Warrior Angel (2 page)

A
THOUGHT BEGAN TO TUG
at the corner of Sonny's mind, but before he could decide whether or not to let it in, the door banged open and a voice boomed, “The world is waiting for Sonny Bear. Is Sonny Bear ready to deee-light the world with another deee-fense?”

Malik and Boyd jumped up and the trainer and the cornermen straightened. Even Red Eagle turned.

“Mind if I keep shooting, Mr. Hubbard?” asked the cameraman.

“My life is an open screen, dedicated to the cham-peen.” Elston Hubbard gently slapped Sonny's cheeks. “Awake, my man, and prepare to pummel another pretender to the throne.” He snapped his fingers at the trainer. “You know better. He should be warmed up by now.”

“He won't do nothing, Mr. Hubbard,” the trainer said.

Sonny watched as the big round dark face
loomed over him. He smelled Scotch and cigars. For once it didn't sicken him. Nothing. I am beyond feeling.

“Ten thousand people outside that door, Sonny, the cream of Las Vegas and Hollywood, and countless millions at home, waiting to be inspired anew by the Tomahawk Kid, the Natural Man, the Native Son. Can't disappoint.” He grabbed Sonny's shoulders and pulled him off the table. He held up his hand. “Jab.”

Sonny threw out a left. It felt as though he were punching through water.

“I said jab.”

The second one was straighter but barely moved Hubbard's open hand. “Navy Crockett gonna think you are trying to pick his nose. JAB!”

He aimed this one at Hubbard's face and tried to remind his muscles to snap it out, to fire from the shoulder, to roll his wrist on impact.

Hubbard inclined his head, and the jab shot over his shoulder. “Better.”

The cornermen took over, rubbing his arms, setting up targets. Sonny began jogging in place. He felt his muscles warming up, but they seemed detached from his brain. Someone else's muscles.

The door banged open. “Let's go. Crockett's in the ring.”

“Showtime,” said Hubbard. “Lead the way, Red Iggle.”

It wasn't until they were out of the dressing room that Sonny realized they had been inside the health club of a casino hotel and were now crossing the pool area toward the parking lot. The air was warm, moist. He needed to breathe through his mouth as well as his nose.

Red Eagle, in the lead, scattered ashes from his steel bowl along a red carpet that ran through the crowd to the ring. They passed between two rows of young women in bikinis waving rubber tomahawks and shouting, “Son-nee, Son-nee.”

Hubbard waved to the crowd, urged them to pick up the chant. Hands reached out to touch Sonny. He saw faces of people he knew, movie actors, rappers, ballplayers. Why were they here?

Navy Crockett was waiting in the ring, taller than Sonny and thirty pounds heavier, some of it fat. His upper arms jiggled when he shook them over his head. He spotted Sonny coming up the ring steps and glared.

As he climbed through the ropes, Sonny
thought, What's his problem?

Sonny's robe was stripped off. The trainer ran an ice cube down his spine. He felt Hubbard's strong hands on his arm. “Snap out of it, Sonny. This…is for…your title.”

Hubbard smacked him across the face, hard.

Sonny tried to will himself out of the brown murkiness that surrounded him, banging his gloves together, whipping his head from side to side so his ponytail slapped his bare shoulders. But the lines to his feelings had been disconnected.

The voice of the ring announcer could have come from another planet as he introduced the celebrities. They paraded across the ring, touched Crockett's gloves, touched Sonny's, wished both men luck. The former champion, Floyd (The Wall) Hall, raised his hands to the crowd. Lights glinted off a gold ring on every finger. The rapper glided across the ring to hug him. When the movie star trotted across the ring, the crowd shouted his alien-killer line from the movie: “Sayonara, snotface.”

“And now, the main event, for the heavyweight championship of the world…”

The trainer's fingers were deep in the muscles of his shoulders, and the cornermen were kneading his legs.

“In the green trunks, the challenger, from Ja-mai-ca, at two hundred forty-one pounds, the Reggae King, Nay-veeeeee Crockett.”

Steel drums pounded in the darkness at the back of the parking lot and a line of dancers snaked around the ring.

“In the red trunks, the pride of the Moscondaga Nation and of all Americans from Native to new, the youngest heavyweight champion in history, at two hundred ten pounds, the Tomahawk Kid, Son-neeeeeeeeeeee Bear.”

War drums thundered, and the Tomahawk Girls shimmied down the aisle. Steel drums, war drums, the shouting dancers, the stars and the ballplayers and the rappers standing and cheering.

