The Voices of Martyrs Read online

  This wasn’t Stagger’s first battle royal, though he hoped it would be his last. Hopping the freight, he’d ridden through Memphis, St. Louis, and now Springfield, grinding out enough dollars to live on. Tonight, a three-dollar purse hung in the balance. The fight would be fairer if he were the only one blindfolded. At his last battle royal, the four other fighters were friends, so their plan was to rush the stranger, agree on a winner, then split the purse. It ended the same way this one would.

  “They call you Stagger ’cause that’s how I’m gonna leave you.” The first man painted a bull’s-eye with his tongue. A roundhouse to the jaw stopped the jibber jabber.

  “They call me Stagger cause that’s how I left your momma last night.” Stagger was as good with his mouth as he was with his hands, often terrorizing his opponents before they had a chance to throw the first punch.

  The nearest man actually growled at him as he threw his slow wind-up of a punch. Stagger side-stepped the arcing whoosh and countered with a devastating shot to the head. Two opponents down in two punches, the others rushed him, bumping into each other, panicking them to step back and start swinging. The crowd roared in rising delight.

  A disconcerting presence fluttered at the edge of his senses, the notion that someone else was in the ring with them struck him. At first, he feared a con similar to one he was subject to back in St. Louis, when someone hid behind a curtain, and, whenever he brushed by, an unseen assailant pummeled him in the back of the head. Stagger chanced opening his eyes to count too many shadows against the wan light and, as if surprised by his own reflection, began dodging and weaving.

  The shadows coalesced back into two figures, and his vision’s clearing left him feeling foolish, as if he had been caught doing something unwholesome. A shot to one of the remaining men’s midsection dropped him to his knees; Stagger imagined the man’s face, eyes no longer focused as if lost in prayer. Tottering like an ill-balanced sack of potatoes, the last chump’s body realized all the fight had fled him and fell.

  The dock warehouse’s closeness left the cloying taste of sweat and cigar smoke on Stagger’s tongue. He stalked the last man around the ring. The laughable melee came to an end with a flurry of punches as Stagger trapped the last man in a corner against the ropes, making it difficult for him to break left or right. Flashing a foolish grin, he took off his blindfold. The crowd threw coins into the ring, a gratuity for a good show. He shook the image of his father’s bulging eyes staring back at him through the charred mask of his face. And the disturbing memory of the children who ran around selling bits of his father, his fingers and toes, as souvenirs of the evening. In the end, this was a fight, and the coins spent better than pride. He had sought attention all his life. Now everyone knew his name.

  Stagger Jackson.

  §

  The cellar smelled of decaying mushrooms and other things that thrived in the dark, but it served well enough for their purposes. Stagger pummeled a heavy bag, sounding like swatting a wet mattress. Nan ran him through his paces. The old man’s raspy cough, a phlegmy death rattle, didn’t hide his gin-soaked breath. Rheumy eyes studied Stagger’s movements as a sparring partner riddled him with blows. Stagger barely flinched, training his body to absorb blows faster. Once the last of his workout fury was spent, Stagger settled into his rubdown.

  “What’d you think, boss?” Nan asked, as his spidery fingers, with wrinkles like fine webbing, wound their way along his back muscles. With a mixture of beef brine and borax to pickle his skin, he massaged Stagger’s head and neck twice a day.

  “I think I’m tired of scraping for chump change when there’s real money to be made out there,” Stagger said, despite the fact that he always earned on top of the purse by betting on himself. The youngest of seven children, three of whom died before they reached school age, he knew from poverty and spent his life making up for it.

  “That was quite a thump you put on. We’ll get there.” Nan kneaded his shoulders.

  “When? I feel like we’re barnstorming for hayseeds. Who’s up next?”

  “Baby Doc.”

  “Again? That lump of coal couldn’t stun flies with his punches.” Stagger turned his head.

  “No, suh.” Nan kept rubbing, unmoved by Stagger’s bravado.

  “Can you give your ‘yassa boss’ routine a rest? It’s giving me a headache.”

