“Goddamn it, get your hands up, Nancy.”
Sol reaches forward, grabbing the boy’s wrists, lifting them closer together and raising them a few inches. Turns them inward some, lining up the fists where they need to be. “Here, like this,” he says, tapping the top knuckle of one of Nancy’s thumbs. “See how this knuckle points right at that opposite shoulder? That’s where you want to be throwing from. Keep your hands lined up like that.” He leans down, slapping at the kid’s front leg until he pulls it in a little. “And goddamn it, quit sprawling your leg out like that. You can’t punch if you’re standing there like you’re trying to step over a big puddle.”
“Sorry, Mr Parker.” Nancy turns his head, then murmurs something else into his shoulder.
“That you said?”
The boy won’t meet his eyes, just mumbles, “Don’t like being called that, Mr Parker. Nancy. I ain’t no fairy.”
“What? Of course you are, son. And no one’s business but your own, that. Now come on, hands up and let’s see what you can do to this bag.” Sol steps behind the big gunnysack filled with sand, which hangs from a beam in the warehouse he’s using to skim a quick veneer of pugilism onto Nancy. Who, if anything, is even more hopeless as a boxer than he remembers. That training hadn’t quite taken, first time around, but maybe he’ll be better now, catching him young like this. At least the boy is still huge, and hopefully just as tough as before. Sol leans his shoulder into the back of the bag and waits for a punch, but Nancy just stands there, hands dropping to his side.
“I ain’t no fairy, Mr Parker. Drunk is all I was. Just fuckin drunk.” Nancy’s head sags.
Oh Christ. Sol steps out from the bag, reaching a hand up to Nancy’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze. “Son,” he says, “don’t much matter if you’re queer or not. Thing is, people are going to think that about you now. If it was a mistake, well, it’s been made, and you got caught at it, more’s the pity. You ain’t the first boy to get liquor in him and take a pleasure that ain’t quite the usual. Hell, I knew a man once got caught with a horse. And you know what they say about them Basques down Boise way, the shepherds. Lonesome, right? Just like you Irish.” He gets half a quick grin, maybe. “But son, if you’ve got inclinations that aren’t necessarily towards women, that’s your own business, just like I said. You don’t let no one tell you how to live your life, OK? Maybe it was a mistake or maybe it’s a phase or maybe that’s just the way you are. Life is fucking hard enough, so why quibble over shit like that? You keep your chin up, hey?”
Nancy nods, back to looking miserable. The boy already knows, Sol can see, knows that he’s different. World isn’t kind to those who are different, after all. Sol wonders at what point Nancy came to terms with it all, before, because this conversation had sure never happened, first time around. Maybe there’d been someone standing in, playing Sol’s part, or maybe Nancy had just figured it out on his own. But Sol doesn’t want to think about that first time, before, any of it. Not this, not the rest of it. Didn’t happen, didn’t matter. Just focus on the here and the now and get this boy to the point where at least the punters will take a chance on him. Make some money.
Sol gives him a slap on the arm. Much as he doesn’t like it, doesn’t want the reminder, it’s comfortable, though, being around Nancy again, callow as this one is. “OK, kid, now listen: I want those punches to land hard, hard, hard. Big as you are, you’re never going to be quick, so you need to make your punches count. Man told me once that every punch had to land with the weight of a baby dropped off a building. So you think about that when you’re dropping those big hambones of yours: baby falling off a goddamn building. Bam. OK?”
“That’s a awful thought, Mr Parker.”
“Goddamn it, son, you know what I mean.” Sol steps back behind the bag, snugging his shoulder and ribs against it to keep it still. “Now fucking hit me like you mean it, Nancy.”
“Kid looked good tonight, Sol,” Sean says, pouring them both generous shots of whiskey from the bottle he keeps in the drawer in his desk. “Sláinte.”
