Pound for Pound (37 page)

“That’s a start,” Earl said, pretending to still hold back. “Where’ll he live?”

“I already got him stayin in my old room.”

Earl had to look away again.
“Old
room? So this is already a done goddamn deal?”

“No, no, not if you don’t want it.”

Earl couldn’t keep it in any longer. He slapped his thigh and busted out laughing.

Dan said, “Ya fuck, ya, makin me dance, your own white brother.”
Earl clapped his hands and laughed some more and held his belly and slid along the wall. Dan loved him.

They went downstairs, where Chicky was waiting. Tired as he was from the night before, he had slept little. Barky had made things worse at five
a.m.
when he wheezed to go out to pee.

Earl and Dan tried to look serious, but Chicky could see they were happy about something. He hoped to God that Earl saw something good in him, too.

Earl said, “Why’d you say you were going back home?”

“My piss-poor record. And money.”

“Who’d you lose to?”

“Black feller in Las Vegas who was eleven and zero with eight KOs. The other one, a Mexican supposed to be five and zero with three knockouts. Once I was in with him, I could tell he was way more’n that. Tony Velasco set the first two up.”

“Setup is right,” said Earl. “Did the first two kick your ass?”

“Hail, no!”

Earl had to smile. “Where’d you do your farming?”

“For my granddaddy in Poteet, that’s the strawberry capital of Texas.”

“You think you’d like shop work?”

“What with trainin with y’all, it’s soundin better’n better, yessir.”

Earl extended his hand, and shook the gentle, fighter’s handshake. “Hard Knock’s got a new fighter.”

Dan had returned to Los Angeles three months before Chicky shook hands with Tony Velasco. He wished that he had met the kid earlier, that he could have saved him from being fucked over. Well, they’d just have to make up for lost time.

They went through the door at the back of the shop and entered the gym.

“But there’s one more thing, since you’re stayin here. No girls upstairs,” Earl insisted. “Whores steal and nice girls squeal.”

Chicky smiled at the idea of nice girls squealing.

Earl said, “Not that way. To the police. Lawsuits.”
Chicky frowned. He hadn’t thought of that. These old guys were no dummies.

Dan said, “You got a steady girl?”

“Not no more.”

“If you get one, that’s your business,” Dan said, “and she’ll be welcome here to visit, but not upstairs.”

“I ain’t likely to go fishin in that ol’ pond for a spell.”

Earl winked at Dan. Both smiled.

Chicky was so grateful and so proud to be working with Dan Cooley that he thought he’d bust his buttons. He wanted to call Eloy right off about the good news, but decided to wait at least a week, maybe two, for fear that he might somehow mess up large and get his dumb ass run off. How would he ever explain that one? Tony Velasco and Blond Darleen would be hard enough to talk about. He thought on it some more. Yeah, he’d come clean to his granddaddy about Velasco and his defeats—his three losses were sure to come out in the wash, anyway. But Blond Darleen’s dirty drawers he’d keep tucked under his Stetson.

He fit right in to the shop, with Momolo and the other guys. This was the closest thing to family he had experienced since he’d left Eloy and the farm.

Dan and Earl trained Chicky the way they had trained Tim Pat. They trained all their fighters the same way, starting with balance, movement, and how to torque ass for power. Because Dan was getting old, Earl worked the punch mitts. Dan was involved with everything else, especially movement, angles, and distance, but he also worked the mitts if Earl wasn’t there.

Once Chicky’d settled into the routine of his new job, and the hump-busting training sessions in the gym, he began to believe in himself again, especially when he heard the
pop, pop, BANG!
his gloves made when he fired jabs and leads and hooks into the mitts, Earl calling the combinations like a drill sergeant.

“Come off that hind toe! Do it! ‘At’s my baby! Do it again! Do it
pretty
for me!”

Chicky found himself slipping punches, and catching punches, and countering punches, and suddenly understood that he was learning boxing from Doctors of the Philosophy of War. Dan taught him about breathing, too. It was hard at first. Chicky could coordinate it with the jab as he shot forward off the back foot, but breathing as he threw combinations flummoxed him. Dan walked him to a big bag. He instructed the boy to only slap, rather than punch, and to breathe and slap in slow motion with both hands, one after the other, four punches per combination.

