The Best American Mystery Stories 2004

Scott Wolven EL Rey

From Lost in Front

Before the logging operation in Maine closed, Bill drove a big rig and generally got paid more than I did. I ran a saw. I drank quite a bit. It ate into my wallet. We kicked around in Maine. I was in good shape from working so much and in a bar outside Houlton I managed to sneak a right hand in and knocked a guy out for two hundred dollars. I thought I was a boxer.

We finally ended up at Bill’s mother’s house in Saint Johnsbury, Vermont. On the way there, we stopped at a reservation and picked up some tax-free cigarettes for her. She didn’t seem happy or sad to see us when we pulled up. She didn’t hug Bill, but she did take the cigarettes. “Are these for Mother’s Day?” she asked Bill when he gave her the cigarettes. “They are now,” he said. “You don’t have to pay me for them.” Hard times had made that love, for the two of them.

In the morning, I walked down to Thompson’s wood lot and fifteen minutes later, I was working. When I first started in late May, my back took a month to come into its own. I was lucky I was in decent shape to start with, or I couldn’t have done it at all. I hurt so bad some nights after work that I slept on the hardwood floor. My hands hummed from running the chain saw all day. My spine rusted tight. I didn’t think I’d be able to raise myself out of a bed to walk to work in the morning.

Bill started to cash a check, driving a log truck down from Quebec for a big outfit and then an accident got him, crushed him against the steering wheel. He sat totally paralyzed in a wheelchair at the house. He could look out the window and see me at the wood lot, and I would wave up to him, give him the high sign. Nurses from the county came in to feed him. His mother made sure the door was open so people could get in. A buddy of his, Tom Kennedy, came to see him once in a while. His voice still worked, and I imagine he gave those county people hell for the hour they were there. He hated being paralyzed. Beyond hate, really.

I ran the chain saw most days, filling firewood orders as they came in and trying to stay ahead, as people got ready for winter. We had as many as fifteen orders a day, mixed cords and half-cords. Gary worked with me, a wiry little local with a mustache and a tattoo on his arm that said amber inside a hand-drawn heart. Gary ran the hydraulic splitter and packed the cut cords into the rusted dump truck. He was a good worker. We managed eight cords a day, ten if nobody drank heavy the night before. The heat would drive it out of you anyway, sending you behind the shed to puke before eleven o’clock in the morning. We all did it, kicked sawdust over it, and kept right on working. The log trucks made the turn off the road down into the main yard and the French-Canadian drivers would hop up into their cherry pickers and unload themselves right onto the big stacks, and then walk over to the pay shed where Harold sat, answering the phone and paying cash for any decent load of logs that happened to come his way. He didn’t care where the logs came from or whose property they were. The log business can depend a lot on timing. You leave a load on the ground in the forest too long and bugs can get at the wood and ruin things quick. Or maybe somebody crossed a property line on a clear cut and had to get rid of some wood fast. Once the wood found its way into Harold’s yard, it was his, and the exchange rate being what it was, the French-Canadians made sure plenty of wood always managed to show up. Bill watched all day from his bedroom and we’d talk about my day at the woodlot when I got home.

“Better than television,” he said. I always knew if Tom had stopped by because Bill would be drunk. Tom left beer and sometimes whole bottles for Bill. “He keeps me in the juice,” Bill said. Then I’d join him for a drink in his room and look out the window at the woodlot where I worked all day.

