Pound for Pound (42 page)

The ref sent one of the Commission guys for the glove man with instructions to bring Garza’s gloves.

Trini Cavazo said, “What the fuck is this shit, man, what you sayin about my boy?”

Shortcake said, “Look at my boy face, that the shit I be talkin ‘bout, what you think?”

Garza was announced the winner, and the Mexicans in the balcony began to hoot and to pegar sus gritos—”¡Ay-yai-yai-yaaaai!”—and to piss in their beer cups and shower them gleefully down on ringside.

Garza’s gloves were produced. They were wet with sweat, but they were the same as new and neither had been altered, and both had clearly been used only once.

Shortcake made a last try. “Ain’t no goddamn blood on ‘em.”

The glove guy said, “I wiped it off, like always.”

Cooley, the icy towel still around his head, was already thinking of a rematch. With only one good eye, he could see Garza’s gloves well enough from his stool to believe that Garza had won fairly. But he wouldn’t concede defeat—as he saw it, he had beaten himself. Given the fury of the fight, and the way he had covered up, if only for an instant, Cooley realized that he had thrown in the towel on himself, had accidentally signaled the ref that he was defenseless. He hadn’t meant to, had in fact believed that he could still win, yet he was the dummy who, in the blink-second of lost concentration and a broken rib, had forced the referee to stop the fight.

That one moment would eat at Cooley. It would whack him more than missing his shot at the title. It would torment him more than having to retire from boxing. It was a nightmare he could never wake up from, and he would live the rest of his life brooding about being too soft for the hard game.

C
hicky’s plane landed at two-thirty
p.m.
San Antonio time, and he immediately called Greyhound for the Corpus schedule. The next bus wouldn’t leave for two hours, so there was nothing to do but head for downtown and wait.

He took a city bus from the airport to the Main Plaza, the Plaza de las Islas. He stopped to pray for Eloy at the Spanish colonial Cathedral of San Fernando, where a marble sarcophagus held the remains of Travis, Crockett, and Bowie. Afterward, he thought about walking over to the San Ignacio Gym, where he’d won many of his trophies. He decided against it, because those
pinches
fuck brothers, Trini and Paco Cavazo, might be back from Houston, those
hijos de la gran chingada puta madre,
sons of the great fucked whore mother. So he strolled over to the bus station, sat on a bench, and tried to steel himself against the shock that might be in store for him in Poteet.

Chicky’s bus left the blue-and-white Greyhound terminal in San Anto about the same time that Dan opened the first scrapbook. Before heading
down to Corpus Christi and the Gulf, the bus would stop at the country towns of Floresville and Pleasanton, both big growers of peanuts. Eloy’s farm in Poteet was some sixteen miles down from Pleasanton, off of Highway 16 and at the end of an oil-soaked private road. Poteet was smaller than Pleasanton.

A sign on the road read “Don’t Mess with Texas.” Chicky could feel in the air that he was getting close to home, and he began to remember little things and big. But mostly he remembered the day when things began to change, the day his grandfather was late coming back from the doctor. Chicky realized that he was almost back to where he’d started. Nonetheless, he thought back to how mortified he’d been when Dan discovered his connection with his sick granddaddy, the Wolf.

“You come a long way, cowboy,” Chicky whispered.

When
el bus
stopped at the Exxon station in Pleasanton, Chicky put on his El Patron. There were no cabs, so he took Texas highway number
242
and lit out on foot. Poteet high school was some nine miles off, but it was on the way to his granddaddy’s farm, and that was a good six to seven miles more. Chicky figured he could make the high school in an hour if he humped, but it turned out that he didn’t have to walk. He got a ride from a weathered peanut farmer in a frazzled straw farm hat and faded bib overalls.

They passed the Atascosa River, narrow and all but dry, and then the farmer headed down empty roads and let Chicky off at the high school. Chicky took off straight for the football field. Practice was winding down. Coach Oster waved him over. Though Chicky had been small for football, the thick, big-bellied old coach knew him as one of the hardest-hitting defensive backs who had ever played for Poteet. Hitting hard wasn’t something a Texas football coach forgot.

Coach Oster shook Chicky’s hand and asked, “You need a lift, boy?”

“Yessir,” said Chicky. This was Texas, and in Texas you talked Texas. “If it wouldn’t be no bother.”

“Hail, no.”

The coach blew his whistle, spots of brass showing through the worn chrome plate. He waved his players to the showers, then motioned Chicky over to his sun-bleached
‘82
pickup.

