The Fighter (21 page)

Rob
stepped onto a scale. His torso shone blue in places, the shaped muscles
touched with shadow. An official scribbled "164" on the cover of his
boxing book. A fight doc shone a penlight in his eyes and listened to the
thack-thack
of his heart.

Rob's
US Boxing book was tossed upon the heap at the matchmakers' table. Three
officials were tasked with matching fighters according to weight and
experience. As they sorted through books, the trainers assembled on the
sidelines voiced their opinion:

"Make
it fair, boys, make it fair ..."

"Aw,
no, man! That boy's dead for a ringer—no
waaaay
we taking that match!"

"We'll
fight anybody. AnyBODY!"

Rob
was matched against a twenty-five-year-old amateur from Bed-Stuy: Marty
"Sugar" Caine. Caine had recently qualified for a berth on the
Olympic squad.

Reuben
and Rob sequestered themselves in the temporary trainer's quarters: a rubdown
table bookended by flimsy hospital screens. On either side could be glimpsed
the shadows of trainers wrapping their fighters' hands, massaging necks and
shoulders.

"Won't
be a cakewalk," Reuben said. "Caine's got skills. But his knockout
ratio's piss-poor. You gotta get inside his head, Robbie. I want him thinking,
This kid's got bricks in his chin.
I want him thinking,
This kid drinks kerosene and breathes nitrous oxide flames.
Got it?"

Tommy
poked his head through the hospital screen.

"Where've
you been?" Reuben said.

"Bus
broke down on the side of the highway." He smiled at Rob. "How you
feeling, champ?"

A
boxing official stopped by to watch Reuben tape Robbie's hands; New York boxing
commission rules stipulated that an official must observe the pre-fight hand
wrap to ensure it was done by the book, no lead slugs or mustard-seed oil. The
official initialed Rob's wraps and Reuben had his son lie down on the training
table, working winter- green liniment into the muscles of Rob's back.

"How
you feeling?"

"Nervous,"
said Rob.

"Hey,
if you don't have butterflies, there's something the matter with you. Just
remember: cowards and heroes feel the same fear. Heroes react to it
differently, is all."

But
his father didn't understand. Rob wasn't scared of being hit or even getting
knocked out. Rob was scared for Marty "Sugar" Caine.

"Fear
has been around for centuries," Reuben said. "It's old, and it's
good."

The
basement of St. Michael's cathedral was cloaked in shadow save for a halo of
spotlights above the ring. Rows of folding chairs hosted mothers and fathers,
local fight enthusiasts, boxers and coaches, the odd talent scout. The canteen
was staffed by the nuns of St. Francis. Fighters skipped rope or shadowboxed in
darkened corners. A folding table behind them supported a glittering cargo of
trophies, each crowned with a brass boxer with arms upraised.

Rob
sat between his uncle and father in a black robe. In the ring a pair of
middleweights went at it. That they were the same weight seemed insupportable:
one a thick-necked fireplug, the other a lanky beanpole. The fireplug pursued
the beanpole, hoping to blow a hole through his willowy opponent with one solid
punch. The taller fighter kept him at bay, snapping hard jabs, avoiding those
bullish charges as smoothly as a toreador.

When
the bell rang, the judges scored unanimously in favor of the beanpole. The
decision received scattered boos, most of them coming from the fireplug's
cheering section. The beanpole's supporters jeered back and before long two
women—the boxers' mothers, in all probability—were screaming hysterical threats
at each other. "Hold me back!" the fireplug's mother cried, "or
else I'll pound her!" She took her husband's arm, braced it across her
chest, and again cried, "Hold me back, so help me
god
!
" Once things settled down,
Reuben said, "We're up."

Marty
"Sugar" Caine was lean and tapered, his every muscle visible under a
thin stretching of flesh. Rob noticed a pair of star-shaped welts on Caine's
torso, one between the second and third rib, another above his right nipple.
Gunshot wounds. When Caine turned around in his corner, kneeling to bless
himself, Rob saw the exit wounds on his back: scar tissue like lumps of
bubblegum smoothed across the underside of a table.

The
fighters touched gloves over the referee's arm. The bell rang.

Caine
skipped lightly, appearing to float a half-inch above the canvas. Rob stalked,
hands low, gloves poised and rotating. Caine snapped out a pair of jabs, fast
but merely pestering; they glanced off his headgear. Rob bulled in and, as
Caine hooked behind a left jab, slipped the second punch and threw his own
hook, a submarine right to the body.

Caine
managed to take a piece of Rob's punch on his arm, but the shot was thrown with
such force it drove the point of his elbow into Caine's abdominal wall. Caine
bent sideways at the hip, lips skinned back from his gumshield. The ref—dressed
in white trousers and a vest like an English estate butler—hovered nearby to
call the mandatory eight-count.

