Redhanded (2 page)

I shot a look to my corner, Raymond watching the fight sideways, like he couldn't stand to see it straight on. I had spent hours sparring with Raymond in his dad's garage, and he was the friend who had encouraged me to spend the last half year on punches and footwork.

I tried a technique I had picked up after hours, listening to the veteran amateurs, the postal clerks and carpenters who liked to box for the same reason some guys like to drink. They traded stories, half joking, half serious, how to cheat. I stepped on my opponent's white, pristine boxing shoes. I planted my right foot on his left, and leaned hard. I could feel his foot bones flatten out under the sudden weight. I heaved my left glove into his ribs and plowed forward like a football lineman, catching him in the chin with my shoulder.

He gave a little grunt, a likable, animal noise, like a very large dog lying down full of weariness. He gunned a combination up into my mouth, two staccato uppercuts, and danced away—far away, his legs a blur. He gave himself a little tap with one glove, adjusting the compact Everlast headgear and also showing me how to hit him in the head.

It's easy
, he was saying. He flicked himself again with the oversized sixteen-ounce glove, daring me to plant a punch right there in the middle of his forehead.

Raymond was leaning into the ring, both arms on the canvas. His hands lifted in a classic beseeching pose,
be careful
.

I was gulping air, not even remotely in physical shape for this kind of workout. “I'm going to let you go three rounds with someone good,” Loquesto had said, marking in my name with the squeaky black felt-tip he used, the Magic Marker ink smelling like rubbing alcohol.

I slogged after Del Toro, and he did a cute sashay to glide way out of the reach of my glove. So I pumped my fist at him, not bothering to close my glove, trying to stick my thumb in his eye. He whipped a right cross at the side of my head. It landed, a punch I saw coming, and which my head rose to meet as though drawn to it by hypnotic suggestion. The blow momentarily paralyzed the right side of my face.

I continued to try to fight dirty, my body angled so Mr. Monday couldn't see what I was doing. Not because I disliked Lorenzo Del Toro, but because it seemed like all I could do, ashamed to be losing so badly. I dug my glove laces into his cheek, forcing them hard into his skin, and then when he recoiled, I trudged after him and gripped the ropes. I hung on with determination, using the ropes to pull myself toward him, into him, bearing against him with my whole body, ashamed that I had to fight like this.

By now the gym was going quiet, the echoing voices and the drumroll speed bag all falling still as people wandered over, aware that Del Toro was feeding me combinations, fast and mad.

Not out-of-control angry, but cold-pissed, his right hand cocked and ready to finish me while he painted me with his left. My mouthpiece got that raw-steak flavor you get when you're bleeding from the lips.

When the timekeeper called out, “Thirty seconds,” I head-butted Del Toro in a style that belonged in a book of its own, a classic illegal maneuver, head down, bulling into his chest, and then up with a snap.

Even cushioned with the headpiece, the blow hurt me, the point of his jaw outlined in the nerves of my scalp. I knew it did him harm. I then threw a classic cheat, one that it's impossible for a referee to fault you on, even when he sees it happen.

I feinted with my left just to set the foul up properly and make it look like an honest bit of boxing strategy, and I put all my strength into a straight right.

The straight right is a dream punch, one you rarely get to land because most opponents see you set it up. You get your feet just the way you want them, and stride into the punch, driving your gloved knuckles through your opponent's guard.

But in this case, I never really intended to hit him with the glove.

My punch missed on purpose, went straight by him. My elbow slammed into his nose, and I felt the gristle buckle. Guys watching called out a half-admiring, half-protesting, “Oh, man!” The
man
stretched out, the single word taking on the meaning: did you see that?

Del Toro put the heel of his glove on my face in the clinch—a little dirty combat of his own—and Mr. Monday, assistant coach and referee, was suddenly a presence in our fight, like a man who had just arrived. He pulled us apart, his hands slipping off our sweaty arms as the timekeeper rang the bell.

I wanted to enjoy this moment.

The round was over and I could stay as I was, expending no effort, except to disguise my weariness. I even gave that little wave that means
this guy is nothing
, a gesture wasted on Del Toro, whose back was turned.