Sonny thought, I can't breathe.

S
TARKEY THOUGHT
S
ONNY
looked awful, drugged, a robot.

He lurched out to the center of the ring, hands down, chin out. If Crockett hadn't been stiff with fear, he could have marched up and nailed him, ended the fight right then.

Look at those idiot managers, jumping up and down, yelling at Sonny to lift his hands, go after Crockett, chop that lard ass down. Do they want him to lose, or are they as stupid as the boxing writers say? They aren't much older than Sonny, punks who worked for that slimeball Hubbard. Why did Sonny let them in? Because he's losing his grip. Because he doesn't know who his real friends are. Because he needs me.

The crowd screamed for action.

PJ slipped onto the couch next to Starkey. “That was so cool, the way you got out of Circle. Which is the one you're rooting for?”

“Red trunks,” said Starkey.

Roger plopped down. “Crockett's scared. Why doesn't Bear just put him away?”

Because I want all this to end, thought Starkey, thinking for Sonny, because I want to be free, to go back to sleep, to be alone.

A voice on the TV cut through the murk. “Navy, stick, stick and move, Navy.”

“That guy used to train Sonny,” said Starkey, “back when Alfred, Henry, and Jake were still in his corner.” They didn't need to know all this. But he couldn't stop talking about Sonny. “That was all before Hubbard's punks took over.”

“You know so much about him,” said PJ.

“Starkey is obsessed with Sonny Bear,” said Roger.

“We're not allowed to diagnose in the Family Place,” said PJ.

“It's an observation, not a diagnosis,” said Roger. “There are people who fixate on stars because of a lack in their own—”

“Shut up!”
The words came out like straight rights and shut Roger right up.

A jab bounced off Sonny's forehead, just enough to shake him, not enough to hurt. Starkey felt pressure over his left eye.

Sonny looked blank, unfocused. Starkey imagined that Sonny's mind was wandering, seeing faces from his past floating in the crowd, attaching themselves to bodies, then moving on, like masks on strings. Mom and Doll and Robin, Alfred and Marty and Jake.

He imagined that Sonny felt dreamy now, surprised that his body could move on its own, as if it were acting out highlights from old fights. Remember how we kept moving to the left on Boatwright so he couldn't pull the trigger on his jab, in and out on Velez, who was dangerous but dumb.

One of the TV commentators said, “Crockett's got too much reach. Sonny has to move inside if he wants to win this.”

“He's having trouble just keeping his hands up,” said the other one.

“Sonny, look out,” screamed the idiots in the corner.

Suddenly, Sonny was on the ring floor and the referee was pushing Crockett into a neutral corner. Starkey tried to feel Sonny's shock and pain, but felt only numbness. Was that all Sonny was feeling, too?

The steel drums smothered the sound of
the referee's count, but Starkey could see him mouthing the numbers. “Two…three…four…”

“Up, Sonny, get up,” screamed Starkey.

“Stay down, Sonny,” said Roger. “You get up, it's just more of the same.”

He wanted to slug Roger, as big as he was. He started to rise, felt PJ's body stiffen. He held the tension for a beat and thought, If Roger is a member of the Legion of Evil, if he is the adversary sent up from Hell to test me on this Mission, does it make sense to engage him now? Do you beat the devil early or late?

The bell rang.

“Sonny is saved by the bell,” snorted Roger.

You, too, thought Starkey. I will not engage you now. This is about Sonny right now, not about me.

Hands dragged Sonny to his stool, snapped an ampule under his nose, poured ice water on his head, dropped a cube down the front of his trunks, massaged his arms and legs.

The camera moved in. Starkey saw the boom mike, a fuzzy fat gray caterpillar hovering over Sonny's head, picking up the conversation in his corner.

“Wake up, Sonny.” The trainer was slapping his face.

“What's your name?” A man in a suit and tie. The ring doctor.

“Sonny Bear.”

“Where are you?”

“Las Vegas.”

“Who you fighting?”

“Navy Crockett.”

The doctor shrugged and walked away.

One of the idiot managers said, “Sonny, you got to back off—”

But the other idiot said, “In his face, get right up in Crockett's face—”

And then the trainer said, “Tie him up.”

Too many voices in Sonny's ear, Starkey thought, when all he needs is mine. He said, “Just hang on.”

“For dear life.” Roger laughed.

The bell rang.

Bolder now, Crockett marched right up and fired a jab. Some distant memory must have jogged Sonny to slip the punch, let it fly harmlessly over his shoulder, to ram a short right uppercut into Crockett's soft belly.