Whether it was the heat or the work or the booze, I don’t know, but the job made everybody pretty mean. In the beginning of August, somebody made a comment at lunch about Gary’s pregnant girlfriend and the next day, Gary came in and took a swing at this new guy who was standing near the barn and came back to work the splitter with a bloody nose and the beginnings of a black eye. About two weeks later, a log truck pulled in and unloaded and while the driver walked across the yard, I looked at him through my goggles for a minute with the chain saw still running, He gave me the middle finger as he walked into the shed, and I started to move fast. I shut the saw down and took off my Kevlar chaps, headphones, plugs, and helmet, tossed my goggles into the sawdust, and met him as he came out the shed door. I hit him right in the face and then again and he fell to one knee and I picked up an ax handle that was leaning against the shed and started beating him on the shoulders and ribs and back. I hit him so hard that the ax handle stung my hand to the bone. As he lay in the sawdust, I reached into his right front pocket and took the money he’d just earned from the log delivery. Somebody helped him back to his truck and he sat there for a while and then drove out. Later that night, I counted five hundred dollars with my hurt right hand and then I went out and walked to the corner Gas Mart and treated myself to a twenty-four pack of cold beer. I drank three of them before I made it back to my sweltering attic room of Bill Doyle’s house. Bill was howling, laughing upstairs when I came in.

“You gave it to that frog,” he called down to me. The door to his mother’s room was closed with light coming out underneath. I walked upstairs. Bill’s face always looked tight and windburned, from all those years driving a truck. “That’s what I feel like doing, every day. Jumping out of this fucking chair and giving it to somebody.”

I poked my head in his room. “I hurt my hand doing it,” I said.

“You’ve got another one, don’t worry about it,” he said. “I wish Tom could have seen that.”

“Tell him about it,” I said. Bill talked about Tom Kennedy so much, I felt like a big deal to be mentioned in the same company.

“I will,” Bill said. “He loves a good fight.”

I came home from work one day and called up into the empty house from the bottom of the stairs like I always did and there was no answer. I went up to Bill’s room and opened the door and got sick. Bill really wasn’t there anymore: he’d sprayed most of his head onto the wall with a shotgun blast. A faint blue haze hung close to the ceiling. The wheelchair was there with the headless torso slumped in it and the shotgun on the floor. A bunch of beer bottles and a liquor bottle, cheap whiskey. Empty. For so much violence in such a small room, you’d have expected to hear noise, an echo, something. But it was silent. His mom left after the funeral, went to Florida to live with her sister, and I moved out too, got a new room in another house for an apartment.

In the last week of August, two shiny black four-by-fours with tinted windows and New York plates pulled off the highway and down into the main yard. I assumed they were new homeowners, maybe up from New York City, looking to fill a wood order for winter or with some land they wanted clear. I was wrong.

The man who got out of the first truck was a dapper-looking Hispanic, with the whole outfit on. The sunglasses, the gold chains. Shirt open a couple of buttons. The creased black dress pants, black pointy shoes. He spoke with a thick accent. Harold, his gut hanging out of his denim coveralls, walked out of the pay shack and shook hands with the Hispanic man. The rest of us stopped working, wandered over, and listened.

“Hello,” he said to us. “I am Melvin Martinez and we are looking for strong men to spar with.” His accent was so thick I could barely understand him. Several more Hispanic men got out of the trucks. Young, muscular, with black hair, all in blue warm-up suits.

Harold looked over at the men standing by the trucks. “Where’d you last fight, up in Quebec?”

“Yes,” said Melvin. “We started in a logging camp up there and are working our way back down to New York City.” He pointed at one young man wearing red boxing trunks. “That is El Rey,” he said. “We’re preparing him for the pros.”

“Did he win?” asked Harold. He took a kerchief out of his back pocket and wiped the sweat off his forehead and neck.

“El Rey has not lost,” Melvin said. The gold chains around his neck caught the sun. He wore a thick gold bracelet on his left wrist, along with a gold watch and some rings.

Harold considered this a minute. “What weight class are you looking for?” he said.

“El Rey will fight anyone, he doesn’t care, as long as there are gloves and a ring and limed rounds. No headgear. No kicking. Regular boxing.”

Harold nodded and his beard moved. “Well, usually before a fight, there’s another match, there’s more than one fight on the card. Got anybody else who wants to fight?”

“Yes,” Melvin said. He turned to the men who had come out of the trucks. “Hector will fight. He is El Rey’s sparring partner.” One of the men raised his hand and began to take off his warm-up jacket.

