“Hey, I’m all right. Just a little headache.”
“They’re falling out. I knew it would happen. I told you!”
“Hey, calm down. It’s okay.”
Trucks got up and sat beside her.
Claudia scooted toward the glass. She put her arms on the table and put her face on them.
Trucks looked down at her chopped-apart pancakes.
“It’s not okay,” Claudia said into her arms. “Your bruiseity brains. I told you. I told you.”
Trucks wanted to rub her back. Comfort her. But she was so sensitive about his touches now. He didn’t want to make it worse. He always felt stuck between loving her and hurting her. An impossible pendulum.
“It’s still me. It’s always me,” he said. “Pepper Flake. See? I said it right. I said it again.”
Claudia cried. Everything had been taken out of her. From her.
“I’ll get better. The headache’s gonna go away. I’ll quit calling you the wrong name. I promise. It’ll get better. It has to get better. A few more fights and we’re on our way to our own little apartment where you can have a room. Your own space. You can do whatever you want in there. Build forts and color and put puzzles together. We’re really on our way. Just a few more matches. A couple good paydays. A knockout here and there. A handful of Ws. Some win-bonus money. You’ll see. Have faith. Isn’t that what they’re always saying? A few more good matches, and we’re really on our way. We are.”
Trucks scooted closer. He didn’t know what else to say. Sometimes his words meant nothing at all. He rested his head on her shoulder and felt the vibrations of her crying. The heaves of her small body. All the breath she could muster. All the heart she had left.
TAKING IT TO CHOUTEAU
He started out faster. Nearly ran to the center of the ring. Took control of the space. He’d starved himself and lost the six pounds. Trucks knew it wouldn’t be long before he gassed. His head was still throbbing, but the adrenaline dump masked the pain.
Trucks tried to keep Chouteau off with quick jabs, but like Wendell said, he was younger and quicker. Chouteau parried the jabs or slipped off to the side. He threw counter hooks to Trucks’s head when he slipped in, right crosses when he slipped out.
Trucks pulled Chouteau into the clinch. He could hear Chouteau talking to him, but with the beating in his head and the blur of combat and heavy breaths, he couldn’t make out the words.
The ref broke the clinch.
Trucks clipped Chouteau with a left hook on the break. He didn’t get him clean but realized the younger fighter didn’t protect on the break. Something to remember.
Trucks maintained the center of the ring. He kept Chouteau on his heels heading back to the ropes. Chouteau fired heavy straights and uppercuts but often missed. His form was rough, his punches sloppy.
Each time Trucks jabbed to set up a right cross, Chouteau would cleverly bob, weave, slip, or parry the punches. His defense was excellent. It was strange he had such a gap of defense during and after the clinch. Trucks could tell he wasn’t used to dirty boxing. Probably trained in a softer-style club where they only taught the clean stuff. Trucks had learned it rough, battling other kids from the homes and on the streets for years.
He used that knowledge to pick Chouteau apart up close. Trucks threw looping hooks and long jabs into Chouteau’s face. Even when Chouteau parried or evaded, Trucks would stick to him. Wouldn’t let up. Chase him down like a rabid beast.
Pah-pah-pah-pah.
When he got close, Trucks would pull Chouteau in and throw heavy body shots. Hit him with uppercuts. Rough him up with his shoulder when they were tight together.
Time was ticking. Maybe a minute left in the round. Trucks was tired. His wind was really sucked out. He was breathing through his mouth and having trouble keeping his hands up. Chouteau caught him a few times between the gloves, around the gloves, through the gloves.
More blasts to his damaged brain. The rattling wore on.
Out of desperation, Trucks threw a stiff overhand right that knocked Chouteau into the ropes. Trucks followed up by wrapping Chouteau in a bear hug and squeezing hard. He dug his chin into Chouteau’s trapezius muscle and knocked heads with him. Anything to mess with the kid’s mind and keep him uncomfortable.
When the ref stepped in to break the clinch, he admonished Trucks.
