Even with his elbows held tight against his ribcage, Tyron keeps getting jostled by the people around him. Antoine’s fight continues to draw more to the already overcrowded bar, with all eyes on the screens.
The pace of the fight has picked up and the audience can feel it. The commentators have scored the first three rounds to Clayface, but the momentum has shifted. Antoine is the aggressor now and Clayface is on his heels. Damn, he moves fast, Tyron thinks. But what grips him tighter than the speed and ferocity of Antoine’s attacks is the fury in his eyes. There it is at last, Tyron thinks, what was lurking in his foster brother all along. There it is.
I should’ve visited him in prison. The thought comes to him unbidden. He mulls it over. No, it was already too late.
As Antoine swarms Clayface, catching him in the eye and on the temple, Tyron wonders when he could’ve saved Antoine from what he has become. There must’ve been a way.
At the end of the fifth round, Clayface hobbles back to his corner, shell-shocked. His moniker remains apt, though its meaning has changed. No longer something that has been hardened by fire, rigid and rock-like, but something that is soft, malleable, shaped by the forces around it. A blood vessel has burst in the fighter’s left eye, pooling red visibly invading the white, while around the eye socket the tissue is swollen.
At that moment, Tyron realizes what he could have done differently in the past. He could have turned the Quinns down. He could have stayed brothers with Antoine. He is surprised that he has contemplated this so rarely. Even then, when it was happening, he didn’t consider the implications his decision would have on his foster brother. But I was a boy, Tyron thinks. I wasn’t ready to be there for someone else yet.
When the fight starts again, the dip in Antoine’s energy level is immediately apparent. There is not the same aggression, the same intensity to his focus, nor the same speed to his movements. Clayface picks up on it before the commentators do, though they come around when they see body shots snapping through Antoine’s defence.
“It seems that momentum has swung again. The first three rounds were for Clayface. Rounds four and five unquestionably for Deco, and now round six going the way of Clayface,” says the older of the two commentators. “Unlikely that Deco can find a way to steal the round, but the way this fight is going I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Deco showed us all how much game he’s got. But Clayface is still the stronger fighter. He withstood Antoine’s surge and now he’s giving it back,” says the younger commentator, the staccato cadence of his speech emphasizing his points. “Ahh, that’s a good jab to the kidneys. You see, Deco’s trying to protect his head from a knockout, so Clayface goes to the body. He’s not only a knockout machine, he’s a smart boxer.”
“Deco is trying to stay out of range of Clayface’s power, but the favourite knows how to cut off the ring and he is doing it to perfection here. Deco just doesn’t seem to have the same burst he had in the last two rounds.”
“No doubt. He used up a lot of energy to take control of the fight, but now fatigue is setting in. I been there before and it ain’t pretty. Especially when you’re up against the finishing power of Clayface.”
Tyron shuts out their voices. Come on, Antoine. Come on.
The four of them may be fractured. They may have scattered with the wind since they were kids. They may have no right to claim any connection to one another anymore. But for years they trained together, and this is it. The biggest stage for any of them. They can’t fail now.
“Come on,” Tyron growls out loud. “You got this, man. Don’t give in, you got this.”
8:34 p.m.
A gloved fist catches Antoine beneath the ribs and the air pops from his lungs. He’s surprised his insides don’t come out too. His opponent swoops in to finish him off. Antoine sees the counter to be made, but his body betrays him: all it can do is clinch his enemy and hold on for dear life. Antoine’s face is tight, closed against the pain in his abdomen.
It will pass, he tells himself, what he always tells himself when confronted with physical pain. But he has thought this too many times over the last five and a half rounds, and the pain continues to accumulate. His ribs are in agony now.
Konitsyn tries to break free. Antoine clings tighter, knowing it will mean the end if he lets go. He does this as a drowning man, as he cannot get air back into his lungs. The ref breaks them apart, and Konitsyn lunges forward, swinging a haymaker at his chin. Antoine covers up and the blow ricochets off his gloves. The bell rings.
