The Manager (9 page)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“A
lmost there,” said Walter, turning his head so he could holler out the window of the pick-up truck.

We would have made it to our destination sooner, but it took the twins half the day to get ready. Tina and I tried to persuade them to stay home, reminding them that it was only a junkyard we were going to, and since we had to come back to put the new rad in Brandy, they would have another whole night to tinker with Jesse.

There was no talking them out of joining us, however, due to the fact that very close to the junkyard was a bar called The Thirsty Cactus that had music and dancing. Tina said we had no time for that crap, but Walter wanted to try the place out, and since he was helping us by fixing up Brandy, we didn't have much choice.

It didn't seem right that Jesse got to ride up front with Walter while Darlene, Charlene, Tina and I got stuck in the bed of the truck, especially when it was so dangerous. There was nothing dangerous about the truck itself; although it was rusty and looked as if it had been created from the remains of cars, trucks, motorcycles and boats, I fully trusted Walter's skills in automobile maintenance. The real danger lay in putting Tina and Darlene in a moving vehicle, when both would have loved nothing more than to push the other one out. Walter said that putting Jesse back there with the twins would be more of a hazard, so we agreed to the seating arrangement.

We were about halfway to our destination, when we drove through a small, two-light town and had to stop for gas. The service station was next to a high school, and Tina spotted a couple of runners doing laps on the track. She banged on the cab window behind Jesse's head.

“Get out, Mankiller,” she hollered.

“What are you talking about?” he asked her.

“I said get out.” She crawled out the gate of the truck and opened the door beside him.

“You can't go a whole day without training,” she insisted. “Judd Stone's getting ready to kill you as we speak.” She shielded her eyes with the back of her hand and watched as the runners raced by. “Okay, so you're going to lap those two guys right there.”

“In jeans?” he said.

“In your shorts.”

“Whatever you say,” said Jesse, undoing his belt with a dramatic sweep.

Darlene smiled and fixed her eyes on his jeans. Charlene bit her bottom lip in anticipation.

“Not those shorts, you idiot,” hollered Tina. She threw him a pair of sports trunks. He leaned against the side of the truck, let his jeans drop and put them on. The twins hung over the side of the bed to watch.

“You think of everything,” I said.

“I want him to win.”

As the six of us made our way to the track, I had a chance to talk to Tina privately.

“Why do you care so much about Jesse winning?” I asked her.

She didn't answer. Just pulled a blade of grass out of the ground, held it between her thumbs and made a sound like a goose call by blowing on it. Then she told Jesse to start pacing the other runners.

Walter, Tina, the twins and I sat on a bench beside the track.

“Not like that, Mankiller,” she screamed, when he started making his way around the circle.

He threw his arms in the air as if to say, “What the hell do you want?”

That's when she told him to do it backwards. “It's the only way to build foot speed and awareness in the ring,” Tina told Walter, who looked to me like he hadn't run or even walked two miles in his entire life.

“Right,” he said, pulling a package of candy from his back pocket and passing it around.

Dar and Char should have had pom-poms. They cheered in high-pitched unison and jumped up and down when Jesse flew past the other joggers backward, taking big energetic strides. His calves were clearly burning as he dug his feet into the track, and he worked up such a sweat that his clothes were completely soaked by the time Tina told him he could stop.

He loped over to where we were sitting and bent over with both hands on his knees until his breath came back.

“Now you owe me, Tina,” said Jesse.

“I don't owe you anything.”

“One wish.”

“Forget it.”

“And if I can go around a second time, two wishes,” he said, making his way back to the track.

He stopped. “Let's make it three,” he hollered.

Jesse proceeded to push his body to the limit and actually did it three more times. Backward.

“Put that in your smipe and poke it,” he told Tina, who was grinning because she now knew that he had the endurance necessary to go the distance in the ring. And for some reason, unforeseen to me but obvious to my sister, she was determined that Jesse Mankiller would be the next light-heavyweight champion of the world.

—

We made it to Fenton Mills in about two hours, and it was a bumpy ride in more ways than one. It was already late in the day by the time we got to the junkyard, and Walter was so entranced by the place, he spent at least another hour – as wide-eyed as a girl trying to choose her first prom dress – picking out carburetors, tailpipes and distributor caps. Once we'd purchased the rad, and once Walter'd had a chance to complete his junkyard tour for other parts for other projects (which almost filled the back of his truck and made it nearly impossible for us to fit in again for the ride home), we headed to the Cactus.

Fenton Mills was one of those towns where if you were in a coma for a few years and suddenly woke up, you would know immediately what day of the week it was. Friday night meant that pick-up trucks gathered around The Thirsty Cactus like rhinos around a watering hole, so Walter's rig was right at home with the others when we pulled into the lot. Darlene and Charlene jumped out like two spaniels ready to hunt, while I slid out over the back bumper.

