Craig Davidson - The Fighter

Paul awoke in the shack. Cold and dark, the fire dead. When he tried to sit up, fishhook spiders seized his spine; he gasped and curled up again. Parts of his body hurt so badly he wondered if they were ruptured. He dragged himself to the stove and hugged its cast-iron belly, grateful for the warmth.

A hesitant edge of light skirted the hills to the east. Clutching the sardine tin into which he’d swept the fire’s ashes he made his way up the nearest rise.

Dawn broke over Lake Ontario, tinting gold the undersides of low-lying clouds.

The sun provided no warmth yet was beautiful in a way he could not recall ever seeing; light clung to frost-glazed pussy willows as it poured over the flattened grass. Were he a painter, he might have spent his whole life in search of such a scene.

The lake was a few miles away, and while the possibility of ashes traveling quite that far was remote, he figured, Why not? But the wind shifted when he shook the tin and the ashes blew back into his face, up his nose and into his mouth.

He sneezed and spat dirty gray gobs, shaking his head at this dismal failure.

Then he saw that some ashes were still stuck to the oil at the bottom of the sardine tin and resolved that they would receive a proper burial.

He set off across the plateau, away from the winery, down toward the lake.

Fight night.

Tommy Tully bounded down the stairs into the kitchen, pushing off the bottom stair to glide awkwardly across the worn linoleum in his sock feet. Reuben and Rob sat at the kitchen table. The black valise lay open at Reuben’s elbow; he inspected rolls of gauze and white tape, strips of sponge and vials of adrenaline chloride. Rob sat with a bowl of hard-boiled eggs and a cup of lemon tea.

Tommy stalked over to the Amana fridge and threw jabs at its white unmoving bulk. He hooked to the icebox, puffing through his nose, “Yip! Bing! Thwack!” shuffling his feet Muhammad Ali style, “Biff, Bing, Pow!” raising his arms, dancing, grinning. “You better check the warranty, ’cause the fridge is toast !”

“Stop clowning,” said Reuben.

Tommy grabbed a loaf of his beloved Wonder Bread off the counter and hefted it above his head like a trophy. “I dedicate this win to Gummy Sue and Stinky Mulligan and ol’ Armless Joe down at the VFW hall — we did it, guys!”

Rob found a wooden soup spoon and put it to his uncle’s mouth, assuming the folksy bearing of an interviewer. “Gee golly, Tom Tully, that was some fight. You and the Fridge exchanged heated pre-fight words — you remarked that the Fridge didn’t have the legs to make it through the late rounds. The prediction seems to have rung true.”

Tommy said, “First of all I’d like to thank God almighty, without whom no things are possible. The Fridge put up a hell of a fight. I respect the Fridge as a fighter. But this was Tom Tully’s night.” He hugged the loaf of bread to his chest. “If the Fridge wants a rematch, okay, fine, but it’ll have to get in line. The Stove’s my mandatory challenger, and the Toaster Oven’s been flapping its gums. Tom Tully don’t duck no appliance! None!”

Rob said, “Stern words from a stern man — Tom ‘Boom Boom’ Tully.”

Tommy and Rob dissolved into snorting giggles. Reuben wasn’t laughing.

“Pull yourself together,” he said.

Tommy patted his brother on the back. “Lighten up, killjoy.”

Reuben finished packing while Tommy fetched their coats and boots.

Tommy returned with their gear. “What’re we waiting for?”

“Waiting for you to wise up,” said Reuben. “But since there’s about as much chance of that as there is me sprouting fairy’s wings, guess there’s no use wasting our time.”

Tommy said, “That’s the spirit.”

“Meet at Macy’s after?” Rob said.

“If your uncle’s face doesn’t look like ten pounds of ground chuck.”

Rob wished his uncle good luck. He felt the lump lodged deep in his belly.

Tommy winked. “Another day in the salt mines.”

Two men drove the southbound QEW in a rattletrap Ford.

They crossed the Niagara overpass, high over freighters plying the Welland Canal.

The highway cut west, curling around a Christmas tree farm, on past wrecking yards and discount tire outlets.

Weeks had passed since the paintball incident. Nothing had come of it all, aside from an article in the St. Catharines Standard: crazed motorist runs amuck on canalfootpath. (A quote from the recumbent bicyclist: “Thank heavens the maniac was driving a small foreign car and I was able to outrace it.”) He’d seen no headline titled musclebound idiot found dead in fieldand soassumed the Einstein was okay. He had moved out of his parents’ house the next day; his nights had been spent on the couch in Lou’s office.

Lou drove with both hands on the wheel, a prudent five miles below the speed limit on account of the icy roads and his driving license being suspended. Between them on the front seat: a black leather valise stocked with gauze and tape, adrenaline chloride, ferric acid.

“You’re off that shit, aren’t you?”

Paul nodded; he’d quit the ’roids cold turkey following his binge. And though he’d surrendered muscle mass, he was streamlined and agile and his skin had lost its yellowish tinge.

“Let me tell you something about muscles,” Lou told him. “They look good and I guess they’ll frighten off a lot of guys; nine out of ten — ninety-nine out of a hundred — take one look at a pair of sporty arm-cannons and walk the other way. But muscles aren’t skill or heart. So your problem is when you run across the one guy in a hundred who recognizes that — and that guy is going to hurt you a hell of a lot worse than those other ninety-nine would’ve. Hurt you half for spite.”

They drove along the river. The spiraling coils of a hydroelectric plant reared in solitary abandonment against the night sky. Farther on, a rutted dirt path rounded into a sprawling farmstead. Cars were parked along a barbed-wire fence.

At the barn door they were met by Manning in his long duster coat. He dragged on a corn-husk cigarette and said, “Who we got here?”

Lou hooked a thumb at Paul. “From the club. Tough kid. The guts of a burglar.”

Manning sized Paul up. His eyes were obscured by a haze of smoke spindling the cigarette. “On you go, then.”

The barn was packed. A highway work crew in bib pants and reflective vests; high rollers with narrow silk ties and suits of exotic cut; tattooed, bandanna-wearing members of the local Hells Angels chapter — one sported a tattoo that read i’d rather see my sister in a whorehousethan see my brother on a jap bike. The dark, dumb eyes of cattle peered through knotholes in the barn walls.

Fighters stood on the peripheries, clustered in pockets of shadow beyond the lit ring.

“Wait here,” Lou said.

Paul sat on a hay bale. A fighter sat on the floor beside him. Not too tall or short, thin or fat, lean or muscular. He wore a deerstalker tugged low over his lumpen features and a pair of boxy black-rimmed glasses. He sat there, rocking.

Paul had heard that schizophrenics gave off a stink that often got so intense doctors claimed to see colors — scarlet, aquamarine, magenta — wafting off their patients. An imbalance in their bodily makeup, the enzymes being out of kilter or otherwise fucked. This guy stunk like rotting peaches.

“Fight like a dog,” Paul heard him say.

“What’s that?”

“It’s the best mindset to put yourself in.” In the stark white of the barn lights, the guy’s sockets looked like they were packed with dry ice.