Brawler

by Neil Connelly

  He leaned back in his chair. “I’ve said all I needed to say. But I’ll leave you with something I read in a book once: The world is naught but sheep and wolves. We both know which one you are.”

  The morning after my first official victory as a brawler, I woke sore as hell, muscles aching and back on fire. But I was jacked up and ready to train hard, see what Khajee had to show me next. Only the bedroom door stayed frustratingly closed, even as I paced back and forth in the living room fully dressed in the predawn light. Than’s coughing fits had woken me a few times overnight, and now he was racked by them at regular intervals. Every so often I heard Khajee speaking to him, low and urgent. If he answered, I didn’t hear. Finally, I knocked and said, “Anything I can do?”

  Khajee cracked the door and the antiseptic hospital smell emerged. “You’re on your own this morning.” After a pause, she went on, “It was a bad night. I need to tend to him.”

  The care in her voice, the no-nonsense this is what has to happen, it made it easy to picture her as a nurse or a doctor, someone to count on in a crisis. “I can help,” I said.

  But she just shook her head. “I’ll get him settled and go to school. I won’t leave unless he’s all right. You jog, give the wall a shot, and hit the gym. Check on him around lunch, okay? And don’t let him smoke.”

  “Sure thing,” I told her. I rubbed hard at my neck, where my muscles formed a knot that felt like a stone.

  She vanished for a second and returned with the tennis ball, which she deposited in my upturned hand. It was wet with slobber, and I was certain Rosie had slept with it. Behind her, Than’s voice was thin, weak. “Kà-nŏm bpang mâi dtông. Ao kâe nám sôm gôr por.”

  Khajee closed the door, and there was nothing else I could do. I knew the old man was sick, but I’d wanted to describe the fight to him myself. This was a silly and selfish thought, one I pushed from my mind as I readied for my run. Than was Khajee’s uncle, not mine. I shouldn’t be so desperate for his approval — or anyone’s.

  The day passed easily enough. I made three attempts at the stone wall over in Seibert, each time getting a bit closer but never reaching the summit. At the gym, my win seemed to earn me some small additional measure of street cred. There was no sign of Badder, Maddox, or Dominic, but the few other brawlers didn’t crowd me. In fact, Santana shook my hand and said he was looking forward to our fight. The smile on his scarred face looked sincere. I wondered again if someone had cut him, or if those wounds weren’t the result of some crash, his face versus a windshield. Before stepping away, Santana touched his beard and eyed up mine, tossing me a validating grin. In between sets, I watched him jump rope, work the speed bag. He wasn’t as muscular as me or Dominic, and he wasn’t tall like Maddox. But the dude was rattlesnake fast.

  Around noon I checked in on Than, and he was out cold. When I first opened the door and saw him motionless on the bed like that, I thought the worst. But up close, I could hear a raspy breath escaping from his open mouth, and I could see the thin sheet rising and falling across his chest. In the living room, I lingered by the corner table with the bronze Buddha and wondered if I should pray for Than. Would my Catholic prayers reach a Buddhist heaven?

  I remembered praying as a boy, my fingers folded tight in the darkness, for Jesus to come and intercede with my father, calm his savage temper. One Lent, I said a rosary every night before bed. A lot of good that did.

  I moved away from the shrine and sat on the couch, my head full of questions. All day during my workout, my mind had been crammed with thoughts — of the ref I hurt, of Leonard in the boxcar, and Sunday’s offer to be some sort of junior-level enforcer. Now I couldn’t stop imagining my mother with her arm in a brace, and the shame was too much. I needed to shut my brain down for a while, so I decided to try Than’s meditation again. I settled on the couch and gently, I closed my eyes. I summoned up a summer sky, blue like a robin’s egg. It was nice at first, pleasant and calm. I even felt a breeze brush my cheeks. Inevitably though, my worries returned. I concentrated my attention and made each into a small cloud, focused so that by force of will it dissipated. I tugged them apart as if they were cotton balls. But the troubling images began to gather one atop the next, and in no time, my blue sky was darkened by storm clouds. I heard a thunder clap, and a lightning strike opened my eyes.