“Huuunh.” Crockett doubled over, his chin
slamming into Sonny's shoulder. Sonny grabbed him, pulled him into a clinch. Crockett wrenched loose and stumbled away.

The fear was back. Crockett circled again. The movie stars and rappers and ballplayers stamped their cowboy boots and chanted, “Son-nee, Son-nee.”

Behind them, to the steel-drum beat, voices from the cheaper seats chanted, “Nay-vee, Nay-vee.”

Starkey could sense that Sonny's murkiness never completely cleared and that he never quite connected with his body, even when he got his hands up and began to move his feet. Twice he caught Crockett coming in with sharp jabs. The second time he managed to land a hook as Crockett was backing away. It startled Crockett, and he tripped over his feet, falling on his backside. He was up again before the referee could start the count, but he stayed away from Sonny for the rest of the round.

The crowd began to boo through the middle rounds as the fight fell into a pattern. Crockett would circle until he gathered enough courage to attack. He might land a jab or two, even a brief flurry of punches, but Sonny would
trap his arms and step into a clinch.

The referee broke them apart as quickly as he could, “No hugging—fight,” but Crockett couldn't stop Sonny from clinching.

One of the TV commentators said, “Navy's too slow, too set in his ways to figure this out.”

“He's a classic plodder willing to absorb punches to give some back,” said the other. “But Sonny's hardly mounting any offense at all. Wasn't this supposed to be just a little tune-up fight for the champ?”

At the beginning of the tenth, Starkey sensed Sonny's murk beginning to lift, like a stage curtain slowly rising. He could see that Sonny felt it first in his arms, lighter, then in his feet, moving faster. Sonny snapped three straight jabs into Crockett's face, driving him back across the ring, and as the crowd began to roar, he slammed a left hook into Crockett's jaw and a vicious short right into his heart. Crockett fell against the ropes, his elbows snagged on the top strand. The crowd was on its feet as Sonny lowered his head and pounded Crockett's soft gut.

“Kill the body and the head will die,” shouted Starkey.

Roger snickered. “Where you hear that dopey stuff?”

Starkey started to rise, but PJ squeezed his arm and he settled back down. It was in The Book. Mr. Donatelli had spoken those words to Alfred, who had passed them on to Sonny. Can't react to Roger, not now.

Crockett had nothing left, he was in no condition to box for twelve rounds, and he sucked air and circled until the final bell sounded. The crowd was booing and whistling. It got louder after the ring announcer pulled down the mike and read the judges' cards.

Split decision. Sonny wins, retaining the title.

Starkey felt sweet warm relief fill his chest.

“Crockett got robbed,” said Roger. “And your guy is almost as screwed up as you are.”

“Get lost,” snapped Starkey.

Roger stood up. “Make me, psycho pup.”

Defining moment, now or never. Starkey stood up. He tried to imagine what Sonny would do, but before he could even think it through, the heel of his hand shot out and slammed into Roger's nose. Roger sat down hard, blood leaking between his fingers.

Roger whimpered. “I'm gonna tell—”

“And I'll say you bothered me,” said PJ. “Now get lost, toad.”

PJ didn't wait for Roger to leave before she sat down and hugged Starkey. He was too surprised to resist. Besides, he knew Roger would snitch to Dr. Raphael that he had hit him and they'd send a counselor up.

Then I can get back to my room and send Sonny another message. He closed his eyes and wrote it in his mind:
Dear George Harrison Bayer, Saw you on TV after the fight. That look in your eyes, like it's hopeless. It's not. Hang on. I'll be there as soon as I can. Warrior Angel.

T
HE BOOING ROLLED
over the ring. He met Crockett in the middle and they hugged.

“I stunk,” said Sonny, patting Crockett's back. “Sorry.”

“Me, too, mon.”

He shuffled back to his dressing room.

Hubbard was bellowing at the trainer, “Pack your sack, never want to see your face again.”

Malik jerked a thumb at the cornermen. “And take those useless—”

Hubbard growled, “Malik, shut your mouth. 'Cept to thank me for letting you pretend to be the manager.”

Malik and Boyd slunk across the room.

Red Eagle said, “There is a dark spirit inside the young brave….”

Hubbard whirled on him. “So get your mojo on it. That's why I give you the big wampum.”

Sonny climbed up on the table and stretched out.

Hubbard's face bobbed over him. “No media. I can keep the vultures out.”

“Don't care.”

