M.I.A.

by Lizzie Swale

  “Thanks for the heads up, Tony,” Jackson said. “I really appreciate how much you’ve been there for me over the past few months.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Tony said. “I know how hard you worked for the Old Man when he was running things. The old way needs to go away though, as you like to say.”

  They both laughed.

  “Those sorority girls got you reading poetry, do they?”

  Jackson looked at Tony and smiled.

  “They sure do,” he said. “And I fucking love it.”

  **

  Before he left the sorority house for his road trip, Samantha asked him to leave his red plaid shirt, so she could sleep in it. As she watched him drive away in the truck, she felt a piece of paper in the breast pocket. Pulling it out, she unfolded it and held it to her chest. Tears welled up in her eyes. It simply read:

  I love you.

  She wrapped his shirt around her naked body, feeling the warmth of the fabric and inhaling his scent. She smiled; she was his.

  TAKEN BY THE FIGHTER

  Dan didn’t like to think about his job anymore. It was just kind of something he did to pay the bills. Or at least that was what he told himself when things weren’t going so well. Lately, things hadn’t been going that well, so he’d been telling himself that a lot. He tried not to think about what he thought life was going to be like when he first started fighting professionally. He had had all these dreams about being someone. And now that he was the person who’d he thought he’d wanted to be he was finding it something he didn’t like so much anymore. Not that he’d liked it all that much to start.

  Kind of like boxing was for inner city black kids, MMA was for a lot of white young men. Not that there wasn’t a very eclectic group of ethnicities present in MMA, but if you were black and good at boxing, you were a boxer. Maybe it was apples and oranges, as a lot of people were fond of telling Dan when he made the comparison. But for him it was fair to say that because he really believed it, and because he was living it. And not just living, but thriving. As far as that was getting him. It wasn’t like he was any less beat up than the next guy that had to fight for a living but wasn’t doing so well.

  Maybe it would have been better to not have been doing so well. Unlike the boxers it wasn’t possible for him to just fight a few matches a year and somehow make ends meet with so much money he was stuffing mattresses with it and using it as kindling in his fireplace. That just wasn’t the way the industry was for people like him. He had to fight a lot, nearly every month, and sometimes that didn’t work out well. Because there really was no way to avoid getting knocked around a little bit. Sure, you could make a pretty good go of doing the whole Floyd Mayweather run and gun, but that was only going to get you so far in UFC. And in UFC you could end up hurt in a hurry if you lost a match badly.

  As Dan trained he thought of all of this. It was something that never left his mind, the sport of UFC. He was even going to start going to a trainer to help sharpen his game a little. The doctors were telling him that he just couldn’t get knocked around that much anymore, that maybe the next shot to the head would leave him terminally punch drunk. Dan wasn’t so worried about that, though. It wasn’t like he was going to be doing UFC forever. Or at least that was what he liked to think when his body started to really disagree with him. Sometimes when he woke up in the morning everything creaked, groaned, and cracked. He was like an old man on some mornings, and on even the best mornings he was no spring chicken.

  Youth was fleeting, he would remind himself as he worked the speed bag. Youth, good looks, the ability to get beat up all the time and still keep coming back for more. All of that was very fleeting. And there was no way to add anytime to it, as far as Dan was concerned. All he wanted to do was throw fuel on the fire while he could. He needed this to work out for him in the long haul sense. He wanted to be one of those guys that retired into the world of coaching at a gym. It wasn’t much of a life, but it beat breaking his back on a highway somewhere, trying to spread asphalt around like some kind of real working man. Dan didn’t want to end up being that guy, the father who was so burned out by the age of forty that they could barely stay standing at their childrens’ soccer games. There was just a lot on the line, at least in Dan’s mind.

