Closer All the Time Read online

  “I thought so. You’re not fighting again.”

  “I told him no.”

  “Good for you.”

  Then somebody shouts her name, and she rolls her eyes and goes through the swinging door beside the bar into the kitchen. It’s gotten busy, and I know they need the table, so I finish my meat loaf and beer, pay Potter at the register, and head outside.

  I’m thinking about the Catskills, now, and I remember running on the pine needles before dawn, weight training until my arms went shaky, skipping rope and thumping the big bag, working on muscle memory: jab and step, hook and duck. Between that and fighting twice a week, they got me into great shape. That was the bad part when I quit: Training on my own just wasn’t the same. I kept fighting, though, got by on what the Portland Press Herald called “a hard head and a big heart,” made some money, lived it up for a few years. I can’t help wondering what I might have done. I still made something of a name for myself; otherwise, why would Silverman come down to Baxter looking for me?

  “Answer me that,” I say out loud.

  I’ve crossed the Speedway and the bridge and am driving down the River Road. It’s November, and hunters are walking the roadside in their red flannel, rifles over their shoulders. The sun is already setting behind the trees over by the airport. I watch it sink all the way down, and by the time it disappears I’m turning into the lot where we keep the tanker truck.

  My first delivery is on the other side of town, out by the quarry, in this development they put up a few years ago in the old hayfield. A guy goes trotting past, running pretty smooth, and I think about Silverman running in the park, meeting Mysterious Billy. It’s strange to think of him still being alive. That would have to have been in the 1940s. I can imagine Silverman stopping to talk, reaching his fists out, Billy tapping them with his own, both of them knowing to do it, like a secret handshake for some club. Then Sam jogging away with his arms flicking out in those fake roadwork punches. I think that it is sort of a club. We all share the history: roadwork, shadowboxing, training. Depriving ourselves. Climbing into the ring and risking our lives.

  Some club, I think.

  I get out of the truck, walk the hose to the inlet pipe, pull the trigger, and let it flow. I’m back to wishing I’d stuck out the camp, really just holding the idea in my mind, like I’ve done before any number of times. Suppose I’d managed to turn into one of those golden boys. I might’ve made some serious money. More than some, maybe, being white and all.

  I never said it was an especially fair sort of club, you know?

  I remember one of D’Amico’s trainers named Walter Coombs, who fought for fifteen years and never got anywhere. He was pretty good, too, at least the way he tells it. He was wielding the paddles one day, taking me through different combinations, spinning tales about how they’d ducked him because he was too dangerous, and because they could get away with it.

  “Now, if I’d been a little paler,” he said, and he tipped back his head and laughed, like it was a joke on both of us. If I could talk to him now, I’d tell him that wasn’t the only way of being screwed on the deal. I’d tell him there were other kinds of unfair.

  I do my second delivery all the way over to the Elks Club, and then I get a call from Sonny Philips on the CB and have to head back down the River Road to Primus Blake’s. I guess the old bird scared up enough money to fill his oil tank. At least I’ll end up near the lot, I think.

  The road runs close to the river, then drifts away.

  I watch the woods and think about Hitchcock. He was one of the biggest names in the state for a while, and I got some ink of my own just by fighting him tough. He was a real fighter, hit me harder than anybody in D’Amico’s camp ever did; had a way of throwing a hook that started out low and came up over your guard that I never figured out. I remember how he had me on the ropes when the bell rang to end our first fight, how hard it was to stand steady while we waited for the referee to make the call. I remember thinking that maybe I’d won and just didn’t know it, and it makes me blush to think how surprised I was when it was Hitchcock’s hand that got raised. I guess I wasn’t thinking straight.

  I remember Terry tapping me on the arm and saying, “Good fight, kid.”

  I’d run into him in Portland afterwards, and he’d always stop and say hello, even when he was flying high. He respected me, and later on, when a payday was going to fall through for him, I was the guy he had Silverman bring in. I fought him hard again that time. He knocked me out, but it took him eleven rounds, and things were pretty tight on the cards when it happened. I busted one of his ribs, it turned out. It was probably my best effort ever.

