Bareknuckle Barbarian (Fight Card)

by Jack Tunney

  “People of the Realm of Fae,” Morgana said in a voice like church bells ringing and birds singing. “Visitors from other lands, and mortals of DunKillie, special of all the mortal plane for your presence here, I bid you welcome.”

  When she spoke, Howard felt a shiver run down his spine, as if cold fingers were caressing him. His whole being tingled with electric energy from the very sound of her voice. He looked at those beside him and could see they were, indeed, feeling something similar.

  “Now, wardens,” the Queen continued, “judge well. You two warriors before me, noble mortals in the circle of champions for the first time in the many ages since the Hound of Cullen himself stood before me,” her expression lit in an almost winsome smile, “fight as Cuchullan himself would have. Do this and we will be well pleased.”

  The Texan turned to his Irish opponent and the two men locked eyes.

  “I’m gonna break you in half, Yank,” Bran said in a low growl. “Then I’m gonna take me one of these witch women and live like a king.”

  “You keep giving me more reasons to keep you from winning, hombre,” Howard said. “Now I have to save one of them poor ladies from being pawed by the likes of you.”

  The two ring judges, an older Elf with a limp and a Leprechaun with a potbelly, called the two men to their position in the center of the cleared circle.

  “Mortal men,” the Elf said to the two fighters, “you stand before the realms in triumph, prepared to do battle in exhibition of skill before our Queen.”

  “You are the first of your race to reach this juncture in many mortal years,” the Leprechaun said. “It is up to you to contend with skill and valor in a way that reflects well on your race.”

  “Take care you answer the call of the horn to cease your actions on command,” the Elf continued. “The sands will drain once,” he pointed to an hourglass that held a quantity of glittering red and blue sand. “It will continue until one or both cannot continue. If no victory is gained in the time of the sands draining, a draw will be declared. Know, however, this has never, in memory, occurred.”

  “No biting, unsportsmanlike blows, no gouging, and no pulling of hair,” the Leprechaun finished. “If warnings are not heeded, we may be forced to judge such a foul reason to declare a loser. And such a loser beyond disgrace will deal with legal consequences of his actions.” His stern look implied the consequences would not be pretty. “Are these rules understood?”

  Both combatants nodded.

  “I promised you’d get the first shot, hombre,” Howard smiled at Bran. “So do your worst.”

  The Elf judge held up his arms and stepped back. “Begin!”

  The hourglass was turned over, a gong was struck, and Bran attacked.

  The mustached Bran launched himself at the Texan with a vicious series of powerful but uneducated punches that battered at Howard’s defenses.

  The Texan had little choice but to give ground under the assault. He took the brunt of the blows on his forearms as he walked the circle to draw Bran along with him.

  Bran was in the Irish stance to fend off any return blows, but Howard back pedaled and offered no retaliation. Instead the Texan absorbed the powerful blows on his shoulder and arms, not letting the bullet-headed thug close enough to launch any kicks.

  Howard had seen the vicious shin kicks that were allowed in the other matches, and took particular note Bran wore heavy boots. The mustached thug was skilled at Speachóireacht, and Howard knew if his opponent connected he could cripple the Texan.

  Bran became frustrated with not being able to close the gap with the Texan and stopped his assault, planting his feet.

  “Come to me, you coward,” the Irishman snarled. “Stand your ground.”

  “Coward’s not a good word to be throwin’ around with a Texan,” Howard said in an almost amiable tone. “And as for standin’ my ground, well, we done it at the Alamo, San Jacinto, and bunch of other places since. But we like to pick out time and place.”

  Howard began to circle the mustached Bran, weaving and bobbing to avoid the few tentative punches the Irishman threw in an attempt to bait him into rushing in.

  “Stand still, you yellow dog.” Bran taunted.

  Howard just smiled and continued to circle slowly, carefully picking his steps. “I’ll do that when you’re looking up at me from the dirt, hombre. And when you apologize to Cuan and his daddy.”

