Jeff Jacobson - Foodchain

* * * * *

The auction yard squatted at the top of a low hill on the north side of town. The large building rose to a steep crown in the center, its sharply angled shingles a glossy green in the moonlight. Heavy stones anchored the walls into the earth, giving way to dark slats of oak. The rest of the building sloped off to either side, long and low. Frank couldn’t see any windows. The parking lot was full of pickups.

He caught the faint, guttural roar of a crowd.

They parked near the end of the parking lot. The clowns pointed out where they lived—a large gooseneck trailer at the edge of the property. They finished the bottle of Seagrams and cracked open one last beer. “No alcohol inside,” Pine explained. “We work auctions four days a week. Saturday nights, usually, we got dogfights. Tuesday nights, Sturm rents the place out to the spics for cockfights. Tonight…tonight only comes once a year.”

The roar reverberated out of the building again.

They went inside. The floors were stone, the walls dark wood. The main room was large, with high ceilings. Five sodium vapor lights hung over the circle in the center of the room, bright enough to bleach the color out of skin. Stadium seats surrounded the center, aluminum slats that echoed with a shrill, hollow sound as cowboy boots dragged across the metal. The seats were full of men; ranchers and farmers and fieldhands. Frank smelled sawdust, sweat, and underneath it all, the sour, yet tangy aftertaste of a steak that’s just a shade rare—the smell of spilled blood.

Eight gates formed an octagon in the center of the room. The clowns marched right on down and leaned against the gates. On the opposite side, one of the gates was open, leading to a tunnel under the stadium seats. Off to the side was a large chalkboard, displaying a round robin style elimination. It only had last names. The last three spaces were vacant.

Underneath the chalkboard, a plank lay over two sawhorses where a guy sat in front of a ledger and a chipped metal cash box. A second man stood at the chalkboard, carefully writing names across the last two lines. The last two names were Glouck and Sturm.

Frank hung back from the clowns and made his way over to the table. “What’re the odds?”

“No odds here. Just even money,” the guy sitting at the table said.

“I’ll be back.”

The guy shrugged. “I wouldn’t wait too long, mister. Window closes in…” He peered up at a clock enclosed in steel mesh above the chalkboard. “Three minutes.”

Frank nodded. “I’ll be back.”

The other guy walked over until he was standing above the tunnel. He held up a bullhorn. Reading off a sheet, he spoke in a flat, emotionless tone. “Welcome to the one hundred and fourth annual summer fights. In the championship fight, we have thirteen year-old Ernie Glouck at one hundred and fourteen pounds…” There was a smattering of applause but the clowns started booing, drowning out the applause. “Versus thirteen year-old Theodore Sturm at one hundred and twenty-three pounds.” There was a lot of cheering for Sturm. The clowns went nuts, applauding, whistling, shouting.

The fighters appeared. Theodore Sturm had his blond hair cut short, but it looked expensive, too perfect, as if the artful spikes had been shaped and gelled by a professional hairdresser. His lips were drawn in a thin slash. His nostrils were wide and pumping; eyes flat and hard. Well-defined muscles wriggled up and down his arms. Frank figured the kid had been hitting the weights for five or six years solid. Theo’s taped fists popped the air in a flurry of combinations, right, right, left—left, right, left, left. The kid was quick; Frank gave him that much.

The man behind Theo was the same little guy from the restroom at the fairgrounds. Horace Sturm hung back, dark and squatting in the shadows, a goddamn midget Grim Reaper in that black, flat-brimmed cowboy hat and ankle-length duster. Frank watched closely, then checked the clock. Two minutes left.

Ernie Glouck followed Theo. Ernie had a severe buzzcut, so short Frank could see worms of scar tissue like mountain ranges on a relief map, exclamation points of pain across the kid’s skull. Like Theo, he wore shorts and a T-shirt. But while Theo’s shorts looked like expensive boxing trunks, maybe even silk, Ernie’s were oversize jean cutoffs. They hung below his knees, drawn up tight around his narrow hips with a length of extension cord.

His two moms followed Ernie. They looked like somebody had put two shapeless housedresses on a couple of dull and pitted hatchets and walked them around. Five or six older brothers darted between the two mothers, offering strong words of advice and thumping the scarred skull. Ernie flinched easy. Too easy, Frank figured.

He pulled out a twenty, flattened it on the bare plywood, and said. “That’s twenty on Ernie Glouck.”

“Twenty on Glouck. Name?” the guy at the table asked.

Frank said, “Winchester.”

The guy wrote down the name and slipped the twenty into the box. Frank headed up the stairs to a nearly empty bench at the top. Just as he sat down, the rest of the men rose to their feet. Their right hand came to a rest over their hearts.

Frank finally realized that they were looking at the United States flag that hung vertically above the sodium lights just as everyone started in a slow, jagged rhythm, “I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of the United States of America. And to the republic, for which it stands …” Frank got to his feet and mumbled along. It had been a while, and he couldn’t quite remember the words. “…with liberty, and justice for all.” Everybody sat back down. All talking stopped. The hollow sound of hard leather soles scraping ridged aluminum ceased. Nobody breathed.

* * * * *

Theo and Ernie walked into the ring, eyeballing each other. The gate closed behind them. They backed into opposite corners, Theo bouncing on the balls of his feet, Ernie rolling his head on his neck.

Horace Sturm approached the ring, eyes cloaked in the shadow from his hat. Several silent moments crawled by, until finally the guy with the microphone held up a large bell and hit it with a hammer.

Frank could only hear the rustling of the boys’ bare feet in the sawdust and their quick, shallow breathing as they slipped away from the gates and approached the center of the ring. Neither wore boxing gloves, just medical tape that bound their fingers into tight fists. They circled each other for a few seconds, bobbing and weaving, feinting and rolling their shoulders, sizing each other up. Ernie threw a half-hearted jab with his right, easily blocked by Theo.

Pine shouted, “Knock his fuckin’ head in the dirt, boy!”

Horace Sturm shot him a look. Pine got quiet.

The two boys kept circling, throwing short, cautious jabs.

Then Theo got impatient and went for it. He stepped in close, faking with his right, all the while lowering his left shoulder, preparing to bring his left fist up. Ernie saw it coming. Frank saw it coming. Everybody saw it coming. Ernie flicked in close, jabbed Theo in the nose. Surprised blood popped out of Theo’s nose. His head snapped back as his left uppercut went sailing up through empty air.

Ernie hit Theo in the nose two more times before dancing away.

Theo shook his head, spraying blood over the sawdust. Ernie came in from the side, cracked Theo in the left ear. Theo backpedaled, holding his taped fists up over his bleeding face. But Ernie stayed right with him, slamming his fists into Theo’s stomach, doubling the rich kid over.

For the first time in his life, Theo panicked. And without thinking, he tried to kick Ernie in the balls.

The room froze for a split second in a glacier of silence, then erupted in shouting and stomping. Ernie’s brothers leapt onto the gates and screamed up at the two men under the chalkboard. In response, the clowns jumped off their seats and climbed onto the gates that encircled the ring, shouting at the Glouck family. The rest of the crowd rose, as one, to their feet.