Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine

by Thom Jones

Genres: Short Stories

Synopsis

The author's world encompasses dilapidated fight arenas, state mental hospitals & chaotic emergency rooms. The inhabitants are his brilliantly etched characters, who battle desperately against fate in a game of life they cannot win but dare not lose. As we approach the end of the century & the millennium, no one writes better or more vividly than Jones does about the personal, private apocalypses we all face in our darkest moments. In one story, a Vietnam vet, a Recon Marine, swims alone across the English Channel, the Straits of Gibraltar, & the Bosporus to maintain "the edge" that kept him alive in wartime - & that is all he now has left. In another, a brilliant doctor verges on a breakdown. In the title story, a young amateur fighter stoically endures repetitive beatings because he knows the world of boxing shields & protects him from the even crueler world outside of the ring. A number of these stories have appeared in different forms in the New Yorker, Playboy, & Esquire.

Release date: November 29, 2009

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 320

Sample

Praise for Thom Jones’s


“This might be Jones’s best work yet, which is saying something, since The Pugilist at Rest was a National Book Award finalist…. The stories snap and crackle like high-tension wires.”


—William Porter, Denver Post

“Darkly comic short stories composed of fiery, sometimes shockingly original language…. Jones’s characters bristle with dreams
and fall down from the great heights they’ve constructed in their own warped imaginations…. Jones has his thumb on the pulse
of what it means to be a vulnerable, passionately confused man of our time.”


—Jane McCafferty, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“What do you get when you blend morbid rock-and-roll, existential philosophy and men and women on slap-happy antidepressants?
You get a Thom Jones short story—a raw, adrenalized chunk of conflicted emotion and barely suppressed rage. Six times out
of ten these literary cocktails are potent enough to leave you feeling, like so many of Jones’s characters, ecstatic and suicidal
at the same instant.… A sub-par Thom Jones story has more juice, and more hard-won clarity, than a first-rate one by almost
anybody else.”


—Dwight Garner, New York Times Book Review

“True to form as one of literature’s practicing wild men of prose, Thom Jones delivers a third collection that is a nutty
perfection of the weird and the wasted, done to wondrous effect…. Jones is a brilliant risk taker whose stories reward you
with their ornery, out-there energy.”


—Elle

“Jones is a true poet of the scurrilous, creator of his own harrowing and uproarious brand of bedlam, and he repeatedly relishes
the spark of defiance that can be seen sputtering in almost any human wreckage…. Jones’s genius is to energize you with his
version of hell.… In Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine, that genius is served up in its purest form yet.”


—Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times


“Not only a good read but an important piece of work.… In language at once concrete and lyrical, [ones lays out the cruelty,
devastation, and soul-death of men who have forsaken compassion…. This unsentimental book never forgets the grain of human
spirit that takes tenacious hold and can sprout up anywhere…. The effect of this collection is symphonic. These stories gather
momentum as the book rolls on.”


—Emily Carter, Minneapolis Star Tribune

“The most exciting short fiction writer to emerge in the 1990s…. Jones has a resume—boxer, ad writer, janitor—that gives his
stories a gritty authenticity.”


—Judith Wynn, Boston Herald

“Thom Jones’s third collection focuses on the lives of people who fall through the cracks in the unforgiving structure of
our society. They might appear to be fringe characters, but often they’re closer to us than we’d like to think.”


—Peter Nichols, San Francisco Chronicle

“Jones is mining electrifying material…. His writing is frighteningly simple and direct.”

—Cameron McWhirter, Detroit News/Free Press

“A lusty exploration of ‘desperate souls, hopeless and broken.’… The best stories in Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine map the nature of downward spirals, and invite us to question the very tentative nature of sanity.”


—Lisa Zeidner, Philadelphia Inquirer

“Razor-edged…. Portraits drawn with such sly humor and wicked intent that the characters draw you in even as they repel you.”

—Amy Driscoll, Miami Herald

“The Schopenhauer-quoting Jones understands pain. Reading him is like watching a horse race and waiting for the rider to get
thrown, maybe trampled, but at least thrown. It’s not if but when.”


