Pound for Pound (20 page)

“What’s in the long boxes?”

“Catheters.”

“Tell somebody to get these bags off of me, okay?”

The nurse said, “Someone’ll be in.”

A nurse wheeled the other patient out.

Dan waited. The bags, bearing down into his groin, had Dan talking to himself. A different nurse came in to check on him.

“Not yet,” she said.

Dan said, “How long have I been here?”

“A bit.”

Dan said, “This should have closed, right?”

“We’ll give it a little more time.”

“How much more?”

“A little.”

Dan was sure Kogon didn’t know what was going down. He held his hands out, palms up. “I get the feeling that no one knows I’m here. That, or nobody gives a shit.”

The nurse huffed out. Dan looked at the walls. He realized without surprise that he didn’t care whether the femoral closed or not. He figured that dying itself wouldn’t be so bad, might even feel good. All he wanted was someone to get rid of the slick and greasy sandbags. Another nurse came in for catheters. Dan asked her what time it was.

“Not late,” she said, and hurried out.

Dan waited another hour. It felt like four. Another nurse came in and checked the incision. “Not yet.”

Dan said, “Get a doctor in here now.”

“I can’t just go get a doctor, sir. We have procedures.”

“Well, you just got a new procedure. Bring a croaker in here now or I’m getting my ass up and walkin the fuck out.”

The nurse hurried off. Five minutes later, three large men entered. One of them, the oldest, was the one who’d checked on the patient who’d been wheeled out.

Dan said, “You guys croakers, or from the goon squad?”

The oldest said, “We’re staff doctors. Maybe you should go a little easy on your nurse.”

Dan said, “I already took it easy now for, what? four, five hours? I could bleed to death between the times these nurses come in to screw with the bags.”

The youngest doctor said, “You mean you haven’t had the same nurse?”

“Hell, no,” said Dan.

The youngest doctor lifted the first sandbag, then the second. A shot of spurting blood arced thirty inches into the air. Two more heartbeats launched two more red rainbows onto the tile floor.

Dan said, “Why not mix up some thrombin and be the fuck done with it?”

The oldest doctor said, “So, you know about thrombin?”

Dan said, “Yeah, doesn’t everybody?”

The femoral closed immediately with thrombin plugs; plugs were something Dan had no previous knowledge of, though he knew that coagulants could be used in different forms. After forty-five minutes, he was wheeled back to his room. His leg and groin were hurting and felt bruised. He bitched. He was given a tiny white pill.

Bing!

He woke near midnight and rang for the nurse. Some patients loved the effects of drugs, but he hated the woozy feeling.

Dan said, “You got anything to eat this time of night?”

“Fruit. Apple. Orange.”

Dan said, “I got to take a leak. Do I need one of those bottle things?”

The nurse said, “You’re okay to use the toilet, if you want.”

Dan got out of bed. He was unsteady. He checked the incision, which had closed, but was still partially soft instead of hard with scab. He turned to the nurse.

“Is this hole in me closed for good?”

The nurse said, “Barring complications.”

Dan said, “When will Doc Kogon be in?”

“Someone will check you again at four
a.m.,
and then again between seven and eight. You doctor will also be in later, since there was a problem.”

Dan said, “When’ll that be?”

“Before he starts his procedures tomorrow, say around one or two?”

“I want to leave now.”

“No.”

She gave Dan some kind of capsule to swallow with water. He tried to figure out a scheme for the next day. The fight was at two. Kogon wouldn’t be in until one at the earliest. No good. Dan got fluffy. He crashed before he had a plan.

He was woozy again at four, but alert when he woke at six
a.m.
He checked how hard the scab was and if it was dry. For breakfast, he ate cereal and an apple, and drank chamomile tea because they wouldn’t give him coffee. A fuzzy-cheeked intern did an examination at seven.

“Looks good, old fellow.”

Dan said, “You talkin to me or to my dick?”

The intern blushed and got out. Dan rang for a nurse, then began to dress. A grumpy, bleach-blond nurse came in. She was losing her frizzed hair but had great-looking legs. She stopped cold when she saw Dan in his pants.

“You get back in that bed this instant!”

Dan said, “I don’t mean to be a pain in your you-know, but please tell those in charge that I’m outta here.”

The nurse said, “Sir, you could break open.”

“I’ll buy some Kotex.”

“Kotex? You can’t just get up and leave, clown, we have to inform your physician!”

