Chris Offutt - Out of the Woods - Stories

We walked Lynn to the ring. She wasn’t blinking.

“Go for the face,” Jack said. “Keep your chin down and your eyes open. Circle but don’t back up. Say this over and over — kiss, kiss, kill.”

She nodded and climbed the stepladder to the ring. The other fighter was a short Indian woman with a powerful body. I knew Lynn would lose and I felt awful for having put her there. If I hadn’t left Kentucky, she’d be with a guy who had more to offer.

The bell rang. The crowd was yelling, and the announcer chanted into his microphone, “Here kitty, kitty, kitty.” The Indian woman moved slowly, waiting to see what Lynn would do. Lynn’s little white legs looked pathetic below the torso pad. She wore her swimsuit, and I wished she was still in the pool, that they were fighting in the water where Lynn would have a chance. They circled each other three times. Jack stood beside me muttering, “Kiss, kiss, kill.”

The people in the crowd were yelling for blood. Lynn’s fists were up and her chin was down, and suddenly she jumped through the air, swinging both fists wildly at the woman’s head. Lynn connected two or three times before the woman shoved her away and hit her in the face, opening a cut above her eye. When I saw the red smear, my guts just folded up on themselves.

The doctor called time and the referee took the fighters to neutral corners. The doctor examined the cut, put ointment on it, and left the ring. Lynn had a look I’d seen when a customer stiffed her at the diner. She was mad. The other woman just looked serious, like she could face a sideways ice storm and walk all night. She moved forward a step at a time. Everybody in the place understood that Lynn was no fighter, but she was in there, and she wasn’t afraid.

The Indian woman walked to Lynn as if to shake hands and hit her very hard on the cut eye. Lynn’s head jerked to the side, spattering blood on the canvas floor of the ring. I started to cry. When I looked up, the fight was over. The doctor had stopped it and the crowd was booing.

The doctor worked on the cut while a man from the judge’s table handed Lynn an envelope. Jack helped her to a chair. He held her chin with one hand and lifted the water to her mouth like a baby’s bottle. He was very gentle. I sat beside Lynn. She was gasping for breath, her chest rising and falling, barely able to drink. There was a butterfly bandage across her left eyebrow. A sheen of sweat covered her skin.

“The doctor said it won’t scar,” Jack said.

“I want it to,” she said.

The woman who won the fight leaned over the chair to hug Lynn. Her arms were strong, with raised scars on them. The two women reeked of sweat in a way that I had only smelled on men in a work crew. They whispered in each other’s ears. After Lynn got control of her breathing, Jack helped her to the rest room where she could change clothes.

I sat there thinking that Lynn was tougher than me. She hadn’t gone down, she’d just got cut. I watched the winner walk the aisle. Someone gave her a cup of beer and someone else gave her a cigarette and I suddenly wanted her for a girlfriend. I wanted to treat her as tenderly as Jack had treated Lynn. The woman was beautiful in the garish lights of the ring that spilled shadows on the bleachers. Whatever she’d gone through to get so tough soaked me with sorrow.

Lynn and Jack joined me. The flush had faded from her skin. She’d wet her face and hair, and she looked fine. We went outside, past teenage boys smoking cigarettes and faking punches at each other. The dry cold air snapped against my face. Snow drifted down, one of those early autumn snows before the hard cold sets in. The flakes were the size of silver dollars falling from the sky, turning the black night white.

“If they hadn’t stopped it,” I said, “you’d have won. It was your fight.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Lynn said. “It was never my fight.”

Jack unlocked the Cadillac and sat behind the wheel. Lynn gave me the envelope that contained her prize money.

“I’m going with Jack,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

I nodded.

“The motel is paid through tomorrow,” she said. “We can drop you there, if you want.”

I shook my head no.

“This isn’t about you,” she said. “This is about me.”

She hugged me then, squeezing me tighter than she ever had. My face pushed against her neck and I smelled the cheap soap from the rest room. I put my arms around her, but I couldn’t hug back. My knees felt wobbly. She stepped away. She was sad but trying to smile. A strand of hair fell over her face. I lifted my hands and pretended to take a picture.

She got in the car and I watched the red taillights move around a corner.

I headed for the motel and stopped at the bridge that crossed the Missouri River. I stood there a long time. Snow was thick in the air. My family had been in the hills for two hundred years and I was the first to leave. Now I was pretty much ruined for going back. The black water ran fast and cold below.

I started walking.