In the Cage

by Kevin Hardcastle

  “You ain’t a skier?” Daniel asked.

  “Has there ever been a sport more perfectly designed for assholes?” LeBlanc said.

  Daniel laughed. Said there probably wasn’t. They drank and made some more small talk about work, their wives, their kids. LeBlanc had four girls and a boy. The first before he might have even considered himself grown. LeBlanc stopped talking mid-sentence and went quiet for a minute.

  “You still hooked up with the bikers and those Indians?” LeBlanc said soft.

  “Pardon?”

  “Under the table kind of stuff,” LeBlanc said. “You know what I mean.”

  Daniel didn’t even try to bullshit the man. He’d a belly full with beer and he gone tired right through as the evening limped by. He told LeBlanc that he didn’t do that work anymore.

  “Come on,” LeBlanc said.

  “I’m telling you the truth, pal.”

  LeBlanc’s face soured. He drank at his beer.

  “We known each other for a long time,” LeBlanc said. “And you know what kind of guy I am.”

  “I do,” Daniel said. “But I still can’t help you. It ain’t like what you think.”

  “You don’t know what I think.”

  LeBlanc would barely look at him.

  “You should do anything but what I done,” Daniel said. “I’m being straight, man. You shouldn’t even be fuckin’ asking about it.”

  LeBlanc said no more. Daniel got up from the stool and went across the room, down the corridor to the bathrooms. The men’s had the door marked by a wooden cutout of a rooster. Daniel went in and took his place at the end of a metal trough. Nobody else in the room. As he pissed he read the wall in front of him. Someone had written “Life Sux” on the plaster at face-height.

  The door opened as Daniel shook and zipped his fly. LeBlanc took a step into the room but no further. He pulled his shirt off over his head and tossed it to the bank of sinks against the one wall. The man carried some extra meat around the midsection but he was heavy with muscle underneath, through his shoulders and chest and arms. Determined look of a drunkard in his eyes.

  “What the fuck is this?” Daniel said.

  LeBlanc just put his fists up high.

  “I’ll prove it,” he said.

  “Prove what?” said Daniel.

  But the big man was already coming at him. The bathroom was maybe twenty feet in length and with the stalls and the sinks Daniel had nowhere to go. LeBlanc swarmed him and swung wild. Daniel covered up and he was calm enough to ask LeBlanc to quit. Got hold of LeBlanc by his neck and put his head under LeBlanc’s chin and shoved him back. LeBlanc would not stop and he was long-limbed and on the way back he slammed a left hook upside Daniel’s forehead and sent him teetering into the stalls. Daniel got back to his feet and he was moving funny at first. His right foot sluggish as he stepped the tile. When LeBlanc came back Daniel snapped a push kick into the huge man’s stomach with his lead leg and that backed LeBlanc up a step. Then Daniel had his legs back and he whipped a hard right low kick to the meat of LeBlanc’s thigh.

  LeBlanc blurted something odd and started falling as he came forward on the stung leg. Still, he was moving too fast and had enough reach that he grabbed Daniel up and they both went over together. The bigger man falling onto Daniel and pinning him there to the filthy bathroom floor under his weight. Daniel couldn’t see and he couldn’t move LeBlanc. Acrid, damp smell that he couldn’t help but inhale deep. Someone came into the room and could be heard swearing and then they went back out in a hurry. Hard footfalls in the corridor.

  And there, buried under the giant, Daniel felt something he’d not felt in years during a fight, not since his early days as a green amateur. True panic. He tried to shuck loose as LeBlanc kept the weight on and near smothered him. Short punches landed to the side of Daniel’s head and shook him, so big were LeBlanc’s lunchbox mitts. Daniel settled himself and when LeBlanc tried to posture up Daniel elbowed LeBlanc from the bottom and managed to work to a butterfly guard, his knees bent up and his shins under each of LeBlanc’s thighs. LeBlanc didn’t know what to do there and when he began to throw punches again he was off-balance and Daniel elevated the big man and pushed him to the side. Daniel got his knee to the tile and pulled LeBlanc’s support hand off of the ground and rolled him. Drove LeBlanc all the way down to his back and held him there.

