He nodded briskly to Earl, who made as if he'd slipped, went briefly to his knees and pulled the wrist chain taut across a trunk.
The blow was swift and perfect, and in the same second that it was delivered, Tangle Eye pulled away and headed back to his detail.
Earl saw that he'd not hit the link closest to the ring on the cuff, but the ring itself, the one point where the ancient steel was thinnest.
Earl hadn't even felt the shudder or the sting of vibration, so perfectly placed was the blow and so completely sheared was the ring.
Earl grabbed the now freed chain with his free hand and pulled it close.
He was no longer tethered.
The car pulled up, and someone dashed out to open the rear door. His royal hugeness, Bigboy, sunglasses and drill instructor hat in place, perfect tie putting a point to his immensity, stepped daintily out, sniffed at the brackish air, then looked about until his eyes rested at last upon Earl.
'You, Bogart. You, up out of the hole.'
'Yes, sir,' cried Earl, 'I am coming.'
He got halfway and he turned.
'Ain't going to be with you no ' trash no more, you bet!' he screamed.
'I'm goin' back to the white world, thank you, Jesus.'
The men regarded him furiously, as he climbed the rest of the way out, reached the levee, and with a shuffle and a shit-eating grin minced toward the big man.
'Take me from these low men, sir, for they are beasts of the field, and I am white.'
Someone grabbed him roughly and brought him stumbling to Big boy.
'So you want to talk, eh, Bogart. Finally seen the light, have you?
You have been a stubborn cuss.'
'My ', sir, but being among the colored is enough to set any white man straight.'
The guards let him stand free.
'And one more thing, Mr. Guard Sergeant. You're a tub of white trash monkey shit.'
Bigboy's mouth fell open in astonishment, and Earl stepped back as his two companions moved in on him. They grabbed; he ducked and slipped, then banged the first one hard with a double jab to the jaw, feeling that bone shatter on the second hard blow.
The other man round housed him, and Earl dropped under the arc of the clumsy punch and nailed this one right in the heart. It took the fight out of him, and he went low fast, his face whiter than terror, his eyes big as fried eggs.
'No guns,' Bigboy screamed, for guns were coming out all along the line.
'You, Bigboy, let's see how much tough you got in you,' Earl yelled, drawing near.
'You're about to find out, partner. I have this dance saved up special for you,' said the man, who had not a lick of fear anywhere in him and suddenly welcomed the assault as an amusement of great potential.
Somewhere the dogs started growling, their throats filling with sound as the excitement of battle violence filled their dog veins and brains.
Bigboy tossed aside his hat, pulled his big Colt handgun and tossed it.
East to come off were his sunglasses, which he neatly folded before tossing to another guard.
'I can rack him, boss,' screamed Section Boss, who'd heaved near atop his mighty horse and unlimbered the Thompson gun from his saddle horn 'No, sir,' said Bigboy, his fists circling with a pugilist's grace as he moved with surprising agility left, then right, dancing like a well schooled heavy. 'This here boy's been aching for a boxing lesson, and I'm going to give him one. You think us albinos are weak and red eyed.
Ho, boy, you goin' learn the truth.'
Earl shot a left, which Bigboy flicked away, but in the next instant Earl drove a hard right into the big man's gut and met nothing but an impenetrable wall of muscle, skinning up his knuckles but doing the big fellow no apparent harm.
'My old man hit harder than that,' he said, smiling.
Mine didn't, Earl thought, a little surprised at what a cool athlete this big monster was turning out to be.
Bigboy fired off a right that hit Earl above the eye. It was a fast, hard punch, an expert's punch, the punch of a man who'd worked both light and heavy bags for years. The big fellow had fast hands, too, but Earl shook it off, trying to show no pain, even if half-a-second's worth of bright lights skyrocketed off behind his eyes.
Earl circled on his toes, and so did the big man. Two jabs were thrown by each, and caught by each high on the arm, for bruises that would emerge in two days but not now. Then Earl fired a good shot off that struck the big man in the nose, crunching it. Blood gushed, but Bigboy merely dropped back a step, spat disdainfully into the ground, a goober of red-shot mucus, then set himself again and moved into the attack.
He was a body puncher. He was so slathered in muscle and so anesthetized by fury no blows could stop him. He absorbed pain on his arms, kept his head hunched behind his big fists, then worked in close, unleashed a flurry of sharp jabs that flew to Earl's ribs and lit off hell. Earl fell back, his backward motion somewhat defusing the punches, then slipped the one blow thrown from the outside (meant to crescendo the flurry) and countered with a good hammer to the jaw. It would have KO'd a lesser man and rocked a greater man, but like the nose-buster, it merely made the Bigboy blink and spit, take a step back, then set himself and move in.
He would take pain to give pain. That was his strategy. It was crude but based on conviction: he knew he could dish out more than any man could give. He would emerge from his fights bruised and bloodied, but always the winner, on that principle alone.
Earl had a sudden fear: he would lose. The guy was a polished professional-level fighter, who could take a punch, who expected pain, who had the stamina of a platoon, and whose will to conquest was unquenchable. Plus he had good health and nourishment, six inches in height and six in reach, forty or fifty pounds in weight, and lots of gym workouts going for him. And pleasure. This was fun for him. He was loving this, loving the drama, the power, the savagery of it, as he must have hated the delicacy of the Earl problem and now could deal with it without frustration.
Earl took a couple of shots to the arm, ducked and moved in to pummel the gut, and took a glancing blow to the temple, which nevertheless opened a gash that soon issued copious amounts of red blood.
'No cut men in this ring, Bogart,' sang the happy warrior. 'No corner men, no bell, son, just you, me, until you drop, and son, that's coming up real soon now.' He smiled and closed, threw two hard rights, the last of which glanced off Earl's blocking arm and reached his ribs for a stinging shot that brought tears to Earl's eyes.
'Oh, felt that one, did you? More coming, convict.'
He threw a punch that Earl countered, but Earl's return blow was somewhat blurred by the fatigue that now corrupted his body, and didn't land square enough to do any damage.
The big man dropped back, reached up and undid his tie and tossed it away, while he sucked oxygen.
Earl, in this moment of respite, realized that the drama was so intense that both audiences, black and white, had formed an auditorium around it. No one spoke, but they watched in utterly raptu red fascination.
The big man ripped off his shirt, revealing an undershirt sopped in sweat that constrained muscles of unusual density and precision. He had a statue like quality to him, marble wrapped in wet cotton. He wasn't fat at all, just big and solid as Wall Street.
The big man went back to his toes and came at Earl.
'We're going to finish it right soon, nigger,' he said. Earl went into his crouch, bobbed and weaved, dashed this way and that, as the big one sought to close. Earl now saw what he must do. Tire the man, wait for a guard to drop out of fatigue, then hit him hard and fast and dash back out of range. This was no ring, so there was plenty of room to move.
But in that same instant, Bigboy backed up, dropped his arms and yelled to his boys, 'Get those dogs behind him. He's running too much. This ain't about running, it's about hitting.'
Earl sensed that ordered activity un spooling behind him and knew his backing days were done. If he couldn't dance, he couldn't win, he knew, for the big man would corner him and pummel his arms. His arms would die, and then his body and then his head.
He heard the dogs screaming on their leashes as they were brought near.
They smelled the blood and sweat in the air and knew that killing time was near. He felt them scuffling
