Free When the Thrill Is Gone by Walter Mosley Page A

married to the mothahfuckah,” he said, raising his voice.
    The driver looked up nervously into the rearview mirror.
    The bark got Tally coughing again.
    “Was Shawna close to him?” I asked after he got his lungs under control.
    “Shawna don’t care ’bout nobody, man. That’s why I wondered why she send you to me.”
    This brotherly revelation renewed my speculations about Shawna’s motives.
    “She told me she cared,” I said. “She gave me the money for your bond.”
    “Yeah,” he said. “I bet.”
    There was something behind this private wager but it would take longer than a taxi ride to tease it out.
     
     
    WE MADE IT to Brooklyn and Tally guided our reluctant driver through a labyrinthine journey to a house in a run-down neighborhood.
    When we got out I gave the driver a fifty and said, “Keep the change.”
    “Fuck you, nigger,” he said to me before hitting the gas.
    I grinned, watching the yellow cab fishtail down the street. The man was Eastern European and unschooled in the ways of American racism. He used that word to hurt me and express his fear and resentment. But in truth it was I who had oppressed him.
    There is no balance between men unless everything around them is even. My father used to say those words to me. On that ramshackle street in Brooklyn I began to understand their meaning.
    “Come on, Mr. McGill,” Tally said at my back.
    He was walking down a lane between two six-story apartment buildings. I followed until we got to a little cove where a small tarpaper dwelling was nestled like a dying rat.
    “Hey, asshole!” a voice called.
    I glanced to my left and saw two good-sized young black men moving toward us. They were both wearing black leather jackets and blue jeans—uniforms of the street. Tally took a step back.
    “So here’s the rub,” I said out loud.
    “What you say, mothahfuckah?” the fatter of the two thugs said.
    I grinned broadly.

14
    OVERCONFIDENCE KILLED THE CAT, dog, pouncing lion, and the entire global alliance of the Axis powers. That is to say, when two men who have the strength to stand upright get in your face you have to act fast and with certainty.
    I took a step toward them, holding out my right hand as if I expected somebody to shake it. The gesture was meant to say that we were all brothers there in the rat’s-nest cove behind the dirty brick buildings. The smaller of the two men was five inches taller and forty pounds heavier than I. That put him well over two hundred pounds. I could see that it wasn’t all fat. He tried to stiff-arm me when I got close enough. I lowered down into a squat and hit him with a left hook to the gut that made him whimper. Instantly, with my right hand, now a fist, I slammed the jaw of Shorty’s jumbo partner. He would have hit the ground if I hadn’t followed up with six or seven punches that both debilitated him and kept him standing upright. Then I turned back to the whimperer and threw a long right hand.
    That was a mistake.
    Sometimes I forget that you are not compelled to follow the rules of boxing when in the street. The second man stood back and pushed against my shoulders. Already off balance, I fell to the ground. Even though he was probably suffering from a broken rib or two, the guy tried to kick me in the head. I rolled onto my left shoulder, grabbed his ankle, and yanked. Falling, he cried out again. I climbed up his prone body, throwing punches at anything flesh. I connected with half a dozen punches and got to my feet just in time to duck under a fist aimed at my head by Jumbo. The fact that he was still conscious meant that he would have made a good specimen for the sweet science. But he was raw, untrained.
    We traded blows for all of ninety seconds, me landing and him not. When it was over he’d lost a few teeth, broken his right hand against a brick wall, and had blood streaming from three cracks in his face.
    I stood back and gestured at the two men; the larger one was down on one knee and Shorty