I walked outside to the ring, where the crowd was roaring. I raised my arms in triumph, letting the blanket slide off my shoulders onto the floor. I had never appreciated a crowd before this. I roared, and they roared back. I roared again, but this time I was met with silence. At once they had all stopped cheering and stood motionless in complete silence.
The reigning champeen had showed up.
As I turned my head, a mélange of emotions struck me. I felt betrayed and manipulated. I wasn't sure what I should have believed, what should have been true. I wasn’t sure who to trust anymore. Why hadn’t anyone told me? Was I the only one who didn’t know? And of course, there was the feeling of “Yes, I guess I should have expected this”. I am sure you, Dear Reader, had guessed it where I had not.
The truth of my betrayal was right in front of me. He was also bare-chested, his skin a scarred map of former battle wounds. There were claw marks and knife marks, burns and twisted gashes, the memories of a thousand fights all healed into ugly scars. Underneath the scars were wiry muscles that I hadn’t noticed before due to the layers of clothes he always wore. But here in the flickering light, they were obvious. He now moved like a predatory cat. I couldn’t read his expression, but knew that expression was going to get much worse once we started fighting.
My opponent was Swearing Jim.
Reigning
July, 1994 - West Texas
I’ve been over this night countless times in my mind. There’s so much I don’t understand, so much that seems to mutate in my memory the longer I think about it. A shadow of darkness falls over the whole recollection. Ultimately I know I shouldn’t try to understand it, but recount it as best as I can remember. Maybe you will understand better than me.
I remember being surrounded by hundreds of homeless gentlemen. Though there were many, an eerie, oppressive silence had descended over the area. Not one of the hobos moved, not one spoke, none grunted nor shuffled their feet. I couldn't hear them, I couldn't even smell them. It was as if someone had taken the volume on their very existences and turned it down. They were gray, silent, and unmoving.
I could hear the wind as it whipped over the top of the basin out onto the cracked desert. All I could feel were my conflicted emotions swirling within me as I stood in front of my final opponent. Since I had first joined the hobo community, Swearing Jim had always been my protector, my mentor, and my sponsor. As I fought my way around the hobo boxing circuit, he was my manager, the one who arranged my fights, the one who directed my development. It was his work that brought me to the notice of the Tournament of Champeens. It was all through his efforts that I was brought here. I had thought he had my best interests in mind. I would not be here if it was not for him and his kindness. Now all that kindness had been upended, and I saw it for what it was, something more like an opportunistic distaste. Now everything he had ever done for me was in question.
The Jim that stood before me was not the Jim I had known. I had known a happy bearded man bundled in old patchwork clothes, fond of giving me advice and occasionally telling me how to throw a better punch. Before me stood a different man, one of intensity. There was a ferocity to his eyes that I had never seen before. Something behind his eyes was old, far older than I would have guessed Jim was. Behind that I saw a darkness that made me look away.
“Why?” I asked him. There was more pain in my voice than I had realized.
"This is how it plays out. This is how it will always play out."
"But why me?" I said. "I'm not anybody. Our meeting was just by chance. Why me?"
“I knew it would be you,” he said with a glimmer within those dark eyes. “I saw your potential when I first saw you, that's why I began this charade. There was still some doubt, but I knew for sure you were the one in that first punch. You had the raw talent. You had the spirit, the life, that spark. I knew you would be the one to make it here. You were just the Fool I was looking for.“
“But why? I don’t understand. Why didn’t you tell me you were training me for this?”
“Knowing your destination was not required. It gets in the way. It has been a problem before.”
“Before? I’m not the first you’ve played this sick game with?”
“You are not the first Tex,” he said with a grim smile, “and you will not be the last.” And then there was a redoubled intensity in his eyes. "And you're all pale shadows of the original Tex." He spat on the ground.
“I still don’t understand,” I said pitifully. “Why? Why this game? Why do I have to fight? Why have you made me fight?”
“I need a worthy opponent,” he said, his teeth gritted. “And if none exists, I am willing to make one. There has to be one. There has to be a Tex.”
“So I had to become worthy?”
“Oh, you haven’t proven yourself worthy yet,” he said. “Oh no, not yet.” His voice changed with that last sentence. And things were suddenly very different.
He inhaled deeply and I felt the air shift. All around me, the hundreds of hobos suddenly became less distinct. Already gray and motionless, they were now transparent, each face dour and forlorn.
He exhaled and I could see his breath, white and smoky. I suddenly felt colder. Goosebumps prickled my skin. I shivered involuntarily as the wind picked up. Jim’s eyes began to glow faintly. A whitish - almost blue light - filled his eye sockets. He inhaled again and flexed his arms. The other hobos became even less distinct, a crowd of gray lost souls. I began to wonder where I really was.
As he exhaled, I saw his cold breath again. Whitish blue flames appeared around his hands, like strange will o’ wisps. Those flames also began burning in his eyes. I suddenly felt dizzy, the air around me thick.
“This is a test,” he said, his voice reverberating all around me. In the air, the ground, inside my head. He raised his fists. “Your test.”
