The New Black (14 page)

– If that is what you wish, sir, by all means, you may. If what you wish is to get your hair fixed, you can and may just go to the hairdresser and get a damn haircut. Do not let us stop you. We here at the
Instituto de Perfeccionamiento
are neither interested in nor capable of fixing things. If we fixed things, the institute would be called the
Instituto de Reparación
. It is not. We are not. It, we, is, are the
Instituto de Perfeccionamiento
.

– Well, hell.

– Yes, she said, from the Middle English, and that from the Old English, akin to helan, ‘to conceal,' the Latin
celare
, the Greek
kalyptein
, compared metaphorically and perhaps also likened literally to war by General W. T. Sherman. Have you come to a decision?

Again he paid in cash, and again he was shown into the waiting room. Again the chair and the sitting down, again only a glimpse of the ideal rump. Again the bookshelves and books and the fifteen or twenty minutes and the walking around and the sharp right angles and the inspection and the wish. Again the sitting, the getting up, the walking to the door, the listening, the hearing of nothing, the five or seven minutes, the opening of the door, the walking, the lobby or vestibule. Again the nine or eighteen minutes, the lack of bell or buzzer, the calling out, the shouting, the screaming, the firm rapping of the knuckles, the opening and closing, the walking, the long drive home.

X

He awoke in the morning with perfect hair. Movie-star hair. Thick and wavy and lustrous, unlike it had ever been. He did not have to open his eyes or stretch or get up or go to the bathroom or turn on the light or remove his underpants or turn on the shower or look in the mirror. He awoke and simply knew: he could feel its perfection against his scalp. He would never have to rinse or shampoo or condition ever again.

And so it went. Skin, hair, refrigerator, eyesight, wardrobe, gastrointestinal tract, sofa, car, unicycle, hearing, pogo-stick, flooring, plumbing, prostate, wiring, fingernails, and so on. Drive, walk, knock, open, enter, chat, pay, walk, sit, glimpse, wait, inspect, wish, sit, get up, walk, listen, hear, wait, open, walk, wait, stand, call out, shout, scream, rap, walk, drive, over and over.

Then she said, Your program, sir, is complete.

– What?

– Your program is complete.

– No, I don't, it can't be, I'm, we're just getting started, just getting going, just getting into the groove.

– No, sir, I'm afraid we're not doing any of those things. Your program is complete.

– Well, okay, but surely there are, there must be, aren't there other programs?

– Not for you, sir. I'm sorry.

– But— But what about my fear of heights? My fear of lows? My nightmares? My echolalia?

– Sir, you do not suffer from echolalia.

– But I can feel it coming on right now at this very moment! “Sir, you do not suffer from echolalia.” You see?

–
I'm sorry, sir. Your program, your only program, the one and only program for you, it is finished.

–
But what about Rahlan Drot? I'd give anything just to know if he made it, and if he did, to get back in touch, to know that he's okay, doing well, being happy. And what about my mother? She's old, extremely old, ancient and kind-hearted and courageous but we haven't spoken in years—she's never forgiven me for allowing my ex-wife to get away. And my ex-wife, speaking of my ex-wife, beautiful woman, I don't blame her a bit for what happened, and she, well, yes, she remarried, but I heard she's since redivorced, so she's free now, reunattached, and there's nothing in the world I want more than to have her as my ex-ex-wife, to try again, to do right by her this time.

– I'm afraid that none of those things fall within our purview, sir. That is to say, none of those things yield to our treatment. Your program is complete.

– But—

Again she did not interrupt him. He sought a way to end his sentence. He found it nonendable.

– So I guess this is goodbye, he said.

–
Yes, she said, an alteration of “God be with you,” 1573, a concluding remark or gesture at parting; see also “
adios
,” 1837, from the Spanish
adiós
, from
a
, from the Latin
ad
, and
Dios
, from the Latin
Deus
, used to express farewell.

Back to his car, his perfect car, back to his house, his perfect house. He walked immortal in circles and squares, one perfect room, and then the next. He ran his fingertips across his perfect skin. He ran his hands through his perfect hair. He ran across his perfect carpeting, stumbled over his perfect roller-blades, slammed headlong into a perfect wall, and there was no mark upon it, no mark at all, and his head was also still perfect, no pain, no swelling, no blood, and he ran from his living room to his kitchen to his hallway to his bedroom and the three pictures framed on his dresser: his mother, her apron stained, the rolling pin held up for show, the flour on her cheek, her laughter caught and held; and Rahlan Drot standing next to Stanley, the small brown man and the large white man, their arms interlocked, Rahlan Drot's earlobes pierced and stretched, Stanley's tigersuit faded but clean, this one moment permitted, friendship and trust, this one moment of grace before the next descent; and his ex-wife, the first day of their honeymoon in Cabo San Lucas, behind her the ocean stretched out calmly and bluely, the low white wall of the terrace, the orchid in her hair, he'd told her how beautiful she looked, he'd raised the camera and she'd smiled and averted her eyes.