“I'll wait here,” said my sister, making herself at home between a bucket seat and an outboard motor.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “It'll be fun.”

“I don't want to.” She leaned back and put her feet on the tailgate.

“Do what you want,” I said. Then under my breath added, “You will anyway.”

I followed Walter and Jesse into the Cactus; Jesse still hadn't dried completely, but his sweat blended in nicely with the other men in the bar, most of whom had set out for the place when the whistle blew at five, without going home for a shower.

The twins had already managed to cajole the bartender into giving over two gin and tonics despite the fact they were underaged. Walter and Jesse each had a draught beer and got me an orange soda. (Once I'd finished it, Walter kindly poured some of his beer into my glass; if he hadn't drunk half of it first, it would have tasted better.)

“Where's Tina?” Jesse asked, his eyes panning the bar.

“She's not coming,” I said.

“Why is Tina going to Boston anyway?” he asked.

“I can't tell you that.”

“You could, but you won't.”

“You'll have to ask her yourself,” I said, knowing that he had about as much chance of dragging that out of her as Ellwood did of watching
Gunsmoke.

“Why won't she join us?” asked Walter.

“She doesn't like public places much,” I admitted. “Except boxing arenas.”

“Good,” chirped Darlene.

“Yeah,” added Charlene with a blink.

“That's not very nice,” said Walter, signalling to the waitress for another beer for Jesse and ordering a plate of fries, wings and some deep-fried cheese balls. His excuse was that he was driving, so he'd better eat and not drink, but I figured those deep-fried cheese balls would have been his first choice even if we were all going home on the bus.

“Tina won't be too happy if you have more than one beer,” I warned Jesse, but that only made him chug back the second one out of spite. A band was setting up their instruments not far from us, and they were clearing a dance floor in the middle of the place. Unfortunately it was a country and western band; I could tell from the banjo and the fringes on the lead singer's shirt. That and the fact they warmed up with “Mama, Don't Let Your Babies Grow up to be Cowboys.”

I imagined myself dancing with Jesse anyway – his muscular arms around my waist – and all the girls in the place turning green with envy. Already they were gawking at him, watching his every move. And then suddenly, without warning, their heads turned toward the door and they were staring at someone else.

It was Tina.

She waltzed in the door with two guys – two big burly guys in red plaid jackets and leather boots laced only half way and once-white-but-now-grey baseball caps. The kind of guys who have a vocabulary of five words and four of them are dirty. They were arguing, and I heard her say something about two hundred dollars. They argued some more, and she changed it to fifty.

Jesse turned around in his chair to see what was going on.

Tina and the two guys headed straight to the pool table. While they racked up the balls, my sister went behind the bar, found a stool and pushed it over to the table.

“Nine ball?”

“Right,” said one of the guys, handing her a cue.

Tina took a square of chalk off the holder, then stood next to the cue to see if it was regulation length. It was a good ten inches taller than she was.

“This is a snooker cue,” she hollered. “Too long for pool. What – you think I wouldn't notice?”

One of the guys went to the rack and returned with another cue, which she proceeded to chalk up.

I headed to the pool table and asked her how she met these two and got them suckered into a game.

“Not now, Ellie,” she said, lining up her shot. “Seven ball, corner pocket,” she declared, and
Wham!
in it went, just as she said it would.

I returned to the table, and by then the band was playing. I'd hoped Jesse would ask me to dance, but he didn't. He just sat there, staring into space. I figured he was thinking about his sister. Every once in a while, his gaze landed at the pool table where Tina continued to sink balls. Slowly but surely, more and more people gathered around to watch.

Darlene's eyes looked like two little gin and tonics as she burped behind her hand then slithered around the table and draped her arms over Jesse's neck. I was hoping she wasn't going to do that “Boo!” thing again. She didn't. This time she pulled him out of the chair and insisted he dance with her.

Jesse was an excellent dancer. He moved with the music effortlessly. I don't know if it was because he'd had a couple of beers or if he was just born with a natural sense of rhythm, but even though he was a Bruce Springsteen fan (a fact I discerned from the hundreds of times he'd changed radio stations so he could hear “Born to Run”), he had no problem dancing to country and western music. Darlene didn't either and she squealed in delight when he grabbed her hand and swung her around. Once, when it was one of the burly guys' turn at the pool table, I caught Tina watching Jesse too.

