The Devil Train had, indeed, arrived. Gans played his joker’s tune on the ancient swivel bag, on its thirty-second bladder by now, if his mind was still the gear inventory tracker it had once been.

J-bar was playing at being a man, stepping up quite respectably to the government men—and even a woman, a fine black vixen of the light and lovely variety with the big beguiling eyes he had once, in his youth, been unable to resist. Jones, unable to conceal her lesbianic proclivities, gawked with unseemly thirst at the woman who might once have graced the cover of JET but was now an agent of evil, the Devil’s little ho.

He stalked over to Jones as the room became silent with his issuing forth from the well-oiled door to the sanctuary above, with eyes only on this misguided child who had saved him from two bums in an alley—a fact that would forever color his regard for her. It was a good thing he was not long for this world, for the weight of such a debt to a woman of such scrambled mind might unhinge him, especially as he attempted to apply the long out of vogue precepts of fatherhood to her.

Gans yet pattered like the jack of all boxers on the bag as J-bar lost his composure and the entire coven of devils looked at the meat-hung shade of Akbar Qama stalk up to the dumbfounded Lesbo Jones, who gawked open mouthed at the beautiful traitress, and hissed in her ear, “Girl, conceal your fool thirst for that succubus. Carry yourself in a dignified manner. Prepare two buckets.”

As if released from a trance, Jones’ face cleared and she began gathering the bucket’s, soaking the sponges, selecting two towels—soon to be immersed in the minutia of corner work.

Before him stood the black-eyed form of that James Bond-looking White Devil, Noble and four lesser fiends, crowded about J-bar, who had earned a place among men and in the Paradise that Poet wished he could believe in. J-bar blinked twice at him with both eyes, the signal that two more government devils waited outside, most probably guarding the government vehicles.

Poet stopped before them, placed a hand on J-bar’s shoulder and said softly, “Thank you for greeting our guests. Now go and see to wrapping Gans’ hands. He’s papping the jack ball again with nothing to save his pretty knuckles. He will be sparring tonight.

J-bar swallowed hard, shedding the responsibility of hosting five evil adults like a heavy coat of lies as he moved off to his appointed tasks. Mister Noble then extended his hand and he and Poet shook firmly, the broken bones grinding, the swollen tissue giving the impression of strength. Pain, however, was gulfs away, suffered by some lesser, nearly forgotten being as he twisted on the hangman’s rope of his own myth.

The man who now finally comfortable wearing the cloak of Poet, smiled what was surely an empty rearrangement of the face, as Noble, obviously battered, bruised and stiff from the recent sparring encounter, introduced the lesser devils of the coven in a manner that echoed in his mind but came as no ordered introduction, but rather as a parade of enemies marching by the review stand of his tiny—and only nominally free—pugilistic nation:

Marianna, the beguiling, whore traitress keeping Satan’s bed, whose engaging smile deflected from Poet’s cadaverous heart.

Doctor Bloomingdale, a bespectacled nerd of cinematic proportions, whose failure to project a shred of manliness tugged at the last remaining shred of Poet’s pity.

Agent Stuart was obviously a military killer of the athletic type, whose Nordic muscles were too tight to make much of a boxer but who no doubt excelled in the killing arts.

Agent Donnell Jackson, a large, explosively muscular black man who looked as if he could have been an NFL linebacker, who stepped forward gregariously and slapped a false hug about Poet’s shoulders, “My Brother. The boss here said you could surely test my skills in the ring and I did eat my Cheerios today—how about it?”

The bag stopped beating, as if the heart of the gym had no more blood left to pump. That fool girl, Jones, close behind him with her buckets it seemed, let them drop and gasped at the rude suggestion of the towering ape of a man who had just challenged an obviously worn man, nearly a head shorter, twice his age and little more than half his weight, to spar, in a gym known for rough ring work.

Poet returned the hug, which did cause the clicking of some distant, broken ribs and cartilage and brought a death grin to his recently aged face, “Indeed, Brother. J-bar and Gans shall work your corner as they know my style—with Mister Noble, of course. What with his recent experience putting these old gloves to the test, he might offer a point or two.”

His distant hand seemed to squish as the big bully, of the White Devil, took it in his monstrous paw and squeezed cruelly, knowing full well the hand appeared out of sorts, mouthing a false courtesy, “Why thank you, Poet, it will be an honor.”

The traitress whore was eying him closely a bit engaged, perhaps.

The glasses-wearing devil was raising an eyebrow, and then chirped in a sissy voice, “Mister Poet, might I serve with the young lady in your corner? I was dragged along against my inclinations as it is. I might be put to better service behind a water bottle than in a pair of gloves.”

He nodded “yes” with a serene smile, nodded respectfully to Mister Noble, with whom he did have a bond of honor, and calmly raked the traitress whore with an admiring gaze and a grandfatherly wink as he turned toward the ring and rumbled, with a deep voice that would have once set his aching bones on fire before his recent disembodiment, “Gans, slice an orange for Mister Jackson, so he has something to refresh him between rounds.”

Within seconds he was standing in the corner as Jones wrapped his hands, with the odd tear wetting her cheek, not daring to speak of his injuries in front of these polite-acting enemies. The beautiful traitress whore prowled around the ring in her sneakered feet, obviously some kind of karate person by her interest and the well-formed thighs barely obscured by her professional attire, for she had come wearing a suit dress, rather than the rest, who arrived in sweats—even this fool doctor, who assisted Jones with jamming the glove on over his swollen hand, fixing him with a stare of amazement and intellectual scorn all in one.

Jones and the Doctor were both giving him strange looks as he realized that he had been beguiled—despite his recent separation from his body—by the glassy green eyes of the traitress whore. Jones hissed and the glasses-wearing faɡɡot, apparently an actual doctor, intoned, “Mister Poet, you are seriously concussed and understandably distracted. Are you certain this is wise?”

His voice flowed sleepily, “Of course it is not wise, Doctor. Otherwise you would be doing it.”

Then, with memories of youth babbling in the deep recesses of his brain, he rubbed Jones on the head with the heel of his hand, called “Seconds out!” and stepped away from the ropes, out onto the 'Raised Pit' that had been his own inspirational Hell, where he had been bought, betrayed and sold by Usef back in the day. He stalked out onto his decades-old hunting ground with the easy confidence of many years spent between the ropes, sparing a leering wink at the traitress whore, who, a lingering shred of his humanity mused, might be brought back into the Afrikan fold by the right man, a real man with a slow, fatherly hand—though her contemptuous nose twitch of disdain seemed to take affront at the notion.