  The crowd’s sense something special was taking place was confirmed as they watched the clash between the two warriors, which had all the earmarks of a battle of titans. The wild cheers that had split the air during Bran’s assault died away to an almost reverent silence as they watched the by-play between the two gladiators.

  Bran snarled in annoyance and moved to fire a series of punches at a weakness in the Texan’s defenses. They were only a perceived weaknesses, however, because Howard had purposely let down his guard on his left to invite the attack.

  Once more, the Texan blocked the attack and backpedaled to foil any attempt at a shin kick. Once more, Bran cursed and pursued him with ineffective, but powerful strikes.

  Those in the crowd who knew boxing began to see the Texan’s strategy – he was letting Bran’s fury, and his need to punish Howard, drive him to recklessness and exhaustion.

  It almost worked, but for a loose patch of sod, which gave way under the retreating Texan. Howard’s leading heel slipped on the grass and he went down hard on his back. It knocked the air out of him with a great whoosh.

  Bran pounced.

  The Irishman stomped down for Howard’s head only a heartbeat after the he fell.

  Everyone in the crowd gasped and Cuan screamed, “Bob!”

  ROUND 9

  CHAMPION OF THE FAE

  The fallen Texan gasped for breath when he hit the ground, but had no time to draw a chest full of air before he had to react to the descending boot or die.

  Howard dodged the deadly stomp by a fraction of an inch as it smashed into the earth by his ear. Before Bran could follow up with a second stomp from the heavy boot, Howard rolled into Bran’s leg and clamped on with both arms.

  The prone Texan toppled the Irishman to the ground, and in a moment the boxing match had become a catch-as-catch-can wrestling encounter.

  The crowd let out a collective sigh of relief, which became a roar of delight as the two men roiled in the dirt jockeying for advantage.

  Bran tried to get his strong hands around Howard’s neck, but the Texan kept his chin down and heaved himself up so he got on top of the Irishman.

  Once on top, the writer pushed himself up and off Bran, stumbling back to his feet where he assumed a relaxed en guard boxing stance.

  “Come on, boy,” Howard said with a broad smile calculated to infuriate. He glanced over at the hourglass to see the sand was not even a quarter emptied – the action so far had barely taken a few minutes, though, to the combatants, it seemed an eternity. “First you prove you sure can’t do the Texas two-step, now you’re takin’ a nap? You’all is mighty lazy – these folks expect a show.”

  Bran roared incoherently and sprang to his feet. He charged at Howard, all pretense of art and skill gone, a creature of pure fury and hate.

  Howard dodged like a matador and threw a looping left hook, which tagged the Irishman on the top of the head. It was not a powerful blow, but it was enough to unbalance the mustached man so he went sprawling.

  The crowd burst into laughter. The Texan looked up to catch Conri’s eye and the two exchanged a nod of understanding. Howard would defeat the brute and hurt him in a way that would go deeper than any bruise – he would beat his ego.

  Bran was beyond strategy and his anger was fed by the humiliation of the audience laughing at his fall. He pulled himself to his feet and made a show of dusting off his trousers.

  “I will pound you to gruel, Yank,” Bran hissed.

  “There you go gettin’ on my bad side again, hombre,” Howard said with a dark laugh. He settled into a deeper fighting stance
and added, “Now come on, and watch you don’t trip over your big feet again.”

  The Irish brute came forward with speed, but more caution than his headlong charge and began to try Howard’s defenses again.

  The Texan accepted the first few blows, but then, with speed that would have been expected from a smaller man, moved on the offensive.

  Howard slipped a hard right and attacked with a combination to Bran’s body. The blows were like trip-hammers and it was Bran who was rocked back on his heels and had to retreat.

  The Texan saw real fear in the man’s eyes for the first time as the Irishman realized Howard had been holding back until that moment.

  “I will destroy you,” Bran snarled in bluster. He spoke more to bolster his own courage than because he believed it. “I will cripple you.”

