THE BOXER'S LAMENT
A Story...
Uncle Sam would sit with his cronies and drink until the sun went down. Most of them came from miles around and brought special gifts with them, like bottles of moonshine, or chews of tobacco. He'd tell stories to his cronies about how he sailed to Europe first class; how he owned houses, and cars, had women at his beck and call, (and White women too, he was quick to point out). They never once doubted him. Not like I did.
After his cronies left, he'd nap for an hour or two, then he'd start drinking in earnest. He'd call out for me in that lisping voice he had, and I'd help him inside. He always asked me where such-and-such a man was; this man, or that one, and I'd have to say I didn't know. He'd nod his head slowly, drunkenly, stopping to spit into a tin can he always carried--almost burying his head inside of it--and tell me how they said they'd always take care of him; to protect him from himself, he added. It always felt like he was apologizing to me. Then he'd laugh, asking me where they were now, as if I was supposed to have an answer for him.
When I told him I'd protect him, he looked at me deliberately—just like he always did whenever I said that to him—focusing on my voice. He reached up to touch my face, telling me I was a good girl. His hands were smooth, his touch as soft and gentle as a child's first exploration of its mother's face. He used to call me Angel. He started calling me that because of the sing-song sound of my voice, he said, even after I told him my name was Sarah.
I used to sit beside him, reading Mamma's collection of Classics to him, hoping he wouldn't get too drunk before the end of the day. I tried not to watch him dribble his tobacco juice into the tin can between his legs, but I always did. Then he'd ask me to read another story, and quietly fall asleep.
Uncle Sam never got used to being blind. If he needed anything, he'd have to call for help. He hated everything about being blind. The fact that he'd been deserted, neglected and forgotten, well, it ate at his soul as much as it ate at his mind. Maybe that's why he drank; it had always been that way for him.
He never dressed, instead, he sat outside with his cronies wearing an old tattered bathrobe. It was fraying along the edges, stained from where he'd dribbled tobacco juice on himself, and faded with age. It had all of those old man smells I'd come to know with Uncle Sam: his breath, with the chew he always worked on; the sweat of who knew how many years folded inside the robe like a soft dough rising through the tattered holes. There was a stink of piss on him, because he was always having accidents, and the stink of liquor. He wore felt the linings from an old pair of winter boots he had for slippers, and red pajama bottoms to keep his legs warm. At his age, a man's veins tend to become a problem, one way or the other, he said.
There were days when he'd lament his lost past, telling me how he used to own the world and let it slip away. Sometimes he sat with silver tears in the corners of his eyes. I used to resent him when he was like that; I used to resent how he always made me a part of his past, calling me Celia instead of Sarah. But I resented him for a lot of different reasons as well, not least of which was the time he stole from me, when I might easily have been sitting out on the hillside overlooking the village and the river valley. I resented him for not letting me be who I was, and for not letting me live my dreams. He'd always say how sorry he was to me in the end—and for a moment I'd think he was talking to me—but then I'd realize he was thinking I was Celia again, and I'd think about the portrait in the cigar box. He was always thinking I was her.
And then he'd piss himself. I'd be forced to clean him up before Mamma came home from working at the Cannery. I'd pull his funny slippers off and make him stand up as I pulled his pants down. He never wore underwear. He'd step out of his pants, holding onto my shoulders and looking for all the world like a guilty child, his tears glistening in his eyes. I always felt embarrassed seeing him like that—naked, crying, looking exposed and vulnerable—and like Noah's children trying not to look at him, I always did.
His friends pitied him. They didn't see the man I saw. I told them the last thing a man like him needed was pity; I needed more of a reason. It felt like I was wasting my life taking care of an old man reliving his past through his friends. I think that's why he listened to them, so he could hear the past the way they saw it.
Living his life took away everything he had, and didn't give him anything back in return. But sometimes, you make choices in life and no matter what happens, there's no one you can blame but yourself. Uncle Sam once had three hundred thousand dollars. How can you spend that much money in a hundred years?
But he traveled the world, he said. He went to the Philippines, Mexico City, Paris, Berlin, and London. He fought in Argentina, Peru, Columbia, and San Salvador. When he needed money to pay for the operation they said would restore his sight, he fought for it. He fought through near blindness and won the Heavyweight Championship of Spain in Mexico City, back in 1923. But the damage to his eyes was beyond repair. That was the kind of man he was. Simple. He never thought anything through; once a fight was over, there was nothing to think about except the next one. I don't think he knew what was best for him, because he never knew what was best.