  I got some decent fights after that, enough to put some cash away. And I kept on fighting longer than I probably should have, just because I didn’t know what else to do with myself. Finally, though, I took on this farm kid from Aroostook County, and he not only went the distance with me, but broke my nose for good measure, and after that I was smart enough to call it a day. I wasn’t going to end up like Ali, all shaky and pathetic, or dead, like The Pink Cat. I had that money in the bank, and I was going to maybe go back to school and learn a trade.

  While I’m at Primus’s filling the tank, this guy is shooting baskets at the hoop over the barn door. I’m surprised he can see well enough in the twilight, but he fires away, taking these old-fashioned set shots. After one the ball hits a rock and bounces over my way, and I stop it with my foot and kick it back. When the guy picks it up he squints at me, then comes closer and points.

  “Arnold Stimpson!” he says.

  He walks up with the ball under his arm, sticks out his other hand, and says, “Eric Lunden; remember me? How long you been back in town?”

  “Not that long.”

  I do remember him, then, running around town, eight or ten years older. I’m surprised he recognizes me, since he left when I was still pretty small, but then he tells me it’s because he was living in Portland and saw me fight Terry Hitchcock at the Expo.

  “Ouch,” I say.

  “No, you took it to him,” Eric says. “He got lucky.”

  “That’s one way to look at it.”

  “I remembered you when I read the write-ups,” he says, and I wait for him to bring up my little childhood indiscretion. It was in every article, pretty much—how I came out of the State Farm, and why I was there—but before he can, I’m saved by the bell. The fuel gun clanks and jerks off, and I get busy yanking the gun out and sticking it into its cradle on the truck, shutting the PTO off, letting the pressure hiss away.

  He waits, smiling, bouncing the ball, alternating hands.

  I put a foot up on the running board and the receipt book on my knee and write out the slip. Then I tear off Primus’s copy and hand it to him.

  “Mind seeing he gets this?”

  “Sure, I’ll see him at supper, if he lives that long.”

  I laugh and say it was good to bump into him. I grab the steering wheel, pull myself up into the truck.

  Eric says something about getting together for a beer, then waves and heads back to the basket, dribbling the ball behind his back, stopping and popping from fifteen feet out. I wait until the shot swishes through, beep the horn, turn the key, and drive out onto the River Road.

  A week later I’m sitting at the table in the old brooder coop, digging into a plate of SpaghettiOs, when the phone rings. I pick it up and hear: “How’s it going, brother?”

  “Terry?” I say. “How’d you get this number?”

  “Silverman gave it to me.”

  “I didn’t know he had it.”

  “He did. So listen, did you think it over?”

  “I didn’t have to.”

  “Did you think about the money?”

  “Mainly I thought that comebacks are for suckers.”

  “Not this one,” he says. “Listen, we’ll call it Hitchcock–Stimpson Three! Equal billing, my brother!” He goes on, describing the publicity he’ll arrange, blowing smoke about how to
ugh I was, and how he wants a good opponent to start with so they’ll take him seriously again, and I let him keep talking. It’s nice to just listen. I’ve been sitting alone in the coop, drinking Narragansett from the old lady’s stash in the fridge, eating canned food, and maybe I’m a little lonely.

  Then he says something about taking it easy on me, and I feel the old temper kick in.

  “Nobody ever had to carry Arnold Stimpson.”

  He laughs. “That’s my boy.”

  I hang up then, and when he calls right back I let it ring.

  When it finally stops, the food’s cold and I’m not hungry anymore anyway. I scrape my plate and wash the dishes and towel them dry. Then I put on my jacket and go outside. It’s dark and cold, and I look up the hill at the crab-apple grove and my grandfather’s old house. Somebody I don’t know lives there now. After he died they sold the house and the old lady split the money with my uncle Mike, then drank her share all up and had her stroke.

  Nice job, Ma.

