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- Herausgeber: Pushkin Vertigo
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
'Thrums with authenticity' The Times 'Powerful, bruising and beautiful' Chris Whitaker A bleak, brilliant slice of American noir' Daily Mail The latest novel from the CWA-shortlisted author of Three-Fifths – a Sunday Times, Guardian and Financial Times Book of the Year ____________ IT'S NOT A COMEBACK. IT'S A FIGHT FOR HIS LIFE. Xavier "Scarecrow" Wallace is a biracial Black MMA fighter on the wrong side of thirty, who's been given a last-ditch chance to break into the big leagues. He is also losing his battle with pugilistic dementia, a struggle he is desperate to hide. In the nursing home of his father, a white man suffering from Alzheimer's, Xavier witnesses shocking episodes that expose ugly truths about his family and his past. As the big fight draws near, Xavier is faced with a dangerous dilemma: throw his match or suffer the deadly consequences. ____________ FURTHER PRAISE FOR John Vercher 'John Vercher could well be the next great American novelist' Kia Abdullah 'Shrewd and explosive' New York Times 'Vercher writes with the intensity of championship round' Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds 'A stunning, stone-cold knockout' P. J. Vernon, author of Bath Haus 'Think Warrior by way of Fat City' William Boyle, author of Shoot the Moonlight Out 'John Vercher writes like a fighter, a dancer, an athlete' Wiley Cash, author of A Land More Kind than Home
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“John Vercher writes like a fighter, a dancer, an athlete … Here is a novelist at the height of his powers” Wiley Cash, author of A LandMore Kind than Home
“Shrewd and explosive” New York Times
“[A] stunning, stone-cold knockout … Brutally elegant prose, jet fuel-like propulsiveness, and Vercher’s powerhouse voice force us to confront a profound and tragic question: How do you save yourself when you’re the person you trust the least?” P. J. Vernon, author of Bath Haus
“Think Warrior by way of Fat City. It’s poetic, evocative, and charged with passion … Xavier ‘Scarecrow’ is a character I just can’t shake” William Boyle, author of Shoot the Moonlight Out
“A riveting story where the drama propels you from page to page … This book grabs you and doesn’t let you go” Crystal Wilkinson, author of Perfect Black
“A spellbinding tour de force … Written in deft and visceral prose … one of the best books I’ve read this year. I loved every moment of it, even the ones that broke my heart” Lauren Wilkinson, author of American Spy
“Exactly the type of book one needs about the fighting life and what it costs those who get paid to give and receive punishment … Brilliant” Ryan Gattis, author of The System
“Completely unforgettable. The prose is deft, weaving and feinting just as its characters do” Henrietta McKervey, author of A Talented Man
“An old-fashioned page-turner, a fl a wlessly rendered portrait of a most unexpected literary hero, and a contemplation of violence in its many forms” Stefan Merrill Block, author of The Story of Forgetting and Oliver Loving
“Heartbreaking and gripping in equal measure” Joe Heap, author of When the Music Stops
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v
For Mom and Dad vi
vii
Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
—Michel de Montaigne viii
CONTENTS
MY MIND PLAYING TRICKS ON ME
Last year, he left his groceries in the trunk for two days.
He’d just gotten the call—a number-one contender fight. After alternating wins and losses, he’d strung together four in a row, evading a cut from the roster by the slimmest of margins. The old-timer, the journeyman. Not a has-been but a never-was. In spite of—no, because of the doubters and their calls to leave his gloves in the middle of the cage. No one would have thought less of him if he’d quit on his own terms. The game had passed Xavier “Scarecrow” Wallace by. Too many young bucks on the come up looking for a steppingstone to the next level. The cage had no place for old toothless lions fighting for their pride.
And then four in a row. No tomato cans, either. Championship kickboxers. Jiu-jitsu aces. Each one the next big thing. But none of them had the grind in them. All talent and hormones. Cardio made cowards of them all. Xavier dragged them into deep waters, the championship rounds where lactic acid torched muscles. Where deep breaths provided no oxygen, only the desperate need to breathe deeper. Faster. Shoulders ached. Submissions lacked squeeze. Punches lost their snap. Kicks sloppy, thrown with languid legs, hinging and pivoting at the joints from sheer momentum. Break the spirit and the body follows fast behind.
But he’d paid a cost for his time in the deep end, too. 2Worse than the patchwork remnants of stitches in his forehead; worse than the accumulation of crackling scar tissue above his jagged orbital bones; worse, even, than the seemingly interminable, intensifying headaches. Worse than all that was the forgetting.
Mild at first. Patches of time gone, sketches of memories swiped from a chalkboard where only the faintest outline of the words and images remained. More and more often, feeling that he’d been somewhere, done something, though never sure how, when—or if. The ravages of age, he told himself, nothing more. Some days he almost believed that.