Trucks still had Chouteau near the ropes and stepped back into the pocket. He threw several feints to the head and body. Got Chouteau thinking. Then Trucks initiated another clinch and blasted away. This time he didn’t wait for the ref to step in. Instead, Trucks broke the clinch himself, faked a step back, and caught Chouteau with an unexpected gazelle hook.
Chouteau stumbled back. He let all the weight of him go against the ropes, and Trucks moved in. His eyes full of fire. No thought in his mind. Only the pure, brutal instincts of a man on the edge, protecting the small, precious life he’d worked so hard to make.
A blur of fists on the wobbly fish against the ropes. All those unharmonious thuds. The ref pulling Trucks off. Waving his arms overhead. Calling the fight.
Trucks walked away weary. The smell of hot-iron blood in his nose. Down his throat. The blur of the ring and the crowd and all those angled lights.
He stumbled across the canvas, tasting the blood. Trucks rested his forearms on the coiled top rope. The sweat rolling off him. He looked out to see his girl in the back row. She wasn’t even looking his way. Had her back to the ring. Probably hadn’t watched a second of it.
Trucks stood there. Hopeless. Leaning. Trying to think. A buzz in his mind. A sharp pulsing.
The volunteer corner man came over and wiped around Trucks’s face and neck. Trucks leaned on the ropes with all he had left. Hoping his girl might look over. See what he’d accomplished. What he’d done for them. That he’d bested another man in battle. And was there anything harder than that? Anything that took more guts and courage? Anything to be prouder about? Year after year reaching down into the utter pit of himself and pulling something out to save them. This drive from the rarest of all deep places. Like a magician who could just pluck it right out. As if from the depths of some unknown inner pocket.
THE SONIC EMBRYO
He took her hand as they cut through the dark. His mind was fading, and he could feel it. Sense it disintegrating under the weight of the blows. All those years of knuckle on bone. The knocks. Compounded into the sharp flares and pulses.
Thwup-Thwup. His head hurt like that. Thwup.
Claudia pulled her hand away. Not quick. Not angry. Just slow and careful. Almost sedate.
Their breaths puffed out as they crunched along. The hard-packed snow under their boots.
Trucks didn’t know if they’d said anything to each other since leaving the casino. He remembered nothing but flashes after he stepped down from the ring. The scissors gliding through his white knuckle tape. A couple tabs of aspirin on his palm. Him and the boys used to call it Sally Ace. The little white pills made of salicylic acid.
“Give me some of that Sally Ace,” Trucks said out into the cold.
Claudia looked up at him. Didn’t say anything back.
“I love you,” Trucks said. “I don’t really say that, huh?”
Claudia stayed silent. They kept walking. The tote bag swung from Trucks’s wrist.
“Well, I do. I guess I should say it more. Nobody ever said stuff like that to me. So I—” He felt a sharp sting in his temple. “So I should work on that. I’ll remember.”
It felt colder that night. Even without the whipping wind. There was a pure chill out there. The Billings streets near empty. The errant flickers of the dying streetlights. The two of them moving stiff in the dark.
“I just wanted you to know I love you. I hope it means something.”
He looked down at her as they walked. Her face was pink. She had her hands jammed in her coat pockets. He was hoping those oversized gloves were still doing the trick.
“It’s okay if you don’t
have anything to say about that. Because you know I’m trying. And trying means a whole lot where we come from.”
They continued in silence. Whenever a car passed, Trucks would watch the eyes of the driver. Looks of pity that ate him up.
Another sharp pain in his temple. He breathed in hard through his mouth. His nose was swollen and full of dried blood.
A few minutes later, Trucks heard what sounded like a snap of thunder. Saw a streak up in the sky. Golden bright with a pink layer in the middle. Like a sonic embryo shooting across the universe.
“Holy shit,” he said, and stopped walking.
Claudia stopped too.
“What?” she said.
Trucks put a hand to his head and rubbed his temple.
“What?” she said. “What?”
