The Fighter (14 page)

Reuben got on
his younger brother the moment he cleared the gym doors.

"Well if it
ain't the leather-assed road gambler!"

Tommy nodded
over at Scarpella. "Give me a minute to change up."

"So tell
me, Amarillo Slim," said Reuben, "make out like a bandit?"

"Lay off,
willya?" Tommy headed to the lockers. "Quit it with the fifth
degree."

"Fifth?"
Reuben said. "This is the zero-eth degree! You couldn't handle my fifth!"

Life in the gym
took on its familiar rhythms. Trainers hollered:
Five rounds with the rope! Two hundred stomach crunches!
Burn, baby, burn!
A boom box kicked on: pulsing rap
beats overlaid with growling lyrics and random gunfire. Trainers held heavybags
bucking against their chests and coached with their cheeks inches from their
fighters' smacking fists. Managers talked on silver cellphones, arranging deals
or pretending to. The buzzer sounded at three-minute intervals.
Stop playing pocket pool and HIT something!
Boxers caught their reflection in a manager's mirrored sunglasses and put a
little more
oomph
into their shots.
Throw the
right, baby—let it GO! He's flagging, get on his ass! Counterpunch on one and
rip that shit!
Boxers finished their sparring
sessions, geared down, and stepped onto the ring apron. A look on their faces
like they'd exited a decompression chamber or come down from outer space.

Rob finished his
circuit and sat on the risers with the managers and gym bums. Tommy worked the
ring with Scarpella. He fought out of a crouch, the way Scarpella's trainer
wanted. Scarpella let go with a clumsy roundhouse; Tommy let the punch slip
through and took a knee.

The gym emptied
out. The next wave of boxers would arrive after lunch. The gym bums swapped
barefaced lies.

"Sailor
Perkins could eat fifty pig's knuckles at a sitting, may god strike me blind
for a lie."

"You'll
never see a Mexie heavyweight champ. They just don't grow that big south of the
Rio Bravo. Something to do with the intense heat shrinking the bones and that's
not just me talking—that's science."

"Johnny
Pushe's skin was so tough it could blunt a nail."

"Every
welterweight champ in history had O-positive blood. A-negative or AB-positive
welters, forget it—pack on thirteen pounds and move up to middleweight."

The walls of
Robert's bedroom were hung with portraits of Muhammad Ali and Roy Jones Junior.
They had been hung by his father and functioned, Reuben hoped, as a subliminal
training method. Rob was working on his homework assignment—a haiku poem—while
his father and uncle prepared for their trip over the river. "Where's the
adrenaline chloride, Tommy?" "In the fridge behind the milk."
"Looks a mite yellow. Out of date?" "How should I know?"
"Your face, not mine."

Rob had so far
composed a single line:
My toenail is
broken.
This had come to him staring down at his bare foot. Was that
too many syllables? "What about ice?" "We'll grab a bag over
there."

"We got any
Canadian cash? Any whaddatheycallem—
loonies
?
'
Robert amended:
My toenail is split.
Tommy poked his
head through the door.

"What're
you working on?"

"Haiku."

"Gesundheit."

"It's a
Japanese poem."

Tommy strode
into the room with his chest puffed out. "Why not write an ode to your
handsome uncle?" He got down on one knee. "Tommy dearest, tell me
true, why do all the gals love you ..." "Quit horsing around!"
Reuben called. "I'm helping Robbie with his poetry!"

"You
wouldn't know Shakespeare if he crawled out the grave and bit you on your ass!"

"I'm a poet
and you don't even know it!" Tommy hollered back. "There once was a
man from Nantucket—"

"Enough,"
Reuben said, appearing in the doorway. "Robbie, we're gone until eleven.
If your uncle's face isn't bashed so bad it'll put a man off his food, we'll
meet up at Macy's."

Rob wished his
uncle good luck.
Be careful,
he wanted to add, but among boxers those words were considered the father of
bad luck. He could already feel the lump of fear in his belly, a lump that
would persist until he received his father's call from Macy's diner.

Reuben's Dodge
Shadow backed down the driveway, its rusted muffler rattling down 24th Street.
Rob picked up the phone.

"Tully,"
Kate Paulson said from her end. "What's up?"

"Working on
that poetry thing. What're you up to?"

"
Meh
."

"Why don't
you come over and help out?"

"You mean
do your homework?"