“Fine,” Harold said. “That’s fine. We’ll get something going here, just give me a minute.” He turned around and pointed at Gary. “Take a sledge and a tape and some of those long iron stakes by the shed and make me a ring here.” Harold turned to Melvin. “How big do you want?”

“Twenty feet is good,” Melvin said. “We’ve got gloves with us, sixteen ounces, for better protection. Do you need them?”

“Yeah,” Harold said. “I don’t have any boxing gloves sitting around.”

Gary held a stake as I pounded the top of it with a sledgehammer. The sawdust jumped around the base as it went into the ground. We used the tape to measure out twenty feet for the next stake, and snapped a plumb line to make sure the thing was square. The blue chalk dust hung in the hot air after the line drew taut. We drove in all four stakes this way and tied a white rope all the way around.

Harold and Melvin held a private conference on the hood of the closest four-by-four and then Harold came back over to us. Everybody was standing near the pay shack, looking at the ring. Harold ran a hand through his hair and spoke as he walked toward us.

“I put two hundred fifty dollars on it, so let’s see what happens,” he said. “If you want to bet, go give it to him.” He pointed at Melvin. “No odds, just straight win by time or knockout.” A couple of guys walked over and gave Melvin some money, but I wanted to wait.

Harold turned to George Hack. George was a big man, a drinker and a bar brawler. He generally ran the skidder if we were in the woods and he always worked on the big saws on any cutting job. He played football for Saint Jay High School and still talked frequently about it, although it was years ago and I’d seen him knock the daylights out of Jimmy Conrad, the bouncer over at Suedon’s Bar on Main Street. We prepped the ring area with a rake, and George went into shed and came out without a shirt on, just a pair of jeans, his work boots, and the sixteen-ounce boxing gloves on his hands. Some of his flab hung over his jeans. Hector was smaller than George, but there was no fat there. Hector had on boxing trunks and shoes laced up to his knees. His gloves. Melvin agreed to take the first round as referee. He wore a white towel around his neck.

The bell rang and both men came out of their corners toward the middle of the sawdust ring. George took a wild swing that hit nothing. He almost slipped. He was already sweating. Hector set him up fast. Two quick left-handed jabs, one to the face, one to the body, and all the time, the right fist was waiting, held back, the pressure building, as George’s hands chased Hector’s up then down, still back, the bombsight zeroed in on George’s left ear, then boom! Right on George’s ear, clean, solid, through, and George’s knees buckled and his head bounced when it hit the sawdust. George wasn’t even conscious and yet, tears were coming out of his eyes. Two guys jumped into the ring and pulled George into the back of a pickup truck. As they turned him over, sawdust stuck to his chest and his face and his crotch, which was soaked. He’d wet himself from the shot to the head.

Harold suddenly pulled me off to one side, behind the pay shack. “Go get me Tom Kennedy,” he said in a low voice. He handed me a hundred-dollar bill. “Tell him there’s more to go with that.”

“Let me fight El Rey,” I said.

Harold shook his head. “I want to win,” he said. “You can’t take an ax handle out there in the ring with you.” He talked out of the side of his mouth and then turned toward me. “Besides,” he looked straight at me, “you don’t have the life in front of you that Tom does.”

I took the money and walked along the stream that made the back border of the wood lot. It brought me out at the end of Langmore Street and Kennedy lived one over, on Hartsel Avenue. I walked down the cracked sidewalk, full of frost heaves.

Tom Kennedy was Harold’s main tree climber, for any residential job that went up over a hundred feel. At least, that’s what everyone at the wood lot would say, but I’d only seen him at the woodlot once. I heard more about him through Bill than anything else. In reality, Tom Kennedy managed to collect weekly pay from Harold just for staying away from the wood lot. His temper and drinking were two of the things I first heard about when I came to Saint Jay. Tom Kennedy was also a local fighting legend. I’d heard stories about him from Bill, and the last I’d seen him at the wood lot, he’d yelled at Harold like I’d never heard anybody do, ever. You could tell he was a mean drunk just from the force of his words. Told Harold to suck it, then stood there and waited for Harold to say something. Harold didn’t say anything. I was nervous going to get Tom Kennedy.

