Salvador really wants Chancho to like him again.
He moves a little closer with the tray.
Chancho squints, takes his mineral water, crosses himself.
16
Minutes later.
Chancho holds the striking pads for Andrew and begins to call off punches.
“Jab. Jab. Right cross. Jab. Jab. Double jab. Left hook.”
Chancho calls these words at the outer limit of audibility, as gently as if he were inventorying flowers at a funeral parlor.
“Now move forward with me,” he says, lets Andrew push him across the yard. He no longer calls punches, just holds the pads up and lets his friend improvise.
“Now punch while backing up. This is very important. You can knock a guy out who thinks he has you.”
Chancho moves forward slowly but insistently, alternating pads, nodding when Andrew lands an especially crisp one.
The taped-up gloves tattoo the taped-up pads in the backyard, the staccato mixing pleasantly with birdsong and a tractor straddling asphalt and dirt on the road out front.
“Don’t puss out on me,” Chancho says, now gently boxing out at Andrew’s ears with the mitts to show him he’s letting his guard droop.
“Switch,” he says, and Andrew takes the mitts, preparing himself for the barely padded brickstorm he will now be fielding. He’s glad for the rest all the same; his drills have left him wheezing.
The staccato comes faster and harder now, the bigger man pushing the lanky one back, bobbing his head and shoulders like something between an angry chimp and a piston. Chancho had been a formidable boxer fifteen years ago, and might have gone professional had he not been so fond of beer—he had never etched a boxer’s six-pack into his belly. The obvious way to beat Chancho was to wear him out, and enough of them did to keep him from quitting his day job.
But many did not; to wear Chancho out, you had to be able to duck his bear-swat punches, which was hard, or absorb them, which was damn near impossible.
And you had to not smoke a pack a day.
“Okay, enough punching.”
“Thank the gods.”
“Now elbows,” Chancho all but whispers, smiling his big smile under the uneven, dated mustache, just going gray. Only the soul patch under his chin keeps him from looking like he stepped out of a Starsky and Hutch episode.
Chancho throws elbows first, so the magus can rest his lungs a bit more. The tattooed arms lash out and bite the pads deep, the left elbow flashing the star tattoo of Texas, where the burly man lived until he found Jésus and got out of moving drugs. Or, rather, protecting people who moved drugs.
Chancho would always be the first guy you’d want to meet in the ring and the last guy you’d want to meet in the parking lot. Or see coming up to your sliding glass door with a lucha libre mask on.
Andrew is feeling dizzy with exhaustion, but Chancho wants him to push through it, so he does, the sweat drenching his long hair even in its ponytail, making his bare chest glisten and soaking the waistband of his jeans.
“Now you. Twist at the hips so I feel it. You’re little, so it’s even more important for you to get your hips in it. I want twenty on each side.”
When the drenched and reeking pads are lying on the table and the panting men sit down on their benches, Salvador walks from the back door carrying Mexican Coca-Cola bottles on a tray.
“Good boy,” Andrew says. “Thank you.”
Six years now since he used his secret books to bring the dog back. Chancho watches Salvador with a fixed eye; looking away from the clockwork figure is difficult, especially when he swivels his Dalí head around to meet your gaze. The thing moves so… fluidly.
Chancho likes Mexican Coke because it’s in glass bottles and has sugar, not that corn syrup crap they drench everything in now.
He likes it so much he doesn’t cross himself when he takes the bottle from the stick-man.
Instead he turns his gaze on Andrew.
“You’ve got to quit smoking.”
Andrew, who knows how green he looks, just nods, sipping his cola.
“I know. But isn’t that pretty pot-kettle? You smoke.”
The sweat on the green bottles looks heavenly to Chancho and he studies his, pressing it now to the side of his temple.
“I know.”
“You smoke my cigarettes, for fuck’s sake.”
“Your cigarettes are good.”
“So buy some. They’ll sell ’em to you.”
“Got to go to the hippie shop for that.”
“I’m just saying a smoker ought not tell a man to quit.”
“I don’t wheeze like a busted vacuum. I ought to quit. You got to quit.”
“Maybe.”
“Ain’t there a pinché spell for that?”
“Yeah. It’s right next to the one for quitting drinking.”
Chancho smiles.
“Maybe we could get you a hip’motist.”
“Ever seen one?”
“Heard about ’em.”
“Well, they scare me fuckless,” Andrew says. “I saw one make a guy think he came all over himself right at a café table, so that when the waitress came the guy pulled the tablecloth half off trying to cover up his lap.”
Chancho laughs, broadly enough to show the gap where the tooth behind the canine should have been.
“Funny. A man scaring you. Just a man, I mean. When you play with dead girls and dead dogs and stuff. That fishy girl, you said she kilt herself, right?”
“Her sister stole her man and she threw herself off the bluffs.”
“McIntyre Bluffs?” Chancho asked.
Andrew nodded.
“’Cause I know a guy took his lady there and they both fell off f’ing. Only nobody died. But he got his back broke, but could still walk. I think she landed on him.”
“Nadia died. Broke that pretty neck back in 1926.”
Chancho squints at him and tilts his head up, assessing.
“You need to get right with Jésus.”
“I’m fine with Jésus.”
Silence.
“Can I drive the Mustang?”
“If you shut up about Jésus.”
Chancho smiles.
17
Years ago.
Night.
Another Mustang, the ’65.
Upside down, wheels spinning, engine running. Andrew uncomfortable, scratched, confused. Can’t reach the keys to shut the motor off because there’s a branch in the way. Led Zeppelin is singing about California but it sounds wrong because only one speaker works.
He climbs out into cool spring air, smelling radiator fluid and oil.
Nearly falls; something is wrong with his leg.
The peasants! The peasants cut my leg off!
He looks down, but his leg is there.
Mostly.
His jeans are ripped and lots of little somethings hurt, far away.
His heart is pounding.
Just breathe.
Just walk.
Andrew walks, his back to the lamplit greenery and spinning wheels of the wrecked Mustang.
Ford.
First on Race Day!
(F)ucked (OR) (D)ying.
Andrew in his snakeskin boots and tight black jeans, walking down 104A, tempted to stop at a house but senses he’s done something wrong; he needs to get back to his own house and Sarah. He’ll be safe there; he’ll sleep and he’ll know what to do in the morning.