In the Cage

by Kevin Hardcastle

  “How much of that shit you had?” he said.

  She smiled for maybe a half-second. Passed him the joint. He took a haul and handed it back. Coughed hard into the crook of his elbow.

  They sat there in silence. They drank. She smoked for a time and then got up and put it out in the sink and came back. She brought her hair back with both hands and tied it there. Then she bent down and fished through her purse on the floor. When she sat up again she had a torn-open envelope in her hand. She wiped her eyes and slid the letter across the table to Daniel and then she looked up at the ceiling.

  He set his beer down and took up the envelope. He pulled the letter and unfolded it carefully as he could. He read. When he was done he put the pages back in the envelope and held it in his hand for a while. Finally he slid it back over to Sarah. She just let it lie on the tabletop in front of her.

  “You are gonna go to that school, Sarah,” he said.

  She shook her head and ran a knuckle under her eye again.

  “Did you see what it costs?”

  “There’s government loans they give for that.”

  “I can’t be off work that long. If something goes wrong we’re done for.”

  Daniel got up with the chair in hand and set it down beside her. He sat and put an arm around her. She was rigid but he kept on.

  “Is that what you want to do or isn’t it?” he said.

  “I wanted other things I didn’t get. It won’t be the last one.”

  Daniel cupped her chin in the valley between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Trust me when I tell you that eventually you can come to a last one. You can come to it all of a sudden.”

  Sarah took his hand in hers and put it to her cheek. She let go and sat up straight and poured more wine. Took a swig from the glass.

  “I’ll get work,” he said. “Don’t matter what it is.”

  She levelled her eyes on him.

  “Yes,” she said. “It does.”

  He tried to smile for her. She drank again. Took a few breaths. Emptied the glass. Then she pulled his arm up by the wrist, wrapped it around her. They watched the candles melt down and spill. Their like in the black windowglass behind.

  “You are going to that school,” Daniel said.

  Her head nodded slight at his shoulderjoint.

  “I’ll find a way to get you there.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  He went to factories and foundries in neighbouring towns, those off the highway along service routes and industrial laneways. He did this for days and days. On the last day he could see the southernmost suburbs of the city by the time he stopped and turned back. He had to pull over at a rest stop because he couldn’t see the road anymore. Daniel skidded to a stop on the part-paved laneway. Gravel flew and skittered away from the truck tires. Sunshine on his shoulders as he stepped over a roadside barricade and went out into a rivertrench beyond. He sat in the blanched highgrass with his knees pointing out from the grade and his fists curled in his lap and he was there for hours.

  Dusk fell on the warehouse plaza and on Daniel’s truck in the lot. He waved to the young lady at the front desk and went through the gym to the changeroom. When he came out he had his hands wrapped and he skipped for twenty minutes. All the while he watched the action in the ring. The fighter named Johnson, with his long, cordmuscle arms. Unshod feet. Fists distending his gloves. He stalked another man on the canvas. Jasper and Jung Woo leaned on opposite ringposts and called out instructions to the fighters. The big man did not seem to need them and his sparring partner couldn’t hear them. The hurt fighter staggered back against the ropes with his forearms up and there he took a stiff jab and an inside leg kick and then a right hook to the body that folded him and he balled up with his knees and forearms and forehead flat to the canvas.

  Jasper climbed through the ropes and knelt beside the downed man and finally got him to stand. That man went clumsily out of the ring and walked slow across the gym floor to the corner of the room. There he leaned heavy on the wall and then finally slid down and sat huffing, his eyes swollen and lower lip split and bloodied. Jung Woo had come down from the ring and followed the beaten fighter and knelt beside him. Jung Woo spoke to him at length and the man nodded solemn but he wouldn’t look up.