—Ed Gray, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

“Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine has generated the best reviews of Jones’s career. His voice is like a run through the jungle—wild.”


—Tom Grimes, Austin American-Statesman

AS SOON AS the turquoise blue Impala pulled in the driveway, Kid Dynamite was out of the backseat, across the lawn, into the house,
and dancing out of his wool pants and tie as he vaulted up to his room. Sunday services at St. Mark’s Lutheran, when communion
was offered, were very long affairs. Sit down, get up, sit down again; up-and-down, down-and-up in a flesh-eating wool suit
as voracious as a blanket of South American army ants. Out in the car, Cancer Frank had barely turned off the ignition switch.
Kid Dynamite was already in his gray cotton sweatpants and boxing shoes. Church, man! If the boredom didn’t kill you, the
everlasting sermon could have you snoring in a bolt upright position. Add to that six or seven hymns where otherwise harmless
old ladies howled like they were hell-bent on shattering more than nerves—they were out to break celestial crystal. So were
the small babies who screamed protest against the stagnant oxygen-deficient air
and the stupefaction of body heat. What a relief to be done with it. The only reason he consented to go at all was for the
sake of his grandmother, Mag.


As Kid Dynamite carefully taped his hands in his bedroom, he heard Cancer Frank’s heavy wing tips scraping up the front steps.
There was the snap of his stepfather’s Zippo and the clatter of an ashtray being placed on the piano. In his gray sharkskin
and brown felt snap-brim, with a Pall Mall draped from his lips Cancer Frank was the Hoagy Carmichael of Aurora, Illinois.
Kid Dynamite laughed to himself thinking that C.F. endured the services in nicotine withdrawal—served the chump right, too!
As soon as his hands were wrapped, Kid Dynamite slipped a hooded sweatshirt over his head and was down the back stairs and
out of the house. Out. Clean. Gone.


Kid Dynamite stepped through the wet grass in his boxing shoes, threw his shoulder into the side door of the garage, and stepped
inside. It was cold and damp, smelling of musk. He snapped on his transistor radio. WLS was running a shit-load of Sunday
advertisements cheerfully promulgating the American life of living death. Kid Dynamite peered out the window where he spotted
his mother, “the Driver,” still sitting in the car preening in the rearview mirror. For the Driver (one trip to the Buy Right
with her behind the wheel and you would get down on your knees and pray), church services were just another place, as all places were to her, where you went to show
off your good looks and your latest outfit.


Kid Dynamite slipped on his bag gloves. It was early March and the wind was blowing hard. It had been raining off and on.
Three of the garage windows were broken and the roof leaked, but the floor was made of smooth wooden
planks. As Kid Dynamite did some side twists to limber up, he looked through the window again and saw his mother finally get
out of the Chevy and walk into the house where there were bigger mirrors. He wondered what she had been thinking looking in
that rearview. “How did I go over today?” No doubt.


Kid Dynamite spent a lot of time in front of a mirror himself, but only to examine his body alignment and his punching form.
He was himself a good-looking young man but a realigned nose, a little scar tissue beneath the brows, and a cauliflower ear
were beginning to make any comparisons with the Greek gods unlikely. Poker-faced, he threw a jab at the double-ended bolo
bag and gave it a quick head slip when it bounced back. Slipping punches was the most accomplished means a boxer could employ
to protect his face but also the riskiest. Kid Dynamite tattooed the bag and continued slipping punches until he began to
sweat. Then he started moving in and out on the bag—started using his legs. In another few moments he was gliding around the
greasy floor planks, the air so cold he could see his breath. Shadow boxing, he worked his legs, moving about the floor in
a bob-and-weave style, watching himself in variously positioned mirrors. His Sunday afternoon workouts belonged to him alone
and he used them to cover contingencies that had been skipped over in his regular gymnasium workouts. The old man once told
him, “There are at least a thousand things that can go wrong in a fight, and how many of them can you think of—fifty?” As
with most fighters, Kid Dynamite’s things going wrong invariably involved the problem of fear. As the old man had said, “Control your fear and you are cooking with gas, baby.”


