The Nickel Boys - Colson Whitehead Page 0,35

white boys’ showers to pick his dates. “All these dirty old men got a club together.”

Elwood and Turner were hanging out on the gymnasium bleachers this afternoon. Griff sparred with Cherry, a mulatto who took up boxing as a matter of pedagogy, to teach others how not to speak about his white mother. He was quick and lithe and Griff clobbered him.

Catching Griff at his regimen was Cleveland’s favorite occupation those early days in December. Boys from the colored dormitories made the rounds, as well as white scouts from down the hill who wanted the skinny. Griff had been excused from his kitchen shift since Labor Day to train. It was a spectacle. Max kept him on an obscure diet of raw eggs and oats, and stored a jug of what he claimed was goat blood in the icebox. When the coach administered the doses, Griff swallowed the stuff with a lot of theater and mortified the heavy bag in revenge.

Turner had seen Axel fight during his first term at Nickel, two years prior. Axel was slow on his feet but as solid and abiding as an old stone bridge; he weathered what the skies decreed. Contrary to Griff’s mealy disposition, he was kind and protective of the smaller kids. “I wonder where he is now,” Turner said. “That nigger doesn’t have a lick of sense. Making things worse for himself, probably, wherever he is.” A Nickel tradition.

Cherry wavered and sank on his ass. Griff spat out his mouthpiece and bellowed. Black Mike stepped into the sparring ring and held Griff’s hand up like Lady Liberty’s torch.

“Do you think he’ll knock him down?” Elwood asked. The likely white contender was a boy named Big Chet, who came from a clan of swamp people and was a bit of a creature.

“Look at those arms, man,” Turner said. “Those things are pistons. Or smoked hams.”

To see Griff quiver with unspent energy after a match, two chucks unlacing his gloves like retainers, it was hard to imagine how the giant could lose. Which is why, two days later, Turner sat up in surprise when he heard Spencer tell Griff to take a dive.

Turner was napping in the warehouse loft, where he’d made a nest among crates of industrial scrubbing powder. None of the staff bugged him when he went alone into the big storage room on account of his work with Harper, which meant Turner had a getaway place. No supervisors, no students—just him, a pillow, an army blanket, and Harper’s transistor radio. He spent a couple of hours a week up there. It was like when he was tramping and didn’t care to know anybody and no one cared to know him. He’d had a few periods like that, when he was rootless and tumbled down the street like an old newspaper. The loft took him back.

The closing of the warehouse door woke him. Then came Griff’s dumb donkey voice: “What is it, Mr. Spencer, sir?”

“How’s that training coming along, Griff? Good old Max says you’re a natural.”

Turner frowned. Any time a white man asked you about yourself, they were about to fuck you over. Griff was so stupid he didn’t know what was happening. In class, the boy struggled over two plus three, like he didn’t know how many damned fingers he had on his hand. Some foolhardies in the schoolhouse laughed at him then and Griff stuck their heads into toilets, one by one over the next week.

Turner’s assessment was correct: Griff refused to grasp the reason for the secret meeting. Spencer expounded about the importance of the fight, the tradition of the December match. Then he hinted: Good sportsmanship means letting the other team win sometimes. He tried euphemism: It’s like when a tree branch has to bend so it doesn’t break. He appealed to fatalism: Sometimes it don’t work out, no matter how much you try. But Griff was too thick. Yes, sir…I suppose that’s right, Mr. Spencer…I believe that is the case, sir. Finally the superintendent told Griff that his black ass had to take a dive in the third round or else they’d take him out back.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Spencer,” Griff said. Up in the loft Turner couldn’t see Griff’s face, so he didn’t know if he understood. The boy had stones in his fists and rocks in his head.

Spencer ended with, “You know you can beat him. That’ll have to be enough.” He cleared his throat and said, “You come along, now,”