He sat on the wood porch of his big house, drinking a beer. Bill told me Tom’s father had been the first Irish cop to leave Boston and tried to bring some big-city justice to the force here in Saint Johnsbury. Tom had tried to be a cop too, for a little while, but something went wrong and after a short time, he simply wasn’t a cop anymore. He didn’t wear the uniform and he didn’t drive the car anymore; he just faded out of that life into another.

There were kids running around, some his, some his girlfriend’s. Some belonged to other people and I thought that ten years from now, those same kids wouldn’t even hang out with anyone named Kennedy. Tom sat there on the front porch, drinking a beer. I walked up the sidewalk to the bottom step of the porch.

“Hi, Tom,” I said.

“Hi yourself,” he said. “What does Harold need done?” He tilted his head back and drained his beer, tossing the can on the porch. His reddish hair looked bronze in the sun.

I took the hundred-dollar bill out of my pocket and handed it to him. “There are some men from New York City over at the wood lot, looking to fight.” I indicated the money. “Harold says there’s more after that.”

“What type of men?” he asked. “Niggers?”

“No,” I said. “Hispanic men. From New York City.”

Tom made a noise I took as a laugh. “They aren’t from here,” he said. “They’re not local. There’s no Spanish Vermonters.” He looked at me. “How tough are they?” He touched his own check. “Some black guys got hard faces, their faces can break your hands. And they take people’s crap all the time, so they can get pretty mean. Hispanic guys aren’t like that.”

“The one guy just sent George Hack to the hospital,” I said. “Hurt bad.”

“George Hack?” he said. “George Hack couldn’t fight my sister.”

“Well he went down pretty hard,” I said. I thought of the tears coming out of Hack’s eyes, that he pissed himself.

“Did you think George Hack was tough?” he asked. He started lacing up his work boots.

“Maybe,” I allowed.

“George Hack was a fat slob,” Tom said. “I should go over to the hospital and beat him in his bed just for losing so bad.” He pushed on his right ear with the flat of his hand and I heard the cartilage crack. “He couldn’t box,” he said.

“He got hurt,” I said.

“How big is this guy I’m fighting?” he asked.

“Big,” I said. “Probably two-twenty, maybe more.”

“You know what they say?” he asked.

“No, what’s that?” I asked.

“It isn’t the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog,” he said.

“Oh,” I said. Tom stood and stretched his arms out. He sat again. “Thanks for looking in on Bill those days.” I appreciated Tom buying Bill’s booze.

“We went back a long way,” Tom said. “Used to be good friends, he knew my father when my father was still alive. I made sure his mother got around in the snow sometimes.” He waved it off. “Just friends, that’s all.”

“Thanks,” I said.

He pointed toward the woodlot. “Think I can beat him?” he asked.

I took a minute to answer. “No,” I said. “I don’t think you can. If he’s better than that guy who fought George Hack, no way.”

“Is he mean?” Tom asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Oh, you’d know,” he said. “Heard you beat some frog with an ax handle a while back. Bill told me.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Sorry about Bill,” he said. “But he’s better off. He wasn’t living much. Not that any of us are but at least we can still walk.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You should learn to use your fists,” he said. “Learn to box.”

“I know how to box,” I said.

He snorted. “I’d have shoved that ax handle so far up your ass you’d have coughed splinters,” he said. “You want to see boxing? Come watch me right now. I’ll show you boxing.” He stood and stretched. He looked at one of the little kids running in the street. “A plastic helmet and toy gun don’t make a soldier.”

“You should’ve seen what this guy did to George Hack,” I repeated.

“Did he piss his pants?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “How’d you know?”

