Red Hook Road (26 page)

In the back of the cage he came upon a box salvaged from the attic of his parents’ house after his father’s death. This box posed little risk of
upending his heart, and he opened it. On top, in a cracked wooden frame with a loose nail poking through the paper backing, lay a faded black-and-white photograph of Daniel in boxing trunks and gloves, his lean body slick with sweat. He found he could remember neither the match nor the moment the photograph was taken, but he was sure he had won. You could tell by his grin. In the dim, dank storage locker, Daniel crouched down onto his heels, holding the photograph in his hands. He remembered with heartbreaking clarity what it was like to be so young and powerful. So unencumbered, so free. He remembered in his hands and shoulders how good it felt to fight, how a few minutes in the ring could wipe out a day’s worth of frustration, of self-doubt, of everything beyond the instantaneous question of where the next punch would land.

This summer, as soon as they arrived in Red Hook, Daniel had driven up to Newmarket. On that first morning, as he pushed opened the heavy steel door of the Maine Event and walked into the stinking fug of sweat, foot, mildew, leather, and chalk, he felt like he was shedding years and responsibilities and, especially, any pain that could not be treated with a handful of aspirin and an ice pack.

He had been training hard since that first day. Thirty minutes jumping rope, and then another thirty working the heavy bag and the speed bag, shadow boxing in front of the mirror. Then an hour stretching out and soaking in the overchlorinated hot tub. It was a long workout, longer than anyone else’s at the gym, even though the other guys were much younger. Every once in a while a couple of guys would take a desultory turn in the ring, but mostly they appeared to spend their time wrapping and unwrapping their hands, and talking shit about their amateur rankings. Sometimes one or another of them would glance Daniel’s way, say something to his buddies in an undertone that broke them up, as though there were something funny or even pathetic about the sight of an old man working out so hard. Daniel tried not to give them the satisfaction of hearing him suck wind, but every so often he had to bend down, rest his elbows on his knees, and wait for his heart rate to slow so that he didn’t feel like it was going to burst out of his chest and go flapping around the room.

He’d told no one about his workouts, especially not Iris. She’d hated his boxing, had insisted that he quit almost as soon as they met. If she
knew where he was, she’d throw a fit. Over the past few weeks he’d found himself concocting ever more Baroque explanations for his three-hour daily absences from home.

At first the exertion and the familiar colors, furnishings, and sounds of the gym—the smells of armpit and feet, the give of the mats beneath his shoes, the weight of the gloves in his hand, the ticking rattle of the speed ball—had been enough. But now, he wanted to fight. When Daniel was in his prime, none of the young fatheads who hung out at the Maine Event would have lasted more than three rounds with him. He knew he could take a couple of them even now, if the little bastard who managed the place would just let him spar.

“How old are you?” the kid asked, smirking. This was the same kid Daniel remembered from two years ago, turtle-shaped, his bullet head jutted out almost horizontally from the Gargantuan hump that was his back and shoulders.

“Four years older than Larry Holmes. How old are you?”

“Twenty-two.”

“How many fights have you had?”

“Four,” the kid said, with some embarrassment.

“By the time I was twenty-two, I’d beaten half the middleweights on the New England Golden Gloves circuit,” Daniel said, in an uncharacteristic show of braggadocio.

A gravelly voice from behind him rasped, “And the other half?”

Daniel turned in the direction of the voice and found himself staring down at the freckled bald pate of an elderly giant in an electric wheelchair. Daniel had seen him around the gym before—he clearly owned the place. Daniel took a step back in order to look more closely into the man’s face. He had the mashed nose of a fighter, and one corner of his upper lip was bisected by the twisted thread of a scar. The man’s large gnarled hands with their lumpy knuckles rested uselessly on the arms of the wheelchair. The tips of his fingers were bent at sharp right angles, as though they’d been broken and poorly reset.

“The other half kicked my ass,” Daniel said.

The man in the wheelchair extended his crippled hand to Daniel. “Jimmy Tunney,” he said.

“Any relation to Gene?”

“My father’s cousin.”

Daniel nodded and took the man’s hand. “Daniel Copaken.” Tunney’s palm was soft and powdery, a surprising contrast to his knotted and calloused fingers.

“How long since your last fight?”

