The Gringo Champion

by Aura Xilonen

  He gets up and tucks the thermometer away in its plastic case.

  “By the way, Liborio, there are some illnesses that don’t have any symptoms.”

  When I open the box, I find a note. Naomi’s hovering beside me; she keeps trying to get a look inside, but she can’t reach from her wheelchair.

  “Curiosity killed the cat,” I tell her.

  “Meow!” she answers.

  I read the note: “Sassbucket: For the love of God I had to burn all the things you left at my house. So I’m replacing your filthy crap. Wendoline.”

  “What is it?” asks Naomi, her eyes bugging out of her head.

  I pick up the box, place it at her feet, and say, “You can help, Naomi.”

  Naomi starts rummaging through the box. She pulls out a new pair of Everlast boxing gloves and sets them on the bed. Then some Nike sneakers with green stripes, some red-and-blue Adidas boxing boots, very shiny, and a brand-new mouthguard in a case with instructions. Five pairs of shorts—one red, one blue, one white, one yellow, one green—all with hologram labels. A pair of blue-and-black Nike sweatpants with a matching jacket. A Ferrari coat with a hood for the snow. Some T-shirts made of a fabric so soft and stretchy, it could be the skin of a Mexican hairless dog. Five pairs of Wilson sports socks. Five athletic T-shirts for boxing. Five bandages and a book that Naomi hugs happily to her chest—“We have seven now,” she jubilates—titled Boxing for Beginners. From the bottom, among the scraps of white paper that the things had been wrapped in, Naomi pulls out an iPod Touch still in its box.

  It’s got another note taped to it. “As you can see, I wasn’t able to find a cup in your size, papito, ha-ha-ha. So I got you this instead, so you never have to run alone again, my dear champion.”

  “Wow!” says Naomi. “That’s incredible!”

  “Do you know how to use it?” I ask.

  “Yes.” She pulls it out of the box, removes the packaging, plugs in the earphones, and tells me, “Listen.” She turns it on, we each place an earbud in one ear, and ta-da, Calle 13 starts blasting.

  The first training sessions with my new trainer, Mr. Bald, were rough. On the morning of October 1st, he showed up at the shelter looking for me. I was furiously punching the sandbag. Without Coach Truddy, who was still in the hospital, I had started to train using Double-U’s book as my instructor. I went running every morning without music—I’d given the iPod to Naomi so she could listen to whatever she wanted.

  “If you keep hitting that bag like that, boy, you’re going to end up injuring your wrists and elbows,” Coach Bald told me when he entered the gym, followed by Mr. Abacuc. He was wearing his flat cap and a pair of black cotton pants.

  “Mr. Bald!” I said in surprise. “I thought you weren’t going to come.”

  “I wasn’t sure myself, but here I am, boy.”

  “What about your brother?”

  “I left him the entire family business and the boxers, who, by the way, are still out of it but should survive your assault.”

  “That’s a good start,” Mr. Abacuc said, smiling. “What do you think, Mr. Sixto?”

  “Call me Bald, please,” he said.

  “What do you think, Coach Bald? Does he have potential?”

  “More than anybody I’ve ever seen in my life, but we can’t tell the boy that or he’ll start thinking he’s a big shot and end up losing everything.”

  “Did you hear the coach, Liborio?”

  “I’ve never thought I was bigger than I am.”

  “Yeah, seems like he’s got a golden fist.” The coach puts on the mitts. “Let’s see how you hit, son.”

  He plants himself on the floor, stepping forward with his left foot. He raises his mitts into position.

  “Now punch me as hard as you can, like it’s the final blow to win the world championship, boy.”

  I gauge the distance. I calculate my timing and launch my missile. But before my fist reaches the mitt, Coach Bald moves it away and my punch goes wide, pulling me forward with it; the coach takes advantage of my being off balance to smack me in the head with the mitt.

  “Hey!” I say in a huff. “Don’t move that thing away or I can’t hit it, and don’t smack me in the head.”

