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together. Sanity had left his blue eyes.
    On the way home I stopped at a Denny’s for coffee and a piece of gummy lemon pie. I’m still thinking about that kid.
    My brother had some income property on Bull Shoals Lake down on the Missouri-Arkansas border. He died suddenly and left it to me, and now I moved back there to fix it up and sell it. I forgot all about Hoolie when I learned that he’d dumped Ike, who’d been with him since the amateurs, and who had hopes of winning a title with Hoolie, Ike’s first. So three months after I’m in Missouri, Hoolie gives me a call. He says he’s got a new trainer and a manager from Mexico. The manager’s positioned him into a WBC featherweight title fight with Big Willie Little in Kansas City, Missouri.
    “I want you in my corner, homes.”
    “Why Kansas City?”
    “Big Willie’s from there. It’s a big deal on one of the riverboat hotel casinos, pay TV, all the shit.”
    “Why me?”
    “The promoter only came up with four plane tickets, and I’m using one for my wife. That leaves tickets for my trainer and one more corner man from out here. Besides, I don’t want to chance it with some hillbilly, white-bread mayonnaise sandwich from back there, right?”
    “Like I say, why me?”
    “You’re the best, man, look what you done for me in TJ, man, they’da stopped it except for you, man, shit. Besides, you’re already back there, homey.”
    “How’d you get my number?”
    “From Ike.”
    When I heard that Ike had given him my number, I knew Ike was scheming on the punk, that Ike wanted my presence in Kansas City, and I got interested.
    “You owe me a hundred dollars, forget the gas and what else it cost me in TJ.”
    “I know I do, man, but you gotta know how broke I been since the suspension. It’s over now, but now my old lady’s got cancer in the tit, ese, and it’s costing me, but I’ll give you your bread, no sweat, man.”
    “Is Tweety going to be there?”
    “No, man, I’m squeaky clean for this one, shit.”
    “Here’s my deal,” I said. “It’s something like three hundred miles from here to Kansas City. That’s all day both ways and three tanks of gas. So if I do come, I don’t want to waste my time, understand?”
    “No doubt about it.”
    “How much you gettin? Level with me.”
    “Yeah, yeah, only fifty grand, see? I’m takin it cheap just to get a shot at that maiate Big Willie mothafuck.” Maiate is a word some Mexicans use for black people. A maiate is a black bug that lives in dung. “I’ll take his black ass easy.”
    I don’t trust Hoolie the fight’s only for fifty thousand, not with his name on the card, but if I can make a grand, it’ll buy the paint I need to finish the work on my brother’s buildings.
    “I’ll come,” I say. “But up front, you send me my hundred you owe me by overnight mail. I don’t get it overnight, forget it. Once I drive up to Kansas City, the day I get there you pay me one thousand up front, which is two percent. Or I turn around and come back home.”
    “You got it, ese, no problem, man.”
    “When’s the fight?”
    “A week from Saturday. We’re flying in day after tomorrow.”
    “When you want me there?”
    “Promoter says two days before the fight, to get your license and all. I already got a room in your name. Your meal tickets will be at the desk.”
    “I don’t want to lay around that long, so I’ll be there one day before. Give my name to the Commission at the weigh-in. I already got a Missouri license from a fight last month in Saint Louis.”
    He gave me the name of the casino and the address. I gave him my P.O. box number, and the deal was made. It took three days for my hundred to get to me, because I live way out in the hills. I cashed Hoolie’s money order and drove down to Gaston’s on the White River for catfish, hush puppies, and pecan pie.
    The day before the fight, at six in the morning, I picked up highway #5 out of Gainesville, Missouri, and slowly headed