The Streets

by Tom Sheridan

  With Franco unwilling to engage, The Prince’s fists and feet began to fall short. So. He shot on Franco. The Prince’s wrestling-since-he-was-six paid dividends like it was his trust fund. He picked Franco up by the legs and planted him on the canvas. Then split his forehead with a hammer punch. Franco shouldn’t’ve groomed that morning— The Prince busted his unibrow for him. Franco reached up and once again wrapped up. From his back. The jumbotron above might as well have fell. Drilled him straight to hell. But Franco was saved by the bell. Like he was Zack v Slater in Saved by the Bell. Franco unfurled from the fetal position. Austin Powers unfrozen for the first time. He lumbered to his feet. His forehead rupture erupted lava flows of blood. Flows that fell to the canvas as Franco fell into his stool.

  “The FUCK was that!” wondered Joey.

  “You have to dictate the terms,” said Nelly like he was Miss Lane reviewing vocab.

  “From the guard,” zaid Brazil.

  Franco spit out his mouthpiece. Sucked wind and blood with every breath. Clutched his stool like he could sit on it forever. He had forty more seconds.

  Nelly backed up Brazil. “He’s got your number standing up. Give the guard a go.”

  “And…fuckin fight this time!” injected Joey.

  Franco’s nose leaked like an everlasting jelly donut. “Good idea.”

  Taz had been tidying him up. He ironed Franco’s eyes. Toweled the blood from his head. Tried to stop the nose bleed once. Twice. Thrice. No dice. He plugged it with a cotton ball.

  “Mind if I get some of that?” mustered Franco.

  Joey was mid-sip of Franco’s water. Staring across at The Prince. Sitting upright and unscathed. Chiseled from chin to shin. Bobbing his head. Listening to his team like he was listening to a tune. Joey squirted the water in Franco’s gasping mouth. “Ya know. He kinda looks like you. Like you but in high school.”

  Franco shook his head. Tried to shake the cobwebs as he trotted out. Tried to dictate the pace in round two. He had the success of a white teacher in the hood. In one of them movies. The teacher-in-over-his-head threw punches. The precocious pupil evaded. Smirked over the authority’s effort. The teacher escalated the issue to takedown attempts. The pupil skirted them like a homeboy told to go to the office. Not gonna happen, teach. Before long, the pupil straight-up took over the class. Put the teacher on his ass.

  “The guard!” yelled Brazil.

  After some opening pops by The Prince and a well-timed takedown, Franco fell into his least favorite form of MMA fighting. The guard. Yeah, he’d worked on it a brazillion times with Brazil. Yeah, there was the added edge of there not being footage of him on the offensive from the guard. But still. If a street fight was a barn-burning brawl that scattered this way and that, fighting from the guard was its opposite. A counter to aggression. Immobile. A slow burn that required precision. The slip of an arm, the tuck of a knee enough to swing a fighter from submitter to submitted. So any move made by Franco also opened the door for him to be moved on. The Bunns Lane Brawler was used to coming forward. Throwing fists. Scoring takedowns. Now? He lay on his back. On guard from the guard. Knees and elbows up like a baby about to have his diaper changed. Or worse. Like an old man trying to stop the coffin from closing.

  The Prince rained hammer fists on Franco like a Hammer Bro on Mario. He zapped any Flower Power Franco had then shrunk him down to a shell of himself. Franco on his last man in the Video Game of Life. So Franco, feeling shrunk to a baby, pulled The Prince in and gave him a big huggie. Yeah, Franco tried to make it look good with the occasional arm bar attempt. But The Prince evaded and countered with pounding punches. While Mario Franco had shrunk, the Hammer Bro grew as big as Bowser. Fired punches like fireballs.

  Still, Franco saw the engagement as a relative win considering how round one went. The Prince had proved so potent on his feet that there was no need for him to go to his back. Instead, it was Franco on his back. Shifting from snake position to rubber position to the alleged Damn Good Guard position.