“A while,” Daniel said. As he had worked his body back into fighting shape, he had begun to feel that the young man who had danced in the ring, weighed down by nothing but two ten-ounce gloves, was his finest, truest self. His other self—the man who went every day to a job he hated, who held up his end of a marriage that had grown difficult and disconnected, who had lost one child and feared the growing distance between him and the other—that Daniel Copaken felt weighed down by time and failure.

“Back in the late sixties?” Tunney said.

“Thereabouts.”

“You ever fight down Lowell way? We’re talking late ’67, ’68?”

“Sure.”

“Yeah, I saw you once. I had a boxer on the same card, Damone Pettiford. It was his last amateur bout. And the last decent fight he had.”

Daniel remembered the card and the fighter. He could remember every single one of his fights: every punch, every count, every ring of the bell. Over the past weeks, his memories of those long-ago bouts had gradually returned to him, as though his sweat and effort were bringing them to the surface of his mind.

“Pettiford?” Daniel said. “Kind of a showboat. Threw a wicked seven.”

Tunney laughed. “That’s the one. You fought some kid from the islands. Can’t remember his name.”

Daniel winced at the memory. “Angel Franqui.” He pictured Franqui in his mind. A small man, with muscles bunched like tennis balls under his skin and a birthmark the size and color of a plum across his solar plexus. Daniel remembered taking aim at that birthmark, trying to use it as a target. He had not, he remembered bitterly now, ever managed to connect.

“That’s right. Franqui. You lost.”

“Only on points,” Daniel said, his cheeks reddening beneath the whiskers he had not bothered to shave this morning. One good power punch would have brought pitty-patting Angel Franqui down for the count, but Daniel had had an off night.

“You took a lot of hits.”

“Could always take a punch. Still can.”

“We’ll see,” Tunney said. “What do you walk around at, ’bout 190?”

“Closer to 185.”

“That’s a far cry from 165. Hey, Wiley,” Tunney called. “Come on over here.”

A thick-legged man with a graying scraggly ponytail stilled the speed ball he’d been hammering and ambled over to them. Despite having worked out in the same gym since Daniel first walked through the door, this was the first time they’d been part of the same conversation. “Yeah, Jimmy?”

“You want to take a round or two in the ring with this guy?”

“With you?” Wiley said to Daniel.

“Sure.”

“What are you, like, fifty?”

“I used to be.”

“Man, I been the oldest dude in this dump—except for Jimmy—for a long time. But shit, compared to you I’m a fucking ankle biter.”

“Archie Moore won his last fight by a knockout, in three, when he was fifty years old,” Daniel said.

“Ali kicked Archie Moore’s ass,” the kid behind the desk said.

“
Cassius Clay
kicked Archie Moore’s ass,” Daniel said. “And this guy doesn’t look like any Cassius Clay to me.”

Tunney laughed. “Okay, we get it. You’ve got, what, fifteen, twenty pounds on Wiley? And he’s got fifteen, twenty years on you. I figure that makes it a fair enough fight.”

It took only a few minutes for the men to get suited up. Daniel bounced on his toes and shoved the brand new, unmolded mouth guard around with his tongue, trying to keep it from cutting up his gums. The cracked leather of the old headgear rubbed his skin and the borrowed sparring gloves were soggy and stank. He tried not to think of the wide circle
of their acquaintance among the damp palms of greater Newmarket. But even without his own equipment, he felt good. The blood rushed to the surface of his skin, waking every cell to the impending relief of battle. He was going to kick Wiley’s ass.

Wiley, his ponytail poking out of the back of his headgear, climbed into the ring and did a few ostentatious squat stretches. “All right, old man,” he said, turning from the ropes. “I’m gonna lay you out real gentle.”

“Just a round or two,” Tunney said. “See what happens.” He flicked a mangled hand at the kid who worked the front desk. “Jason, you ref. And keep your goddamn eyes open. We don’t want either of these old farts getting hurt.”