“He’s already worked it out.”

T
he right side of Dan’s groin was black and blue. Walking to the parking lot, he felt like he had a groin pull. He fired up the truck, then set the thrombin pack beside him on the seat. He purchased a box of Kotex maxi pads on Melrose, then stopped on Robertson for pastry and strong coffee at a French bakery. He finished at nine o’clock, then stayed on Robertson down to 10 East. When he hit downtown, he veered onto 5 South. Two hours later he was at the hotel in Del Mar.

The fair was in full swing when Dan and Earl and Momolo pulled into the parking lot at eleven-thirty.

Sweetly, politely, Momolo said, “You have the proper equipment and the necessary medications, am I correct?”

“Pardner,” Earl said, “he’s got the whole world in his hands.”

Momolo was a Christian boy from a missionary school that had been destroyed by civil war. He got the reference and smiled.

The bright, overhead sun made for short shadows. The breeze off the rolling breakers a mile away kept the temperature in the mid-seventies.

Food stands were set up. Smoke and grease mixed with the smells of oregano and cilantro and garlic and ginger and cinnamon. Italian, Texas barbecue, Thai, Mexican, a coffee stand, Greek, corn on the cob, cotton candy, fish and chips, lemonade, ice-cream parlor, and Mom’s Pies.

The horse crowd was there, Western and English. There were families of every color, speaking many languages. Surfers, dopers, old folks, military, teenagers in Future Farmers of America jackets. A cheap carnival was up and running, and the Ferris wheel was turning. The boxing ring and folding chairs for a thousand had been set up in the middle of the vacant acreage outside the apricot structure of the old racetrack. Dust from the massive parking lots moved with the breeze through the narrow valley.

Earl and Dan sniffed the food, while Momolo checked in with the Boxing Commission doctor. Momolo returned to say there was some kind of problem, his eyes moving from left to right.

Earl said, “What kind of problem?”

Momolo said, “I am not clear on this. We are to see the official.”

Earl said, “Best see Jolly Joe.”

They headed for Commissioner Johnson, who sat at a makeshift desk ringside. José Maximiliano “Jolly Joe J. J.” Johnson was the son of a Mexican mother and a black man from Houston. He weighed close to three hundred pounds, and had a smile as big as his ass. His round head was shaved, and his midnight eyes laughed whether he was eating or in a fight. He was known alternatively as Jolly Joe and J.J. He had his mama’s straight black hair, and spoke passable Spanish with his daddy’s Texas drawl. He liked working with Earl and Dan, saw them as stand-up guys who played straight with their fighters. He called Dan “Big D.”

When he saw them, he said, “Say, Soff! Happenin, Big D?”

Everyone shook hands the old-fashioned way.

Earl said, “What’s this business with my man Momolo here?”

Jolly Joe said, “That right, bro. You fight fell out.”

Earl said, “Say what? Our opponent was talkin shit in Mexican like he was Marco Antonio Barrera!”

Jolly Joe spread his hands. “His trainer called in a hour ago sayin once his boy thought about your African, he up an’ run to mama.”

Dan said, “Where’s mama live?”

“Way the hell down Ensenada someplace.”

Earl said, “The promoter get us a stand-in?”

Johnson said, “We bof tried, even if I ain’t supposed to get into it. But it too late for locals in you weight, an’ too far down here for nobody else.”

Momolo looked like he was going to cry. “I still receive my compensation, do I not?”

Dan shook his head. “See, the deal’s not made until you actually sign the contract. Fallouts are why lots of promoters don’t let prelim boys sign until just before the fight. That’s in case something like this goes down—so they don’t have to pay the fighter who does show. This promoter is usually able to put together solid fights. That’s why me and Earl took the chance on him. Promoters’ll even try for if-come with ten-round fighters, if a boy’s hungry enough to go for it. It’s not just you.”

Dan could see that Earl was pissed about the fight falling out, and that Momolo had already spent his purse.

Momolo said, “These are crafty fellows.”

“Yeah, they are,” said Dan. “But they got to cover their asses, too. See, there was a time when fighters who lived a long way off would cash in their plane tickets, and that could cost promoters big bucks. That way, the bunko punks could collect, and never have to fight.”

“Would the authorities not arrest them?”

Dan shook his head. “What promoter’s going to sue somebody in another state, much less another country?”