  LeBlanc tried to shift Daniel but the big man had nothing from his back and he was sucking air. Daniel had his arms around LeBlanc’s neck and shoulder and he let go long enough to push LeBlanc’s arm up against his massive head. Then Daniel got his grip again with his left bicep and forearm squeezing LeBlanc’s neck, Daniel’s head and shoulder pinning the big man’s own left arm and putting pressure on that side. The choke was tight already but Daniel cleared his legs and swung them over LeBlanc’s knees so that he was belly-down on the floor beside LeBlanc, completing the hold. LeBlanc tried to buck and hit Daniel in the back of the head with his free hand. Seconds like that and his fist drummed Daniel’s back clumsily and fell away and then LeBlanc went limp.

  Daniel let go of the choke and got to his knees. LeBlanc’s arm was twitching a little on the floor. Daniel patted the big man on the chest and got up. He went to the mirrors by the sink. Welt at his forehead where LeBlanc caught him. Line of blood right down the middle of his chin from a cut lower lip. Scratches and scrapes on the one side of his face. Swaths of his shirt gone dark and damp with LeBlanc’s sweat. He could not catch his breath. He felt weird right through and puked beer into the sink. Again and again until he was just dryheaving. When it stopped he drank water from the tap and rinsed the basin. Daniel washed his face and then let the tap run cold over his hands. Went back over to where LeBlanc lay. He knelt and put his hands to the man’s face. Shook him a little. LeBlanc had already started to stir and come back. Daniel slapped the downed man across the cheek.

  LeBlanc was still a little unsteady when they loaded him into the passenger seat of his truck. It took Daniel and another man on either side of LeBlanc and a waitress with armsleeve tattoos shoving LeBlanc in by his ass. The big man only lived a mile or so from that watering hole, and Daniel drove LeBlanc’s truck while the waitress followed in Daniel’s truck. Her shift was up and he’d agreed give her a lift home after, on the way out of town.

  When they got to LeBlanc’s place, all the windows were dark and there were no other vehicles in the drive. LeBlanc had recovered enough to speak and to walk but he didn’t say anything. He was still hammered-drunk on top of his having been actually separated from his senses. When they got out Daniel and LeBlanc met around the front of the truck and the big man apologized and shook Daniel’s hand. Daniel walked LeBlanc up the pathway to his own front door and LeBlanc fumbled with the keys until he found the right one. Daniel tried the key in the deadbolt but the door hadn’t been locked. LeBlanc went in.

  Daniel came back down the drive to his own truck and the tattooed waitress shuffled over on the seat. She had black hair and a lip ring. He didn’t know of her or her family name.

  “His old lady is probably going to knock him out as well,” the waitress said.

  Daniel looked up at the house. No lights yet by the windows.

  “I don’t believe anybody else has been living there for some time,” he said.

  ELEVEN

  Daniel came home from work with hours of the day to spare. He sat on the step of his house in his workgear as if they might call him back in a minute. When he went into the house he opened the fridge and stood there. He got a beer and glanced at the clock and then put the bottle back.

  He sat on the basement steps and wrapped his hands. Fifteen feet of cloth to better hold bone and ligament together. He had his near worn-out sixteen-ounce gloves with Velcro straps and he pulled the gloves on and fastened them tight. Daniel threw jabs and his straight right until the bag and his mitts shucked the dust clear. He m
oved on the balls of his feet. Shifted weight to either foot and shook his wearied limbs. He stretched his hamstrings and his arms and his neck and then he threw the jab over and over. He tried to throw hooks and nothing felt right. He went back to his jab and once in a while he threw the heavy right hand. The ball of his right foot grabbed concrete and then shifted power through his calf and his ass and his core. Torque of his wrecking-ball shoulder. The bags shook in its chains and the crossbeams rattled. When he landed the right-hand clean the bag bowed and bucked and swung a wide orbit. If anyone were upstairs it might have sounded as if he were taking a sledgehammer to the washing machine.