Hubbard's face came close. “That wasn't you out there, Sonny.” He turned and raised his voice. “Sonny was drugged. Only explanation. Never been so sluggish before. You all got that?”

Malik and Boyd looked at each other, and Boyd blurted, “We didn't—”

“That's right you didn't—do nothing. Okay, let 'em in.”

Hubbard stood in front of the table, arms crossed, blocking Sonny as the camera crews led the charge into the dressing room. Hubbard ignored their shouted questions until the pack had settled down, cameras rolling, pens poised above notebooks.

“Tomorrow morning,” he said, “I will demand the boxing commission investigate drugs infiltrated into the champion's food or water.”

“Are you accusing—”

“The commission will accuse, the Good
Lord may excuse, all I say. That wasn't the Sonny Bear we know out there.”

A TV reporter said, “He was sleepwalking out there.”

“Pre-cisely,” said Hubbard. “And he could have got killed. We have a case gonna rock boxing. Count on you people to keep the commission's feet to the fire, don't let them sweep it under the floor.”

“Sonny, what do you think?”

Hubbard stepped aside. The bobbing faces made Sonny dizzy. “Felt flat. Couldn't get off.”

“You think you were drugged?”

He sat up. “Don't know what it was.”

“Try this,” said one of the TV reporters into his camera. “Is Sonny Bear over the hill at twenty?”

There was a moment of silence, then Hubbard boomed, “We will find out in six weeks. I have an announcement.”

The reporters pressed forward again.

“A year ago Sonny Bear snatched the title in one of the greatest wars of modern times. He will now defend his title against that fearsome warrior.”

“The Wall?” someone asked.

“Who can forget? Floyd (The Wall) Hall is coming out of retirement to attempt to reclaim his throne.” Hubbard pointed to the dressing-room door. “The Wall is across the hall, waiting to talk to you.”

The pack turned and rushed away.

A reporter with a familiar face lingered. “Not much time, six weeks.”

Hubbard nodded. “Strike while the public still hot.”

“You mean before your deal with Sonny runs out.”

Sonny slipped past them into the shower room. He lost track of time under the hot needle spray.

“Sonny.” It was the trainer. He was holding towels. “You okay? Better drink lotsa water.”

“Thanks.” He stepped out and let the trainer wrap the towels around him.

“That's it for me, Sonny. Hubbard canned me.”

“Sorry. Good luck.”

“I'll be okay. Good luck to you, kid. Take care of yourself.” The man didn't seem to want to leave. “Get yourself some help.”

“Help?”

“Talk to somebody, know what I mean?”

“You still here?” Red Eagle stood at the shower-room door.

The trainer hurried away.

Sonny dried off and dressed slowly. Get help, the trainer said. What did he mean? Who could he talk to? Red Eagle, Malik, and Boyd were still in the dressing room. Talk to those three stooges? Malik was staring into the laptop screen.

“That guy is back, the Warrior Angel.”

“What's he say now?” asked Sonny. He was surprised at his interest.

“Crazy stuff,” said Malik.

“Read it,” said Sonny.

“Dear George Harrison Bayer, Saw you on TV after the fight. That look in your eyes, like it's hopeless. It's not. Hang on. I'll be there as soon as I can. Warrior Angel.”

I am deep in the murk, Sonny thought, and the Warrior Angel is on his way.

 

By the time they got to the victory party, on the top floor of the Oasis Hotel, the guests had cleaned off the buffet tables. Malik and Boyd grumbled, but Sonny wasn't hungry. Red Eagle
squatted on his heels in a corner, eating dried fruits and grains from the pouches that hung from his shoulders. The short, muscled movie star came over to taste Red Eagle's food and drew a crowd.

Sonny drifted around the big room. He moved whenever he saw someone coming to talk to him. The waiters, their heads shrouded in the hotel staff's Arabian Nights costumes, appeared as ghostly as he felt.

At a wall of windows, he looked down at the Vegas Strip. He remembered the first time he had ever seen it, flying in from New York with Marty Witherspoon. He had thought then the Strip looked like all the crayons in the world melted into a dazzling river. Marty had liked that image, and Marty was a writer.

Beyond the colors was the darkness of the desert. He had a sudden urge to get out, to run the wind.

He heard raised voices behind him.

“You have really got some stones coming in here.” The movie star, legs spread, hands on hips, was glaring up at the rapper.

“Little man, you don't know stones, uh-huh, so watch you mouth or I snap your bones,
uh-huh.” The rapper laughed and high-fived his bodyguards.