  I met Blalock at Pancakes and Porkchops for a late lunch. This time, I ordered one of those cheesesteaks myself, and yeah sure, it was damn good. Under the table, he slid me an envelope thick with cash. He explained that there was a little extra included, a bonus from Sunday, “to give me a taste.” This was clearly an attempt to encourage me to accept Sunday’s offer, and Blalock didn’t need to spell it out. Instead he talked about Santana, said he’d once seen him foot-sweep a guy to the ground so fast it looked like he’d been shot.

  Just cause I was curious, I asked where the next fight would be, and Blalock got fidgety. He glanced around and leaned in over our empty plates. “That intelligence is disseminated on a need-to-know basis. As a security precaution it’s necessary to limit access to our actual whereabouts. Even the high rollers only learn the location the day of the fight. Loose lips sink ships.”

  He looked deadly serious and I nodded just to let him know I wouldn’t ask again. Whatever. Like I cared.

  Before we parted, he also explained that the advanced online betting was looking good. Despite my dominant first victory, Santana opened as the 5–1 favorite but a lot of the money was following me. I was curious about the offshore website, how big the organization was, where the high rollers fit in, but Blalock was edgy, so there was no point in asking.

  When Khajee got home after school, she found me crashed on the couch. The TV screen was filled with an MMA fight tape I found mixed in with the box of Muay Thai. The closing door startled me, and I watched her drop her backpack and a white CVS bag on the table, then she turned off the TV and came to my side. “Trying some sort of subliminal training regimen?”

  I sat up and she asked, “How’s he been?”

  “Fine,” I said. “Good. He rested the whole day far as I can tell.”

  She handed me a tiny octagonal jar that had “Tiger Balm” printed on it. “Strong stuff,” she said. “Massage a little bit into your neck and it’ll relax the muscle. But don’t get any in your eyes.”

  She disappeared into the bedroom and I did as she instructed. The lotion was pungent and my flesh burned, but in a way I could tell was good.

  When Khajee emerged, I thanked her and she said, “He’s hungry but sleepy with fever. A bath should revive him.” After she went in the bathroom, I heard the water running. The sound make me think of Khajee’s singing, something I hadn’t heard in a few days.

  I asked if I could help get him in the tub and she shook her head. “We’ll manage. He’s a private man, very proud. You understand? You can find something in the freezer for dinner for us, yeah?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Of course.”

  My stomach was still full from that cheesesteak, but I heated up some frozen lasagna during the bath, and Than eventually made his way to the table with great effort, leaning heavy on his walker and hopping with difficulty. He greeted me and gave me a thumbs-up. “Good to get a first win under your belt!” he said. Khajee smiled, but I wondered if she’d told him about all that had happened, if he knew about the fire or how I lost control. Than ended up not having much of an appetite for the lasagna. Mostly he just moved it around with his fork and sipped some sort of protein shake that Khajee made in the blender.

  Later, I did the dishes while Khajee paged through some math, tapping on a calculator. I wasn’t sure if this was SAT prep or homework. I settled Than in his easy chair and we started watching a VHS tape of Olympic judo. He was asleep by the end of the second bout.

  After we got him back to bed, I joined Khajee at the kitchen table and asked something I’d been wondering. “How does samatha help him with his pain?”

  Khajee cocked an eyebrow at me.


  “He taught me the word. I’m coachable.” I winked. “Seriously, so like it helps him ignore it?”

  She shook her head. “No. Meditation clarifies things. But it’s not a way to delude yourself. If you feel pain, if you have troubling thoughts, you acknowledge them, but then you move on. You let them go.”

  “That sounds hard.”

  “Yeah right,” she said. “And it’s harder than it sounds.”

  I remembered my mom imploring me to forgive my father like she had done, to accept that we’re all sinners in need of Christ’s grace. But my anger at him was such a big part of who I was. If I let go of that, then who would I be?

  Somehow, this must’ve been showing on my face, since Khajee asked, “You okay?”

