In the Cage

by Kevin Hardcastle

  “Maybe if you taught me...”

  “That’s enough,” he said.

  The girl went quiet. Daniel just watched the road. He seemed to shrink some in his seat. Madelyn let him be for a minute.

  “Do you really know that kid’s dad?” she said. “The one who swore at you.”

  “That’s why I know what kind of ingredients are in the boy,” Daniel said.

  Madelyn set about fixing her ponytail, took the elastic out and retied it. Daniel surveyed the neighbourhoods as he drove. Houses of brick with naked oak trees and wooden fencing, custom-built awnings and decks. Subdivisions of wood and brick-facade with wide driveways and coloured siding. Houses of clapboard and tarpaper with rough, black shingling and brokedown garages, rockgardens and crabgrassed lawns covered in snow. They passed houses that Daniel knew and houses that he didn’t.

  “At least you threw that punch right,” Daniel said. “Break a hand out there and you’re done for.”

  He could see her smiling in the window reflection.

  “Don’t do it again though, hear me?” he said.

  She said she’d not. Tried to stone-face him as she made the promise. Daniel looked at his daughter hard and knew that it was too late by years for her to keep it.

  TWELVE

  Early on a Thursday afternoon Daniel finished his half-shift and made for his truck. He sat in the cab and stared out at the site-office for a while. Bowed his head and breathed careful. He drove away from the site and followed the concession road out of town. When he was supposed to turn off for home he didn’t. He kept on driving and saw the mouth of the road that he lived on from the highway overpass. Beside him on the seat he had an old duffel bag, stuffed full.

  Half an hour later he turned into a pothole-ridden lot outside of an industrial plaza. A foot of snow on its flat roof. The truck tires ran through sludge and road salt. There were four units in the plaza and only one was occupied. The rest were barred and boarded shut and had notices pinned to the doors, offers of sale or rent or notices of dereliction. Daniel waited in the truck awhile. Three vehicles in the lot and he knew one of them. Eventually he shut the engine off and got out with his bag. He walked across the lot toward the lit front of the occupied unit. Light freezing rain fell about him. Icewater mist that blew at his hair and face as he went.

  When Daniel got to the door he saw the front room empty, a computer left unattended on a desk. Worn-out office chairs on either side. Framed pictures were hung on the wall behind the desk and posters were tacked around the office and taped to the front window. Light at the end of a long, dim hall. He knew that the entrance door would be unlocked so he pulled it open and went inside. Smell of sweat and old leather, dampness, disinfectant. Then he heard a sound like gunfire. Bare feet shuffling. Someone unloading on pads in the distant, open room and the sound echoing against the bare cinderblock walls. Daniel smiled and took his shoes off where he saw other men’s shoes. The front door had not closed full behind him and he pulled it shut and went down the hallway.

  They stopped when they saw him. Just for a few moments. Then they went on. Two men were in the ring. One held the pads and the other wore gloves and shorts and nothing else. Another man skipped in the corner of the room atop green floormatting and he turned as Daniel came in and then went back to skipping and studying the men in the ring. A digital timeclock sat on a table by the corner of the ring and counted seconds. At five minutes a high tone rang out and the coach caught one last punch and then he lowered the focus-mitts. The fighter in the ring raised his arms and laced his hands behind his head. The coach spoke to him close and the fighter nodded and looked the coach in the eyes. The coach held the pads out and the fighter bumped them with his gloves and started walking back and forth. Wet canvas underfoot where he’d loosed sweat. Daniel waited ringside until the coach turned to him. Tan skin. Nose flat and the bone long gone. The coach leaned on the ropes. He squinted and then he smiled slight.

  “What you doin’ here?” he called out.

  “Hey Jasper,” Daniel said.

  “Long time, man.”

  “I heard you opened up shop again.”