When the contender call came, he’d been ready. The weight didn’t come off as easy as it had a decade ago, so he’d kept his diet tight. A fight meant keeping it even tighter. Temptation beckoned when the refrigerator was bare, so it was off to the grocery store for the usual suspects. Packs of skinless chicken breasts. Sacks of brown rice. Sweet potatoes. Leafy greens. Broccoli. Gallons of distilled water. He’d tossed his plastic sacks of calorie-bereft blandness into the trunk and drove to the gym to tell Shot the news before heading home.
That night had been restless. He conjured images of the fight to come. No matter how many times he’d ascended the stairs to the cage, his fearful mental rehearsal was always the same. Involuntary and unwelcome. And never was more at stake than now. A contender’s bout meant media days. Press conferences. Local television appearances. He played those out, as well. The questions about his age and how many more wars he had left in the tank. His thoughts on his opponent, attempts to spark the inevitable trash talk. He lay flat on his back in the darkness, eyes wide open. A hot breeze wafted through his open bedroom window. Sweat beaded on his bare chest. The broken air conditioning window unit sat like a headstone in tribute to its own demise. Even in the dead of 3night, the humidity of a late Philadelphia August hung in the air like fog, pressing up against the wood siding of his father’s Montgomery County bungalow.
Resigned to sleeplessness, he peeled the backs of his legs from the sheets and pushed himself to a sitting position on the side of the bed. He gripped the edge of the mattress and closed his eyes as he waited for the spin to slow, then stop, the positional vertigo another unwanted trophy, awarded after years of concussive blows to the head. His doctor had told him the spinning originated in his ears, something about crystals floating loose, a condition requiring a specialist’s treatment. Xavier imagined a long-haired socks and sandals-wearing type with a stringy goatee waving a shard of glass over his ears, collecting a seventy-five-dollar copay for five minutes of work. He told his doctor he’d take his chances. His physician then offered him a medication, but the side effects included dizziness. Xavier stopped seeing him altogether.
The spinning stopped and he stood. A cacophony of pops and clicks sounded in his joints, ankles to spine. He tried but failed to ignore the swell of pressure behind his eyes, the steam whistle of tinnitus in his ears, an unwelcome and worsening addition to the forgetfulness of late. From a pile of clothes at the edge of the bed, he donned a paint-splattered tank top and basketball shorts and stepped into the short hallway leading from the bedroom to the kitchen. Canvas tarps covered the floor. A roller sat in a pan. Paint congealed in the well.
The roller sizzled against the wall as he crossed it back and forth, up and down, the motion hypnotic, sage green covering the off-white. The first coat completed, he was no more ready for sleep than before, but the tinnitus had grown louder. He moved to the kitchen where he leaned his hands on the counter. His eyes squeezed shut, he willed the whistling to go away, but the intensity increased. He sat on the floor, long legs 4stretched out in front of him, and rested the back of his head on a cool cabinet door.
And then awake.
Not in bed.
Eyes open. Neck stiff. Ass sore.
Sweat had stuck the skin of his scalp to the cabinet door and he peeled his head away. He wiggled the stiffness from his knees and stood, gripping the edge of the faux granite countertop to steady the room. Through the window over the sink, the high bright sun shined orange through his closed eyelids as he waited out the spin. The carousel ride over, he scanned the room and saw the roller in the pan. The hallway walls had more paint on them than before.
Didn’t they?
The fumes, perhaps. That made sense. They’d made him drowsy, and he’d sat. He should have opened more windows. That seemed like something he might have told himself at the time. Of course, that was why he fell asleep. On the floor. In the kitchen. Perfectly reasonable. Unlike the time on the microwave clock. 3:24. In the afternoon.
That’s impossible.
He walked from the kitchen to the living room, ducking his head under the jamb, and retrieved his cell phone. The clock on the screen read the same as the one on the microwave. There were a number of texts and calls from Shot. Xavier had missed his morning workout. And his afternoon training session.
My bad, Shot. I’ll double up on the roadwork. Hitting the trail right now. Catch you at the gym tomorrow.
He watched the screen. The speech bubble appeared, the dots darkening and fading in sequence before disappearing. Xavier’s face tightened. Then:
K.5
“Fuck,” Xavier said. No way to make the drive to Manayunk now. Rush hour would be a nightmare by the time he got to Lincoln Avenue. Another headache swelled at the base of his skull. Back in the kitchen, he grabbed a gallon of distilled water from the pantry and downed two ibuprofens. A pair of running shoes sat by the front door. He scooped them up and stepped out into the summer haze.
An hour later, he’d returned home, sweat-soaked and ravenous. The heat of the asphalt trail had burned through the bottoms of his shoes, propelled him forward, faster than his planned pace. The sun’s relentless blaze had weight and rounded his shoulders. He peeled off his tank top, dropped it to the linoleum with a wet slap, and downed more than half of the gallon of water in loud glugs as the plastic imploded. The remaining water he poured into a pot on the stove. He ignited the gas burner and went to the refrigerator for a chicken breast to boil and noted that it was his last. The vegetable drawer was equally sparse, and his bag of rice in the pantry was down to his last serving. To the grocery store tomorrow then.
