Brotherly Love (21 page)

He is strangely fascinated by the punches, their
speed and ferocity. Even as the numbness settles into his shoulders
and arms, the kid’s intention settles too. He is trying to hurt
him.

He catches one of the gloves again and pulls Harry
close, and at the same time the buzzer goes off. Peter feels him
relax.

Harry turns away and begins walking in quick circles
around the ring, his sweat and Peter’s blood smeared across the
muscles in his stomach. Peter stands where he is, taking as much air
as he can into his chest, wiping at his nose with the sleeve of his
shirt.

He has not caught his breath when the buzzer goes off
again. Harry turns back to him, looking at him for the first time
since the end of the round, and offers one of his gloves for Peter to
touch.

A moment later, he hits him again in the nose. Peter
is aware of the pain now; it has a rhythm that is almost unconnected
to the punches themselves, a hum someplace behind the violence. A
weight tugs him, one way and then another, and Peter fights for
balance, using the ropes behind him and then Harry himself when he
can catch an arm or his head. He does that, collects himself, and
then pushes him away.

The kid relaxes when he is caught and is pushed away,
and it is like lifting dead weight, over and over.

Somewhere in the second round, Peter feels fatigue in
his arms; he feels the limits of his strength.

He still pushes Harry away—but not as far away
now—and he is back a second later, right in front of him, bobbing
like a fishing cork, impossible to hit or stop. The punches land once
and then seem to echo back a moment later, even as other punches are
coming in other places.

The buzzer goes off and Harry stares at Peter a long
moment, as if he does not want to stop.

Peter wipes at the blood from his nose and waits for
the next round.

A minute into that round, Peter has trapped Harry’s
arm just behind the elbow and is holding on—all pretense of boxing
gone, he only wants to last the round—and as he looks past Harry’s
shoulder he sees Nick standing in the corner, his arms draped across
the ropes.

Nick is smiling, but he isn’t happy. He sees what
is happening in the ring.

Peter straightens himself up, not wanting to look so
sloppy in front of Nick, and throws a surprise right hand that
bounces off the top of Harry’s head. In return, Harry hits him with
half a dozen shots before he can grab his arms again, and stall for a
little more time.

The clock always keeps moving.

And then the buzzer goes off again, and Peter climbs
between the second and third ropes, spits his mouthpiece into his
glove, and sits down on the bench. He drops his head beneath his
shoulders, too tired to hold it up.

Nick brings him a towel and holds it against his
face.

"What are you guys, opening a blood bank?"
he says.

Peter cannot talk yet; he has used himself up getting
through the three rounds. Harry is on the other side of the ring, and
when the buzzer goes off again he begins pounding the heavy bag.

Peter watches him a long minute, the towel covering
all of his face beneath his eyes. He feels himself getting sick, but
sits still, fighting it. He pulls his face away from the towel,
wanting fresh air. Nick studies him from the side.

Peter goes back to the towel and blows his nose
gently into it —not hard enough to make the tissue under his eyes
swell. When he moves away again, the blood is running fresh over his
lips. Drops of it splatter on the floor between his feet in an uneven
line.

Nick crouches in front of him and begins to unlace
his gloves.

When he has pulled them off, it is easier to breathe,
as if the wet gloves had been covering his face. His hands are
lighter now, and he moves them with less effort.

He pulls his shirt over his head, and then falls back
against the wall.

Nick tosses the gloves into one of the lockers, and
Peter stands up and pushes the cup off his hips, and then, nauseated
again, he leaves it around his feet to sit back down.

On the other side of the gym, Harry steals a look at
him as he hits the bag. Nick picks up the cup and tosses it into a
locker too and then nods in the direction of his son.

"He beats the hell out of me too," he says.
"I start boxing, but I can’t get mad at him, you know? It’s
probably the same thing with you."

He moves closer and studies Peter’s nose. From the
front and then from the side.

He smiles, but he isn’t
happy.

* * *

P
eter is back the next
day.

Harry stays off his face, but leaves red blotches
over his chest and sides with body blows. Half a dozen times, he
doubles Peter over with these shots, takes the breath out of his body
and paralyzes the mechanism that breathes.

There is no blood today, but he is hurt at least as
badly.

Nick watches three rounds from the ropes again,
pouring water over Peter’s head between rounds to cool him off,
smiling and worried.

It is like that the second
day, and the third and the fourth. On the fifth day, Harry rebreaks
his nose.

* * *

N
ick drives home in a
six-year-old Pontiac that needs a brake job. He looks across the
front seat at Harry. The kid has been strangely quiet the last week,
even when they are alone. He has been strange in the gym too.

It’s not like him to punish anybody the way he is
punishing Charley Flood’s kid, not even the professionals who come
up once in a while and try to rough him up. After he hurts them, his
punches always change—an almost indiscernible thing from outside
the ring, they come with the same speed, with the same leverage, but
at the very end he takes the weight off them, and they are harmless.

If there is a fault his son has in a boxing ring, it
is his reluctance to hurt anybody.

"You busted him up pretty bad today," Nick
says.

Harry nods, looking out the window. He doesn’t
answer.

"He ain’t good enough, you should be hurting
him like that," Nick says.

The car is quiet.

"He do something to you?" Nick says.

Harry shakes his head no.

"So that means you don’t want him around the
gym?"