"Did I say
do
? Did that word
cross my lips? I said
help"
Rob tried to sound indifferent. "Or whatever."

"Or
whatever," she mimicked, teasingly. "You know you need me, Tully. If
poetic passion were punching power, you couldn't plow your posterior out of a
paper peanut pack. Bet you don't even know what that's an example of."

"What are
you talking about?"

"All those
P words strung in a row—it's called ...?"

Kate hummed the
theme from
Jeopardy.
Rob snapped his fingers, struggling to recall his last English lesson.
"Alliteration?"

"Baaah!
Sorry, you didn't answer in the form of a question and must forfeit your
fabulous Caribbean vacation for two." Kate kept silent for a bit, then
said, "Anything to eat over there?"

"Leftover
spaghetti."

"Oooh, now
there's a deal sweetener. No offense, but your dad ..." She sifted various
word combinations through her head. "... is a crummy caustic cook."

"But he's a
blazingly brilliant baker."

"Not to
mention a terrifically tyrannous trainer."

Rob let it
slide; Kate's thoughts about his boxing aspirations were well documented, as
were those regarding his father's role in them.

Kate's fingers
drummed the wall beside her phone. "I'll be over in half."

Tommy and Reuben
drove streets slick with twilight rain past pawn shops and discount liquor
outlets and All-For-A-Buck stores. Spitting rain froze into a milky glaze at
the windshield's edge. Tommy caught his reflection in the window, his forehead
piled with scar tissue in the glow of passing streetlights.

Reuben paid the
toll and drove out over the Rainbow Bridge. High- intensity spotlights trained
on the Horseshoe Falls caused the ever- falling water to sparkle. The pines of
Luna Island and Prospect Point were coated in crystallized spray.

They passed
through the border toll and turned up Clifton Hill. Clusters of discount
tourists peered through the darkened windows of shops closed for the season.
Blinking neon reflected off frozen puddles; the road was pocked with fitful
pools of blue, red, and green.

Reuben said,
"A few fellas in the butcher department retired the other week. They're
looking for meat cutters."

Tommy cracked
his knuckles. "Maybe you think I'm blind," he said mirthlessly.
"Maybe you think I missed the copy of the want ads you left on my
pillow."

Reuben expressed
mock surprise. "Is that where I left those? It'd be better than what
you're earning now, plus it's forty hours a week, guaranteed."

Tommy opened and
shut his mouth, jutting his lower jaw out until he looked like some predatory
deep-sea fish: jaw limbering exercises. "I'm too clumsy. Liable to cut my
pinkie off."

"Right,"
Reuben said, "and how would you cope without it?"

"Wouldn't
be invited to any more tea parties." Tommy mimed tipping a china tea cup,
his pinkie extended. "The Duchess of Windsor would be heartbroken."

The buildings
and houses fell into the distance. The sawblade silhouette of a fir-lined ridge
zagged above the fields.

"I thought
you were done with this stuff, Tom."

"I thought
so, too. This is the last time."

"The
last?"

Tommy paused.
"One of the last."

Reuben wasn't
satisfied to let it rest. "This is how you imagined capping your career?
You boxed at Madison Square Garden, in case the fact slipped your mind."

"Long time
ago I did."

"So this is
how you want it?"

"No, it's
not." Tommy stared down at his hands lit by the dashboard, shrugging as
if unable to conceive of another employment for them. "Just drop it."

"I worry
about my kid brother, is all."

"Not a kid
anymore."

"You know,
this is about the only time I ever see you serious. And you'll always be my kid
brother," Reuben said, not unkindly.

Flat frost-clad
fields, fence posts, barns, the dark contours of sleeping cattle. A corduroy road
cut off the rural route leading to a farmstead
hemmed by a
windbreak of pines. A tiny farmhouse with squares of light burning in odd
windows. The dark outline of a peaked-roof barn stood east of some silos.

Vehicles were
parked along a muddy fenceline: pickups and rusted beaters, ATVs and dirtbikes.
Moonlight danced over the polished paint of a German sedan. Bumper stickers:
soccer dad and proud of it
!
and
my other car is a broom.

Reuben stepped
onto wooden batboards laid down over the mud. He grabbed a black valise from
the back seat. They made their way through a canopy of leafless trees to the
barn.

"I ought to
put on one of those rubberized aprons," he said. "The kind
slaughterhouse workers wear."

They were met at
the barn by Manning.