  “Fine,” I told her. Then I said something true. “I’m really worried about your uncle. I know how he feels about doctors, but I think he’s getting worse.”

  “He’s stubborn,” Khajee said, looking his way. “Besides, doctors cost money.”

  Quietly as I could, I stepped into the living room and reached under the couch cushion. I pulled out an envelope with the stack of cash I’d gotten from my fight. That afternoon I’d counted it on the kitchen table — $5,000. More than I’d ever had in my hands. “Money we got,” I told her.

  Khajee stared at me for a minute. “I don’t —” she said. “I could never —” Then she dipped her head, swallowed, and looked back at me. “I’m not in the habit of taking handouts.”

  “It wouldn’t have to be a handout,” I explained. “We could call it a loan or —”

  “I don’t like being in debt. To anybody.” At this she abruptly turned away. Without saying another word, she slid on her sneakers and got Rosie into her harness, clipped on her leash. Sometimes in a fight, you’ve got to know when to keep pressing, so I got my sneakers too, and when Khajee opened the door to leave, I followed.

  In silence, we walked along the darkened street, past the cans and bags set out for garbage night. Rosie seemed to want to sniff each one, and Khajee had to yank on the leash, urge her forward. She snapped, “Come on!” and Rosie trotted on obediently, head hanging from the scolding.

  “Hey,” I finally said. “Don’t take it out on the doggo.”

  Khajee flashed me an angry glare and we walked on, but she let Rosie linger more at trees and hydrants. We crossed Front Street and made our way along the bike path, trotting by a mom pushing a stroller. I took note of the “exercise stations” the city installed in the name of public fitness, most of which looked like misplaced pieces from some strange playground.

  The lights were on over at City Island, which was weird since the Harrisburg Senators were surely out of season. In the summer, they shoot off fireworks after a win. Some nights when Mom didn’t have a shift, she and I would walk up to Negley Park overlooking the west shore. It was fun, trying to follow the game from afar, rooting for a win so we could watch them color the night sky. This memory dislodged another, one I’d lost track of: my father leading me by the hand to our seats inside the stadium, a special treat one year for my birthday. We shared nachos, did the wave, craned our necks to see the cascading fireworks. On the way back to the car, I was so tired he carried me.

  Khajee paused at a bench I thought was already occupied. Then I realized the figure I saw was only a statue, another “improvement” the city made when they renovated the waterfront. The bronze man sat with his legs crossed, comfortably reading a bronze newspaper. I stood next to them and the Susquehanna flowed south. Two joggers padded by us wearing lights on their foreheads, like miners. The half-moon glowed plenty bright so we could see the ripples. I said, “Look how the water —” but cut myself off, remembering her odd reaction down at the creek.

  Maybe Khajee sensed my thoughts, and I guess the evening was thick with the past, because out of the blue, she spoke in a quiet voice, facing the river. “When I was eight … one of my mom’s friends invited us to spend the weekend at Chincoteague Island down in Virginia. The first night, I remember, we all chased ghost crabs on the beach with flashlights. So much fun. But then Saturday —”

  Khajee choked on the next words, and I had a feeling where this was going. I remembered that her parents had died, but she’d said nothing about them other than that. I wasn’t sure why she was telling me this, but I could tell it was costing her. The sentences were like stones she was heaving up from a deep well. She sniffled and straightened. “Saturday, even though the sky was gray, they took us out on their new sailboat, about six adults altogether and me. I can still feel my mom tightening the straps of my orange life vest, the same one she made me wear when we went tubing on the creek.”

  She got quiet and I didn’t know what to say.

  “The rest is murky. The waves got bigger, sharper, tossing us around. I threw up. Some of the adults started arguing. I remember lightning and my mother crying, my father clutching me, the ship pitching, bucking like a wild horse. Then I was splashing in the water, alone. It got really dark then, black as midnight.”

  I imagined a child on her own in the ocean, and I wanted to tell her I knew something about that darkness. In the riverside air, impossibly, that familiar smell of the closet came to me on the breeze. “Khajee,” I whispered. I reached out for her.

