THUGLIT Issue Twelve (15 page)

I haven
't spoken to my father in a decade, give or take. He had cause not to see me. Doesn't make it right, but he had cause. I don't particularly miss him anymore. Don't miss the smacks, the punches, the spankings, the whippings. Still, I wouldn't mind seeing him, so I could rearrange his smile with my fists.

I grew up big and mean. Just like my dad. Juvie helped with the meanness. I was a bad kid, now I
'm a bad man. Born bad? Who knows? Who cares? What's the blame game gonna do for me? Doesn't make much difference how we got here. Here we are.

The last time I saw my father, my last image of him, he was driving my little brother to the hospital
—Nick's forehead bashed in and bloody, courtesy of me, the aluminum bat I'd had in my hands. I don't really remember what he said or did. My temper's always been on a hair trigger.

I do remember the noise. Metal on skull. Still hear that noise from time to time. Occupational hazard.

I escaped from juvie on my first day, went home. Tried to. My father's voice loud and crazy and drunk from upstairs. My mother at the kitchen door, pressed cash into my fist, pushed me out the door. My other two brothers looked at me like chickens look at a wolf.

Like I said, there
's all kinds of ways to hurt someone. I was learning.

Back to juvie. Where else could I go?

They had this Golden Gloves program for kids like me. A healthy outlet for violence, they said. Hurting and getting hurt. Not sure which I enjoyed more.

Because I deserved to get hurt.

For putting my little brother in a coma.

He's still in a coma.

I see him once a week. Saturday evenings. My family knows not to come then.

The first time, a social worker brought me, right to the door. Told me to go in, visit.

So pale. So thin. His forehead had healed but it was like I could see cracks under the skin, the bruised brain beneath the bone.

That hurt.

Worse than any beating I ever got.

The next time hurt just as bad. It still stings, just like the first time. Maybe worse. Watching him grow, like some kind of ugly, exotic flower in a greenhouse. His skin vampire white now. The color of everything else in that awful place.

When I turned eighteen, a boxing manager offered to sponsor me. I was undefeated as an amateur. Had won the amateur belt the year before. I was always good at hurting people. He made me better. Could I have been a contender? Was I the next great white hope? Probably not. My trainer was a sweet guy. Al. A sweet guy in a sour world. He owned a gym in Dorchester, just off Dot Avenue. It was a shithole, too cold in the winter, too hot in the summer. Place
hadn't been painted since Christ was born.

I loved it.

Al was like a father to us orphans and castaways. All collected from family services. There was a half-dozen of us, sometimes ten. We trained just like those ninjas I used to watch on Saturday afternoons. Al was the master, we were the grasshoppers, the gym was a temple of pain. Push-ups and sit-ups and jumping rope, punching bags, punching each other, getting punched, running in the cold, in the heat. Every day a battle. I miss those days. Maybe you heard of a few of us. Al would land the occasional title fight, in Vegas or Atlantic City, once or twice in Madison Square Garden. Never had anyone win a belt, but he tried to get us all a shot.

He never told us about his wife getting cancer. About the medical bills. But
all of a sudden we were fighting more often, fights Al never would have taken before, guys way out of our league. The knockouts piled up, we all got familiar with the sensation of waking up on canvas. You could see it weigh on Al. His wife's illness and the guilt over the fights he was taking. He got in over his head.

I had a fight at the Taj Majal, in Atlantic City.
Some dude from California. The Calabasas Kid was his handle. The scouting report was that he was big and fast, a dude on the rise. The report on me? Young and dumb and watch out for that right hook.

Al was quiet as he taped my hands. I could smell the gin on his breath. He wouldn
't look me in the eye.

Enter Johnny Del Negro, with some hulk of a flunky.

"What's up, Al?" I said.

He backed away, still not making eye contact.

I recognized Johnny from the neighborhood. He'd been in the gym a few times. Nobody was ever happy to see him.

"
Frankie Long Legs," he said. A joker's smile on his face. "You look ready to kick somebody's ass."

I was, but I kept quiet.

"About that." He pulled a stool over next to the table I was sitting on. The muscle he came with stayed back, made with the hard looks.

I mirrored them right back.

He chuckled, indulgent. His name was Hank. Hank the Tank.

Johnny Del Negro cleared his throat.
"We're gonna need you to go down in the third round."

"
Who the fuck is we?"

Johnny sighed, his eyes seemed to ask, Do we really need to do this?
"We is me. And your manager over there."

"
Al, what the fuck?"

Al stared at his shoes.

"Don't be too hard on him, Legs. Goddamn medical bills have a way of piling up. And people call
me
a shark."

"
Medical bills?"

