The Fighter (27 page)

Tommy
said, "First of all I'd like to thank God almighty, without whom no things
are possible. The Fridge put up a hell of a fight. I respect the Fridge as a
fighter. But this was Tom Tully's night." He hugged the loaf of bread to
his chest. "If the Fridge wants a rematch, okay, fine, but it'll have to
get in line. The Stove's my mandatory challenger, and the Toaster Oven's been
flapping its gums. Tom Tully don't duck no appliance! None!"

Rob
said, "Stern words from a stern man—Tom 'Boom Boom' Tully."

Tommy
and Rob dissolved into snorting giggles. Reuben wasn't laughing.

"Pull
yourself together," he said.

Tommy
patted his brother on the back. "Lighten up, killjoy."

Reuben
finished packing while Tommy fetched their coats and boots.

Tommy
returned with their gear. "What're we waiting for?"

"Waiting
for you to wise up," said Reuben. "But since there's about as much
chance of that as there is me sprouting fairy's wings, guess there's no use
wasting our time."

Tommy
said, "That's the spirit."

"Meet
at Macy's after?" Rob said.

"If
your uncle's face doesn't look like ten pounds of ground chuck."

Rob
wished his uncle good luck. He felt the lump lodged deep in his belly.

Tommy
winked. "Another day in the salt mines."

Two
men drove the southbound QEW in a rattletrap Ford.

They
crossed the Niagara overpass, high over freighters plying the Welland Canal.
The highway cut west, curling around a Christmas tree farm, on past wrecking
yards and discount tire outlets.

Weeks
had passed since the paintball incident. Nothing had come of it all, aside from
an article in the
St. Catharines Standard:
crazed motorist runs amuck on canal
footpath.
(A
quote from the recumbent bicyclist: "Thank heavens the maniac was driving
a small foreign car and I was able to outrace it.") He'd seen no headline
titled
musclebound idiot found dead in field
and
so
assumed the Einstein was okay. He had moved out of
his parents' house the next day; his nights had been spent on the couch in
Lou's office.

Lou
drove with both hands on the wheel, a prudent five miles below the speed limit
on account of the icy roads and his driving license being suspended. Between
them on the front seat: a black leather valise stocked with gauze and tape,
adrenaline chloride, ferric acid.

"You're
off that shit, aren't you?"

Paul
nodded; he'd quit the 'roids cold turkey following his binge. And though he'd
surrendered muscle mass, he was streamlined and agile and his skin had lost its
yellowish tinge.

"Let
me tell you something about muscles," Lou told him. "They look good
and I guess they'll frighten off a lot of guys; nine out of ten—ninety-nine out
of a hundred—take one look at a pair of sporty arm-cannons and walk the other
way. But muscles aren't skill or heart. So your problem is when you run across
the one guy in a hundred who recognizes that—and
that
guy is going to hurt you a hell of a lot worse than those other ninety-nine
would've. Hurt you half for spite."

They
drove along the river. The spiraling coils of a hydroelectric plant reared in
solitary abandonment against the night sky. Farther on, a rutted dirt path
rounded into a sprawling farmstead. Cars were parked along a barbed-wire fence.

At
the barn door they were met by Manning in his long duster coat. He dragged on a
corn-husk cigarette and said, "Who we got here?"

Lou
hooked a thumb at Paul. "From the club. Tough kid. The guts of a
burglar."

Manning
sized Paul up. His eyes were obscured by a haze of smoke spindling the
cigarette. "On you go, then."

The
barn was packed. A highway work crew in bib pants and reflective vests; high
rollers with narrow silk ties and suits of exotic cut; tattooed,
bandanna-wearing members of the local Hells Angels chapter—one sported a tattoo
that read
i'd rather see my sister in a whorehouse
than see my brother on a jap bike.
The dark, dumb eyes of cattle peered through knotholes in the barn walls.
Fighters stood on the peripheries, clustered in pockets of shadow beyond the
lit ring.

"Wait
here," Lou said.