T
wenty-seven bones make up the human hand. Lunate and capitate and navicular, scaphoid and triquetrum, the tiny horn-shaped pisiforms of the outer wrist. Though differing in shape and density, each is smoothly aligned and flush-fitted, lashed by a meshwork of ligatures running under the skin. All vertebrates share a similar set of bones, and all bones grow out of the same tissue: a bird's wing, a whale's dorsal fin, a gecko's pad, your own hand. Some primates got more—gorilla's got thirty-two, five in each thumb. Humans, twenty-seven.

Bust an arm or leg and the knitting bone's sealed in a wrap of calcium so it's stronger than before. Bust a bone in your hand and it never heals right. Fracture a tarsus and the hairline's there to stay— looks like a crack in granite under the x-ray. Crush a metacarpal and that's that: bone splinters not driven into soft tissue are eaten by enzymes; powder sifts to the bloodstream. Look at a prizefighter's hands: knucks busted flat against the heavy bag or some pug's face and skin split on crossing diagonals, a ridge of scarred X's.

You'll see men cry breaking their hand in a fight, leather-assed Mexies and Steeltown bruisers slumped on a corner stool with tears squirting out their eyes. It's not quite the pain, though the anticipation of pain is there—mitts swelling inside red fourteen-ouncers and the electric grind of bone on bone, maybe it's the eighth and you're jabbing a busted lead right through the tenth to eke a decision. It's the frustration makes them cry. Fighting's all about minimizing weakness. Shoddy endurance? Roadwork. Sloppy footwork? Skip rope. Weak gut? A thousand stomach crunches daily. But fighters with bad hands can't do a thing about it, aside from hiring a cornerman who knows a little about wrapping brittle bones. Same goes for fighters with sharp brows and weak skin who can't help splitting wide at the slightest pawing. They're crying because it's a weakness there's not a damn thing they can do for and it'll commit them to the second tier, one step below the MGM Grand and Foxwoods, the showgirls and Bentleys.

Room's the size of a gas chamber. Wooden chair, sink, small mirror hung on the pigmented concrete wall. Forty-watt bulb hangs on a dark cord, cold yellow light touching my clean-shaven skull and breaking in spears across the floor. Cobwebs suspended like silken parachutes in corners beyond the light. Old Pony duffel between my legs packed with wintergreen liniment and Vaseline, foul protector, mouthguard with cinnamon Dentyne embedded in the teeth prints. I've got my hand wraps laid out on my lap, winding grimy herringbone around the left thumb, wrist, the meat of my palm. Time was, I had strong hands—
nutcrackers
, Teddy Hutch called them. By now they've been broken so many times the bones are like crockery shards in a muslin bag. You get one hard shot before they shatter.

A man with a swollen face pokes his head through the door. He rolls a gnarled toscano cigarillo to the side of his mouth and says, “You ready? Best for you these yahoos don't get any drunker.”

“Got a hot water bottle?” Roll my neck low, touch chin to chest. “Can't get loose.”

“Where do you think you are, Caesars Palace? When you're set, it's down the hall and up a flight of stairs.”

I was born Eddie Brown, Jr., on July 19, 1966, in San Benito, a hard-scrabble town ten miles north of the Tex-Mex border; “somewhere between nowhere and
adiós
,” my mother said of her adopted home town. My father, a Border Patrol agent, worked the international fenceline running from McAllen to Brownsville and up around the horn to the Padre Island chain off the coast. On a clear July day you'd see illegals sunning their lean bodies on the projecting headlands, soaking up heat like seals before embarking on a twilight crossing to the shores of Laguna Madre. He met his wife-to-be on a cool September evening when her raft—uneven lengths of peachwood lashed together with twine, a plastic milk jug skirt—butted the prow of his patrolling johnboat.

“It was cold, wind blowing off the Gulf,” my mother once told me. “
Mío Dios
. The raft seem okay when I go, but then the twine is breaking and those jugs fill with water. Those waters swimming with tiger sharks plump as hens, so many
entrangeros borricos
to gobble up. I'm thinking I'm seeing these shapes,” her index finger described the sickle of a shark's fin. “I'm thinking why I leave Cuidad Miguel— was that so terrible? But I wanted the land of opportunity.” An ironic gesture: shoulders shrugged, eyes rolled heavenwards. “I almost made it, Ed, yeah?”

