The Hitter – Part One

The stark wind had stopped its winding, had stopped it’s furnace-blasting sound. It breathed now like a vacuum. He was in an alley. It was his alley and his place of quiet, and he paused to sip his Jameson and sip his cigarette.

Like all good things, the moment passed in a few seconds.  There were quick shuffles behind him, curses getting mumbled to themselves in the underdeveloped language of the street. It jolted him, the shock of someone else being alive at four-fifty seven in the morning.  Out here in the arctic.

The dark expanse of the alleyway had pockets of snow mixed in with the gravel and garbage, milk bottles and beer bottles and sheets of paper and shit and half-cigarettes, the heaviest drift at the back where the alley met with a wooden fence. That was where the noise came from.  He looked at it, back to the where the fence met up with the green alley dumpster. He spotted a human mass, slowly shedding newspaper skin, coming to life like a familiar dirge.

The old man was startled and said, “Jesus Christ.” But he wasn’t like most men.  He didn’t want to run and didn’t scream.  His first thought was admiration, because he knew what the Detroit wind was, and on this morning, with the pink of the morning chasing after the remnants of the night, he would’ve guessed it was a touch above zero.  But to hell with admiring– the old man set down his bottle of Jameson and turned and made fists with his hands, anger spreading in him like a moss.

“This ain’t a place for vagrants,” the old man said.

The developing shadow tried to say something, but instead threw in for six or seven hard coughs. He got up. Old man could see he a dark Negro, in his youth, maybe in his teens, a throng of greasy, gray hair and snot plastered to his nose and chin. But big. The boy slid to his feet slowly, and when he uncurled himself and stood, the old man felt like David matched up with that certain elephantine Philistine.

“What are you doin’ here, then?”

The young boy tried to form words. Trying to explain himself, but panic, and chill, and grogginess. So instead he did what big angry black kids do, he found enough rage and held up two mighty fists and took steps forward.

The old man should have backed up and given himself time to understand the dimensions of the alley. The alley was crooked and cramped and he didn’t want to trip over a crate and give the big kid an advantage. Most of the ruffians nowadays couldn’t fight, instead went with knifes and saps and liquor bottles and some of the older boys even had revolvers.  Even if you were white and as old as he was, they wouldn’t respect you, they’d just as soon leave you blood-letting in the street, like a useless dog.

The boy ran up–the old man took off his hat and showed him his hard grey eyes and gritted his teeth, got compact and on the balls of his feet, and slowly moved his fists in imperceptible circles, his dark irises aflame and clicking back and forth for a tactical mistake–but the boy stopped.

There wasn’t fight in him, but the old man hit him anyway, a short hook–like a little Miles Davis bop–into the solar plexus and the boy doubled across himself and coughed at the ground. It had been eleven years since the old man had thrown a clean punch at a man like that, and it delighted the older man and he bent close into the boy’s ear and chuckled.

“Ah, now,” he said, while the boy coughed. “Found yourself in the briar patch, have ye? Your proud moment wasn’t what you thought. Want to try again, boyo?”

The boy clutched his insides and watched the snow for a while. The wind sang.         The kid was obviously trying to sort things out in his slow head. The old guy was shorter and smaller but punched like a machine at the factories he passed by every day. And he heard the hard brogue, the mush-mouthed stamp of Parlee that confused everybody when they heard it, especially black folks.

Finally, he stood.  His eyes were pink and shiny. He put away his hands into pockets that had holes in them. Like a lampshade being pulled, the boy’s face ran black and lost and then he slumped and walked past the old man. Mumbled a stuttering apology.

“That’s all you have, is it?” The man kicked him in the seat of the pants as he went past towards the street. “Yes now.  It’s a hard livin’ bein’ stupid. You’re lucky I don’t call the coppers. Never come back here, boyo, or I’ll put down you like a dog.”

The wind echoed the hatred and the old man felt it pass through him. He wondered if the boy wouldn’t fly away once he faced it unimpeded. Even beneath the arms of the skyscrapers and towering apartment buildings, the wind was hell-bent on vengeance. It would root any place of true warmth and could kill a man if given enough time.