I waddled, heavy and stiff-legged from the exertion, and leaned against the ropes in my corner while Raymond squirted water on my mouthpiece, washing off the pink glue all over it.

“Well, you're still alive,” said Raymond.

The small crowd around the ring parted as Loquesto made his way up to the ring apron, some of the spectators, with white towels on their shoulders or baseball caps on backward, acting out my head butt, my elbow punch, all of them eager to see if Loquesto would keep the fight from continuing, disqualifying me for fighting dirty.

CHAPTER TWO

This practice bout was scheduled to go two more rounds, but you could see Mr. Monday stroll over to the ropes, awaiting instructions from Loquesto to tell me to go take a shower.

Loquesto came over to me in his black sweater and his black, sharp-creased pants, looked over Raymond's shoulder right into my eyes and asked, “Holding up okay, Steven?”

“Great,” I said, all I could manage, I was breathing so hard. I didn't want to meet his eyes.

He shouldered Raymond to one side and took my headpiece in his hands, forcing me eye to eye. “You're better than this,” he said.

I shrugged one shoulder.

“If you don't show some class, you'll never make it to San Diego.”

The Golden Gloves West Coast tournament was a month away, at the San Diego fairgrounds. If I could muscle up my boxing skills and get the registration fees and traveling money together, I had a chance at something big.

I let my gaze slide off his. But I gave a nod.

Loquesto sauntered across the canvas, and you could see him engaging in a silent laugh with Del Toro and his handlers, two older brothers with experience in the Junior Olympics, muscular middleweights. Loquesto gave a nod to Mr. Monday, a gray-haired, ebony-skinned man who always looked like he was listening to a ball game in his head, a playoff, his team way ahead.

Raymond is a short, thin guy, not quick enough on his feet to be much of a boxer. Raymond is the sort of person who might talk the two of us into climbing into the grizzly bear habitat at the zoo, and then cringe at the edge of the lair in real horror. He has a crave/disgust relationship with risk.

The rest period between rounds is always over before you know it. Andy, the timekeeper, hit the brass bell with the little wooden hammer that had been used for that very purpose since they began boxing in Franklin Gym sixty years ago. I rose to my feet off the wooden stool feeling that some mistake had been made—a minute could not have passed so quickly.

Maybe Del Toro wanted to buy a few seconds, too. He did that funny little hitch some boxers do, pulling up his boxing trunks even though with your hands wrapped and encased in padding you can't get much of a grip. His trunks still sagged a little, his pads exposed, bright pink kidney guards peeking out.

Mr. Monday called time-out. Del Toro glanced down, hitched at his belt, stopped and wrestled with his shiny blue trunks. Mr. Monday shook his head and stepped in front of him, grabbed his trunks, and gave them a tug upward, a valet adjusting a gentleman's suit. The crowd was patient, a couple of hand claps.

The entire gym wanted to know what would happen next.

So did I, and I didn't necessarily like the feeling.

Del Toro was adjusting his mouthpiece, giving himself a preparatory tap on the headpiece, the guy suddenly a mess of nervous tics. I walked across the ring. I dangled my arms, shrugged my shoulders, worked my head from side to side. Everything that happens in the ring is a contest, and I was intent on winning this beauty pageant, which of us looked most at ease.

Del Toro circled and was saying something around his mouthpiece, scuffing the flat, treadless surface of his boxing shoes on some water droplets Raymond had left on the canvas in front of my corner.

Mr. Monday observed this, and he called time-out again while Raymond leaped into the ring and wiped the canvas with a Bay Linen Supply towel.

The next few mental snapshots passed too quickly.

Raymond took a month blotting up the water, powder-puffing the dark patches on the canvas with a resin bag. He looked up and smiled hopefully, letting me know he was stalling, giving me a few more seconds of respite.

“Excellent job, Raymond,” said Mr. Monday. He used to be a PE teacher at Merritt College, and even in semi-retirement you'd see him showing people how to fold towels, or set up a row of folding chairs, with a habitually encouraging air.

Del Toro threw a combination, far away from me, a practice one-two.

The next instant he hit me hard, I don't know with what hand.

