Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
JENSEN
It’s Monday night.
I take Godspeed from his stall and start brushing him down a little before dinner. My nerves are steel, the way they always are before a fight. That will hit me a few minutes before they lock me in the pit, but I need that. The only fights I’ve lost are the ones where I wasn’t nervous beforehand.
Godspeed raises his head, turning to the doorway. I lift mine to look. Under the entrance floodlight stands Brothers, a lone shadow. He doesn’t move. I take a step out and wait, but he just runs a hand over his face.
“Hey,” I say.
He comes closer, putting his hand on Godspeed’s nose. “I was pissed when you took this one. I could see even when he was young that he was going to be quicker than hell.”
“He’s fast,” I say simply.
“He’s about ready to be retired,” he says.
“I plan on it.”
He looks up, face half shadowed. “One last ride, huh?”
I nod. “He’ll get us where we’re going. I trust him.”
Brothers smiles, but there’s something about him that unsettles me tonight.
His shoulders sit lower, like he’s resigned.
Considering we’re about to walk into a fight, I don’t like the aura of defeat around him.
Thinking hard, I saddle up Godspeed and put him in the pen in the corner to wait.
When I return, Brothers sits on a bench, smoking, his legs stretched out.
He’s sober. No jokes or digs tonight.
“Hey, you good?” I say.
He’s distant. “Kayleigh’s doing it for Della, not for me. She traded her cousin in return for Della and Landis going free, but she didn’t barter anybody else’s life.”
“So…what does that mean?” I ask.
He finally looks up. “It means, when I kill every person in her family I can get my hands on, we’re going to have a long, hard road to forgiveness.”
Dead silence. I clear my throat, still not following.
“Are you planning to do that tonight?” I ask.
He shakes his head, inhaling smoke deep. “We’ll see.”
“You can talk straight to me,” I say.
He leans against the wall, releasing a sigh. There’s a wet patch on his Sunday shirt.
“You know why they called me Brothers Boyd?” he says.
I shake my head. “Never thought you’d answer if I asked.”
“Jem commissioned the sign over the door of our first bookie business. It was supposed to say The Brothers Boyd, but they didn’t seal the paint correctly,” he drawls, eyes disconnected.
“After a while, through time, the first word wore out, leaving it just Brothers Boyd. Jem was a slower moving kind of guy. He liked an easy life. See, back in the church, I was the eldest son. I had all the responsibility. The yoke, as it were, was thrust on my shoulders. But Jem…he just kinda ran to keep up, you know? I was moving, shaking, and Jem was fading out because he couldn’t keep up.
Eventually, I become both halves of The Brothers Boyd. ”
I study him. It’s hard to think of Brothers as anything but an adult man.
“Is that why you wanted to bring me on to replace Jem?” I ask.
“Yeah, Jem fell behind.” He points at me with the cigarette. “But Jensen Childress, he didn’t just catch up. He flew like a fucking arrow.”
I grunt, uncomfortable.
“It wasn’t hard work,” I say.
“It was. You were just good at it,” he says.
“People called me Brothers for a good while. Then, I was at the races one day. You weren’t there, but you were working for me at the time, and one of the owners of the Derby winner that year saw me from across the room.
He said Good God, it’s Boyd, and it came out so loud, the whole room laughed.
He was a big guy, Scotch-Irish, booming voice.
Now, down at the racetrack, they call me The Good God Boyd. ”
I’m quiet. I’m not sure he wants me to answer. He’s just talking. I think people don’t listen to him talk very often, at least, not like this. He rolls his cigarette between his finger and thumb, brow creased.
“Kayleigh… When I met her, she thought that was so damn funny,” he drawls. “So I stopped minding it so much.”
He falls quiet, smoking, thinking. Finally, he clears his throat.
“I’ve been called near everything but my own name,” he says. “I like that just fine, but I like it better when Kayleigh says my name, my real one.”
I don’t ask him what that is—he won’t tell me anyway.
“I am a round peg in a square hole, Jen,” he says finally. “Been weird, little off-beat, my whole life. Don’t think I had a chance after the way I was raised, but she makes me feel…like that’s alright.”
My head goes back to Della, to how accepting she’d been of my past and how it shaped me. Brothers drops his head, stabbing out his cigarette on his boot. We sit for a while.
“Grace,” I say.
“What’s that?”
