Half of Paradise

“Let’s see it.”

Toussaint held it up.

“Where’s the ring doctor?” Ruth said.

“He’s coming,” Archie said.

“We’ll get an X ray at the hospital and see how bad it is,” Ruth said.

“It’s a compound fracture,” Archie said. “He’s bleeding under the skin.”

“I’m sorry, Toussaint. I had it arranged with the promoters for you next month.”

“He’ll get another chance. The money boys are watching him.”

“They thought you’d make a good drawing card to fight an out-of-town boy.”

“How’s Pepponi?” Toussaint said.

“He was all right after he got up. You just took the wind out of him,” Ruth answered.

Archie cleaned the blood out of Toussaint’s eye with a piece of cotton.

“Here’s what I owe you for the fight,” Ruth said.

“There’s a little bit extra to hold you over. Tell the doctor to send his bill to me.”

“I ain’t asking for no handout, Mr. Ruth.”

“I know you’re not. I always give a boy something extra when he gets hurt and has to lay off a while.”

Ruth tucked the money in Toussaint’s robe pocket.

“When your hand is all right come down to the arena and we’ll see what we can do,” he said.

Ruth left the room. The ring doctor came in and put Toussaint’s hand in a temporary sling. He cleaned the cut over his eye and closed it with twelve stitches. Toussaint dressed without showering, and he and Archie drove to the hospital for an X ray. The intern said that he had broken several bones in the back of his hand and it would take a long time to mend. The intern set the hand in an aluminum brace that was shaped to the curve of the palm and fingers and didn’t allow any movement of the fractured bones. Archie drove Toussaint to his flat.

“Ruth meant it about you coming back to the arena when your hand is well,” he said.

“The doctor told me I got to wait six months before I fight again.”

“What about your job on the docks?”

“They ain’t hiring one-arm men to handle freight.”

Toussaint lived in a tenement building a few blocks from the warehouse district. He went up the narrow stairway through the darkened corridor to his room. The room was poorly furnished, and dingy like the rest of the building, with a tattered yellow shade on the window, a single bed with a brass bedstead, a wall mirror and a scarred chest of drawers by an old sofa that was faded colorless; the wallpaper was streaked brown by the water that seeped through the cracks every time it rained. He turned on the single bulb light that hung by a cord from the ceiling. He took off his sling to undress, and rinsed his face in the washbasin. He looked in the mirror at the row of black stiches across his eye; one side of his face was swollen into a hard knot. He showered, turned out the light, and went to bed.

Outside in the alley he heard drunken voices and the rattling of garbage cans. He looked up through the darkness and thought of his home in Barataria, south of New Orleans. He wondered if he would ever go back. A woman yelled for the drunks to be quiet. Toussaint rolled over in his bed and closed his eyes. He thought of himself on the deck of a trawler with the nets piled on the stern and the steady roll of the Gulf beneath his feet, the horizon before him where the dying sun went down in the water in a last blaze of red, the smell of the salt and the seaweed and the sound of the anchor chain sliding off the bow. He turned in his bed and couldn’t sleep. He remembered the tavern where they used to go after coming into port. It was a good place with a long polished bar and small round tables covered with checkerboard cloths. They served boiled crabs and crawfish, and you could get a plate of barbecue and a pitcher of draught beer for a dollar. It was always filled with fishermen, and Toussaint would stand at the bar and talk and drink neat whiskey from the shot glasses with water as a chaser.

The next morning he looked for a job. He tried the state employment agency first. The only jobs to be had were those of bellboy, bus hop, and janitor. He went to warehouses, trucking firms, auto garages, and was told that there was either no job to be had, or to come back when his hand had healed. The third day he went to a clothing store on Canal that had advertised for help in the stockroom. Toussaint applied and got the job. When he reported for work he was shown where the brooms, mops, dustpans, and cleaning rags were kept, and was told to mop the floor of the men’s and women’s restrooms. He left the store and looked for another job. A week passed and he found nothing. The landlord of his building asked for the rent, which took Toussaint’s last twenty dollars. He rode the streetcars and buses and walked over most of the city to find work. He went to a private employment agency. They said he might try cutting lawns; there wasn’t much else for a man in his condition.

Two weeks later he was sitting in the pool hall, reading the want ads in the newspaper. All the tables were being used. A man with a cigarette between his teeth sat down on the bench beside him. It was one of the hustlers who had tried to get him into a game the afternoon of his last fight.

“Out of work?” he said.

“That’s right.”

“See anything in the paper?” Toussaint looked towards the pool tables.