Craig Davidson - The Fighter

“Come on, Murdoch.” Fritzie slapped his thigh. “I’ll leave you men to it.”

Reuben Tully’s forehead lay on the table like it had been glued there. The bottle of Jim Beam was empty. At some point in the evening he’d taken Rob’s boxing trophies out of their display case and arrayed them across the tabletop.

The sound of Tommy’s and Rob’s feet squeaking on the linoleum jerked him from his stupor. “If it isn’t my two favorite people in the whole… wide… world.”

“You look like shit, Ruby. The drunkard style doesn’t suit you.” Reuben’s eyes were red-rimmed. “You’re not wearing a rain barrel. You win, Tommy?”

“I did not.”

Reuben nodded, as though expecting it. “And you,” he said to Rob. “The great white hope.” He gulped air and slurred, “The pacifishht .”

“Head on up to bed, Robbie. I’ll get him squared away.”

“Uh-uh-uh.”

Reuben held his hand out like a traffic cop — halt . “I wanna talk. Discuss the…” His head bobbed. “… happened today.”

Rob said he only wanted to go to bed.

“Well, I want things, too. I want to know…” Reuben’s hand cinched around the golden boxer on top of a trophy, his finger tapping its little golden head. “… why you tanked the goddamn match today.”

“I didn’t tank it, Da—” Tommy cut in. “Don’t answer him. He’s loaded and talking nonsense.”

“I wasn’t loaded this afternoon! And I been around long enough to spot a piss-tank!”

Tommy guided Rob toward the stairs. “Okay, you’re off to bed.”

Reuben jerked up, knocking the table with his knees. Trophies bucked off and hit the linoleum, their cheap metal heads and arms busting off. The bottle shattered, spraying shards. He lost his balance and collapsed onto his chair; a metal leg buckled, spilling him onto the floor.

Tommy grabbed his brother’s sweater and yanked him up. “Goddamnit, get your hands off me!” Tommy shoved his brother up against the fridge. Reuben swatted Tommy’s face, a glancing shot that drew blood above his eye. The fridge rocked on its casters; the jar of quarters Tommy collected for the laundromat tipped off and smashed. Rob was surprised at how easily Tommy was able to manhandle his father. “Let go, you prick!”

But Tommy pinned Reuben’s wrists and jammed his head into Reuben’s shoulder.

“You’re in sock feet and there’s busted glass all over. Damned if I’ll let go.”

Reuben closed his eyes; he couldn’t seem to catch his breath. When he opened them they were focused, with calm intensity, on his son.

“In the ring,” he said, “you hit a man, you earn his respect. Other places — the office, the boardroom, wherever — that man does not have to respect you. But in the ring, it’s the law. And sure, it’s rough. And no, I can’t say you won’t ever get hurt. But that pain is temporary, Robbie, and better than the pain of a wasted life, the same faces and places and heartbreak for seventy, eighty years.”

“I don’t care about getting hurt, Dad. What worries me is that this” — he nodded to the broken trophies — “… is all there’ll ever be.”

“It won’t be. Listen, we want the same thing — for you to get out of this town.”

He shoved against Tommy, who didn’t budge. “Boxing is your ticket. You see the ring as a trap, but it’s not: it’s a doorway. You got to step through.” He sighed. “I’m done, Tom. You can let go a me.”

Tommy kicked stray bits of glass away so that Reuben could make the stairs without slicing his feet. Supported by the railing, Reuben ventured into the unlit darkness of the second floor.

Tommy wiped at the trickle of blood rounding his eye. “That went about as good as you could expect.”

“He doesn’t listen. Never has.”

“What’d you say?” Tommy threw an arm around his nephew’s shoulders, hugged him close, kissed the top of his head. “I’m kidding. Listen, the sauce turns your pops into a comic book villain — the Asshole from the Black Lagoon. Let’s hit the sack; the Asshole can clean this mess up tomorrow morning.”

Paul was in an unnamed metropolis with sunlight trickling between the high rises. He was naked, his muscles sleek and oiled, and at the end of one arm hung a snub-nosed revolver. Up and down the sidewalks walked businessmen in identical suits and ties and glossy shoes and briefcases with their hair cut in the same style. They wandered aimlessly, bumping into one another and apologizing, tripping and falling and getting up and falling again, running as if to catch a departing bus only to smash headlong into the spotless facade of a skyscraper.

He turned and found one at his side and his breath caught because its only feature was a huge mouth like a puppet’s stretching halfway round its face.

This thing grabbed Paul’s hand and shook it but Paul couldn’t feel any bones, a wash-glove packed with chilled lard, and the thing’s oversize mouth opened up and said, “You’re missing the big picture.” It said, “Uh-huh, uh-huh, yup-yup-yup-yup-yup-yup-yup—” and Paul’s other hand, the one with the revolver, came up and the muzzle fitted under the thing’s chin and when he pulled the trigger the thing’s hair fluttered and it fell and Paul saw the hole in its head where the bullet went through but no blood just a sound like wind rushing through a tunnel. And he turned to find another right next to him, noseless and earless and eyeless and Paul wished for a razor blade to slit the milky bulbs where its eyes should be and peel back the skin and see if anything stared back. This one also grabbed his hand and shook it and said “The bubble has burst” with great sadness and its teeth were the size of shoe-peg corn, hundreds of them on account of its mouth being so big, and Paul put the gun to the spot where its heart should be and pulled the trigger twice, the sounds ricocheting between the skyscrapers and echoing along the street and its body curled up and turned to white flakes like instant potatoes that blew away. Paul cracked the chamber and checked the cylinders but each one still had a bullet so he flicked it shut and shot another one and another, laughing like hell, but they spun through the office building’s revolving doors without end and his exultation was replaced by hopelessness and he began to wither and shrink, his body dwindling to half-size, then quarter-size and smaller as the sun vanished behind a high rise so black it ate all light and Paul was no bigger than a toy solider, naked and terrified as he fired at legs the size of giant redwoods and fear exploded in his chest as a huge soft-soled loafer came down to crush him…

He woke in the backseat of Stacey Jamison’s Humvee, wedged between two giant Einsteins. The Humvee — Stacey had painted get your jam on at jammer’son the side — jounced down a washboard road; silver maples arched their branches overhead.

Stacey’s hands were clad in weightlifter’s gloves; his shirt read pray for war.

Twice a month Stacey and his Cro-Magnon gym buddies engaged in paintball warfare.

“It’s serious business,” Stacey had told Paul before becoming wistful. “They’ve outlawed it — outlawed war. There’ll never be a Big Three, Paul,” he’d said desolately. “Not unless those ragheads get hold of a few more 747s.” Convinced it was nothing more than an exercise in tactical grab-ass, Paul had accepted Stacey’s invite out of curiosity.

They pulled into an open field. Sport-utes and pickup trucks, Einsteins in camo fatigues smearing lampblack on their faces. Late afternoon sunlight glittered on patches of unmelted snow.