At 147 pounds, Kid Dynamite fought as a welterweight. He had recently advanced through the semifinals in the open class of
the Chicago Golden Gloves, but made the finals only just barely. Two of these victories were split decisions. In his last
fight on Friday, he suffered a slight cut under the left eye. The opponent had pushed him to the limit and he knew that from
here on in the competition would get much rougher. Four of the boxers from the Steel-workers’ Hall had made it to the finals.
They were all sky high that night, driving back to Aurora on the Eisenhower Freeway in Juan’s junky-ass Cadillac. But after
Juan dropped Kid Dynamite off and he came into the house with his gym bag, Cancer Frank was lying on the couch watching TV
and didn’t bother to even look up at his stepson. The Driver was already in bed and it was too late to call his girlfriend,
Melanie. So he went upstairs and woke up the Driver. “I won. I got him good,” he said.


The Driver’s face was covered in a luminescent green mask. “Did you knock him out?” she said wearily. There was a bath towel
on the Driver’s pillow and flecks of cracked green paste dropped from her face as she spoke.


“Jesus. The creature from the Green Bog,” Kid Dynamite said.

“It’s a wrinkle mask. Did you knock him out or what?”

“My guy? No, I won on points. Chubby knocked his guy out. I won on points. Cuba and Eloise Greene won.”

“What about your homework?” she said.

“What about it? It’s Friday night. Man, I was feeling so right tonight. It was the best thing. I’m going to win the tournament,” Kid
Dynamite said.


“You’re just like your father and where is he now? He’s in
the nuthouse. You’ve got to study. You’ve got geometry problems.”


“I’m talking to a lima bean. Screw geometry. When was the last time you had to whip out a slide rule to solve one of life’s
problems?”


“You hang out with those lowlife boxers and you act crude. What will you do with your life? How can you hang out with such
scrums?”


“They’re my friends. Jesus! I come in here feeling great. Can’t you just say, ‘Good, I’m glad you won. You’ve made me a happy
lima bean.’ Is that too much to ask?”


The Driver stuck her hand out groping for the alarm clock. “I’ve got to get up at the crack of dawn, what time is it?” she
said.


“Midnight. I’m going to take an aspirin. I’ve got a headache. Shit!”

As he left the bedroom his mother said, “I don’t want to take the wind out of your sails, but you better pass or you’ll end
up in the gutter.”


Kid Dynamite stepped into the bathroom and closed the door. She said, “I am glad you won. But don’t stay up all night doing push-ups; I need quiet. My nerves are shot.”


He didn’t bother to reply. Instead he leaned against the sink and examined the cut under his eye in the medicine cabinet mirror.
It wasn’t that bad, but the tissue under his eye was swollen and tender. A couple of jabs, one good solid punch could easily
burst it open. He went downstairs and got an ice cube, passing Cancer Frank on the stairs. Neither uttered a word in passing.
Kid Dynamite wondered if C.F. even knew he was fighting. Suddenly the elation of reaching the finals returned to him full
blown. His recent win was not
merely a stay of execution. This time, one way or another, he would take it all the way. Back in bed he let the ice melt over
his eye, feeling the water roll down his neck onto the pillow. He could hear Cancer Frank talking to the Driver. “He’ll never
get past the next round. He drew Louie Reine, the redhead that nailed him last year. It was three days soaking in Epsom salts
after that—”


“Who knows,” his mother said. “Maybe he’s better now, he’s bigger. He sure thinks he’s going to win,” the Driver said.

Cancer Frank said, “Not even if you tied one of Reine’s hands behind his back does he win.”

