Gods of Mischief (20 page)

“Maybe I will,” growled Quickie John.

Sure enough, in a few minutes the little garden gnome arrived, potbelly sticking out and that stringy white hair hanging to the shoulders.

“Prospect,” Tramp says to me right off. “Is it true you hit one of Quickie's hang-arounds?”

“Yeah, but he hit me first,” I protested like a first-grader.

Quickie jumped in with, “We should let all the prospects fuck him up.”

Tramp thought a moment. “You know, that sounds like a pretty good idea.”

Well, that was all Quickie John needed to hear. Wasting no time, he gathered all the prospects he could find for a good old-fashioned ass whooping. Before those boys could have at me, though, the international P issued a new directive.

“Now wait a minute, Quickie. All at once doesn't seem fair. Maybe we should have them fight one at a time.” Tramp glanced over at me. “That work for you, prospect?”

“If that's the way you want to play it,” I told him.

“Alright, Quickie,” ordered Tramp. “Let's take this out back and line 'em up.”

The crowd marched through the bar and out the side door into the open yard. Quickie John got to work making sure all his biggest bruisers were up front. It was time for a little one-on-one gladiatorial combat at the Screaming Chicken Saloon.

And those poor bastards didn't stand a chance.

Throughout my teen years
and into my twenties, if I wasn't finding a fight, a fight was usually finding me. One night in the town of Winchester I got into a brawl outside a hamburger stand with three men, whipped two of them and ran off the third. Some dude ordering a burger saw the whole thing and suggested I should fight for a living. I didn't think anything more of it until I bumped into the same guy at a bar a few months later and we got to talking.

He told me about an underground fight circuit, illegal in the state of California, where bookies arranged bareknuckle matches. It was cage fighting before the cages . . . only more brutal. These were two men pounding each other toe-to-toe until one gave up or couldn't continue. There were no rounds. No referees.

“There's two hundred fifty bucks in it for you if you're interested,” the man said.

I figured why not.

This was at the tail end of my U-Haul Bandit days and I was looking
for a way out of the drug racket. I'd dabbled in landscaping and tree trimming, but not many upstanding citizens were willing to hire convicted felons, so the fight game seemed a sensible alternative. The man jotted down an address, date and time on a piece of paper and handed it to me.

And so began my bareknuckle phase.

That Saturday night I drove out to a bowling alley in Riverside that had closed for the evening. But the door was open, so I stepped inside to find a small crowd of maybe forty people gathered under a haze of cigar and cigarette smoke. Right away I recognized the dude from Winchester, hobnobbing with a group of bettors. He broke away and greeted me with a handshake. As we spoke, I noticed the others sizing me up like a colt at auction. In a moment the bookie approached, a chubby bastard with a stump cigar between his teeth, a Tupperware tumbler filled with whiskey in his hand and a stink about him that almost made me gag. There were only two rules, the bookie explained; no biting and no poking in the eyes.

My opponent was waiting for me in an open space in front of the snack bar, where the tables had been pushed aside to create a makeshift ring. The fighter looked to be in his late twenties—a little older than me at the time—wearing a tank top and shorts. I wore a T-shirt, Levi's and a new pair of Nikes, which I removed because I didn't want to get them bloody.

We shook hands, then someone clapped and the match was on.

As we circled each other I could tell by the cheers that the big money was on my opponent—nobody was giving the new guy much of a shot. I finally got tired of the dance and met the man halfway. He came in close, took a swing. As the punch missed, my foot flashed toward his temple and struck the side of his head faster than he could raise his hand to block it.

The kick that coldcocked my opponent was a move taught to me by my old martial arts instructor, Mr. Lee. I'd practiced it countless times when I was a kid, and countless more as I got older. I'd jump and
kick door headers from a standing position . . . broke my toes doing that once. To condition my feet I walked through parking lots booting concrete barriers. For my legs it was broom handles, one in each hand, slapped up and down my calves and thighs. To toughen my torso I whipped nunchucks back and forth against my ribs.