“A test of what?” I asked, pulling myself into the best fighting stance I could. I had trouble finding my balance. His voice continued to echo in my head after he stopped talking, the word “test” bouncing around and colliding with my thoughts. It was a hot throbbing vertigo that reduced my will to nothing, just a faint whisper fighting against the echo. "I don't want to be tested."
He came at me then. I felt it before I saw it. There was a sudden feeling of heat in my mind and a cold tingling on my skin. My instincts had me moving, the motions drunken and uncoordinated. I barely had the willpower to move – I felt like I was trying to move jello by poking it with a stick. But somehow I did it, tumbling out of the way before Jim struck me. I barely saw him move. He suddenly became transparent as a blur of afterimages lunged towards my location, those white blue flames barely missing me.
I stumbled across the ground, barely maintaining my balance. I somehow managed to stand back up and swung my body around. I'm not sure what was moving me. I keep saying instinct, but who knows what actually made it happen. I knew it was not willpower. Something was making me fall apart inside, and I was not sure how long I could keep it together.
“Good!” said his twisted voice. “You impress me, boy. Few are able to move once they get started. But, so you don’t get cocky…”
I saw him inhale, then he streaked towards me, punching me in the face. His knuckles were burning and sharp as they scraped across my skin. Pale white light flashed in my mind when he made the connection. For a second I teetered, but then he lunged from the opposite direction, breaking my ribs in two places with a devastating punch to my chest. The impact sounded like the crack of whip and I saw white light again. I had barely time to acknowledge this when he came at me again. A punch to my stomach caused blood fill in my mouth and more white light. The blur that was Jim stopped ten feet away and appeared to breathe cold air again.
I teetered on the balls of my feet. I was going to fall. My legs were unharmed, but between the new pain, the vertigo I had been fighting against, and blood in my mouth, I was going to fall. Moreso, I wanted to fall. I was out of my league. I felt like I was going to
die and I was ready to let that happen. I had been trying so hard to keep myself together, but now I was ready to give up on it all, just to let go and finally rest. Let the darkness overtake me… it seemed so easy.
I began to fall. Time slowed and I seemed to begin to slip through space. But suddenly Jim was next to me grabbing my left arm. I didn’t even see him move. One second he was ten feet away, the next he was clutching my arm in a death grip. Where he touched my arm I felt an icy cold.
“Not yet,” he said.
Something in me rebelled against him, rebelled against his cold. From some well deep within the cavern of my being, something screamed in defiance, a howl that rose from those depths and out through my soul. In my mind, flames welled within me and rushed to the place on my arm where he held me. For a moment I felt his grip loosen and he looked at my arm in surprise. He smiled and uttered just a single word, "Interesting," as his grip tightened around me. My inner flames vanished when faced with that endless cold. I felt that frostbitten cold coursing through my veins as I felt something torn from me. I could only focus on the white-blue fire in Jim’s eyes as he stared at me.
And then it ended, almost as suddenly as it began.
“We’ll meet again,” he said, releasing my arm.
I fell to the ground.
Around me, everything faded away.
No, it was not my slip into unconsciousness that made everything disappear. Even though I was passing out, I know what I saw. All around me, the crowd of hobos faded away, their gray forms becoming more and more transparent until they were gone. Then Jim began to fade away as well, until just the white-blue lights in his eyes remained. In a moment those ghost lights also slowly faded away.
I was all alone. Then I too faded away as I passed out.
When I awoke it was daylight, probably sometime in the mid morning. I felt the heat already reflecting off the rocks. I was still in that basin, but something was not right. Something was off. The rock formations were the same, but everything was wrong.
There was no evidence of the tournament. No tents, no garbage, no forgotten belongings. No burned out fires. The stream which ran through it was just a tepid trickle of water.
There should have been some sign. Even if they had hastily packed up in the night, something should be left. Some random piece of trash, some scrape in the dirt, some indication that humans had been there. There should be indications of hundreds. But there was nothing.
My head spun. I paced back and forth, trying to grab for sanity as questions whirled in my mind. Did it really happen? Was it some strange dream? Had someone slipped me some drug along the road and in a hallucination I walked here to this place? But why this place?
Maybe I had some bad beans on the train going west and I had leapt off of my own accord, wandering the desert until I sobered up here. Maybe I was in the wrong basin. The hobos had dropped off my unconscious body here, and it just looked like the same basin. Maybe I dreamed the tournament and Kirby was waiting for me at the tracks.
So many possible explanations flooded my mind. I wanted it to make sense. I wanted to be able to slot my memories in some safe box. Every idea had flaws, all suggested more questions.
I’m not sure what I wanted to believe. Did I want to believe I was at some midnight tournament that didn’t exist in the morning? Did I want to believe I was at a gathering of hundreds of homeless who abandoned me? Did I want to believe I was simply hallucinating and had wandered the desert far from friends? Did I want to believe in a man with death in his eyes?
No, I did not.
