One Good Punch (5 page)

Star Prospect Sent Packing

I
PUT ON A WHITE SHIRT
and a maroon tie and go to work twenty minutes early, mostly because I want to see what’s up. I’ve never worn a tie here before, but maybe this is a good day for it. Tucker isn’t around. I ask if he’s been in and am told that he’s in the managing editor’s office.

Tucker wouldn’t usually work on a Monday, but I figured he’d be here because of the drug bust. It’s his story; he’d want to follow it even on a day off.

I see Larry staring at me from the sports department. I nod and walk over. He’s wearing a T-shirt that says
HELP WANTED
: Many Positions Available.
Under the words are cartoony drawings of people in various sexual positions. Great office attire.

I glance at the old Gerry McNamara poster, showing his classic jump-shooting form. The pride of Scranton. Undeniable.

“So what’s new?” Larry asks sarcastically, as if he already knows. He probably does know. Everybody in the newsroom probably does. Maybe I’m paranoid, but I don’t seem to be getting the usual warm greetings from people.

“Not much,” I say.

“Oh no?” He’s giving me a half sneer, like he’s disgusted with my behavior. He’s got a real case. The guy is drunk most of the time, even at work, so how is this different? Like there’s some sacred newsroom trust against smoking dope? And suddenly this sleazy sports guy is Mr. Morality.

I see Tucker come out of the office and head for his desk. Larry is looking over that way, too, as Greg, the managing editor, comes out and looks around.

“Nice knowing ya,” Larry says, looking away from me and back at the computer screen. “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”

“Yeah, screw you, too,” I say.

He gives a dismissive laugh. “Good riddance.”

Greg catches my eye and motions for me to come to his office. He’s young to be running a news department—maybe thirty-five, neat haircut, wears a suit.

“Why don’t you shut the door?” he says as I come in.

So I shut it.

“I’m sure you know that we’ll be publishing a story on the drug sweep either tomorrow or Wednesday,” he says.

“Sure.”

“Under the circumstances, it’s best that you not work tonight. Understand?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re an adult, so you’ll be named in the article unless the charges are suddenly dropped,” he says. “That’s our policy in situations like this. If you’re eighteen, we run your name.”

“I know. I figured that.”

I haven’t even sat down. But I guess that’s it. “So I should go?”

“I’m afraid so,” he says.

“What about Friday?”

He thinks for a second, maybe not sure what I meant.

“I’m scheduled to work,” I say.

“Oh,” he finally says. “We’ll call you.”

I reach for the doorknob.

“I’ll walk you out,” he says.

So he escorts me through the newsroom and down the stairs to the employee entrance. Totally unnecessary—I would have just left on my own—but I guess I understand. You can’t have dangerous criminals hanging around.

“Mike,” he says as we reach the door, “I have to take your pass card. Just while we sort things out.”

“What for?” I ask. They really are treating me like a criminal.

“Company policy,” he says.

“Company policy.” I take the pass card out of my wallet and hand it over.

“Good luck with this thing,” Greg says. He lowers his voice and leans closer. “I heard you can get the charges dropped and be reinstated at school if you come clean about the dealer.”

“That’s what they tell me.”

He looks a little surprised. If I know that, why haven’t I done it, right? He seems reluctant to kick me out. “You’ve been doing a good job here,” he says.

“Thanks,” I say, but I’m squirming and looking toward the street.

“I hope it can continue,” he says. He squeezes my arm. “Don’t be a martyr.”

“Right,” I say. “I’ll see ya.”

I walk a few blocks and sit on a bench at the courthouse square, staring up at the ancient Electric City neon sign atop a nearby building. I feel numb, like maybe this isn’t really happening. But it is.

I reach into my pocket for my cell phone and punch in Shelly’s number.

“Where’ve you been?” she asks instead of saying hello. “I tried calling you a million times.”

“I shut off my phone. You heard what happened?”

“Duh. Of course I heard. Where are you?”

“Downtown.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah.”

I fill her in on the suspension and the pressure and all that. I hate talking on the phone, though, so I tell her I’ll come get her. “Your mom hear about this?” I ask.

“Yeah. But she also heard you got set up.”

“I didn’t get set up.”

“You know what I mean,” she says. “It’s not what it looks like.”

“Why does everybody think that?”

“I guess they just can’t believe you’d be guilty.”

“I guess I can’t believe it myself.”

She opens her front door before I’m up the walk. She must have been watching for me.