“Start with the head and end with the body, like this. Now start with the body like this, and end with the head. Breathe as you slap. Slow. Slow. That’s it. Do it slow until you can combine the timing and balance and slaps with your lungs, until it’s all one thing, simple as a yawn and a stretch.”

It took a few days. Chicky practiced with the doorjamb in his room.
Slap, slap, slap, slap.
One night he got it. He ran downstairs, Barky on his tail. He went slowly, only slapped, and then he began to punch and to breathe, slowly at first, slowly, and then he let it rip, and then he punched for a solid five fucking minutes and knew he could punch for another ten. Sweat streamed from him, the best sweat of his life.

“Hot damn, look at Chicky Garza now!”

The next day he was breathing
and
punching, and never in his life had he worked so fast and with such force, never had he had such wind and legs. His body worked for him instead of the other way around. He was suddenly separate from and free of himself. Fifteen three-minute rounds, one minute rest between each. Aside from Earl and the mitts, his routine included the big and speed bags, the jump rope. It also called for sit-ups, five sets of thirty reps each. It meant he was working at the max, and he was losing four to six pounds of water weight during his seventy-plus-minute workout, about what he’d lose during a fight. He’d be up the next morning to jog through the wooded old golf course. He
would shower afterward, eat a light breakfast, and then nap for an hour and a half. He’d lie around watching TV until time for lunch, and then he’d work off his meal in the shop until it was time to hit the gym again. After that, it was salad, chicken or fish, green vegetables, and either steamed spuds or brown rice—no salt, light butter. Fruit, sleep. Up and running the next day. Sunday he’d go to the park or the movies, or sometimes out to Venice Beach to watch girls. His Stetson and boots seemed to put off the local stuff. He didn’t understand that he needed a volleyball and baggy shorts. Or have bodybuilder bitch tits and strut, half whacked, with steroid-fueled rage. He understood the thongs up the cracks of babes’ asses, all right, but he didn’t know how to get those thongs down to their ankles. He’d think about Darleen, have to rearrange his shorts, and then head for a movie with lots of stunts and explosions. Fool movies. But they took him away from being lonely until he could set his mind back where it belonged.

“How’m I doin, Mr. Cooley?” said Chicky, turning away from the big bag at the bell.

“Not bad.”

“Not bad? You didn’t see me tearin it
up?”

“Yeah, I did. And you’ll do it better once we close that wide-assed stance of yours.”

“I just don’t seem able to get the knack.”

Dan smiled. They’d been working at it since day one. Dan knew how simple it all was—once you understood it. But some boys never would get it, even fighters who made it to a title. “Let’s give her another shot.”

Dan waved Chicky into the ring, thinking he’d try to reach the kid by using different words, different moves, something new. He instructed Chicky to take his regular fighting stance, feet wide, and to stand midway between two corners of the ring, his left shoulder next to the top ring rope connecting the two. When he threw his straight left hand, it would slide along the top of the rope.

“Good,” Dan said, facing Chicky. “The wider your feet, the shorter your reach.” Dan rested his open hand on the top rope. “Now go easy and in slow motion. Slide your left glove along the top of the rope and make contact with my hand same as if you was punchin.”

Chicky stepped off his right, or front foot, but as always his back foot remained rooted in the same rear position. That meant that in order for Chicky to make contact with Dan’s hand, he would have to lean in and bend forward. With his head and shoulders down and stretching, it meant that Chicky’s upper body was out past the balance point of his right, or front knee, a problem that had deviled him from the very beginning of his boxing career. Stripped of balance, and his reach shortened due to improper mechanics, Chicky was unable to make contact with Dan’s open hand.

“You’re too far away.”

“Not when you do it right,” Dan told him. “Like I keep tellin you, the problem is that you’re stepping off on the heel of your front foot, instead of pushing off with the toe, or ball, of your back foot. Simple as that.”

Dan instructed Chicky to rest his left glove on the top rope the same way Dan had rested his right hand. Dan, as a right-hander, made the move he’d instructed Chicky to make. Not only did Dan reach Chicky’s glove, but his fist moved six inches past it.

“How the hell you
do
that?” Chicky asked.

“Make the same move as before, only this time push off the ball of your hind foot as if you were jumping a puddle with a snake in it.”