The man didn’t have sympathy or any particular principle, but looking at the back of the kid, still holding his sides and coughing, he kept picturing the boy freezing to death somewhere. He was a fan of war and it’s players, Patton and George Washington and Napoleon. Would a warrior abandon a hobbled enemy to the cold? So it was that impulse–and maybe the laconic Irish Catholic guilt that rings in all of us–that compelled him to do anything good.

The old man found his hat and then jogged after him and patted him on the shoulder with the back of his hand.

“All right, come on then.” The old man waved him back to The Irish’s door. “I suppose even a nigger doesn’t deserve to die in the cold.”

There was enough rage flowing in the boy, that an insult like would begin a tipping point. He stopped and stiffened and just watched the wind some more, turning in hopeless streams, blowing snow like rocks at the rest of the earth.

The old man went to the door of The Irish and opened it. Light sprang out like a jack-in-the-box.

You could literally sniff the warmth. The kid had to follow. Even if it was a trick, or the police were going to be called later on, it was worth it to be greeted by that sauna. Even the lights the old man kicked on seemed to emanate heat, even the fans twirling above had it.

Then the boy came and saw, the room still and composed like the hours before a church mass. Two boxing rings with the canvas draped over them, red heavy bags with scratches and seams and small speed bags nailed to wooden posts and wiry jumping ropes and two dozen metal lockers with names scrawled on them and buckets. The floor was all wood and spattered with old blood and there were posters on the boards everywhere, posters of men looking to destroy whatever came at them. Most of them were black, like the boy.

A smile came to the kid. The old man watched him walk around, mouth open, boards creaking beneath his feet, the boy going around the wide gym, touching every single piece of equipment in the joint.

The kid began to twitch slightly in the face, and his neck jerked and eyes closed at the man. The old man squinted in contempt.

“What-what do you d-d-do in here?” The boy covered his mouth in shame and watched the rest of the gym with the eyes of a scared bird.

The old man removed his coat. He went over to the maintenance closet, the tiny space at the corner of the gym and grabbed a mop and a broom.

“I train fighters. It’s a boxing gym.”

The old man sighed and put a broom in the boy’s hand. He was already thinking about the day’s sparring and haggling with a promoter who wanted to do a tournament in Springfield. When he turned, he saw the boy was still and quite confused.

“W-what I’m ‘sposed to d-do?”

“Suppose I couldn’t get a smart colored, could I,” the old man said and then demonstrated. Then he gestured at the boy. Stupid fool didn’t pick up on it until the fifth time. But the boy didn’t stop sweeping until the old man stopped sweeping. By that time, both were in undershirts and sweating, pushing clean sponges around the canvas of the second ring.

The old man put on his spectacles and went over the boy’s work. It was careful and meticulous and well-done. Much as he disliked the smelly, stupid kid, he still loved the sight of discipline.

“Well, you didn’t completely fuck it up. What’s your name, then?”

The boy looked up with the bugle eyes and then told him after three seconds of fighting with his stutter.

“That’s fine. Now, that we’ve met, take yourself elsewhere. You got your bit of warmth, and Detroit‘s a big enough place.”

The boy looked like a kicked puppy. Like the other beggars, he expected a handout and probably room and board for the rest of his life. But young as he was (the old man posited him at thirteen) he’d been in The Bottom and in Detroit long enough to know white folks generosity was always an expiring quantity. He nodded gravely with a knowledge past his years.

“I–Thanks for lettin’ me get warm. I-I likes y’boxin’ place, s-s-sir.”

Sentiment was never the old man‘s cup of tea.

That’s the answer to a question I haven’t asked. Out with you. Come back, I’ll sic the PD on you.”

The boy sniffed and nodded, backing out with his back to the door like he was at gunpoint. The old man didn’t look up as the door squealed and closed.