Oster shook his head, said, “Big bad Wolf ain’t the same, son.”

“No?”

“Y’all’ll see.”

They drove to Eloy’s peeling, white clapboard house. It was set between low trees and trimmed in layers of buckled green and strawberry red. It sagged at one corner, and one end of the big “Lobo Farms” sign out front hung loose from its rusted frame. Part of the sign depicted a smiling wolf in bib overalls standing upright in the faded reds and greens of a strawberry field, but now the wolf had become a dull gray. The front section of the picket fence was on its side. Prairie dogs had taken over the lawn. The barn door was closed, the chicken pen empty, and every other animal was gone as well. Eloy’s dirty 1964 Chevy flatbed, his first truck ever, was parked near the open side door of the house. Chicky stood at the door and called out,
“¡Abuelito!”

Eloy’s voice sounded weak as a poisoned cat. “Door’s open, ain’t it?”

Coach Oster looked back to Chicky. “Wont some help with this here deal?”

“I better handle it.”

“I understand,” said the coach, a sigh in his whisper. “Ya’ll call me, hear?”

“Yessir,” Chicky said. He hoped he could handle it, but wasn’t sure.

Oster heard the doubt. “Maybe I better hang around, just in case?”

Chicky said, “‘Preciate it.”

Chicky walked in and Oster followed him. What was once as neat as a priest’s parlor was now strewn with newspapers and unwashed tin cans. This was not the place Chicky had grown up in, the place he had learned to keep respectable, the place where he had learned to scrub floors. The kitchen sink was full of dirty paper plates. Uneaten food had
gone to garbage on the tile counter. Roaches scurried, and the place stank of black bananas. Fruit flies hovered like a lace fan, and the place smelled like death.

“Grandpa?”

“I’m here.”

The voice came from the bathroom, located down a short hall. The floor tiles and those in the shower had always sparkled, but now the grout was gray and there was black mold halfway up the shower wall. Eloy sat on the toilet wearing long johns. His head was in his hands, his face had caved in, and his bent body listed into the wall.

Between the toilet and the wall was a rusted old pink oval waste-paper basket. In it were several used syringes and six of Trini’s empty twenty-milliliter squat brown morphine bottles. They were Eloy’s last, and he was ready to die. He tried to flush the toilet, but didn’t have the strength. He smiled bleakly and with shame at Chicky, his gums showing instead of false teeth. He mixed Spanish with English, and Chicky answered him likewise.

“Lost my teeth somewheres.” The whites of his eyes were a dull yellow, and so was his skin. His diseased liver had caused his feet to swell so badly that he hadn’t worn boots in weeks, forcing him to drive to and from the hospital in flip-flops. “I figure I’ve had about all the fun I can stand.”

“How long you been on the stool?”

“Been sleepin here is all I know. Can you get me to bed?”

“I can he’p ya with him,” said Coach Oster, standing off to the side just in case.

Chicky got the old man to his feet. He was emaciated except for a bulge in his stomach the size of a pumpkin. Chicky buttoned the flap of his grandfather’s soiled underwear, then picked him up, not needing Coach Oster’s help after all. Eloy didn’t weigh ninety pounds. His skin was flaky, and his sparse gray hair was greasy and long. Chicky eased the old man down to sheets that hadn’t been changed in months, then made the sign of the cross.

“We got to get you to the hospital.”

Eloy said, “I was in the Santa Rosa two weeks ago.”

Chicky said, “Then what the dickens you doin back home?”

“Checked myself out once me’n Doc Ocampo had us a sit-down.”

“What’d Ocampo say?”

“Same’s before.
Que me han chingado el higado y el pinche corazón.”
That my own liver and fuckin heart have screwed me.

“You never told me,” Chicky said, looking away.

Eloy shrugged his bony shoulders, tried to smile.
“Son cosas de la vida.”
He winked at Oster. “Coach, I wonder if you could dump that trash basket in the crapper for me? I think I got me a varmint loose in it.”

“Glad to,” said Oster.

When Oster saw the syringes and morphine bottles in the pink can, he understood why Eloy had asked him to remove it.

“Don’t worry, Eloy,” Coach Oster said under his breath. “Chicky’ll never find out from me.”

Oster dumped the bottles and the needles into a black plastic bag, and stashed the bag in the back of his truck. He reached for his can of Copenhagen, and figured it was best to remain where he was, but then he put the dip away and decided to go back inside. He winked at Eloy, and Eloy understood.