  Johnson took water in his corner and glanced over at the man he’d beat. He drank again and spat it out of the ring to the matting below. When he came back to the centre of the ring for the next sparring partner he saw Daniel and looked right through him. Daniel skipped on. Johnson thrashed two more men, peppered them with jabs and low kicks at range and then mauled them against the ropes and ragdolled them to the ground and walked away. He didn’t seem to want to be there. He listened to Jasper sometimes and other times he fought wild and reckless and got away with it. The old coach stared into the ring steely-eyed.

  Jung Woo had come up to Daniel as he wound down his warm-up. Daniel doubled the rope over and tied it into a loose knot.

  “You know this fuck?” Jung Woo said.

  Daniel shook his head.

  “He box for a while in Montreal. Undefeated. Now he fight Muay Thai and fought seven times in MMA. Good wrestler. Never lost yet.”

  “He’s got somethin’,” Daniel said.

  “He’s an asshole.”

  Daniel nodded.

  “Natural athlete. Big. Strong. Quick. But a fucking asshole.”

  “He’s runnin’ out of people to beat on.”

  “Shouldn’t be here. Jasper train him for next fight and then get him out of here. This kind of guy bad for the gym.”

  They watched Johnson do away with another up and comer. He had the kid hurt and the kid looped a right hand and the big fighter slipped it. The kid’s right cheek lay naked for a counter and Johnson didn’t let up. He came over the top with a long left hook and caught the kid clean on the chin. The kid dropped jawjacked to the canvas and tried to get up but he couldn’t.

  Daniel was already up at the ring apron and he hung his forearms on the ropes. He eyeballed Johnson hard while Jasper attended the downed fighter. The big man looked at Daniel from above as if he were a stray dog at his doorstep. Jasper came out of the ring with the hurt young fighter and then Daniel said something to the kid as he went by and the kid smiled brokenly and walked on. Jasper came back and stood next to Daniel.

  “You need another body?” Daniel said.

  “No,” Jasper said, and started up the short steps.

  Daniel caught him by the elbow. Jasper turned.

  “Let me in there,” Daniel said.

  Jasper looked him over. Gave nothing away by his eyes. He turned to Jung Woo for just a moment. Turned back to the ring.

  “Warm up,” he said.

  “I’m warm enough,” said Daniel.

  He came out and took the centre of the ring. Johnson threw at him right away and Daniel parried or blocked all but one long right hand but he walked through it. He’d already started cutting off the ring but Johnson was stone-faced and pumped a jab at him over and over from range. The bigger fighter moved light on his toes and he raised his left leg and stepped it up and down. He leapt in and dug his feet into the canvas and there he bombed Daniel with a powerful straight right and a series of hooks to follow. Daniel covered up and drove ahead and shoved the big man back against the ringposts, bowed him backward over the ropes as Johnson tried to step out to the side.

  They were tied up there for a second and then Johnson managed to force Daniel out to arm’s length and there he threw a knee that caught Daniel high in the gut. Daniel had braced for it but the weight behind the blow kept him at distance and the big man turned hard into a round kick and his right shinbone found deep thighmeat on Daniel’s left leg. Daniel’s left hand dropped a little and Johnson snapped Daniel’s head back with a lead right. The big man thought
he had Daniel hurt but when he tried to throw the right leg again, Daniel reared his left leg and checked the kick. The taller man’s leg came back stung and Daniel had already stepped in to throw a straight right and left hook. Both landed and Johnson staggered.

  Fighters were hollering in the naked stone hanger. Daniel faked another right hand and the man tried to slip it and fire back over the top with a looping left hand, but Daniel’s punch had not come. Johnson had his hook blocked by Daniel’s pinned up elbow and forearm as Daniel turned hard to his right and buried a short left hook into the big man’s nose and upper teeth. Johnson sat down hard on the bottom ringrope and fell to his side. His lip had split against his mouthpiece and his eyes were very white and very wide.

  Daniel went back to his corner and by the time he’d got there Johnson was already up to one knee. Jasper had gone in the ring to talk to the man but Johnson just took out his mouthpiece and gobbed blood and spit onto the apron and then stood up. Every other man in the gym stood ringside at a hush. Jung Woo behind Daniel in his corner with his knuckles paling where he held the top rope.

