Some of the high rollers crowded around me at the edge of the pit. They patted my shoulders, asked me how I was feeling. I said, “Extra wild,” and this made them grin. But I could tell by the look in their eyes, by the way they glanced at each other and exaggerated their smiles — most of them had bet against me. Badder was considered unbeatable. I could only take so much of their false admiration, and I excused myself and walked away, out into the darkness that rimmed the site.
That’s where Blalock tracked me down, standing over that sign. “The evening’s initial bout has begun,” he said. “Maddox and a young pugilist from Maryland are engaged in a heated display.”
“And you think that sounds appealing to me?” I asked him.
He looked around. “What exactly are you occupied with out here?”
I stared up into sky. “Trying to see the stars.”
Blalock turned his eyes upward. “I suppose there simply aren’t any out.”
“Of course they’re out,” I said. “We just can’t see them.”
He adjusted his glasses, pinched his nose where they rested. “You sound oddly philosophical. The warrior poet is more myth than reality. I suggest you focus your concentration on the evening’s main event, as it were.”
I said, “Yeah.”
“You deserve recognition, Edward. You’ve accomplished more in a short period of time than any other brawler.”
“With everything else going on in the world tonight, you’ll forgive me if I want to think about more than a fight.”
Blalock went quiet. Behind him, a cry went up, some big move in the match.
“Than’s situation is deeply regrettable. He was a good man.”
I didn’t like Blalock talking about him in the past tense and threw him a nasty look. “Still is,” I corrected.
“Undoubtedly,” he said, a little rattled. “Sans caveat.”
With him off-balance, I took a shot with an unexpected question. “What happened to Marco?”
Blalock twitched and looked out into the darkness beyond the construction site. “Marco happened to Marco. The young man had significant potential but an inflated sense of self-importance. He failed to grasp the crucial concept that in life, one is sometimes compelled to do things that may seem unpleasant or distasteful.”
“Things like what?” I pressed him. “Things you don’t want to do?”
Behind Blalock, another cry went up, followed by applause.
“The first match has concluded. We should retire to the pit.”
The second match was barbaric, two certified hard-asses from Pittsburgh trying to settle a grudge. They stood toe-to-toe, no finesse, no style, just trading haymakers without even pretending to defend themselves. I’m not sure I’d ever seen anything quite so brutal. Finally they both collapsed together, bloodied, and one crawled on the other, pinning him down and raining tired punches. Even exhausted as he was, he managed to land a couple shots, enough to drive his opponent into unconsciousness. To prove the guy was out, the victor lifted one limp arm and dropped it. The winner could barely climb the ladder out of the basement, and they had a hell of a time carrying out the groggy loser.
With all the blood left behind, somebody had the bright idea of blasting the concrete with a hose, and the water swirled down a drain in the center. During cleanup, I saw Badder across the pit from me. His groupies surrounded him in a gang, but he brushed them off, locking eyes with me over the opening in the earth, which felt like a giant grave. There was something different about the way he was carrying himself. He wasn’t scowling or making any of his crazy faces, which didn’t make a lot of sense. Maybe we both knew it was time to get down to business and settle this thing between us. We were past the point of games.
Sunday emerged from the crowd and took a position in front of one of the cameras. Through a mic attached to a speaker, he welcomed everyone to the main event, did his usual schtick about the purity of hand-to-hand combat, the warrior spirit, etc. As if from a distance, I heard him yell, “The champion Badder versus the upstart Wild Child!”
I secured the Velcro straps on my gloves, then dug my mouth guard from the pocket of my gym shorts. Before stuffing it in, I turned to Blalock. “Any last words of encouragement?”
The glow from his phone bathed his face in a blue light. “Perhaps it will serve as some motivation that the oddsmakers underestimate you. You’re currently an eight-to-one underdog. Prove them wrong.”