  So he’d work the bag extra in hopes that some of it would really pay off, and he’d stay longer hours at the gym than he needed to. And now he was hiring a couch to tell him how to fight, even though he already knew how to fight. How was this person going to help him? The fact that she was a woman had nothing to do with hit, he would tell himself as he skipped jump rope by an empty ring, way after hours, when no one was in the club. That was just the way he did things though, working late and always applying himself. Maybe if he would have applied himself a little bit more in school he wouldn’t have had to put all his might into the whole MMA thing, but that was the distant past now. Now he needed to win the next fight, because it was big.

  Chapter 2

  Walter Whitman, or WW as people liked to call him, was a Russian man as big as a bear. He was a man that as a child actually grew up wrestling bears, so it was fitting that he was now as bid as one. His reach, and his strength were renowned—in fact he had even killed the last two men that he had fought. Dan sat watching the fights where WW got in the two or three finishing punches that he always ended with a crushing blow to the head. In American UFC the judge would have jumped in way before the last blow would have delivered a death knell, or at least that was what Dan liked to tell himself.

  WW had something of an underdog story going for him as well because he had grown up on the wrong side of the tracks; or so the story went. Dan was never very sure of all the details since so much of the information about WW came straight from his publicists mouth, but he figured there was probably some truth to the tales about him fighting for scraps of food when he was kid—some truth. Dan wasn’t buying all of it though.

  Dan shook his head and told himself that he needed to focus on his own training and not be so worried about the stories other fighters circulated about themselves. He was pulling into a gym that was new to him to work with his new trainer for the first time. The gym was one of those little ones that thrived back in the day but had recently fallen onto hard times because of the influx of people going to the twenty-four hour fitness gyms that had popped up all over the place like dandelions in recent years. Dan had heard that the trainer, Samantha, was former military and a real hard ass. That was the reason that Dan wanted to work with her so much.

  Were there trainers who would love to work with him that were a little more well known? Sure. But Dan wasn’t trying to work with someone based on the reviews that their gym had online, or because they helped newbies to the fighting world get their start. Dan wasn’t a newbie, he didn’t need someone to tell him how to hook and jab, or how to roll with a punch. He needed someone to suss out his weak spots and then really hammer on them so he could start to make some real changes. This was imperative to him. Dan been hearing rumors of how WW was watching hours upon hours of video of him fighting, and that all his trainers were mimicking his fighting style when they sparred with WW.

  Dan didn’t wory about much, but that had him worried. Mostly because for a long time he had taken a bunch of heat from the talking heads of the MMA media world for never working with a trainer. In the past it wasn’t something Dan had felt would really be worth his time. But now, walking into the old gym, he felt like he was doing the right thing by finally working with someone who was really going to be hard on him. He needed that, needed grow and change so when he got in the ring with WW things didn’t fall apart—so he didn’t get taken apart.

  Dan surveyed the gym as he walked back to the locker room to change. The lighting was that kind of harsh fluorescent lighting that flickers quickly, but just slowly enough so that there is almost a strobe like effect. The floors were freshly mopped, but it had been a very long time since they had been replaced. The walls had old school vents for
AC and heat, the metal kind that turn brown with rust that can’t be easily scraped off, as if it is actually part of the metal instead of being something on the surface. There were a few water fountains. Dan checked both of them and they both worked. The ring in the center of the place was well worn, and there was a brown in one of the corners where someone’s blood had stained the white mat. There was still some looking around to do even though the place was small, but for the moment Dan was satisfied.

  “Did the place pass muster?”

  Dan whipped around to see a smiling, lithe, female figure leaning up against one of the walls. It had to be Samantha, his new trainer.

  “Yes!” Dan said. “Everything looks great! Well, there are a few things that have probably seen better days, but I’m kind of that way as well in some spots. Wouldn’t have gym any other way.”

  Samantha straightened up away from the wall and walked toward him with a good natured smirk on her face. She had short brown hair and delicate features, although it was apparent that she’d had her noes broken a few times and whoever had set it hadn’t really known what they were doing. That was a common sight to see in the fighting world. A lot of fighter didn’t want to spend thousands of dollars after every fight where a glancing jab sent the cartilage in their knows sideways so they’d have a trainer set it.