“Did you see that?” he said.
Trucks dropped the tote bag and scooped up Claudia. He set her on top of a bus stop bench along the road.
“Look at the sky. Look out there,” he said.
“At what?”
“I don’t know. But look. It’s moving so fast. That bright streak. There it goes, see?”
Trucks leaned against her body. Stuck his arm out at an upward angle and pointed his shaky left hand at the black sky.
“I can’t see it. Where? Where?” she said.
“Right there. There!”
“Where?”
“The bright light. The streak. It’s golden and beautiful. Can’t you see it? Look. Look, for fuck’s sake!”
“I’m trying. It’s not there. I can’t see it. I don’t see anything!”
Trucks’s head throbbed. It was so sharp and severe. But he kept pointing.
“It’s going right to left. Coming down at an angle. Follow my hand.”
She followed his hand.
“It’s lighting up the sky out there. Going faster. Faster.”
“I can’t see it. It’s not there! Nothing’s there!”
“Are you following my finger?”
“Yes!”
“Dammit. But it’s so bright.”
“Dammit,” she said.
“How can you not see it? It’s just so damn bright,” he said.
“I don’t know. I don’t know!” she said.
“Oh no,” he said.
“What?”
“It’s fading. It’s getting too far. Can’t you see it yet?”
“No. I can’t. I wanna see. Where? Tell me where!”
“There! Keep following my finger. Just look. Quick. Hurry. I think it’s fading. It’s going out.”
“I don’t see it! There’s nothing there. Only dark.”
“No, it’s got a little light left. Here.”
He hooked his arm around her waist and pulled her tight to him. Their heads were touching. His throbbing and hers so cold.
“There, Clarinda. It’s so there,” he said.
And then he closed his eyes and pointed as hard as he could into the night.
UNDER THE ARCHES
They washed in the morning. Wiped themselves with harsh paper towels and hand soap. It was always cold in the cement-walled bathroom hut. Trucks had hoped it would shock his mind back to normal. But he knew something was really off now. His brainwaves perpetually on the verge of short circuit.
After they were clean and dry, Trucks rolled up the mummy bag and put it in the stuff sack. He loaded the tote bag for the morning walk to the gas station.
Claudia sat at the picnic table. She bit into the fingers of her glove.
Trucks thought of the sixty dollars he’d earned last night. Tucked in his back pocket. Forty for the work, twenty for the win bonus. It put them around seventy-six dollars. They were on their way. He’d only remembered the previous night in flashes. Wendell’s smug face. The bills placed in his hand. Wendell mentioning two days. Their last big promotion for a while. Wanted Trucks to fight a kid from, shit, had he said Kalispell? Anyway, the kid from Kalispell had stiff jabs. Better watch out. So said Wendell in flashes.
Trucks left the tote bag and sat across from Claudia at the picnic table. His head hurt, but he didn’t let on.
“How’s your back and side?” he asked. “Still a little sore from the hard wood?”
Claudia didn’t answer. Sleeping on the picnic table wasn’t easy. But it was the howling that really got to Trucks.
In front of them was the small sweeping city. They could see it all from up there in the park. The few tall buildings, dark against the white snow. An army of bare trees. The ridges of the rugged land all around. There was little sun that morning. Just rays peeking through. The rest a gray filter around them.
“Soon it can be regular. Not just pancakes. We’ll have fruit and cereal and the good bread. Not that white cardboard.”
Claudia sighed.
“What?” he said.
“You always say stuff like that.”
“What should I say?”
“I don’t know. Something true.”
“Why wouldn’t that be true?”
Claudia rested her chin on the table.
“Isn’t that cold?”
She didn’t answer.
“Why wouldn’t that be true?” A pain in his head. “Couldn’t it be true?”
“You imagine it. Like lives you talk about. You tell me it’ll be nicer, but it’s never nicer. It’s freezing. And it just gets worse. It’s okay eating pancakes. I don’t care. I just want a place where people are nice to me and it’s warm and kids don’t make fun of my hearing phones.”
