The Fighter (33 page)

"Tully?"
Kate's head occurred in a second-floor window. "Jeez, Rob..."

"Did
I wake you?"

"I
was awake," she lied. "Everything all right?"

"Copacetic."

"I'll
be down in a minute."

She
came out wearing her powder-blue shell and unlaced boots. Crumbs of sleep in
the corners of her eyes; a tuft of hair sticking straight out like a unicorn
horn. "Fine morning for a walk."

They
moved together down Niagara Street. A fire burned somewhere to the north:
columns of blue-gray smoke rose over the flat shop roofs. Kate hummed a tune
under her breath—high, peppy notes—and kicked pebbles from her path.

"How's
your pops doing?"

"Tommy's
coverage isn't great, so Dad's battling the insurance company. But it's not
like they can pull the plug, can they?"

"No,"
said Kate. "That would be unethical, or something."

They
passed Loughran's Park. Rob and Kate used to come here with Tommy when they
were kids. Tommy would sit on the benches with the housewives while Rob and
Kate played. He became a park fixture, an ox of a man with his smiling crumpled
face. The housewives tried to teach him to knit, but his hands were huge and
scarred and he never did get the hang of it.

"I
met him," Rob said.

"Who's
that?"

"At
the hospital. I caught him visiting Tommy."

"Why
was he there?"

"Felt
guilty, I would say."

"Well,
sure. Two guys in a ring, neither expects it to turn out that way." Kate
puffed air into her cupped palms. "Big guy?"

Rob
was too embarrassed on Tommy's behalf to give a truthful description: the
raggedness, the
toothlessness.
"Big guy," he said.
"Very rough-looking."

"Tommy
never should've been there," Kate said. "Or your dad. It was a stupid
thing to be mixed up in."

"Boxing's
all Tommy's ever known. It's what my family's always done."

They
crossed a baseball diamond. Rob stepped in old boot tracks pressed into the
cold mud, idly wondering if he knew the person who made them.

"My
father," Kate said, "was a big asshole. That's how Mom refers to
him—The Big Asshole. Steps out for cigarettes one day when I'm three days old
and never comes back. Talk about your abandonment clichés. He was a selfish
man—but in a way it took guts to do what he did. Leave it all and never look
back. Step out into the world with nothing. Of course, it was cowardly,
too—walking away from his wife and kid, leaving us in the lurch. I don't
know... cowardly and gutsy at once, if that makes any sense."

Rob
gave a long sigh and looked away from her.

"You
don't even like boxing," she went on. "Not like that's any secret.
Your greatest problem stems from your not going after what you really want in
life."

"And
so what?" Rob felt himself getting tight inside; iron bands clapped around
his skull and rocks started growing in his chest. "Who loves their job—who
has that luxury? You think my dad likes hauling his ass out of bed at two a.m.
to bake bread, or your mom loves clipping the stems off marigolds, or Tommy
loved driving a forklift? No, they do it because it's their duty and you don't
shirk that. Everyone has obligations; why should I be above that?"

"Yeah,
but whose obligations?" She stopped and looked at him. "For a tough
guy, you sure let yourself get shoved around a lot."

The
whole point wasn't worth arguing, especially with Kate, who had honed her
skills on the school debate squad. Still, he couldn't quite let go. "At
some point you need to start being sensible about things. Take an adult frame
of mind. Stop writing poetry and hunting up and down a beach with a metal
detector."

"At
least Darren has dreams and they're his own. His mom's a toll- taker but he
feels no need to be one himself."

"Let's
drop it—"

"You
want out of here as bad as he does."

"Maybe
so," Rob said. "But how can you escape without a plan that makes any
sense? Boxing makes sense. I can make it work."

"That
doesn't matter," she said. "It's not your own plan."

Rob
lacked the energy to go on with this, and besides, he knew she was right.

"You'll
make a great boxer," she told him, "whether you want to be or not. We
all know that." She paused, then added, "But it takes guts to step
away from the safety of the world you grew up in. I'm not saying the life you
leave has to be a bad one—maybe it's just not right for you, personally. Any
other way and it's not really your life, is it? Just the one someone else
thinks you ought to be living."

They
rounded back to Kate's house. They talked about trivial subjects: a
spring-break road trip to Daytona Beach, the prom's lame "Under the
Sea" theme.

"Mom
and I are stopping by the hospital this afternoon," said Kate. "Mom's
baking those sugar cookies Tommy loves. She thinks the smell..." She shook
her head. "Maybe I'll see you."

Rob
set off down 16th toward the Fritz.

He
thought about what Kate said—about how being good at something shouldn't
dictate the course of your life. He didn't love boxing, but he had talent and
aptitude. His fists were a ticket out of this place, the tenement houses and
blood banks and boarded shopfronts, no more of this scraping by, plenty of cash
for fancy cars, eye-popping mansions, fine wines. He could save his father and
Tommy from all this—it was within his power.

Or
was it? Maybe it was each man's duty to save himself.

Fritzie
Zivic answered Rob's knock in slippers and a housecoat. Murdoch squatted at
Fritzie's heel, his old eyes focused on Rob.

"Young
master Tully." Fritzie smiled sadly, scratched his backside through the
housecoat's frayed material. "How you holding up?"

