Craig Davidson - The Fighter

To push Rob past the point of resistance, after which he’d settle into his role. Jesus, nobody was taking his life away: he would box until he was thirty, maybe thirty-five. Reuben would manage him carefully, bring him up the right way so he could retire with his brain intact and enough money to spend the rest of his days in comfort. On the streets he’d hear “There goes the Champ!” and he’d die knowing that part of him would remain on this earth — in the record books and archived footage — forever. This was Reuben’s plan: a wise and reliable plan. A plan for the future. The family’s future. And yet always he’d known, in the greater part of his mind and soul, that his son had never accepted his role.

Reuben and Kate guided Rob to a chair and sat him down. Rob stared, with a gaze of deep absorption, at the halogen lights overhead. Slowly, with great care, Reuben peeled sodden toweling away.

“Oh, my… oh… oh…”

What they saw resembled nothing so much as what might be found clogging the filter of a slaughterhouse sluice grate. Meat. Red and flayed and broken meat.

Everything tangled up, enmeshed, no one part all that distinguishable from the next. Reuben marveled, with knife-edged sickness, at the fortitude it must’ve taken to commit an act of such desperate aggression against oneself.

“My god, Rob…”

Reuben could not take his eyes off his son’s hands. What if they healed that way, skin grafting and bones setting into a scarred lumpen ball? Would they ever be right again? Not right enough so he could box — there was no way he’d ever step inside a ring again — but right enough to grip a pencil? To tie his own shoelaces?

“I’m sorry,” Rob said. “I’m so… sorry.”

“Sorry? No… you don’t have to be sorry. You don’t ever have to be sorry.”

“I didn’t… couldn’t do it. For you and Tommy and everyone I wanted to but I couldn’t anymore and I’m so, so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Reuben said even while he felt his whole world collapsing, all the things he’d striven for coming down around his ears. “It’ll be okay.”

Reuben set his arms around his son’s shoulders. Rob’s every muscle tensed; his entire body quaked. Reuben had no idea as to the precise sequence of the night’s events, what his boy had been through since they’d last spoken. He only wished he’d known of Rob’s intentions: if not to stop him, then at least to have been there for him — his father, instead of some neighborhood bum like Fritzie Zivic.

Christ, what were they going to do ? Rob was a smart kid, hardworking, but college? No way could he afford it. So what were his options: pouring concrete, snaking toilets, hammering two-by-fours. The same ones open to every go-nowhere do-nothing slug in town. For a soul-destroying instant Reuben pictured his son at the bakery with a bag of enriched flour on his shoulder. Flour in Rob’s hair and ears, gathering at the sides of his eyes.

“You didn’t have to do this,” he said. “You could have told me.”

But was that really true? Perhaps there was no other route his son could have taken: only an act of this magnitude — an act of zero recourse — could steer him off the path he’d been set upon. Bonds of family are the fiercest, and can only be broken by the most extreme strokes.

“We’ll be okay.” If his words lacked conviction, at least his voice was steady.

“We’ll figure all this out.” He touched his lips to Rob’s forehead.

“You need a doctor. Kate, stay here.”

Reuben shot Fritzie an unforgiving look as he shoved past him out into the hallway.

“I’ll go with your dad,” Fritzie said meekly. Murdoch padded into the room and sat by Tommy’s bed; he started to chew on a dangling IV tube.

Rob could still feel the lingering wetness of his father’s lips on his forehead.

When was the last time his dad had kissed him — as a baby?

Kate’s expression was caught somewhere between dread and wonder. “You’ve destroyed them,” was all she could say.

“I’ll never box again.”

She smoothed the sweaty hair on his forehead. Though the sight of his hands obviously made her queasy, she smiled.

“What are you smiling at?”

“Nothing. They look awful, Tully. A busted jigsaw puzzle.”

“You’re still smiling.”

“I know I am. I’m sorry. I don’t know why.”

Rob found himself smiling as well. Still in shock, he figured. He glanced at Tommy and wondered what he might make of all this, were he awake. Then he thought of them in their little house on 16th Street. Sitting on the porch with his uncle on a warm summer’s night: a cold soda, the fireflies and stars. Brief, sure, but then the good times always seemed too brief. Who was he to ask for any of it over?

“Do you want me to get you anything?” Kate asked.

“Just sit with me, okay?”

His hands were blazing. He heard the whisper of Tommy’s breath. He sat with his uncle, each man in his own place.

Both of them waiting.

Paul drove the QEW north toward Toronto. He’d taken his father’s Corvette Stingray — why the hell not? The highway was empty and quiet; Lake Ontario swept off to the east and nightlong valleys twisted west to the escarpment. Over the Burlington Skyway, past Stelco smokestacks pumping effluvia into the charcoal sky. He tuned the radio to NEWS 640: Earlier tonight, an explosion rocked the InoDyne Animal Testing Center in midtown Toronto, leaving four dead. A rogue animal rights group has claimed responsibility for the blast….

He felt queasy and pulled over, jerking the door open in time to puke a stream of yellow gruel over the breakdown lane. Three great heaves from the gut. For thirty seconds he stayed that way, his body leaning out over the dirty slush, but that was it. He was empty.

The Corvette skirted the city on the Gardiner Expressway. The slender spike of the CN Tower, the bleached bubble of the SkyDome. Three o’clock in the a.m.; spider legs of pale pre-dawn light skittered over the horizon.

Pearson airport sprawled across a flattened scrim on the city’s western edge.

Shark-colored planes eased down on gentle trajectories to meet halogen-lit runways.

Paul parked in the short-term lot and killed the engine. He grabbed his father’s suit off the passenger seat, tossed the keys under the seat, and set off toward the international terminal.

Once inside he made a beeline for the nearest restroom. He shucked his clothes and donned the button-down shirt, trousers, and flared jacket. He stuffed his old clothes in a trash can and kept only his sneakers, rinsing them under the tap to wash away the blood.

He considered himself in the mirror. The suit made him look like he’d wandered off from a Captain & Tennille theme party.

He grabbed a handful of toilet paper, wet it, and wiped his face. The paper clumped and shredded; bits snagged on his stitches. When he finished he looked, if not presentable, then at least human. Grabbing the stacks of money off the countertop and stuffing one into each pocket, he headed into the terminal.

The departure board loomed above the ticket counters. Destinations ticked past: Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney, London, Moscow, Barcelona, Sao Paulo, Caracas, Monterrey.

Eenie, meenie, minie, moe, catch a tiger by the toe …

Edinburgh.

… if it hollers …

Cairo.

… let…it…go …

Napoli.

… eenie …

Tokyo.

… meenie …

Rome.

… minie …

Kabul.

… moe .

The girl behind the Thai Airways counter clocked his approach with a mixture of professional decorum and abject horror: a wretched ghost in a cast-off leisure suit who wouldn’t have looked out of place haunting an abandoned discotheque.