We walk up the hill and right back toward the courthouse. After we turn the corner, she stops and puts her hand on the back of my neck. It’s still cold out; she’s wearing big blue mittens, and the warmth she generates is both internal and external. Very soothing.

“This has to be killing you,” she says. “I know you want to protect Joey, but look what you’re letting happen to you.”

“How do you know it’s Joey?”

“Come on,” she says, touching my face. “It’s
so
obvious to anybody who knows you guys.”

“That he sells drugs?”

“Doesn’t he?”

I start walking again. “He did me a favor. He
screwed up
the favor big-time. But I asked him to get me the dope. He was dumb enough to put it in my locker, but it was my stuff. Or it was about to be, anyway.”

We take a seat on the same bench where we made out one time, and she leans tight against me, gripping my hand. I let out my breath and we just sit there, and I start to relax just a little bit again. I appreciate her being here; it makes me feel like I’m not totally alone with this problem. Not much she can do to resolve it, but it helps to have somebody actually listen.

“You can’t let yourself get expelled,” she says.

“Dealers get jail time,” I say.

“You’re not a dealer.”

“I didn’t say I was. What they want from me is a statement about who
is.
I don’t even know if Joey’s been dealing. I just know he knows where to get it.”

“Everybody in school knows places where they can get it, don’t they?”

I shrug. “Probably. But Joey’s very small-time. Like I said, he was just doing me a favor.”

We’re quiet for several minutes. She’s caressing my fingers.

“Shit,” I say softly.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just this whole thing sucks. I shouldn’t be in this much trouble, but if I get myself out of it, then Joey gets way more trouble than he deserves.”

“But you can’t take the blame for everything,” she says. “You don’t graduate, you don’t go to college, your reputation goes to hell. You have to think about all that.”

I laugh, even though this isn’t funny. “I got sent home from work, too, you know. This all gets reported in the paper. They’ll probably fire me.”

A police car drives by, and I hunch down a little, even though we’ve got every right to be here. But I feel watched, and I know that everywhere I go now, I’ll feel like people are suspicious of me.

“When I was twelve, me and Joey went into a convenience store and stole about six candy bars,” I say. “Joey’s got this crappy old pair of shorts on, and on the way out, the bars slip through a hole in his pocket and land on the floor. The clerk sees it and yells at him to stop, which he does, but I’m already out the door, and I run like hell up to the park and hide out. The clerk gets Joey’s name and calls his parents, but he won’t give up my name, so I get off free. The next day, I see Joey and he’s got welts on his arms and under his eye. But he says just to forget it.”

“Is
that
why you’re protecting him?” she asks, as if there’s no parallel at all.

“Not exactly,” I say. “But we were always doing things like that—throwing rocks through factory windows at night or stealing bottles of soda—and I always seemed to get away with it. He usually did, too, but he got caught a few times and never ratted on me.”

She gives me a very surprised look, like she can’t believe I’d really do anything criminal.

“We grew
up,
” I say. “I was twelve!”

“God,” she says, shaking her head.

“Anyway,” I say, “I still don’t know if I
am
going to protect him. I have until tomorrow afternoon to decide.”

“You can’t compare stealing Hershey bars with selling drugs, Mike.”

“There’s more to it than that,” I say. “This isn’t even about protecting him, you know. I don’t want him getting arrested, but that’s only part of it. Everybody keeps telling me to tell the truth, but they’re all full of shit. They have this preconceived notion of what they think the truth is. But they’re wrong.”

“So make it right.”

“This is about honesty, Shelly.”

“Honesty means telling the truth, Mike. Doesn’t it?”

I stare at the sidewalk, then start nodding my head slowly. “That’s exactly what it’s about,” I say.

Decisive Match Is a No-brainer

I
T’S STILL EARLY
when I walk Shelly home. She leans into me at the doorway and kisses my forehead lightly. “I know you’ll make the right decision,” she says, sounding like my mom.

I just shrug. I don’t know what I’m doing. I need a run. But first I need to go see Joey. I don’t know if I’m going there to talk things out or to beat him up, but I’m going. Somehow that will help me decide.

“See ya,” I say. Shelly watches me from the step until I’m out of sight; I keep looking back, and she keeps standing there.

So I walk up the hill and through the downtown and over to Joey’s. They live in one of those big old Victorians on Myrtle; I think it was passed down to them from Joey’s father’s family.

