crook of the knee, the boot of legions which had trod ancient slaughter fields black, and the sodium lamps leaned like palm trees in a hurricane, beamed their bright-hot lights into Conrad’s eyes. Angels instantly retreated to wavering pinpricks. Devils made long, sinuous ribbons of themselves and hissed. Conrad’s chin strap came apart and his helmet arced out in a cinematic parabola of gleaming metal and crimson bristles, bounced once into darkness and disappeared.
Cymbals clashed.
Conrad’s blood jumped from him, hurled itself from him, declared him the headwaters of a river, a broken vessel, the Grail smashed upon rocks.
The Picts howled—
The painted devils, the fearful angels—
An x-ray of his skull in the doctor’s hand—
A red infant, yarded from the womb trailing its umbilical cord—
A hog squealing in the stirrups, rising to meet the knife—
And the next dropkick slammed home into Conrad’s ribcage with the weight of a derrick behind it, digging into the meat of him, the bones and the sinews of him bending around the leather and the steel and the Finn’s calf, a granite oblong piston.
Conrad clasped that pillar in a death clinch. Thank you , he thought in that jigsaw moment when all moments converged, when all possibilities revolved upon the point of a tooth. Thank you for that. And he squeezed—
The planet hurtled through dusty space.
—a crocodile with a deer in its maw turning and turning over in the river, whipping the muddy water like a thresher takes wheat and covers the camera lens.
The Finn’s thighbone snapped, then his spine; a sharp, pulpy report as of a pickaxe hacking into moist subject matter and then Conrad had the Finn’s neck levered between elbow and sternum and he twisted with a convulsive scissoring of his hips, making a corkscrew. Paralysis, strangulation, death; quietly desperate as any pincer-to pincer mortal combat waged by arthropods in the soft grass of nature’s killing floor.
After, no applause. The buzzing lamps, cold. A couple of guys in green smocks hustled Conrad into the back of a drywall van and switched on the fluorescents, began stitching him up.
Like Satan appearing in a puff of black smoke, DeKoon squatted in the opening that breached the cab. His sallow features shifted and flowed in the sickly light. “Should’ve gone the whole hoplite route—pila and knives. Rauno had too much faith in his hands. Rubbish with weapons. Bloody awful. At least you put him down. Thank god.”
None of the fighters had names, barring fanciful nom de plumes, or popular crowd attributions. It was always the Finn, the Turk, the Russian. Conrad was the American, and that sufficed. At the moment he was the It boy representing what DeKoon referred to as ‘the Colonies.’
Conrad couldn’t speak because his lungs were deflated sacks of shocked flesh straining to expand and get some oxygen cycling before the lights went out. So he bled. He suspected DeKoon was a figment summoned by head trauma. What a backwater stage this was for a man of DeKoon’s caliber. The man’s presence here in the outpost of pillaged American heartland, the Fair Lady of Liberty and Plenty sans makeup, was supremely incongruous; so far removed from his customary haunts of European pleasure salons and Hong Kong opium dens. Conrad hoped the well-heeled ghoul would dissolve at any moment, sink into the quagmire of his id.
DeKoon grinned as if he tasted the very wish in Conrad’s mind. “I am unhappy with your exhibition. You don’t take unsanctioned fights. That’s a no-no.”
“Maybe we need to renegotiate my contract.” A medic ran a needle into Conrad’s shoulder and laced the heavy sutures in the manner of sealing a pigskin. Conrad’s mouth crimped tighter.
“Don’t be stupid, Conrad.” DeKoon picked lint from the breast pocket of his suit. His long, exquisite fingers would’ve brought tears to the eyes of world class pianists and state-sponsored torturers everywhere. “Do you
Cymbals clashed.
Conrad’s blood jumped from him, hurled itself from him, declared him the headwaters of a river, a broken vessel, the Grail smashed upon rocks.
The Picts howled—
The painted devils, the fearful angels—
An x-ray of his skull in the doctor’s hand—
A red infant, yarded from the womb trailing its umbilical cord—
A hog squealing in the stirrups, rising to meet the knife—
And the next dropkick slammed home into Conrad’s ribcage with the weight of a derrick behind it, digging into the meat of him, the bones and the sinews of him bending around the leather and the steel and the Finn’s calf, a granite oblong piston.
Conrad clasped that pillar in a death clinch. Thank you , he thought in that jigsaw moment when all moments converged, when all possibilities revolved upon the point of a tooth. Thank you for that. And he squeezed—
The planet hurtled through dusty space.
—a crocodile with a deer in its maw turning and turning over in the river, whipping the muddy water like a thresher takes wheat and covers the camera lens.
The Finn’s thighbone snapped, then his spine; a sharp, pulpy report as of a pickaxe hacking into moist subject matter and then Conrad had the Finn’s neck levered between elbow and sternum and he twisted with a convulsive scissoring of his hips, making a corkscrew. Paralysis, strangulation, death; quietly desperate as any pincer-to pincer mortal combat waged by arthropods in the soft grass of nature’s killing floor.
After, no applause. The buzzing lamps, cold. A couple of guys in green smocks hustled Conrad into the back of a drywall van and switched on the fluorescents, began stitching him up.
Like Satan appearing in a puff of black smoke, DeKoon squatted in the opening that breached the cab. His sallow features shifted and flowed in the sickly light. “Should’ve gone the whole hoplite route—pila and knives. Rauno had too much faith in his hands. Rubbish with weapons. Bloody awful. At least you put him down. Thank god.”
None of the fighters had names, barring fanciful nom de plumes, or popular crowd attributions. It was always the Finn, the Turk, the Russian. Conrad was the American, and that sufficed. At the moment he was the It boy representing what DeKoon referred to as ‘the Colonies.’
Conrad couldn’t speak because his lungs were deflated sacks of shocked flesh straining to expand and get some oxygen cycling before the lights went out. So he bled. He suspected DeKoon was a figment summoned by head trauma. What a backwater stage this was for a man of DeKoon’s caliber. The man’s presence here in the outpost of pillaged American heartland, the Fair Lady of Liberty and Plenty sans makeup, was supremely incongruous; so far removed from his customary haunts of European pleasure salons and Hong Kong opium dens. Conrad hoped the well-heeled ghoul would dissolve at any moment, sink into the quagmire of his id.
DeKoon grinned as if he tasted the very wish in Conrad’s mind. “I am unhappy with your exhibition. You don’t take unsanctioned fights. That’s a no-no.”
“Maybe we need to renegotiate my contract.” A medic ran a needle into Conrad’s shoulder and laced the heavy sutures in the manner of sealing a pigskin. Conrad’s mouth crimped tighter.
“Don’t be stupid, Conrad.” DeKoon picked lint from the breast pocket of his suit. His long, exquisite fingers would’ve brought tears to the eyes of world class pianists and state-sponsored torturers everywhere. “Do you
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