The Fighter
Page 23
"And ... this is what you do?"
"All my life." He peered down at the abominations. "All my life."
"I'm sorry," was all Paul could think to say.
"I've been hauling up a lot less lately. Used to, I'd bring up four or five nets. Now, only one and it's not even quite full."
"Do you think that's a good thing?"
He gave Paul a warm smile. "Makes my job a helluva lot easier, leastways."
The creatures died quickly. Some melted; others calcified and sifted into powder; the rest turned to flakes that blew away over the gunnels. Soon there was no indication they'd ever existed.
Paul woke up on the terminal floor. The family dressed in Hawaiian shirts was looking at him strangely and Paul wondered if he'd been screaming in his sleep. Then he remembered the dream, those flapping blubber-creatures, and felt sick in his own skin.
He found a restroom on the terminal's south side. A few stitches had popped; blood wept through the Dermabond seal. Stripped to the waist, he blotted his face with toilet paper. He blotted too hard and popped another stitch. He leaned over the sink and let himself drain.
Paul stepped back and considered his reflection. His torso was splotched with purple bruises and scored with gloveburns. Destroyed but still standing. Beaten and bashed and bloody, but there he was.
With his right foot set slightly before his left, his body turned at such an angle as to present as spare a target as possible—turn yourself into a pane of glass, as Lou would say—Paul began to shadowbox. Flashing out the left hand and puffing short breaths—tsh! tsh! tsh!— the sound echoing sharply off the tiles. He executed the Fitzsimmons shift and threw a right hook at his reflection. He was warming up; the sweat was flowing. He felt loose and agile and strong.
He threw punches and thought about it all. Thought about the kid, Rob, and about his uncle, Tommy. Thought about Lou and about Stacey. Thought about his mother and his father and felt nothing but gratitude and love.
Five jabs in quick succession—ts-ts-ts-ts-tshh!—right hook, right hook, left uppercut, step back bobbing on the tips of his toes, sneakers squeaking. He considered how it all started as a simple desire. To banish weakness and inhabit strength. Develop those defensive mechanisms he'd never used. The porcupine, its quills. The scorpion, its sting. He juked and feinted then lashed out with a right hand, knuckles grazing the mirror. Drops of blood-tinted sweat wicked off his brow.
Why didn't you ever teach me to be a man?
He'd wanted to ask his father this question last night. Yet he realized his father had taught him how to be a man—a man for this time and era. Where before the teachings had been learned in fields or factories or foxholes, Today's Man learned in lecture halls and boardrooms. Where before men wore coveralls or buckskins or the colors of whatever side they fought for, Today's Man wore herringbone jackets and loafers, his nails were manicured, his hair smelled of nectars. His father had taught and he had learned. Those lessons had held him in fine stead until his path crossed with Yesterday's Man with his bloodlust and quick fists and old ways; only then did he realize that all he'd been bred for was useless. Perfect in his element, fragile and susceptible outside of it. And a man can't live in a vacuum—not his whole life.
Paul wiped his chest and armpits with toilet paper, donned his shirt and jacket. He stared into the mirror. Who was that person staring back?
It was...well, it was him. For better or for worse—him.
He was as unlikely a candidate for all this as you were liable to find. Or else he was the ideal one: a man whose life had always been primed for cataclysmic change. Or maybe there was no ideal candidate; perhaps the reasons for taking the road less traveled were as diverse as the histories of those who ultimately chose to walk it. And why not him? He came from good strong stock. His ancestors were farmers and before that sharecroppers and before that hunters. His bloodlines were fierce and he felt that fierceness in his own blood.
Follow anyone's family tree back far enough and you'll find warriors.
It wasn't that he thought he'd become a better man; he didn't feel like a Phoenix risen from the ashes of his former self. And yet there was a former self, a person who existed once and existed no more. So if he stood for anything at all, it was as a testament to change.
That full five percent change. A whole new person.
And consider if he'd never tried at all. Never fought, never suffered, never given all of himself. He would have spent his whole life wondering, just like any of us. And one day he might have woken to the awful realization that no choice he'd made had been his own, that his life had been plotted and planned and he'd followed it all by rote. Woken up still scared of every little thing. Woken up with no knowledge of his limits.
"I'm coming to your town. Last of the ramblin', russlin', tusslin' fighting men." The mirror reflected the sly irony in his smile. "Lay out your best, your fiercest men. Let's toe a line in the dirt."
Paul Harris butted his fists together, turned from his reflection, and exited the washroom toward Customs.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15