in many countries."

  It was something that had always sustained him. But now, he began to wonder. Except for trying to leave Galveston by train once, falling asleep in the boxcar, only to discover it had been making circles in the train yard all night as supplies were unloaded, he’d had no adventures, and was still eating his bread in Galveston.

  All night he fought mosquitoes, the heat, and his own ambition. By morning he was exhausted.

  WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 10:20 A.M.

  Telegraphed Message from Washington, D.C., Weather Bureau, Central Office, to Issac Cline, Galveston, Texas, Weather Bureau, Central Office:

  Disturbance center near Key West moving northwest. Vessels bound for Florida and Cuban ports should exercise caution. Storm likely to become dangerous.

  10:23 A.M.

  McBride awoke, flicked the redhead, sat up in bed, and cracked his knuckles, said, "I’m going to eat and train, Red. You have your ass here when I get back, and put it on the Sportin’ Club’s bill. And wash yourself, for heaven’s sake."

  "Yes sir, Mr. McBride," she said.

  McBride got up, poured water into a washbasin, washed his dick, under his arms, splashed water on his face. Then he sat at the dresser in front of the mirror and spent twenty minutes putting on the Chinaman’s remedy and combing his hair. As soon as he had it just right, he put on a cap.

  He got dressed in loose pants, a short-sleeved shirt, soft shoes, wrapped his knuckles with gauze, put a little notebook and pencil in his back pocket, then pulled on soft leather gloves. When the redhead wasn’t looking, he wrapped his revolver and razor in a washrag, stuffed them between his shirt and his stomach.

  Downstairs, making sure no one was about, he removed the rag containing his revolver and razor, stuck them into the drooping greenness of a potted plant, then went away.

  He strolled down the street to a cafe and ordered steak and eggs and lots of coffee. He ate with his gloves and hat on. He paid for the meal, but got a receipt.

  Comfortably full, he went out to train.

  He began at the docks. There were a number of men hard at work. They were loading bags of cottonseed onto a ship
. He stood with his hands behind his back and watched. The scent of the sea was strong. The water lapped at the pilings enthusiastically, and the air was as heavy as a cotton sack.

  After a while, he strolled over to a large bald man with arms and legs like plantation columns. The man wore faded overalls without a shirt, and his chest was as hairy as a bear’s ass. He had on heavy work boots with the sides burst out. McBride could see his bare feet through the openings. McBride hated a man that didn’t keep up his appearance, even when he was working. Pride was like a dog. You didn’t feed it regularly, it died.

  McBride said, "What’s your name?"

  The man, a bag of cottonseed under each arm, stopped and looked at him, taken aback. "Ketchum," he said. "Warner Ketchum."