  All of his familiar black rivals had been beaten two and three times over. Called Mysterious because he always found a new way to cheat, Tobias “Mysterious” Williams lost to him three times. Marcus “Mule Kick” Harrison was always good for a four-round knockout. The last time he fought Miles “The Abilene Wonder” Louis, he was kneed in the groin for his trouble and won due to foul.

  “We gonna be ready, boss. Maybe in Chicago.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.”

  “What hole did you crawl out of tonight?” Imogene Watson strode into the room with nary an announcing sound. The milky skin of her face drew too tightly across her skull, her haunted eyes always chased the next thing to hold her attention. Her arms looked uncomfortably thin, and she had no ass to speak of; but Stagger could see the hurt in her. Some women measured their lives in self-destructive inches. Though the flame was fit to singe her, she gravitated to the life. She exchanged hard glances with Nan as the old man didn’t like any woman breaking their routine. Smoking her cigarette, she hugged herself to stave off a chill of her spirit in the warm evening.

  “Dock yards. Battle royal.”

  “You need a well-connected manager. At least a better connected one.” She took another drag of her cigarette and blew it in the opposite direction of the men, an excuse to not have to look at them. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

  “Look at you, trying to wear some pants.” Stagger sat up, and Nan draped a robe around him.

  “Someone ought to.”

  “Watch yourself now. Don’t start speaking out of turn.” Despite his gleaming smile, a hint of threat undergirded his words, a mild bark to settle her down. He wasn’t going to be talked down to, even by a white woman. His prize, as if he’d won yet another bout in life.

  “Do you remember what you promised me when you asked me to come with you?” Imogene asked.

  “The life. The sporting life.”

  Imogene studied each wall in turn then took another drag of her cigarette. “There’s someone I think you ought to meet.”

  §

  The Black Belt of Chicago ran just south of the Loop and down by State Street, some thirty or so odd blocks. A world of Negro entrepreneurs catered to the needs of their own. From Eighteenth to Twenty-second streets, between Federal and Halstead, was the Levee District, where vice (such as blacks and whites mingling together) was tolerated. And nowhere was vice more tolerated than at Out. A series of joined three-story houses, Out catered to the elite of the sports, the dream child of one Harlem Williams.

  The sauntering, towering figure of Stagger Jackson certainly cut a dash in his new togs: green waistcoat, fresh creases in his pantaloons, and patent leather boots. An ermine silk scarf over a tasty double-breasted suit, Harlem had set him up just fine. Imogene clung possessively to his arm. Draped in an elegant black dress, she, too, shone in the Black and Tan club. A mosey of a walk allowed bystanders a chance to admire them.

  “Stagger, Stagger, Stagger. Glad you could make it.” Harlem turned to Imogene, took her hand, and kissed it. “Baby, you know you’re welcome at Out anytime, anytime.”

  “You want me to wait here?” Imogene withdrew her hand and held it to her chest as if to suppress a cough.

  “I don’t have to daddy you ’til at least my third drink.” Stagger dismissed her, a stray to be handed off. He set his suede, pearl gray afternoon gloves next to his drink and leaned his cane against the table. He turned to Harlem. “I want a shot at the champ.”

  “Straight to business, huh? You think you gonna get a whiff of the white man’s belt after what Jack Johnson did? You box in his shadow. Even got a white lady on your arm like you
ain’t learned a gotdamn thing.”

  “What can I say? I learned to walk upright. With pride.” Stagger smiled, his teeth capped with gold, and diamonds duffed his cuffs and fingers. The long-schooled coloreds didn’t lead an easy life either, not one they could call their own. The weight of the whole race bore down on them at every turn. He knew how they were seen, no matter their pedigree. Brutish apes with savage, unintelligent eyes, without the mind for higher society but fit enough for menial labor. Thick lips drawn back to reveal threatening teeth ever eager to tear into soft, white flesh. Large hands and swinging penises ready to grope and penetrate their precious white women. Then they spent their energies trying to convince white people how gentle and civilized they were.

  Not the shadow he brought with him, but the shadow white folks planted in him. It grew, deeper and more tangled, a spreading kudzu across his soul.