The next morning, the list he’d taped to the refrigerator reminded him of his errand. He headed to his car, opened the driver’s side door, and was hit with a potent smell. A sour odor, like the meat drawer in his refrigerator when the power had gone out in the middle of a summer some time ago (when was that?). He poked his head in the backseat, the odor stronger there. Some sweaty rash guards and shorts sat lumped behind the passenger seat. He knew that smell, and it wasn’t this one.
He popped the trunk. There sat the groceries he’d forgotten he’d bought the day before. Chicken spoiled in a cloudy pink puddle of its own juices. Wilted broccoli glistened with slime. Cooked under the summer sun. 6
He held the waste at arm’s length as he hauled the bags to the trash cans next to the garage. The stench rose up out the can in a whoosh as he dropped them in, and he gagged. He left the door open to air out the car and sat on the edge of the driver’s seat. He recalled wanting to go for groceries. He remembered knowing that he needed to. Yet he didn’t remember having gone. He’d been busy, he rationalized. His mind preoccupied with the fight, among other things. The groceries had simply slipped his mind. Just like falling asleep in the kitchen, it could have happened to anyone.
Sure, it could have.
The memory of that day had faded like many others since, and he’d not thought of it again—until this morning.
Late (again) for work at the gym, Xavier opened his driver’s side door. The trapped heat blew a stench against his face like a blast furnace—but it smelled nothing like the reek from last year. He reflexively slammed the door shut and held one nostril closed as he blew snot out of the other, but the odor lodged in his olfactory. The smell of shit and piss was unmistakable, but there was something else, too. Something he couldn’t place.
He walked toward the trunk, stopping to look in the backseat. On the floor behind the driver’s seat was a pile of feces sitting in a pool of urine. Across from the mess, in the same space on the passenger’s side, was a dog with grayish blue fur, curled into itself.
“What the fuck?” Xavier ran around the back end of the car, whipped the rear passenger door open, and held his breath. “No, no, no, no,” he said, wishing the dog had been some kind of mirage, brought on by the haze and glare of the high morning sun. He kneeled on the cracked driveway and hovered his hand over the dog’s body, skin pulled tight across 7the ribs. Xavier went to rest his hand on the dog when the ribs moved.
He jerked his hand back. A hallucination, surely, born of wishful thinking, but he lowered his hand again, and the curved bones rose to meet his palm.
“Hey,” Xavier said, softly.
The dog’s whip-like tail pulled away from where it had curled against the hind legs, lifted, and then dropped to the floor with a thump.
A little louder. “Hey.”
The tail thumped twice more.
Xavier slid his hands under the dog’s head and hind quarters and gently lifted him out of the car. Its skin was hot to the touch through its thin fur coat. He cradled the dog to his chest and could not differentiate the dog’s rapid heartbeat from his own. Xavier lowered his nose to the top of the dog’s head and breathed in.
Through the smell of the dog’s own fluids, there was a scent embedded in the fur on its crown, one that unleashed a torrent of recollection, though one stood out more than any other. When he first saw the dog, he wondered who would put it in his car, what kind of person would leave it there to suffer in the summer sun. The scent told Xavier what kind of person would do such a thing. He didn’t need to see the rescue adoption papers sitting on the passenger seat with his signature to discover the answer.
The dog was his.
GRAND CHAMP
The dog shivered despite the heat radiating from its skin. Xavier’s sweat soaked his shirt as he carried the dog the short walk up the uneven sidewalk to his father’s back porch, pulled him close while his hand searched for the handle of the screen door. He heard a rustle and saw movement in his periphery. Ray, his father’s nextdoor neighbor—or rather Xavier’s neighbor now—sat on his back porch. He made a show of turning the pages of his newspaper, pretending to mind his business when he most decidedly was not.
Xavier had first met Ray on a return trip from the grocery store. Xavier had gone to pick up his father’s medications, along with an assortment of frozen dinners and liters upon liters of diet soda. Ray had been raking leaves in his tiny front yard and Xavier lifted his chin at him and waved. He hadn’t yet noticed the white embroidered MAGA on Ray’s red baseball cap, perched high on his balding head. The hat had his full attention when Ray asked with no small sense of entitlement if Xavier lived in the neighborhood. Xavier smiled tight-lipped, a practiced response to like-minded questions from the many Rays he’d encountered, a mask he wore when explanations were in no way owed but nonetheless demanded.
Xavier told Ray that he was in fact Sam Wallace’s only son. Ray’s face registered a mélange of surprise and 9disappointment. Whether the man’s expression was because his neighbor’s son was Black, or because he felt he no longer had a good enough reason to call the police, Xavier didn’t know. Nor did he care. Arms encumbered by the groceries, Xavier had fumbled for the keys, used the wrong one twice, conscious of Ray’s watching him until he slid the right one home and made his way inside. Xavier imagined Ray back in his house, grumbling something in racist, peering through the aluminum blinds bent just wide enough to see whatever Black shenanigans Xavier would most assuredly be up to.
