Craig Davidson - The Fighter

“But you didn’t cause the accident. And you weren’t thankful for it happening — were you?”

“Not thankful.” He stomped a crescent of ice off the shoreline. “But I thought the only reason it happened was to distract the police. So I wouldn’t get arrested.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“I’m saying that when I saw that person flung through the windshield the first thing that leapt into my head was that my, I guess you could say existence, was so vital that some god or universal force had rigged the whole accident for my benefit — a human being had been killed, just to get me off the hook. And I drove away smiling.” He gave her a look: hopeless, cored out. “Smiling, Mom. Really.”

“They’re only thoughts, Paul. You didn’t make those cars collide; you didn’t hurt anyone.”

“And that’s basically it, Mom. I haven’t done anything, ever. Good or bad.”

“Nonsense. You’ve graduated university—”

“Whoopee. Only took six years.”

“What about all those trophies in your office?”

“Dad bought them at a thrift store! Didn’t you know that?”

Barb looked confused. “Really? I could have sworn…”

“Nothing!”

The enormity of the understanding rocked Paul like a blow. “Even vicious murderers go to their graves knowing they’ve changed the world somehow. Murdering takes initiative; it takes drive. You got to get up off your duff to murder someone.”

“Paul!”

He calmed down.

“It’s just, sometimes I feel like… a nonessential human being. I could be replaced with a robot that looked and dressed like me, that’d been programmed to run through the basic routines of my life, and nobody would ever know the difference.”

“And you think picking a few grapes will make those thoughts go away?”

He gave a sigh.

“Other suggestions?”

“Therapy, for one—”

“Jesus please us.”

“—or medication. My Pilates partner told me that Stelazine brought her son back from the brink. He’s grinning like a cherub all day long, never been happier. Paul—?”

He peeled away from her and walked out onto the ice. He caught his reflection in a boil of dark water: eyes as wide and scared as a horse in a barn fire.

“Do they make a drug called Chrysalis, Mom? You swallow one and hang from a tree branch until a cocoon forms, and two weeks later you crawl out, a whole new person. Pharmaceutical reincarnation — some egghead should get cracking on that !”

“Paul, come on in. You got me fluttering.”

The ice pan boomed as a long fault line split its surface. Ice shattered under Paul’s feet; his leg plunged in up to the crotch. His heart hammered so hard it threatened to tear his chest apart.

“Do they make pills for people who don’t want to be themselves anymore, Mom?”

The water was probably fifteen feet deep beneath him, currents running swift; they wouldn’t dredge his carcass up until next spring, which by then might have floated halfway to Cornwall, but he didn’t give a damn and he laughed like a bastard.

I work hard so you won’t have to. Parents tell their children this, Paul thought. I will sweat and toil and bleed so you never will.

All for love, but still, they miss the point entirely.

Reuben Tully worked in the bakery department at Topps Friendly Market. He rose at two a.m. weekdays, showering and dressing in the dark so as not to wake his son and brother. He caught the 2:30 Portage Express and nodded to the bus driver, who always touched the brim of his cap in reply. A woman who collected border tolls hopped on two stops later; she always sat four seats from Reuben with a coffee thermos and a lurid tabloid magazine. At the next stop the doors admitted a man in a threadbare suit who worked as night auditor for a strip of border motels; he always sat ramrod-straight — stiff as a bishop’s pecker, the gym bums would say — with a briefcase on his lap.

Reuben had traveled with these people for twenty years. They’d all put on weight together and lost hair together, their eyesight had waned and their faces had furrowed together. They’d ridden through marriages, divorces, births, and deaths. Reuben rarely spoke to them, yet felt an odd kinship. On those rare occasions when he’d spot one on the street he’d raise a hand and they would respond with a nod or smile.

At the supermarket he’d buy coffee from an Italian with his steam cart; he’d mill with the butchers and florists and forklift drivers in the pre-dawn darkness. When the shift whistle blew he’d wheel a barrel of Red Star yeast down a row of industrial mixers. Over the years a yeasty, breadlike smell had sunk into his flesh. No amount of granulated pink industrial soap or frenzied scrubbing could erase that smell, and in his most maudlin moods Reuben could hear mourners at his funeral whispering that his corpse held the odor of fresh-baked bread.

Every few years a new man was hired fresh out of high school. Reuben wondered what he’d do if Robert chose to quit boxing and work here — a prospect that filled him with an intractable, deep-seated fear. His son was better than this town, with its crumbling tenements and bulletproof shop windows, its rusted cars and malt liquor bottles lining front stoops.

Robert Tully was destined for mythical things. Reuben Tully’s only son would not die in upstate New York with the stink of bread on his hands.

The number twenty bus dropped Reuben off a block from Top Rank. He carried a grease-spotted bag of day-old bearclaws for his son. Not exactly the breakfast of champions, but Rob’s metabolism ran hotter than a superconductor; he’d burn through them before lunch.

In the gym two heavies were training for an upcoming card at the armory. A pair of nightclub bouncers, they were set to square off against a couple of garrison Marines. Reuben pictured the matches: two pug-uglies in the dead center of the ring, bashing away like Rockem Sockem Robots. The war vets and jarheads on furlough would gobble it up.

Rob was up in the ring with bespectacled Frankie Jack, a retired welder who hung around the gym drumming up cut work. Frankie, with a pair of leather punch mitts over his hands, instructed Rob to turn through on his right cross, make it sing.

“Frank, ya fool,” Reuben called, “you filling my fighter’s head with nonsense?”

“Not at all, just warming him up for you.” As if Rob were an old Dodge on a winter morning. “He’s in fine shape, Reuben. Tip-top shape.”

Rob spread the ropes so that Frankie could step down. Frankie jammed the punch mitts into his armpits and tugged them off; he rubbed his hands, wincing.

“I’ll tell you, this kid can hit. He hurts just to breathe on you.” Cotton swabs were pinned behind Frankie’s ears like draftsman’s pencils. “Hope this ain’t out of line, but if you ain’t yet settled on a cutman for Robbie’s next fight I’d gladly step in.”

“Now what makes you think he’s gonna need a cutman?” Frankie knuckled a pair of black-frame glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I’d surely like to be part of it, is all.”

“Everyone wants to be part of it.”

Their conversation was interrupted by the Buffalo heavyweight, Scarpella. “Seen your brother ’round?”

“I have not,” said Reuben. “He owe you money?”

“Supposed to be workin’ wit’ him but don’t see him nowhere.”

“Ah, Jesus — he’s over at the Fritz. Let me go grab him for you.”

“I’ll go get him,” Rob said.

“Yeah, that’s the ticket,” Reuben said. “Tommy might have a tough time sparring with my boot up his ass.”