  “Then box your pride ’cause that ain’t the way things work. And you know that … so I don’t know why you got your chest all puffed out.” Harlem tamped the bottom of a box of cigarettes, sizing Stagger up during his little ritual. “Now, I got money. And, as long as there’s at least one crooked bone in a man, money has connections. I can set up a meeting.”

  “That’s all I ask.”

  §

  A knife scar etched Tolliver’s left cheek, a souvenir from a bar fight gone awry. Unlike the champ, Tolliver crossed the color line: he fought whomever for whatever as long as the money was guaranteed. Stagger could have taken Jack “Little Sullivan” Tolliver in the first round if he were so inclined. Tolliver took six, seven, eight jabs before his guard went up and fought from a bit of a crouch which made him appear smaller than he was. But Stagger needed to draw things out.

  “You punch like a woman,” Stagger chatted to the crowd and other corner.

  “Fight like a white man, you yellow cur.” Tolliver kept jabbing though he never connected.

  The bell pealed. A short, red-faced man appeared apoplectic with Stagger’s continual taunts. “Get the lead out,” he cried out to Tolliver. Stagger never sat down between rounds, a tacit jeer for them to deal with. Let them measure his manhood that way. Searching for Imogene, he scanned the crowd. A colored man sat along the swiftly constructed fence. A wave of vague unease washed over him, though the details of the man’s face were obscured by distance. Mouth agape, he bulged his eyes like a coon from a minstrel show in an accusing glare. The look of his father, shaped by the sting of a whip. The wildness driven through his mind by the taste of a bit in his mouth. The sullen emptiness of waiting to be bought out of slavery. Defeated, broken, and chained, even when the jangling no longer echoed with his every step.

  The bell tolled for the start of the next round, drawing Stagger’s attention back to the bout. Jogging to the center of the ring, his left arm leading, he measured the distance like a scope on a rifle waiting for the shot of his devastating right jab. From the corner of his mind, as he sensed the movement rather than saw it, he knew the colored man had stood up. As Stagger circled, the man pivoted, his left arm extended and his right hand cocked.

  “Who told you you were a fighter?” Stagger cuffed Tolliver to wake him up, then bumped him to throw the timing off his punches.

  “I’m going to send your nigger balls into your mouth,” Tolliver muttered.

  “I guess I’ll find out what your wife’s been tasting.”

  Stagger let loose a barrage of punches, sloppy and without technique, only to spy a matching flurry of motion. His mirroring fan became his anchor: when he swayed to the right, his doppelganger swayed to the right; when he ducked Tolliver’s awkward, slow roundhouse, his admirer also ducked.

  “Nigger.” The voice lulled, clear in Stagger’s ear like he were right next to him. “You ain’t nothing but a nigger.”

  Distracted, Tolliver caught him with an uppercut which lifted him off the ground. Shaking his ferrous skull sadly, Stagger dabbed the blood with his glove and hunched his shoulders. Showtime was over. The crowd grew silent as Stagger slowly dissected the man with punches where he stood. The Indianapolis Freeman later reported that Stagger danced around the flat-footed white man all night, never taking a punch and that he sealed the deal with a “right in the kisser” in the ninth round. When Stagger glanced up, his dark twin was gone.

  §

  “Was all that signifying worth it?” Harlem chomped on a too-large bite of catfish, chewing in wet gulps.

  “They weren’t going to give me a fair shake no how. It was worth it to see their faces.” Stagger made peace with the “you’ll fight who I want, when I want, for what I want. If you want to fight at all” rant from the superintendent by calling it an opportunity. With enough fights he hoped to shame the champ into a bout, even if it meant just the two of them in a cellar.

  “Next time you in a mood to get us lynched, let me know so I can skip the meeting.”

  “I don’t take orders from no one.”

  “You one of them ‘New Negroes.’” Harlem pointed his fork at him, needing to swallow the last bite of food in his mouth before speaking further. “Thinking you all but free.”

  “I need to believe that I have some sort of say over my life.” Stagger jabbed a wayward piece of his steak. He’d gotten two steaks and three beers during the course of this verbal spanking. He’d eat an entire purse’s worth of food if he let the man ramble on.

  “You got boundary issues. You don’t know how to pick your spot and work within it.”

