In the Cage

by Kevin Hardcastle

  It was a heavyweight fight and the other man stood six-foot-three and weighed nearly two-hundred and forty pounds. Daniel weighed just shy of two-twenty and he gave up an inch or two in height. The other man had death’s head tattoos on his arms and a grenade inked on the back of his right hand. Scars about his mouth and eyes. Not a shred of fat on him. They did not touch gloves and the other fighter belted himself about the cheeks and showed his black mouthguard.

  Minutes in and the man had Daniel bullrushed to the ringpost, tried to can-opener him by pushing Daniel’s head back, his massive forearm and one hand jammed under Daniel’s chin. Daniel fought the hands and shucked his head loose and kneed up to the man’s guts. The man took them well and threw knees of his own to Daniel’s sides and quads. One that caught the cup and could be heard plain but the ref didn’t see. Daniel fought for position and got an underhook on the man’s one arm and drove his head under his opponent’s chin. He stepped quick and turned the man. There he could tell that the other fighter lacked in his footwork and his rudiments. The man clawed at him and threw uppercuts up the middle, one that numbed Daniel’s upper teeth and set his ear ringing. Daniel kept at the knees. One of them made the man put a hand down and Daniel worked both hands behind the man’s head and put one over the other in a Thai plum. Pinched his elbows together and pulled down. The man couldn’t defend quick enough and Daniel ragdolled him against the ropes and they bowed under the weight and made it harder for the bigger man to get his footing. Daniel threw brutal knees to the body from range, stutter-stepping to the mat and driving full with his ass and hips. The crowd groaned whole at the sound. Daniel blasted him again and when the other fighter’s hands dropped to defend his body Daniel elevated and ripped a knee flush to the man’s forehead and the man crumpled and nearly went out through the ropes.

  Somehow he got back up on unsteady legs and swung hooks that whiffed as Daniel slipped and waited to time his attack. The big man’s right eye was shut and his forehead above had already begun swelling monstrous. Daniel lit him up on the ropes, long punches to the bad eye and the contusion. He feinted and bombed power shots off-time. When the man next shelled up Daniel stepped wide on his right foot and turned on that toe and whipped a hard left round kick to the other fighter’s liver-side. Impact like he’d took a baseball bat to the man. The man’s body seized and quit and he dumped to the canvas. Daniel started to back off and raise his arms but the ref just looked at him so Daniel loped in and hammered the man upside the ear with another right hand.

  He sat by the slots with two beers on the counter and his right hand in the ice bucket. Daniel still wore his fight shorts with their bloodstains, hoodie that he’d already sweat damp. He played quarter bets and pulled the lever. Jung Woo and Jasper were near the box office talking at the events manager and some of the pit bosses who’d seen the fight and were mimicking the clinch and the knees. The manager paid them out and shook hands with both men. He waved over to Daniel where he sat. Daniel raised a hand back. He put the last quarters in the machine and flushed them.

  “You ready, champ?” Jasper said.

  “Sure,” Daniel said.

  He downed his first beer. Took the other up as he stood and pulled on it as he left out across the casino floor with his trainers.

  THIRTY

  Daniel leaned back in the truck seat and waited. Chewed a toothpick and flicked it out the open window and got another. He watched the front of the tavern from over a hundred yards, his truck parked on a diagonal against the metered curb. Warm spring wind blew in at him, pushed a riderless, training-wheeled bicycle into the road where it toppled. A small boy came over to fetch it and started to wrestle it up onto the sidewalk. His young mother helped him right the bike and then she went around and got the front wheel between her pink legs. She turned the handlebar and straightened the wheel up, skirt dancing at her thighs. She gave the bike back to the boy and tried to rub the tire marks out of the skin at her knees. Soon she gave up. The little boy was already trundling past. The young woman stood up to call for him and there she saw Daniel in the truck. She waved at him. Red in her cheeks. He knew her but he couldn’t remember her name. He waved and she turned and went on.

  Daniel looked to the tavern again. A minute later the front door swung open. Tarbell walked out into the street with barely a glance in either direction. A passing car had to slow for him. He went on without gesture. Collared shirt and khakis and good shoes on the sandstrewn asphalt. He appeared to be talking to himself. A behemoth cloud drifted high above the town, lesser clouds herded on before it. Midday sun simmering behind them. Tarbell got into a maroon sedan and drove away. Daniel watched the car pass by in his rearview mirror. Then he backed away from the curb enough to straighten up in the lane. He drove down the road to the building.

  He went through the doors and the bartender saw him. The young man set his rag and dripping pint glass on the counter and his hands were under the bar.

  “Easy on, buddy,” Daniel said. “No reason for that.”

  The bartender just stood there.

  “You new?” Daniel asked.

  The bartender didn’t say. Daniel stared at the man until he brought his hands back up to the counter. He didn’t take the rag up again. Daniel heard the flat thud of a heavy steelbolt. Sound of a door broaching its frame. Shoe soles padding the hardwood. Wallace came out and looked at Daniel. He nodded. Then he looked at the bartender and laughed. The bartender gave Wallace the finger and set about cleaning the glasses again.