  I walk up the hill to the road. They paved it a few years back, and there are more houses than when I was a kid; there are lights all the way up to the crossing. I walk up that way, looking at my uncle and aunt’s house, thinking back, shaking my head. I wonder what Mark is up to these days. Julie and the rest of them, too. I walk all the way up to the crossing and my ears and face are getting cold, so I turn around and go back and sit in the coop and crack another beer and think about stuff.

  So I guess it was a combination of things: staying in the frigging coop again; visiting the old lady and the hostility in her eyes; Silverman and Hitchcock badgering me. And last, but definitely not least, being stupid enough to ask Tomi Lambert if she wanted to go out.

  Oh yeah, I asked her.

  If you’re clueless enough, you can talk yourself into almost anything.

  I kept going up to the Neutral Corner when she was working, and I sat at the Mysterious Billy booth because it was near the kitchen, in case she might want to get off her feet again. One evening she was complaining about how tired she was, and I put my fork down and told her I’d like to take her out for a drink after she got off work so she could relax for a change.

  She looked surprised. Then she said, “Oh, Arnold,” with a look so full of pity that it left me no choice but to find something stupid or reckless to do as soon as humanly possible. I mean, go ahead and tell me I’m an idiot. Tell me I’m ugly or delusional or punch-drunk or just plain full of shit. Tell me you don’t go out with former juvenile delinquents.

  Just don’t look at me like I’m a sad little boy who needs a hug.

  I held up a hand while she was still apologizing and said, “Hey, no sweat, it was just a thought,” and jumped up like I had a crucial appointment I’d forgotten until that very moment. And when Tomi stood up too and looked into my eyes with that same god-awful tenderness, I grinned like a maniac and snapped off a salute to old Mysterious Billy, went over and paid my bill, and left a tip I couldn’t afford. Then I raced home to the coop and dug through the trash until I found Silverman’s card.

  Some kid sticks his head into the room and says, “You’re on,” and I feel my stomach roll over. I look at Silverman and he holds up a fist. Same old crap, right down to a sudden attack of cold feet. I spend a few seconds fantasizing about faking an injury, hold it in my mind like a consolation prize. But when Sam says, “Let’s do it, champ,” I put on my robe and follow him down a corridor into the arena. It’s noisy inside, nearly a full house.

  Somebody boos when we start down the aisle.

  I trail Silverman up to the ring, rolling my shoulders, banging my gloves together, seating them around my knuckles. My hands are taped and sweaty inside the gloves, and I’m loose from shadowboxing.

  The ring is smoky under the hanging lights.

  Silverman spreads the ropes and I duck through and bounce into my corner and shake out my arms. I grab the ropes and do a couple of knee bends as I look around at the crowd.

  I grin, like my mouth isn’t as dry as the Sahara of Maine.

  When I turn back, Hitchcock is snapping his head like there’s water in his ears. He looks about four feet wide, and I feel a little panic start up. But I tamp it down and manage to sneer.

  The ref motions to us and we meet in the middle of the ring.

  I look at a pimple on Terry’s forehead, imagine jabbing it. He’s carrying a few extra pounds and his skin is shiny, and the ref is already sweating through his striped jersey. He instructs us about illegal stuff, tells us to fight clean but protect ourselves at all times.

  Hitchcock sticks his gloves out, I tap them with my own, and he gives me this grin as if to say, Here we go again, brother!

  I shuffle to my corner and grab the ropes. I do a deep knee bend, look out at the crowd. I don’t see Eric Lunden or anyone else I know, even though Alva Potter put a fight poster in the window a week in advance. I guess it wasn’t exciting enough to drag anybody all the way to Portland.

  Then I see the two swanks, just showing up. I guess they’re real fans, after all. They move along the row, saying, Sorry, sorry, and finally reach their seats. The guy holds up a hand and the girl slaps him five. They settle themselves and look toward me, and just for a second, looking back into that killer girl’s eyes, I forget where I am or what the hell I’m supposed to be doing.

  I guess that’s why they call them knockouts, right?

  But then Sam says, “Thirty seconds!” and I have to get myself squared away.

