Don’t Ever Wonder (23 page)

“Sounds like love at first sight.” He laughed. “Or is it lust?”

“Nah, it’s deeper than that with her. I think she’s beautiful and sexy, but I want so much more from her right now other than sex. It’s like I can’t wait to soak up knowledge about her like a sponge.” He pursed his lips up like he was going for the line I was giving him. Then I added, “Don’t get me wrong…eventually a brother will want to tap that ass.”

Then I continued on about how much fun it appeared that Dee was having. After a while Nate seemed to relax a lot more, then we talked about him and Anita. He told me that he was going to settle down and do right by her. He was going to win this fight, marry her, and relocate. In that order too. He said he liked Charlotte, Atlanta, and Miami. It was funny but Faith told me that one day she wanted to relocate from Chicago to a warmer climate. I was shocked when he told me that he wanted to raise a family with Anita, hopefully no girls. He said he would be too overprotective and rightfully so. That’s how men feel when they think that their daughters could one day meet a man like them.

I didn’t tell him what I had learned about Trina. I didn’t want his mind to be on anything other than his fight. His dreams and, most important, his life depended on it, so I kept it light.

“I had to
know if I could do it,” Nate repeated over and over. “Cory, how am I doing?”

It was a lot different being up close and personal to the action. I was in his corner and right there at the side of the ring. The lights and the crowd noise were so distracting that I had trouble focusing on the action at hand. From what I could tell, Nate was doing fine. He had lasted three rounds with the Horse.

Pops yelled out, “You’re doing fine.” He reminded me of Mickey in
Rocky
. The whole scene had my head spinning.
Hand me this, hand me that, give me the sponge, more water.
It was demanding work in the corner.

At the start of the fourth round, Pops said to me, “Son, for some reason he’s looking to you for encouragement. You gotta pump him up. Pay attention, and if he ask you something, tell him,” then he smacked me on the side of my head as if I was stepping into the ring.

As Nate move away from the corner, I yelled, “Whoop his ass.”

Pops smiled at me and turned his attention back to the fight. The fighters gave the crowd reason to cheer as they had a violent exchange of punches in the middle of the ring. It was the first clean punch of the night for the Horse. Unfortunately for Nate it gave him confidence. After the exchange the Horse began asserting himself. It became obvious that it was his time on top as he began hitting Nate with a barrage of punches. Although he was never in danger of going down, the punishment was evident on Nate’s face. His left eye showed some swelling when he came back to the corner after the round.

I didn’t hesitate when he asked how he was doing this time. “Nate, he’s bigger and stronger, but you’re quicker than he is. Don’t stand there and trade punches with him.” In my mind I was thinking that it could prove fatal if he did, but I said, “Use your speed. Come on. This is what you wanted, right? I know you don’t need the money. So, if you’re fighting for pride or ego, then show it, man.”

With that he turned and looked at me and nodded his head. Pops shouted a few curse words about his performance but I knew that he was hanging on my words.

The next two rounds Nate was barely hit while throwing twice as many punches as his opponent. The seventh round both fighters seemed to tire and looked as if they were resting up for the finale. The crowd didn’t like it and everyone from the cheap seats down to the celebrities began to boo. I looked over at Faith, whom I had given my seat to, to make sure that she wasn’t joining in. When I looked over at her, she was already staring in my direction. Our eyes met and she smiled.

Nate surprised everyone by not just surviving the next few rounds. It was possible that he was ahead on a couple of the judge’s scorecards. In the corner we were all yelling at him, trying to keep him pumped up. “You’re doing it,” I yelled.

“Pops, I told you I could do this, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, you did.”

“Damn right I did.”

“Okay, stay loose and be careful. You only have two rounds left to go. It’s yours. Listen to the crowd.” They were chanting for Nate. The whole place had turned, not so much against the Horse, because he was a great champion. It was more of a swelling up for the underdog.

Nate stood, anxious for the bell. Across from him the Horse was a confused and frustrated fighter. He couldn’t understand how he had underestimated Nate so badly. He had cursed his cornermen so much by this point that they were silent in between rounds. The bell rang and the two met in the middle of the ring.

As they danced around, Nate’s mind began to drift. He began to think about the ESPN special. He began to think about the history he was on the verge of making. No boxer had ever come out of retirement to defeat such a formidable opponent. This was bigger than Leonard versus Hagler.

Nate was no longer focused on the punches. He was focused on the end result. The crowd was chanting his name as they had for the past two rounds, but suddenly he could hear them. He began to wonder how it would feel to wake up as the champ again.

The first punch came and Nate ducked it, the second he backed out of the way. Nate had lost track of where he was in the ring. His back was against the ropes and there was no escape. The third was not to be denied. Nate felt the impact and his knees buckled. A fourth and fifth punch to the head sent him reeling to the canvas two feet in front of me.

I could see his eyes rolling up in his head and, for a minute, I wasn’t sure if he was okay. When I saw him trying to shake the cobwebs out of his head at the count of five I was encouraged. At seven he had his hands on the ropes. At nine he was standing straight up. The referee asked him if he could continue. “Hell, yeah,” he replied.