  “You need to stop making promises you can’t keep,” the Texan said. “And you need to learn a little humility.”

  As he spoke, Howard redoubled his attack, mindful the sand seemed to be moving through the hourglass at a faster rate.

  “All in my mind,” he thought,

  Bran had no time to see anything but the blazing fists of the Texan. They were fists that seemed to make it through every defense the Irishman had. They came fast and hard, the tempo increasing as Bran became tired.

  The Irishman lost power with each punch, which he was only partially able to deflect. Finally, having been backed around the circle twice with no ability to make a meaningful riposte to the attack, Bran became desperate.

  Just as Howard scored a strong right that slammed into the Irishman’s ribs, Bran launched an unsportsmanlike kick to the Texan’s groin.

  The Texan was only partially able to dodge the blow, and he went to his knees with a grunt of pain.

  A cry went up from the crowd and the two judges moved toward the gong to sound a foul.

  “I promised I’d cripple you!” Bran screamed, his anger beyond all reason. He kicked again at the kneeling Howard with lethal intent, but the Texan punched the kicking leg in the shin with a right cross to off-balance Bran, and then fired a left uppercut that came literally all the way from the ground.

  The second blow caught Bran under the jaw, and with all of the Texan’s body weight behind it. It was so powerful the Irishman was lifted almost a foot off the ground.

  Bran did a complete flip in the air and landed flat on his face, completely unconscious. He even started to snore.

  “Like I said, hombre,” Howard grunted in pain to the unconscious Bran. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

  The crowd around the ring went mad with cheers! The roar of their approval was like thunder.

  The Fae swarmed forward and the Texan found himself hoisted on the shoulders of the horde and carried around the perimeter of the tourney field.

  “You did it, fella!” Conri called up at the confused Texan. “You taught him a lesson he won’t soon forget.”

  “I see it is like you said,” Abban said with a benevolent smile. “A Howard, a writer, and a Gael.”

  The parade carrying the winning mortal passed all around the field until it stopped in front of the reviewing stand again. Howard was set down on his feet. He quickly grabbed his shirt and Stetson from Cuan and donned both, feeling suddenly undressed before the radiant Fae Queen.

  “Well and nobly fought, mortal.” The musical voice of the monarch, though not loud, was clear and heard by all who came to sudden silence at her words.

  The Texan dropped to one knee and bowed his head. “I did my best, ma’am.”

  “Indeed,” the Queen said. “It was like seeing a warriors of old from the age of heroes. Will you now choose your mate from among the maidens of the realm?”

  Howard looked up at her from beneath his brow, a little stunned by the magnitude of what had just occurred. The Sidhe Royal smiled down at him and he was all but blinded by the radiance of it.

  “I thank you for the compliment, ma’am, but I didn’t do it to get hitched – though all your ladies are really quite fine. I did it ‘cause I had to teach that fella a lesson and to prove a point. I’m powerful glad you were pleased and hope you won’t take a fella like Bran as an example of all us decay monkeys.”

  His use of Abban’s derogatory term caused some snickers in the crowd, but the Queen’s face remained regally neutrality.

  “I have had my opinion on mortals changed several times over the millennium,” Morgana said. “But have chosen to keep our realms mostly separate since your kind have come to worship the belching metal beasts of your civilization.”

  “Civilization will pass,” Howard said as he looked down at his skinned knuckles. “It is only a ripple in the stream of time. Like the Visigoths who toppled Rome and the Mongols who conquered all they faced. We mortals will revert back to barbarism soon enough and you will see us as we were in the golden age of heroes.”

  Now the Queen’s neutrality faded to a smile. “You are not like any other mortal I have ever met. Are you a philosopher or a warrior?”

  “Naw,” Howard said with a comforting certainty for the first time. “Just a Texan, ma’am. Just a Texan.”