  “Come on,” Wallace said.

  They went into the back office and Wallace closed the door behind Daniel.

  “Clayton’s in the john,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  Daniel took a seat in a worn-out leather chair like a giant catcher’s mitt. He settled back. Wallace sat across from him.

  “He ain’t got you killed yet?” Daniel asked.

  “Who?”

  “That blonde motherfucker.”

  “Not yet. But he’s tryin’ awful hard,” Wallace said. “You just missed him.”

  “I saw him cross the street,” Daniel said. “You’d think there could be a drunk driver coming down that road. Somebody who spilt hot coffee in their lap. But no.”

  “Did you not wanna say hello?”

  “I just didn’t want the bartender to have to clean him off the ceiling.”

  Wallace grunted. Daniel sat forward in his chair.

  “You believe the story Clayton is spinnin’ about that dude?” he said.

  Wallace looked to the bathroom door. No sound from within.

  “He was adopted by Clayton’s half-sister,” said Wallace. “Real father was from Akwesasne. Supposedly the mother was long gone.”

  “Yeah?”

  “That’s about the fuckin’ limit of what I cared to know. But it’s true.”

  The bathroom door came open. Clayton shut the light off and walked into the room. He sat beside Wallace.

  “You ladies are a gossipy bunch,” he said.

  “Well, I’m done talkin’ about it,” Daniel said.

  “So, what do you want to talk about?”

  “A bet.”

  Clayton leant forward to the edge of his seat. He pinched at his nose and sniffled.

  “On what?”

  “On a fight.”

  “What fight?”

  “The next fight I’m in.”

  Clayton backhanded Wallace at the chest and then got up and went across the room to the corner bar. He held up a bottle of whiskey and looked back at the seated men. Wallace nodded.

  “Dan?” Clayton said.

  “Sure.”

  “What about your trainin’,” Wallace said.

  “Gonna let myself have a drink today. But just today.”

  Clayton was studying him from the other side of the room. He came over with the drinks, hande
d them over and sat heavy on the couch again.

  “I know you’ve been crushing tomato cans,” Clayton said. “But I also heard you nearly killed some guy in the gym. A fighter with a name.”

  “I didn’t think that’d get around.”

  “It got around to me. But that’s me.”

  “Good. They got me at a five-to-one dog in this next fight.”

  “It’s been a while since you fought on a real card, Dan.”

  “I know it.”

  “What about your eye?”

  “Doc said it’s fine.”

  “That kind of thing heals?”

  Daniel nodded.

  “What kind of money you after?” Clayton said.

  “Ten thousand.”

  Clayton frowned. He drank half the whiskey in his glass.

  “You can’t get ten grand if it goes wrong. We both know that.”

  “I’m gonna smash this guy.”

  “Why not go for a hundred then? If it’s a done deal.”

  Daniel started to get up out of the chair. Clayton stepped forward with his hand out and settled him back down.

  “You know how it works if I lay that down for you,” Clayton said.

  “I do.”

  “I don’t think you should do it, Dan,” Wallace said.

  Clayton turned to him slow. Wallace shrugged. Clayton turned back to Daniel.

  “You win I take the ten back and five for laying the bet. You lose…”

  “Yeah,” Daniel said. He downed the drink and stood up. Clayton met him in the middle of the room. Eye to eye. They shook hands.

  “I’ll call you to come get the ticket,” Clayton said.

  “Give it to Wallace. We’ll meet up somewhere. I ain’t comin’ back here again.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  Night came late to the farmhouse. Twilight over the field and before the decking where the old man and his wife waited for company. Murray sitting low in a Muskoka chair. Music played soft through the screen door and the living room windows. An old country ballad here. Fiddle music. Some Delta blues like a haunt over the farm. Murray tapped his foot and drank a short of rye. He heard the crackle of tires on gravel and stood in time to watch the truck through the thin trees at the edge of the property. He patted at the pockets of his shirt like he might have lost something. When the truck turned in to the long drive he took another drink.

  “They’re here,” he called into the house. Then he set the glass on the arm of his chair and went quick down the steps.

  They ate by candle and lamplight. Warm nightwind slipped in through the kitchen windows and screen door and circled about their legs and feet. Mosquitoes pestered them some and were swatted or stuck to a flystrip at the corner of the room. Daniel had already begun his weight-cut for the fight and his cheeks were sunken. His neck and arms were nothing but muscle and vein, cord and bone. He ate skinless chicken and not enough of it. He ate uncooked vegetables and drank water. Every other plate had red meat and roast potatoes with gravy, buttered frybread. Daniel ate slow so that he wouldn’t finish before them. The girl was talking Ella’s ear off. Sarah and Murray fussed over Daniel but he ignored them until they gave up to eat. The old man wolfed his food down and sat back with his hands on his chest. He drank from a bottle of beer and got up for another.

  “Will you take a beer?” he said to Daniel.

  “I could have a glass of wine.”