Son of a bitch if Hesley hadn’t actually seen Ray Marquez knock a man’s head sideways on to his neck. He had watched it in real time–one of those punches you saw on TV that you sucked in a hard breath and covered your mouth like a cave, and maybe the girl next to you screamed and turned away. He could still see the old punch clear as day, maybe this was ’89 or ’90, when Marquez was still coming up: just a swift and odd circle of a hook that landed right on the other guy’s neck and the beginning of the jaw, made a sound he’d never really heard before, and then it took the other man’s head and popped it at an angle so that it sat on the neck like a teeter-totter.

The white man hadn’t died, but his neck was permanently broken and the nerves had been killed in the man’s hands. None of the doctor’s had been able to explain the man still retained clear speech and most motor function.  Everywhere but the hands plus the guy had a rapid blinking of one eye the rest of his life.  But it was a punch so sickening that even now the cyclical annals of classing boxing networks never replayed the fight. No one even intimated towards it when they talked to Ray Marquez, because that would mean they would have to think about it, then picture that bit of mortality–no thanks.

Had he recalled the awful punch, Hesley wondered if it would’ve changed his position on taking the fight. He knew the answer was no. But every time his young fighter Delly Hughes got slammed in the face by an awful right-handed rock, from the same guy, John found himself squinting up at the boy’s neck and praying to God Delly’s head would stay in place. It had been in his dreams the night before and he’d found the fear of that growing and widening in his stomach.

Paris, Kansas. Wasn’t any reason to be in a place like Paris, Kansas. A dried and flustered town. Kind of place where the biggest attraction was the exit, where the girls would have big, floppy asses and chew bubble gum like a pastime and reminisce about things in high school that never happened. That and it housed a meatpacking plant that dabbled in illegals, for so long that there were second generation illegals as shift supervisors and managers, least ‘til recently when Homeland Secuirty had nosed in. But the plant hadn’t closed. If it did, Paris was kaput, like one of several hundred towns that would just dwindle for no other reason than time and eventuality.  Didn’t matter that it had a population of seventeen thousand and an Indian casino sitting ten miles up the road.

Hesley had always dreamed of being in Paris, but this– it was like the circus had come to town. Nearly nine thousand drunken and feral Mexicans had crammed inside the auditorium, and had excused themselves of politeness or manners. They rocked the place with stomping and shouting. They flipped popcorn and paper cups, fired Mexican anthems in a surprising male tenor that seemed to give the building even more menace. There were vaqueros and women in flower-print dresses with makeup on their faces like paste and even a mariachi band playing in the crowd. Some of women held up their kids (John thinking, who the fuck lets kids into a fight?). There were also white farm owners and drunks and black youths in stocking caps and coats and old men in mismatched suits and the collective engineers of a boxing television network placed sporadically around the ring.  A salvo of white and hot lights were hung in a square as big as the blue canvas ring, a hundred advertisements and messages stamped all over it.  Cameramen draped over the side of the ring, tables at each end set up for the corner crews and judges and the TV goofs, everyone with eyes up at Delly and Ray slinging punches at each other and ducking and shifting about the ring.  A circus.

He and Delly weren’t here for any other reason than the attention that came from fighting Ray Marquez. Marquez had owned title twice for a total of seven years (1992-1994, 1996-1999, a bout with cocaine in between) and had been one of the best middleweights in the nineties. So now John and Delly and Mack were up to their elbows in the flat ass of Kansas inside the belly of a poor reservation casino. For unobvious reasons, the casino was called the Wooden Gnome.

Why did Marquez fight here, rather than a hundred other gates? Buster Cates, his manager, had put it like this:

“Jack, it’s Ray’s deal. For one, he’s broke. But also, his dad just passed. Dad worked twenty years at the meat plant. Funny thing is, Ray don’t even know Pops ’til he becomes a champ, when Pops found his patriarchal duties important again. Even then, Ray hated the prick. Figure that out. Look, I fucking know, it’ll be Little Mexico in here, and your boy won’t have the crowd. But my boy’s willing to give up the split. That’s unheard for a champ. That’s how badly he wants to be here. We’ll give you five points. An’ we know Delly is the juice now.  He’s the ticket. Ray just wants a couple interviews with the Boxing Network , a little piece about the town, his love for the motherland, blah fuckin’ blah. And don’t tell me that little gym of yours don’t need the money. I heard. So your boy gets to knock out Ray Marquez on national TV. Ray never been knocked out before. Think about the money that’ll bring.”

