Craig Davidson - The Fighter

Lou’s face swam above him. His features were a mask of wild panic. His mouth formed words but Paul couldn’t hear anything on account of the cycling roar that filled his skull.

Lou started waving his arms. “No,” Paul said, though he couldn’t hear his own voice. Lou’s lips moved; he might have been saying Crying blood. “Don’t care.” Lou’s lips moved again: Skull filling with blood.

“Don’t care.”

Shit yourself—

“Don’t care.”

Die here—

“Don’t…” Spit a sac of blood. “…care.”

“This guy…” Fritzie was baffled. “I never seen anything like it. What is that guy anymore — a punching bag, that’s it.”

“He’s got to quit,” Rob said. “He’s got to cry uncle.”

“He’s not gonna do that. There’s something the matter with him.”

“Then we keep going.”

“And you’re sure you want to? Don’t exactly look it.” Fritzie wiped under Rob’s eye. “That’s not sweat.”

Rob swiped his cheeks furiously. “Tell someone to ring the bell.”

A profound sense of peace settled over Paul. The workings of his mind flattened out; his thoughts disintegrated. Like he was on a plane on a clear cloudless day, staring out the porthole window as earth ceded to ocean: the houses and roads and buildings, the patchwork quilt of farmers’ fields, all that variation giving way to a smooth blanket of water — green closest to shore, the white curls of Queen Anne’s lace turning to deepest blue and, where the water ran deepest, flat ongoing black…

…while Rob’s was consumed with visions of slaughter. His hands felt hardened, lumps of rock, and his wish was to drive them into Paul’s face, across the bridge of his nose or into his mouth, dislodge the rest of his teeth and slam his fist, the whole of it, deep into Paul’s mouth, down his throat, choking him, or instead cleave his skull, crack it open like a fleshy nut and destroy the core of his brain. To step through those barn doors was to enter a realm of violent imperatives and so he let his fists go, beating a merciless tattoo on this creature who stared balefully with his blood-filled eyeball…

… Paul could no longer feel his arms or legs. He felt isolated from the fight: as though another man was taking the punishment while he stood nearby, watching. He saw two men in a series of frozen moments, the sort of stylized postures glimpsed in ancient Greek friezes. It resembled less a fight than an aggressive coupling, yet there was an odd deference: May I place my hand here? May I set my leg here, between yours? May I, May I, May I and their bodies melding, fists enveloped by the other’s chest or face, arms and legs and heads uniting, flesh bonding until they became a united whole, this faceless sexless creature that might haunt a lunatic’s dreams…

…until a hard stroke finally sent Paul to one knee. He could not see the boards under his feet. Blood dripped from his face, dripped from all parts of him. He raised one hand, that hand trembling uncontrollably, and touched his face. He felt something beneath the skin, incredibly hard. Harder than bone, even. He pushed three fingers deep into the most gaping wound and touched these alien contours. New ridges and planes that did not feel human — not entirely so. If his body were to be hit hard enough, long enough, if it absorbed enough punishment, maybe this soft outer layer would slough away to reveal whatever lay beneath. Imagine a cocoon, a pupating bug. The prospect entombed itself in his mind. If he could just weather the storm he would emerge as something infinitely stronger, harder, more meaningful. No weakness, no fear, no misery or rupture or death.

Paul came forward again, not protecting himself at all, walking straight into punches. The smack of meat on bone snapped off the high wooden beams and a queasy fan yelled, “Stop it. God, just… stop” The two men in the ring heard nothing: not the fans, not the lick of fists or the sound of their own breathing. For a crazed instant Paul wanted to simply touch Rob, to hold and breathe against him, to taste his wounds and know his skin.

And when neither man could punch anymore they stood at arm’s length, strength sapped, holding on to each other: from a distance, it looked as though Rob was teaching Paul how to dance a slow waltz.

Paul’s mouth opened. A single word passed over his broken lips:

“Please…”

Rob did not understand what he was asking.

Was it:

Please, stop.

Or:

Please, more.

Paul’s eyes rolled back in his head as he slipped through Rob’s arms, falling senselessly the way a toppled mannequin falls. Rob made an instinctive grab for him, but Paid was too bloody and Rob too exhausted and so he simply fell.

The bell did not ring; there was no need. Men climbed over the bales and bent over the stricken fighter with something approaching reverence. When they rolled Paul over, the shocking bloody imprint of his face remained on the boards. He was unconscious but his eyes were wide open. Someone might have placed two fingers upon his lids and drawn them shut but nobody did.

Lou lifted Paul’s head and hooked his hands under his armpits.

“Careful,” he instructed Fritzie, who’d taken hold of Paul’s heels. “Get him out to my car.”

The night was still. A low white fog rolled across the fields, thickening toward the tree line. Rob moved over sedge grass stamped flat by cattle hooves. His fury had evaporated as rapidly as it had risen, and in its place remained sickness and self-loathing. He was horrified by his actions — the savagery of them. He’d seen the bloody imprint of Paul’s face stamped on the raw pine boards. The sight had provided no solace or peace, only emptiness and desolation more incurable than he’d ever known.

A fine cool night and Rob walked between heads of cattle, their heaving flanks, the pungent animal smell of them. He had glimpsed in himself a malice of purpose he’d never known and it terrified him. I’ll kill him. It’s what he wants.

The fence post was the circumference of a dinner plate. Rotting at the top, slim wooden stalactites he could snap off with a finger, but going solid toward the middle. Moonlight winked off the rusted points of barbed wire twined around it.

Rob asked himself: Can I break them all?

The first punch was tentative: it wasn’t the pain that frightened him, but the finality of his actions. The next punch was harder; the post vibrated like a tuning fork. Wire tore skin. He threw his fists with as much venom as he could summon, dug his feet into the cold earth. The crisp tok tok tok of fist on wood gave way to mushier, meatier sounds until at some point his right hand — the dynamite right, his father called it — crumpled, delicate jigsaw bones shattering, and though the pain left him gagging he did not stop. His hands became a blur of ever-expanding and ever-darkening red, blood in the air, blood and skin stuck to the post and the bones of his left hand splintering with a tensile shriek and bone visible now, thin glistening shards jutting through sheared flesh, but he kept hurling them.

He dropped to his knees as the sound of his blows echoed across the field. His head rested against the post. The cool wood felt so good on his skin. His hands looked like bags of suet tied to the ends of his wrists. A few fingers hung on strips of skin at lewd angles. Rob curled them under his chin and cried. Softly at first, then with building intensity.

Fritzie found him hunched there. “We loaded that guy into the car. He’s beat up pretty bad, but he’ll be okay.”