A circle formed around the rapper and the movie star. The party quieted down. Casino security officers began whispering into their headset mikes. Sonny waited until he spotted Malik and Boyd crowding in before he began backing out toward the nearest service elevator. The waiters were leaving their posts to watch.

“You must feel lucky, loudmouth,” snarled the movie star. His hands were high, the position he used to bust up aliens.

“Short story, you would make me shake, uh-huh, if a real fight was more than one take, uh-huh.”

When the movie star went into his kick-boxing spin, Sonny bolted for the elevator. The service area was deserted. He was in the elevator, door closing, as the crowd began roaring. Sounds like a better fight than mine, he thought.

No one paid him attention in the basement kitchen, and then he was out in the night, jogging along the Strip, weaving around clumps of tourists and couples holding hands and families with babies in strollers. The crowd
thinned, disappeared. The neon river was behind him. He ran through clusters of suburban homes, and then he was on a two-lane blacktop, the only light from moon and stars.

Sonny ran.

The headlights of approaching cars and trucks blinded him. Sprayed pebbles hit him like buckshot. Even so, the darkness of the desert comforted him, the cool of the night was a blanket. Animals scurried over the sandy rocks. Friends running with him.

He loved to run. It was the best part of training. Especially running alone. Early in the morning or late at night, body still stiff from sleep or sore from a tense day, he would start slow, anticipating the warmth rising from his feet, drowning the aches, finally reaching his brain and flushing the thoughts away.

He pulled the bands off his ponytail, felt his hair fall loose on his shoulders, then lift as the air flowed past his face. He imagined the strands of his hair spread out behind him, the flaps of the tent free from the stakes.

He was no longer alone. He heard a familiar whirring noise. A wheelchair pulled up alongside him.

“You blew it, Sonny,” said Alfred. “You had it all, and you blew it.”

“I had to be free,” said Sonny.

“From people who cared about you?”

“Nobody really cares about me, just use me 'cause I'm the champ.”

On the other side of him, Marty said, “Now you're free? To do what Hubbard wants? To hang around with those two jerks and that phony Indian?”

“I should hang around with you? So you can write another book?”

Sonny ran away from them.

What did they know, a crippled black cop who never made it as a boxer and a fat black college boy who wrote about life instead of living it? What did they know about what was inside him, the monster he had to tame and the dark shadow he couldn't always push away? They always thought all I had to do was show up and train and listen to them and everything would be all right.

Once I thought so, too.

It was easier to get to be champion than to stay champion, all these people pulling at you, telling you what to do, where to be, how to
dress, now that you're a role model, a money machine, the king. King of what?

Nobody knows what I feel inside.

“I knew,” said Jake. “When you were a Running Brave.”

“I was never a Running Brave.”

“In your heart.” He couldn't believe the old man was keeping up with him. Jake was dead. His heart had given out one day while he was working in his auto junkyard on the reservation. Just a few months ago. Seemed like years. “Not no more. Running Braves run to something. You just running away.”

Sonny ran away from him.

He was alone again in the night. He had had it and he had blown it. So what, who cares? Just run. Keep running until you can't run anymore, then lie down in the desert and go to sleep. Forever. Nobody cares. Hubbard's got contracts with the Reggae King and The Wall. Promotors always make money. He'll take care of Malik and Boyd, and Red Eagle can go back to suckering rich people in his phony sweat lodges. Never miss me.

Nobody'll miss me.

Except Warrior Angel. Some nutcase fan
out there, drunk, maybe whacked out on Warrior Angel Dust. That's funny. Warrior Angel Dust. Marty always told people, Sonny'll surprise you with a great line now and then. Sonny's smarter than you think. Marty was all right. But he's gone. Ran away from him, too.

The sky exploded, a dazzling beam of light and a metallic clatter. He was staggered by a sandstorm. It took him a moment to realize that a helicopter was hovering overhead. Booming voices calling him to stop.

Ahead, flashing red lights. Police cars. Somebody
had
missed him. Too late. Doesn't matter anymore.

He jumped a drainage ditch and cut into the desert, stepping high to avoid rocks and weeds. The chopper followed, trapping him in its beam of light. He looked for hiding places in rock formations or groves of trees, but the land was tabletop flat here. He couldn't shake free of the light.

One of the police vehicles was bumping over the desert toward him now, its siren screaming through the clattering rotors.

The monster rose. Go for it, Sonny, you can
beat 'em, outrun them all, go, Sonny, go, and then the dark shadow beat its wings and the murk returned and he stopped and fell to his knees.