He didn't keep his money in banks because banks scared him. They were too intimidating he said, the way those stuffy bank presidents looked you up and down and dismissed you out of hand, silently, without ever saying a word—sometimes with just a look. He said whenever they stood up and welcomed him into their offices, he knew they had no intention of helping him. He said it was like they called him Nigger without even uttering a sound. And there was that look they had. He told them to pay him in cash after that.
And where did all that money go I asked him. He spent it, he said. All of it. He bought fancy cars, saw fancy women, and ate in high class, fancy restaurants, leaving ten dollar tips. He smoked big, fat, Cuban cigars too, because his trainer told him the smoke would work as a decongestant. He traveled all through Europe. He faced the best and worst fighters on the continent. When the war broke out, he put on exhibitions in Paris for the soldiers, taking on all comers. He said while they were in Paris, he invited friends out with him, and they celebrated the fact that they'd lived through another night. He said the distant guns were a numbing reminder of their own mortality.
I can pity him now because I know he couldn't help himself. I know he needed people around him as much for direction, as he did for company. He needed someone to tell him where to go, and what to do. They paid the bills, booked the fights, bought railway tickets, and first-class passage on liners going to and from Europe. But they took more than they needed, until they took so much there wasn't anything left. That was usually when they left. There were others--he said there was always someone willing to help him along--but they took more than he earned, sometimes not even leaving him with enough to buy a drink.
I can pity him for being more than a victim: he was the ultimate prize. He was everyone's Brass Ring. But I was a child then, and I didn't understand anything of what he told me. I couldn't imagine half the things he said: Paris and London were just names to me. It was years before I understood anything, and by then, my life was no longer my own and I learned what it means to survive.
Mamma knew a woman at the Cannery whose sister taught school in Boston. It took Mamma everything she had to convince this woman I was worth her time. I remember Mamma working for a week on one letter alone, checking it, and then re-checking it with her books, making certain there were no mistakes. Mamma had learned to read and write while cleaning house for a minister and his wife, and nothing made her prouder than reading notices to the others at the Cannery. When she finished writing the letter she read it out to Uncle Sam--as if he was any judge of what was right and proper. It took three more letters before the woman finally agreed to tutor me. Mamma was persistent, if she was anything.
I did the lessons as soon as Mamma brought them home—a crisp, clean package done up in brown wrapping. A week's worth at a time; I did it in three days. Then Mamma would bring them in to work and Mamma's friend would deliver them to her sister. Mamma said the sister lived in Boston, and the only reason she agreed to teach me was because I was Uncle Sam's niece. I remember looking at Uncle Sam sitting near the wood stove the day Mamma told me. I watched him staring off into nothing. It was like he didn't even know we were there. His mind seemed like it was a million miles away—probably a lifetime lost, I thought—and I told myself there didn't seem to be anything anchoring him to reality, except the dirty coffee can in his lap.
I read Mrs. Evanston's notes like I was trying to read a part of her through her long, looping, handwriting. I was trying to read something into her letters that made it easier to understand her, thinking maybe there was something in the slant of her J's or Y's, or her open G's, I could make sense of. I was trying to imagine the person behind the words; I couldn't see anything passed the lessons she sent. I began imagining what she looked like.
One day when Uncle Sam was sitting outside with his cronies, I went looking through the worn out pictures he kept in his cigar box. I began sorting through the pictures of the young man I didn't recognize until I found the picture of the woman. She was beautiful, even though her face appeared pale and ghostlike in the dull sepia of the photograph. It was obvious she had dark features though. I didn't know it was possible for a woman to look light skinned and still be considered Black. I thought, years later, that she looked like a young Lena Horne. Maybe she was in love with him, I told myself; maybe theirs was an unrequited love and it was up to me to bring them together? I took the picture and slipped it into my pocket, telling myself that one day I'd find her and make it up to them.
I started reading her letters out loud to Uncle Sam. I tried stopping once, thinking there was no point in going on, but Uncle Sam insisted I continue. He tried telling me it didn't matter what she wrote, it was the sound of my voice he liked. Looking at him, it was hard to tell what he was thinking behind those blank eyes, but I didn't believe him. There were things about him I never understood--and things it would take a lifetime for me to understand.
The years went by. By the time I was seventeen, I was ready to write my college entrance exams. By the time I was nineteen, Mamma had enough money saved for my first year's tuition, and I left home, hoping I'd never see Vermont Falls again. I didn't.
You describe things perfectly, even down to the smell of stale piss on a robe.