  Franco even lost ground with the crowd. Heard something he never heard before. Boos. From a Jersey crowd, no less. Damn. It was a good reminder. Who the fuck was he? The locals even booed Jeter once. Back in ’04 when he showed his first signs of age. Same year Bernie Williams said he was done and ended the Core Four’s run. And maybe the round two bell that had just rung was announcing the end of Franco’s. He headed to his corner with Metallica on his mind. “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”

  Franco kept his head down. Twenty thousand let down. And that was just in the arena. Not to mention he couldn’t even bear a glance with T. T had saved him over and over in his life. T the inspiration for Franco to get his ass in gear over the years. T’s yoking of Yogi. T’s coming up with the plan to get Franco out of the fix. The premonition personified. T gave Franco this shot. This shot at the life Franco always dreamed. Only now, in the octagon, it wasn’t about the brains. It was about the brawn. Franco now the king. And T the pawn. It was on Franco now. He finally snuck a glance at T. Through his eyes beat to daylights. His son was a deer in headlights.

  Even Franco’s team was defeated after round two. Brazil took Nelly’s usual front and center position, “Man, come on! You’ve submitted me from the guard!”

  “You didn’t beat my fuckin face in first,” Franco managed between breaths.

  Nelly stepped in. Said all the right things. You’re getting your wind. Fight your fight. Hang in there. Taz and Joey did all the right things. The eye iron. The wipe down. The water. All of them clapped it up as Franco stood. Still, Franco didn’t need Skylar’s magic eight ball to know: Outlook not so good.

  Franco, with a round off his feet, was ready to give the stand-up game another go. Nothing to lose. The Brawler came forward true to form. Jabbed. The Prince parried. Landed a counter-cross to the kisser. The shot rocked Franco. Like he was Frisco. In an 8.0.

  Everybody’s got a plan until they get hit in the mouth. Well. That was true for Franco, too. So much for the Warning in Joey Yo’s apartment. So much for the run. Rocky fuckin lost the original flick, didn’t he? Everyone forgets that. All he did was go the distance. Forty years and forty million hours of media ago. Good luck being a heroic loser these days. Franco was either gonna leave the fight a champ. Or a chump. The allegedly non-ominous signs—the weather, the dead car, the second-rate city, Joey’s candid comment—were ominous after all. Four foreshadowings that flew right over Franco’s head. Miss Lane, wherever she was, was probably havin a good laugh. Probably on her couch with a big ole tub of popcorn. Why read a book tonight? When she could watch the kid who flunked her class fail one last test. For every one of those underdog wins Franco waxed about, there were five favorites who took care of business as usual. From Jeter and the Yanks to the Cards and Stan Musial. Fuckin Franco. In the octagon and thinkin about baseball. Fair is foul and foul is fair. Shook as Shakespeare all over again.

  Franco covered up on the canvas as he wondered what the fuck he was thinking all these years. Last time, he was in his prime and caught a 22-year-old Prince in his third fight for The Show. And Franco still couldn’t get the W. Yet ever since, he didn’t stop believin, like the Soprano family in their final scene. Nowhere like standing in a cage with a killer to realize that maybe that scene was also ironical. Everyone’s always caught up in their own shit, ain’t they? The Prince deserved it too, didn’t he? His privilege was either earned by his parents or their parents before them—who are all him—when ya get right down to the DNA. The Prince could probably lay out his whole fuckin family tree. Dust off some giant scroll from his oak fuckin library. Unravel the shit at some grand podium and tell you all about this royal Saudi line and this angelic Anglo line and so on. He probably put on glasses and a pipe and told you awl about it. What the fuck did Franco know about his ancestry? What the fuck! One fuckin thing. That he learned just last year from Church. Eric fuckin Church. He’s from a line of Sinners Like Me. Not The Prince. His proud people were reaping wha
t they sowed. Watering their seed since birth. Steered him right into mixed martial arts. And as Franco was witnessing firsthand, His Highness had honed the fuck out of his craft.

  Franco almost let his guard down right then and let The Prince get it over with. All these years. While Franco was dancing around deluding himself with lines from 36 Chambers, The Prince was sleepin in a fuckin hyperbaric chamber. While Franco was doing prison workouts, The Prince had a gym the size of a prison ta work out. While Franco was eating two-buck canned tuna, The Prince was eating fresh catch. While the possibly part-Roman ate ShopRite romaine, the True Caesar feasted on organic kale. ShopRite. Ha. Franco shopped at a store that couldn’t even spell its name rite. The Prince meanwhile was one of those holier than thou Whole Foodies. You are what you eat. The Prince. And The Pauper.