I climbed down a metal ladder, one rung at a time. On my bare feet, the concrete was cool and slick. Above me, Badder pointed my way and yelled, “You’re mine!” then jumped down, I guess to show how tough he was and everything. Eyeing each other, the two of us made our way to the center, where we found ourselves ankle deep in a puddle of bloody water gathered around the clogged drain. Up close for the first time in a while, his tattoos looked different than I remembered, like the swirls on his cheeks were bigger or something. I dismissed this stray thought and turned my attention to the fans rimming the edges of the pit, pumping their fists and chanting.
Sunday produced the gong, and as he banged it out all present roared, “No mercy! Prepare! Brawl!”
For all this bravado, Badder was cautious at first. He circled, kept his distance and tossed out a few tentative jabs from outside. I pursued, eager to mix it up, but I kept my guard raised. Hunched behind my fists, I sidestepped and cut off the corner. Badder backed into the wall, then without warning charged into me like a mad bull. Too late to sprawl, I scrambled backward with his arms wrapping around my waist, his head planted in my gut. He couldn’t quite get ahold of my legs to drop me, and I couldn’t quite get free, and we shuffled diagonally across the fighting pit. In the far corner, he slammed me into the wall hard enough to snap my head into the cinderblock. I tasted blood and went dizzy.
Bent before me, Badder pummeled his fists into my ribs, left and right and left again, swinging wildly. I raised an elbow and spiked it into the back of his skull three, four times, then launched a knee into his face. Reflexively he sprang up, and I was ready with a left jab, poking it into his nose and driving him back. Advancing now, I missed a looping right hook that passed just over his ducking head, but still it gave me a chance to slide away from the wall. He pursued me, crouching, and I circled, a little wobbly. I found it hard to get a full breath without a pain shooting across my midsection, and I wondered if he’d cracked one of my ribs. Badder maybe saw me wince and banged his palms together, pounded his own thick chest. He screamed to the audience and they yelled back their approval, inspiring him to turn to me and contort his face into the Maori grimace — eyes bulging, tongue extended. In that moment, he was flat-footed, with his head stretched away from his body and his arms draped at his sides. My opening couldn’t have been clearer. It was an amateur mistake, a gift.
In the heat of battle, you don’t often think. It’s not like a game of chess where you plot out different courses of action, weighing the pros and cons and making a deliberate decision. Mostly you react, rely on your instincts, and go with your gut. Sometimes you realize your body is in motion before you even know for sure what it’s doing, as if the warrior inside has taken control and bypassed the conscious self. When I saw Badder exposed like this, I didn’t think anything. The pain in my ribs disappeared and I just found myself bolting forward. As I charged in, I pivoted to the side, planted my left leg, leaned back and drove my other foot into his chunky torso. It was a side kick that would’ve made Khajee proud, and it doubled Badder in two. His face was now at waist level, and I twirled a full 360 degrees, catching him flush on the cheek with a spinning kick I didn’t know I had in me. Badder dropped to a knee, and I felt like I was chopping down an enormous tree, one axe swing at a time. Standing before him, I took a thick handful of his bushy hair in my left hand and raised my right fist up to my shoulder. He glanced up at it, and his eyes were bright, more aware than I thought they might be. I released that downward punch like a thunderbolt from Olympus, connecting with his chin, then lo
oped a left hook in the other direction, whiplashing his face. How he didn’t go down, I had no idea.
I backed off a bit, wondering why he hadn’t collapsed and trying again to catch my breath. My ribs complained but I ignored them. In frustration I swept in again, swinging my foot at an imaginary bull’s-eye on his face. I pictured punting his head up into the crowd, maybe Sunday catching it. But Badder’s two thick arms crossed in front of his chest, blocking my kick, and he captured that foot. Gripping it viselike, he rose to his feet, leaving me hopping on one leg. The crowd exploded.
When a guy’s got your leg, you’re basically at his mercy. Odds are he’s going to take you down unless you can get out of bounds, but that wasn’t an option in the cinderblock pit. I turned and mule-kicked, trying to yank my trapped leg free, but Badder was way too strong for that, and he tugged me back, hoping to slide his grip up past my knee. I remembered that crazy move Dominic pulled, and the next time Badder jerked me toward him, I went with the momentum, lifting my planted leg up and catching him flush in the chest with my foot. He released my leg and I crashed to the concrete.