  Mr. Abacuc chuckles.

  “So what have you learned today, boy?” the coach asks me.

  “That you’re a jerk?”

  “Ha!” Mr. Abacuc laughs again.

  “No, boy,” the coach continues, “you learned that skill is more valuable than strength. All right, let’s go again, hit me like your life depends on it.”

  “Are you going to move it away again?”

  “That I don’t know. Boxing is a matter of fate.”

  He puts the mitt right in front of my face and yes, people say only fools don’t learn from their mistakes, so I gauge the distance but instead of launching my fist toward where the mitt is, I swing the other arm toward where I think the coach is going to move it, and yes, he moves it. I feint with my left arm, the coach moves the mitt to the right, I launch my right missile, and I punch the coach’s mitt-covered palm smack-dab in the center. The blow sounds sharp on the vinyl. Thwack! Coach Bald immediately takes the mitt off and starts massaging his hand.

  His palm is red.

  “You see, boy?” he says, his hand numb. “You just learned skill.” Then he turns to Mr. Abacuc. “Mr. Abacuc, would you happen to have any ice you could give me?”

  “How’s the music?” I ask Naomi.

  “Look at this,” she tells me. She calls up a YouTube video of a music teacher giving a first piano lesson. “Do you think I could learn to play the piano?”

  “You’re way smarter than I am, so I can learn to pound on a speed bag, then you can certainly learn to pound on some keys.”

  “You can’t achieve anything without sacrifice,” Coach Bald tells me the next day, his hand wrapped in a bandage. “Whatever talents you have, boy, if you don’t use them, you’ll never get anywhere. So we’re going to divide up your training into five simultaneous elements: physical training, technique, tactics, psychology, and theory. Each of these can be further divided into four elements: direction, volume, intensity, and recovery, and all of this in the pursuit of three fundamental elements: your athletic form, the maximum performance of all your abilities, and finally, boy, the optimum outcome. Understood?”

  “Yeah,” I say, hanging upside down from my balls like a vampire, trying to do the hundred-and-fiftieth of the sit-ups he’s assigned me so that, he said, I’ll develop a six-pack.

  “Everything is about order and discipline. There’s no other way to do it, boy.”

  Mrs. Merche started plucking more chickens.

  “You eat like someone who’s actually working hard, you baboon,” she said one day after I scarfed down my food in a single gulp. Mr. Abacuc, on Coach Bald’s recommendation, had given me a pill to kill all my worms. That’s why my skin was blotchy, he said. He also gave me a bottle of vitamin pills so I could take full advantage of all the nutrients in my food and waste less when I went to the bathroom. It’s going to make you really hungry, Coach Bald said. And it’ll seem like you’re never full. Drink lots of water.

  This was my routine: Get up at 4:45. Feed the chickens. Go running for two hours. Come back, jump rope, and do physical training: sit-ups, squats, and push-ups of all sorts. Then eat breakfast and help out around the shelter: tidy clothes and bags, move boxes, herd kids like a flock of lambs to have breakfast and then go to Ms. Webber’s classes, sweep the rooftops, fix anything that was broken or not working. After breakfast, at eleven, when Coach Bald arrived, start my technical training. He showed me the right way to hit the punching bag.

  “If you hit it like that, you’ll just get one blow in. But watch this now. A punch moving from your front leg is called a jab. Are you familiar with those?”

  “Coach Truddy
showed me.”