  “Really?” she asked. “Because the place you’re coming from, the nice little fitness place that is open all hours of the day and night, is a lot nicer than this place. There you have someone that will talk all sweet to you and go over how you are really letting yourself down by drinking all the time and constantly stuffing your face with junk food. Here, well, here you aren’t going to have that.”

  Dan wasn’t taken aback by the somewhat abrasive hello. He figured that if Samantha was really as tough a cookie as everyone said that she was then she wouldn’t hesitate to talk some shit about how Dan was one of those fighters that didn’t work out in a dungeon.

  “That isn’t what I’m looking for from you,” Dan said. “What I need from you is someone that is going to push me. Someone that is going to keep me in check and really hold me accountable. My next fight is with that maniac WW, the one that has killed a few people in some of his fights. I’m sure you’ve heard of him. Well, I plan on winning that fight. And beyond that I plan on kicking his ass. So that’s why I’m here. To learn and grow.”

  Samantha smiled and slowly circled around Dan, looking him up and down.

  “Call me Sam,” she said. “And hurry up and get changed, we have training to do.”

  Without saying another word, or even so much as looking Sam again Dan headed back to the locker room and started to get ready. It took a little bit for him to get all the way ready, almost as long as it had taken his ex to get ready to go out on a Friday night. First he had to change, then tape his hands up, then there was what some fighters called “getting in the zone.” Although it didn’t take Dan as long as some fighters he’d met to “zone in,” it did take him about fifteen minutes of meditating while he listened to heavy rock to get in the mood to train. Because training wasn’t like fighting; there wasn’t a huge adrenaline rush that went along with fighting a trainer. The trainer wasn’t another fighter, who Dan could wear down bit by bit. The trainer was going to wear him down. Dan had to be ready for that.

  By the time Dan walked out of the locker room in a hoody, gym shorts, and training shoes Sam had already set up a few bags for him to hit. He had kind of thought that maybe she would start him off with some of the fancy drills to see where he was at as a fighter. Showing of technical skill was something that people that weren’t amateurs asked Dan to do on a regular basis, so he expected the same from Sam. But that wasn’t what she had waiting for him. Instead of doing anything fancy, she just had him work the bag.

  So for the next few hours Dan worked the bag. He worked it and worked it, up and down, left and right, until he could barely lift his arms. The bag was one of those super heavy bags trainers fill with sand and chain from the ceiling. Sam held it for him so it wouldn’t spin or sway, and every time he let his guard down she lashed out with jab to his face. It wasn’t a hard jab, and she’d put on some soft training gloves so that it wouldn’t hurt him, but it still stung. And it stung a lot more than just Dan’s face. He could feel his pride start to well up a little bit, and he had to remind himself that he wasn’t too good for a trainer, that every jab she landed was actually his own doing and if WW would have landed it he’d be in a world of pain. That was what Dan focused on while he worked the bag in a fervor—how he was going to beat out WW, and then the whole world would know that he was a very “for real” fighter.

  Lately the talking heads that ran the MMA sports round up shows had been criticizing Dan in ways that he had never thought he be criticized for before. Usually it was all about how he was a sloppy fighter, or how his foot work wasn’t that great, or how maybe he would be a better fighter if he gained some weight, or dropped some weight, or whatever other fool idea had flitted into the minds and out of the mouths of talk show hosts with no fighting experience of their own. Not that the public watching at home cared if the people running their mouths had ever stepped in the ring, or even so much as been in a fist fight on a playground at some point. All anyone cared about was breaking fighters down, and the more of a chance you had at being a truly great fighter, the more that people wanted to break you down.

  Suddenly Sam pulled the bag away from him.

  “What are you thinking about right now?” she asked.

  Dan wasn’t sure how to respond. He’d thought that he’d been giving one hundred percent while working the bag, but now he realized that he must have been giving it away that his mind was somewhere else.

  “I was thinking about what the fucking MMA news casters say about me on television,” Dan answered. “And I know that sounds like some super insecure shit, but at least I’m being honest.”