"
He didn't say anything? Poor guy's wife's got the cancer. Cut him some slack."

Al
's eyes were closed now. A hand on his temple like he suffered from a migraine.

"
So, kid." Johnny waited for me to look at him. "You go down in the third, or else..."

"
Or else what?"

Johnny looked at Hank. If cruelty had a smell, Hank reeked of it.
"Or else my man here has to pay somebody a visit."

Hank grinned.

"How about he pays me a visit right now?"

Johnny shook his head.
"Not you, Legs."

We all looked at Al, who looked about as sad as a man can look.

"I think we're done here, Hank."

Before Johnny left, he turned and held up three fingers. Then turned his hand into a gun and pointed it at Al.

We didn't speak again, Al and I. He finished wrapping my hands without making eye contact. The closest thing to a father I'd had in the last five years. Sold me out. I understood why. Still hurt. We walked to the ring like two men headed to the electric chair.

The Calabas
as Kid made a flashy entrance. He danced and strutted like a peacock, punching the air. The crowd got worked up. I bounced lightly on each foot, rolled my head to loosen my neck, felt the pops and cracks. Shook my arms. Watched the Kid mug for the fans.

In the front row, Johnny and Hank watched. Johnny caught my eye and smiled.

My heart pumped hot lava through my veins. I shook with rage.

We touched gloves at the center of the ring.

"Ready, punk?" he said.

I was.

He came in fast.

I came in faster. I remember his eyes. Surprised, confused, then scared. Then closed. Knocked out in the first round. Inevitable chaos. The overwhelmed crowd buzzed, someone struck the bell over and over again,
the ring filled with trainers. I tore off my gloves, hopped through the ropes and went after Hank.

Johnny Del Negro watched as I tenderized Hank
's face, until I wiped the grin off it, until his left eye was swollen shut. Then I turned and looked at the spooked, silent audience, fully prepared to take every one of them on.

"
Nice fight," Johnny said.

A couple of guys dragged me back to the ring. Some medics attended to Hank.

Al tried to talk some sense to me. I shoved him away. Marched back to the dressing room alone.

Johnny Del Negro waited for me there. He didn
't look upset, more like puzzled. I figured he was there to shoot me. I didn't care. I gave him his chance.

"
Put some clothes on, Legs."

I started to get dressed.

"Well, you cost me some money tonight. Cost Al some money."

"
You bet on the wrong guy."

"
Looks that way." His smile was just an excuse to show his teeth. "But you got me wondering."

"
About what?"

"
Can you control that temper of yours?"

"
What do you want?"

"
Maybe I could use a guy likes to hurt people, who's good at it. Maybe you help me out, we forget about what Al owes me."

"
I'm listening."

Because of the incident with Hank, I couldn
't fight in Boston anymore. Lost my fight card. No more sanctioned bouts. I didn't have a lot of options.

That
's how I got mixed up with these people. The wrong people. The wrong crowd. I don't mean guys that smoked, or drank, or did drugs. I don't mean naughty people. Bad people. Bordering on evil. You do what you have to do. Or what you think you have to do. No difference.

At first, I just rode shotgun on Johnny
's house calls. Looked scary. Applied pain when needed. Pretty soon, he let me fly solo. Saturdays, I visited the deadbeats who didn't pay up on Friday.

It paid well.

I was good at it.

Apart from the occasional Saul, I enjoyed it. What can I say? So many different reactions to pain. Everyone has a different threshold. Felt like it was my mission to discover people
's limits. Find out what hurt them the most.

My father, when he smacked me with his belt or his hand or his fist, used to say this hurt him more than it hurt me. Not from where I was sitting. Much better to dish it out than to take it. Ask my brother.

The third time I visited my brother, I finally spoke. Told him I was sorry. One of my counselors told me that was important. I sat next to him, took his little hand in my paw.

And I had this eerie vision. My brother surrounded by a bunc
h of neighborhood punks. I knew them. I'd picked on every single one of them at one time or another. They were laying into my brother, making fun of his cheap, hand me-down-clothes—a lot of them mine, passed down through all my other brothers first. Teasing him about our ugly mother, our drunk father. I could feel my brother's terror and rage.

I let go of his hand.

How come you never told me?

I
'm telling you now
. A ghost's voice, the sound of my brother as a child, healthy, happy, in my head.

There were six of them, in a circle around him.

My third stop of the day is a personal errand.

His name is Reggie Hanson. I
've known him since we were kids.

He doesn
't see it coming. The uppercut into his solar plexus. Takes the air right out of him, he goes limp as a sail. Then I go to work on his knee. With a tire iron. Don't feel bad for him. Don't you dare. He has it coming.