Kid Dynamite waited in the silence of the night for this defense attorney to speak up for him. For a long time there was nothing,
then came the familiar animal sounds. Christ! The two of them were having sex in spite of her stiff green wrinkle mask. Kid
Dynamite rolled over on his stomach, covering his head with a pillow, but it was useless. He felt compelled to listen. When it was over he heard light feet squeaking on the linoleum tile, followed by intensive Listerine gargling,
a hard scouring toothbrush, then footsteps back to the bed. Next Cancer Frank’s heavier feet could be heard padding into the
bathroom. Kid Dynamite heard his stepfather take a long horse piss and do some Listerine gargling of his own. In a moment
he was back in the master bedroom where body positions were assumed, covers were adjusted, and things finally became quiet.
Then he heard the Driver say, “I don’t know. He was in the paper again, fifteen in a row. Knocking them out left and right.”


Cancer Frank spoke matter-of-factly, without rancor or malice. He said, “Those were prelims. Kids that don’t know
how to fight. This other fighter, Reine, has his number. The kid is scared. He isn’t going to win. He’ll blow it.”


Kid Dynamite was suddenly up on the edge of the bed in a rage. He pounded his fists on the tops of his thighs. Through clenched
teeth he said, “You don’t know shit!”

Cancer Frank heard him and said, “Hey!” The voice that had so terrorized Kid Dynamite for so much of his life stabbed him
now like a punch to the solar plexus. Stepfather or no, the man was supposed to guide and encourage him, not run him down
and disparage his every move. Cancer Frank was the original and main source of his travail in the world thus far. Kid Dynamite
imagined him poised up in bed next to his mother. C.F. said, “Watch your goddamn mouth or I’m coming in there!”


Kid Dynamite got up and crossed the hallway to the master bedroom saying, “Well, come on then, you son of a bitch. If you
want some, come on!”


The Driver leaped out of bed, rushed to the door, and locked it with a skeleton key just before he got there. “God! I knew
this was going to happen.”


Kid Dynamite grabbed the door handle and shook it. Then he began pounding the door with the balls of his fists. His hands
were already sore from the tournament. This only intensified his rage. He threw his hip and shoulder against the door. It
was an old door. Solid oak. “I’ll knock down the wall,” he screamed. “I’ll kill that cocksuckerl”

The Driver’s voice was a vicious rasp, “You get the hell out of this house!”

In the middle of a coughing spasm, Cancer Frank choked out the words, “Call the police!”

Kid Dynamite stood at the door and listened to his step
father cough. From the sound of it, Kid Dynamite knew he was overdramatizing. He shouted, “Go ahead, call them, you car-selling
motherfucker. I hope you die!”

He gave the door a last thump and went back to his bedroom where he dropped to the floor and pumped off two hundred push-ups.
He knew the police would not be called. But someone would be brought in to straighten him out. Uncle Mikey, a seriously bad
guy and a notorious overreactor. Since the onset of Frank’s disease, Uncle Mikey had more than once dragged his nephew out
of bed, kicking his ass all the way down to the basement. He came early, too, when the kid was most vulnerable. He was like
some Eastern European goon squad in that regard. It would be better if the police were called—better they than Mikey.


Kid Dynamite lay awake all night in rage and anticipation. Mikey didn’t show up until noon. He was wearing a suit and tie,
an indication there would be no violence. At forty, the former heavyweight champion of the Seventh Army looked like he could
still fight at the drop of a hat. Unlike his brother, Kid Dynamite’s old man, Mikey did not become a professional fighter;
he was too smart for that. Instead he went into sales and had become the most materially successful member of the family.
As far back as Kid Dynamite could remember, Mikey had the best cars, houses, clothes—the best of everything. It was Mikey,
however, who had introduced Cancer Frank to his mother, and the kid’s admiration for him was severely mitigated by that factor.
In his suit and tie, on an early Saturday afternoon, Mikey was very solemn. Kid Dynamite knew grave matters would be discussed
and threats would be issued. Compromises and concessions would be few.