  “Look out now,” he said. “Hands up. Always up.”

  Daniel didn’t turn around and he didn’t speak.

  In the ring Jasper followed Johnson to his corner and gave him shit. He did not want them to go so hard. He did not want them to kick in the early rounds. The fighter nodded over and over and Jasper said everything again and then came away shaking his head. He backed up into the middle of the ring.

  “You heard what I said, Dan. Say yes.”

  “Yes,” Daniel said.

  Daniel took the centre of the ring again and he’d not moved more than a step into range when Johnson pivoted on the ball of his left foot and whipped his right shin at Daniel’s head. The big man threw the kick with all he had, his hip turning over hard and his arms and torso pulled taut like horsemuscle. He threw it to kill. But he had telegraphed it in his footwork and his posture and the tensing of his thighs and groin. Daniel saw it coming and by the time shin would have cracked jawbone he had come forward into the pocket, stepping in so that his hips and flank stifled the kick at the big fighter’s knee. Johnson could not get his hands back up to his face and Daniel’s head dipped low under cover of his left arm and there in its place came an overhand right like the executioner’s axe.

  Johnson dropped atop a buckled left knee and Daniel reached down and pulled that ill-bent leg straight and then walked away. He paced the length of the ring and breathed but shallow. Jasper and Jung Woo were in the ring on either side of the downed fighter and then were calling for the other trainers. Mayhem around the ring. Fighters were walking circles with their hands atop their heads and others were pushed up against the ringropes. Trainers came with cold water, ice, gauze, adrenaline, smelling salts. One held a cellphone in his hand and waited for the word from Jasper about calling an ambulance. Jung Woo peeled off and let another trainer in with a bag of ice. He went over to Daniel. Grabbed him at arm to stop him pacing. He looked into Daniel’s eyes and thumbed at his cheeks and jawbone and then he reached up his thumb and forefinger and pried the mouthguard from Daniel’s upper teeth.

  “You okay?” Jung Woo said.

  Daniel nodded.

  “How’s it look over there?”

  Jung Woo glanced back over his shoulder.

  “Out cold. Gone.”

  “He’ll be alright.”

  “Think so.”

  Jung Woo left Daniel and went back to Johnson. They were propping him up now and he sat bloodied and bewildered. Jung Woo clogged the man’s crushed nose with gauze and it soaked red near instantly. Johnson got to his feet all at once and tried to walk to the stool but his legs would not work right. The men guided him to his corner where they sat him on the stool. He faced the ringpost with his forehead pressed up against the padded column. They tried to turn him to get to his nose but he couldn’t be moved.

  Jasper kneaded Johnson’s cannonball shoulders and said a few more words to him and then left him in Jung Woo’s care. Daniel had stepped out of the ring and Jasper went down and caught him on his way to the locker room. The coach had scissors in one hand and he put them up in his teeth and unlaced Daniel’s gloves. Then he took the gloves off and got the scissors and carefully cut the tape from Daniel’s hands.

  “Can you get me a fight Jasper? A real one, outside the gym,” he said.

  Jasper kept working the tape loose.

  “You don’t fight no more. Remember.”

  “Can you get me one?”

  “That shit ain’t real enough for you?”

  “Please,” Daniel said.

  Jasper looked into his eyes.

  “What for?”

  PART FOUR

  The little girl got sick and after a few days she got sicker. Her forehead like a coalfire had been lit under it. Sarah woke her father-in-law and he stared at her through the shadow like he did not believe she was there. He shoved the covers down and swung his stockinged feet out of bed, thick grey hair crazed at one side of his head. He coughed to clear his throat and then he got up and followed her downstairs.