  An hour later Daniel stood with his hands behind his head. Hauled as much air as he could. Finally he let his arms drop and he bit at the strap of one of his gloves and pulled it loose. He took the gloves off and set them down on the stairs and then he sat down beside them. Daniel unwound the sodden wraps and balled them up and tossed them at the washing machine. He got up and went over to the laundry sink and turned the tap on. He leaned in and drank water from the tap until his insides stung from the cold. He stood up and took great, heavy breaths and then drank again. Then he turned the tap off and went to the steps and picked up his gloves. Walked those stairs with his mouth open.

  He had the truck idling in the roadside gravel, parked so that he could see clear across a small patch of stony field to where the house stood. Modest two-storey building in one of the town’s older neighbourhoods. He observed changes made to the structure, an extension to the garage. A boat on a trailer out front, in its covers. They’d lately built an above ground pool and it took up most of the back yard. There’d been a pond there that they must have had filled.

  That had been his father’s house for forty-seven years and then it was Daniel’s for just five more before he had to sell it so that he didn’t lose it outright. They’d gone bankrupt not long after Daniel had to quit fighting and they only had the house because it had been left to them. Two years of piss-poor welding jobs that came and went and paid almost nothing had them remortgaging the place and another worse year had them on a second mortgage from the bank. When they sold the house they had credit cards and a line of credit and they were upside down on the mortgage and couldn’t cover it all. They’d paid the bank but were still paying the other creditors, month by month. Daniel had even borrowed from Clayton the once but swore he’d never again, long as it took for him to work that through that debt with his hands before he could start to earn.

  He waited awhile longer until he couldn’t stand to look at the place. As he was putting the truck into gear somebody came out onto the back deck and looked toward him. Shielded their eyes with the flat of their hand. Daniel wound the window down and stuck his fist out, gave them the middle finger. The man on the deck kept looking. Then he waved. Daniel pulled out from the fringe and drove off.

  Yellow buses came and went over snow and sludge. Daniel sat in his truck trying to remember if he’d ever rode in one but he couldn’t. Kids ran with their bags dangling and some were dressed well, brand-name running shoes and backpacks and clothes bought new for they alone. The cuffs of their pants soiled gradual by grit and salt as they walked the pathways and parking lot. Other kids wore ill-fitting hand-me-downs and had home-cut hair and others yet were bedraggled with busted packs and sneakers. They were children that ranged in age from five to thirteen years old, and he saw faces of men he knew in some that passed, of girls he had known in his youth that would be in their thirties now. Still, there they went, some tiny and high-voiced. Some of the older ones had outgrown their age and Daniel guessed at their troubles or the troubles they’d cause.

  Daniel got out of the truck and shut the door, stood waiting. Faint trace of his breath in the air. He wore a light jacket but the cold bothered him little. He saw parents in other cars, parents at the school doors talking to teachers and each other. He stayed by the truck. The girl didn’t show and she didn’t show. Nervousness deep in his chest that he couldn’t control nor explain away. He waited there until almost all of the kids had cleared and then he pocketed his keys and started for the school.

  He’d not been long in the truck, driving the roads around the school, when he saw her by the perimeter fence. Daniel knew her by her walk even with some hundred yards between them. The girl was trailing three boys and they were trailing another. Daniel about blew a stop sign and closed on them quick.

  By the time he got level they’d begun the scrap right in the sidewalk, the three of them after the other kid. Quick mess of fists and they had the kid down in the snowbank where they battered him. Two of them were tall and thin and they’d pinned the smaller boy. The thicker of the three was punching the downed kid in the back and dropping knees to his flank. He threw mean and the punches had some weight to them. The kid on the ground had not been in good shape even before they started beating on him. They could barely hold the scruffy kid down and he was whining and growling and cursing them out. Daniel cranked the wheel and pulled up hard to the curb and the tire clipped it and rocked the truck. As he thumped the door open he saw they’d dragged the boy into the snow itself to smother him in it, stuffing mittfuls into his jacket and down the back of his pants. Daniel’s boots hit the fringe just as Madelyn got there.