“Don’t let me find that thing’s shit on my lawn,” Ray called out. Xavier’s fingers grasped at air as he cradled the trembling dog. His arms burned from the strain. He shifted the animal, pressed his thumb down on the door handle’s release. Ray snapped his newspaper. “Or in anyone else’s yard for that matter. This is a decent, clean neighborhood. And I better not hear so much as a whimper past eight p.m. You know we have a noise ordinance around here, don’t you?”
Xavier leaned his rear against the door and closed it behind him. Ray continued his screed unfazed by the lack of audience. Xavier stepped into his bedroom, just off to the left of the back door. The dog still in his arms, he pulled the sheets from the mattress and dragged them down the hall to the kitchen. Once there, he piled them into a makeshift bed with his foot and gently laid the dog down. From the cabinets he pulled down a bowl and filled it with cold water. Xavier placed the bowl by the dog’s muzzle and lay down on the floor in front of him, their faces inches apart. The dog’s dried nose flared, each breath a struggle. One eyebrow lifted, then the other, as he looked to the water bowl, to Xavier, then back again. His eyes interrogated Xavier, asked him why and how, pleaded for answers. Xavier heard the unspoken questions, ones that echoed his own, but those 10answers on the chalkboard, like many as of late, had been partially wiped away.
Yesterday had been, relatively speaking, one of Sam’s better days at the nursing facility. Xavier hadn’t been able to make it that week as many times as he would have liked—or at least as many times as he told his father he would have liked. As the end of his suspension neared, Xavier stepped up his training, the intensity and frequency as though he was in camp, ready to take a fight any minute, though the chances were remote given the circumstances of his exit. The promoter had told him as much. Still, he had to stay in fight shape. Being unprepared when the call came was a luxury for fighters under contract. If that meant missed visits to Pop, then so be it. To see his father’s decline was difficult. Not being there to see it remedied that particular malady.
There were, of course, days where Xavier simply forgot to go—and then there were the days that he forgot that he forgot. Yesterday was not one of those.
Lying on the floor across from the dog, he remembered that he’d remembered to be at the nursing home for a family care conference with the team coordinating Sam’s care. The nurses and therapists told Xavier his father’s emphysema had worsened, and in his demented agitation, he had been pulling his nasal cannula out, which caused him to desaturate. When Xavier asked them for a translation of all the words that weren’t “agitation” into English, one of the care team explained that it was getting harder for his father to breathe on his own and that the Alzheimer’s symptoms made him pull out the oxygen tube from his nose. When the staff tried to help him, he’d become combative. The lack of oxygen caused him to pass out, and only then were they able to replace the cannula. 11
If all that hadn’t been enough good news, he’d also grown increasingly verbally abusive of his new roommate, unable to recall (and even then, understand) that once his money had run out, medical assistance meant no more private room. The team conveyed the situation to Xavier with a rehearsed compassion, their words spoken in a mixture of kindness entwined with the fatigue of delivering bad news.
Xavier folded his hands on the conference table and hung his head. “I’m working on his house to get it ready to put on the market. That might get him enough to put him back in a private room, right?” The care team exchanged glances across the table. “What? It can’t be that expensive.”
“No, it’s not that,” said his social worker. “I mean, yes, it can be that expensive, but that’s not the concern. Not the main one, anyway.”
“What is?”
“He hasn’t just been abusive to his roommate. There have been some issues with certain members of the staff.”
Xavier lost patience with the verbal gymnastics. “I’m sorry for that, but he’s an old man. I know that’s no excuse, but can’t you just—”
“He’s been calling members of my nursing staff racial slurs,” said the director of nursing. She was a thin older Black woman with short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair. She sat tall, her hands folded in front of her on the conference table. The way in which her white co-workers looked down at their notepads told Xavier that she’d long moved past making them comfortable as the only Black woman in the room. He thought of his mother, and at once felt kinship and rejection.
“Yeah, no, that doesn’t make any sense.” Xavier peered across the table at her badge. “Mrs. Thomas. You sure you didn’t, I mean your staff, or whoever, they didn’t just mishear him? I mean, come on. Look at me.” 12
“There was and is no misunderstanding, Mr. Wallace. I know this is a challenging time for you and that there may be certain realities that are difficult for you to accept.”
“So, since no one here wants to come out and say it, the reality you’re suggesting I need to accept is that my father, who married a Black woman and loves his Black son, was secretly a closet racist and now because of his Alzheimer’s, his filter is off? Do I have that right? Do you know how fucking ridiculous that sounds?”
All but Mrs. Thomas shifted in their seats, straightened papers in front of them, cleared their throats. Mrs. Thomas’s regard, serene but intense, remained trained on Xavier. Her look disarmed him. She did not speak, and though he tried meeting her gaze, the weight of her silence pulled his head down. His anger withered under her unspoken admonition. He broke the quiet with contrition.
“Does he have to leave?”
The social worker spoke again. “No, no, nothing like that. Well, not really. Not yet.”
Mrs. Thomas shook her head, exasperated at the social worker’s equivocating. “We do not have an advanced dementia unit here, Mr. Wallace. If your father’s condition continues to progress at this rate, if he becomes a danger to himself or my staff, we will have to have a discussion about finding him a facility that can better take care of his needs.”