  “No,” she said, shaking away my touch. “Just let me finish this now or I might never get back to it. After forever, the storm subsided. There were lights in the sky then a rescue boat and a woman rubbing me with a towel, telling me, ‘Let’s get you warm.’ ”

  “Sweet Jesus,” I said, a curse and a prayer.

  “My uncle took me in,” she said. “He moved here from Atlantic City. He’s always been a sort of jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none kind of guy. He’s been a fisherman, a bricklayer, a bartender, an electrician. But he’s a terrible gambler, and he got in way over his head with Sunday. My uncle had no assets to take, and there was no use beating him, so Sunday put him to work. He was an errand boy for a while, then graduated to being his personal driver. When Brawlers got going, he started training fighters in Muay Thai at that ratty gym.”

  I wondered how much they owed Sunday and asked, “What kind of debt are we talking about here?”

  She knuckled her eye sockets. “The kind that keeps accruing interest. By the time my uncle’s health took a turn, Grunt was driving and my uncle was mostly training fighters, so Sunday said he’d keep paying our bills if I stepped in. If I were a boy, I’d be in the ring making real money, not just chipping away at what we owe.”

  “No doubt,” I agreed. I was pretty sure that one-on-one, Khajee could take most of the guys on my wrestling team. “But this is crazy,” I told her. “Like you’re some sort of indentured servant.”

  She shrugged. “No offense Mac. I mean, I like you and all, but still. You know I’m not training you for charity or to beef up my resume.”

  That hurt, but the words I like you and all sort of glowed in my mind.

  “Sunday pays our rent, gives us money for food and a little extra. I’m not even sure what we still owe or how long I’ll be paying it off. If I go to the cops, who will pay the bills next month? How will I buy groceries or medicine?”

  Khajee was a proud girl, and I knew it pained her to tell me all this. I remembered my mom pulling the packet of food stamps from her purse at Karns, always keeping her head down when she handed them over.

  “I understand,” I said, knowing I really couldn’t. Not fully. I wasn’t supporting an adult and trying to get through school at the same time. Khajee began to weep quietly, and Rosie put her head on her lap, which was more comfort than I could offer. But I knew she’d shared something important with me, and it felt wrong not to share something back. “I only saw him once.”

  Khajee sniffled back tears. “What now?”

  “My father,” I said. “You asked if I ever saw him in prison. The answer is just one time. And even that was across a parking lot, through a cyclone fence. After he was in there for like a year, my mom convinced m
e to visit him. But when we got there I sort of freaked. I refused to get out of the car.”

  Khajee seemed to take this in. I wondered what screwed a kid up worse, having parents die like hers or having a dad like mine. I figured us both for pretty much lost causes.

  “And you never went back?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Nothing there for me.”

  She fixed me with those green eyes. “You father has nothing you want?”

  “What’s he going to do? Explain how he’s sorry for what he did? That’s not going to happen.”

  “How do you know?”

  “People don’t change. Even as an inmate he kept screwing up, got a few years added to his sentence for fighting or something. Trust me. The only thing I’d want from him is a chance to kick his ass.” Sunday’s proposal drifted through my head. For Khajee, I added, “But that seems kinda unlikely, given the prison guards and all.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed. “I guess crime is frowned upon in prison.”

  I stood. “It wouldn’t be a crime to give that man a beating. It’d be justice.”

  She waited for me to say something else, and I heard the tone I’d used, the heat rising in my voice. “C’mon,” I finally said. “My legs are getting stiff. Let’s walk.”

  In awkward silence, we retraced our steps. A dad with three kids was helping them climb over the bars of one of the exercise stations. A homeless woman in filthy clothes leaned against a tree, stroking a cat on her lap. Eventually we wandered back into the neighborhood, with Rosie sniffing every stack of garbage bags as we passed. We traveled along a row of bars, doors open and music spilling out. Some of it was live. Some lady was butchering the Johnny Cash tune “Ring of Fire,” and I turned to Khajee. “That better be karaoke. Nobody that bad should get paid to sing.”

  “She’s not so bad,” Khajee said. “A little pitchy on the edges.”