After shooting the bull with C.F. and the Driver, Mikey politely invited Kid Dynamite for a drive in his new Mercedes convertible.
It was a nice car and Mikey was proud of it. He talked about the virtues of German engineering as he took the river road and
drove south toward Oswego. Kid Dynamite fell into a pout and nothing was said for a few miles. Then Mikey looked over at him
with mounting irritation and said, “What the fuck is the matter with you? Why are you giving Frank such a hard time? He has
cancer, for Chrissakes. What are you busting his balls for?”


Kid Dynamite looked straight ahead and said nothing. His body was coiled to dodge a side-arm blow, but better that than surrender
his pride.


Mikey looked over and said, “I know what it is. It’s Mag—a goddamn grandmother. She’s been poisoning your mind against him,
hasn’t she?”


Kid Dynamite kept his eyes straight ahead. “No. She doesn’t poison anybody. In fact, she pays Frank’s bills,” he said.

“Don’t get sarcastic with me!” Mikey said. “I’ll pull over and give it to you right now, you stupid little fuck!”

Kid Dynamite removed the wise-ass from his voice and said, “It’s true. She pays.”

Mikey shook his head and sighed. He removed his Italian sunglasses and threw them on the dashboard so he could rub the bridge
of his nose. “Okay, I’m thinking… let me think. You’re in over your head in this boxing tournament. ‘Hard’ Reine is going
to fall all over you, is that it? I saw a piece about this motherfucker in the Sun Times. The same guy that got you last year. He ran over you like a freight train.”


Kid Dynamite was sullen. “I’m better now. But how would you know. I haven’t seen you at any of the fights. Personally, I’d
rather be me than him. In fact, I feel sorry for the guy. Frank was out of line badmouthing me. It wasn’t called for. That’s what the whole beef is about. I don’t know
what they told you, but I didn’t do anything except raise my voice a little.”


“Raise your voice a little?” Mikey said. He pulled the car over to a gravel culvert where two men in bib overalls were fishing with stink bait. Kid Dynamite
braced himself as Mikey switched off the engine. The big man took a deep breath and exhaled. Nephew and uncle sat watching
the river for a moment. Each of the fishermen had a can of Budweiser in hand. “The beer drinker’s stance” Mikey said. “They always stand that way. Isn’t that something?”


“Nothing in there but carp and bullheads. How can you call that fun?” Kid Dynamite said. “They ought to get off their asses
and do something more active. You can buy fucking fish.”


Mikey laughed, “The problem I’m having here is that I like you. You act like a spoiled little brat. No harm in that. I’m trying to get past that so I can help out. As troublemakers go, you’re just a pissant. I was worse. Shit. There was a depression. It was different.
It took the law of the fist to salvage me. Is it the same with you? I treat you decently, things are okay for a while and
then you start in on him. Look,” Mikey said, pointing his finger in the kid’s face. “I’m on your side on this one. But you
can’t terrorize him in his own home. You scared the fucking shit out of him.”


“I’m not a scary person,” Kid Dynamite said. “I’m mild-mannered as all hell.”

Mikey laughed again. He reached over and clapped his nephew on the shoulder. “Loosen up, kiddo. You’re tighter than a drum.”

Kid Dynamite shrugged. “I’ll win the fight. I trained. I’m in shape. Once we start exchanging punches, I’ll know what to do.”

“Your dad had balls. He was half my size and would take on anyone. But the thing that makes you good in the ring is the very
thing that makes life outside the gym impossible. I was hoping you would end up more like myself than your crazy father.”
The glare of the sun bounced off the river, and Kid Dynamite used his hands for an eyeshade. Mikey replaced his sunglasses
and said, ‘You’re sure Mag hasn’t been ragging on Frank?”


“Yeah, I’m sure. She knows he’s sick. She doesn’t rag on him. In her way, she’s trying to help him.”

“He’s dying! And he’s cracking up a little bit, too. I mean, why else would he be going to church three times a week. Would you like to
walk in those shoes?”


“Fuckin’ wing tips, not me,” Kid Dynamite said. “I don’t think he’s going to die, either. Two packs a day. The two of them
are screwing night and day—”


Mikey spoke abruptly, “You call off the dogs, okay? I don’t want to hear the piss and moan.”