“I’d like to see him now. Can I see my dad?”
Mrs. Thomas pressed her lips together and breathed through her nose. “Did he go back to his room after therapy?” she said to the young blonde across the table.
“I think he’s out in the courtyard with some of the other residents. The dog rescue is here again today. He actually does really well when they come to visit.”
“He had a boxer when he was a kid,” Xavier said. “Sully. 13Talked about him all the time. Chased leaves like they were cats. He said he would have named me after that dog, but my mother wasn’t having it. He was all, ‘I guess naming him after a comic book character is okay, but not the greatest four-legged creature on the face of the earth.’” Xavier laughed to himself and the care team at the table smiled. He talked to excess when he was anxious, like venting pressure in a pipe. He chewed at the inside of his cheek and his eyes stung. “Sorry, I’m rambling. Where is the courtyard?”
The occupational therapist rose, followed by the rest of the team. Xavier thanked Mrs. Thomas, who bowed her head at him. The therapist held open the door and walked him down the hall. She went to open the glass door to the courtyard for him, but Xavier put his hand out. “Not yet,” he said. She excused herself to go see her patients. Xavier watched the scene beyond the glass.
Sam sat in his wheelchair. He wore a white T-shirt and a pair of linen pajama pants. He craned his head back, failing to dodge nuzzles and licks from a brown Labrador mix as wide as it was tall. When the dog’s loving attack relented, Sam vigorously scratched behind its ears and around its cheeks. Other residents looked equally enamored with their canine companions, tossing tennis balls, stroking heads. Xavier smiled at all the pairings.
The representative from the rescue, a slight middle-aged blond woman, her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, watched the group as well. A dog sat obediently at her side, a blue-gray Staffordshire, its head so massive it obscured the neck, the dog a bobblehead doll version of itself. Xavier couldn’t take his eyes off the pit, nor the pit him. He’d been around enough dogs to see there was no malice in the stare, no predatory sizing up. Only an intense curiosity that pulled Xavier through the door almost as strongly as the desire to see his father. 14
He approached his father’s wheelchair from behind and placed gentle hands on Sam’s shoulders. The muscles were taut from the endless exertion of lifting his lungs to let in air, but the skin hung loose around them, the fibers beneath deflated of the strength they once held.
“Hey, Pop. How you doing?”
Sam looked up, his smile bright despite the nicotine stains. His cheeks rose, concealing his eyes in a mess of crow’s feet. When he saw Xavier, however, his eyes widened just a bit, the corners of his mouth dropping. Xavier recognized the look.
“Well, hello,” Sam said. Xavier circled the chair to squat down in front of him. “It’s been a little while.” He ended on an upturn, a question more than a statement.
“It’s okay, Pop.” Xavier scratched behind the ears of the dog who’d been mauling Sam with licks. It leaned in and rumbled with a satisfied growl.
“She sure likes that,” said Sam. “You keep that up, you’ll have to take her with you.”
“She looks pretty happy here with you.”
“If only I could have a dog. I used to have this boxer. Greatest dog in the world. Dumb as a can of paint, but God, I loved him.” Sam laughed. He looked off somewhere, to sometime before the courtyard. “When the wind blew, he’d skitter off after leaves so hard, he’d split his nails. Damn near yanked my shoulder out the socket. But there was not a more loyal, lovable dog in the world. But so dumb. I had it bad for that one. I almost named my boy after him.”
Xavier swallowed hard. “Sully.”
Sam’s head snapped back to Xavier and set free a tear that clung to the edge of his eyelid.
“Xavier?”
“There he is,” Xavier said. Sam outstretched his arms and pulled Xavier in for an embrace, trapping the dog between 15them. She wagged her tail as though the hug was for her. Xavier pulled away and wiped at his eyes. Sam did the same.
“Are you taking me home today?”
Xavier considered whether to tell him (again) that the house was for sale. That they had this conversation almost every time he came. That it was beyond Xavier’s ability to care for him, to keep him safe. Each iteration of the conversation leached a little more joy from his father’s face. Part of Sam remembered what was happening though he wasn’t conscious of the remembering.
“I’m taking good care of the house. Don’t worry about it.”
Sam patted Xavier’s cheek. His palm was warm. “I’m not worried about it. I’m worried about you. I don’t like you there by yourself.”
Xavier laughed and flexed his bicep. “I can take care of myself, old head.”
Sam fidgeted with the draw string to his pants. “Nobody’s tough enough to beat being alone.”
Xavier let go of his pose. Despite his façade, his solitude shone as a lighthouse through his father’s fog. Eager to change course, Xavier glanced behind him at his blue-furred friend. “Tell you what. Why don’t I see if I can find myself a friend to take home? Then maybe you won’t worry so much.”
Sam didn’t look up. Still seated in his chair, he was already off somewhere else. He resumed scratching behind the ears of his canine companion.
Xavier walked to the woman and the pit. The dog raised its head to take in his height as he approached, and his body moved from side to side, asynchronous to its wagging tail.