Paul
sat on a hay bale. A fighter sat on the floor beside him. Not too tall or
short, thin or fat, lean or muscular. He wore a deerstalker tugged low over his
lumpen features and a pair of boxy black-rimmed glasses. He sat there, rocking.
Paul had heard that schizophrenics gave off a stink that often got so intense
doctors claimed to see colors— scarlet, aquamarine, magenta—wafting off their
patients. An imbalance in their bodily makeup, the enzymes being out of kilter
or otherwise fucked. This guy stunk like rotting peaches.

"Fight
like a dog," Paul heard him say.

"What's
that?"

"It's
the best mindset to put yourself in." In the stark white of the barn
lights, the guy's sockets looked like they were packed with dry ice.

"You're
a dog. A dog isn't frightened by pain. A dog is frightened by thunder and
fireworks and the vacuum cleaner, all the things its tiny brain can't quite
comprehend. But a dog—and I'm talking a
real
dog, here—is not the least bit
frightened of pain. So: fight like a dog."

Paul
considered this man closely. He looked as though, in some former life, he might
have been a doctor or a professor. Paul felt like he'd seen him before,
somewhere.

"Makes
my dick hard." The fighter gestured to his jeans, the rigid outline of his
cock swelling the denim halfway down his thigh. "It's the
anticipation."

Paul
had no response to this—he was fairly certain the guy wasn't looking for one.
And he was utterly certain he'd rather not fight the bastard.

Lou
returned. "You're on as an alternate. But we should get your hands wrapped
in case it turns out you're called in."

Reuben
looped bandages over and around, pressing gently the oft- broken bones of his
brother's huge hands. Tape next, over and around, a thick encasing layer. How
many times had they done this together, in preparation for training, sparring,
title fights? A few thousand, surely. The act held an underlying ease, a
familiarity: their heads bent and almost touching, they resembled lovers
sharing some sweet intimacy.

Reuben
scanned the barn. The dark peripheries hosted seventy or eighty spectators.
Fritzie Zivic stood beside a withered ancient in a wheelchair; Murdoch was
chewing the codger's slippers off his senseless feet. Reuben nudged his
brother.

"Look
who's here."

Tommy
followed his gaze and saw Garth Briscoe sitting beside a young guy. Garth was
wearing a pair of boxy glasses and looked repulsive; he rocked back and forth
like someone suffering a neural disorder—as could be the case.

"Huh,"
said Reuben. "Least he's alive."

"Take
a break, Ruby. You don't have to be a prick every day of your life."

"That
wasn't very nice," he admitted. "I always liked Garth; everyone
liked him, till he went off the rails. But what does it say that you and him
are in the same place?"

"Ruby..."

"All
right, forget it, I'm laying off. You ready?"

Tommy
punched himself under the jaw. "Time to make the donuts."

Manning
singled out Tom and Paul for the evening's fourth bout. He recalled the rough
time Tommy had had with the Kilbride kid and thought he'd throw the old
warhorse a bone.

"Well?"
Lou asked Paul. "What do you figure?"

"God,
that's one big slab of humanity."

Lou
acknowledged this was so, but said, "Often the worst you ever absorb is
one good punch: the one that knocks you cold. Most guys find it hard to keep
hitting a man who's gone unconscious—the skin goes slack, no tension to it,
like punching a gutted fish. I've found there is an innately human resistance
to such violence."

The
glasses-wearing schizo overheard Lou and said, "That guy's a pro, too—he
won't hit you any more than he needs to."

"Listen
to Garth here," Lou said. "He's been around."

The
schizo gave Lou a smile so grateful it was sickening. Only then did Paul
realize where he'd seen him before: that first day at Lou's gym, the beaten
fighter who'd shambled in to take a few licks at the heavy- bag before Lou
stopped him.
Ease down, Garth,
he remembered Lou saying.
You did good last night. Real good.

"So,"
Lou asked, "are we on?"

Not
long ago, the prospect of fighting a man like Tommy would have made his bowels
quiver. Tommy was huge and scarred and looked exactly what he was: a tough
veteran fighter in the Thunderbird Layne mold. But when Paul searched the place
in his heart where stark fear once held court, he found the court was empty.

"I
want to fight him," he told Lou. "I do."

They
met in a circle of stacked bales. No headgear, no mouthshields or gloves. Paul
felt his heart as a discrete presence in his chest.