Eloy said, “How you like trainin with Mr. Cooley?”

“A lot.”

“Psycho Sykes is up to eighteen and zero with eleven KOs,” Eloy said. “I been followin the boy’s career somewhat close.”

Chicky said, “You’n me both.”

“Got too big for welter. He’s fightin at one fifty-four now.”

“Don’t I know it?”

Eloy squinted, his yellow eyes dull. “What’s your record again?”

“I’m nine and three, with six KOs. The three losses come before Mr. Cooley. I’m six knockouts out of nine with him.”

“I told you he was good.”

Chicky couldn’t shake the smell and returned to the bathroom. The
reeking toilet was full of white feces and coffee-colored urine. Chicky gagged as he flushed the toilet, then opened the bathroom and bedroom windows for ventilation.

Chicky gave his grandfather a sip of water. “Why didn’t you stay in the hospital?”

“Because home is where my wife died.”

Chicky thought of his Mamá Lola, her Indian eyes and nose, the copper in her skin. He lowered his eyes as he remembered how tenderly she had cared for him. Swinging his eyes back to Eloy he said, “But now we got to bundle you up good, and get you back to the Santa Rosa.”

“No’mbre,”
no man, the old man said. He looked away from the kid, then back again. “You really okay with Mr. Cooley?”

Chicky nodded. “Next to you, he’s the best.”

“Naw, he’s better’n me,” said Eloy. “He figured out who we was to each other, didn’t he?”

“It was Coach’s call what did it.”

Eloy said, “How long’t take him?”

“‘Bout a minute, once Coach called you the Wolf,” Chicky said. “How come you didn’t tell me about how you knew Mr. Cooley?”

Eloy evaded the question, wheezed out a snicker. “I got the Cavazos thinkin you’re up College Station goin to A & M. They think you gave up
el box.”

Chicky said, “Ain’t you the slick old dawg.”

“Wolf,”
Eloy said slyly, “slick old
Wolf.
Game ain’t played out yet, rat?”

Chicky locked hard on Eloy’s eyes, repeated his earlier question, “So how come you didn’t tell me about you and Mr. Cooley?”

Eloy hacked, his lungs shot. “I wanted you goin to him clean, son, and I wanted him to take you on when he saw how good you are.”

Chicky said, “That he did.”

Eloy said, “How hard is it getting the right fights out there?”

“Hard, now that I been winnin.”

“I warned you ‘bout bein a lefty in the pros, rat?” Eloy watched as

Chicky nodded, then said, “You still got a hard-on over that Psycho Sykes deal?”

“Hail, yeah,” said Chicky, “and will have for a spell. But each dawg has his day, and rat now you’re what counts.”

Eloy pointed to a card table on which there was a large package. It was amateurishly wrapped in shiny paper, and tied loosely with ribbons and a stick-on bow, all used Christmas wrappings saved from years before. “It’s for you.”

“What is it?”

“You’ll see later.” He pointed to a thick brown envelope sealed with clear tape that set next to the alarm clock.

Chicky picked it up. Two words, “DAN COOLEY,” were scrawled large.

“That’s for Mr. Cooley,” Eloy said. “Don’t you never open it before you give it to him, hear?”

Chicky said, “You’ll give it to him yourself. We’ll get you fixed up and I’ll take you on back to L.A. with me.”

Eloy dismissed the idea, turning down his mouth. He spoke formally. “You don’t open the envelope, understand?”

“Yessir.”

Eloy struggled to get the words out. “You put it in Mr. Cooley’s hand directly. You say it is from me. Use my name, say the Lobo Tejano sent ‘em, Eloy Garza, you understand?”

“Simón,”
Chicky said, but uppermost in his mind was how to keep his granddaddy alive.

Eloy said, “Coach Oster’s helped me with my paperwork, and all. The ranch’ll be yours to do what you want with. There’s some money left if you want to jump-start it after fightin.”

“I only care about getting you back in the saddle.”

“And I only care about you.”

Eloy died in the night. His legs were off the bed, but bent up underneath him, as if he was trying to beat the count. Chicky had Eloy’s rosary and funeral mass held at the little carrot-colored brick church of St. Philip Binizi in Poteet. Eloy went into the ground next to his Lolita, at the First Memorial Cemetery, where there were names like von Uffen, de la O, and Indian Pete. Chicky wept openly as he sprinkled dirt on the coffin, bronze and snazzy, an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe etched the length of the lid. Inside was Chicky’s 30 X El Patron.