"Fine,
Mr. Zivic. I need to talk."

"Tommy's
debts? I cleared the books. Your uncle's such an awful player it makes me sick
to think about collecting."

"Thanks."
Rob was touched by this unexpected kindness from a man not known to dispense
favors. "But that's not it."

"It's
not, huh? Well, you'd better come in."

He
led Rob down the front hall into the kitchen. Murdoch trotted behind, taking
sly nips at Rob's boots until Fritzie hollered at the splenetic old beast.

He
set a beaten coffee pot on the burner and sat in the chair opposite Rob.
Rubbing his unshaven, blocklike chin, he yawned and asked what was on Rob's
mind.

"You
go to those fights. You were there for Tommy."

"Well,
I do, I do." Fritzie's head nodded slowly, his hard features etched with
some embarrassment. "And yeah, I was there when Tommy... drove him to the
hospital, didn't I?"

"Take
me next time."

"And
why's that?"

"Does
it matter?"

"If
you looking for my help, yeah, it does."

Rob
laid out his reasoning without meeting Fritzie's eyes. Once he'd finished,
Fritzie spoke.

"Revenge,
uh? Men have fought for less." The old Croat became pensive. "Let me
tell you a story. Years ago, before you were born, this guy went around leaving
refrigerators in parks and playgrounds. Your dad ever tell you about
this?"

When
Rob shook his head, Fritzie went on. "This guy would pick up fridges at
the dump—the old kind, right, with the locking latches. He filed the safety
catches down and left them where kids played. At night he'd leave them; the
next morning, bright and early, there they were. Like an invitation."

Murdoch
made a couple of circles underneath the table, snuffled morosely, and plopped
down at Fritzie's feet.

"Now
the good thing was, nobody was killed. Some kids hopped inside and mucked
around but none of them ever shut the lid. But this whole town was
terrified—meetings at city hall, a park patrol, and every old fridge at the
dump filled with cement. They never caught the guy. But there are people out
there like that; the type you don't quite believe exist until you see proof of
it—like an open refrigerator next to a swing set.

"The
point I'm driving at is this: every time I go to that place where your uncle
got hurt, I think of those fridges. A lot of the guys don't look like
anything—desperate bums and drifters, most take their beating and off they go.
But you can never tell the scorpion from the frog; you never know which one's
gonna sting. I think of those fridges because some a those guys are like
that—they look harmless enough so you climb inside and muck around and it's not
long before you're locked inside and down to your last breath."

Fritzie
poured himself a cup of coffee. He sipped, his eyes holding Rob's over the rim
of the mug, then said, "Now the question you need to be asking yourself,
Robbie, is: do you think Tommy would want you doing that?"

"You're
saying you won't take me?"

After
a pause: "You're how old?"

Rob
lied. "Eighteen."

"Old
enough to make your own choices. Not my place to stop you. What I'm asking is,
do you feel it's worth it?"

"I
couldn't tell you," Rob said, honestly. "But I can't see my way clear
of it any other way. What do I want—retribution? Is that what Tommy would want?
I don't know. But nothing else seems to answer anything."

Fritzie
sat down and knitted his hands together on the tabletop. "Robbie, let me
ask you one thing. Is this going to be enough for you?"

"I
don't catch your meaning."

Murdoch
pawed his master's leg; Fritzie lifted the dog up and balanced him across his
knees. Murdoch glared across the table at Rob, who had not received a more
malevolent stare from man or beast.

"Look
at your uncle or the pugs at the club—hell, look across the table: all of us
single, no kids, no money, nothing to hold on to."

"My
dad—"

"Your
dad's no fighter. Your dad is ..." Fritzie bit his lip. "... something
else. Boxing's a dream, Robbie, and a sweet one. But the dream takes
everything; you got to feed every ounce of your life into it. Like a heat
shimmer on a stretch of summer tarmac—you can chase that damn thing forever
without ever catching it. And one day you wake up and see you've fed that dream
everything and it's no closer than it was years ago."

Fritzie
kneaded the ruff of Murdoch's neck. "Your uncle and I did pretty good for
a couple of neighborhood guys. Tommy fought at Madison Square Garden; I ate a
fifty-dollar steak at the same table as John Gotti after a fight. But what's
any of it amount to—an hour, a week, a month where you're king shit? Nah. The
best thing about fighting is getting into that ring and you look the other guy
in the eye and say, For the next ten rounds let's bring something out in each
other—something we didn't even know we had. Show me what I don't know about
myself.
That's
the juice of boxing." He kissed the top of Murdoch's head. The beast
growled. "And if that's not what thrills you, you shouldn't be boxing. Not
worth the risk—and I don't just mean getting hurt. Look at me. I got this
vicious old mutt and when he goes I'm going to fall to pieces. I got nothing
else."

Rob
could think of nothing to say but, "He looks fairly healthy."

Fritzie
smiled gratefully. "You think? Anyway, what I'm asking is, will you be
able to walk out of that place when it's over and be kaput?"

"I
hope so."

Fritzie
nodded. "Fights go next Thursday night. You're here, I'll take you."

"I
appreciate it, Mr. Zivic."

"Don't
take it the wrong way when I say I hope to see not hide nor hair of you come
next Thursday."