Joe Lansdale - The Best of Joe R. Lansdale

He whipped Forrest Thomas like he was a redheaded stepchild; whipped him so badly, they stopped the fight so no one would see a colored man knock a white man out.

Against their wishes, the Sporting Club was forced to hand the championship over to “Lil” Arthur John Johnson, and the fact that a colored now held the club’s precious boxing crown was like a chicken bone in the club’s throat. Primarily Beems’s throat. As the current president of the Sporting Club, the match had been Beems’s idea, and Forrest Thomas had been Beems’s man.

Enter McBride. Beems, on the side, talked a couple of the Sporting Club’s more wealthy members into financing a fight. One where a true contender to the heavyweight crown would whip “Lil” Arthur and return the local championship to a white man, even if that white man relinquished the crown when he returned to Chicago, leaving it vacant. In that case, “Lil” Arthur was certain he’d never get another shot at the Sporting Club championship. They wanted him out, by hook or crook.

“Lil” Arthur had never seen McBride. Didn’t know how he fought. He’d just heard he was as tough as stone and had balls like a brass monkey. He liked to think he was the same way. He didn’t intend to give the championship up. Saturday, he’d find out if he had to.

9:00 P.M.

The redhead, nursing a fat lip, two black eyes, and a bruise on her belly, rolled over gingerly and put her arm across McBride’s hairy chest. “You had enough?”

“I’ll say when I’ve had enough.”

“I was just thinking, I might go downstairs and get something to eat. Come back in a few minutes.”

“You had time to eat before I got back. You didn’t eat, you just messed up. I’m paying for this. Or rather the Sporting Club is.”

“An engine’s got to have coal, if you want that engine to go.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” The redhead reached up and ran her fingers through McBride’s hair.

McBride reached across his chest and slapped the redhead. “Don’t touch my hair. Stay out of my hair. And shut up. I don’t care you want to fuck or not. I want to fuck, we fuck. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Listen here, I’m gonna take a shit. I get back, I want you to wash that goddamn nasty hole of yours. You think I like stickin’ my wick in that, it not being clean? You got to get clean.”

“It’s so hot. I sweat. And you’re just gonna mess me up again.”

“I don’t care. You wash that thing. I went around with my johnson like that, it’d fall off. I get a disease, girl, I’ll come back here, kick your ass so hard your butthole will swap places with your cunt.”

“I ain’t got no disease, Mr. McBride.”

“Good.”

“Why you got to be so mean?” the redhead asked suddenly, then couldn’t believe it had come out of her mouth. She realized, not only would a remark like that anger McBride, but the question was stupid. It was like asking a chicken why it pecked shit. It just did. McBride was mean because he was, and that was that.

But even as the redhead flinched, McBride turned philosophical. “It isn’t a matter of mean. It’s because I can do what I want, and others can’t. You got that, sister?”

“Sure. I didn’t mean nothing by it.”

“Someone can do to me what I do to them, then all right, that’s how it is. Isn’t a man, woman, or animal on Earth that’s worth a damn. You know that?”

“Sure. You’re right.”

“You bet I am. Only thing pure in this world is a baby. Human or animal, a baby is born hungry and innocent. It can’t do a thing for itself. Then it grows up and gets just like everyone else. A baby is all right until it’s about two. Then, it ought to just be smothered and save the world the room. My sister, she was all right till she was about two, then it wasn’t nothing but her wanting stuff and my mother giving it to her. Later on, Mama didn’t have nothing to do with her either, same as me. She got over two years old, she was just trouble. Like I was. Like everybody else is.”

“Sure,” the redhead said.

“Oh, shut up, you don’t know your ass from a pig track.”

McBride got up and went to the john. He took his revolver and his wallet and his razor with him. He didn’t trust a whore — any woman for that matter — far as he could hurl one.

While he was in the can trying out the new flush toilet, the redhead eased out of bed wearing only a sheet. She slipped out the door, went downstairs and outside, into the streets. She flagged down a man in a buggy, talked him into a ride, for a ride, then she was out of there, destination unimportant.

9:49 P.M.

Later, pissed at the redhead, McBride used the madam herself, blacked both her eyes when she suggested that a lot of sex before a fight might not be a good idea for an athlete.

The madam, lying in bed with McBride’s muscular arm across her ample breasts, sighed and watched the glow of the gas streetlights play on the ceiling.

Well , she thought, it’s a living .

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 10:35 A.M.

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

Storm warning. Galveston, Texas. Take precautions.

Issac Cline, head of the Galveston Weather Bureau, sat at his desk on the third floor of the Levy Building and read the telegram. He went downstairs and outside for a look-see.

The weather was certainly in a stormy mood, but it didn’t look like serious hurricane weather. He had been with the Weather Bureau for eight years, and he thought he ought to know a hurricane by now, and this wasn’t it. The sky wasn’t the right color.

He walked until he got to the beach. By then the wind was picking up, and the sea was swelling. The clouds were like wads of duck down ripped from a pillow. He walked a little farther down the beach, found a turtle wrapped in seaweed, poked it with a stick. It was dead as a stone.

Issac returned to the Levy Building, and by the time he made his way back, the wind had picked up considerably. He climbed the stairs to the roof. The roof barometer was dropping quickly, and the wind was serious. He revised his opinion on how much he knew about storms. He estimated the wind to be blowing at twenty miles an hour, and growing. He pushed against it, made his way to the weather pole, hoisted two flags. The top flag was actually a white pennant. It whipped in the wind like a gossip’s tongue. Anyone who saw it knew it meant the wind was coming from the northwest. Beneath it was a red flag with a black center; this flag meant the wind was coming ass over teakettle, and that a seriously violent storm was expected within hours.

The air smelled dank and fishy. For a moment, Cline thought perhaps he had actually touched the dead turtle and brought its stink back with him. But no, it was the wind.

At about this same time, the steamship Pensacola , commanded by Captain James Slater, left the port of Galveston from Pier 34, destination Pensacola, Florida.

Slater had read the hurricane reports of the day before, and though the wind was picking up and was oddly steamy, the sky failed to show what he was watching for. A dusty, brick red color, a sure sign of a hurricane. He felt the whole Weather Bureau business was about as much guess and luck as it was anything else. He figured he could do that and be as accurate.

He gave orders to ease the Pensacola into the Gulf.

1:06 P.M.

The pigeons fluttered through the opening in the Johnsons’ roof. Tar paper lifted, tore, blew away, tumbled through the sky as if they were little black pieces of the structure’s soul.

“It’s them birds again,” his mother said.