  She turned the wide one by his shoulder and drove a straight right to his maw and he sat down on the pavement. Then she took the nearest of the taller boys by the neck of his jacket and horsecollared him to a knee. He was taller than her by plenty but he’d not seen her coming. The other tall kid turned and quit with the kid on the ground long enough to take her measure. The thickset boy was up again fit to kill her but Daniel hollered so loud the boy froze up and almost lost his footing again. Dribble of blood from his nostril. They cleared out but Madelyn had got tangled up with the tallest boy and she kept feeding him little shots to the guts and he wrestled her off her feet into the snow. Daniel walked through the other two and got hold of the tallest by his coatback and his belt and lifted him high, like he were a bundle of long kindling. The girl came up with the tall boy and they let each other go. Daniel just took the boy a few feet away and dropped him.

  As soon as the scruffy kid lowered his arms and saw daylight he sprung up and swung on the nearest kid, the second tallest one who’d been last to get his licks in and was still upright. That kid took a haymaker to the ear and went back toward the road and banged up against an old utility box in the snowed-over fringe. He held the side of his head and had his eyes shut tight. The scruffy kid had filthy teartracks ran down his cheeks. His eyes were crazy. Daniel caught him and tied him up before he could take another crack. The kid tried to thrash clear but within seconds he slowed and all the air seemed to go out of him and he sat down heavy in the snowbank again. His damp hair stuck out from his head and he’d snow in his earholes. His coat hung open, the zipper busted. The tall kid who took a shot to the ear was already jogging away down the street and the heavyset boy was pulling his other friend off the ground.

  “You fucking assholes,” he said. “We’re gonna come after you. And all your wagonburner buddies.”

  Daniel walked at him and the boys tried to scramble. They weren’t quick enough and Daniel got a boot to the heavy kid’s rear end as he started to run and the kid stumbled and took a header to the pavement. The tallest was up and running then. The mouthy one quick on his heels and he ran with a limp.

  “I know your old man, son,” Daniel called. “You can tell him who done it and ask him if he wants to talk about it.”

  The kid stopped long enough to flip Daniel the bird.

  “If I was a worse person I’d tell you why he ain’t gonna do a goddamn thing,” Daniel said.

  The kid spat into the road and then he kept running. Daniel stared after them for a little while and then he turned around to check on the kid they’d beat. Only Madelyn there with her face red and her ponytail pulled ragged. The other boy was gone.

  “He took of
f,” she said, and pointed.

  Daniel looked around at the nearby pathways and the gaps between houses but he couldn’t see the boy. There were bloodspots in the snow, a lone backpack that one of the bullies left when they fled. Madelyn had gone for her bookbag and came back brushing the snow from it. She got to the abandoned pack and picked it up by the handle and flung it wide. It clipped the top of the schoolyard fence and turned end over end, spilled its contents in the field. Daniel met her in the sidewalk and took her by the underside of her face in one hand. She stopped. Scrapes across her right cheek and on her forehead.

  “You okay?” he said.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Good,” he said. “Now get in the goddamn truck.”

  Madelyn’s window creaked and wound down in fits and starts until it was halfway open. She took the cold air over her face and put her hand outside the truck.

  “Let me see that,” Daniel said.

  She brought the hand inside and he took it in his and looked at her knuckles. Redness but no more. He pressed each knuckle with his thumb and she didn’t make a sound until he got to the joints of her index and forefinger.

  “That hurt much?”

  “A little bit.”

  He let go and she rubbed the hand, put it back outside. They said nothing for a long time.

  “You pissed at me?” she said.

  He shook his head, watched the road.

  “I don’t want you fighting.”

  “You fought,” she said. “Hell, you even got in a fight the other week.”

  Daniel shook his head. He still wore some of the damage from his night on the town with LeBlanc.

  “That shouldn’t ever have happened,” he said.

  Madelyn was still breathing heavy from the scrap. Daniel reached over and squeezed her by the shoulder. The girl shook some. All that adrenaline run through her that had nowhere to go now.