My father's eyes rose over a copy of the
Daily Sentinel
. “A few more hours and you'd've washed up somewhere, my dear.”

The details of that boat ride were never revealed, so I'll never know whether love blossomed or a sober deal was struck. I can picture my mother wrapped in an emergency blanket, sitting beside my father as he worked the hand-throttle on an old Evinrude, the glow of a harvest moon touching the soft curve of her cheek. Maybe something stirred. But I can also picture a hushed negotiation as they lay anchored at the government dock, maiden's hair slapping the pilings and jaundiced light spilling between the bars of the holding cell beyond. She was a classic Latin beauty: raven hair and polished umber skin, a birthmark on her left cheek resembling a bird in distant flight. Many border guards took Mexican wives; the paperwork wasn't difficult to push through. My sister was born that year. Three years later, me.

I finish wrapping my hands and stand, bobbing on the tips of my toes. Tug the sweatshirt hood up, cinch the drawstring. Half-circle to the left, feint low and fire a right cross, arm cocked at a ninety-degree L to generate maximum force. Torque the hips, still bobbing slightly, three stiff jabs, turning the elbow out at the end. A lot of people don't like a jabby fighter, a pitty-patter, but a smart boxer knows everything flows off the jab: keeps your opponent at a distance and muffles his offense, plus you're always in a position to counterpunch. And hey, if the guy's glass-jawed or thin-skulled, a jab might just knock him onto queer street.

My father once took me on his evening rounds. August, so hot even the adders and geckos sought shade. We drove across the dry wash in his patrol Bronco, past clumps of sun-browned chickweed and pokeberry bushes so withered their fruit rattled like hollow plastic beads. He stopped to show me the vents cut through the border fence, chain-link pried back in silvery flaps.

“Tin snips stashed in a plastic bag tied to an ankle. Swim across the Rio Grande, creep up the bank and cut through.” A defeated shrug. “Easy as pie.”

The sky was darkening by the time we reached the dock. Walking down the berm to the shoreline, we passed a patch of agaves so sickly even the moonshiners couldn't be bothered. Our boots stirred up clouds of rust-hued dust. Stars hovered at the eastern horizon, casting slivers of metallic light on the water.

My father cycled the motor, pulling into the bay. Suspended between day and night, the sky was a tight-sheened purple, shiny as eggplant skin. The oily stink of exhaust mingled with the scent of creosote and Cherokee rose. To one side, the fawn-colored foothills of west Texas rolled in knuckled swells beneath a bank of violet-edged clouds. To the other, the Sierra Madres were a finned ridge, wedges of terra cotta light burning though the gaps. A brush fire burned distantly to the north, wavering funnels of flame holding the darkness at bay. Stars stood on their reflections at the Rio Grande's delta, a seam of perfectly smooth water where river met ocean.

My father fired a flare into the sky. As the comet of red light arced, he squinted at the water's surface lit by the spreading contrail.

“They don't understand how dangerous it is,” he said. “The pulls and undertows. Fighting a stiff current all the way.” He pulled a Black Cat cigar from his shirt pocket and lit it with a wooden match. “Shouldn't feel any responsibility, truly. Not like I make them take the plunge. Everyone thinks it's sunnier on the other side of the street.” I snap off a few more jabs as my heart falls into pre-fight rhythm. Sweat's coming now, clear odorless beads collecting on my brow and clinging to the short hairs of my wrists. Twist the sink's spigot and splash cold, sulfurous water on my face. A milky crack bisects the mirror, running up the left side of my neck to the jaw before turning sharply, cleaving my lips and continuing north through cheek and temple. Stare at my face split into unequal portions: forehead marbled with knots of sub-dermal scar tissue and nose broken in the center, the angle of cartilage obtuse. Weak fingers of light crawl around the base of my skull, shadowing the deep pits of my sockets.

Thirty-seven years old. Not so old. Too old for this.

On my fourteenth birthday my father drove me to Top Rank, a boxing gym owned by ex-welterweight contender Exum Speight. I'd been tussling at school, and I guess he figured the sport might channel that aggression. We walked through a black
door set in a flat tin-roofed building, inhaling air cooler but somehow denser than the air from the street. The gym was as spacious as a dance hall and dim, vapor lamps set in the ceiling. The ring erected in the center with a row of folding chairs in front. A punching bag platform stood between two dusty tinted windows on the left. An old movie poster hung on the water-stained wall: The Joe Louis Story.
America's Greatness was in his FISTS
, the tagline read,
The Screen's Big Story in his HEART!
A squat black man worked the speed bag in a ponderous rhythm while a Philco radio played “Boogie Oogie Oogie,” by A Taste of Honey.