I knew that despite being in the process of killing two men at nine-ball, her normally-impossible-to-attract-unless-it's-boxing-related attention was attracted by Jesse's smooth moves. She snapped up her cue, gave it another dose of chalk (I think she was pretending the end of the stick was Darlene's nose) and proceeded to sink every ball on the table.

Darlene managed to hang on to Jesse through two Conway Twitty songs, a Glen Campbell and a Kenny Rogers. I knew she was holding out for a slow dance, so when the band finally played one, I watched as her long, pink nails grew into points and held him firmly in her grasp.

Jesse broke away from her though. In my fantasy, he came back to the table, reached for my hand and pulled me to the dance floor. In fact, he marched right past our table (Charlene stood up and blinked, thinking he was coming for her) then made a beeline to the pool tables, whispered something into my sister's ear and plucked her off the stool.

She whacked him over the head with the cue, but then it slipped from her grip and dropped somewhere between the two burly guys and the dance floor.

She hollered something about putting her down or she'd be out fifty bucks.

She screamed something about letting her go or else.

She told him that she never dances under any circumstances.

He whispered in her ear again.

“Stick your three wishes,” said Tina. “I'm not your goddamn fairy godmother.”

She was right. She wasn't anybody's fairy godmother. But when Jesse grabbed her, pulled her as close to his chest as he possibly could, leaned over her without giving a damn about their height difference and forced her to dance
,
she was the closest thing to Cinderella at the ball I'd ever seen in my life.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

S
aying good-bye to the Valentines was a bit like standing up when the credits roll at the end of a movie. On the one hand, you're happy to be stretching your legs and brushing off the bits of popcorn that have fallen into your lap, but on the other, when the bright lights go on over your head and the imaginary world in which you were living evaporates like mist in the sun, you can't help but experience a sense of being tossed back unceremoniously into the real world. That's what it felt like when we pulled out of the Valentines' driveway.

Dar and Char had made one last attempt at capturing Jesse. They chose several pairs of their prettiest underthings and – once they were certain he was watching – proceeded to hang them on the clothesline, one by one and with such aplomb I thought it might actually work, and Jesse would leave the world of boxing, join Walter and Ellwood in their endeavor to raise chickens and reconstruct cars and marry Darlene. Or Charlene. Or both – no one would be the wiser behind all those trees.

I think the girls' final attempt would have been more successful had Ellwood not joined them at the clothesline with a laundry basket full of his underwear – grey, torn and stained. Due to the situation with their well, all clothes had to be done in the pond, so there was even some algae dripping off the fly front.

Walter refused to take any payment for his work on Brandy, claiming that it was an honour to work on so fine a vehicle. He wondered, though, if he could keep the old rad, saying it was “about as useful as a milk pail under a bull,” but he'd like to have it as a souvenir. Despite the fact that he looked like he was molded from dough, I liked Walter. He was a good guy with a good heart, and I truly hoped his life would work out for the best.

We didn't see Dot when we departed – it was too early in the day – but she left an envelope for Tina to take to Hollywood. It was addressed to Johnny Carson and marked personal and confidential.

Tina went to tear it into pieces, but I suggested we save it as one of those time capsule things that we open up in ten years for a laugh. She must have tossed it out the window somewhere between the Valentines' and Boston, or maybe it got left in one of the boxing arenas along our route or misplaced at one of the motels, but it was never seen again.

—

Our map described Portland as “a picturesque seaside city full of Victorian charm and classic Maine style.” That may have been so, but our motel was nowhere near the ocean, had about as much charm as the two burly guys Tina had beat at pool and the only view was the back entrance of the arena where Jesse's fight was going to take place the following night.

Both Jesse and Tina were unnervingly quiet during the drive to Portland. Jesse kept one arm draped over the wheel and stared straight ahead at the road. I figured he was thinking about Meryl again; he'd made another call and had learned that his sister was nowhere to be found. That, in turn, messed up Tina's mind, because she knew that even the slightest distraction could destroy his chance of beating Judd Stone.

Tina didn't say what else was bothering her, but the closer we got to Boston, the larger Count Ilizarov loomed, and that was a bitter reality neither one of us could ignore. I hadn't forgotten my promise to Azalea that I would try to talk her out of the whole thing; I was waiting for the right moment when she might be more reasonable and open to seeing things my way. But waiting for a moment for Tina to be reasonable and open to seeing things anybody's way was like trying to dash across the road at rush hour. Wait too long and you'll be there forever. Attempt to cross too soon and you'll be smashed to pieces.

It was dark by the time we'd had some supper and checked into our room at the Flamingo Motel. Other than the fact that it was pink, I saw no good reason for the name, and when I asked the attendant, who didn't speak English, she just smiled, nodded her head and assured me that whatever happens in the Flamingo, stays in the Flamingo.