I used to come over here once in a while after school. One time me and Joey went up to the attic and crawled out on the roof, which is steep and fairly high. We could see way over to the valley and, much closer, into people’s yards and windows.

We were about thirteen, and one of the neighbors started yelling at us to get the heck down from there before we fell and broke our necks or worse. Joey just laughed. “I fall off here all the time,” he called back, which was totally untrue, of course. We
would
have broken our necks or worse if we fell.

The neighbor called the cops, and a car came by. The officer got out and looked up at us with his hands on his hips and said, “You boys all right?”

“No problem,” Joey said.

“You better get down. You’re making people nervous.”

Joey looked at me with a smile. “That’s good,” he said, loud enough for the cop to hear.

We crawled back into the attic and went to the kitchen and ate peanut butter sandwiches.

Mr. Onager opens the door and greets me enthusiastically. He’s wearing old gray pants; a white T-shirt is stretched over his huge stomach. His hair, which is receding and thin, is sticking up as if he’s been lying on the couch.

“Come in, Mike. Come in,” he says, smiling and sweeping his arm toward the living room. So I follow him in. You never know what he’ll be like: sometimes he’s funny and engaging; sometimes he’s practically brain-dead and nasty.

“Let me make you some room,” he says, picking up a pile of seven or eight old Bibles from an armchair and setting them on the floor. He brushes the chair with his hand and motions for me to sit.

“Joey ain’t home,” he says. “You thirsty? Want a beer or something? A soda?”

“Sure,” I say. “Soda. Whatever you got.”

He goes over to the kitchen. There’s a big stack of hunting and fishing magazines on the floor in front of the sofa, and old papers—postcards, ledgers, letters—on the coffee table. Everything’s dark in here—the old upholstered chairs, the ornate wooden tables, the wallpaper, the hardwood floors. I think things have stayed pretty much the same for three or four generations of Onagers. I pick up one of the postcards showing downtown Scranton. The postmark on the back is 1916.

He comes back and hands me a can of Sam’s Club orange soda. “I just got all that crap at an auction,” he says. “Cool, huh?”

“Yeah,” I say, picking up another postcard showing the Jermyn Hotel in 1925.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Most people would just burn that stuff. I think it’s interesting. Lives lived, you know?”

“Definitely.”

“I don’t know where the hell he is,” he says, meaning Joey.

I glance down at the Bibles. “You studying these?”

He laughs. “Nah. I got the whole bunch of ’em for two bucks, and I couldn’t resist.” He seems a little embarrassed. He explains, “I hate to see stuff like that get chucked, you know? It’s got deepness or something. Etern—What’s the word? Eternality? You know what I mean.”

“Sure. Stuff has meaning,” I say. “Believe me. You know these obituaries I write? You talk to the families, and it’s always something simple that they remember most about the one who died. Their cookbooks or their bottle collection or the scarves they knitted for their grandchildren.”

“Yeah,” he says, “that’s what I mean. We got shit in the attic here—my old man’s army medals,
his
old man’s tools, my grandmother’s buttons and sewing needles. I could never throw that stuff away. Haven’t even looked at it in years…. I ought to.”

He sits back on the couch and burps. “Scuse me,” he says. “You hungry? The wife’s at some church thing, and God knows where Joey’s at. I got a stew cooking.”

“Yeah, I can smell it. Smells good.”

“I tell ya, I got this nice lean pork, browned it up in olive oil, threw in a bunch of spices…nothing hot, just parsley and garlic and something else—black pepper—and it’s been simmering for about three hours. The key is a bottle of beer—domestic stuff. If you use Heineken or Molson or something imported like that, it gets sour. I use Stegmaier; they brew it right over in Wilkes-Barre, you know. Anyway, you simmer that all together, and my God—you can smell it, can’t ya?”

“Yeah. It’s ready?”

“It’s ready. Oh, and a little can of tomato paste. You’ll see.”

He goes back to the kitchen. I get the impression that he doesn’t work much. He always seems to be on call to do some sort of labor, but the calls don’t come in very often.

I figure Mrs. Onager is out at some bar. It’s after ten; I don’t see any church events going on this late. Maybe Mr. Onager is lonely. He sure seems glad to have company.

He comes in with two bowls of the stew and hands one to me. “Joey should be eating this,” he says. “He’s out every friggin’ night.”

I dig into the stew, which is fantastic.

“I can be a prick,” he says, acknowledging, I suppose, why his son and wife are missing. He laughs. “So how are you?”