There is no nod from the man this time. He glares at Antoine, disgusted that the bell has saved him from certain defeat. With his swollen eyes and his blood-filled eyeball, Antoine’s opponent looks hideous. Fearsome.
Antoine stares back at him, but inwardly he is shocked that he wants to look away. He has never been afraid in a fight before. Afraid of losing, perhaps, but never truly afraid. Not afraid for himself. Not afraid of pain. It sickens and worries him, this fear he feels now.
He walks to his corner, while Konitsyn remains in the middle of the ring staring him down. The ref eventually nudges the enemy to his own corner, and the man reluctantly saunters away.
Slumped on his stool with Simón doing his best to revive him, Antoine wonders what he will do now. The juice didn’t work. It wounded the beast instead of killing it, while it left Antoine physically and mentally spent. What now? There must be a way. There is always a way. But he is out of ideas. Or perhaps there are ideas in there, but his brain is too muddled to go looking.
Antoine blinks. Alejandro is crouched before him, snapping his fingers in front of his eyes. Unlike most trainers, Alejandro talks sparingly to Antoine during a fight. They agree that Antoine should know what he is supposed to do, and must be left to execute it without distraction. Only when Antoine strays from the plan, forgetting some detail or weakening in his resolve, does the old man step in to take command. The scarcity of his words makes them ring all the louder in Antoine’s ears.
“Sobrino,” he says, for he calls Antoine nephew. “It is one more round that you need. No more. He is tired, I see it. He is too angry to notice yet, but I see it. You have done well to hurt him and anger him. He will come after you all round. And you, sobrino, you keep him chasing. Take the counter when it is there, but keep him chasing. Rest as much as you can. Round eight is when you strike.”
Antoine’s eyes lock on to the old man’s. It is something to have someone believe in you. To see it in their eyes.
Antoine nods. The old man smiles. He gives a gentle slap to Antoine’s cheek.
“Five percent better,” Alejandro says. “No más.”
Antoine closes his teeth around the mouth guard Simón offers.
The bell rings.
8:37 p.m.
“You can do it, Antoine!” Naomi screams. She is aware of the neighbouring richies eyeing her with distaste. Even Ricky seems for once to be giving her some distance. Let them judge. If there is any way to help her boy win this battle, she will take it. “Antoine, you can do it!” And then, half to piss off those glaring at her and half because the words are broiling within her and need to get out, she cries loudest of all, “Beat this fucker!”
Others ahead of her — inspired by her ferocity perhaps — call out Antoine’s name, shout words of encouragement. She wills their cries to inspire those lower down, so that her message may descend that long way to the ring where Antoine is fighting for his life.
The arena is immense. No sky above, it feels to her like a cavernous hall, burrowed into the roots of some great mountain. No night, no day, only the teeming masses in their sealed-off tomb, clamouring for violence. A scent of blood in the air. No wind here to scatter it away; it saturates her breath.
We are a mob, she thinks. A mob closed off from the rest of the world. A mob drunk on brutality. For this is indeed a brutal fight. Even in escape, Antoine keeps going after Konitsyn’
s head, keeps knocking his brain onto a collision course with the inside of his skull. There is an inflamed lump near Konitsyn’s right temple, almost the size of a golf ball and growing, the product of an inadvertent head butt. Naomi can see it in gory detail on the gigantic screen above the ring. Antoine is bleeding from a cut above his left eye and another from his lower lip.
And then there is the sweat sliding off each of them. Sweat cascading when a fist hits its mark. All of it sustenance to the mob. Drunk on liquor, a fervour is waiting to take hold of them.
This, Naomi can sense as the seventh round passes into the eighth and Antoine attempts a resurgence. But she has been keeping score in her head, and the rounds are unquestionably five to two, with no knockdowns and no penalties. Even if Antoine wins the remaining three rounds, the best he can do is a draw. And the eighth is the first that is inconclusive, with exchanges going both ways and long stretches of inactivity, each fighter seeming to lick his wounds. Antoine needs a knockout, she thinks. It is the only way he can win. He must know it too. But there are only two rounds left, and his opponent looks indomitable.
