SHORT STORIES: The Mighty Pelican

The Pelican came out, and the punters yelled. He used to brag that he flew like a bird in the ring; that’s why they gave him the name. The crowd was roaring drunk, and it was tense between him and me – though this was at odds with the gentle folk music that blared from speakers in the corner. As I meditated on this, The Pelican approached.

He clapped his gloves, and let his shoulder muscles ripple as Leonard Cohen crooned behind him. But the fight only mattered to him and me, I reminded myself. This evening meant fifty quid to us. This evening was a nasty cut on the lip, and then bed time. I looked to the bar, gaging the opinions of the shadowy customers. None of them would remember this fight.
“He’s a biggun, ain’t he?” said a man to his friend, nodding at The Pelican.
“Big for a middleweight, aye,” the friend replied.
I looked back at The Pelican, thumping his chest, and watched his pectorals clench and unclench behind the gloves. His lip was working above his gumshield, and it glistened with spit.

Now his eyes caught me. They were hollowed back in his head under the dim light, clinging to emaciated flesh, and they fixed me in place like Medusa’s pupils.
Under the ropes he swung. His sternocleidomastoids leapt out as he arched. I shifted doggedly, fulfilling the romantic image of the hardy boxer in my mind.

Then we were touching gloves and moving apart. He danced for the punters, and they roared again in heaves. He was taller, and the revolutions of his arms showed off their length. The Pelican hit me one way, and then the next, and I reached blindly for his jaw, but couldn’t find it in the dark. Then we backed off, and his right eye raked me, looking for a cut to exploit. Then I was pummeled, and I clenched my abdominals in protest. I saw the whites of his eyes as they flashed across my vision in a streak.

He was only thinking about the art now; the art of moving like an animal, fixing me in the gut. But then I was a creature, and rounded my shoulders– like a classical statue; like Atlas under the sky, I felt my fingers all at once. They were powerful things. My fingers crashed like a pianist’s on ivory, and fell like Pygmalion’s on a breast, and knew their collective power. He bled, and it looked like it burned.
I realised that I was cut, as the blood rushed over my face.
“Find those rivets, and those harsh valleys of my complexion,” I urged the blood, “make me a terrifying creature.”
“Ha! See big Albert up there!” cawed gentle Frank.
“I hear the thunder up there,” affirmed Matthew, who was blind but still came every night.

Then I was like Hercules. Steam poured off my shoulders, and I jumped up off the stool, ready for The Pelican. His chin was lolling and rested for a second on his chest, where sweat flowed freely. He was crumpled, and I noted that his pectorals looked smaller than I’d thought them.
Then we burst out like greyhounds from kennels; like bulls from bucking chutes, and met in the middle.

We sat over the table from one another, and said nothing for a while. It was some time later, and I had won under dubious circumstances. The Pelican rubbed vinegar from the corner of his mouth and moved into the candle’s sphere of influence.
“Good fight, that,” he said, blinking rapidly in the light’s glare.
“It were an odd bout,” I replied, watching the punters file out. No doubt, we were a funny sight– the Pelican sported a gash above an eyebrow, and must have had bruised ribs. Comparatively, I had come off much the better, though my face was mottled blue. We were hunched in our chairs, battered.
“So much for fighting fair, I suppose,” the Pelican said, finally.
“Eh? Didn’t I say I’d fight fair?” I shot back.
A vein jumped in my neck.
The Pelican’s sternocleidomastoids were firing up. They were colossal things, like hills running up his neck.
“You said you would, aye. But you didn’t. We said beforehand that we’d have no cheeky business, just plain boxing– we aren’t bloody professionals, Albert. There’s no need for it.”
The Pelican was getting riled, and so was I. He was aware of my usual japes, but I hadn’t pulled anything in the ring – I liked to think we were friends. Elvis echoed in the stagnant room, punctuating the quiet. Steam poured from our fish and chips, and the salt stung us both in our cracked lips. Chairs thumped methodically when the busboy propped them on tables. It was closing time.

The Pelican didn’t bother to hold the door for me. He stalked out into the darkness, fuming. I’d gone through the pub’s inner door, and was about to push the outer, when I stopped. Was The Pelican waiting out there? I stared through the cloudy panes, and glimpsed Herculean shoulders tensed by the fence in the thicket.

I pushed the door, and waited in the half-cold for a noise. I heard the sound of a kick, and a shard of fence fell onto the path. There was huffing, and words of fury were spat. He lumbered out next to the shard and his stare was vehement. Then he charged.