  The old man drove through blinding white, the truck tires spinning wild on the buried road. Snowdrifts sent them skittering. He righted the truck and went on. Lightning flashed crazily in the southwestern sky. The old man tried to wind his window down but it had frozen shut so he thumped it with the underside of his fist and tried again. He drove with his head out of the truck and his eyelashes frosted and his beard thick with snow. They skidded through the sleeping town, through red lights and rusted stop signs with him peering out into the void for other travellers. None there.

  At the head of the hospital road the truck climbed an unseen hillock of snow and stopped. The old man came around to Sarah’s door and took the blanket-swaddled girl from her and hefted her up to his chest, pallid skin and damp hair and weak arms and all, cradled against his heavy flannel coat. He took off down the wood-shrouded pass, the little girl’s legs hooked over his forearm at the knee, feet dancing in her coverings as the old man carried her through the mire.

  The old man found Sarah on the handmade benchseat at the end of his long, narrow yard. She wept small but in keeping it quiet she shook and shivered. Fish circled gold and silver in the murky waters of the pond before her. The old man sat down on the bench, his knees crackling as he sunk. She only looked up at him for a second before she let her head hang and sobbed another lonely song.

  The old man leaned forward to better see her. Alike to Daniel but not. Deep grooves of age in the rough skin, eyes very blue and very different. Salt and pepper hair curling out from the edge of his cap. He had a good build but he did not walk as well as he should have. Massive forearms stuck out of his shortsleeves, white-haired and scarred throughout from metal burns and wounds ill-tended.

  “I need him back,” she said.

  He took hold of her by the shoulders.

  “He’s a stronger man than I ever could have made him. And by God don’t you see that he’s the weaker of you?”

  She came back to the house to shower and change her clothes. Cold, cold night and black. Up the drive she went with her eyes full with fatigue and fear. Those same eyes saw rectangles of light in the garage door. Sarah pressed up to the sectioned metal and saw the old man on his workshop phone, bottle of rye whiskey on the countertop beside him. A glass half-filled. A water jug. He spoke long with his huge, knotted fingers strangling the receiver. He drank deep and filled the glass again with whiskey and a little water. She could not hear what he said.

  Later she woke to him kneeling aside her, scent of whiskey and a clean man’s sweat. He’d shook her gentle until she took hold of his bicep and stopped him. She’d being sleeping upright and half-dressed in an armchair, her hair still wet from the shower.

  “What time is it?” she said.

  “I got him,” the old man
told her.

  “Where is he?”

  “On the road back. Comin’ now.”

  She smiled at the man and then she started to cry. He let go of her and touched her light on the head and told her he’d be downstairs. Waved at her from the bedroom doorway before he eased the door shut. He did not tell her that he’d been all night on the phone talking to men he knew in the solitary northwest. That he’d sent a runner to a camp outside of High Level where Daniel was known to be working but could not be raised by phone or radio, though he likely had both. The runner had been paid by proxy and left out from Peace River in bleak early morning. And there at the end of the world the he’d found the man in the camp canteen, wild-bearded and terrifying, and the runner told him his daughter had pneumonia that had nearly killed her and that it was time to go home.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Sarah dressed and undressed and dressed again. She’d not been out on the town in a long while, but some of the girls at work had talked her into it. Thirtieth birthday for one of the receptionists. Sarah had her hair trussed up in a towel and the cast-off skirts and dresses on the bed. Eventually she just sat on the edge of the bathtub in her underwear and smoked a joint. She burned it halfway and then wet her thumb and forefinger and pinched it out. Sarah took up the first dress she’d tried and stepped into it. She loosed her hair and fired the hairdryer.

  Someone knocked the door a few times and she didn’t hear it. But she did hear a man’s voice over the whine of the dryer and shut it off. He was saying hello. She waited there quiet until he spoke again and she knew it was Murray. Sarah brushed out some lengths of her hair and went out to meet him. The old man hadn’t gone farther than the landing and he had his cap in his one hand. He was trying to get his own hair under control with the other.