Or how he leaped from several paces away, an opponent exactly my weight, but built like a real boxer, with a torso that looked too heavy with muscle to match those thin, deft legs.

I was hit. I understood that much.

And then, as I reviewed what had just been happening, I tried to convince myself that I had slipped on some of Raymond's water. I thought hard. I had been hit with a right cross, it was the only logical explanation. I was down.

On the canvas, my legs folded, like I was waiting to roast marshmallows.

I assembled myself, bone by bone, and when I was on my feet I became aware of Mr. Monday's count. “Seven,” he said, holding out several fingers. “Eight,” he said, methodically, looking over toward Loquesto, ready to stop it.

I jumped up and down, and said something, “I'm okay” coming out like caveman language around the mouthpiece.

“Suck it up, Beech,” said one of the older men, a man in his thirties who used the gym as a workout establishment. “Hit him in the face, Steve,” said one of the fourteen-year-olds. Nobody who knows me calls me
Steve
.

But I absorbed the sound of this, people cheering for me. I liked it. Del Toro ran a glove over the top of his head, dug a left hook to my ribs, and another one, punches that shook me. We clinched. I hung on hard, climbed into him, pinning his arms, bulling him back toward the ropes.

I landed a couple of rapid-fire combo, lefts and rights. You could hear the crowd suck air in surprise and pleasure. It looks pretty, when you do it right.

We wrestled, Del Toro needing a recess. I felt Mr. Monday's shadow over me, and heard his breath, his teeth gritting together as he forced an arm between us, like a man reaching into the back shelf of a closet.

Mr. Monday said, like a man very mildly irritated with two little children, “I told you to break.”

I hadn't heard him, and neither had Del Toro. Del Toro offered an apology with his eyes, his brows uplifted, and I held out a hand in a half-wave, both of us suddenly the picture of boxing manners.

Mr. Monday gave a signal, bringing invisible cymbals together, flat-handed: keep going.

But Del Toro and I circled, breathing deeply, buying a few seconds before we dived in.

CHAPTER THREE

“Good rounds,” said Del Toro.

It was a hundred years later, and it was over, all three rounds of it. I let the mouthpiece fall out of my mouth, followed by a long splash of drool.

“Great rounds,” I agreed, sounding like a talking dog.

Del Toro gave me a gentle, crablike embrace, his gloves impeding us as we hugged around the middle of our bodies, and slung an arm over each other's shoulders, as though someone was going to take our picture. He was panting, bleeding a little from his nose, but his respiration was already starting to level off. I felt dizzy, my breath sawing in and out of my body.

No one had a camera, and the crowd was already turning away, clapping with the perfunctory, cheery politeness of people with other things to do, the fight over, life losing much of its gloss. A few of them looking back to say something in Spanish to Del Toro, giving me a thumbs-up.

Coach Loquesto nodded at me, several silent up-and-downs of his head, like he was agreeing with a point I was making. I wasn't saying anything. I sidled my way through the entourage of a flyweight twenty-seven-year-old and his friends waiting to take their turn.

I felt great.

I showered and used some of the Alfred Dunhill aftershave Raymond had stolen from a department store—or so he claimed—twenty dollars an ounce unless you have smart hands. I laced on my street shoes, my hands feeling puffy and clumsy, while Raymond took random blows at the lockers with a knotted towel. When he struck a locker too loudly he flinched, and gave the metal surface a gentle swipe.

Raymond was saying that I could have killed Del Toro, if we met in the street. I let him talk for a while, Raymond tough now that it was over. Raymond was always yelling encouragement at his favorite team on TV, and then covering his eyes, afraid to look. We both felt excited by the fact I had survived three rounds with a fighter who had fought on amateur cards in Richmond and Modesto.

“I guess Chad couldn't make it,” said Raymond.

“Better things to do,” I said.

Chad was someone new in recent weeks, someone Raymond had bragged about, his new friend, the guy who'd been in jail. With an older brother in prison on a felony murder charge, Chad sounded like trouble. Raymond said Chad bragged about shooting a homeless guy down by Fruitvale Avenue, emptying a clip into him, but I didn't believe it.

“Chad missed a good fight,” said Raymond.