The Pelican had great fury, and his hands flew faster than the broken wind. I could not find my fury, for I had left it in the ring, and now The Pelican had the greater incentive. He struck me one way and then the next, and I thought I could hear the punters roar in icy mania at the stage. To the birds, nearly sleeping, we were in the ring; to the grass, shivering forever, we were in the ring; and to the deep river, which coursed with fervour equal to ours, we were in the ring.

I was felled and came to rest on some brambles. Their multitude softened the fall, like a bed of nails rather than one. I watched the far-off light from the pub, until The Pelican blotted it out. He crouched, as if to whisper some crazed threat in my ear, but I smote him with my boot and he staggered like some lost Hamlet, dying in the dirt.

The glen into which we had crumbled closed in on me – my mind was motioning to depart. I clawed up the tree behind me, and although my legs were sore my back made up for it. I imagined the coils of sinew, driving in deep ravines and high ridges up my spine, and felt the fear of the Pelican reflect onto them.

I turned to behold him, broken in the night. The whites of his eyes flashed like a camera lens: to leaves, to the black thicket, to any swift escape. He looked at me then, when he realised that he was doomed.
“Albert, call it a night – I’d have called it a night, if it was you down here,” he called, not daring to look at me. I said nothing, for I needn’t have spoken – the man wouldn’t find quarrel with me again. The spiked branches and soft leaves caved under my feet as I left. I emerged, saw the pub, and knew it was miles to the barracks again. It was miles.

None of the boys said anything to me, when I was back in the dorm. I wondered why, but discerned that fury was still painted on my face. I climbed into bed, kept my eyes downturned, and didn’t bother to watch the door.

My arms were clamped together, and my muscles were tight. I could feel every one of them with heightened sensation. Perhaps my tension had stilled the room, but at least I could think peacefully. Ash fell onto my shirt from a cigarette that clung to my lips – my chest rose up and down, and I expected to feel a stab of heat from the ash but none came. Through the window ahead of me I could see the river. It coursed with black ferocity in the night and spewed in the gusts. There was a rock, slanting with the river, which threw up white froth like a whale’s blowhole.

But I was recalled from my thoughts: there was a disturbance in the room. Blankets rustled in the corner bed, and from within came a groan of discomfort. The boys and I watched the corner in silence, and the shift of bedclothes came again. The Pelican sat up – I hadn’t clocked his return. He was a picture of grey, with a grizzled face after his journey back – he looked more weathered now than he had before the fight. He watched me then, but not with hate or anything of the like. The mind of a fighter is a confused thing. When to fight? When not to? It was hard to say whether an apology was on the horizon or another punch-up. I saw in my periphery that he stared for some time.

Was that a man I saw through the window, climbing out the water? It was always too dangerous for anyone to swim in the river, so I could scarcely believe it. The harsh light on the boathouse caught his shock-white clothing. He slid onto the bank like a true amphibian, and stalked past any watchers peeking from the boathouse. I marvelled at his own languid look: his shoulder rolled, his wrists flicked, and his ankles clicked in his stride. ‘I want to learn from that man,’ thought I, ‘and use his eel-like movements in the ring.’
He was gone though, leaving a faint white vapour in the air. The Pelican had seen him too, and asked in fright whether he was alone in that. None of the men answered, perhaps thinking his description fanciful. I caught his eye and nodded. The Pelican stood, and came to my bed. He sat by the bedpost, and on his shoulders I saw the boxer’s sweat – I felt it too.

The door opened. I did not know whether it was a coincidence that the wind blew stronger, but a gale carried the man in white. Around him, the reflections from the suit ebbed at the shadows – the Pelican and I now thought the same thing. Ghost.
As he moved closer towards us, I saw his ashen face. His cheeks sank like a cliff’s beaten caves, and his mouth formed a cracked ‘o’ of eternal fatigue. His feet made no sound on the wood – the only noises the Pelican and I made out were the rustle of sheets as he entered the neighbouring bed.
He turned to face us, shifting uncomfortably, and we watched in apprehension. None of the other boys paid attention. He had come for The Pelican and me only. The ‘o’ widened, and we braced for a howl of hellish origin.
“The suit looks funny, I know,” he remarked offhandedly.
The Pelican and I were shocked out of our tension, and the bed snickered as we slumped to rest.
“The Truculent’s acting up,” the man continued, “that’s why we’re down here. They needed divers to check it over. It’ll set off in a few hours though – all’s fine.”
So he was a diver. This closure placated me, but The Pelican started.
“How d’you mean she’s ‘acting up’?” he shot back, “I’m bloody well stationed on that sub!”
“Oil leak – it’s easily dealt with, mind,” replied the man.
The Pelican leant back against the bedpost.
“Alright, alright,” he said.

