The Fighter

by Michael Farris Smith

  “You might could make some money.”

  “I know and I still don’t care.”

  “That ain’t the Jack I know.”

  “Well,” he said. “I’ve been rehabilitated.”

  “There ain’t no such thing. Or else I’d be out of business,” she said.

  Jack drank from the beer again. Licked his lips and looked at Ern and then back to her. “I’m going now,” he said.

  “You’re out of one hole,” she said. “But not the other. I know what you still need. So do you. I hear the big house goes up for auction first of the week and that woman’s still laying in the old folks home.”

  “Yeah. I know. I also know you won’t pay me thirty grand to fight that big son of a bitch.”

  “You’re right. I won’t.”

  Ern waited. Jack waited. Then Big Momma Sweet told Ern to get out of the way and he stepped to the side. Jack finished off the beer.

  “But the odds are seven-to-one,” she said.

  “I already told you. I don’t care,” he answered and he tossed the empty can into the bin. Then he walked past Ern and out the door and Ern closed it behind him.

  The floodlights shined from the corners of the cabin and when Ax came onto the deck some in the crowd below had noticed him and they gawked at his wide shoulders and arms like tree limbs. He stalked along the cabin deck, slapping at his own face and running his hand across the mohawk and flexing his shoulders and chest as more gathered below. But then he had seen Jack move over to the window and look out and he stopped. Stood next to the window and listened to what he and Big Momma Sweet were saying. And he heard her tell him the odds of the fight and he heard Jack say no thanks.

  He now leaned against the deck railing, the intensity draining from him. The crowd calling to him but he ignored the noise. Then the door opened and Jack came out. When the crowd saw Jack standing next to Ax they pointed and laughed and some grimaced. Ax a head taller than Jack. Muscled and glistening in the floodlights. Jack ignored Ax as some of the voices from the crowd began to call out to Jack and some cried insults and some made jokes but it was only the sounds of the night to him. Nothing he hadn’t heard before. He had started down the cabin stairs when Ax moved across the deck and in a low and threatening voice he said you’re lucky, old man.

  Jack stopped midway on the staircase and looked over his shoulder. The two words like two bullets fired at him from the blurry years gone by.

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  From below Annette rolled down the window and called for him to come on.

  “I don’t think I did,” Jack said.

  “I said you’re lucky, old man. And you better get your old ass out of here while you can still walk and talk.”

  Jack paused. The crowd began to rumble as they watched the two men. And then their voices charged the night, a twisted fury of shouts and bellows and they all wanted the same thing. They all wanted the line to be crossed where there was no return.

  He listened to them. Moved his eyes from the young man and looked out into the valley of night. A single bright star shined in the low sky and in this star he seemed to see everything. This brilliant rebel diamond against the backdrop of infinity.

  He then descended the stairs. Moved between the men on guard. Moved between the motorcycles and to the truck. Annette leaned over and pulled the lock. He opened the door but did not climb in. He leaned across and asked if she had something to write with. She stuck her fingers into a small shelf beneath the radio and handed him a pen.

  “What is it?” she said.

  On the back of his hand he multiplied twelve and seven and it came out to eighty-four. Plenty, he whispered.

  “Would you tell me what you’re doing?”

  “Figuring the odds.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of the fight. It’s seven-to-one against me.”

  “Is that who you’re supposed to be fighting right up there?” she asked and she pointed up the stairs.

  “Yeah.”

  “Then it should damn sure be way more than seven-to-one. Do you see that son of a bitch?”

  “I can get the house.”

  “You can get a lot worse. Did you even give her the money?”

  “She’s got it.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “But you have to know what I’m thinking too and you’d be better off if you didn’t try to figure it out.”

  “Jack. Get in. I’ll take you back to Maryann.”

