A Woman Named Drown - Padgett Powell Read Online Free Page A

back to
Bilbo's and found a dude who wouldn't kill me and learned a little
boxing in the mornings. The watering woman and I, you might say, fell
in love waving. I flirted at a hundred paces, got beat up for three
rounds, listened to pygmy hysteria for eight hours. It was not a bad
time. My previous life, of soft-metal bonding mechanics, seemed no
less preposterous than Sweetlips's life of pygmy sightings and giant
strength. I was completely comfortable being completely out of
control.

         I was
in fact beginning to feel like I was drunk but free of motor
impairment. Whatever presented itself to me as partaking of the
continuum of nuttiness was the thing for me. I would not act my age
or observe my station.
    Back at Bilbo°s Bar, Gym & Grill the next
morning I had coffee. The same massive dude was sparring, this time
with a slighter opponent, who was having a bad time of it. The
lighter guy looked ready to quit, ready to cry, for that matter, but
did neither. At every break the oak tree called him a punk.
    I looked around. The counterman appeared to have
scoliosis. He bent to hear a customer and jerked back ' up, staring
wild-eyed at the customer. "No!" he shouted. "No more
bacon!" The customer smiled and went back to reading his menu.
The counterman retreated in a huff through double doors, out of
sight.
    The boxers had quit. I did not see the smaller guy,
but the oak tree was putting Royal Crown dressing on his head and
then a lady's stocking over that. He picked up a load of gear
equivalent in bulk to a rodeo cowboy's tack and left.
    The counterman returned and I got a refill. "Who
is that guy just left?" I asked him.
    " StebbinsStebbinsStebbins what--you fall off the
truck? You want me to tell you history all day or you want to be
somewhere else? No b.l.t.'s, in case that's your next move."
    That was Harold, the counterman. What he had told
me--in two weeks I managed to decode--was that everybody who was
anybody knew Frank Stebbins, who had a middleweight match in France
coming up, and who was going to be history when it was over, and that
he (Harold) did not cook bacon anymore. Ever. The slighter boxer
reappeared at the counter near me, began looking suspiciously all
around the place, and said quietly to Harold, "A Curs."
    More happily than I'd seen him all morning, Harold
virtually ran a Coors over to him. "Shifty'll chew your black
ass when he sees this."
    " He ain't gone see shit. Stebbins most kill me."
He took the Coors and poured it into a Coke can that he'd held under
the counter.
    " I'm looking for someone to spar with," I
said.
    The boxer looked at me. "You botts," he
said. "I seen you before."
    " You've seen me drink beer in here, maybe."
    " I recall it. Wid honks."
    " Yes," I said, nodding solemnly, as if to
deepen the confession.
    He looked to the ring as if we had not been speaking.
    After a while I said, "I guess you have to go
with Stebbins, anyway."
    " What you mean?"
    " Nothing. Just that you spar with--"
    " Okayden."
    " Okay what?"
    " Tamarr."
    "When?"
    " Sikserty."
    " You can call me Al."
    " Egret."
    We tried to shake and got fouled up accommodating
each other's racial handshake, and wound up fumbling our fingers
together awhile. We were involved in this little charade when a
small, gray-haired squat of a man came up and grabbed Egret's Coke
can and threw it at Harold.
    Neither Egret nor Harold said anything. The man stood
his ground, rasping breath, the gray hair coming out of his ears and
nostrils, his mouth stained olive by chewing tobacco. He looked at
Egret.
    " You conspiring to sign wid him now, or what?"
He meant me.
    " Haw, naw, Shif," Egret said. "He a
bottser himself."
    Shif--Shifty of Shifty's Stable, as I came to
know--regarded me with a long squint. The hair was coming out of him
in tufts, in whorls--he looked like a tobacco-stained owl. He took a
deep breath. "You wear glasses!" he said.
    I heard Egret do a little thing like a hiss under his
breath.
    " How long you wear glasses?"
    I