  THE END

  DEDICATION

  To Jerry Kokich,

  my friend, sounding board, and

  the only man I know

  who has worn tights more often than I have…

  THE DAY THE WORLD CHANGED

  TEEL JAMES GLENN

  I have liv'd long enough: my way of life

  Is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf;

  And that which should accompany old age,

  As honour, love, obedience,

  troops of friends,

  I must not look to have;

  but, in their stead,

  Curses, not loud but deep,

  mouth-honour, breath,

  Which the poor heart would fain deny,

  and dare not.

  ~William Shakespeare~

  Macbeth Act V, Scene III

  Hester Howard was not long for the world, her son Bob had known it before the nurse’s pronouncement. Mrs. Green said Mama was gonna die real soon. There was no doubt about it, she would not wake from her coma. It looked like she was in a deep sleep, so frail, her breaths so shallow her chest did not appear to move unless one looked intensely at it.

  Bob had bought a plot of land in a cemetery for the family the day before, so there would be a certainty of a place. It seemed important somehow, with everything else, that Bob knew where she would rest. And he would rest beside her.

  As sick as she had always been, she had still always been there for Bob with stories of their family in old Ireland, or crossing the United States as pioneers. She had been the only flower in the dusty dirt of Cross Plains Texas. It was she who introduced him to poetry and literature. To the point where Bob used to sneak in to the closed library, take a book or two to read then return it when done. He was sure the librarians knew, but they never said anything.

  It was she who showed him there was something beyond the dusty horizon. It was in books, he found a way out of the grime and ignorance of Cross Plains. And it was in writing, he realized he could find some way to escape the death and decay.

  Yet death had always been there. Mama Howard had been dying for as long as Bob could remember. His father was a country doctor with no bedside manner and little love for the profession that worked him hard and kept him poor.

  Bob had seen the procession of oil field workers, bullies, roustabouts and drunkards who populated the day-to-day reality of the town pass through his father’s office. He had even accompanied his father to the sites of shoot-outs and stabbings, watching, slack jawed, as Doctor Howard ministered – oft times futilely – to the wounded. Bob had seen many men pass to the great beyond. Now his mama was going and he would be left alone in the dying boom-town.

  It was why Bob borrowed the old thirty eight caliber revolver from his friend Lindsey Tyson. Now, he sat in the battered old Ford in the driveway to the hospital workin
g up the courage to use the gun.

  It was not that he feared death. He knew death. All his life death had been his constant companion.

  No, it was that he feared life. A life of endless drab days, each blending into the next. He looked out of the car window at the dusty street.

  He had seen that street for most of his life. That same street. It was not the market in Samarkand, the Steppes of Russia, the field of Agincourt, nor the plains of Aquilonia, yet on that street he had seen them all.

  The men who walked Main Street in Cross Plains were the same as those of ages gone, yet to Bob Howard they were aliens. They had been, he had not.

  He had not gone a hundred miles from his birthplace his entire life.

  Except in books.

  Words had been his passport and his hope. If only the magazines paid more…If only the magazines paid on time…If only.

  He could not live on if only.

  Without Hester Howard’s kind words, her quotes from poetry and tales of the family history, the words in the books were empty.

  He hefted the gun. It felt very heavy in his meaty hand, and so very cold. An odd thought fleeted across his poetic mind, wish it was Grandpa’s gun. It would seem somehow fitting if he used the old gun, but restoring it was one of those things he had just not gotten around to.

  Time, he thought. It is always about time.

  There was never enough.

  He thought about all the time he had sat alone in a room writing for the pulp magazines. All the time he had not walked across the London Bridge. All the time he had not crossed the Bosphorus. All the time he had not lived himself, but given life to paper heroes.

  Tears blurred his vision.

  Now Hester was gone or close to it, there was no hope. No one to joy in his triumphs. The one other woman who had been in his life, Novalyne – she who had listened to him and delighted in his visions of ages past – was gone as well, not to the great dark, but beyond his reach. A destiny not his.