Tom Schreck - TKO

“Yeah, we did, and it didn’t sit right. Besides that, I ain’t got much going on these days and I’m kind of pissed off.”

“What you talking about?”

“I’m suspended from work and probably getting fired.”

“Isn’t that almost always happening?”

“Yeah, but I don’t like the way the so-called helping profession is throwing Howard in.”

“That’s why you’re pissed off?”

“Partly.”

“Wouldn’t have anything to do with anything else, would it?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Be careful,” Kelley said.

We went back to watching the TV in silence, at least silence between the two of us. The Foursome was still jawing.

“I guess you’d have to say that Manson was the best,” Jerry Number One said.

“The best? What makes him the best?” TC said.

“You know, for sheer terror and attention,” Jerry Number One said.

“You know he was in the Beach Boys,” Rocco said. “He started killing people because he got obsessed with that ‘Help Me Rhoda’ song. It made him nuts,” he said.

“He did hang out with Brian Wilson and he was definitely nuts,” Jerry Number Two said.

“Whatever happened to that crazy broad that tried to shoot Nixon? Stinky Fromage was her name,” Rocco said.

“Wasn’t she Squeaky Fromme?” TC said.

“I never heard her speak or knew where she was from,” Rocco said.

I figured I’d start out by trying to find out as much as I could about Howard’s life. Seeing as though he spent most of his life in prison, it made sense to find out what his time inside was like. I didn’t have many prison staff connections that would’ve known Howard when he was inside, but I sure had plenty of connections of clients who used to be inmates. It was just a matter of heading down to the Hill and seeing who was on the corner.

Jefferson Hill was the old Irish neighborhood where a lot of my family lived generations ago. Today, it was almost entirely black and Latino, with the exception of some old-timers who were too old or stubborn to move. The houses need painting, there was always litter being blown around, and the whole section just seemed dark, like even the sun didn’t want to come around anymore. Even though I’m a very white guy, I could hang on the Hill, partly because of my job but mostly because I was known from the gym. There was something about the fight game that brought down the barriers. I’m not saying boxing never had a racist element, but when baseball and football didn’t allow blacks or Latinos, boxing had champions of those persuasions. Sure, it was harder for them and they didn’t let a black guy fight for the heavyweight title for a long time, but it was still better than the other sports.

I parked the Eldorado near the corner of Steuben and Albany Streets and headed up Albany to see who was around. Up by Craig Street three older black guys were passing around a brown paper bag. I knew two of the guys, Carlisle Jackson and Chipper Poston, because both of them had been to the clinic and had dropped out several times. Both of them were alcoholics and heroin users.

When I walked toward them they instinctively hid the bottle until Chipper recognized me.

“Duff-what’s up?” he said.

“What’s up, Chip?” I said.

“Hey, Duff,” Carlisle said.

Both guys were gray and weathered looking. They were kind of like the jakey-bum version of Laurel and Hardy, with Carlisle at about six foot three and rail thin and Chipper a rounded five foot six. They had run together for the last thirty years, and they were somewhere between fifty and seventy-five. There was no way to figure out how old they were by looking at them.

“Duff, this is Silk, from Brooklyn. He’s Chip’s second cousin,” Carlisle said.

I exchanged silent nods with Silk.

“Duffy, what you coming up here for?” Chipper said.

“I’m curious about something,” I said.

“Curious? You comes to the Hill, you gotta be pretty fuckin’ curious,” Carlisle said.

“You guys were inside when Rheinhart was in, weren’t ya?” I asked.

“Crazy, skinny-ass white boy who killed all them kids? Yeah, we both were,” Chipper said.

“Boy kept his mouth shut and the rest of him buttoned up,” Carlisle said.

“You remember anything about him?” I said.

“Yeah, he was the only motherfucker who didn’t OD in that part of the tier,” Chip said.

“Eight motherfuckers died, another eight all fucked up vegetable-wise in the head. Crazy white boy had death all around his skinny ass,” Carlisle said.

“What was the story?” I asked.

“We was both away from that shit, but the word was one of the hacks was sellin’ some bad acid trip, ’cept it wasn’t regular acid, it was some new shit I never heard of before or since. They called it ‘Blast’ or some shit,” Chipper said.

“Shit was bad and no hack ever got caught. It was all swept under the fuckin’ carpet. Who care if inmates dyin’ anyway?” Carlisle said.

“Why didn’t Howard get into it?”

“Boy was straight-laced, man. He was no hardened criminal. I think the motherfucker flipped for a short period and then went back to be just a skinny-ass white boy,” Chipper said.

“You guys ever try ‘Blast’?” I asked.

“No man, shit came and went fast. I heard it was fuckin’ crazy shit-like meth and acid and dust times ten all at once,” Chipper said. “I’m a down head. I ain’t lookin’ for no fuckin’ Ferris wheel ride,” Carlisle said.

We kicked around some small talk and I let them know how they could get a hold of me if they needed me. With guys like this you didn’t come on too strong about getting help, but I always wanted them to know where they could find me if they had to.

I thanked the guys, gave them a ten, and headed back to the Eldorado. On the way back to the Moody Blue, I threw in the On Stage eight-track and listened to Elvis do “Walk a Mile in My Shoes.” I was thinking about Howard’s shoes and how his whole life he’d been stepping in shit with those shoes, and probably how the one time he fought back against it in his life it was the biggest mistake he ever made. I also wondered why he wasn’t getting high in prison. I knew if I ever had to live that life I would have done anything and everything to alter my consciousness away from the reality.

It felt to me like the “Blast” overdoses had something to do with something, but that just might have been my mind’s way of making something fit. It could just as easily have been one of the many fucked-up events that had occurred during Howard’s thirty-year stint in our culture’s hellhole. Elvis had moved on to “Sweet Caroline” as I was pulling up to the Blue when I saw Billy chucking his throwing stars into my oak tree. He sprang to attention as I pulled in.

“Sir!” he said.

“Hey, Bill,” I said, returning his bow with just a slight nod.

“Sir-I am anxious to resume training, sir.”

“Yeah, well Billy, uh, I haven’t felt like going to the gym much.”

“Sir, I will train anywhere.”

“Okay, Billy, but I’ve been a little fucked up lately, so I’m not sure how good I’ll be as a teacher.”

“Sir?”

“Uh… it’s just… well… never mind.”

Billy looked at me with his eyes wide open and his head tilted. It’s the same look Al gives me when I take away a shoe he’s been chewing on. I figured it would be easier to just give Billy a half-hour workout than to try to explain it to him.

“All right, Billy. C’mere,” I said. He sprang up, ran over to me, came to attention, and bowed.

“WASABIIII!” Billy screamed, snapping his fist down into a ready position.

For the next half hour I worked him on throwing good punches and pretended it was a special karate technique when in reality it was fundamental boxing. I’m not entirely sure why, but I made him drill his recoil every time he threw a punch, and I did it so much I could tell that even Billy was getting bored with it. To me, it was like some sadomasochistic medieval mantra I was doing to punish myself because I had misplaced my hair suit. I kept with it though, like it was an infected itch that I should’ve stopped scratching a long time ago.