Craig Davidson - The Fighter

And a man can’t live in a vacuum — not his whole life.

Paul wiped his chest and armpits with toilet paper, donned his shirt and jacket. He stared into the mirror. Who was that person staring back?

It was… well, it was him. For better or for worse — him.

He was as unlikely a candidate for all this as you were liable to find. Or else he was the ideal one: a man whose life had always been primed for cataclysmic change. Or maybe there was no ideal candidate; perhaps the reasons for taking the road less traveled were as diverse as the histories of those who ultimately chose to walk it. And why not him? He came from good strong stock. His ancestors were farmers and before that sharecroppers and before that hunters.

His bloodlines were fierce and he felt that fierceness in his own blood.

Follow anyone’s family tree back far enough and you’ll find warriors.

It wasn’t that he thought he’d become a better man; he didn’t feel like a Phoenix risen from the ashes of his former self. And yet there was a former self, a person who existed once and existed no more. So if he stood for anything at all, it was as a testament to change.

That full five percent change. A whole new person.

And consider if he’d never tried at all. Never fought, never suffered, never given all of himself. He would have spent his whole life wondering, just like any of us. And one day he might have woken to the awful realization that no choice he’d made had been his own, that his life had been plotted and planned and he’d followed it all by rote. Woken up still scared of every little thing. Woken up with no knowledge of his limits.

“I’m coming to your town. Last of the ramblin’, russlin’, tusslin’ fighting men.” The mirror reflected the sly irony in his smile. “Lay out your best, your fiercest men. Let’s toe a line in the dirt.”

Paul Harris butted his fists together, turned from his reflection, and exited the washroom toward Customs.