“I been around,” he said. He showed me his right hand. There was a raised scar between his first and second knuckles. “I hit a man so hard his front tooth was lodged in there.” He pointed at the scar with his left hand. “All the way to my bone,” he said. “That’s what happens when you put that torque on your punches. I’m not just talking about a brawl. I’m talking about boxing, like my old man taught me.” We walked down the sidewalk in silence and as we turned, I stole a glance at his right hand again and at the massive scar between his knuckles.

We walked back the way I’d come over and by the time we got there, there were probably fifty people crowding around, looking at the little ring and staring at El Rey, who sat on a stool in the corner with his back to the four-by-fours. He and Hector were talking in Spanish, along with Melvin.

Harold came over to us as soon as we walked onto the lot. He went to shake hands with Tom, but Tom brushed him away.

“Two hundred dollars besides what you already gave me,” Tom said.

“Done,” Harold said. He reached into his coveralls and pulled out two damp hundred-dollar bills and gave them to Tom.

Tom stripped to a pair of shorts and sneakers, no shirt. On his back, along the right shoulder blade, he had a half-finished tattoo that looked like a shroud with a scythe and the words GRIM REAPER in shaky script. It was the color of mold. Tom got into the ring and sat in his corner. He looked over at El Rey.

Melvin and Harold both got into the ring and after looking at each other, Melvin clapped his hands. Everyone was quiet.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is going to be a twelve-round fight with two-minute rounds,” he said. Melvin pointed at El Rey. “And in this corner, wearing the red trunks, the Hispanic Panic, undefeated in his career, weighing two hundred and twenty-one pounds, the King of Knockout, from the Bronx, New York New York, El Rey!” The other Hispanic men whistled and clapped and El Rey stood up and shadowboxed for a minute, finished up with a flurry of short punches, then remained standing, dancing on his feet, loose. Melvin stepped out of the ring and Harold cleared his throat and pointed to Tom Kennedy.

“In this corner,” he said, “weighing one hundred eighty-five pounds, the Pride of Saint Jay, Tom Kennedy!”

And when his name was called, Kennedy got off his stool and danced for a minute, bobbed and weaved and threw a few light punches and we all cheered him, really cheered him, and he remained standing too, moving and ready.

Harold motioned for both guys to touch gloves and they did and Melvin hit the bell. El Rey came out fast, moved up to Tom and swung and missed, and Tom made two quick jabs at his ribs and backed off, his hands held at an almost awkward angle, his feet always moving. They moved together and El Rey jabbed with his left, pulling his right hand back, jabbed again, and swung full with the right, but Tom wasn’t there anymore, he moved back and to the side and then in again and bang! bang! two fast rights to El Rey’s head and the bell rang.

Tom came over to the corner and sat on the stool, and I gave him some water, which he spit into the sawdust. Melvin and Hector were in El Rey’s corner, talking loud in Spanish. Tom spit his white rubber mouth guard into his right glove and spoke.

“Watch me now, and learn about those fists,” he said. He popped his mouth guard back in and stared across at El Rey’s corner. The bell rang and he stood, and I grabbed the stool out of the ring.

He and El Rey met in the middle of the ring and El Rey juked left with his head, then right, swung, but Tom ducked under, and one two! Shots to the body and one two! again, one to the solar plexus. I saw the look on El Rey’s face, I knew it, and as he brought his hands down to cover himself, Tom slammed the right side of his head with the glove, hard, and again, and there was blood Hying, and I thought for sure Tom would step back, but he stepped forward, closer, almost hitting down on his target and bang! a strong left hand to El Rey’s nose and the bell rang.

Tom sat on the stool. He was breathing heavily, sweat all over his body, and we toweled him down and they were screaming in Spanish in the other corner. Tom popped his mouth guard out. He didn’t say anything. He looked mad. He stared across at El Rey’s corner and put his mouth guard back in. The bell rang and Tom came off the stool like a rocket. He threw a couple of light punches, and El Rey took a step back and Tom stepped up, closer again. Then he swung twice, fast, and it was like punching bullet holes in a paper target — El Rey didn’t feel the shock until the punches were through him.