A short thin man in his early forties exited the office. He wore a checkered blazer with leatherette elbow patches and a brown fedora with faded salt stains peaking the hatband. “How you doing, fellas?”

“You Speight?”

“Exum's up in Chicago with a fighter,” the man told my father. “Jack Cantrales. I mind the shop while he's gone.”

Jack made me skip rope for a few minutes, then quoted a monthly training fee. My father shook his hand again and said, “Be back in a few hours, Eddie.”

For the next two years I spent every free minute at Top Rank. As Exum Speight busied himself with the heavyweights, my training fell to Cantrales. Jack was an amiable bullshitter, always joking and free with advice, but later I came to realize he was one of the milling coves known to haunt boxing clubs, the “gym bums.” Gym bums were pugilistic has-beens or never-wases—Cantrales's pro record stood at 3-18-2, his sole attribute an ability to consume mass quantities of red leather—who hovered, wraithlike, around promising fighters.

Gym bums were also known to squeeze a penny 'til it screamed, and Contrales was typical of the breed: he once slid his foot over a coin a kid had dropped, shrugged, and told the kid it must've rolled into the sewer.

It was a
dime
.

Near the end of high school Cantrales booked my first fight at Rosalita's, a honkeytonk border bar. My parents would've never allowed it had they known, so I squeezed through my bedroom window after lights out and met Cantrales at the end of the block. He drove a Chevelle 454 SS—car had get-up like a scalded cat.

“You loose?” he asked as we fled down the I-38 to Norias. June bugs hammered the windshield, exoskeletons shattering with a high tensile sound, bodies bursting in pale yellow riots.

“Yeah,” I said, though I couldn't stop shaking. “Loose.”

“That's good.” Cantrales had recently switched his fedora in favor of a captain's hat of a style worn by Captain Merrill Stubing on
Love Boat
. Dashboard light reflected off the black plastic visor, according his features a malign aspect. “You'll eat this frito bandito up.”

Rosalita's was a clapboard tonk cut out of a canebrake. Acres of cane swayed in the wind's grip, dry stalks clashing with a hollow sound, bamboo wind chimes.

Inside was dark and fusty. Hank Snow growled about some woman's cheatin' heart from a heat-warped Wurlitzer. Off in the corner: a canted plankboard ring, red and blue ropes sagging from the ring posts. I bent between the ropes and shuffled to the four corners, shadowboxing. A rogue's gallery of bloodsport enthusiasts swiveled on their bar stools. Someone called, “Looking sharp, kiddo!” My opponent was a whippet-thin Mexican in his mid-thirties. White sneakers, no socks, a clean white towel around his neck. His hair plastered to his skull in black ropes. He looked exhausted. Mexican fighters often hopped the border on the night they were to fight, winding up at Rosalita's soaked from the swim and gashed from razor wire, sometimes pursued by feral dogs roaming the lowlands.

I took a hellish beating. The fight was a four-round smoker, each round three minutes long. Those twelve minutes stretched into an eternity, especially the final three, eyes swelled to pinhole slits and gut aching from the Mexie's relentless assault. The guy knew things about momentum and leverage I'd never learned in sparring sessions, how to angle a hook so it grazed my abdomen and robbed my breath, leaving slashes of glove-burned flesh. It was as though he possessed secret information about the exact placement of my organs, finding the kidneys and liver, drilling hard crosses into my short rib. I pissed red for days. Between rounds the bartender—who doubled as cutman— tended to my rapidly expanding face. He wore a visor, the kind worn by blackjack dealers, Vaseline smeared on the green plastic brim. He'd reach up and scoop a blob to grease my cheeks.

“You're breaking him down,” Jack lied. “Stick and
move, Eddie.”

By the final round the Mexican looked slightly ashamed. He ducked punches nimbly, sticking a soft jab in my face or tying me up in close. A chorus of boos arose: the shadowy bar patrons were anticipating a KO. The only damaging shot I landed all night was a right hook to the Mexican's crotch. It wasn't on purpose: my eyes were so swelled I couldn't see what I was punching. He took the foul in good spirit, pulling me close until our heads touched, whispering, “
Cuidado
, lo blo,
cuidado
.”