  “Good. You use it to maintain distance when your opponent is shorter than you. That’s what you used when you knocked out Dulls Jara in the dressing room. It’s not a very powerful punch, though you’re an unusual case. Always jab with the arm you’ve got in front. If I put my left leg in front, it’s a left jab; with my right, it’s a right jab. Now, boy, a punch with the rear arm is called a cross. Look. See that? It can be up toward the face or down toward the pit of the stomach. If you go for the face, you can knock a guy out if you do it right. If you go for the stomach, your opponent will take a few seconds to go down. All right, now, this punch that you throw like a parabola above or below the shoulder is called a hook. You can aim it up at your opponent’s head or down at his sides. Look, watch how I punch the bag. If you connect with the head, a hook can knock a guy out. Lower down, connecting with the liver or kidneys, it disables your opponent’s legs. This is good for wearing down your adversary’s resistance. You hit him right here, right where the liver is, and three or four good, well-aimed punches will make him curl up like an oyster when you throw salt on it. His legs’ll go weak and he’ll end up going down. Another punch is called an uppercut. This punch starts low and drives upward. If you aim it directly at the chin, you’ll be sure to knock out whoever’s unlucky enough to be standing in front of you. Look, you start down low and punch upward, like this. Try to throw your whole body forward and then up so all of your weight is pushing in that direction. Got it?”

  “Yes, coach.”

  “Then let’s get boxing.”

  After that came lunchtime, at about two in the afternoon, when I’d wolf everything down; even the pile of stones in the kitchen that Mrs. Merche set the pots on looked like chickens to me. Then I’d rest for a bit in the library, studying Double-U’s book, which the coach said might do for now for a bit of theoretical training. It had instructions for how to wrap your knuckles without looking like a mummy. Or how to lace your boxing boots with a double L knot. Or how to clench your fist so as not to break the bones in your hand. Or how to do shadowboxing, imagining an invisible adversary. According to the book, there was a boxer back in Antiquity named Ars de Ilse who could box so fast that his own shadow, blistering there in the sun, couldn’t keep up with him.

  Then came Naomi, who almost always interrupted me and dragged me off to help her up to the piano on the gym stage. I’d lift her and place her on the piano bench.

  “You’re not going to fall?”

  “I’ll try not to,” she told me the first time. “I used to fall a lot. See this scar? That’s from when I fell down some stairs. I’d sat down there because I wanted to sit by myself, without anybody’s help. And I pitched forward and didn’t even stick my hands out to catch my fall.”

  When I lifted her down again, she would hang around my neck like a medal as I carried her to her chair. After that, Mr. Abacuc would call me to help him unload or put away the daily supplies he picked up around town, or when needed I’d go with him in the van to pick up items that generous people were kind enough to donate to us.

  At night after dinner, my eyes would shut of their own accord. And then, I think, my psychological training would begin: I would dream about Aireen.

  The first time Double-U called me on the telephone, I was thinking about Aireen as I carried some boxes from the kitchen to a pile that was accumulating outside, which we were going to load up and take to the recycling center to trade them in for a few dollars since Mrs. Merche needed chocolate to make mole poblano for dinner.

  “Your aunt’s on the phone, monkey-pants,” Mrs. Merche said, her eyes like pistols.

  “Sassbucket,” Double-U greeted me cheerfully on the other end of the line. “What’s up? Did you like your crap?”

  “Very much,” I said enthusiastically. “Except I don’t use it.”

  “Why?” she asked, faltering.

  “I’ll get beaten up on the street if I wear that stuff.”

  “Really?”

  “No, I’m kidding. It’s been really useful.”

  “Dumbass.” She let out a loud laugh.

  Then we started talking about how our various projects were going. She told me about the politics around immigration. That the state government wanted to toss all illegals in jail. That the right wing was more hazardous to life than the most toxic toxin on Earth. That she’d just gone back to the Sun News paper to do a report about the Minutemen group and she knew she’d done a good job because she’d received more than a hundred threatening e-mails from them. That she was reading a lot at night, especially romance novels, the pink kind with a lot of sex in them, because she needed to keep her mind clear of all the day-to-day garbage.

  “And how are you doing, kid?”

  “All right,” I told her. “I’ve got my first tournament on the 17th. Coach Bald says it’s not a big one but he wants to test me out with some guys who are better boxers than the ones I fought before—he says they were really green. It’s a tournament that’ll kick off the new boxing season.”

