Shoggoths in Bloom Read Online Free PDF Page A
Author: Elizabeth Bear
down the roots of the world and keeps it rich, it’s a transformative magic. It never goes away.
However you spill it, it’s blood that makes the cactus grow. Ochs, just to interject a little more irony here, paid for his power in his own blood as well.
5.
Twenty-fifth child of twenty-six, Sonny Liston. A tenant farmer’s son, whose father beat him bloody. He never would meet my eye, even there in his room, this close to Christmas, near the cold bent stub end of 1970.
He never would meet a white man’s eyes. Even the eye of the One-Eyed Jack, patron saint of Las Vegas, when Jackie was pouring him J&B. Not a grown man’s eye, anyway, though he loved kids—and kids loved him. The bear was a teddy bear when you got him around children.
But he told me all about that fight. How the Mob told him to throw it or they’d kill him and his Momma and a selection of his brothers and sisters too. How he did what they told him in the most defiant manner possible. So the whole fucking world would know he took that fall.
The thing is, I didn’t believe him.
I sat there and nodded and listened, and I thought, Sonny Liston didn’t throw that fight. That famous “Phantom Punch”? Mohammed Ali got lucky. Hit a nerve cluster or something. Sonny Liston, the unstoppable Sonny Liston, the man with a heart of piston steel and a hand like John Henry’s hammer—Sonny Liston, he went down. It was a fluke, a freak thing, some kind of an accident.
I thought going down like that shamed him, so he told his wife he gave up because he knew Ali was better and he didn’t feel like fighting just to get beat. But he told me that other story, about the mob, and he drank another scotch and he toasted Muhammad Ali, though Sonny’d kind of hated him. Ali had been barred from fighting from 1967 until just that last year, who was facing a jail term because he wouldn’t go and die in Vietnam.
Sensible man, if you happen to ask me.
But I knew Sonny didn’t throw that fight for the Mob. I knew because I also knew this other thing about that fight, because I am the soul of Las Vegas, and in 1965, the Mob was Las Vegas.
And I knew they’d had a few words with Sonny before he went into the ring.
Sonny Liston was supposed to win. And Muhammad Ali was supposed to die.
6.
The one thing in his life that Sonny Liston could never hit back against was his daddy. Sonny, whose given name was Charles, but who called himself Sonny all his adult life.
Sonny had learned the hard way that you never look a white man in the eye. That you never look any man in the eye unless you mean to beat him down. That you never look the Man in the eye, because if you do he’s gonna beat you down.
He did his time in jail, Sonny Liston. He went in a boy and he came out a prize fighter, and when he came out he was owned by the Mob.
You can see it in the photos and you could see it in his face, when you met him, when you reached out to touch his hand; he almost never smiled, and his eyes always held this kind of deep sonorous seriousness over his black, flat, damaged nose.
Sonny Liston was a jailbird. Sonny Liston belonged to the Mob the same way his daddy belonged to the land.
Cassius Clay, God bless him, changed his slave name two days after that first bout with Sonny, as if winning it freed up something in him. Muhammad Ali, God bless him, never learned that lesson about looking down.
7.
Boxing is called the sweet science. And horse racing is the sport of kings.
When Clay beat Liston, he bounced up on his stool and shouted that he was King of the World. Corn king, summer king, America’s most beautiful young man. An angel in the boxing ring. A new and powerful image of black manhood.
He stepped up on that stool in 1964 and he put a noose around his neck.
The thing about magic is that it happens in spite of everything you can do to stop it.
And the wild old Gods will have their sacrifice.
No excuses.
If they can’t have Charismatic, they’ll take the man
However you spill it, it’s blood that makes the cactus grow. Ochs, just to interject a little more irony here, paid for his power in his own blood as well.
5.
Twenty-fifth child of twenty-six, Sonny Liston. A tenant farmer’s son, whose father beat him bloody. He never would meet my eye, even there in his room, this close to Christmas, near the cold bent stub end of 1970.
He never would meet a white man’s eyes. Even the eye of the One-Eyed Jack, patron saint of Las Vegas, when Jackie was pouring him J&B. Not a grown man’s eye, anyway, though he loved kids—and kids loved him. The bear was a teddy bear when you got him around children.
But he told me all about that fight. How the Mob told him to throw it or they’d kill him and his Momma and a selection of his brothers and sisters too. How he did what they told him in the most defiant manner possible. So the whole fucking world would know he took that fall.
The thing is, I didn’t believe him.
I sat there and nodded and listened, and I thought, Sonny Liston didn’t throw that fight. That famous “Phantom Punch”? Mohammed Ali got lucky. Hit a nerve cluster or something. Sonny Liston, the unstoppable Sonny Liston, the man with a heart of piston steel and a hand like John Henry’s hammer—Sonny Liston, he went down. It was a fluke, a freak thing, some kind of an accident.
I thought going down like that shamed him, so he told his wife he gave up because he knew Ali was better and he didn’t feel like fighting just to get beat. But he told me that other story, about the mob, and he drank another scotch and he toasted Muhammad Ali, though Sonny’d kind of hated him. Ali had been barred from fighting from 1967 until just that last year, who was facing a jail term because he wouldn’t go and die in Vietnam.
Sensible man, if you happen to ask me.
But I knew Sonny didn’t throw that fight for the Mob. I knew because I also knew this other thing about that fight, because I am the soul of Las Vegas, and in 1965, the Mob was Las Vegas.
And I knew they’d had a few words with Sonny before he went into the ring.
Sonny Liston was supposed to win. And Muhammad Ali was supposed to die.
6.
The one thing in his life that Sonny Liston could never hit back against was his daddy. Sonny, whose given name was Charles, but who called himself Sonny all his adult life.
Sonny had learned the hard way that you never look a white man in the eye. That you never look any man in the eye unless you mean to beat him down. That you never look the Man in the eye, because if you do he’s gonna beat you down.
He did his time in jail, Sonny Liston. He went in a boy and he came out a prize fighter, and when he came out he was owned by the Mob.
You can see it in the photos and you could see it in his face, when you met him, when you reached out to touch his hand; he almost never smiled, and his eyes always held this kind of deep sonorous seriousness over his black, flat, damaged nose.
Sonny Liston was a jailbird. Sonny Liston belonged to the Mob the same way his daddy belonged to the land.
Cassius Clay, God bless him, changed his slave name two days after that first bout with Sonny, as if winning it freed up something in him. Muhammad Ali, God bless him, never learned that lesson about looking down.
7.
Boxing is called the sweet science. And horse racing is the sport of kings.
When Clay beat Liston, he bounced up on his stool and shouted that he was King of the World. Corn king, summer king, America’s most beautiful young man. An angel in the boxing ring. A new and powerful image of black manhood.
He stepped up on that stool in 1964 and he put a noose around his neck.
The thing about magic is that it happens in spite of everything you can do to stop it.
And the wild old Gods will have their sacrifice.
No excuses.
If they can’t have Charismatic, they’ll take the man