“Who’s this guy?”
“This gentle giant is Loki.”
“And is he as mischievous as his namesake?”
“Very good. But definitely not. This big fella is a saint.” 16
“So why isn’t he out there with the residents?”
“No one wants to visit with a rescued fighting dog. They’re usually too afraid. Comes with a stigma that’s hard to shake, no matter how much of a good boy we tell them he is. Same at the rescue. Everyone passes him up. I bring him to every event I can so he can at least spend some time out around other people.”
The woman gave Loki’s leash slack. Xavier sat on the ground, legs out in a split. Loki, a pile of coiled muscle, lifted off his haunches and came nose-to-nose with him. Xavier slid his fingers between the sweet spot where Loki’s ears met his head and scratched. Loki lowered his head. Xavier ran his hands down around the dog’s thick jowls and massaged with the heels of his hands, sending Loki listing from one side to another, pushing his massive jaw muscles into the pressure. Xavier brought his forehead to Loki’s, and the dog pushed against him until he felt as though they were holding each other upright.
“Wow,” the woman said. “That’s a first.”
Xavier trailed his fingers down Loki’s face. The tips ran over hairless patches down to Loki’s crinkled jawline, and the dog lifted his head, his neck a mottled mix of pink and gray skin, crisscrossed with scar tissue. Xavier moved his scratching there. Loki’s rear paw thumped the ground in pleasure.
“What happened here?” Xavier asked.
“Loki was a champion, the way we were told it. Until he met another pup a hell of a lot meaner. It tried to rip his throat out. Left this poor fella with no bark. Only his bite. Except after a fight like that, he didn’t have it in him anymore. And you know what happens when a fighting dog can’t fight.”
“God damn it,” Xavier said. He patted Loki’s barrel chest.
“Exactly. One of our volunteers saw him staked outside in a yard in the middle of a snowstorm. No doghouse. No food. Not sure if they were trying to get his mean back or if 17they just didn’t want him to die in their house. Either way, his skin was pulled tight as a drum over his bones. Our volunteer called the SPCA and after talking with them, we decided to take him in. It was touch and go for a while, let me tell you. But this dog just didn’t quit.”
“Still had that fight in you, huh, boy?” Xavier gave Loki’s jowls a vigorous rub, and the corners of his mouth turned up as if in a smile.
“Seems you know a little something about that?” the woman asked. Xavier looked up and she pointed at her own ear and then to his. He pinched the hardened cartilage that filled his ears.
“Yeah, you could say that. You a fight fan?”
The woman shrugged. “Kind of. I don’t follow them too closely, but when the hubby gets a pay-per-view, I’ll sit on the couch with him and watch until I fall asleep. See a lot of ears like yours. Are you a pro?”
“Some days, maybe,” he said. She tilted her head quizzically. As Xavier pushed himself up to stand, so did Loki. He placed a paw on Xavier’s knee as if to pull him back to the ground.
“You’ve got a fan.”
“Feeling’s mutual.” He shook Loki’s paw. When he released it, Loki placed his paw back on his leg. “Guess I’m not done, huh?” Xavier sat back down, and the woman handed him the leash. Loki walked between his spread legs and turned in a circle before plopping down and rolling to his back. Xavier relented and rubbed his stomach. Loki’s hind legs pumped. Xavier looked over his shoulder for his father. Sam petted his dog, the old man’s face brighter than Xavier had seen it in some time. Xavier thought about the empty house, so many of his father’s belongings packed in boxes there was nothing left to absorb the sounds of his feet 18on the laminate floor, or the cacophony of his own breathing on the quietest of nights.
“What do you say I take this guy off your hands?”
“The adoption process can take up to a month, unfortunately. There’s paperwork. We have to do a home check, that kind of stuff.”
Xavier looked down at Loki, still belly up, his jowls and eyelids flipped back in a happy yet crazed expression. Though he’d only met the dog moments ago, the thought of leaving without him filled Xavier with an odd anxiety that was at once recognizable and unfamiliar.
“It’s the perfect house for a dog. It would just be us. No kids to pull on his ears or yank his tail. Just two tough guys.” His laugh sounded sadder than he’d intended. “You said so yourself—no one wants to take this guy home. I do. Can’t you call the boss at your rescue?”
“I am the boss at the rescue,” she said. She folded her arms and looked at the two of them together, Loki writhing on his back in delight under Xavier’s rubs. She smiled. “Give me a minute to go grab the paperwork.”
“Thank you.” As if he understood, Loki popped up, stood on his hind legs, and rested his paws on Xavier’s shoulders. His tail sliced the air in a bluish blur. Xavier wrapped the leash around his knuckles. “Come on, Loke. There’s someone I want you to meet.” Xavier walked Loki back over to his father and the Labrador mix. Sam looked up to see them approaching and his smile dropped away. He held his hand up.