“The boxing life is a treacherous one. My father warned me.”

“Yeah,” Earl told him, “but it’s the only life where you can become champion of the world.”

“Yes,” said the African, “that is of importance.”

Jolly Joe Johnson had seen it happen too often in his twenty years with the Commission, and for twenty more as a fighter and a trainer.

He’d begun as a successful middleweight at 160, fought in the amateurs when Dan was already a pro. But he realized that his place in boxing was outside the ropes, not in. When a low-level Commission job opened up, he grabbed it, then worked his way up. The California Commission under Johnson was ranked with Nevada and New York. Jolly Joe’s personal file on boxers started the day he began work for the Commission, and contained the records of every fighter in every fight since, national and international.

Anytime some manager or promoter tried to bullshit him about a boy’s record, J.J. would smile, his black eyes merry. “My man,” he’d say, “I’m big like a elephant, an’ I remembers like one.”

Now, gazing calmly at Dan, Earl, and Momolo, Johnson scratched his ass, then wiped sweat from his jowls with a clean white handkerchief. “You boys takin off, or you gon hang around like civilized folk?”

“I don’t know about these two, but I’m headin back to town,” Dan replied.

“Why should we stick around for nothin?” Earl asked.

Jolly Joe said, “Hail, there’s always
somethin
when friends socialize. Don’t all got to be bidness.”

Dan started laughing. “J.J., I broke your code a long time ago, you don’t know that?”

J.J. said, “What shit you talkin, man?”

Dan said, “You’re a cheap-ass mooch, that’s what I’m sayin. Notice that I didn’t say a shameless mooch.”

Johnson brought his fingers innocently to his bouncy chest. “Mooch?
Me?
A man of my station in the community?”

Dan laughed and said, “Oh hell, why not? I’m gonna take you out to dinner, J.J.”

Momolo looked outraged. This was the man who had just taken away his fight, and now Dan and Earl were going to buy him dinner? As they were leaving for the restaurant, Earl pulled Momolo aside and said quietly, “You know your Bible, so you gonna remember what it say about castin yo bread on the waters. Well, we gonna cast some bread and one
of these days Jolly Joe give you a break. Forget the fight falling out. Happens all the time. We’ll give you a raise at the shop, make up for some of dat purse you would have gotten knocking that Mex on his ass.”

They had a blow-out meal. Dan paid. But he did wince when Jolly Joe placed his order.

“Let’s see. Baby-back ribs, beans, slaw, corn bread, sweet potato pie,
an’
I’ll need some that peach cobbler wit a little vanilla ice cream, yeah, that ought to do it. An’, uh, I think I’ll have me one a them double lattes, too.”

“You want a half slab of baby back, or you want a whole?” Dan asked.

“Half? Half?” Jolly Joe laughed. “Damn, you chislin on me after all what I done of old Salt and Peppa? Half? Sheeuh, I want the whole slab, man! You didn’t know that?”

Dan knew that fat was bad for arteries, but he ate barbecue anyway. He checked the incision several times throughout the day. There was some leakage at one point that he stopped with adrenaline. He covered it with a sanitary pad, but he never mentioned the incision to Earl, and Earl had the sense not to ask about the angioplasty. Later that day, when Dan called Kogon, the cardiologist said that he hadn’t been surprised by the way Dan left the hospital. Kogon liked the type As, being one himself.

Dan saw Kogon two days later. He examined the crusted incision and then checked Dan’s heart. He said, “So far so good. Did you win?”

“Fight fell out. I upset your people for nothing.”

Kogon said, “At least you proved I do good work.”

“Doc, I got a problem,” Dan said, his eyes scanning the Santa Monica Mountains. “I’ve noticed that I don’t care about anything anymore.”

Kogon said, “You think it’s because of the angioplasty?”

Dan looked back at the doctor. “Truth to tell, it’s been comin on. But
when the fight fell out, I noticed that I wasn’t pissed. I wasn’t even disappointed. Nothin.”

Kogon said, “It’s not uncommon, say, for bypass surgery to radically affect someone’s moods. Some go into serious depression and stay there awhile. Some break down crying all the time, men as well as women. Others come out of their depression quickly. Some experience little or no negative emotional effects. To a large extent, it depends on the individual—that and a number of variables, medical and otherwise. Some in cardiology attribute negative effects to the heart-lung machine. Others claim it is the trauma of the surgery itself.”