“But nobody’s made fun of you,” he said. He felt a catch in his throat.
“That’s ’cause I’m only around you. Not other kids. But they’d probably just make fun of me and call me names ’cause of my hearing phones.” She reached up and touched them. “It makes me weird.”
“We’re not all the same,” Trucks said. “And we don’t have to be. It’s okay you don’t hear so good. And maybe in the future when I get us more money we can buy you some hearing ai—phones that fit good and people won’t even be able to notice. Maybe we can find some as small as little bees.”
Claudia looked out at the city. Trucks did the same. They sat looking under the arches of the wooden gazebo. A slight wind blowing through.
“Maybe we should get inside somewhere warm,” he said.
Claudia ignored him.
“Do you really think I’m lying about the lives? You think I don’t mean it when I say it’ll be better? That I can bring us better? Don’t you believe in me?”
Claudia didn’t answer.
“I guess we should get down to the gas station, then,” he said. “We wait too long and the pancakes aren’t on special.”
Trucks stood and made sure everything was in the tote bag. His ears were ringing. A thrumming pinch in his brain.
When he looked up, Claudia was already down the path. But he hadn’t been sifting through the bags that long, had he? It made his heart ache to see her so far away. He hooked the tote-bag straps around his wrist and ran after her. Each hurried footfall forcing the small speck of her ever closer.
THE HOWLS OF DEVASTATION
You suffocate everything you love.
Trucks shot up in the dark. Claudia stirred. She made a noise, twisted in the bag, and went back to sleep. Trucks lay awake. Wide-eyed. Sweating, yet cold. He stared through the face hole of the mummy bag and gripped the internal zipper with his fingers. He squeezed it tight.
Who had said that to him? It must have been one of the free-clinic therapists from so many years ago.
His head ached. He bit down and flexed his muscles to ward off the pain. Nothing helped. Sometimes it came in pulses. Like red blinks of pain. Other times it lasted and lasted. Seeming endless. A torture earned.
His thoughts ran. Was that what he always did? Suffocated everyone and everything he loved? Pulled them in and squeezed too hard from the fear of losing them if he let go? Did he know how to do it any other way? Could he ever learn different?
And Claud
ia. Breathing deeply against him in what felt like tranquil sleep. He hoped she was dreaming of other worlds. Other universes. Places so far beyond what they’d known and what he could give her that she might even forget it altogether.
“I’m a fuck-up,” he whispered to her. “I’m so sorry for being such a fuck-up.”
Trucks gasped. He felt the warm tears rolling down his cheeks. He let go of the zipper and covered his mouth. His body convulsed. The harsh movements of such deep sadness.
He unzipped the bag, got out, and zipped it back up. He put on his boots and walked partway down the hill against the harsh wind. It was so damn cold. He pulled on his hood and stuck his hands in his coat pockets.
Trucks sat in the snow. The tears still rolling. He was shaking. He was sad.
“You’re such a fuck-up, you’re such a fuck-up,” he said. And he didn’t stop. He kept repeating it. His body shivering. The tears coming. His head throbbing.
He took his hands out of his pockets and hit himself in the side of the head.
“Work, goddamn you. Work!”
But all he could do was sob across the big hill. The glowing lights of the city so bright below. Twinkling orange and yellow. Like he was looking at an inverted buzz of constellations he’d never know.
The realization made him angry. With the unforgiving world. With his past. With his inabilities. With the fucked up parts of himself.
He hit himself again and again. Berating himself for crying. For his weaknesses. For his inability to keep it together. To give his girl the life she deserved.
And with every blow he spoke in spit and tears. Trying to convince himself of something he was no longer sure of.
“I’m not a beast. I’m not a beast. I’m not a beast.”
Anything near that hill would have heard the sounds of his breaking. But it wouldn’t have sounded like a man. The loud shiver of sobs from so deep within that broken spirit. They’d have resonated more like the howls of devastation. The hurt of an uncharted species.
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