  “I don’t know my place?” Stagger raised the question and wanted to believe the iron of his indignant tone. “Good.”

  “We don’t want to get above ourselves.”

  “If we were any less above ourselves, we’d be underground.”

  “But you got nothing. Just living the life of a sport,” Harlem said.

  “Better than most.” Stagger smiled his gold-capped, toothy grin at the passing waitress. She returned with a beer and a shot of whiskey, both of which he downed under Harlem’s baleful watch. The banter flared without heat. He studied his shadow as it danced along his plate. Reaching for his glass, the near translucent cast struck him as a pale reflection of himself, intimately bound up with his life. His soul.

  “See, that’s your problem: you think you a pimp. When the day comes, make it a bout, but make no mistake, when we say it’s time, you swallow that cold, dark thing you call pride and lose that fight.”

  §

  A jagged scar of a man, Luke “The Stackhouse” Kutchner was a hard-eyed white bruiser of the first order. Uninterested in the finer aspects of the art, he charged opponents and usually pummeled them mercilessly within a few rounds. Kutchner immediately re-thought his strategy after his initial assault swiped nothing but air and received two quick right jabs and south paw in the jaw for his troubles. Now he circled Stagger with quiet, menacing assurance.

  “We need to get their hopes up, drive the fervor to have a white hope beat this uppity fool down. Be the villain you need to be,” Harlem had ordered. “This keg of beer was a chump, but you need to make a show of it, so let it go a few rounds.”

  “I’ll trim you good,” Kutchner snarled, saliva mixed with blood over his protective mouth bit. The pink-tinged drool dribbled along his chin.

  Stagger remained silent. No taunts about Kutchner being used as an outhouse. No chatter about the man’s mother, wife, or sister and the dreams they had of bedding such a black stallion. No jibes aimed at Kutchner’s corner or even the row of reporters who rendered his every comment into pidgin English despite his literate affect. Only a cold, pale silence as he listened to the Shadow.

  “You’re a tough nigger,” the voice said, low at first. A movement in the stands distracted him and allowed Kutchner to graze his temple with a glancing shot. The crowd erupted, jubilant that Kutchner had finally landed anything solid after three rounds. Stagger searched the crowd. The darkness moved, an ebon shark amidst the sea of white faces.

  “You’re a clever nigger.” The walking blot o
ozed among the onlookers, drawing strength from each stained soul it touched. An explosion of flashbulbs temporarily blinded him, leaving Stagger’s vision playing tricks on him. The crowd was rows of pale pickaninny dolls, with leering eyes, too big for their heads. Their teeth wizened to points, in grins of frozen rictus. Open mouths ready to rend. Sweat stung his eyes. The ring canted beneath him, the corners not meeting at proper angles.

  “You’re a pretty nigger.” The voice neared and filled his ears like the roar of an ocean crashing against a galleon. Tauntingly near, yet just out of reach.

  Kutchner made his move. A snap of a punch caught Stagger square in his face and exploded his nose. Splattered blood filigreed Kutchner’s face, to his delight. Buoyed by the crowd, he led with his left hand and countered with his right jab, Stagger absorbed every blow, as if savoring every bite of a succulent meal.

  “At the end of the day, that’s all you’ll ever be. Just another nigger.”

  “Wake the fuck up,” Nan yelled at him from the corner.

  Stagger fell into the ropes. Kutchner, too confident, bought the feint. He waded in with a full-fledged attack. Stagger danced under his roundhouse and landed an uppercut connecting flush with Kutchner’s jaw. It sent him flying through the air and left him unconscious for ten minutes after the ring cleared. While Stagger collected his purse and winnings from betting on himself, the crowd booed Kutchner when he struggled to his feet.

  §

  News of his final fight came down from Harlem. A clubber named Ronald “The Dock Saint” O’Leary, a solid opponent who’d racked up enough wins to be credible, but he was no champ. Not even a true test, with Stagger being the clear favorite, as he should’ve been; but the arrangement Harlem struck with the superintendent demanded that Stagger go down. In the eleventh round would be good, so additional money could be earned by replaying the match on movie reels. Stagger brooded in silence, haunted by could’ve beens.