  The Prince landed punishing blows while The Pauper accounted for the pennies of his life. The final blow was a showstopper. Franco was on the defensive. But The Prince leaped off the fencing. He cracked Franco with a foot flush across the face. With such force and follow-through that The Prince spun into his landing. Like Ryu landing a Hurricane Kick. His street-fighter opponent as done as Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. Another promising Jersey fighter who wound up in Woodbridge. Rahway Prison to be exact.

  Franco was amazed by what can pass through one’s mind in a moment. He floated to the canvas like that feather in Forrest Gump. And took inventory of his life’s box of chocolates. The good old days. Five years old with Joey Cano in kindergarten. Gone. His parents—biological and otherwise. Gone. His relationship with The Frog. Gone. His prime as a fighter. Gone. The guys at the docks. Gone. His Mustang. Gone. A lost T who needed him. Gone. His Julie. Gone Baby Gone. Franco’s life’s box of chocolates was empty. It was time to go to sleep.

  The General hit the canvas and it all went black as fast as The Sopranos finale. The Battle of Newark was his Battle of Yorktown. The final battle of the Revolution. When the World Turned Upside Down. Only this time. The American was turned upside down.

  Franco lay there. On his stomach. His face sideways. After seven years of sideways.

  Though he was seeing black, his eyes must’ve been cracked. Because he saw them. Tucked ten rows back. Those two jewels. Amid nothing but black. Big and blue. And staring right back. Glowing like they used to. Way back. Franco stared for what felt like an eternity. At those jewels that stopped time and stood the world still. Those majestic jewels of such exalt. More powerful. Than smelling salt.

  Franco reached in their direction. Grabbed the cage. Climbed himself upright. Unsure if ten milliseconds or ten years had passed. “Julie!” Franco kept the pursuant Prince at bay with a couple of back kicks. Like a philly not wanting to be phucked. “Julie!”

  The bell rang as the ringside fight commentators tried to make sense of the situation. The bald Bull gushed into his headset. “Take a look at this replay! Franco gets kicked flush across the face. Look at his eyes. It’s lights out. His legs collapse right out from under him. His arms are spaghetti—he’s defenseless! It’s over! All The Prince has to do is pound for what, a few seconds, until the ref calls it?”

  “The Prince saw what we saw! That it was over!” began the mustachioed Mercer. “Look at this replay. Franco is DOA.” Mercer shook his head. “Then boom! He’s up!”

  “What was he screaming?” begged The Bull. “Julie?”

  “He should’ve been screaming HELP!” mused Mercer.

  “He’s gonna need a lot of it. There’s no question he’s down all three rounds. His only chance is a finish,” The Bull said as he shook his head.

  “A finish? He’s finished!” burst Mercer. “Have you ever seen a beating like this? This is… This is The Assault at The Vault!” decried the unmerciful Mercer.

  Franco zig-zagged to his corner like Baby T’s first walk across the carpet. Only this time son caught father.

  “You guys see that? Julie’s here!” is how it sounded in Franco’s head.

  His fight team heard, Yuhgaseeat? Jews here.

  “What! Jews are here?” exclaimed Joey. “Of course they are! It’s fuckin Jersey!” continued Joey with his arms out.

  “The Prince is here, too!” roared Nelly.

  Taz got to work on Franco’s claymation face. But no enswell was gonna end the swell. And that roundhouse kick. Oof. Left Franco’s nose as crooked as some of the fans in the front row.

  “Good news bad news,” tallied Taz as he plumbed Franco’s nostrils. “Bad news. Your nose is broken.”

  “What’s the good news?” wheezed Franco. Wuzagoodnew?

  “You already ugly.”

  Franco’s laugh launched bits of blood. Added to the tapestry of Taz’s razzmatazz getup. The whole team helped Franco get up. What the hell were they all so worried about? Franco tried reassuring them. “Igahdis. Jews here.”

