Leonard Gardner: Fat City

In a moment all was still. Collapsed, conscious again of the rain on the roof, he realized he had experienced the ultimate in pleasure.

“Was it good?” he asked.

“It was nice,” whispered Faye.

Ernie was gratified, hearing that. Still he was uncertain. He wondered if everything had gone as it should. Was that all there was to it? Perhaps it had been celebrated out of proportion because there was nothing else to live for. He lay with his face in a split in the seat, his nose squashed against the stuffing.

“It must be getting late.”

“Yeah.”

“Are we all right here?”

“We better go,” he murmured into the seat.

“Do you think we should?”

He abruptly sat up. “We better get out of here.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t have stayed so long.”

The engine rumbled, the lights shone out into the rain, the wipers swept and clacked across the windshield. After a few yards the car stopped, wheels spinning in the mud. Ernie shifted from low to reverse, trying to rock free, but the tires dug in and settled firmly.

“What’ll we do? I should have gone home,” said Faye.

Glad to get away from her, he stepped out into the rain. Leaving her at the wheel, he grasped the rear bumper, his back to the car, his shoes gripped by mud. Shouting directions, he heaved forward. The car thrust backward. He leaped away, screaming above the whining wheels. She shifted and the engine died.

“I can’t do it,” she said and he was afraid she was going to cry. Face streaming, he got back in to start the engine. “I wish we hadn’t come,” she said. “I wish I’d stayed home.”

Ernie returned to the rear bumper. While the tires sprayed mud, he grunted and pushed and yelled at her not to spin the wheels. Finally, feet sucking and splashing, he walked off in search of boards, crashing angrily through the bushes down the steep slope of the levee. He was close to the water now but could not see it. In front of him was a black expanse with a sound like escaping steam. As he felt around on the bank he heard Faye calling from the car and he bellowed back, disgusted that she thought he would run off in the rain and leave her. Whipped by twigs, he was pulling himself along the bank from willow to willow when a whirring of wings rushed up before him. Recoiling, he slipped, throwing out his hands, striking the ground on his side, and instantly he was in the icy shock of the river, up to his waist, disbelieving, tearing away chunks of bank in terror. Blindly he clambered out and stood quaking on the slick bank, his teeth chattering, water pouring from his pants and his shoes full. Clutching twigs, his mind assailed by that black immersion, by what had happened in the car, he felt that everything had passed out of his control. He had to get home, had to get warm and dry and rested for his fight, but he was out here, wet in the bushes, stuck miles from town with a girl he might now never be able to get rid of. Through the hissing rain his horn sounded. Ernie moved ahead along the bank, weighed down by his pants.

He returned to the car dragging a waterlogged board.

“Ernie? Is that you?”

“Who else? What’s all the noise about?”

“I was afraid you got lost.”

Cursing, he jammed the board under the rear tire. He pushed, the wheels spun, the board cracked, the car surged ahead and mired down, Ernie collapsing in the glow of the taillights. Wallowing on his knees, he dug at the mud, jammed the cracked board back under the tire, and heaved against the car while Faye raced the engine. When they at last reached firm ground near the point where the levee road turned down again to the paved lane, the car lurched and careened ahead. Ernie ran after it down the turnoff.

“Will you call me tomorrow?” Faye asked on the way back to town.

“What for?”

“Because I want to talk to you.”

Feeling the obligations already beginning, he agreed.

Her street was submerged from curb to curb, the water roaring under the car as they approached her house. Her porch light was the only one on in the block.

A carload of boxers departed in the rain. They rode past the county hospital, past leafless vineyards, orchards and walnut groves, barns, chicken pens and puddle-covered fields. On the back seat, slumped between Wes Haynes and Buford Wills — both wearing small black hats with upturned brims — sat Ernie Munger. Ruben Luna was driving. Beside him Babe Azzolino rode with Bobby Burgos, a Filipino bantamweight, who was his only fighter of the night. While the two managers talked on and on, Ernie nodded, dozed and jerked awake.

“We got the winners,” said Ruben. “What do you think?”

“I’d say we got the winners.”

“We got four sure winners. You know what I’d like to do some day? I’d like to take these guys to England. They appreciate class over there. When I turn these boys pro I’d really like to make that trip.”

In Salinas they had a dinner of chili burgers. “This guy can’t fight,” said Ruben, sitting across from Ernie in the booth. “You’ll knock him out. How you feel? Hardly wait to get in there?”

“I’ll give it all I got,” said Ernie.

“You may have to go the four rounds, so don’t punch yourself out. Don’t lose your head.”

“I won’t. I’ll pace myself.”

“It goes fast, though, so don’t hang back.”

“I won’t hang back. I’ll give it everything I got.”

“Yeah, but you want to pace yourself. Buford, your guy’s been around so you don’t want to let him get a good shot at you. But he’s a boozer, you know how these soldiers are. He won’t go the limit.”

Fog was blowing above the roofs and trees when they reached Monterey. Del Monte Gardens was near the edge of town. Ruben Luna, leaning slightly backward, coat and sweater unbuttoned, shirt open at the throat, hat back and arms swinging, led the way in. Several boxers were already in the dressing room, resting on tables, undressing, moving nervously around amid a murmur of voices and tense clearing of noses. Lightheaded from hours on the road, Ernie listlessly took off his clothes. In new boxing shoes, leather cup and a pair of purple-trimmed gold trunks with a monogrammed A, he shifted about while Ruben wrapped his hands, moving with him, winding the gauze and muttering to him to keep still. With narrow strips of adhesive, the bandages were taped down and anchored between each finger. The gloves Ruben pulled first onto his own hands, pounding and kneading the padding away from the knuckles before he removed them and, braced, held them for Ernie to work on. They were smaller than those Ernie had trained with, and he shuffled in his light shoes, swinging his arms while Ruben pursued him, smearing Vaseline around his eyes and down the bridge of his nose. Ruben then crossed the room to Wes Haynes, who was sitting in T-shirt and jockstrap on the edge of a table, his red straightened hair in a high mound.

“I just hope I didn’t leave my fight in the bedroom,” Ernie confided to Buford Wills. Buford, matched for the semi-final, was still in his street clothes. “Don’t tell Ruben this, but I was out getting a little last night.”

“I was too. That don’t make no difference. It don’t matter if you dead drunk, you got two hands you can beat that motherfucker. I don’t care who he is. It all in your mind.”

“I hope so.”

“Hoping never done nothing. It wanting that do it. You got to want to win so bad you can taste it. If you want to win bad enough you win. They no way in hell this dude going beat me. He too old. I going be all over him. I going kick his ass so bad, every time he take a bite of food tomorrow he going think of me. He be one sore son-of-a-bitch. He going know he been in a fight. I get him before he get me. I going hit him with everything. I won’t just beat that motherfucker, I going kill him.” Buford was small and thin. His hair, divided at one side with a razor-blade part, was cropped close. His nose turned up, his nostrils flared, his lips were soft and full and his hooded eyes were narrowed in a constant frown. The year before, only fourteen, he had lied about his age and won the Golden Gloves novice flyweight title in San Francisco. Tonight he was fighting the champion of Fort Ord. “You want to know what make a good fighter?”