“We’re good here. Tell your lady boss over there that I don’t need to be visiting with any pit bulls. That’s a thug’s dog.” He wagged a thin-skinned finger at Loki. “I don’t know why she’d bring that thing here, anyway.” The dog in Sam’s lap whimpered. Then a growl rolled from her throat. “See, that beast is making her nervous.” Loki’s jaws opened in a 19wide-mouthed yawn and he shook from head to tail, unbothered. The Lab mix barked. “Get that damn thing away from me!” Sam shouted at Xavier.
A high-pitched whine, one that had become all too common as of late, keened in Xavier’s ear. Pressure swelled behind his eyes and his temples ached. Xavier brought his wide hand to his face and kneaded his fingertips into the muscles above his eyebrows. “Come on, Pop. Just relax. It’s fine. It’s me.”
“I don’t know you. You and that mongrel get the hell out of here!”
The woman from the rescue appeared at Xavier’s side, paperwork in hand. A nurse’s aide jogged up and stopped behind Sam’s chair.
“Everything okay here?” the aide asked.
Xavier took the paperwork from the rescue organizer and backed away a step. “Yeah, we’re fine.” He searched Sam’s face, hoping for some glimmer of recognition but found only fury. “I was just leaving.” Blinking back tears, he looked to the organizer. “You take credit?”
The headache worsened as he approached his car in the lot. He hoped the asphalt wasn’t too hot for Loki’s paws, but the dog trotted along, looking at Xavier the whole time, wanting only for more of his attention. The car exhaled hot breath when Xavier opened the passenger side door. He leaned in and turned the ignition, then cranked the fan up full blast in a futile attempt to cool the car. Stale dry air swirled about, the air conditioning long in need of repair. Loki sat at his feet.
Xavier pressed the heel of his hand into his forehead. He hadn’t wanted to believe the care team at the nursing home. He couldn’t accept that his father had gotten so much worse. The whine in his ears turned into a steam whistle, the pressure behind his eyes threatening to push them out with each 20beat of his heart, which had taken up residence in his skull. He retrieved a bottle of migraine medication from his pocket and swallowed two pills dry. The car was as cool as it was going to be. He opened the driver’s side door and Loki bounded across the console. He plopped down in the passenger seat, panting and grinning.
The distance to home wasn’t long, but the drive was interminable. The medication didn’t touch the pain, only made him drowsy. He didn’t want to take the pills before he drove, but he’d hoped they would blunt the edge of the maul buried in his brain stem. At stoplights, his drooping head jerked him out of the drug-induced nod.
Then, minutes from home, it happened.
The traffic light turned green, and Loki disappeared from his sight as half the vision in Xavier’s right eye went black. He slammed on the brakes, grateful no cars were behind him, and pulled into a gas station parking lot. Loki came back into his view as Xavier turned his head to the right. Loki stopped his panting and cocked his head at Xavier, seeming to sense his distress. Xavier dug his knuckles into the tension wires of muscle at the base of his skull, desperate for relief. Loki’s tongue slapped against Xavier’s forearm. Then he gave his hand a wet-nosed nudge.
“I’m all right, Loke.” Minutes passed and Xavier opened his eyes. He saw the entirety of the parking lot in front of him, and Loki in his periphery. The pain and pressure continued undiminished, but with his vision returned for who knew how long, he had to get home, and quickly. He rubbed Loki’s jowls and pulled out of the parking lot.
By the time he parked behind his father’s house, he had fought the waves of nausea as long as he could. The high early afternoon sun blazed through the windshield. The bright light sent daggers to the back of his brain. Ray sat on his back porch, eyeing Xavier up. 21
“Fuck,” Xavier said. All he wanted was to open the door and puke, get his dog inside without any of Ray’s bullshit. He knew Ray was looking for a reason, any reason, to call the police. Vomiting from his car in the middle of the afternoon would be all Ray needed to report him for a DUI or some other nonsense. He closed his eyes and rubbed the crucifix on his neck between his thumb and forefinger. When he opened his eyes Ray was still there. “Yeah, I didn’t think it worked like that.” Another stabbing pain caused him to dry heave. He patted Loki and opened his door. “I’ll be right back, boy. Just need a quick minute to get the house ready for you.”
He slammed the door behind him and fast-walked to his back porch, clearing two steps at a time. The wooden screen door clacked off the siding and he gave Ray a mental middle finger as he charged down the hallway and into the bathroom off the kitchen. He barely got the lid up before he vomited his spinach and egg-white flatbread sandwich into the toilet. Cold water splashed his face. The strain increased the pressure in his head, and he gagged harder in a brutal, endless cycle. His stomach hollowed out with each heave, back arched like an angry cat, neck muscles strained. When nothing but bile remained, he sat on the floor and rested his neck on the cool edge of the tub. He rolled his head back and forth, digging for some respite from the tension, but there was none to be had.
Then the cut in his vision returned.
Xavier went to the kitchen sink and poured himself a glass of water to take another dose of medication, but his hand numbed. He lost his grip on the glass and it shattered in the sink. The headache tried to push his skull through the skin of his face.
This is it. My brain’s bleeding. I’m done.
He hand-walked his way down the hallway to his bedroom.
Just a minute. I’ll lie down for a minute.22
Feet still on the floor, he lay back on the comforter.