“Cheers, Sean.” They knock the glasses back and Sean refills. “But were you watching the same fight I was, tonight? That boy is terrible, can’t box a goddamn bit. All he did was stand there and soak up that old rummy’s fists until he got lucky and dropped a haymaker. Come on, Sean, bullshit.”
Sean shrugs. The big poof was no boxer, for sure, but at least he’d won tonight’s fight. He’d been knocked right out of his first fight not a minute into it, dropped his guard and caught a cross to the chin, out like a light, and from a man more than twice his age. But still, the kid was huge and had shown he knew how to take some punches. If he could be taught to keep himself covered he’d do all right. Men always liked to bet on the big boys. They’d get the kid into some more fights and maybe he’d make them some money; if not, well, there were ways to encourage that. The fight business was just a hobby anyway, these days. It reminded Sean of his youth, the brutal affairs they’d put on in Dublin, where men would half-kill one another – if not finish the job by accident from time to time – in the squalid little holes where he’d come up.
Looking around his office, Sean knows full well where the real money is: sucked straight from the Company’s tit rather than peeled away dollar by dollar from the lowliest of their employees. Still, though, he loves the spectacle of the fight, the sounds and smells of it. Maybe at heart he’s still just a Dublin gutter rat in a nice suit.
Thinking of money reminds him. He reaches into his jacket and removes an envelope, tossing it on the desk in front of Sol, just far enough away that he has to reach for it.
Sol takes the envelope, hefting it in his hand appraisingly, frowning. He opens it, riffles the stack of bills inside with a thumb, the frown deepening. “Bit light, hey?”
Sean shrugs again, knocks back his whiskey and refills the glasses once again. “Business has been a bit light, hasn’t it?”
“Jesus Christ, Sean, no, it ain’t light. You know the take from my places just as well as I do, and my places are solid.”
“Hey now! I won’t have it with the blasphemy. You fuckin well know that.”
Oh Jesus fucking Christ’s hairy ass, Sol thinks. By the sweating balls of the Virgin fucking Mary, go fuck yourself, Sean. His employer likes to pull this bullshit from time to time, play the devout, aggrieved Catholic, Mass every morning, saints’ days, all that. Sean is about as devout as Sol is – not at all – and probably hasn’t seen the inside of a church since he’d last robbed one. It’s just another in the series of constant, aggravating tests Sean puts his underlings to, more fucking bullshit to illustrate just who the boss is and who is the goddamn servant. The higher up Sol’s gone in the enterprise, the more he’s been tested until, now, damn near every little thing had to have some jab in it. Same as Sol does with Mickey, he supposes, but it fucking rankles, this way of doing things. That’s the way of the world, though, isn’t it? The strong and the weak. There’s always someone stronger than you out there.
But this light fucking envelope. Sean damn well knows every penny that comes in and goes out of his places, knows that those Sol minds are as profitable as ever, more so. But what is Sol going to say? Call Sean a liar, a thief? That’s exactly what he is, but Sol can’t say a goddamn thing, but just scoop up his meager earnings and thank the master for his generosity.
Sol looks around the office, willing his teeth to unclench and his heart to slow. Sean isn’t any smarter than he is; a bit more of a bastard maybe, but Sol can likely hold his own there, any more, after plenty of practice. Wasn’t no reason why Sean was the only one who should be sitting there like that, grinning like a cat with a broke-winged bird under his paw. Wasn’t no reason that Sol shouldn’t be on that side of the desk, with a string of businesses and properties and a bank account the size of a fucking barn. He meets Sean’s eyes, holds that smiling gaze as long as he can. Uncomfortably, he’s reminded of Billy’s old Indian uncle, just then, that flat black look that hits you with weight. Eyes like dead babies. There’s always someone stronger, isn’t there.
“Problem, Sol?”
You bet there’s a fucking problem, Sean. “Nah,” he says. “And yeah, guess maybe business has been a bit light, lately. I’ll get it turned around, hey?” He swallows something hot and bitter, keeping his face as placid as he can.
Sean winks, pours them another shot.