The bell rang at dawn. The Pelican had moved back to his corner earlier on, and I saw him stand unconsciously. He left, and I thought nothing of it. I’d see him that evening for another fight, no doubt. He passed the other men like a parody of Florence Nightingale, and his duffel bag knocked the doorframe on the way out.
The diver was restless. His breathing told me that he was awake, and his head was turned to the window ahead of him, in which the sky’s clouds had gained colour, and the river cut through like a wound.

Then the diver sat up and lit a cigarette. Was he saying something? Was he talking to himself? He motioned subconsciously with his hands, and his eyes glazed as though he was picturing some machinery. I tried to make out his words, but couldn’t hear so I shifted and sat on the side of my bed to face him.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
He stopped motioning, and turned on the lamp beside him.
“That submarine is getting on my nerves,” he confessed.
“But you fixed the leak?” I replied, thinking of The Pelican, cramped into some impossible space with dial boards and monitors obstructing an escape route. Then I thought of the water flooding in, and the monitors flickering and fizzling out sequentially. Then I pictured his face, as he felt the first wetness on his neck. The muscles of no man could force their way from within that cage. His sternocleidomastoids tensed in my mind, and then relaxed as the water engulfed him.

A cry was raised from the river. It came shrilly from the distance, and the men around me raised stiff necks from their beds – they were faceless without light, yet undoubtedly bemused. We all scrambled, throwing on trousers and boots, and followed the bell’s new call. The boathouse was lit and we lugged rope to the boats. They were loaded, with one man at the bow of each. Those men carried torches, and peered across the water’s edge for the bad news. I leapt into one with some men I knew, and forgot my bruises, which The Pelican and his fury had raised.

I clenched the boat, and felt the river lap onto my toes in the footwell. There were two shadows downstream: a boat, and a great pillar that stuck out, perpendicular to the torrent. They had collided, and fire fought water on the surface. Some men crawled away from it like rats. I could see them on the banks – either huddled, or illuminated by the light. Their breath was climbing visibly upwards with the steam from their bodies. The pillar sank, and sank gradually, like a doomed Venetian building.

There were shouts from the foremost boat. It was beating on faster than all the others, and I saw the wind-bitten diver at its bow, forcing the rowers on with harsh tones. They came to the collision, and the torch flew back over his shoulder into the lap of another man. The diver donned his scuba helmet, its windows reflecting the carnage, and raised his arms together. He leapt in a serene dive, like a dolphin from the hand of Bacchus, and disappeared in the cold current. Then I saw forearms beat at the surface as though it was dough, and white trousers flash above and below.

I scanned the men on the muddy banks. Those islands were cold, and reeds made them hard to reach by boat. I told the men to steer us close to the side, while squinting at the drenched faces. I didn’t look down, and when I felt the reeds tickle my knee I waded ashore.

The Pelican, The Pelican: Where was he? These men had escaped, so I took it that he had as well. I climbed to the top of the knoll, and ignored the clamouring men. He had to be up there, his shoulders heaving with exertion, but still with warm blood beneath them. I walked along the low ridge, but there was neither sight nor sound of him. It seemed inconceivable that he could be in the sub, which had disappeared by then, but something caught my eye.

I stumbled down in the mud and fell next to a body by the reeds, right by the water. Hercules had fallen, and here was my proof. His bruises from the fight were covered by mud, and his fingers were formed into claws that reached for the hilltop.
Then, out of nowhere, there were inky wings over the reeds. The bird’s beak was long, its neck arched over, and its wings’ feathers were black. It dropped to inspect the man in the mud, shuffling comically along his back. Finding nothing of note, the bird upped and left. It seemed no more than a blip in its journey.

Now there were larger boats arriving to clear up. Men on the bank filed along a makeshift wooden path, which wound through the marshy ground and up a gangplank. I didn’t want to leave The Pelican just yet, and I patted his sodden back, remembering the dance in the ring.

The man in white, the diver, emerged. He fought the flow of wet sailors, and reached the shore. He walked around and looked at the faces, no doubt thinking it was his fault. I couldn’t call out to tell him he was wrong, I couldn’t make a sound in the quiet. The diver looked up and saw me; he caught sight of the man by my side. He turned and climbed the gangplank.