I scurried to my feet while he was still staggered, sidestepped a sloppy kick, and tagged him in the ribs with a nice combination, followed by a knee to his gut. Badder retreated into a corner and covered up, ducking his face behind his raised forearms. Rather than trying to punch my way through his defense, I shifted gears and locked up with him, wrestling style. We each had one hand on the other’s neck and one hand on an arm. Our heads bent into each other’s shoulders.
Facing the floor, both of us grappling, Badder said quietly, “You’re doing great,” which I sure as hell didn’t understand. Was he trying to psych me out? Get in my head with mind games? Whatever his motivation, I was distracted by his words, and even when he telegraphed his attack with, “My turn now,” I wasn’t ready for the foot sweep. He shoved my body to my left, then blocked that foot, sending me tumbling to my side. I splashed in the nasty puddle and tried getting to all fours, but Badder was on me too quick, riding me from behind. He chopped my arm and broke me down, flat-bellied into the water, and when I tried to rise, he slipped in a full nelson, arms snaking under my armpits, hands locked on the back of my skull — same move I’d dropped on Kaminski. Bad karma indeed.
Pressing down with all his weight, Badder forced my face toward the water. I strained my neck, shoved back into him, but he had too much leverage and was just too freaking heavy and strong. First my chin dipped in the cruddy pool, which smelled rank and foul. As my lips got close, I twisted my head sideways, but Badder kept the pressure up. Soon my cheek was wet, and then half my face was submerged. Had the water been just a bit deeper, he probably could’ve drowned me. As it was, I had to keep my lips locked and breathe through my nose. Badder must’ve realized he couldn’t completely cut off my air. In frustration, he rocked back, drawing me up with him, then slammed us both forward, pounding my forehead through the pool and into the concrete floor. I was dazed, exhausted, and he pressed his face in close to mine, bringing his mouth along my ear. He whispered, “Just so you know the real score, all right Baby Blue?” With this, he hoisted my head and drove it down once more, but then he did something entirely unexpected. He let me go.
The weight was suddenly gone from my back, like a boulder lifted from me, and I turned to see him above me, and the stars now above him, visible through the intersecting beams. He was raising his hands in victory, rotating slowly to bask in the crowd’s adulation. For a second I thought that maybe they had the impression I’d tapped out, which I hadn’t, but then Badder kicked me and yelled, “Come get some more.” This guy was so cocky he’d given up a perfectly good hold, one I couldn’t escape from. He was treating me like I’d treated Dunkirk back at the Giant Center, craving a showboat victory. As I got to my knees and regained my breath, I vowed to myself I’d make him pay.
Once I took my fighting stance, he kept his distance, regarding me from ten feet away. He pointed at me and laughed, getting into a mirror image of my stance to mock me. He looked away, egging the crowd on, but I recognized his feint as a dead giveaway, and right then, my vision came to me, and the future revealed itself. So when Badder spun and exploded in my direction, I’d already slid three steps away from him, and as he roared my way with his arms outstretched, poised to tackle me into the wall just behind me, I held my ground, letting the moment stretch out. Anyone watching might have thought I was caught flat-footed, that I was about to get plowed over. They’d have been dead wrong.
As his chest slammed into mine, I scooped one arm under his shoulder and lifted while with my other I gripped his opposite elbow and tugged down. I absorbed his momentum and tilted back, but my feet were planted firm, and as we tumbled, I twisted and arched my back, torquing my waist so Badder’s body drifted up and over mine, weightless. On the mat, this move is called a pancake because you end up slapping the guy flat on his back. And that would’ve been good in my fight with Badder. But even better, I’d backed up enough that halfway through this headlong flip, his back collided into the cinderblock wall. We crumbled awkwardly down, the top of his head crashing into the concrete floor, and when we settled he was on his back and I was leaning onto his chest. My wrestling instinct told me to slide into a headlock, stick his shoulder blades so the ref could call a pin, but there was no judge in that pit but me. So instead my arm slipped just around his neck, forgoing his arm, and when I began to squeeze, it was clear why this move too is totally forbidden in high school. In the crook of my arm, pinched between my bicep and the bone of my forearm, his throat felt fleshy and soft. Badder gasped and his eyes bugged out. He thrashed and his arms flailed, pounding my back, my head, but they had no power and wouldn’t deter me. I tightened my grip and felt his struggle slowly dwindle. It was almost like he was going to sleep. And I knew — I was totally aware — that I was strangling him, that this was more than a chokehold and something indeed that could kill him. That power surged through my blood and I tasted the thrill of invincibility.