I didn’t know exactly what happened next because Tom moved so fast and his back shielded me from seeing the punches directly. All I could watch were his shoulder blades, moving with each punch, over and over and all to the body of El Rey and El Rey’s face looking at me over Tom’s shoulder, trying to stay alert, and now Tom was on El Rey’s head, he found the range, it was a right, another right and a right and El Rey fell to his knees hard and Tom kept hitting him, blood coming out of El Rey’s ear onto the sawdust, and El Rey went down face first, the sawdust jumping up as his head hit the ground, his eyes closed, and it was silent. The Hispanic men jumped in the ring and popped amyl nitrate capsules under El Rey’s nose and he didn’t move, and Tom just sat there on the stool, with blood on his chest, as they picked El Rey up and carted him back to the trucks and presumably the hospital.

It stayed quiet as men collected their money from Melvin and came over to congratulate Tom. He was still sweating, still trying to catch his breath. A bruise was starting on his face from a punch I hadn’t even seen. The marks on his chest seemed to glow red. Slowly, he took his gloves off with his teeth.

“You want some help?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I’m just taking my time.” He put a shirt on after a while and he and Harold talked and then I watched him walk back the same way we’d come over, along the stream toward the house.

I have a different job now, handling shipping and packages for a company near Montpelier. Every time I drive past Thompson s wood lot and see the men working there, I’m glad it’s not me. Last night, I was up late — my wife had already taken off to her mother’s house, she lives just down the block — had a couple of beers, and turned on ESPN. The late-night fight card had El Rey on it. He looked bulked up. I decided to walk to the corner store for some more beer and snacks. It was mid-November and snowing pretty hard.

Tom Kennedy was at the store. He smelled like beer. He was in the back, looking at the coolers full of beer.

“Hey, Tom Kennedy,” I said. “The Pride of Saint Jay.”

He turned and stared at me. Sometimes when people drink a lot, they have a certain look about them, a fog they have to get through before the world reaches them, and Tom’s gaze had retreated into that phase. He didn’t know who I was.

“Hey, mister,” he said. His jeans were ripped and he wore an old flannel shirt.

“I’ve got El Rey on ESPN over at the house,” I said. “Want to come over and watch?”

“What?” Kennedy said.

“You know, El Rey,” I said. “That guy you fought over at Thompson’s.” His hearing seemed a little weak too.

“I haven’t been in a fight,” he said.

“No,” I said. “Three years ago.”

He looked at me. “Three years ago? What the hell’s three years ago got to do with today?”

The question hung there in the air. I had the luxury of thinking about three years ago, of a TV, or having a fight with my wife. “Nothing,” I said. “Just thought you might be interested.”

“I’m interested in getting some fucking beer, but that asshole won’t sell it to me.” He pointed at the high school kid behind the counter. “Says I’m already drunk. Right?” Tom Kennedy gave him a deadly stare.

“I’ll call the cops if you don’t leave the store,” the kid said. “I’ve done it before on him,” the kid continued. “He makes me.” A phone hung on the wall behind him. Tom Kennedy headed back to the beer cooler. He grabbed a six-pack of bottles and ran out of the store, into the snow. I tossed a ten-dollar bill on the counter and ran after him. He was already headed down the sidewalk.

“Hey, Tom,” I called. “Wait up.”

He turned fast. His face seemed to come clear out of the snow and I knew that he remembered me.

“I shot him,” he said. “He begged me to do it, and if you had been a good friend to him, you’d have done it.”

“What?” I said.

“I blew his head right off,” he said. “What was the point of him living if he didn’t want to live?”

“What?” I said. “You mean Bill?”

“That’s right,” Tom said. “But it should have been you. To pull the trigger.”

He hit me in the side of the head with a full bottle of beer. I lay there in the snow and went in and out of it. I heard a police siren going through the night, a sound you don’t hear very often in Saint Johnsbury, through the quiet streets and houses, echoing out into the huge forest of the Northeast Kingdom and beyond.