The Dead Women of Juarez

Kelly’s nose was gushing again. The Mexican kid was over him. Another punch slugged down from the heavens and blocked out the ring lights. Only then was the bell rung. The ref raised the Mexican kid’s hand and Kelly Courter disappeared for everyone in the room.

TWO

IF THE PLACE HAD DRESSING ROOMS, they weren’t for bolillos. They set Kelly and Vidal up at the back of the men’s room. While drunken viejos wandered in and out to use the piss trough, Vidal helped Kelly get the tape off his fists and get changed. He cleaned up Kelly’s face the best he could, but he worked corners and wasn’t a doctor.

Green and white paint on the walls peeled from neglect and humidity. The men laughed at Kelly and insulted him in Spanish because they didn’t think he understood them, but he did. “His face looks like a bowl of frijoles refritos,” one of the old men said to another. Kelly might have argued, but he saw himself in a mirror coming in and knew they weren’t far wrong; the Mexican kid did a dance on his face.

Vidal put his thumbs on either side of Kelly’s nose and pressed until cartilage crunched. Needles of pain stabbed through Kelly’s forehead then and when Vidal put tape across the bridge of his nose to keep things stable. Kelly would have two black eyes for a while.

Ortiz came in. The room reeked of urine and shit. There wasn’t a breath of fresh air inside four walls. Ortiz didn’t look like the kind of man who’d wash his hands in a place like this even if the sink worked. He took a wad of American bills out of his jacket and counted out $200.

“What did you think of Federico?” Ortiz asked Kelly.

Kelly gave Vidal two twenties. The old cut man put the money away and packed up. “I think he punches hard,” Kelly said.

“Oh, yeah,” Ortiz agreed. “Without gloves on, he could kill you.”

“Then I guess I’m lucky he had gloves on.”

Outside the bathroom the crowd revved up again. Kelly’s match wasn’t the only fight on the card, but the rest of the fights were all brown on brown. Now that the spectators had their appetites whetted, good matches would go down smooth.

“You want I should call a taxi for you?” Ortiz asked.

“I don’t want to waste the money.”

“Hey, it’s on me, Kelly.”

Vidal was already out the door. Kelly got up. His bag and jacket were inside a stall with a broken toilet. Ortiz’s money went in Kelly’s pocket. “You already paid me. And I’m not fuckin’ crippled,” Kelly said. “I’ll take myself out.”

“Hey, amigo,” Ortiz said, “I might have something for you next month, you heal up okay. You want I should let you know?”

A month would give the cuts time to close and the bruises to fade. Every dollar in Kelly’s pocket would be gone, too. The only constant was the demand for gringo blood.

“Yeah, okay,” Kelly said, and he left.

It was hot and still light on the street. Kelly could have gone right to bed. People outside the fights — too proper to care, or too sophisticated to admit it — didn’t understand what a fighter gave up in the ring. Every drop of sweat had a cost and every punch thrown or taken did, too. Kelly was tired because he was all paid out.

He left the smoker behind. Old cars crowded the broken curb on both sides of the street. Rows of fight notices were pasted up beside the entrance. Even out here Kelly still heard the spectators hollering.

Kelly didn’t have a car, old or not. He drove a slate-gray Buick down from El Paso five years before and sold it for a hundred bucks and some Mexican mud. He was already so bent that the culero paid him half what he promised and Kelly didn’t notice until it was too late. So he walked, bag over his shoulder, and kept his swollen face pointed toward the pavement. Juarez had plenty of buses.

He stopped two blocks down to spend some of his money. A little bar with a jukebox playing norteno beckoned Kelly inside. He had six bottles of Tecate, one after the other, and that took the hurt off some. The alcohol stung a cut in his mouth. He was the only white man in the place; the rest were rough brown men who worked with their hands under the sun or with machines in the maquiladoras. They ignored Kelly and that was fine.

“Oye,” Kelly asked the bartender. “You know where I can find some motivosa? ?Entiende?”

The bartender pointed. The bar was long and narrow and lit mostly with strings of big-bulb Christmas lights. Posters for the corridas, the bullfights, were on the walls beside pictures and license plates and any other junk they could put up with a nail. Booths with high backs marched all the way back to the banos.

Kelly checked each booth until somebody made eye contact. He put his bag in first and sat down next to it. “Motivosa,” he said to the woman.

“How much you looking for?” the woman asked. She was flabby and braless and wore an unflattering shell- pink top that showed too much arm and neckline.

Kelly put a couple of Ortiz’s twenties on the table between them. “Keep me busy.”

The woman took Kelly’s money and stuffed it into her shirt. From somewhere under the table she produced a shallow plastic baggie of grass. Kelly put the baggie away. “You that white boy they like to knock around at el boxeo, eh?” the woman asked.

“What of it?” Kelly asked.

“Next time you around, come see me.”

“What for?”

The woman smiled. She had even, white teeth. Kelly realized they were dentures. “I like boxeadores,” she said. “Next time you come around, I get you relaxed.”

Kelly got up. “That’s what I get the herb for.”

Kelly Courter wasn’t a good-looking man. He’d seen uglier, both inside and outside the fight world, but he wasn’t a model and that was okay with him. Kelly’s nose had a crook in it and bent slightly. Even when he didn’t have raccoon eyes he always looked tired because he always felt tired; his body was older than he was.

At thirty he felt like a grandpa getting out of bed in the morning — all aches and protesting joints and sore muscles — and more decrepit still on the day after a fight. He carried too much weight around his middle and his hair was falling out, so he shaved his face and head once a month and let it all grow at the same rate.

He lived in an apartment building ten minutes away from the border crossing into Texas. Just a few miles, a line of police and a mostly dry riverbed separated Kelly in Ciudad Juarez from El Paso. Standing on a street in Juarez with closed eyes, just listening to the sound of Spanish, the rush of cars and smelling exhaust, it was easy to pretend the cities were the same, but Kelly didn’t go north anymore.

His apartment had a concrete balcony. Kelly kept a heavy bag there, though he rarely hit it. For Ortiz’s smokers Kelly didn’t need to be in shape and didn’t need to keep his skills sharp; all he had to do was show up more or less at weight and take a pounding. That he could do. That was what he had left.

He put his stuff in the bedroom and because the air was still went out on the balcony to roll a magic carpet. Sitting in a folding lawn chair with an old, chipped plate for an ashtray, he had a perfect view of a maquiladora that turned out automobile seats for GM. Night and day the seats came off the assembly line and went into truck-portable cargo containers for shipment back across the border. Wages started at a buck an hour and topped out before hitting three.

Mexican weed bought away from the tourist traps was always better than anything a man could find on the other side. Some Canadians told Kelly once that their marijuana was primo, but he didn’t believe it. Call it malva, chora or nalga de angel, Mexico grew the best shit; if Kelly was going to acostarse con rosemaria, go to bed with rosemary, he would do it south-of-the-border style.