"Follow
up!" Reuben hollered. "Get
on
it!"

But
Rob did not get on it. He threw another hook but pulled short, feinted left for
no reason at all, and drew away.

Caine
recovered enough to throw a series of jabs coming off the ropes. Rob held his
hands low and let the punches hit him flush in the face. Caine came through
with a wrecking-ball right that caught Rob under the chin; his head snapped
back. He closed his eyes and ...
wished.
But when his eyes opened a
split-second later he was still standing. He'd taken Caine's best shot and
knew—right then,
knew—
that Caine didn't have the
oomph
to put him away. This cold fact filled Rob with a measure of desolation the
likes of which he'd rarely known.

The
bell rang.

In
the corner Reuben slapped his face.

"What
the hell? You had him. Christ, Robbie—
had
him."

Reuben
offered instruction but Rob's attention was focused on the opposite corner:
Caine sat on a stool, face shiny with Vaseline, gumshield socked in the crook
of his mouth. Caine's eyes darted into the crowd. Rob followed his gaze to a
slim, beautiful woman in the third row. Girlfriend? Wife? Someone who cared for
him, obviously— Rob could see the lines of worry on her face. An infant girl
sat on the woman's lap.

For
an instant the fighters' eyes met across the hunched backs of their trainers.
Caine nodded, a nearly imperceptible motion of his head.

The
bell rang.

Caine
sprang in slugging, was jolted by a flurry and backed off, dancing high on his
toes. They came together again, Caine pepper- potting jabs until a right cross
sent sweat flying from his headgear. Spurred by the crowd, he followed two
precise jabs with a straight right that Rob slipped by an eighth of an inch,
Caine's hand finding only empty air above Rob's shoulder. Pivoting on his lead,
Rob ripped a body shot under Caine's ribcage that sent the other boxer into a
flutter-legged swoon.

"Go
on! You got him!" Reuben yelled.

Caine's
eyes were unfocused; yellow bile foamed the edges of his gumshield. Rob saw the
gunshot wound on Caine's chest, a tight pink asterisk spread like the petals of
an ice plant. Where had he gotten it? Here was Marty Caine with a wife and a
kid and dreams of big paydays and here was Rob fucking it all up—what earthly
right did he have to fuck it up for anyone? He knew Caine would fight until his
eyes filled with blood and his arms grew numb, until he was a senseless wreck
on the canvas. Caine would fight until there was nothing left because he was
fighting for more than just himself, and because the complete sacrifice of his
body was everything he could possibly surrender.

They
went two more rounds. Though Rob controlled the tempo, Caine kept busy and
landed some flashy shots. The judges ruled it a split-decision draw. The
decision split the crowd: half cheered while the other half booed.

Rob
and Caine fell into a loose embrace in the middle of the ring. "Lordy, did
you ever hit me," Caine whispered in Rob's ear. "Nobody should have
to be hit like that."

"I'm
sorry," Rob said.

"No
sorries, man." Caine patted Rob's head. "Never sorries."

Reuben
was at the judges' table, vowing to challenge the decision. "Hung from the
highest bough!" he yelled. "The ... highest ...
bough!"

From
the ring Rob watched his opponent walk to the locker room. Supported by his
trainer, Caine stopped beside the woman. His taped hands moved tenderly on her
shoulder, tenderly over the infant girl's cheeks and hair.

It
was dusk when they left St. Michael's. The dark air quivered in funnels of
light cast by gooseneck streetlamps.

Reuben
and Rob sat in the idling car while Tommy brushed snow off the windows. Rob
drank from a liter bottle of bubblegum-flavored Pedialyte to jack up his
electrolytes; a jar of Gerber's baby food sat between his legs, the only stuff
his system could tolerate after a fight. A warrior twenty minutes ago, now he
ate like an infant.

"Tully's
Record Sullied," Reuben said. "That's what the headline'll read in
the Sports section of the
Gazette.
They'll love the goddamn
alliteration."

"That's
not alliteration," Rob said from the backseat. "Just rhyming."

"Don't
get smart. I don't get it," Reuben went on. "You had him, and not
once—three, four times. The hell happened?"

Rob
wanted to tell his father how, when he had Caine staggered, he'd thought of his
first knockout—those teeth winking like bloody pearls in a black rubber
gumshield. He wanted to tell his father that he couldn't hate a stranger, even
for the short time they shared a ring together, even when that stranger's
intent was to inflict harm.

"We
might not make it out of the preliminaries." A mystified shake of the
head. "Robbie, you were the favorite. The odds
on ..
.
favorite."