See, the thing about fighting was you had to be able to take a hit. Of course, it was always going to hurt, but if your body could absorb the blow, you were golden. A lot of fighters couldn't handle the pain. I was never one of them.

After my opponent was lifted from the floor and got his head straight, the shit-stink bookie handed me my $250 and another slip of paper.

“Be at that address next Saturday,” he said, “and I'll get you a grand.”

The following weekend I grabbed my friend Magnum and we drove to Pomona for my next match. Magnum had been a close buddy all through my drug-dealing days, a tall meth-head who resembled Tom Selleck and didn't seem to know his own strength—like a big Baby Huey. Magnum first proved his loyalty when I was collecting on some drug money I'd fronted an ex-con. When the bastard went for his gun, Magnum clocked him. He became my trusted “road dog” after that, at least until he went to prison and Old Joe came along to take his place.

My next fight was after-hours in a Pomona bar, and this time there were maybe fifty or sixty bettors inside, including the fat bookie with his tumbler of booze. My latest opponent was a monstrous sonofabitch who had to outweigh me by at least a hundred pounds. And I'm thinking,
Holy fuck, now I'm in trouble.

I removed my flip-flops and stepped into the open space near a couple of pool tables. This time there was no hand clapping to start the match. An air horn sounded and the fight was on.

My opponent was one of those lunkheads who throws a roundhouse from the ground up. When he tried that move with me, I quick-kicked
him in the ribs. When he tried it again I booted him behind the knee, and now the giant was limping around like a lame dog. I was faster than he was. Much faster. The dude kept missing, and I kept working that bum knee over until he could barely stand. That's when I made a sudden move inside and drove the palm of my hand hard into his face, breaking his nose.

That bookie made some money that night. I think he must've cleaned up on most of those suckers in the bar.

I kept on rolling from there, and with each fight the number of bettors seemed to grow a little larger. Now they were calling me “Shotgun,” my nickname before I was known as the U-Haul Bandit. I used to own a 12-gauge with a six-inch extension that my brother Keith had machined for me, and I used that shotgun to great effect. Before I made my reputation hauling furniture for delinquent junkies, I was the guy who blew their doors off the hinges and announced, “Where's my money, motherfucker?”

The bank I was making on the underground fight circuit was easy pickin's compared to the drug racket. For a minute of my time I was pulling in thousands of dollars. And that's all those matches usually went—minute, minute and a half. After three, both of us would be out of breath, so I wanted to roll up my opponent and get things over with as quickly as possible.

Man, I don't know how many bareknuckle matches I was in—there were scores of them. But for a long time I never lost. That cigar-chomping, whiskey-swilling bookie kept making money off me too. I recall him betting against me just once . . . and the stinky-ass bastard lost.

Despite the big paydays, I began to feel dirty about what I was doing—like some whore stripping on stage as those businessmen jerked off and laid their money down. I was done with the fight game, but Magnum was making too much money and having way too much fun . . . all at my expense, of course. So I promised him one more bout before folding the tent.

And it was a big one.

It was a daylight match held in the Southern California desert out behind a bar in the middle of nowhere. I was being pitted against an undefeated bareknuckle fighter from Louisiana—a dude with a lot more fights under his belt than I had.

The money was five to one against me.

I remember driving out to that desert bar with Magnum. The parking lot was jammed with vehicles, including a Cadillac Eldorado with Texas plates and the classic bull horns fixed to the hood. Bettors were coming from all over for that one.

Nobody recognized Shotgun Rowe as I stepped into the bar. So I took a stool, ordered a Corona from the barmaid and watched money change hands. Magnum left to find a bookie at five to one.

“You here for the fight?” asked the barmaid.

She was gorgeous. I wanted to fuck her.

“I am,” I said, snatching the bottle from the bar before she could open it.

“It's supposed to be a good one,” she said. “A high-dollar fight. How much you gonna bet?”

“Three grand,” I said, then pried the cap off with my teeth—a little trick that used to freak my sisters out.