  Because, of course, I haven’t actually gone anywhere. Nope, I’m still right here in the ring. And Terry Hitchcock is still snorting and pawing on the other side. And any second now that bell will clang, and I’ll have to come out fighting.

  Susan

  Tomi calls at four thirty to say she has to work late again because another girl has gone home sick. She won’t be getting out until God knows when.

  “I hate to ask,” she says, “but could you possibly keep the girls overnight?”

  “Of course,” Susan says. “But I don’t know why it’s always you.”

  “I don’t know either.”

  “You should have a talk with Alva.”

  “Maybe,” Tomi laughs, “but now would not be the time.”

  “Do tell.”

  “He’s all worked up over Johnny Lunden. Johnny came in for a drink and nobody noticed how bad he was until he fell off the barstool. You know how he covers it up sometimes. So anyway, the bartender shut him off and he made a huge ruckus. Alva tried to talk to him, so Johnny shoved him and pushed a table over and ran outside. I guess he went berserk in the street. Chief Foss had to haul him off, kicking and screaming.”

  “Oh, no. Poor Johnny.”

  “I know,” Tomi says.

  “He’s such a lost soul.”

  “Well, Chief Foss found him. Mom, I have to go. His Highness is staring.”

  “All right. Don’t worry about the girls.”

  “You’re a peach.”

  Susan hangs up the phone and turns to look at Olivia and Eloise, who are sitting at the kitchen table, eating molasses cookies and drinking milk from little blue glasses she bought at the five-and-dime.

  “That was your mommy,” she says.

  “Is she coming to get us?” Olivia, the older girl, says.

  “She has to work late, so I get to keep you here all night.”

  “That’s okay,” Olivia says matter-of-factly.

  “That’s okay,” Eloise says, in an almost perfect imitation, eyes on her sister.

  Susan smiles. They’re such little sweeties. She hopes it takes a good long while before they get complicated. She knows it will happen eventually; it always does. Girls can be a real handful, she thinks. Tomi certainly was! And she shouldn’t talk. She was quite a live wire herself back in the Mesozoic era.

  She looks out the window at a fair-weather sky.

  At least Tomi’s timing is good. Roger has taken Junior out flying, which is just perfect. He loves the girls—but only
in small doses. He and Junior will be training all afternoon, then making a night flight to Augusta, which means that when Roger gets home, the girls will already be in bed and he won’t have to do anything more than kiss them good night.

  Even Roger can handle that much sentiment.

  Susan smiles crookedly, sits down with the girls, and helps herself to a cookie.

  It’s that moment between twilight and nightfall, when the sky is just about to lose its last bit of luminescence. Susan stands hipshot on the porch, holding her cigarette the way Lauren Bacall used to in the movies: between two fingers, wrist elegantly bent, elbow supported by the other hand.

  She takes a puff, tosses her head back to exhale the smoke upward and to the side. This is the way she smoked when she first started, and it’s such a flagrant affectation that it makes her laugh to do it now. But she’s been thinking about poor Johnny Lunden—he taught her to smoke—and it’s taken her back. She can still feel exactly what it was like to be seventeen. She’d wanted so much to be a modern girl, and smoking, of course, gave her a wonderful leg up.

  She nips at the cigarette again, listens to the girls playing inside.

  My plan has worked to perfection, she thinks, and dramatically exhales another stream of smoke, as if she’s said it out loud to Humphrey Bogart. Then she rests her chin on her shoulder and blinks in a sultry way.

  “Oh, Lord.” She laughs again.

  Still holding herself like Bacall, she leans slightly backwards and looks over her shoulder through the window to check on the girls. After feeding them grilled cheese sandwiches and taking them for a walk down the path through the gate to the darkening river (they scared a beaver, and when its tail slapped the water the girls shrieked in mock terror), she herded them back into the house, gave them a ball of yarn, and told them to roll it across the floor for Ginger to chase. They’ve been happily occupied with that little game for the past fifteen minutes, which has given Susan just enough time to slip out onto the porch and indulge herself.