Jason hopped into the ring and motioned the two fighters to the center. They banged their gloves together. Daniel tried to stare into Wiley’s eyes, but the man wouldn’t look at him. Normally boxers locked eyes at the beginning of every round, dropping their gaze only when the bell rang them into their corners. That kind of singular, steady eye contact, occurring for entire minutes at a time, never happened anywhere outside of a boxing ring. Not even in bed with a woman did a man look so intently, with such unflinching focus. But Wiley’s eyes traveled around the ring, up and down, over at Tunney, anywhere but at Daniel. It was disconcerting, Daniel thought, to fight a man who wouldn’t look you in the eye.

Tunney rang the ringside bell and Wiley charged forward, swinging a wild, looping hook. Daniel sidestepped and caught Wiley with a quick one-two. The familiar give of flesh beneath his fist filled Daniel with a flush of emotion so warm, so satisfying, that he could call it nothing other than joy. This was what he had been waiting for. He spun around on his left foot and landed a solid straight right. He felt the blow from his fist all the way up to his shoulder. The most satisfying sensation in the world. A blow perfectly landed. An opponent staggered beneath its force. The world narrowed down to only this box.

Wiley couldn’t put together a combination; he seemed able to throw only one punch at a time, and those so slowly that each fist seemed to float by itself through the air. But his blows were hard enough that when they did land they hurt, and Daniel liked it. He had been waiting for this pain, simple pain, pain of the body, a tingling electric ache on the top layer of
tissue followed by a sharp stab deep inside. During a fight, with his adrenaline pumping, it was not even pain, but an awareness of the promise of pain. During a fight it was possible to forget that the next morning when he woke—head banging, a mouse puffed up under his eye, oozing red patches spread out across his face and body—the promise would be redeemed.

Power was all Wiley had. Daniel danced nimbly out of his path, dodging most of his punches. With every swing Wiley left himself wide open for Daniel to throw to the body. Wiley’s right arm kept floating away, allowing Daniel to land jab after jab on his forehead and nose. Daniel’s mind cleared, emptied of anything other than this perfect moment, the sound of his fist against Wiley’s body. A crashing that sounded less like leather on flesh than metal on metal, harsh and grinding.

Daniel hungered for that knockout blow. It would be so easy—all he needed to do was pack the weight of his entire body onto the few square inches at the front of his fist. Then all other sensation would disappear, and he would feel only the sweet, terrible give of skin and bone under his hands. One punch and then he’d just stand back and admire his work as his opponent crumpled. Daniel ached to throw that punch. He wanted that peace in the pain and the punch and the long slow folding of an opponent onto the canvas.

Just as Daniel felt himself ready to let go, just as he gave himself permission to hit as hard as he was longing to, Jason separated the fighters. Daniel stepped back into his corner, blowing a few ragged breaths, trying to get hold of himself and his knockout rage.

“You want to call it quits?” Tunney said.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Daniel said.

“Wasn’t talking to you. Wiley? You done?”

“Fuck no,” Wiley said.

They met in the middle of the ring again. Tunney rang the bell. Daniel took a step back, and then lunged forward. Wiley didn’t move with anything resembling the same eagerness. Daniel began practicing combinations, passing on the easy punches for more challenging ones, trying to hold himself in check. Time stretched in the ring, minutes passing so slowly Daniel felt he could hold the seconds in his hand, palpate them for a while, and then send them on their way. It was probably no more than a
minute, ninety seconds at the most, before Wiley lifted his gloves in front of his face. Daniel stepped back, again searching for Wiley’s eyes but finding only the Everlast label on the front of the headgear on Wiley’s bent head. Daniel felt the hunger rising again. It would be so easy now. With a single blow he could send the man to the mat. The headgear provided some protection against soft tissue damage, but it would be like cellophane against Daniel’s fist. He could see and hear it so clearly: the thunk of glove against skull, the jerk of the man’s head on his spine, the spray of sweat and spit, the shiver under his feet as the man’s body smashed to the canvas. Once again everything around him faded—the sounds of the few people crowded around the ring, the smells of sweat and leather, the mats and the ropes—it was all gone. All that was left were his fist and the pain it would cause. He hauled back his fist and narrowed his eyes, ready to propel it through his opponent. Ready to see Wiley crumple and fall. Ready to see Wiley’s head bounce on the mat. Ready to hurt him as much as he possibly could. Ready to cause pain, because that was the surest way to forget about feeling it.

Just as he sent his fist sailing through the air he heard from behind an all-too-familiar voice.