Nick takes a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and
punches the cigarette lighter into the dashboard. A moment later it
pops out, and he steadies it in front of the cigarette as he drives,
the orange glow reflecting in his glasses.

"I don’t like those people," Harry says
quietly. "They ruin the gym .... "

"He can’t help who his uncle is." Nick
lights the cigarette and then looks again at Harry.
"Peter
ain’t like them anyway," he says.

"So what does he want with us?" Harry says
a little later.

"Something," Nick says, "or he
wouldn’t be coming back every day so you could beat him up."

Harry looks straight ahead.

"Peter ain’t his uncle," Nick says again.

"It’s all the same family."

Nick nods at that. "Maybe he don’t want to be
in that family," he says.

The car goes quiet, and then Nick glances at his son
again.

"Trust me," he says. "You give
somebody the benefit of the doubt, someday somebody gives it to you."

He sees Harry understands that.

"Besides," he says, "I ain’t old
enough for you to be protecting me yet."
 

PART FOUR

1974

P
eter at twenty-one:

He is naked in bed, unable to sleep, bothered by the
nearness of the girl lying next to him, her arm across his chest, as
if he belonged to her.

He does not know this woman well, only that she
smokes and talks about clothes, even as he undressed her. He is not
used to having someone in his bed overnight.

The phone rings. He turns his head to look at it,
listening to the trucks outside, lining up to unload on the docks.
The trucks and the wind. He picks up the alarm clock on the floor and
studies the position of the hands. Four o’clock. The phone rings
again and he picks it up.

"Peter?" It’s Michael.

"Yeah."

"Something’s happened." He is scared,
Peter hears that. The woman on the bed turns in her sleep, pulling
the blanket over her narrow shoulders.

Peter waits, the receiver pressed against his ear,
the alarm clock rolls underneath him on the bed.

"They got Phil."

That is what Michael calls his father now, Phil.

"Who got him?"

It is quiet a moment. "Constantine’s people,"
Michael says finally. "It must of been the old guys who was
still loyal. The other bunch, they loved him. He did them a favor
with the old man, it’s live and let live ever since."

Peter sits up and puts his feet on the cold floor.
His apartment is on the third floor of a building 150 years old, and
on winter nights he can sometimes feel the wind through the walls. He
feels it now.

"Peter?"

"Yeah, I’m here .... " He stands up,
holding the receiver against his ear, and goes to the radiator to
turn up the heat.

"It was a bomb," Michael says.

"Where?"

"The door. It took out most of the porch, part
of the front wall."

He reaches for the radiator and the phone falls off
the table next to the bed.

It is quiet on the other end for a moment, and then
he hears a noise, it could almost be a laugh. "There ain’t
nothing left weighs two ounces," Michael says. The connection is
quiet again.

"It had to be Constantine’s people,"
Michael says. "Phil had things worked out with the guys that
took over."

Peter is quiet, not knowing anything about the guys
who took over. Only that since his uncle had killed Constantine for
them, they had left the unions alone.

"I’m gonna need your help," Michael says.

"For what?"

"If I’m going to hold on to this, I got to
have somebody I can trust," Michael says.

"I don’t know anything about the business,"
he says.

"I got to have somebody I can trust,"
Michael says, "or I’m as dead as Phil."

The girl in the bed sits up, her mouth and eyes are
puffy with sleep. The blanket drops into, her lap. He sees the
outline of small, round breasts, and between them a gold cross that
hangs from a chain picks up light from the street and winks at him.

"Peter?"

"I’rn thinking," he says.

The girl begins looking for her clothes. He sees that
she is  angry.

"Good," Michael says. "That’s what
you always been good at, figuring things out."

She puts on her shirt and pants, and, as Peter
watches, she suddenly picks her panties up off the floor and pulls
them down over his face and ears.

"Peter?"

He looks up at the girl through one of the holes for
her legs.

She puts on her shoes and coat, and points to the
telephone. "Tell her to come on over," she says, "I’m
done." She slams the door as she leaves.

"Who’s that?" Michael says. "You got
somebody there?"

"No," Peter says, "not now."

"So what do I do?"

Peter thinks a moment, asking himself the same
question. Flesh and blood. "I’ll come over in the morning,"
he says.
 

PART FIVE

1986

A
warehouse in the south
end of the city.

It is February.

Five men climb the fire escape to the roof, the
streetlight on the corner turning the wall behind them green; Peter
Flood goes up first, then his cousin Michael Flood, then two men who
work for Michael—they call themselves Bobby the Jap and Monk—and
then Jimmy Measles.

The steps move under the men as they climb, and
Michael Flood shakes the hand railing and grabs at his cousin’s
feet above him on the stairs. The men who work for Michael Flood
shake the railings too and pretend to fall.

Beneath them, Jimmy Measles holds on with both hands.
This is the first time he has been to the warehouse, and he is afraid
of the height.

Peter Flood hears him somewhere below, his noises
distinct from the others. There is something wrong with his
breathing, and the bottles in his overcoat pocket make the same flat
note over and over as they collide. Hundred-dollar champagne, at
least that is what he’d said.

Eight feet from the top, the fire escape becomes a
ladder, three single bars welded into the wall, two feet apart,
another bar fastened to the roof itself. One by one the men climb
this ladder, leaning forward at the top, their hands touching the
roof to take the long last step.