Last weekend, Barnes had been in Grand Forks watching Kid Rappatoe fight Severine Boyd in a Golden Gloves match. Skipping rope with his students now, he mulled over how Boyd and Rappatoe came out of their corners popping swipes at each other like cats. They were both so fast that neither could connect more than a grazing punch. For five rounds it was like that—dazzling motions, clinch, step apart, then they started dabbing the air again. Rappatoe was famous for wearing down his opponent, but Boyd usually went the distance and hardly broke a sweat. During round six Boyd did something that Barnes thought was questionable, but admired just the same. Boyd stepped back, dropped his guard, hitched his trunks, gave Rappatoe a blank look just as he slid off an untelegraphed long-range left jab that snapped back Rappatoe’s head. All along, Boyd had been leading up to this with fakes. Dropping his guard at odd times. Pretending there was a problem with his trunks. And those blank looks. Every so often, like he was maybe having a spell. They seemed like harmless tics until Boyd came under Rappatoe’s guard with another left, this one to the body, and then a right to the head that dropped Rappatoe momentarily, stopped his momentum permanently, and won Boyd the match.
Sitting ringside, Barnes had turned to Reynold Jarvis, the English teacher, who was also in charge of putting on school dramas.
“We need a drama coach,” said Barnes.
“You need more equipment,” said Jarvis.
“We’re raising money for gloves now.”
“And a speed bag? A heavy bag?”
“Burlap, sawdust. And a couple old tires.”
“Okay. I see. Drama could be helpful.”
Many things, including strength and even stamina, could be faked. Or even more important, many things could be hidden. For instance, one of Barnes’s most promising kid boxers, Ajijaak, looked like his namesake heron. He was like Barnes himself, lean and tall, so nervous he seemed to tremble. Ajijaak held himself with an air of meek apology. But the boy had a startling left jab and shorebird reach. Then there was Pokey Paranteau, who was all raw talent with no focus. Revard Stone Boy, Calbert St. Pierre, Dicey Asiginak, Garnet Fox, and Case Allery, all coming along very well. Wade Wazhashk was working on his mother to let him box in a match. He, too, was promising, although he had no instinct. Thinking was good, but Wade thought twice before he punched. Barnes spent a lot of time driving the boys to matches with other towns—off-reservation towns where the crowds broke out fake war whoops and jeers when their hometown favorite lost. He drove the boys home after matches, and after practice, which lasted long after the school bus had gone out.
Right now, the boys were lifting weights all wrong. Barnes straightened them out. He didn’t like to put too much weight on the left because his goal was to develop in each boy a left jab as fast as the opening to the Music’s fabled “surprise symphony,” a powerful, unpredictable flurry of strikes that had once forced Ezzard Charles onto the ropes. Well, of course, that was before Charles went big-time, then to the top. The Music had been a subtle fighter who eventually connected with a brawler who burst his spleen.
Wood Mountain had taken a welding class, and had made weights for the club by filling cans of all sizes with sand and welding them back together. The weights had come out unevenly so the boys lifted 1½-, 3-, 7¼-, 12-, 18-, and 23-pound cans of sand for strength. But for speed Barnes did things differently.
“Now watch,” he said.
He made a fist of his right hand and pressed his knuckles to the wall.
“Do like me.”
All the boys made fists and did the same.
“Pressure, pressure,” said Barnes. Again he pressed his fist against the wall, thatch of hair flopping down his forehead, until the muscles along his forearm began to burn. “Harder. . . . Okay, let up.”
The boys stepped back, wringing their hands.
“Now the left.”
The trick was to develop only the proper muscles to fill out the punch. The Music had been obsessed with speed and stealth. He had also taught Barnes mental tricks. Barnes signaled for break time. The boys lined up at the porcelain water fountain, then stood around him.
“Speed drills,” said Barnes. “Now I want each of you to name the fastest thing you can think of.”
“Lightning,” said Dicey.
“Snapping turtle,” said Wade, who had been bitten by one.
“Rattlesnake,” said Revard, whose family went back and forth to Montana.
“A sneeze,” said Pokey, which made everyone laugh.
“A big sneeze,” said Barnes, “an explosion! That’s how you want your punch. No warning. Now picture it, each of you, fastest thing you never saw. Shadowbox. Three minutes on. Three off. Like always.”
Barnes took out his stopwatch and prowled behind them as they feinted, punched combinations, feinted, punched again. He stopped Case, tapped his arm.
“Don’t flare that elbow! See your jab a mile off!”
He nodded at their progress.
“Do not draw your arm back! Do not!”
He himself threw punches toward Pokey, teaching him not to flinch. Barnes knew where that came from. And who.
He had them run interval sprints, then a few slow laps to cool down. Calbert and Dicey lived close enough to walk. The rest piled into Barnes’s car. On the way to their houses, he talked about how Boyd had beaten Rappatoe. He couldn’t make it sound right. He couldn’t give the picture.
“We need Mr. Jarvis to show you,” he finally said.
Pokey was always the last to be dropped off. His house was farthest, and off the road, but Barnes insisted on driving down the path even though he’d have to back out. At first it was because he knew about Paranteau, wanted to make sure Pokey was okay. Then he saw Pixie. Now Barnes drove down the road because there was always a chance he’d see Pixie chopping wood. Pixie. Those eyes!
Barnes made it back to the teachers’ dining hall just after the food was cleared away. He lived in “bachelor’s quarters,” a small white bungalow beneath a cottonwood tree. The female teachers, and other government employees, lived in a two-story brick building with four generously proportioned rooms on the second floor, two on the first floor, plus a communal kitchen, and a recreation area in the substantial basement with a small room for the caretaker/cook, Juggie Blue. She was washing dishes and getting ready to mop her way out of the kitchen, which she always did at 7 p.m. Juggie was a stocky, well-muscled, shrewd-looking woman in her forties. She was on the tribal advisory council with Thomas. Like Barnes, she was always trying to give up cigarettes, which meant that when they slipped, they slipped together. But not tonight. Or probably not. He was working with Wood Mountain later.
Juggie always kept a heaped plate of dinner warm for him. Now she slid a pie plate out of the warming oven in her beloved six-burner cooking range. The range had not one, not two, but three ovens with black speckled enamel interiors and stainless-steel racks. It had been hauled up from Devils Lake at Juggie’s insistence. She had clout with Superintendent Tosk. The expensive range allowed her to bake several items at the same time, and even slow-cook one of her famous beef stews. She made the stew in an ancient Dutch oven, brought overland by an ox team in the last century, using an entire bottle of her own chokecherry wine, and carrots bought from Thomas, who buried them for the winter in his cellar, deep in a bin of sand. She coaxed things from everyone on the reservation. Which was odd, because she was entirely lacking in charm.