Kid Dynamite shrugged. “They fuck like animals; it’s disgusting; I got to hear it—”

Mikey raised his hand like a stop sign. “I don’t want the ‘wah wah, boo hoo.’ Confine your violence to the ring or you’re
going to end up in the bughouse, like your father, a paranoid freak. The world is not that bad a place.”


Kid Dynamite turned his palms up in exasperation. “I’m
not a violent person. I’m a shy person. What do I do? I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I work. I help around the house. You don’t see my name on the arrest reports. I’m still a virgin. I don’t even jack off. Fuck, I’m a super
guy. The only black marks against me are that I flunked geometry three times in a row and I’ve got a filthy mouth. You gonna
come and see the fight? I’m going to pretend this guy is Frank and I’m going to kick ass!”


Mikey patted his nephew on the cheek just a little too hard. He laughed and said, “All right, kiddo. In the meantime, stay
out of his way for a while.”


“Serious, Uncle Mikey! Are you coming to the fight?”

“I’ll be at the fight. If you don’t kick the guy’s ass and make it worth my while, I’ll be coming after you when it’s over.
Deal?”


“Hey! I’ll kick his ass all right.”

Mikey laughed at this and exchanged seats with his nephew. South of Oswego, Kid Dynamite found a straightaway and got the
Mercedes up to 130 mph. It didn’t seem as if the car was doing more than sixty. “German engineering,” Uncle Mikey said. “Hard
work, attention to detail, and a willpower that never quits.” He gave his nephew a punch on the shoulder and said, “You’re
lucky to be a German. Who knows, someday you might conquer the world.”


IN SPITE OF the cold garage, Kid Dynamite quickly broke into a full sweat. After the assault of advertisements, Dick Clark popped on
the air with “Big Girls Don’t Cry” by the Four Seasons and then Paul Revere and the Raiders. Kid Dynamite expected a full
day of “suck” radio and he was getting it. Still, any music was better than nothing. The kid was
working hard now, gliding around the floor with his hands carried high at the sides of his head and his chin tucked down.
The plank floor creaked as he moved in and out on the bolo bag. It rebounded with such speed and velocity and from so many
unexpected directions that he had to concentrate intently to avoid having it slap him in the face. He did flunk geometry and
that was ironic. Boxing acumen involved calculating angles. The angles of the ring, Kid Dynamite understood perfectly. He
would show Louis Reine angles aplenty.


Kid Dynamite had boxed him beautifully for two rounds the year before. He had fast hands and could hit Reine at will. Listening
to Lolo was the mistake on that one. Reine was discouraged and out of gas after the second round. Lolo told Kid Dynamite to
stay on the outside and box his opponent, “Take this one on points.” So he followed the advice and boxed at long range. Then
as Reine recovered his wind, Kid Dynamite got trapped on the ropes, where Reine went to work on his body. As soon as Kid Dynamite
dropped his elbow to cover his liver, he got clocked along the jaw and after that it was essentially over.


This year Kid Dynamite was in shape, but he didn’t actually have any better plan for Reine than before. He wasn’t going to
slug with him, he was going to give him angles and box. He was the superior boxer, and he was stronger than he had been the
year before, if he saw a clear shot he would tee off, but he definitely wasn’t going to go in trading. Although Kid Dynamite
had garned a small notice on the Beacons sports page, as his Uncle Mikey had said, Louis Reine was touted in the Chicago Sun Times as the premier fighter of the tournament. At eighteen, he had won forty-two fights
and lost none. He had been fighting stiffer competition from the South Side and the paper said he was likely to go all the
way to the Nationals.


Kid Dynamite had more fights than Reine but had suffered, in all, seventeen losses in CYO, AAU, and Golden Gloves competition.
He had also got his ass kicked in a half-dozen street fights. He had been knocked cold three times, hospitalized twice. His
family doctor prevailed upon his mother to make him quit after the loss in the finals the year before. But Kid Dynamite had
had the fight with Reine in the very palm of his hand and he knew it. . . .