Hesley had forgotten money was the reason boxing was bad in the first place.

This was the first time the Wooden Gnome had ever done boxing and it was in clear evidence. The boxing area was chilly–but sometimes the theory went as the place filled up with people, the kinetic energy and body heat would take the place up fifteen or so degrees. Wasn’t working.  The cool began building in John’s bad back and old knees and he felt like a rusty machine.

They were on an elevated patch of ground: cordoned off by big drapes drifting lazily under the blowers (air conditioning going in late February now) and Buster had brought in a cavalcade of folding chairs that some of the Mexis clacked on the floor or kicked in rage and behind the “fancy” seating went makeshift bleachers borrowed from a high school gym.  Just like a high school game, the place had a terrifying echo effect.  All the noise sat right on top of the fighters. Hesley kept waiting for cheerleaders and a band to strike up. It was hard to hear himself think, so John had holed out a red plastic cup and put it to his lips, shouting like a marine seargent.

“Delly! Bup bup bup! Delly! Bup bup bup and get off! Turn ‘im! Turn!”

Delly as usual, couldn’t hear God in an empty valley.  He seemed to hear everything but, girls screaming his name and the continual commentary from the TV people, but never his coach. And since he was nineteen, there was no need for instruction. All he understood so far so the steady intake of shots to his ribs and stomach. Right now, he was bent into Marquez and the smaller, older fighter was banging away at Delly’s soft rib cage with both hands.

Delly and Marquez looked like the freakish pair at a high school dance: one partner too tall and stickish, other fat and bow-legged. Both men had dark gold and salt-filled skin, but unlike Marquez, Delly Hughes was only a half-Mexican, with big, down-turned ears and wide eyes and a mile of black, stringy hair kept back in a flittering pony tail. Delly was so tall that he had spent much of his life ducking under things and looking down into people that his back was naturally curled and oafish. The worst by-product of his body was his flat-footedness, which made for fine comedy when the boy would shuffle the dusty gym floor like his feet were magnets, but was a terrible issue inside the ring.

Marquez had a shaved bald and had a hook nose. His trunks had tassels and were the color of the Mexican flag and his boots glittered whenever they moved. They hurt Hesley’s eyes to stare at.

Inside the ring, the movement of feet and the hissing of exhales marking thrown punches was heard. John watched every single movement his eyes could absorb. Boxing wasn’t a sweet or exact science, but there was a wealth of information most never picked up on. He moved subconsciously every time Marquez threw a punch at the kid, ducked when Marquez feinted, when Delly fired his jab and Marquez counterpunched, watched the time go by, watched breathing and combinations, watched Marquez thinking and Delly not thinking.

Watched now as Marquez went upstairs with a hard right and Delly grunted a sound made of pure pain. The boy folded again this time and latched onto the old man’s body.

“Jesus. All right, all right! Hold him!”

Delly recovered in a half second. Another couple shots went flying but didn’t land. The referee slid in and broke the two apart and Delly stood back now, sizing the old man up. It had taken him to the end of three rounds for the kid to realize what all old fighters know: it’s the power in your hands that goes last. A man seventy years old might have shaking hands that he cannot control, but if they find the right spot, they can put an oak tree on its ass.

John thought again of that kid with the broken neck. What had the guy said?

“I don’t grudge him nothin’. Boxing is boxing.”

He hated sayings like that. Boxing is boxing. Even under the old man, when he was working in the ring, the old man would say, “Everything is everything, boyo. Just let it be that.” What the fuck did that mean?

TO BE CONTINUED…