Tina and I had just crawled into our bed (still dressed, as usual), and Jesse had collapsed into his – the poor guy had been driving all day, and Tina made him work on combinations after that – when we heard a knock at our door. I knew right off the bat that it wasn't a friendly knock. Friendly knocks are
rap a tap tap.
This was more like one big
thud
.

“Don't answer it,” I said.

“Don't be ridiculous,” said Tina.

“Who is it?” hollered Jesse, pulling off his cover and reaching for a pair of sweats. (Oh, how Dar and Char would have loved it.)

Another
thud.

Jesse opened the door and the two creeps who'd threatened us in Amherst – the blond and the ugly one – barged in and rammed a pistol into Jesse's face.

I started to shake uncontrollably.

“Sit down, Ellie, and keep quiet,” blurted Tina. Then her voice changed, and she calmly suggested to our visitors that they needn't do that, that Jesse was willing to talk.

“Like hell I am,” said Jesse, so they threw him against the wall.

“Don't be an ass, Mankiller. Leave this to me.”

“We are here to bring you a little word of advice,” said the ugly one. “You are going to take a dive tomorrow night, and it is going to happen in the third round. For your troubles, Mr. Mankiller, we are going to give you five thousand bucks.”

“Which is more than you are worth,” added his sidekick.

“I'm not going down for—”

The blond shoved the barrel of another gun right into his neck.

“We will see you tomorrow night,” said Tina.

Jesse thought she was giving in.

“I'm not—”

Tina stopped him. “We'll see you tomorrow night,” she repeated, and they drew back their guns and muscled out the door. But not before blondie warned us once again that if Jesse didn't comply and take a fall for the mob, he would wind up in that picturesque harbour we'd heard so much about. And I could tell by the way he said it that I was probably heading there too.

Tina locked the door behind them, turned off the light and went back to bed.

Jesse and I looked at each other. Then he spoke to Tina.

“I'm not throwing the fight, you know.”

“Of course you're not.”

“I think we should call the police,” I said.

“Police?” scoffed Tina. “And tell them what? That we were threatened by the mob?” She snickered. “What are they going to do, Ellie? Ask them to stop?”

That's when I saw my life flash before me like a movie and heard the offstage sound effect of three coffin lids slamming shut.

—

The crowd at the Portland arena was the biggest one Jesse had ever fought in front of. And it was like nothing Tina and I had ever seen either.

She never mentioned the threats and carried on as usual, going over her plans and giving Jesse her best advice as to how to beat the hell out of Judd Stone.

“He's a brawler,” she told him. “I know how this guy fights. He lacks finesse and footwork, but his punch is like being hit by a Mack Truck.”

Jesse nodded. Already there was sweat dripping down his face.

“He lacks mobility, Mankiller, and that's where you have the advantage. His punches are powerful, there's no denying it. But he's slow enough to be predictable, and I think if you're on your toes, you can see them coming. That's what you've got to do. Then, when he leaves himself open, you use that uppercut of yours and he's history.”

Jesse nodded again.

We were just about to head down the stairs and into the arena when our two friends, the cutthroats, blocked our path. Only this time there were four of them.

“What's your decision?”

“Outta my way,” said Tina.

What's she doing?
She's going to get us killed.

One of them turned to Jesse. “You'd think you'd be back home by now. Your sister the way she is.”

Jesse flew into a rage. “What the hell do you know about my sister?” He reached for the guy's neck, but one of the other thugs stuck a gun in Jesse's back.

“She tried to send herself west. Slit her wrist, that's what we heard.”

Jesse's eyes circulated between the men, Tina and the stadium.

“I'm outta here,” he said, and went to take off.

“Like hell you are,” screamed Tina. She ran after him, grabbed his robe and held it tight. “They're just trying to freak you out. Make you lose your cool so you can't fight.”

I was the one freaking out. “Let's go, Tina,” I said, looking back at the thugs who were slowly tucking their guns into their holsters while watching us closely. “Let's go home. Let's forget about your operation.” Tears flowed down my cheeks and my heart felt like it had dropped out the bottom of my chest.

“Shut up,” said Tina. “Just shut up.”

I realized I'd let the cat out of the bag.

Jesse broke free of Tina. I hoped he hadn't heard the part about the operation, but I was pretty sure he had.

Tina grabbed him again. “These goons are just yanking your chain, Jesse. This is your chance, for you and for your sister. Don't throw it away.”

She let him go.

He turned to leave, then he stopped.

He stared at the ground for what seemed like a year. Then he walked over to the four mobsters and told them he was going to fight Stone and he was going to win.

That's when they pulled out a semi-automatic and pushed him out the exit door.