Pound for Pound by F. X. Toole Page A

the hand so he could fight. And in the years to come, more needles would follow.
    Chicky motioned Paco Cavazo off to one side at the San Ignacio. “You know my
abuelito
a long time, right?”
    “Yeah, hell yeah,” Paco said. He was short and athletically built, had a pencil-line mustache like the old-time movie actor Gilbert Roland. He still combed his dyed black hair in a
pachuco
ducktail that was thick with pomade. He liked Lone Star longnecks, but he had kept in shape through the years by training fighters. He’d been the muscle, Trini the brains. To Chicky, his yellow-brown eyes were from dinosaur times. “Me’n mybrother trained the Wolf here and in Houston, too. Almost got him the title.”
    “What went wrong with him?” Chicky asked.
    “Lots a things, you know, he got old, couldn’t do roadwork, that shit.”
    “Did he always drink?”
    Paco stepped back, looked at Chicky sideways.
“Chico, chico,
you know how we are.”
    “Not this Mexican,” Chicky said, pointing a finger at himself.
    “Ojo,”
Paco said, “watch it, here he comes.”
    Chicky looked up and saw Eloy weaving toward them. Chicky glanced at Paco, who was grinning as if he and Eloy were
hermanos de leche,
brothers in milk, like they were screwing the same woman. Chicky knew that, at this stage, Eloy could hardly find his dick to piss.
    Paco embraced Eloy, who then moved to embrace Trini.
    Trini said,
“Hola, carnal,”
hello old buddy.
    Eloy put on a show, got in a little dig. “Here we are again, the three Mousecateers.”
    Trini said, “Your kid’s been waiting for you, homes.”
    “Had some bidness with a big outfit about my spread,” Eloy said, thinking fast to come up with a plausible lie.
    “You packin in the farm, ése?” Paco asked, using a word pronounced like the English “essay” and meaning
that,
or
that one;
but when used by the
vatos, ése
means buddy, or pal, or homeboy.
    “Tal vez,
could be, but only if the price is right, like on TV,” Eloy replied, then laughed and tilted his hat to look prosperous. “They might want me to run one of their deals down around Rockport.”
    Chicky didn’t believe his grandfather, but he went along in order to scheme on his own. He said, “There’s good fishin down there, and soil’s richer’n the Bush family.”
    Paco said, “But not much boxin down there, ‘cept for Corpus or club fights in Laredo once in a while.”
    “I was thinkin the same thing,” said Eloy. “What say you boys takeover for me with Chicky? I know y’all eyeball him whenever he wins a tournament.”
    By now everyone knew Eloy was lying about selling his farm and working for someone else. But it was true that the Cavazos saw Chicky as a prospect.
    “How’ll I get to the gym?” Chicky asked.
    Eloy said, “You’ll be legal to drive Fresita in a couple of weeks, right?”
    Driving the pickup on his own made the deal especially sweet for Chicky, and everyone shook hands on it.
    “We’ll take care a him good,” Trini promised. “Down the line we’re puttin on our own tournament over Uvalde.”
    “Book it,” Eloy said.
    Chicky had to drive Eloy home.

Chapter 8
    C hicky missed the closeness he’d had training with Eloy. It was loyalty to his grandfather, rather than to the Cavazos, that kept Chicky training with them. He also felt trapped. Before the Cavazos deal, he had already decided to turn pro once he graduated from high school. Trini and Paco, for all their shady action, had over the years trained two boys from San Anto, and one from Nuevo Laredo, into world champions. They had the kind of juice with amateur officials and professional promoters Chicky would need, so he kept his mouth shut, partly out of respect for Eloy’s judgment. Chicky had plans—and he wasn’t quite ready to share all of them with his
abuelito.
    Education was important to Chicky. He was set on heading for College Station and graduating from Texas A & M. Like other local kids who had to work with their daddies,