  Jasper stood full and gestured around at the gym, the new matting and ring covers and ropes. Freeweights on racks along one wall, the opposite wall lined with leather heavy bags and teardrop bags hung from the ceiling by chain. Lone, aged Muay Thai bag actually touching the floor where the sand settled and made the base alike to concrete pillaring.

  “Beautiful, ain’t it?” the coach said.

  “It’s somethin’,” Daniel said.

  “It’s not like the old gym.”

  “No. But that’s alright.”

  Jasper pointed to Daniel’s duffel bag.

  “You here to train?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “You got all your necessaries.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Locker room’s over on the left. You need tape or wraps or anything you just give me a shout.”

  Daniel nodded and picked up his bag. He walked the length of the gym toward the locker room door. The fighter in the ring was pacing back and forth and didn’t seem to know anybody else was there. The other man training outside the ring had never stopped skipping. Now he eyeballed Daniel. His face gave up nothing. Dark skin laid tight over his crooked nose and patchwork brows.

  Daniel arrived home by twilight. As he got out of the truck Sarah opened their front door. She looked him up and down as he climbed the steps with his duffel, then turned and went back inside. Daniel dropped his bag in the hallway and kicked it to the side. He hung his jacket and went into the kitchen to meet her but she was already coming out with their dinner.

  “You didn’t have to wait,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” Sarah said.

  She set the plates down. Roast chicken and potatoes, salad in a bowl at the centre of the table. Two bottles of beer.

  “Sit,” she said.

  “Where’s the kid?” he said.

  Sarah nodded toward the living room.

  “I let her eat in front of the TV. She wouldn’t sit still at the table. Then she was all over the kitchen. All I know is impatience isn’t a trait she gets from me.”

  Daniel sat at the small dining table and waited there. Sarah was back in the kitchen turning the stove off and then she came out and sat. He cut some chicken loose and watched her past his chewing. They ate and said little. Sound came in from the living room and Daniel looked over his shoulder for Madelyn. He ate another bite and then did it again. Sarah stopped and rested her knife and fork against the table.

  “Just go, you dummy,” she said.

  THIRTEEN

  Near every day Daniel left the jobsite at noon. Drove his truck an hour out of town. With one hand he ate the lunch his wife had made him the night before. The door to the gym was open always. He would go inside where Jasper held pads for young fighters and sometimes the coach would be sitting on a chair outside of the ring while his assistants ran drills. On weekdays there were classes in the morning and young men would be in the changeroom when he got there, some of them quiet and some talking shit. None of them knew him. But they saw the curved mark under his left eye, the scar tissue through his brow, hands broke and rebroke with thick and hideous knucklejoints. Musculature of a man who had done a life’s work in the ring and perhaps made part of his living on a farm or hauling a fire hose or shifting metal as Daniel did now. He would wait them out and when they left he went out to skip rope and shadowbox atop the new floormatting.

  Often on those early afternoons there would be just a half-dozen men in the room. Some of those men knew Daniel by the picture of him that hung in the entryway or they knew of him by talk in the locker room or by rumours circulated in other gyms by other men. It was plain that Jasper paid Daniel some mind when he was working, studied him out of the corner of the eye while h
e trained other fighters. But Jasper would never lose track of the pads he held or the punches and kicks coming at him. If a fighter dropped his guard they’d take a pad upside the head or a shin half-thrown to the thigh and they would reset and forget about Daniel altogether.

  For a week Daniel did no more than skip and shadowbox, worked the bags light. He stretched out ligament and tendon and rediscovered muscles that had long been ignored. He made sure to take deep breaths to his diaphragm as he worked. Exhaled hard through his mouthguard while he threw hands. Daniel dripped sweat until his bare feet slid on the matting. Then he’d change his sopping shirt and come back out onto the floor. Towel the mats down again and work until he had to start thinking about home.

  In the last days of that month Daniel came into the gym and there was but one assistant coach and a young hundred-and-seventy-pounder at work. Jasper was not there. Daniel changed and stowed his things, went out to train. By then Jasper had come out from a makeshift bedroom in the rear of the gym and sat the edge of the ring and yawned. He saw Daniel and waved him over.

