Deacon King Kong(102)

Deems nodded at the doll. “What’s that for?”

“It’s for you,” Sportcoat said proudly. “Remember Dominic, the Haitian Sensation? He lives in our building. Old Dominic makes these. He says they’re magic. They bring good luck. Or bad luck. Or whatever he wants ’em to. This here’s a get-well one. He made it special for you. And this here”—he reached into the paper bag, squirming his hand inside the bag, and produced a pink ball—“I got for you myself.” He held the ball out. “It’s an exercise ball. Squeeze that,” he said. “It’ll make your pitching hand stronger.”

Deems frowned. “What the fuck you doing here, man?”

“Son, you ain’t got to use that filthy language. I come a long way to see you.”

“You seen me. Now git.”

“That ain’t no way to talk to a friend.”

“You want me to say thank you, Sport? Okay, thank you. Now get lost.”

“I ain’t come here for that.”

“Well don’t ask me my business. The cops been doing that for two days.”

Sportcoat smiled, then placed the doll pillow at the edge of the bed. “I don’t care none about your business,” he said. “I care about mine.”

Deems rolled his eyes. What was it about this old man that made him tolerant of his stupid bullshit? “What kind of business you got in this hospital, Sport? They make your grape here? Your King Kong? You and your drink. Deacon King Kong,” he snickered. “That’s what they call you.”

Sportcoat ignored the insult. “Them names can’t hurt me. I got friends in this world,” he said proudly. “Two of ’em’s in this hospital. They put Hot Sausage in here, too, you know that? Right on the same floor. Can you believe it? I don’t know why they done that. I just come from him. He was digging at me the minute I walked in his room. Saying, ‘If you wasn’t chunking at me so bad, Sport, I’da never gone out there dressed like an umpire to bother Deems about that dumb ball game.’ I said, ‘Sausage, you can’t deny the boy got a future in base—’”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Deems said.

“Huh?”

“Shut your talking hole, you stupid motherfucker!”

“What?”

“Who wants to hear about you, you drunk bastard? You’s a fuckup, man. You fucked up everything. Don’t you ever get tired of hearing yourself talk? Deacon King Kong!”

Sportcoat blinked, feeling slightly cowed. “I already told you, your words can’t hurt me, boy, for I ain’t never done nothing wrong to ya. Other than care for you, a little bit.”

“You shot me, ya dumb nigger.”

“I don’t recall none of it, son.”

“Don’t ‘son’ me, you shitface bitch! You fucked around and shot me. The only reason I didn’t smoke your ass was because of my grandfather. That was my first mistake. Now Beanie’s dead because of you—and Sausage, that lazy, stupid chickenshit plumber’s-helper bitch. Two dumbass, old-time, donkey-ass idiots.”

Sportcoat was silent. He looked down at his hands, holding the pink Spaldeen ball. “Ain’t no cause for you to use them kind of words ’round me, son.”

“Don’t call me ‘son,’ you cockeyed, hundred-proof bitch bastard!”

Sportcoat looked at him oddly. Deems noted that the old drunk’s face was unusually clear. Sportcoat’s eyes, normally bloodshot, his eyelids, normally drooping and half-closed, were wide open. He was sweating, and his hands were shaking slightly. Deems also noticed, for the first time, that beneath the old drunk’s Housing Authority shirt, Sportcoat, even as an old man, was thickly built around the chest and arms. He had never noticed that before.

“Has I wronged you, son?” Sportcoat said softly. “In all them times we played baseball and all. Me giving encouragement and all . . . in Sunday school, teaching you the good word.”

“Get the fuck outta here, man. Get gone!”

Sportcoat puffed out his cheeks and released a long, drawn-out sigh. “All right,” he said. “Just one more thing. Then I’ll leave.”

The old man shuffled to the door, stuck his head into the hallway, looked both ways, then closed the door tightly. He shuffled back to Deems’s bed and leaned over him, to whisper something in his ear.

Deems snapped, “Get the fuck away—”

And then Sportcoat was on him. The old man lifted his knee quickly, pinned Deems’s usable right arm to his body with it, and with his right hand, picked up the doll pillow on Deems’s bed and rammed it onto Deems’s upturned face.

Deems, pinned, couldn’t move. He felt his air supply suddenly choke off. His head was pressed as in a vise. Sportcoat held firm, pressing down as Deems struggled, frantically gasping for air. Sportcoat spoke, slowly and calmly:

“When I was but a wee boy, my daddy did this to me. Said this would make me grow big and tough. He was an ignorant man, my daddy was. Mean as the devil. But he was chickenhearted when it come to the white man. He bought a mule once from a white man. That mule was sick when my daddy bought him. But the white told him that the mule couldn’t die because he, a white man, had ordered it to live. Know what happened?”

Deems struggled, panicked, straining for air. There was none.