  Murray nodded and came back with two bottles of beer. He uncapped the bottles and handed one to Sarah. Then he sat and took up a bottle of red and poured a glass for Daniel. They all touched glasses at the centre of the table, Madelyn reaching with a can of Coke and Murray leaning to meet her. Daniel drank careful and then he drank again. He let the glass rest on the tablecloth, the delicate stemware neck turning by the enormous pads of his thumb and forefinger. He had a little more and then he slid the glass away to his right, where Madelyn was seated. She didn’t know what to do.

  “Go on,” Daniel said.

  The girl looked to Sarah. She said okay. Madelyn took the glass up slow and sipped. No change in her face. She sipped again small and set it down. Quiet through the place now. Sound of crickets outside in the grasses, but even those calls seemed to thin. Daniel was bolt-straight in his seat with his head tilted back slight. Forearms resting heavy on the wooden arms of his chair. Nobody would look at him for long.

  “Dad,” Madelyn said.

  “Yeah?” Daniel said.

  “How long does the next fight last?”

  “It could last one second. Or it could go for fifteen minutes.”

  The girl thought on it awhile.

  “That isn’t that long,” she said.

  “Let’s hope not,” Daniel said.

  She picked up her glass to drink and then set it back down. Her cheeks had already took on some colour.

  “Are you scared?”

  He shook his head.

  “Not the way you mean,” he said.

  Sarah got up and started carrying cleared plates to the sink. She gripped a handful of her husband’s hair and then loosed it. Daniel reached up for the hand but it had gone. Murray rocked back on the hind legs of his chair and took stock of them all. He came forward and laid his gnarled elbows on the table.

  “You know when those kids at school say their dad is tougher than everybody else’s dad?”

  Madelyn nodded.

  “Well, you’re the only one who’s tellin’ the truth when you say it.”

  She kept watching the old man as if she were waiting for him to wink or smile. To make a joke out of it. He did not.

  Sarah led him into the house and left the place dark. She got hold of him and kissed him. The door swung into the stopper at the wall, blown back and back again by the humid night air. His shirt was up at the back of his neck and her fingers dug into his shoulder blades so hard that it hurt him. He stooped down to get his forearm under her legs and then he lifted her off the floor with her knees pinned to his left side by the crook of his elbow. She tugged him close, pressed into him so that he could feel her stomach tensing, filling with breath as a singer’s might. He kicked the door shut and went through the house by memory alone.

  Her sweaty head was warm at his neck. She talked to him in whispers and he whispered back. He felt the ridges of scar tissue at her shoulder and the fine hair at her upper arm. Her pelvic bone dug into the meat of his thigh, wet below. He worked out a cramp in the bridge of his left foot. There they lay for a very long time and he wouldn’t think about what he looked like to her. He didn’t weigh his luck and didn’t need to. He knew he had too much of it. To be loved and to know it. He shifted like a man shaken out of sleep.

  “I am scared,” he said.

  “Only fools aren’t.”

  “I am.”

  “No, you’re not,” she said.

  THIRTY-TWO

  The sedan pulled into the motel lot at early evening. There were three other cars in the place. Two were parked in front of their lot-facing rooms. The other car sat on an angle with its hood well under a canopy that ran the length of the building. Front of the vehicle maybe two feet clear of the nearest room’s door. Tarbell parked at the far end of the lot and came past to see the crooked car. He strolled between the stuccoed outer wall of the motel and the car’s fender and went on down the walk to the motel office and let himself in.

  He checked the time and calculated the hours he had to get his work done near that isolated village-town. The room was rented for the night and he’d made his calls to Clayton to say that he was where he was supposed to be. There’d been a local constable come to the bar to speak with Clayton, and the officer made no bones about his interest in their evolving operation. Talk of bodies and blown meth labs and special investigations. Tarbell was told to take care of one piece of business that day and another in th
e morning. He’d been told as hard as he could be. To take his time coming back and be wary as nobody had gone out there to back him. Tarbell had no intention of waiting until tomorrow for the second job. The fights from Montreal were on pay TV and he’d already scoped out a bar near to the motel

  THIRTY-THREE

  Daniel rode in the backseat of the car. Jasper drove and Jung Woo sat shotgun. Daniel wore a sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over his head. He took long breaths and watched forests pass. Collapsed barns like dinosaur bones. Country chapels with gabled belltowers. They crossed a border. English moved from the top of the road signs to the bottom. Daniel saw a dirtied young boy at the side of the county road trying to put the chain back on his bike. The boy held up a grease-stained hand. Daniel took his hand out of his sweatshirt pocket and waved back.

  They got to the hotel mid-evening. City lights shone in the valley below, in the water beyond the portlands. Jasper and Jung Woo shared a room and it was connected to Daniel’s room by an adjoining door. The coaches went out and came back with Daniel’s dinner. Eight ounces of grilled fish from an organic market down the road. He ate slow and drank water. He had about eight pounds to cut before the next day’s weigh-in. When he closed his door to them at eleven o’clock he lay down in his bed and watched the television, found a hockey game in French and turned the volume low. He heard the door shut in the other room. Eventually he turned the television off and lay there with the windows open, a gentle breeze rustling the topsheet. He went to sleep hungry and had strange dreams that he couldn’t remember.