  “You want to put all your gear on today? Get some real work in?” he said.

  “Sure,” Daniel said.

  Jasper started to stretch his arms, pulled his elbow back behind his head and bowed a little to that side. The man had Thai and Filipino in him on his mother’s side, Dutch-Canadian on the other. He’d lived most of his life in cities in central Ontario and had only been overseas at length to Thailand, to train and fight.

  “Grab some shinguards from the back if you don’t have none with you,” the coach said. “Just warm up and give me a minute before you starting beating on me.”

  When Daniel was warm enough he strapped his shinguards on. Jasper was in the ring waiting for him. Daniel walked the short stairs behind the ringpost. He waited a beat before he stepped through the ropes, ducking his head as he went. Jasper likewise wore shinpads on his short, treetrunk legs, worn shirt that caught at his stomach a little. More meat on him than Daniel had seen the coach carry before. Underneath it all his bones were yet like iron. Daniel felt the canvas by his footsoles, thin padding and wooden boards below. He studied patches of faded cloth where stains had been mopped and scrubbed.

  “This ain’t one of the aprons from the old ring? Is it?” Daniel said.

  “It’s pretty new,” Jasper said.

  “Yeah?”

  “There ain’t any of your blood in here. If that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “I’d hope and pray those old canvases were burned.”

  Jasper shrugged.

  “All new,” he said. Then he waved Daniel forward with his right mitt-hand.

  Daniel walked over with his guard up, the thumb of his right glove pinned to the right side of his brow and the other held out slightly in front of his face to jab and parry. He moved back and forth, shifted weight from leg to leg. The coach let him settle and then he called for the jab, the right cross, double jabs and lead rights. He called for more head movement and if Daniel’s hands dropped after a punch, Jasper whipped the focus mitts around and Daniel had to get his guard up before the pad slammed upside his head. Instead he took them on the glove, his shoulder, the crook of his elbow. The coach called for him to breathe and then he started calling for hooks at the end of Daniel’s straight punches. Lead hooks, short hooks from in close, long left hooks at the end of a jab with his left foot pivoting hard and his foreknuckles drilling the pad.

  Daniel started tense and wild and off-balance. He reset and fired until he got loose and gave up on throwing power and thought about his feet. He gradually settled lower in his stance, got more rotation with his hips and body. Shoulders, arms and hands to follow. The coach barked at him to crack hard and he stung the pads and his arms shuddered to the elbow. Gunfire again in the hollow of that concrete room. When the coach called time Daniel stepped back and put his hands up above his head and paced back and forth in the ring. The other two men working outside the ring had stopped what they were doing.

  Daniel hauled air over his teeth for a short minute. The coach waved him back over.

  Jasper had him set up right leg kicks with a one-two and let Daniel bury his shin into the meat of the coach’s thigh. For a while Daniel was either too close to Jasper or too far. Had stepped too long when he threw his set-up punches, or he’d thrown his hands too light so that he’d be at distance to land clean. His hips weren’t there yet and he couldn’t get the torque he wanted out of them so he was never in the right spot. The coach repositioned him and called out for him to turn the kick over and finally he buried one deep into the coach’s thigh and Jasper nodded.

  “Better,” he said. “More like that.”

  Daniel started getting the feel for it again and threw the kick hard. Jasper started turning his arm and putting the one pad down over his own leg. He told Daniel to switch up and had him stutter-step and throw a one-two and a left low kick. Daniel didn’t have as much trouble with the switch, but his hips were still tight and his power wasn’t there. He ran the drills and tried to mind his footwork, to stay light. He stepped and threw until he was struggling, his sweat-soaked shirt hung low from his neck. His arms got heavier and heavier but held up lest Jasper slam the mitts against his part-cauliflowered ears. The coach told Daniel to break and again he paced, his arms up high and his eyes on the steel rafters at the gym ceiling. Then the coach called him back.