The ninth round. Antoine attacks and so too does Konitsyn. It is as if they want to heap every brain-addled disease on one another: Parkinson’s, dementia, CTE. This is beyond winning. This is about who can put the other in the grave first. The crowd loves it. They cheer feverishly. The bell rings and the battered fighters wobble to their corners, neither one looking as if he will ever come out. And Naomi realizes how she can help him.
“An-toine. An-toine. An-toine,” she begins to chant as she stands up. She looks over at Ricky. Grabs his arms and starts pumping them up and down, nodding at him to follow her lead. “An-toine. An-toine.”
One flirty smile is all it takes to get that horndog jumping up and down, bursting his lungs to spread the chant as far as possible. She looks at the richies around her as she continues to chant, and motions for them to follow. Carrot or stick, flirtatious smile or intimidating glare, sexy woman or towering baller, she knows just what to use and who to be with each person, until she has tapped into that wildness that is in all of them.
“An-toine! An-toine! An-toine!”
Their section is howling it now. But it is not enough. She yells at those beneath her, still in their seats. “Get your ass up! This is our hometown boy! He needs us!” She flings her long arms up into the air. “An-toine! An-toine! An-toine!”
Those below look up at her in fear and wonder, then jubilation, as they too are swept up in the roar of the pack.
“An-toine! An-toine! An-toine!”
The cameras take note of her. She is up on the giant screen punching her fist into the air with each syllable. The chant doubles, triples in strength.
This is the unique skill of the bench player, their gift to the starters, to ignite the crowd, to light a fire on the court, to take a torch to the stadium. Naomi was never an all-star, but in this she excelled.
“An-toine! An-toine! An-toine!”
8:47 p.m.
He returns to the world. Where he has been he does not know. Where he is now is also a mystery. A loud, blurry place. Where the sound carries.
There is a ringing in his ears. No, the ringing is outside him. Yes, the ringing is in his ears but there is also a bell ringing outside him. A man with a bludgeoned face and bloodshot eyes stares at him in bewilderment. Antoine remembers where he is. He remembers who he is.
The ref is yelling at him to go to his corner, and his people there are yelling for him to do the same. They vociferously motion with their hands for him to come over. It seems a very long way and an inordinately difficult task to cross that canvas floor. He takes a step and feels like he will topple over. He concentrates, takes another step. When he makes it to the corner, he asks Alejandro if he was knocked out. “No, sobrino. You were strong. You were very strong.”
“What round is it?” Antoine asks.
The old man’s eyes widen.
To staunch bleeding, Simón sticks a cotton swab soaked in adrenaline hydrochloride up Antoine’s nostrils, so he inhales through his mouth. Pain shoots across his ribs.
He looks at Alejandro while Simón goes to work on his various cuts.
“It’s round ten,” says the old man. “The final round. You have to knock him out. They won’t give you the decision.”
Antoine knows it is imperative that he wins. But he cannot remember why. Everything before this fight has faded into a distant and irretrievable past.
He shakes his head. “I can’t —” he starts to say, but Alejandro cuts him off.
“Listen, sobrino.”
Listen to what? The crowd chanting at a fight? Mere background noise to what’s happening in the ring. What goes on beyond those ropes is no concern of his. But Alejandro insists, so he listens.
Antoine’s face slackens. He brushes Simón’s hands aside and rises. Looks out at the crowd.
“An-toine! An-toine! An-toine!”
The entire arena is chanting. Their voices as one. Deafening. He spins around, looking up at the rafters, his own name echoing from those heights above. Lowers his gaze to the seats closest to him, row after row of animated faces screaming his name, pumping their fists, stomping their feet. How is this possible?
He looks to Alejandro and Carlos. They shrug and shake their heads, their faces open in disbelief in a way he has never seen on either of the stoic men.
“An-toine! An-toine! An-toine!”
He feels a prickling across his flesh that becomes a burning. It is like the secret juice of rounds four and five, but so much more. He is awake now. In a way he had not thought possible moments ago.
