“You punished or something?” he said.
“Not really,” I said, pushing the shovel deep into the soil next to the house’s foundation.
“The fight’s Saturday morning. You’re gonna be there, right?”
“Did Frank do something to you, Nick?”
It was quiet a long time. “You trying to hurt me?” he asked.
“Is it true?”
“I’m gonna hose Angel Morales in the first round. Then I’m gonna get a shot at the Regionals. But you don’t need to be there, Charlie. Not Saturday, not ever,” he said.
He walked down the street, peeling off his shirt, popping the dust off it like a whip, his ball glove flopping on his hip.
Because I lived closer to the park than Nick, Terry Anne had told me to meet her there at 8:00 a.m. Saturday, then we would pick up Nick in her car and drive to the gym on the north side of town. But even though I woke that morning at first light, I found ways not to look at clocks, so that 8:00 a.m. would come and go without my making a deliberate choice to abandon my best friend.
But by eight-thirty I couldn’t take it any longer. I hurried to the park, only to discover Terry Anne had gone. In her supply closet I found the bucket she had used to scrub blood from a gang fight off the wall of the park house, the bar of Lava soap glued to the bottom, the tin sides crusty from evaporated bleach water. I gathered up a roll of adhesive tape, a box of cotton swabs, a bottle of iodine and one of rubbing alcohol, and, along with two clean towels, put them in the bucket. Then I filled a water bottle from the tap, corked it, and caught the bus on Westheimer.
Downtown I transferred to another bus that took me into a neighborhood of auto repair shops, vacant lots piled with construction debris, vandalized filling stations, and nineteenth-century frame houses whose tin roofs shimmered in the heat.
The gym’s windows were layered with white paint, the name of a tire company still faintly legible on one wall. When I opened the door I saw a boxing ring inside a cavernous stone room, the folding chairs filled with people who did not look like fans at a Golden Gloves event.
“Where you going, bub?” a man at the door said. He wore a white shirt and slacks, and his body was shaped like a huge, upended football.
“I’m working Nick Hauser’s corner,” I said.
“That your spit bucket?” he said.
“Sure. Plus my medical supplies. I’m the cut man,” I replied.
He smiled at another man, then looked back at me. “Better get on it, cut man. Him and Angel Morales are up next,” he said.
The room stank of cigars, shower mold, hair oil, and sweaty workout clothes. A blackboard on one wall gave odds on the fighters, and a bone-white man in a fedora, strap undershirt, and tightly belted zoot slacks was taking bets at a plank bar. His arms and shoulders were streaked with body hair, his mouth formed meditatively into a cone when he wrote a wager on a notepad and tore a slip off for the bettor.
Two fighters, both about seventeen, neither wearing headgear, climbed from the ring and walked down the hallway to the dressing room. One of them had a bloody nose and an eye that had become a knot the size of a duck’s egg. I saw Terry Anne in a folding chair by ringside, biting the corner of her lip, constantly twisting her head to see if Nick had come out of the dressing room. Then she saw me walking toward her, and I could tell by the way she looked past me at the front door, she was hoping Nick’s father was with me.
“Why weren’t you at the park house? You made us late,” she said.
“Nick didn’t want me,” I replied.
“You could fool me,” she said.
I knew she was taking her frustration and anger out on me because she had nowhere else to put it, but I didn’t hold it against her. She was the only woman in the room, and the men sitting around us made me think of piranhas nudging their snouts against the wall of a fish tank.
“This isn’t the Gloves, is it?” I said.
“Go down to the corner pay phone and call Nick’s house. You tell his mother her son has impacted shit between his ears and she’d better get ahold of his father at work.” She took a nickel from her purse and pressed it into my palm. “Do what I say, Charlie.”
“Nick would never forgive either one of us,” I replied.
She blew out her breath and gave it up. She had put on makeup and earrings and looked strangely beautiful inside the grayness of the gym, as though she were the only person there possessed of flesh tones and a red mouth and hair that was natural and full of tiny lights. Then I saw her throat swallow, and I realized how someone even as brave and decent as Terry Anne had her limits and didn’t always do well when confronted with forces that sometimes are simply too much for us.
“Nick’s not afraid. We shouldn’t be, either, Terry Anne,” I said.
“They’re going to use Nick for shark meat. Now shut up, Charlie,” she replied.
She was right. Frank Wallace had been sitting in the back of the room with three men who looked like gangsters. When Nick and Angel came out of the dressing room, he got up from his chair like he was going to greet both of them. But he ignored Nick and cupped Angel’s arm, his fingers wrapped all the way around the biceps, whispering in his ear while Nick climbed into the ring. Then Frank hit Angel on the butt and went back to his seat.