I don’t even hesitate. “I’m in trouble.”

“Aren’t we always? Hey, you want bread?”

“Yeah. Why not.”

“I got some great bread.” He moves some of the postcards and stuff and sets his bowl on the coffee table, then quickly gets a couple of hunks of sourdough bread for us.

“Sop up that gravy,” he says. “It’s the best part.”

He clicks on the TV and switches to one of the sports channels, where two obscure middleweights are boxing. “You a fight fan?” he asks.

“Sure. I watch some.”

“Idiots beating each other’s brains out,” he says with a laugh. He looks over at me. “Firsthand experience. I know.”

“You fought?”

“Right here in Scranton mostly. I won a few fights. Long time ago.”

“Wow,” I say. “You fight anybody good?”

He shakes his head. “Nah. We were all bums.”

His face brightens. “Tell you what, though. I ran into Muhammad Ali once in New York. In an elevator at Madison Square Garden. Larger than life.

“Funny, bright. The guy just glowed. I was in his presence for what, maybe eighteen seconds? But I never forgot that feeling. The guy was the greatest. So quick. Brilliant in the ring. I saw him fight in person once…. Never been another one like him. He stayed true to his heart, you know what I mean?”

“I guess. Yeah…. So why’d you stop?”

“Ah,” he says, giving a wave of his hand. “I had maybe ten fights. Eleven, actually. I won five times and had two draws. I only got knocked out that one time. My last fight. I didn’t
know
it was going to be my last fight, but it was.”

He takes a bite of the gravy-soaked bread and continues talking with his mouth full. “Six-round fight. We’re in the fifth. Pretty close. I take a right hand to the temple so friggin’ hard you wouldn’t believe it.”

He swallows and wipes some crumbs from his mouth with the back of his hand. “I was only out for maybe five seconds, but that was it. It screwed my brain. After, I’m sitting in the locker room, and I can’t stop crying. I don’t even know why. I’m not sad about losing the fight or nothing; it ain’t that. I’m just shook up. Like I just faced death, maybe. I cried for an hour and a half.

“Anyway, I didn’t think I was quitting. I went back to the gym to train, but I never had the desire anymore. I recovered physically from the knockout, don’t get me wrong, but I never recovered as an
athlete,
you get me? I took that one good punch, and it finished me.”

He leans back and smiles.

“Amazing,” I say.

He shrugs. “Omar Medina,” he says. “That was the guy’s name. From Harrisburg…. I’ve never hit a living soulsince.

“Anyway,” he says, scraping some pork from his front teeth with his fingernail, “what’s the trouble you mentioned?”

“Just some shit at school,” I say. “I, uh, did some stuff. Kind of illegal.”

He rolls his eyes. “Tell me about it,” he says, but he doesn’t mean it. That just means that we all do things we regret.

We sit quietly for a minute, me thinking about my trouble and him thinking who knows what.

He jabs a finger into the air toward me, and his eyes get wider, as if he’s got a big idea to share. “Onions,” he says. “I didn’t mention them. You should brown some chopped onions with the meat. You have to. It
makes
the stew.”

I laugh. “Will do.”

“You’ll make this recipe?”

“I will. I definitely will.”

“I could write it down,” he says. He stands and picks up his bowl. “You want more?”

“No. But thanks. It was great.”

“It’s a huge pot.” He takes my bowl and keeps talking as he makes his way to the kitchen. “I still got it simmering; the longer, the better. When Joey ever gets the hell home, he can have some. The kid’s too scrawny; he needs to eat.”

Mr. Onager wants me to stay at least until the boxing match is over, but I tell him I’m tired and I need to go for a run to sort some things out in my head. He scribbles down the recipe on the back of an envelope, and I stick it in my wallet and walk out and down the hill.

From a certain spot on Jefferson, I can see the institutions that have given me opportunities and now have taken them away. Over to my left about four blocks and down the hill, I can just make out the tip of the top of East Scranton High School. Nearly straight ahead, all the way across downtown, is the Observer building, one of the few that are lit up this late on a Monday evening. And behind me and a couple of blocks over (I can’t quite see it) is our house.

Maybe I’m more like this city than I thought. Not just the resilience but the continual mistakes. I’ve just taken several big steps backward, and I’m on the verge of several more. Can I then move forward fast enough to wind up ahead of the game?

I took that one good punch, and it finished me.
That’s not something I’d want to be telling people thirty years from now.

I’ve got too much invested in myself to let that happen.