Chicky pushed and damned if both feet didn’t move forward on their own. “No snake bite.”

“No snake bite,” Dan repeated. “Now, do it again, but turn your ass and left shoulder while you do. No reaching or leaning, just a little flexing of your front knee as your weight shifts forward.”

Chicky followed instructions. Not only did Chicky’s glove make contact with Dan’s hand, but it also shoved Dan’s hand back another eight inches.

“Damn!” said the kid.

“Now do it with your jab, coming off that back toe in the same way.”

It worked again.

“Now give me a one-two, rotating your ass and shoulders.”

Chicky thought of the snake in the puddle. Both feet moved. Both punches landed.

“This here’s magic, Mr. Cooley.”

“I told you you’d get it. Now it’s practice. Repetition until you’re blue in the face.”

“What shade of blue you want?”

Dan had to smile. “Now let’s move around the ring. Use your back foot to move forward, your front foot to go back, your left foot to go right, and your right foot to go left.” Dan kept circling. “When you’re in position to fire, come off that back toe for me so both feet move. Soon you’ll be able to fight inside, outside, left side, right, any fookin side you fookin want.”

These were the dreams Chicky had dreamed back in Texas. He could feel his life changing.

“See, boxing ain’t street fighting where strength alone can make a winner,” Dan explained. “Boxing’s a game of little things, like the links in a bicycle chain. It ain’t about big or strong, it’s about speed times weight bein equal to
force,
not to strength. It’s about respect and heart, and all this comes from your mind and legs, not the muscles in your arms, and sure as hell not because you think you’re some kind of tough. Now the question is whether you can execute under pressure.”

“I can execute,” Chicky said confidently.

“I believe you.”

And Chicky believed Dan. Everything his new trainer showed him how to do made sense. It worked, all of it.

Dan was friends with the greens master at the nearby Wilshire Country Club. He was the father of an amateur boy Dan had once trained. Dan’s fighters had run there for years, running the paths and under the trees at
five every morning except Saturdays and Sundays, and leaving by the back gate before most golfers teed off on the first hole. Now Chicky ran with Momolo and Barky every morning. After breakfast, Chicky cleaned floors in the shop and hauled trash to the Dumpsters. He cleaned toilets and painted the fence. He kept the gym looking bright and spare, the mirrors polished. He finished his duties so quickly that Dan and Earl gave him work making pickups and deliveries. He wanted to work more hours, but Dan made him rest. Chicky was getting strong again, inside and out, and he knew it.

Dan and Earl could see it, too. They’d known the boy was solid after only three days, knew he’d be there when the rockets came ripping in and things got thrilling.

Chicky made the call back home to Poteet and held his breath for fear he might not say things right. But there was no need, because things between him and his granddaddy were the same as always.

Eloy said, “Well, well, if it ain’t the ol’ strawberry man himself.”

“Guess what, Grandpa,” Chicky said, “I found Dan Cooley and he ain’t dead.”

“Huh?”

Chicky related the story of his losses and how he’d come to meet Dan Cooley, about the fight in the parking lot, about Earl, about Barky, and about his part-time job and where he was living and training.

Eloy was so tickled by the good tidings that he forgot the bellyful of tenpenny nails in his guts. “From what you say, this Velasco was bad medicine.”

Chicky said, “More like poison.”

Eloy said, “Cooley’ll cure you.”

“It’s what I’m thinkin, too.”

“You wait and see,” said Eloy. He spat some dip juice down into a Pyrex measuring cup, the liquid pungent and grainy as it soaked into
a balled-up paper napkin. “Cooley, he, uh, does Mr. Cooley know about me?”

Chicky said, “He asked if I heard of a Eloy Garza from down Texas, and I’m sorry, Granddaddy, but it just come out that I said I didn’t.”

Eloy smiled, was glad there was nothing to connect him to Chicky for Dan Cooley. He remembered the smashed side of Dan’s face and winced, closed his eyes. “You done good, boy, like always.”

“See, Granddaddy, I said I didn’t know of you ‘cause I was losin my ass off out here, and I didn’t want to bring shame on your good name.”

Eloy set the measuring cup down, used the handle to give it a half spin.
“Mi querido chiquito,
my beloved little one, you could never bring shame on nobody, least ways not on me.”