Ed Gorman: Blood Game

Halfway there, however, John T. turned around and nodded his head at Guild.

He wanted him to come along.

Given Sovich’s power and temperament, that was probably a good idea.

John T. Stoddard hadn’t been exaggerating. There was every possibility that Victor Sovich was the best fighter in the country.

His sparring partner, Barney, was a rangy man with red hair and small but astonishingly quick fists. Even Sovich had occasional trouble with the other man’s speed.

But for the most part Sovich, dressed in black pants and black boots, had no trouble at all pounding Barney, dressed in black pants and red boots; no trouble at all.

The body blows were almost as impressive as the head shots, something you rarely saw. Twice Sovich hit Barney so hard in the ribs that he lifted the man off the canvas. He hit him so hard in the kidneys that he drove him to his knees.

After twenty minutes, both men were sleek and rancid with sweat.

The reporters had deserted the churchwomen and come over for a look at Sovich.

“Listen to how those goddamn punches sound when they land,” said one reporter in a derby and checkered suit. “They sound like he’s throwing bricks.”

They fought for another twenty minutes until Barney’s bleeding got bad, especially from the nose. He started choking on his own blood, and John T. Stoddard stepped in and said, “Why don’t you quit now, Barney? We’re going to need you again tomorrow.”

For all his sweat, for all the redness in his face, Victor Sovich did not seem tired at all. Indeed, he seemed refreshed in some unimaginable way, as if punishing the other man so severely had made him younger, stronger, sharper.

When he stepped between the ropes, he looked up at Guild and said, “Remember yesterday afternoon, Guild? Remember how it felt?” He smiled. “Next time, you’re going to look like Barney when I get through with you.”

Guild hadn’t realized until just now, looking at the boxer, what was really wrong with him.

Victor Sovich was insane.

Driving cattle, riding shotgun, serving as lawman, tracking bounty, Guild came across them occasionally, insane men. They weren’t the laughing, sneering people he saw in melodramas. Usually it was just something in their eyes, some rage or grief that was frightening when he finally recognized it.

There was no grief in Sovich’s dark eyes. Just rage.

He walked past Guild, back to the dressing room.

John T. Stoddard came up and stood next to Guild. “You stick right by me, you understand, Guild?”

“I understand.”

“I hope you realize that the son of a bitch wants to kill us both.”

Guild nodded. “Yeah, that’s sort of what I was thinking.”

John T. Stoddard shook his head. “I was going to take him along to see the colored man, but the hell with him. You and I will go.”

From inside the livery you could hear Sovich yelling at one of the trainers. He really was crazy.

The town had a colored section adjacent to the mixed-race section. The buildings all seemed to lean at impossible angles, as if ready to collapse. You could smell cooking and heat and filth. A white policeman in a fancy blue uniform and a kepi-style hat walked up and down the street with a murderous-looking nightstick in his hand. Ragged children ran after him, trying to be nice. He wasn’t nice back. He was just fat and Irish-looking and mean. The people here stared at Guild and John T. Stoddard with white, forlorn eyes out of black, forlorn faces.

Rooney was the name of the colored fighter. Unlike Sovich he did not have a training camp. He worked outside against another Negro in tufty grass behind a bar where an ancient Jamaican man played a squeeze box. There were maybe thirty black men in a circle around the two fighters. Some of them wore the bright clothes of the bayou they originally came from. Most wore the drab rags of stoop laborers. Most of them were drunk. The sparring served to take their minds off their problems. They sounded as if they had only one real concern in this world, and that was how good Rooney looked.

“Come on, Rooney, you take him out, hear?”

“Come on, Rooney, quit playin’ and do the job.”

“Come on, Rooney, show him your real punch.”

Rooney was as squat and massive as Victor Sovich. He appeared to be a talented fighter capable of a good right hook and an even better left uppercut, but he did not have Sovich’s skill at moving left and right as he threw his combinations. The other fighter pegged him several times with punches Rooney should have been able to avoid. Guild could imagine what Sovich would do to this man.

“He looks good, doesn’t he?” Stoddard said.

“You know what Sovich will do to him.”

“Sure. But Rooney here will put on a good show. You’d be surprised at how many people will bet on him. A lot of white people secretly believe that colored boxers are stronger. And that’s what you have to play on-that belief.”

It was then that Guild saw the woman start to draw something from her purse, something that glinted suspiciously in the sunlight.

“Shit,” Guild said, and took off running to the other side of the crowd, where the woman stood.

John T. Stoddard shouted at Guild to stop, but Guild didn’t slow down.

The men around here were too drunk and too involved in the fight to see what she was about to do.

Guild got her just as she was leveling the small revolver at Rooney’s back.

He grabbed her wrist and tugged her free of the crowd. He must have grabbed her wrist very hard because she started crying almost immediately.

He pulled her inside the tavern. The place was shadowy and stank of the outhouse just outside the door.

“What the hell are you trying to do?” Guild said.

She just kept crying.

The bartender eased over for a better look at the two of them. Obviously he thought Guild had smacked her around some.

“I wanted to kill him,” she said.

This was the beautiful mulatto woman he had seen last night in the restaurant. She wore the same sort of frilly white lace at her neck, but today her dress was of blue silk and her small angled hat of a darker blue silk. She was still beautiful, but Guild’s impression of her fragile nature had been altered somewhat by the fact that she had just tried to kill a man.

“I know you wanted to kill him,” Guild said. “What I want to know is why.”

She glanced up at the bartender, who was still eavesdropping. “I don’t want to talk with him listening.”

“Let’s go for a walk, then.”

“Why are you so interested?”

“You wouldn’t be interested in a woman who pulls out a gun and almost shoots a man?”

She sighed. “I suppose I would be.”

They left a few minutes later. The bartender looked disappointed he hadn’t gotten to hear what happened.

Guild knew he should be back with Stoddard, but instead he walked with the mulatto woman. Several times she tried to walk away from him. Each time, he grabbed her elbow and jerked her back. “What’s going on here?” Guild would ask. “What’s shooting Rooney all about?” But she’d say nothing.

They walked out of the colored section to a park where children splashed chill silver water in a marble pool and where nurses pushed strollers. Dogs yipped and jumped at balloons and a three-year-old got chocolate all over her face.

When they reached the river, he pulled her into a tavern where the bar was nothing more than rough planks. The place smelled of heat and hops and wine and vomit. He could see she hated it in here. The men filled their ignorant eyes with her.

After two beers-his, not hers; she wouldn’t drink-he took her out behind the place and threw her up hard against a shed.