  TRACK 15. EVERYTHING I’M NOT

  FRANCO STAGGERED OUT for Round Four. He might’ve looked like hell but he had found his heaven. His Jewels. The Prince’s flurries. His blizzards. His hurricanes. Any storm was manageable. When you had The Jewels. And Franco knew all about fighting in shitty conditions. Knew how to hobble his way through a return fight on a reattached ankle. Knew how to take haymakers and make hay on counters. Knew how to take knees and ’bows. From the kidneys to the nose. The pain and numbness custom to him. All the way back to first grade. In that Adidas-sandaled walk through winter slush that turned his toes purple. All the way back to that second-grade bathroom fight. When he caught a concussion from the porcelain sink. Then sunk into his classroom seat like nothing happened. All the way back to third grade when his foster father showed up tuned up to his basketball game and yelled, Shoot the fuckin ball. Then under his Jim Beam breath, Bastard. Little Franco went on the hunt like Will Hunting—had the best game of his life. Cuz fuck the old man. That’s why. The Prince had never been beyond round three. Franco’s whole life was a five-round fight.

  Everyone knows about the Boston Tea Party. Paul Revere’s ride. The Shot Heard Round the World.5 But Franco’s favorite part of the Revolution? What happened after Yorktown. The alleged last battle of the Revolution. Ha. Not in Jersey. In true Jersey fashion, the fighting went past the bell. In true Jersey fashion, there was no formality to it. Just a bunch of down n dirty scraps. Bloody messes that never had the prestige of being called “Battle.” The Skirmish at Manahawkin. The Ambush of Amboy. The Long Beach Island Massacre.

  There Franco stood. Beyond the bell of the third round for the first time in his career. Into the championship rounds. The fellas on the undercard could call it a night after three. But The Prince and The Patriot? They were gonna keep it going in true Jersey fashion. With a little down n dirty scrap beyond the bell.

  That last flying foot from The Prince? Nothing more than a little tap on the shoulder to wake Franco up. While Franco got his motor going for the first time, he could see the invisible battery above The Prince’s head. And he wasn’t keepin it one hunid. Franco used his extra bit of heft to pull The Prince into a wrestler’s clinch. They exchanged intimate blows. Franco’s chipped away at The Prince’s pristine conditions. While The Prince’s returns only tired his taut arms further as the beefy Brawler absorbed them.

  But. A knee to the balls backed Franco off. And why not? The Prince was in no danger of losing by points. Bollocks to the boos from the dirty people in Dirty Jersey.

  The ref broke them up. Franco waved off his right to a minute and staggered about the octagon. He waved his fists at The Prince. Let’s go. The fans in The Vault cheered Franco for the first time since the fight started. And Franco was with them lockstep the whole time. What did Jeter say when he got booed? Fuck the fans? Helll no. He said, I’d boo me, too. Then went to the well and came back with some of the best baseball of his life.

  Franco was ready to do the same. Only that shot to the balls. Oof. This was new territory. Even Bunns Lane outlawed blows to the balls. Franco went for another wrestler’s clinch, mainly to
prop himself up until his balls dropped back in his sack.

  The Prince slipped the clinch and kneed Franco below the belly button. And just above the unacceptable area. A wise hammering that hampered Franco. Franco doubled over for a millisecond, which might as well be a million in MMA. The Prince thundered down a haymaker at Franco’s exposed face. Franco defended in the nick of time.

  Once again, Franco was on the run. Any optimism that inflated The Vault was now gone. Like the first breaths into an inflatable raft that proves too big to blow up. The Prince jabbed. Jabbed again. Threw a hook. Franco’s defensive arms took the heat. The Prince kicked at Franco’s calf. At his knee. His quad. The Prince changed stance and chopped away at the other tree. A lumberjack working toward timbering Franco.

  Franco engaged just enough to keep it going. A counter punch here. A spin kick there. A shoot there. If there were disadvantages to his advanced age, there were some advantages, too. If he could keep the phenom before him focused on yet another finish, maybe The Prince would wear himself out. Their last bout, it was Franco who looked past the safe W. The ambition of youth. Now it was his opponent in his prime. And primed to maintain his finishing streak. Forget being a champ. Franco’s opponent wanted to be an all-timer. After all, he was THE Prince.

  They continued to spar. Franco figured the invisible battery above The Prince’s head was at 80 percent. Damn. Had to wear him out some more. Franco fought every instinct to go in for the kill. It was one thing for Franco to show restraint in his last fight when he was winning. Dictating terms from the get-go. Dishing it out in little doses to sweat out the Ulsa in Tulsa. But this fight? He was behind with no chance of taking a decision. He had to finish The Prince. Or he was finished.