I was quiet. I was hoping he would quit. I wondered if Brendan was watching somewhere. I looked over at Dee. His face showed concern. As I looked in his eyes, I tried to see if he could make it. For the first time he was slow to rise. “Be ready to stop it, Pops,” I yelled.

He ignored me. I repeated myself, “Son, shut your mouth. You don’t know boxing. He’s okay.”

“You’re worried about a paycheck. I’m worried about his life. If he looks shaky, I
will
stop it.” Pops gave me a mean look but I didn’t give a damn.

The crowd was on its feet. Nate pulled himself together enough to make it through the next minute. After the knockdown it was obvious that the Horse was trying to fight safe. He wasn’t throwing many punches and allowed Nate to regain his energy. As the clocked ticked down to the final minute the Horse did something extremely stupid. He responded to the chants of the crowd.
“Knock him out”
they screamed, and he tried.

He threw four hard punches that all landed to Nate’s body and head, but they had obviously lost steam. The Horse had backed Nate into the corner but the Horse seemed too winded to do anything. The champ threw a lazy punch that Nate easily moved out of the way of.

The next thing the crowd saw sent them into a frenzy. A right hand to the champion’s temple stunned him and caused him to stumble backward. From that point Nate threw no less than fifteen punches. The Horse reached out in an effort to grab Nate but only took more blows to the face. Cameras were flashing, hundreds by the second as Nate threw punches like a man possessed. The last punch from Nate landed flush on the Horse’s chin and sent him stumbling to the canvas.

The crowd went off as Nate threw his hands up in victory. We watched from the corner on pins and needles as the referee counted to ten. The Horse couldn’t make it to his feet and just like that it was over.

Nate was the champ once again.

Anita came down to the ring. When I saw the way Nate’s eyes lit up when he saw her I knew that they would be all right. I was next to him keeping the crowd back. I heard him say to her “I love you” over and over.

She was in tears. “I love you too. I told you you’d do it.”

“You did. You told me.” He was crying.

“I love you,” was all I heard. Then I saw the Horse come over to congratulate Nate.

“Great fight, man,” the Horse said.

“Thank you, man. Thank you for the opportunity.”

“Rematch?” the Horse asked with a smile on his face.

“We’ll talk, baby,” Nate said and winked.

A few moments later and Larry came over with the microphone. After Larry’s opening statements and questions, Nate started, “Larry, I know we all say this, but honest out there people, listen up. To God Be the Glory. Anything else I can say is pointless. I didn’t do a damned thing in this ring but show up. God kept me alive.”

“He sure did, Nate,” Larry said and went on, “So what will you do now? Is there anyone you’d like to fight or are you willing to give him a rematch?”

“At this point, I honestly don’t know yet. I have to go and talk it over with my fiancée. We’re getting married as soon as this swelling goes down.” Nate laughed.

“Congratulations. So with all the speculation about health concerns, were you at all scared for your health?”

“Never,” he lied.

“Did you ever imagine that you would be here back on top of the sports world and did that fuel your return?”

“I wondered almost every day for the past six or seven years what this would be like. But I listened to everyone else’s reasons why I had to give it up. But I got one word of advice for everyone out there. Dreams don’t come easy, ya’ know. Life is short, you have to live your dreams. If you sit around wondering when the time will come that life will make it easy for you to live them, you may wait a lifetime. Don’t ever wonder, baby. Don’t ever wonder.”

The End…almost

ONE YEAR LATER

We were sitting
courtside at the Miami Heat play-off game. Shaq had made ten of eleven free throws, the Heat were winning, and the crowd was going crazy. Life was good. Nate had sprung for the tickets since we were guests in his town. Brendan, Dee, and I had all flown in with our ladies for the weekend for a special occasion.

Nate was hosting a baby shower for Anita. Of course, he had gotten a lot of help with the whole thing from Tuesday. During the past year, she and Anita had become the best of friends. Even with the distance, they talked on their cell phones every day, all day. When Nate gave Tuesday the green light to plan a baby shower to end them all, she’d jumped at the chance and had spent two weeks in Miami putting it all together.

Nate had purchased a home on Miami’s exclusive Star Island. The nine-million-dollar price tag was cheap compared to what some of his neighbors had spent. His crib was a five-thousand-square-foot, five-bedroom, MTV crib-worthy dig. The house had a dock in the back with a boat and four Jet Skis hooked up to it. It was equipped with a pool and Jacuzzi.

Nothing was too good for his family, now that he had truly decided to give it his all. As promised, he’d married Anita on New Year’s Day in St. Margaret’s on the beach, no tux or gown, they both wore white linen and were barefoot. By that time the baby was already on the way and due to arrive in July. Nate’s grandmother was moving down to become the nanny. They were expecting a girl. Nate was doing well in his efforts to be a do-right man. He truly appeared to be a changed man, a reformed player.