And he lost a day.
Lying on the floor, the memories back in a rush, he pleaded with the dog.
“Come on, Loki. You got to drink, man.”
Loki’s panting had quickened. Xavier ran his finger along his cheek, down the soft fur between Loki’s eyes, and touched his dry hot nose. Loki stared at him, but when Xavier sat back up, the dog’s gaze stayed fixed on a horizon only he could see.
“No, Loki. Come on. Look at me.”
I could take him to the vet. And then tell them what? That I left him in a hot car? They’d have me charged with animal abuse. Not that he’d even make the drive there. Thank God it cooled off at night. Tough son of a bitch. I don’t deserve this damn dog. Fuck it, I’m taking him.
“Let’s get you some help. Then we’ll get you some place you belong.”
Xavier went to stand but Loki laid his paw across the back of his hand, then propped himself up onto his belly and scooted over toward the water bowl. Xavier slid the bowl closer. Loki dipped his head in and took a few small laps. He chuffed and water splashed out. His tongue darted in and out, faster and faster.
“Easy, Loke,” he said. “Don’t make yourself sick.” Xavier stroked his back. He winced as his hand glided along the ridges of Loki’s spine. Loki’s tail shushed back and forth across the laminate floor. “All right, Loki. All right.”
ME, MYSELF, AND I
Who are you fooling? Yourself, that’s who.
About what? How about the fact you didn’t want a damn dog in the first place. Only reason you brought that mutt home is because your daddy made you feel bad. You’re a grown-ass man, and he’s still got you out here acting like a little pussy over some dumb shit. That or you just wanted to fuck that white chick that ran the rescue. Like taking that broke-down dog was going to make her let you slide.
“I forgot he was in the car.” You didn’t forget shit. You knew good and well that dog was in there.
“Oh, my head hurts.”
“Oh, I have to throw up.”
“Oh, I have to lay down, so I can fall asleep and let that dog cook out there so I don’t have to see his face when I take him to some shelter where they’re going to put him down and I can blame it all on the headaches and the forgetting.”
You’re a straight up bitch, you know that? You going to take an animal you didn’t even want because you’re lonely? And then when you realize that bringing that thing home was some dumb shit, you pretend you forgot it. Always pointing that finger, never mind all the other ones pointing right back at you.
“I didn’t take steroids. It was tainted supplements.”24
“I didn’t choose Pop. She left us.”
Always someone else’s fault except poor, brain-dead X. Cry me a river.
You better wake your ass up.
No, I mean for real. You’re here sleeping.
You sure that dog isn’t dead? Just because he drank some water?
Matter of fact, are you sure you brought him back inside?
How do you know he isn’t still out in that car slow roasting?
Better go check.
Unless you don’t really want to.
I’d understand.
PUNKS JUMP UP TO GET BEAT DOWN
Xavier opened his eyes and sat up, wincing at the pull in his lower back.
Where is he?
His vision adjusted to the dark and he saw a shadow lying at the foot of his bed. The shadow lifted its head and wagged its tail. Xavier breathed out, relieved, and wiped a sheen of sweat from the top of his bald head. He lay back and looked across the room to his clock on top of the dresser. Just a few hours short of sunrise. He closed his eyes again but his mind conjured visions of Loki in the back of the car, straining to find the ghost of his bark in his mangled throat, silently crying for help, curled behind the seat across from a pile of his own waste. No longer waiting to be rescued. Waiting to die.
There would be no return to sleep for Xavier.
He performed his routine for getting out of bed. His hands helped his legs to the floor. He waited for the ache to leave his joints and for the vertigo to subside before standing. Loki commando-crawled across the mattress and laid his head on Xavier’s leg, looking up at him. Xavier massaged his neck and Loki’s tail beat rudiments on the bed.
Feet and paws exchanged pads and clicks down the hallway to the kitchen. Xavier hoisted a bag of dry food from the pantry and filled a deep bowl, then opened a can of wet food and dumped it on top. Once Loki had drunk his fill of 26water yesterday, Xavier had realized he had no actual dog food, so he cooked up ground turkey and mixed the meat with rice. He’d never seen an animal eat so fast. The pile that now filled Loki’s bowl was probably too much food, but after yesterday—and after all the days that came before yesterday—Loki would eat like a king at every meal.
They took a walk too early in the morning for Ray to tell him to pick up after his dangerous dog, after which Loki spent the morning gutting with surgical precision all the squeak toys Xavier bought for him. Xavier looked away from watching DVDs of old Pride and UFC fights to see Loki holding yet another squeaker proudly between his teeth, the cotton entrails of another victim hanging from his jowls. Xavier looked at his cell and saw hours had passed. It would soon be time to head to Shot’s to help train his stable of boxers, kickboxers, and mixed martial arts fighters.
He knew he couldn’t shirk his penance, but he couldn’t leave Loki at home. That dog would never be alone again if Xavier could help it. Short trips to the grocery store and the like would have to happen—but a full day at the gym? He hadn’t thought this whole dog thing through.