“She’s giving you a little fucking grace,” I say. “Feels pretty good, doesn’t it?”
He stares, then he smiles. Sweat etches down his forehead, and he wipes his face with his palm.
“Yeah,” he says finally. “I don’t actually know what the point of all that was. It just came out.”
“I heard what you were saying.”
“Maybe you can enlighten me on what that is.”
“You have a good thing going on,” I say. “At the crossroads, if I were you, I’d pick that woman over taking down the Caudills and getting the city back. Power don’t love you back.”
“No, but it keeps you safe,” he says.
“I’m fighting tonight like we planned,” I say. “Then, I’m getting my girl and her kid, and we’re going west. I don’t need revenge for what happened to me.”
“So what was the point of returning? I know it wasn’t just for the kid.”
“You asked me once what I wanted to be when I grew up,” I say. “Ask me again. I’m grown.”
He’s got the saddest smile. “What do you want to be when you grow up, Jen?”
“I’m a cowboy,” I say. “And I reckon there’s a woman in the Caudill mansion right now who wouldn’t mind settling down with a cowboy like me.
So, I’m gonna get in there tonight, win this fight, and get my girl.
You fuck your life up if you want and fumble Kayleigh because you can’t give up your hold on this city. I won’t.”
He drops his head, laughing. “You are a firecracker.”
“I know what I want,” I say. “And tonight, I’m getting it, come hell or high fucking water. I couldn’t care less what you do. I’ll be on that plane to Montana you promised me by morning.”
He stands, releasing a heavy sigh. “I respect that.”
“Alright,” I say. “Let’s get moving.”
We don’t speak again until we’re both in the rented truck.
I drive, and Brothers sits on the passenger side, the headlights reflecting in his unreadable eyes.
Following behind us is a cargo truck of his men with weaponry.
I’ve been here and done this with Brothers before.
We both know the pit will be the most heavily guarded place tonight, from both sides.
The further we go into the woods, the darker it gets.
Then, after we’ve been in the forest for almost an hour, I catch a glimpse of firelight.
The trees grow sparse. Trucks and ATVs appear, parked in the dusty ditches along the edge of the road.
Men mill around, some of them with women.
I see the glint of their eyes as we drive past.
It feels different this time. Even in the past, when I fought for sport, I was always the underdog.
Not this time.
We pull up outside the pit. Surrounding it runs a fence made up of spiked stakes that run to my shoulder.
On the other side, by the trees, sit a handful of tents.
Some of the men who fight often, usually for money, stay here through the summers.
They’re a rough bunch. I’ve spent a few nights out here myself.
I swing out of the truck. Brothers does the same, circling to me. He’s dressed down tonight, work boots and pants and a gray t-shirt. It makes him look a lot younger. Or maybe that’s the shadows, the flickering light, but he looks the way I remember him back then.
“You ready for this?” he says.
I jerk my head.
“Knock ‘em dead, son,” he says, taking his AK out of the truck bed and slinging it over his shoulder.
I don’t tell him not to call me son. A dozen pairs of eyes follow us as we climb up the short bank and go through the opening in the fence.
Inside, it’s packed, absolutely jam packed beyond anything I’ve ever seen.
Caudill soldiers are gathered in groups, I can tell because their guns are branded with Leland’s crest. They glance up as Brothers and I walk up the pathway to the pit. There’s a strong sense of unrest.
My body is eating the anticipation up and turning it into pure adrenaline.
I’m hungry to fight again.
I pause at the edge of the pit. It’s a hard-packed basin with a dusty floor, deep enough that the wooden walls can’t be climbed.
Over top stretches a thick wire cage. There’s one way in, a set of stairs built into the dirt.
On both sides above the pit are two platforms for the fighters to prep and recuperate.
On the platform to my left loiters a group of Leland’s soldiers.
The one to my right is empty. Brothers and I move there, his men trailing behind.
We step up under the overhang, and I drop the bag and start taking off my shirt.
Brothers stares at the opposite platform, eyes moving like searchlights.
“Who’s their fighter?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Don’t know him. Not local, out of the Carolinas.”
“What’s his scorecard?”
He shakes his head again. “Don’t know, but he’s sort of in your weight class, so he won’t turn you into Swiss cheese.”
“I’m not worried about it,” I say. “I’ve been fighting out in Montana for years. I think I can take whatever they throw at me.”
“Don’t get cocky, Jen,” he says.