“An-toine! An-toine! An-toine!”
He turns to his opponent and sees him staring out at the sea of people surrounding them. His face is also slack with awe. But he is not buoyed up by it; he is not emboldened by it. He cringes from it.
The bell dings and Antoine springs into battle.
8:48 p.m.
Tyron finds himself throwing his own mini-punches in time with Antoine’s hurtling blows. A smile lingers at the corners of his mouth, waiting for that man on the screen to topple. But Clayface is still standing, and as the commentators keep reminding listeners, he will win the fight if he can survive this round.
The time remaining is at the bottom of each screen — 2:27 — and the entire bar, jammed together, watches breathless as the clock ticks down. Clayface is a different boxer to the one who started the fight. He defends instead of attacks, panting like a stray dog that has been run ragged. Antoine has ground him down.
And yet, while Clayface has given up on knocking out Antoine, he has not given up on winning the fight. He retreats, he covers up, he wraps Antoine when he is near. The clock ticks down. Less than two minutes to go.
Antoine has the crowd behind him. They are still with Antoine, no longer chanting his name but bellowing and shrieking each time he lands a punch. The commentators sway with the wind, suddenly calling the favourite “Konitsyn” when they have called him “Clayface” all fight, and referring to Antoine as “Dex” when they have mostly called him “Deco.”
You got this, man, thinks Tyron. Hit the body. Take what he gives you.
Antoine seems to hear Tyron. He fires a slashing left hook into Konitsyn’s ribs, throwing his weight into it so fully that his feet almost leave the ground. Konitsyn winces and angles down to cover his side, his hands dropping. And in that instant Antoine rifles a right jab to the skull. Sweat sprays. Konitsyn’s head whips back. He stumbles drunkenly. Tyron roars, “Come on!”
No one hears him, though. They are all yelling.
8:50 p.m.
Antoine lowers his arms, baiting the dopey bitch. The buffalo has one charge left before he can be put down.
It almost looks like the man has red cataracts, so glazed and bloodshot are his eyes. The blue swelling around the left eye has
nearly swallowed the eye itself. And that lump on his right temple just keeps getting bigger. The man throws a tired jab. Antoine ducks it and pops two shots to the body. Jukes the opponent’s counter, gets in a quick hook to the side of the head, and springs outside of range.
He hears Alejandro shouting at him that there is less than a minute left, but he is beyond panicking. Something happened when the crowd revived him. That formless nothing where his mind had gone was a kind of death. And he’s come back from it.
Konitsyn is swaying. He steps backward, struggling to keep his gloves up. He has knocked out nineteen opponents in a row: it’s been years since he fought a tenth round.
Antoine darts forward, feints a left jab, and comes around with a right hook. Then it is combinations, unceasing combinations, like he is up against the bag while still slipping the errant swings that are the last gasp of a dying man.
Antoine’s opponent teeters, eyes vacant. Knees buckling, he begins to drop. Antoine can let him fall or get one more shot in. He cannot risk the man getting up again. The bell would save him then.
Before the ref can stop him, Antoine winds up and uncoils. His glove drives into the opponent’s falling skull. Flung outward, the boxer collides against the canvas with a rattling thud. His eyes are shut. He is as still as a corpse.
The referee begins his count over the body, but it’s more likely that Konitsyn is dead than getting back up within ten seconds.
Konitsyn’s team shout curses at Antoine, but he ignores them. Turns to his own corner and sees shining faces, those characteristically impassive men now jubilant and proud.
He stands there, on the edge of the ring, fists by his sides, muscles taut, triumph building inside him, waiting for the ref to finish his count.
Who would’ve thought, he thinks to himself. Who would’ve thought . . . that you could actually pull this off.
The ref finishes his count, rises to his full height, and waves to the scorekeepers that the fight is over. Antoine hinges at the hips, clenching his fists to his face, a strangled cry of victory escaping him. The crowd erupts. Antoine straightens, relaxes at last, springs onto the ropes, and basks in their cheers. His team swarms him and he falls back into their arms.
Undercard Page 10