  “One-two. Low right swing,” Jasper said. “Go.”

  Daniel bowed the pads with his hands and threw the kick behind and this time Jasper checked it, lifted his left leg wide with the knee bent so that his shin caught Daniel’s shin as it came. Fire inside the meat of the leg, to the bone. Sensation of warmth after that spread through his calf and down to his foot before he settled back down into his stance. It didn’t last for more than a few seconds. He’d not felt that sting for years. Daniel threw again and felt something like it, less and less. The coach worked him for a few more minutes. Made him alternate kicks and checked them each and all. Daniel took his time with the technique and turned his hips better now and when he connected his shinbones shook right through, but he suffered quiet. Jasper called time. He held one Thai pad out and Daniel touched it with his glove and then stepped back and shook his legs out.

  “How’d that feel?” the coach said.

  Daniel kept on moving, rubbed at the right shin. Picked up the foot and pulled it to his ass to stretch.

  “Okay,” Daniel said.

  He loosed the foot and pointed with his glove.

  “Somethin’s wrong with those legs,” he said. “I near forgot.”

  Jasper grinned.

  “These legs?” he said. “I had them all my life.”

  “Somethin’ that awful don’t come like that to begin with,” Daniel said.

  Jasper unfastened the straps on his Thai pads and let them drop on the canvas. Started to work out cramps in his hands. He kept smiling at Daniel but he didn’t say anything. Daniel took his gloves off and went over to the ring corner where he’d set his water. Jasper had gotten out through the ropes already and came over.

  “You coming back tomorrow?” he said.

  Daniel said that he would. Jasper reached up and pulled the ringrope down. Daniel took up his gloves and stepped through and then hopped down to the flooring and made his way across the room. The pads of his feet were raw and they spoke to him about it on the walk.

  He came home in his workclothes just before six o’clock and when he got out of the truck his legs were already fucked. He stood for a few seconds and stamped his feet on the tarmac as if it would do something. Eventually he reached over and got his lunchpail and he was about to grab the duffel bag but he didn’t. He shut the door and made his way gingerly up the driveway grade. By the time he got to the front steps he could just about cope.

  In the bedroom he shed his workclothes and stopped before he could loose his b
elt. Thought he heard a car. He stood quiet for a time. Nothing. Sarah had worked the early shift until three and then she’d have gone for the girl and groceries before leaving town. He tried to place her on the road but he gave up and took his pants down and stared down at his reddened legs. They would bruise blue but there had been no true damage done. Still, he already felt bonesore and his muscles were spent and run through with lactic acid. He sat on the bed and examined the soles of his feet, each in turn. Then he set them back down on the floor and looked at himself in the mirror. Tried to remember what he looked like when he fought. Daniel got up and grimaced as he made his way into the bathroom, turned the shower as hot as he could take it.

  Two days later Sarah and Daniel sat on the couch together. Madelyn slept in her room where whalesong could be heard playing on her small bedside stereo. That sound drifting ghostly down the hall.

  “We’re gonna hear that sad shit until the end of time,” Sarah said. “You know that?”

  “All I did was give her five dollars in the supermarket.”

  Sarah slumped in the cushions. They watched the news on TV. Nothing good was happening.

  “You want a beer?” he said. “Or is it time to call it a night?”

  She turned to him slow, like she’d not heard him. She closed one eye and opened it again.

  “I could do one more,” she said.

  Daniel got up and walked the cold, warped hardwood in his bare feet. Moved through the kitchen. He set two empties in a case beside the back door and paused where he’d hunched over. Wind whipped against the wood and howled low in the frame-seams. Behind that the mewling and caterwauling of some animal. It wailed the once more and then stopped and he didn’t hear it again. He stood up and opened the door. Nothing but the chill and the rear steps by pale lampglow, darkness beyond where wildgrass shook in silhouette. A small pine branch went past, needles bowed like a ship’s sail.