After the game we hit the club without the ladies. Each of us admitted that it had been a while since we had been out individually or as a group. I had been spending all my free time with Faith. She had moved down to D.C. from Chicago and we were giving our relationship a real try. Faith, believe it or not, was a psychiatrist. She hooked up with one of her professors from Brown University who had a practice on Connecticut Avenue. The greatest thing about her, other than her sex, which was incredible, was that she was the fairest woman I had ever known. She realized that no one was perfect, including herself. She would say that if people wanted patience, acceptance, and forgiveness, then they had to be willing to offer it. On top of that she made a nice piece of change.

We cruised down Washington Avenue toward the club Bed. We jumped out of the limo and walked straight past security. Nate was greeted with, “Hey, Champ,” and “Good luck on the fight,” by the people waiting in line.

Nate had given the Horse a rematch four months after the first fight. This time the doctors had stopped the fight after six rounds. Nate had opened a cut over Scott’s eye in the second round that was pouring blood, impairing his vision. After Nate had hit him with ten straight hooks to the head, it became too dangerous to let the fight go on.

Afterward Nate signed a three-fight, thirty-million-dollar deal with HBO. His camp handpicked the opponents. He was definitely going to retire after the fights. “No need pressing my luck, nothing left to prove, and plus I’m rich, beyaatch,” he had said.

The bottles came and so did the ladies. They came two, three, and four at a time. Each time Nate said, “Sorry, ladies, we’re having private celebration over here. Just the fellas. But please allow me to buy you a drink.” He signaled to the waitress to take care of anyone he turned away.

“We’ve got a lot to celebrate,” Nate said and raised his glass. We all raised ours to meet his. “Here’s to my baby girl,” he said, all teeth.

“To my godchild,” I said.

“Our godchild,” Brendan said.

“Here’s to you kicking much ass and living phat, my nigga,” Dee yelled. He was already tipsy when he climbed out of the limo.

“Here’s to my new lady, my future,” I said with a smile. Then I reached into my blazer pocket and pulled out the blue Tiffany box. “I am going to propose to her on Sunday.”

“Oh shit,” Dee yelled out. I pulled the ring from the box. It was four carats set in white gold. “Do the damn thing.”

“That’s all right,” Brendan said.

Nate just smiled. He already knew. As a matter of fact he had helped me set up the proposal. Game four of the Heat play-off game was Sunday afternoon and right before the end of the first half, Faith would look up and see the proposal on the Jumbotron, then she would look over and see me on one knee.

“Listen up,” Brendan said. “I want to make a toast to you three. You are three of the best friends that anyone could hope for. I just want to toast you three—”

Nate tried to cut him off. “C’mon, man, it ain’t about that, we’re family—”

“Nah, forget that,” Brendan said. “Let me finish.”

“Go ahead,” Nate said.

“I want to say thanks to each of you. You each did some tremendous things to show your support for me in the last year. Nate, I never apologized for leaving Vegas before your big fight and for missing the rematch, but what can I say?”

He leaned in and they shook hands. He went on, “But I want to say that I couldn’t have made it through all of the shit I went through with Trina without your support. I love you all like brothers.”

Brendan had caught the first flight out of Vegas when Trina called his phone and told him the news. Khalil was not his son. By the time Nate entered the ring to fight the Horse that night at the MGM, Brendan was in custody. He had dished out more punishment than Nate and the Horse combined. He had been locked up for assault and battery. After drinking himself into a stupor, he had surprised Trina by popping up at her house and finally kicking her ass for all of the hurt and embarrassment she’d caused him.

At one point he thought about putting a pillow over her head. Khalil’s screams had gone unheard until that point. Moments before it would have been too late, Brendan looked into Khalil’s face and saw an innocent child who didn’t ask for the hand he was about to be dealt.

In that moment he knew he could not make the child an orphan, no matter how far Trina had pushed him. He climbed off of her and called the ambulance and the police. He turned himself in right then and there.

Nate, for his part, had gotten him the best legal defense team money could buy. Dee had convinced Trina not to press charges or show up in court. The state picked up the charges and did their best to stick it to Brendan. In the end, Nate’s money talked and Brendan served only thirty days of a ninety-day sentence and left with no criminal record. He was ordered to go to counseling. He was Faith’s first client.

The year had brought much change. We had all grown as men. Most of the foolish things we had done, and enjoyed doing in our twenties, were all habits of the past. At least most of them.

Brendan was finished with his toast and we all took one last swig. “Oh, one more thing.”

“What now?” we all said together.

“We were going to wait until the baby shower to tell you all this,” he said, unable to keep the grin off of his face. “We just found out last week that we’re pregnant.”

I was the first to show enthusiasm. “That’s great, man. You ready for that?”

“For sure. I mean, I ain’t getting any younger.”

Nate had nothing but a scowl on his face. He didn’t approve.

Dee laughed and said, “Man, you’re a nut.”

Just then Nate’s cell rang. “Yeah,” he said, followed by an okay. Then he spoke some more. “We’re at Bed. We’re leaving shortly. Okay. Okay. I love you too. I will.” He hung the phone up and said, “Brendan, your wife said she’s been trying to dial your cell but you haven’t picked up.”

Brendan looked down at his phone and sure enough he saw six missed calls. He hit the dial button and called her back.

Trina answered on the first ring.