I tried to shake off the thoughts as I climbed the steep path. My body hurt in so many places that any exertion was unpleasant. Breathing made me wincing with pain. Once I reached the top of the basin, I realized my left arm was cold and numb despite the heat. I turned my arm to look for the reason for the numbness and I caught my breath. A shiver went through my body and I felt something cold in the pit of my stomach. There are things I can deny, there are things I can believe I was mistaken about. There are things I can reinterpret, and there are things I can dismiss. But this? No, I knew what happened last night.
On my left upper arm was the worst bruise I had ever had. It was a dark purple mark, almost black. The mark was exactly in the shape of Jim’s hand, when he held me in his icy grasp.
I reached up to run my hand through my hair and noticed something else. I grabbed something off my head. In my hand was the bowler hat I had received for winning the tournament.
A cold wind howled over the top of the basin, almost sounding like a sinister laugh.
Deserted
July, 1994 - Lost
Metaphorically, many have walked across a desert. They talk of trudging through a wasteland, often before, after, or during a long dark night of the soul. Along this journey, they question aspects of themselves. Perhaps they find themselves broken. Perhaps they are walking towards rebirth. Other times, they are just letting go, leaving their internal possessions on the dry earth behind them as they move forward.
Very few people have actually walked across a desert.
It sucks.
When you’re actually walking across one, the last thing you’re thinking about are your soul, the state of your life, or all the things you want to leave behind. Well, possibly the state of your life, but in a very specific way. As in, “What the fuck choices did I make that brought me here, walking across a fucking desert in the fucking summer without any goddamn water?”
I missed water most of all.
I had little in the way of belongings when I woke up in the basin. A bowler hat, a torn blanket, and pants. Not even a shirt on my back. I don’t know who absconded with my possessions, but I had only the clothes I was wearing, and the two things I had laid on the ground immediately before the match: the blanket and bowler hat.
As I walked, I wished I had taken a bigger drink from the trickle of water in the basin. It was tepid and tasted more of rock than water, but later on as the heat of the day beat down on me, I would have gladly traded much for it. I wore the hat and was wrapped in the blanket. These made me hotter than I should be, but the alternative would be to have my bare back and head exposed to the baking sun. It might have been cooler for a while, but I would have eventually been heavily sunburned. Sunstroke would probably be deadly. I had enough sense to keep covered, even if that meant I was dripping sweat off every inch of my skin under that blanket.
I wasn’t even sure where I was. I had lost all my orientation. I didn't remember which direction the train tracks were or the route I had followed Jim and Kirby to reach the tournament. If I could have found those tracks, I could have followed them in either direction to civilization. It might have taken a long time if I chose the wrong direction, but eventually both would lead me somewhere. Without the tracks, I could easily pick a direction that went nowhere.
I climbed out of the basin and looked for anything that looked familiar. I didn't see the tracks, nor the rock giving me the finger. It all looked the same. I picked a direction that felt good and walked in a straight line, full of hope.
I chose wrong.
Hours later, I had not seen the train tracks, nor heard the rumble of the train engine. Nor had I seen a road, a city, a house, or any sign of human life. I had picked a direction that seemed to evade every signpost or remnant of civilization. I picked a route directly into the middle of nowhere.
This desert was not the type that probably springs to mind when I use the word. I was not walking across sandy dunes with the Lawrence of Arabia music playing in my head, walking irregular steps to avoid attracting the attention of a sand worm. No, this was hard cracked earth. Dead grass occasionally poked through the ground, but everything was parched. The wind was thick with dust. Clearly it rained sometime in the year, but much of the summer it was dry, baking rocks and the hard, crumbling ground. It was truly an empty wasteland that had me scaling and stumbling over rock outcroppings more often than walking on flat ground.
I wa
lked for hours until it was late in the day and I stopped to rest. My feet hurt, my legs were weak and my lips were cracked. I realized I should have stopped earlier, but I had kept walking. I had felt I would get somewhere if I just kept walking, and I had wanted to get wherever it was quickly. Resting would have acknowledged that I was going to be walking a long time. But I had finally given up. The sun was too strong and the earth too hot. I had to rest.
I stopped in the shadow of two rock formations. One looked like an enormous wang (circumcised), while the other was not fancy at all and looked just like every other set of rocks. It would have been more poetic if the other set of rocks were reminiscent of a set of breasts or had a vagina-like opening, but alas, whatever celestial entity responsible for erotic sculpture had taken a half-day when this one was made. I sat down in the shadow against the giant wang, so I would at least be staring at the rocks that didn’t make me giggle. Giggling hurt and made me cough, I found.
I’m not sure how long I sat there. My memory is fuzzy, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t fall asleep. The hard ground and uneven rocks were uncomfortable and my butt went numb. I was woken back to alertness by a hiss. My eyes opened and my semi-blurred vision looked around for a source. Seconds later I found it.
Across from me, about five feet away on the non-wang rock formation, was a snake. It was curled around the rocks looking in my direction. My body tensed. I really didn’t have much experience with snakes. I’ve seen them in books and at the zoo, but I didn’t really have any real world experience. At pet shops they were always right next to the tarantula cages, so that was an aisle I walked down without turning my head or acknowledging my peripheral vision. Spiders wig me out.
Damned Lies! Page 11
