Craig Davidson - Rust and Bone - Stories

The kid’s sharing the ring with Bua, shadowboxing. Sucharit’s in with his boy, pointing up, down, to the side, Bua following Sucharit’s pointing finger with a punch, kick, or sweep. The kid’s working the opposite corner, wearing ring shoes, red trunks, and wrist wraps, flashing hard combos—double-up jab, feint, hook, hook, straight right, bob back, jab-jab, uppercut—exhaling short puffs with each punch.

“Hey, Boo-boo.” He’s taken to calling Bua “Boo-boo” or “Boo-hoo.” Sometimes he’ll creep up behind the boy and holler, Boo! “Why don’t we go a few rounds?”

“Take a break,” I call from the apron. “Don’t have to be a prick every day of your life.”

The kid dances across the canvas, peppering jabs at Bua’s back, coming within inches.

“Come on, Boo-boo, show me what you got.”

I say, “Back off. Now .”

“What’s the matter?” Dancing on the balls of his feet, shuffle-step, pittypat jab-jab-jab. “Is Boo-hoo scared? Boo-hoo a puss?”

Bua doesn’t reply, eyes never leaving Sucharit’s moving finger. I slide between the ropes and push the kid away. “The hell’s your problem?”

He brushes past me and shoves Bua between the shoulder blades. “Let’s do this. Let’s do it up, baby.”

I hook my fingers inside his trunks but, as he’s a legit light heavyweight and I never fought past welterweight, I can’t haul him away. “Keep this up and you’re on the next steamer home.”

Bua turns to face the kid. Nothing in his eyes speaks to anger— still smiling that gap-toothed smile—but his arms hang loose and ready, thigh muscles fluttering.

Sucharit steps between the fighters. “You wan’ fie my boy, hah?” he says to the kid.

“What was your first clue?”

“He fie you, okay, okay. Baa no’ here.”

“Why not?”

“Who watch? Who pay? ”

“Over here it isn’t about who’s swinging the biggest dick,” I say. “The boy’s not gonna fight, nobody’s paying.”

“Cool.” The kid’s throwing jabs that stop inches from Bua’s unblinking eyes. “Make a few bucks kicking his ass.”

“When were you thinking?” I say to Sucharit.

“Nex’ wee. Ban’kok.”

“We’re gonna get it on, ’cause we don’t get a– long! ”

The kid raises his arms and dances in the center of the ring like Ali.

A PRIZEFIGHTER IS A FREAK. He’s got maybe ten years in the roughest business in the world, a business ruled by a strict hierarchy: winners and losers. He’s not a paperhanger, a lawyer, a beancounter. He doesn’t put on his galoshes, grab his briefcase, catch the trolley, the same daily grind for thirty, forty years. He gives it all now, or never.

Moe Kundler told me that. Moe was a fighter himself, cruiserweight, never held a belt or scored a big payday, a crippling right hook but a weak chin led to three consecutive canvas naps and eliminated him as a contender. The ring turns fighters into freaks by aging them prematurely: that twenty-two-square-foot expanse is a time warp.

The Royal Jubilee Palace arena’s prep area is located in the building’s bowels. Me and the kid in a shoebox-sized room, low ceiling, pipes rattling overhead. Six or seven shattered chicken coops in one corner, floor crusted with plaster flakes and dead roaches. Above, the dim babble of the crowd cheering the semi-main.

I called Moe and asked was it okay the kid fought Bua. I said, “The only way this kid’s going to progress is to take a rude beating. Only way he’ll learn.” Moe was wary when he heard it was a mixed-discipline bout, Muay Thai versus boxing. “Will his record be affected?” I said no, since the fight wasn’t sanctioned. Moe said, “So the other guy can kick?” I said yes, and headbutt, and elbow. Moe said, “Could the kid get hurt bad?” I said, “A chance. What he needs.” Moe said, “Then go for it.”

The kid’s perched on the edge of a prep table. I’m taping his hands. Wrap adhesive gauze around his wrists to protect the eight interlocking carpal bones, across the meat of his palms, his thumbs, fingers to the second knuckle. The wrap’s got to be tight, but not too tight: a fighter with blue hands is bound to break bones and not even know it.

“Flex your fingers,” I say. The kid curls his hands into tight fists. “Okay. Now the gloves.”

I help him on with the gloves—ten ouncers instead of WBA-sanctioned sixteens—and tape them to his wrists. The kid hops off the table, high-stepping, rolling his shoulders loose. Then the sweat comes and he’s shadowboxing, holding his gloves up, juking his head to the right of them, to the left, cracking hard jabs from the guard.

“Stand back in your stance,” I tell him. “Otherwise he’ll kick your thighs into ground chuck.”

The kid’s dressed Tyson chic: black trunks, black ring shoes, no socks or robe, just a black terry-cloth towel with a hole cut in the center to pass his head.

“Remember your elbows,” I say. “Legal in Muay Thai. Headbutts, too.” Like every pro fighter, the kid’s been taught how to fire elbows and butt heads. Only this time he doesn’t have to worry about the DQ.

“For the thousands in attendance, and the millions watching around the globe,” he intones, slamming his fists together. “Let’s get ready to rum– buuuuul! ”

The kid looks pale under the hot ring lights, skin glowing against his dark trappings. Bua’s wearing green trunks fringed with gold, yellow shoes, the traditional Muay Thai headpiece of braided hemp. Although the kid outweighs him by twenty pounds, Bua’s arms and legs are long, rangy, his hands huge— tack hammers, Moe’d call them. Judging by the stare-down it seems probable one or both will leave the ring on a stretcher.

The Royal Jubilee Palace—nicknamed “The Pail”—is a three-tiered arena: its levels, instead of extending outwards, are stacked one atop another, giving fighters the impression they’re fighting at the bottom of a bucket. Ten-foot-high chicken-wire barriers ring each tier to discourage fans from hurling Singha beer bottles and other trash into the ring. The place is rife with chattering voices, like a forest full of monkeys.

I water the kid, grease his cheeks and brows, remove his mouthpiece from the ice bucket and slip it into his mouth. Sucharit is massaging Bua’s shoulders and whispering in his ear. The ref, a tiny balding Thai in a sweat-stained zebra get-up, calls the fighters together, makes them touch gloves. The ocarina quartet place their lips to their wide-bellied instruments. The bell rings.

The kid rushes out, gloves held over his mouth, elbows out, head down, looking at Bua out of the tops of his eyes. Bua circles out of his corner to the left, standing high on his toes, hands low, wrists rotating. They meet near the ropes, Bua stabbing two quick jabs.

The kid takes the first one high on the forehead. The second one he slips over his left shoulder and, stepping in with his right foot, brings his left hand up in a tight arc. The uppercut catches Bua on the throat under his chin. His legs jelly a little. Kid goes low, knees flexing, fires another submarine shot. Bua grabs him, pulling their bodies flush. The kid’s gloves are high on Bua’s chest but he can’t push him off. He brings them up into the boy’s face, rubbing the laces across the cheeks and eyes. He’s looking to the ref for a break.

“No breaks!” I holler over the crowd noise. “Fight out! Fight out! ”

Bua brings his left knee up into the kid’s side beneath the kidney. The kid lets out a grunt. Bua knees him again, putting all his weight into it. The crowd rises to a quick roar. In close, the kid shoves against Bua’s face, gets some separation and brings an elbow up into the gap, shearing it across Bua’s chin. Bua reels into the ring’s center.