  “And what do they say about you?” Sam asked, looking around the bag at him with blue steel eyes.

  “They say I’m not good enough,” Dan said. “More or less. It’s always something with them. But mostly it revolves around how I’m not technical enough, and how I should be a little more defensive minded.”

  Sam nodded at him and disappeared back behind the bag. Dan went back to hitting the bag, working it up and down, but this time he didn’t think so much. He didn’t really think about anything. He just made sure to keep his defenses tight, and that he wasn’t ever just standing around between punches. Because that’s how one of the guys that WW had killed went down—he’d landed a decent punch on the giant Russian and then, for a brief moment, dropped his guard. WW had smashed him so hard in the head the poor guy never got back up. The boxing world had said it was a freak thing, that usually people didn’t get killed from a single punch to the side of the head like that, but they said this even though it was the second man that WW ha put in the grave. The third had been similar, a punch to the head, but instead of a punch through dropped defenses it was a punch that simple burst through the other fighters defenses.

  After what seemed like forever Sam said that Dan could take a break and went to her office. Dan got a drink from a fountain and sat down on a stool near the ring. The gym didn’t have a moldy smell too it, and that was something Dan was thankful for. He had secretly hoped that the place wouldn’t be an outright dive. Although he wasn’t stuck up about where he trained Dan wasn’t a huge fan of the mindset that thought gross gyms were legit by way of their nasty smell and feel. That wasn’t what Dan thought at all. Sam’s gym was clean, very clean. So clean in fact that when Dan peaked under the flap of the ring to see the floor below the canvas he didn’t find a single speck of dirt or anything that would indicate the place wasn’t cleaned nearly everyday.

  “Don’t worry,” Sam said walking out of her office and catching Dan peaking under the flap. “I clean this place, and I also have some of the kids who can’t pay their dues clean the place. That’s how it goes so
metimes when you run an actual gym and not some place for out of shape yuppies to feel good about themselves after they do thirty minutes on the stair step machine.”

  Dan nodded, and Sam turned away to do something at the far end of the gym. Dan couldn’t tell what she was up to, but figured it meant that the gym was about to officially open. He’d come in extra early for the first day of training, wanting to get to know Sam a little bit. That wasn’t what had happened though; not that Dan was upset or anything.

  “All right,” Sam said walking back. “So the gym opens soon and I’m going to be running a boxing clinic for at risk youth.”

  Dan nodded again. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d nodded so much to communicate. It reminded him of back when he first started coming to gyms and talking to trainers a little bit, before he had decided that he was just going to do it on his own.

  “I understand,” Dan said once he realized that Sam wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easy. “I’ll be out of here before anyone shows up. I know that having a MMA fighter around can be distracting for some people.”

  Sam nodded. Dan realized that that was what she had been getting at, and she had just been waiting for him to figure it out. Dan could feel his face burning as he stood up to head back to the locker room to change back into street clothes and head out. Just when he started to walk away Sam spoke again.

  “I want you to watch video of this WW guy,” she said. “And I really want you to study him. Don’t take it lightly. This guy has killed three people in past matches, and although you are way better fighter than any of those people were, that doesn’t mean that the same couldn’t happen to you. So study it. And I mean really study it.

  Dan nodded, then turned back toward the locker room. It had been a long morning of training, and he was exhausted.

  Chapter 3

  Watching tape was a lot more involved than Dan initially thought. For some reason he’d thought that it would be like plugging in a video and relaxing. Instead he found himself tensely engaged with what was going on in the ring beyond just the punches and jabs themselves. There was a lot to a boxers choreographed rhythm; it was almost like watching a dancer in some ways, except that the progression of a dancer would happen in an arch over their career—or so Dan thought. With boxing it was different in that fighters would go through different phases sometimes. Dan was watching some of WW early fights when he’d realized that the fighter, now seasoned, wouldn’t be using such simple footwork anymore. And sure enough, when Dan checked the most recent footage it was just as he’d thought. There was indeed better footwork, there was also more agility over all, and a kind of weariness in all of WW movements.