Craig Davidson - The Fighter

Rob set off down 16th toward the Fritz.

He thought about what Kate said — about how being good at something shouldn’t dictate the course of your life. He didn’t love boxing, but he had talent and aptitude. His fists were a ticket out of this place, the tenement houses and blood banks and boarded shopfronts, no more of this scraping by, plenty of cash for fancy cars, eye-popping mansions, fine wines. He could save his father and Tommy from all this — it was within his power.

Or was it? Maybe it was each man’s duty to save himself.

Fritzie Zivic answered Rob’s knock in slippers and a housecoat. Murdoch squatted at Fritzie’s heel, his old eyes focused on Rob.

“Young master Tully.” Fritzie smiled sadly, scratched his backside through the housecoat’s frayed material. “How you holding up?”

“Fine, Mr. Zivic. I need to talk.”

“Tommy’s debts? I cleared the books. Your uncle’s such an awful player it makes me sick to think about collecting.”

“Thanks.”

Rob was touched by this unexpected kindness from a man not known to dispense favors. “But that’s not it.”

“It’s not, huh? Well, you’d better come in.”

He led Rob down the front hall into the kitchen. Murdoch trotted behind, taking sly nips at Rob’s boots until Fritzie hollered at the splenetic old beast.

He set a beaten coffee pot on the burner and sat in the chair opposite Rob.

Rubbing his unshaven, blocklike chin, he yawned and asked what was on Rob’s mind.

“You go to those fights. You were there for Tommy.”

“Well, I do, I do.” Fritzie’s head nodded slowly, his hard features etched with some embarrassment. “And yeah, I was there when Tommy… drove him to the hospital, didn’t I?”

“Take me next time.”

“And why’s that?”

“Does it matter?”

“If you looking for my help, yeah, it does.”

Rob laid out his reasoning without meeting Fritzie’s eyes. Once he’d finished, Fritzie spoke.

“Revenge, uh? Men have fought for less.” The old Croat became pensive. “Let me tell you a story. Years ago, before you were born, this guy went around leaving refrigerators in parks and playgrounds. Your dad ever tell you about this?”

When Rob shook his head, Fritzie went on. “This guy would pick up fridges at the dump — the old kind, right, with the locking latches. He filed the safety catches down and left them where kids played. At night he’d leave them; the next morning, bright and early, there they were. Like an invitation.”

Murdoch made a couple of circles underneath the table, snuffled morosely, and plopped down at Fritzie’s feet.

“Now the good thing was, nobody was killed. Some kids hopped inside and mucked around but none of them ever shut the lid. But this whole town was terrified — meetings at city hall, a park patrol, and every old fridge at the dump filled with cement. They never caught the guy. But there are people out there like that; the type you don’t quite believe exist until you see proof of it — like an open refrigerator next to a swing set.

“The point I’m driving at is this: every time I go to that place where your uncle got hurt, I think of those fridges. A lot of the guys don’t look like anything — desperate bums and drifters, most take their beating and off they go.

But you can never tell the scorpion from the frog; you never know which one’s gonna sting. I think of those fridges because some a those guys are like that — they look harmless enough so you climb inside and muck around and it’s not long before you’re locked inside and down to your last breath.”

Fritzie poured himself a cup of coffee. He sipped, his eyes holding Rob’s over the rim of the mug, then said, “Now the question you need to be asking yourself, Robbie, is: do you think Tommy would want you doing that?”

“You’re saying you won’t take me?”

After a pause: “You’re how old?”

Rob lied. “Eighteen.”

“Old enough to make your own choices. Not my place to stop you. What I’m asking is, do you feel it’s worth it?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” Rob said, honestly. “But I can’t see my way clear of it any other way. What do I want — retribution? Is that what Tommy would want? I don’t know. But nothing else seems to answer anything.”

Fritzie sat down and knitted his hands together on the tabletop. “Robbie, let me ask you one thing. Is this going to be enough for you?”

“I don’t catch your meaning.”

Murdoch pawed his master’s leg; Fritzie lifted the dog up and balanced him across his knees. Murdoch glared across the table at Rob, who had not received a more malevolent stare from man or beast.

“Look at your uncle or the pugs at the club — hell, look across the table: all of us single, no kids, no money, nothing to hold on to.”

“My dad—”

“Your dad’s no fighter. Your dad is…” Fritzie bit his lip. “… something else. Boxing’s a dream, Robbie, and a sweet one. But the dream takes everything; you got to feed every ounce of your life into it. Like a heat shimmer on a stretch of summer tarmac — you can chase that damn thing forever without ever catching it. And one day you wake up and see you’ve fed that dream everything and it’s no closer than it was years ago.”

Fritzie kneaded the ruff of Murdoch’s neck. “Your uncle and I did pretty good for a couple of neighborhood guys. Tommy fought at Madison Square Garden; I ate a fifty-dollar steak at the same table as John Gotti after a fight. But what’s any of it amount to — an hour, a week, a month where you’re king shit? Nah. The best thing about fighting is getting into that ring and you look the other guy in the eye and say, For the next ten rounds let’s bring something out in each other — something we didn’t even know we had. Show me what I don’t know about myself. That’s the juice of boxing.” He kissed the top of Murdoch’s head. The beast growled. “And if that’s not what thrills you, you shouldn’t be boxing. Not worth the risk — and I don’t just mean getting hurt. Look at me. I got this vicious old mutt and when he goes I’m going to fall to pieces. I got nothing else.”

Rob could think of nothing to say but, “He looks fairly healthy.”

Fritzie smiled gratefully. “You think? Anyway, what I’m asking is, will you be able to walk out of that place when it’s over and be kaput?”

“I hope so.”

Fritzie nodded. “Fights go next Thursday night. You’re here, I’ll take you.”

“I appreciate it, Mr. Zivic.”

“Don’t take it the wrong way when I say I hope to see not hide nor hair of you come next Thursday.”

Suppertime at Mount St. Mary’s hospital. Orderlies hastened down the halls with trays of Salisbury steak and lime Jell-O, or IV pouches of nutrient-rich Meal in a Bag.

Reuben Tully sat beside his brother’s bed reading a sheet of paper. Withered balloons and wilted flowers. The room smelled too sweet.

He glanced up. “Where the hell were you this morning?”

Rob said, “I wasn’t feeling up to it.”

“I don’t give a shit if you felt up to it or not. You be there. We need to maintain the basic routines, o’kay?”

“What that you’re reading?”

“Fucking insurance companies,” said Reuben. “Jackals. Blood suckers. They’re claiming since Tommy never made a living will…” A brief glance over at his brother.“…stupid, stupid…” And back to Rob.“…they say his care is technically governed by the state. It means that once Tommy’s been declared — oh, Jesus, what was it?” He skimmed the letter. “Right — a persistent vegetative state. If that happens Tommy becomes a ward of the state, which means he goes on the organ donor list, first come first served. Whatever’s left is donated to science.”