  “I’m going to promote your fight!” she said all in a rush, excited, without asking who the hell Coach Bald was or who the hell the green guys were.

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Remember, sassbucket, absence makes the heart grow fonder. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “How’s it going, Naomi?”

  “Look,” she told me. She was sitting on the piano bench, tethered there, because once she’d nearly tipped over backwards and if I hadn’t been there and leaped to stop her, she’d have cracked her head open on the floor. She didn’t want to use the wheelchair because it got in her way, so I’d decided, over her objections, to tie some ropes to her like guylines to make sure she’d be safe and keep her from toppling over. “I learned that that key, the one to the left of those two black ones, is called do. Did you know that music has names?”

  “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “Yes, all music is made from those same seven names: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti.”

  “Really?”

  “Isn’t it incredible?”

  On the 16th I went to Aireen’s house to give her a ticket to the tournament Coach Bald had signed me up for and to once again ask her forgiveness, as I had already tried to do so many times before. Nobody was home, so I slid the ticket under the door along with a note that said, “I hope you can make it.” Then I went and sat down outside. The space where the bookstore used to be was changing. The wrought-iron windows upstairs were now a single large window with a wooden frame. The façade had been refaced with beige granite, and some men were installing LED lights above the door. The interior had been painted white, and some other men were installing what looked like display cases made of glass and wood. There was no more dirt or rubble. In the back I could see part of a new replacement staircase, larger and with an elaborate green railing. The floor of the bookstore was now wooden instead of tile like it used to be.

  “Why isn’t anybody home?” I wondered, since I knew Aireen’s grandfather didn’t like to leave the house or do anything outside. A red bus drove past. Without thinking, I dashed to the bus stop and hopped on.

  “Kid.” Jefe’s missus’s eyes shone. “Where have you been? We looked and looked for you everywhere. You had us with our hearts in our throats. It’s so good to see you again!” She gave me a big hug. She led me out into the backyard, where Jefe was reading a book. He was wearing sandals, and there was a glass of soda on the table beside him. Their children were playing in the grass, building something. “Darling, look who’s here.”

  Jefe lowered his book and glanced over at me.

  “Well, look what the cat dragged in. Where’ve you been, you little shit?”

  “I’ve been kind of busy.”

  “Well, well, well, a busy numbnuts. And with all those wonderful things keeping you busy, what brings you around here, then?”

&nb
sp; “I’ve got a favor to ask you, Jefe.”

  “I’m not lending you any money, you beady-eyed little twerp.”

  “That’s not it.”

  “What then?”

  “I want to buy a box of books.”

  “My, my, what for? Are you going to start your own business?”

  “No, Jefe, they’re a gift.”

  “I see you’re wearing brand-new, brand-name clothes. You a drug dealer now or something, pinche puto?”

  “No, Jefe. I work in a shelter for homeless children.”

  “Well, fuck me. And to think I was going to offer you a job at my new business.”

  “Are you still at the bookstore?”

  “Damn straight. But I’m remodeling.”

  “But how, Jefe? You were totally broke—you didn’t even have enough to pay the light bill.”

  “Luck changes, you alopecious alligator. My insurance company paid for it all because the fucking bookstore was totally destroyed. I want to diversify my business so I can spend less time there. What do you say, asshole? Want to come back and work with me?”

  “What insurance?”

  “The policy I had the good fortune to set up a few weeks before the store was vandalized. What a stroke of luck, huh, you dravidian bastard?”

  “Who vandalized it?”

  “Oh, we’ll never find that out, you meddlesome prick. What does it matter? It was an act of divine justice. I don’t give a shit.”

  “And what are you going to put in there? The bookstore looks totally different now.”

  “It’s going to be a coffeeshop, like Starbucks but with more cachet. I’ll serve only the most distinguished customers. And I need someone to do the sweeping and cleaning. You’d get a real uniform this time. What do you say?”

  “But you never liked coffee, or records, or the sound of music, or . . .”