Craig Davidson - The Fighter

The fighters touched gloves over the referee’s arm. The bell rang.

Caine skipped lightly, appearing to float a half-inch above the canvas. Rob stalked, hands low, gloves poised and rotating. Caine snapped out a pair of jabs, fast but merely pestering; they glanced off his headgear. Rob bulled in and, as Caine hooked behind a left jab, slipped the second punch and threw his own hook, a submarine right to the body.

Caine managed to take a piece of Rob’s punch on his arm, but the shot was thrown with such force it drove the point of his elbow into Caine’s abdominal wall. Caine bent sideways at the hip, lips skinned back from his gumshield. The ref — dressed in white trousers and a vest like an English estate butler — hovered nearby to call the mandatory eight-count.

“Follow up!” Reuben hollered. “Get on it!”

But Rob did not get on it. He threw another hook but pulled short, feinted left for no reason at all, and drew away.

Caine recovered enough to throw a series of jabs coming off the ropes. Rob held his hands low and let the punches hit him flush in the face. Caine came through with a wrecking-ball right that caught Rob under the chin; his head snapped back. He closed his eyes and… wished. But when his eyes opened a split-second later he was still standing. He’d taken Caine’s best shot and knew — right then, knew — that Caine didn’t have the oomph to put him away. This cold fact filled Rob with a measure of desolation the likes of which he’d rarely known.

The bell rang.

In the corner Reuben slapped his face.

“What the hell? You had him. Christ, Robbie — had him.”

Reuben offered instruction but Rob’s attention was focused on the opposite corner:

Caine sat on a stool, face shiny with Vaseline, gumshield socked in the crook of his mouth. Caine’s eyes darted into the crowd. Rob followed his gaze to a slim, beautiful woman in the third row. Girlfriend? Wife? Someone who cared for him, obviously — Rob could see the lines of worry on her face. An infant girl sat on the woman’s lap.

For an instant the fighters’ eyes met across the hunched backs of their trainers.

Caine nodded, a nearly imperceptible motion of his head.

The bell rang.

Caine sprang in slugging, was jolted by a flurry and backed off, dancing high on his toes. They came together again, Caine pepper-potting jabs until a right cross sent sweat flying from his headgear. Spurred by the crowd, he followed two precise jabs with a straight right that Rob slipped by an eighth of an inch, Caine’s hand finding only empty air above Rob’s shoulder. Pivoting on his lead, Rob ripped a body shot under Caine’s ribcage that sent the other boxer into a flutter-legged swoon.

“Go on! You got him!” Reuben yelled.

Caine’s eyes were unfocused; yellow bile foamed the edges of his gumshield. Rob saw the gunshot wound on Caine’s chest, a tight pink asterisk spread like the petals of an ice plant. Where had he gotten it? Here was Marty Caine with a wife and a kid and dreams of big paydays and here was Rob fucking it all up — what earthly right did he have to fuck it up for anyone? He knew Caine would fight until his eyes filled with blood and his arms grew numb, until he was a senseless wreck on the canvas. Caine would fight until there was nothing left because he was fighting for more than just himself, and because the complete sacrifice of his body was everything he could possibly surrender.

They went two more rounds. Though Rob controlled the tempo, Caine kept busy and landed some flashy shots. The judges ruled it a split-decision draw. The decision split the crowd: half cheered while the other half booed.

Rob and Caine fell into a loose embrace in the middle of the ring. “Lordy, did you ever hit me,” Caine whispered in Rob’s ear. “Nobody should have to be hit like that.”

“I’m sorry,” Rob said.

“No sorries, man.” Caine patted Rob’s head. “Never sorries.”

Reuben was at the judges’ table, vowing to challenge the decision. “Hung from the highest bough!” he yelled. “The… highest… bough! ”

From the ring Rob watched his opponent walk to the locker room. Supported by his trainer, Caine stopped beside the woman. His taped hands moved tenderly on her shoulder, tenderly over the infant girl’s cheeks and hair.

It was dusk when they left St. Michael’s. The dark air quivered in funnels of light cast by gooseneck streetlamps.

Reuben and Rob sat in the idling car while Tommy brushed snow off the windows. Rob drank from a liter bottle of bubblegum-flavored Pedialyte to jack up his electrolytes; a jar of Gerber’s baby food sat between his legs, the only stuff his system could tolerate after a fight. A warrior twenty minutes ago, now he ate like an infant.

“Tully’s Record Sullied,” Reuben said. “That’s what the headline’ll read in the Sports section of the Gazette. They’ll love the goddamn alliteration.”

“That’s not alliteration,” Rob said from the backseat. “Just rhyming.”

“Don’t get smart. I don’t get it,” Reuben went on. “You had him, and not once — three, four times. The hell happened?”

Rob wanted to tell his father how, when he had Caine staggered, he’d thought of his first knockout — those teeth winking like bloody pearls in a black rubber gumshield. He wanted to tell his father that he couldn’t hate a stranger, even for the short time they shared a ring together, even when that stranger’s intent was to inflict harm.

“We might not make it out of the preliminaries.” A mystified shake of the head. “Robbie, you were the favorite. The odds on … favorite.”

Nine o’clock, New Year’s Eve.

Rob skipped lightly down the stairs. He wore workboots, faded blue jeans, a clean white T-shirt. Reddened slashes marked his cheeks and chin: burns from Caine’s gloves.

“I’m heading out.”

Reuben sat at the kitchen table with a bottle of Jim Beam. He stared at the Formica tabletop as though, were he to fixate his gaze long enough, the random mica chips might disclose some earth-shattering epiphany.

“Go on, then.” He flicked his hand. “Home no later than twelve-thirty or I’ll be dragging you home by the scruff.”

The party was hosted by Felix Guiterrez — Felix, the guy whose jaw Rob had broken a year and a half ago. He answered Rob’s knock wearing a shiny costume top hat.

“Tully, my man.” Rob noted the dimple scars on Felix’s jaw and felt a pang of regret. To Felix’s credit, he didn’t hold a grudge. “Come on down. My folks are partying upstairs.”

Thirty-odd people filled the unfinished basement, standing or sitting on lawn chairs.

Earlier in the night the place had been decorated but now all that remained were shreds of crepe paper and rubber balloon-rings taped to the beams. Bottles of rum and vodka liberated from parents’ liquor cabinets passed amongst the throng.

He spotted Kate with Darren Gregory. Darren was a willowy senior who favored ripped jeans and Goodwill corduroy; thick dark hair fell over his handsome features. His mother was a border toll-taker who, unbeknownst to Rob, had ridden the same bus as his father for the better part of twenty years. Last month Darren had won a poetry competition; his love sonnet had appeared in the Sunday Gazette. He and Kate sat on lawn chairs, knees touching. Darren made flourishes with his hands as Kate’s mouth formed words — “Yes! Absolutely!” — and she laughed. Watching them, Rob felt strangely cold, gutted, blood running thin as copper wire in his veins.