Even after Badder went still, I held on for a few seconds more. I didn’t want to kill him, but I wasn’t upset by the notion that everybody watching knew I could. And one of those bearing witness stood directly over me. Up above, towering with his arms crossed on the edge of the wall, Grunt looked down on me with an expression I could only read as approval, even admiration.
I released Badder, gasping. When I got up onto my feet and he remained flat, his chest barely rising and falling, I turned my face to the cheering fans. Their applause was like thunder, the sound so strong it felt like a physical thing taking shape in the air around me, a swirling wave of glory. As I rotated and soaked it all up, I had the strange sensation that somehow, I would be raised up, my body lifted into the starry sky.
An hour later, I was still riding that high, though of course it had faded some. Blalock brought me to a greasy spoon on Route 11 and I ate steak and eggs and listened to him prattle on about the future spread out before me, the one I wasn’t sure I was at all interested in. He drove me back to Khajee’s and handed me a wad of cash bigger than any I’d ever imagined I would hold in my hands — $10,000 — more money than my mom could make in three months as a waitress. This was equal to what I had stuffed under the couch cushions back at Khajee’s, the combined winnings from my fights with Dominic and Santana. “Mr. Sunday thought it an appropriate time for a bonus of sorts” was the last thing Blalock told me before driving off.
I was so caught up in the excitement of all that was unfolding that I didn’t ask myself why the light was on in the apartment when Khajee was supposed to be down at the hospital all night. I was surprised by the unlocked door, and when I stepped inside there was no Rosie to jump all over me. I followed the glow of a lamp into the back room, where Khajee was standing over a cardboard box on the bed. Papers and old photos were spread all around it. Rosie was curled up on the pillows. “Khajee,” I said proudly, lost and clueless. “We won! I’m the champ.”
When she lifted h
er eyes to me, they were dull, lightless. The picture she was holding slid from her fingers, and as it rested on the mattress I saw it was a portrait of Than.
We stood in the room in silence, and the reality of what happened settled over me. I walked around the bed to Khajee, folded my arms around her, drawing her into my chest. I couldn’t think of what to say, and when I finally told her “I’m so sorry,” the words felt hollow and stupid. Khajee didn’t hug me back. She just leaned into me. And I held her gently, waiting for the tears I wasn’t sure would ever come.
At my wake, I want the funeral home to be packed. And afterward, I hope the church is standing room only.
Back when I was thirteen, one of the ladies staying at New Hope — a “guest” was the term my mom always preferred — took her own life. I don’t know if that woman slit her wrists in a warm bath or swallowed too many pills and just went to bed. That wasn’t something I asked. I also didn’t ask if the woman had been abused by a husband or boyfriend, since this was pretty much a standard feature in all those stories. What I did want to know, and what I did ask the morning we were getting ready to attend the woman’s funeral, was if she had any kids. This was because I had the habit of picturing every wandering soul in that sanctuary to be some version of me and Mom. In this case though, I was wrong. The woman in question had come to that place seeking refuge alone, and alone she had died.
So it should have come as no surprise to me that when we arrived at the funeral, the pews of St. Sebastian’s were essentially empty. Oh sure, the director of New Hope was there in the front, and three old lady parishioners huddled together in the back. They bent forward together in whispered prayers, and I remember they reminded me of witches, all dressed in black with lacy doilies on their heads. But all the other dusty pews were vacant. I asked my mom if we’d come too early, but she told me that we were right on time. Up at the front of the aisle, the coffin waited before the altar.
Brawler Page 19