The barmaid wasn't impressed.

“Well, I hear it's going to be a great fight,” she said. “Have fun.”

I finished my beer and walked out the back door. At the rear of the building, surrounded by a crowd of close to two hundred spectators, was an elevated boxing ring enclosed by a single rope. My opponent was standing off to the side, chatting up some of the bettors. The man was older than me, and just about as tall. His misshapen nose and a road map of scars spoke of hard miles.

I went over and introduced myself. He struck me as a pretty cool guy—just a barroom brawling motherfucker, come from the bayou to put on a good show and make a few bucks. It wasn't personal for either one of us.

When it was go-time we stepped over the rope together and entered the ring.

A bell started the match. My opponent was quick. One of those fast jabbers—pop, pop, pop. Just flashing out that hard right hand. Right away he caught my jaw and split it wide open. I came back with a kick move that knocked him on his ass. He scrambled to his feet and got busy working my chin again until I put him down for good with a hard blow to the temple using the edge of my hand.

I could have put the boot to the man's head as he lay half conscious on the mat. I'd done it before to some of the assholes I'd fought. “Shit talkers” I called them. Dudes who thought they were badass and talked trash. Those were the fucks I put the boot to because I didn't want them asking for rematches. But I wasn't going to do that to this Louisiana boy. Too much respect. Besides, it was over. He'd lost.

I went back into the bar and took a seat while Magnum stitched the cut on my chin. I noticed the barmaid watching me with an amused smile. I asked for her phone number, figuring I'd made an impression. I was wrong.

“I'm sorry, no offense,” she said, declining my request. “But I think what you do is stupid.”

After that match I thought I was going to hang it up and call it a day. But I didn't. Magnum convinced me to keep the good times rolling, talking me into one more bout after another. The money and the crowds were growing, and so was my ego. I was still undefeated and getting cocky. Eventually I headed for Nevada, where bareknuckle brawling was aboveboard and sanctioned by the state. That's where the big money was. I was looking at a twenty-five-thousand-dollar payday.

The Nevada match was held in a rodeo arena that still had a bunch of horse and bull shit on the ground. My opponent was a muscular black cowboy, a large man with a fight record as good as mine. But he got no respect from me at all. I walked out, refused to shake his hand and said, “I didn't know niggers were cowboys.”

See, that's the man I was back then—a bigoted sonofabitch who said and did things that still turn my stomach today. Fact is, long before I'd been possessed by my addiction to meth, there was a two-headed beast lurking inside me called rage and hate. I look back now and recognize the person I once was, but I can't fathom the evil done in that monster's name.

As a young buck growing up in Hemet I was consumed by those ugly emotions. My little sister, Lin Ann, still keeps a poem I wrote in high school that speaks volumes about that dark time.

Staring out the window as the world passes by.

The dark clouds surrender to tears. I cannot cry.

Lightning flashes anger and thunder sounds my rage.

My heart screams to be out of this hell bound cage.

My soul cries out and yearns to be free far from this place.

Tears can be had so long before a heart explodes.

And emotions lead us down dark and lonely roads.

Not exactly Ralph Waldo Emerson, I know, but you get the picture. I was fucked up in the head. And unfortunately for my schoolmates, when I wanted to vent that bile, they were the easiest targets.

During my time at Hemet High I often spent free time in the school yard smoking cigarettes and hurling slurs at the handful of blacks who were bussed in from the nearby city of Perris. Hemet had become racially polarized back in the 1970s after the state tried to forcibly integrate the school system. Everyone I knew, including my brothers and biker friends, hated the “niggers.” Of course, you're not born to hate, you're raised that way. And I was raised to despise those people with a passion that makes no goddamn sense to me today. It's a sad fact that the first morning those Perris kids showed up at our school, I culled one from the herd and beat the shit out of him.

Just because.

That earned another suspension from Principal Vanderwater.

And my issues with a man's skin color didn't end with high school. I took those prejudices with me into adulthood, where I could really do some damage.