  With the mention of Maryann’s name he paused. Sat down inside the truck and closed the door. The crowd had moved around them now. Hands propped on the tailgate and hips leaning against the hood and the voices goading Jack, believing he was running away. Shouts of chicken shit and coward and he began to feel the rush. The spike of adrenaline that came from the energy of their cries and their money on the line and the chance of proving them all wrong. Annette tapped her hands on the steering wheel and said let’s go. Please. Let’s go. But he lowered his eyes. Held his hands between his knees and flexed his fingers. Listened to the shouts from the crowd and his blood surged and he felt the presence of this angel beside him and all that she had delivered and he believed in her because he needed something to believe in. There was only one voice now and it was the voice telling him you will never be here again. You will never be as close as this.

  Annette reached over and put her hand on his shoulder and told him to say something. Tell me to crank the truck and go. Are you all right? He raised his eyes from his hands and they fell on the hawk on her thigh. Its sharp head and wings spread in a pose of predatory ascension. The memory of his first moments in the field and the hawk guiding him toward Maryann long gone but his eyes fell on the hawk and his mind searched it for familiarity, as if it was a word of a secret language he could almost understand.

  There is only all or nothing, he thought. There is no in between.

  “Just wait here,” he said. He closed the truck door and wrangled through the crowd and climbed back up the stairs. He then went inside the cabin and he walked over to the coffee table. The envelope had not moved and he picked it up and Big Momma and Ern stared at him.

  “Seven-to-one,” he said. “Right?”

  Big Momma Sweet sucked on the pipe. “Seven-to-one,” she said.

  “I want to make a bet.”

  “I don’t know. You already paid up. I wonder if I can let you take it back. What you think, Ern?”

  “I think that’s the craziest fucking white boy I ever seen.”

  “I reckon that means you can take it back then,” she said.

  “Before I do, let’s make sure we understand what twelve thousand multiplied by seven comes out to.”

  “I’m aware,” she said.

  “Can you cover it?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Then I’m putting twelve thousand on myself. Pays eighty-four grand at the end.”

  “That’s good math, Jack. But while we’re multiplying, we better try some subtraction too and make damn sure we understand what twelve thousand minus twelve thousand comes out to. Because when the clock strikes midnight, Cinderella, there won’t be no more magic. If you lose you still owe me and if I don’t get my money, you’ll be laying by Skelly. And you’ll be wearing my dollar sign when you get to where you’re going so the devil will know you came from me.”

  Jack nodded but something shifted in his eyes. There was no more weariness. No more caution. He dropped the envelope on the table and said we go to the cage right now.

  Ax had moved into the doorway and he stood there wrenching his hands together and huffing and puffing like some deranged vessel of destruction.

  “How about you, big boy? You ready now?” Big Momma asked him and she shook her head and cackled. Then Ern walked out and down the steps. Whispered to the two guards about the live or die side bet they were setting for Jack and he sent them out to spread it through the crow
d. They’re gonna ask you if it’s a joke but it ain’t no joke. And as the men moved out into the fueled crowd they discovered Ern was right. They didn’t believe it. Live or die? But Big Momma’s men confirmed and said if you don’t believe us go ask Ern but in the end nobody needed to ask Ern. Some shook their heads and said I can’t be part of this and they took their beers and headed for their vehicles. Others shook their heads and didn’t want to be part of it but they headed for the cage anyway. And still others began only to try and figure out which side of the bet was the right one, hurrying to lay down their money on whether or not they believed Jack would rise from the cruel cage.

  28

  A​NNETTE WATCHED BIG MOMMA’S MEN COME DOWN THE stairs and move through the crowd. Saw the surprised expressions on the faces as some kind of news seemed to pass among them and there was more yelling and shouting. Hands slapped the roof of the truck and drunken eyes gave her final looks before the crowd began to migrate away from the cabin and out toward the shacks and the fighting pit. She waited with her hand on the door handle until the crowd drifted away and then she unlocked the door and got out. When Jack came down the stairs she met him at the bottom.

  “You told me twenty times you can’t fight and now you’re fighting,” she said. “Why couldn’t you just pay the money you owed and get the hell out of here like you said you were going to do?”

  “Because I can’t leave her there. I can’t die with that house on my conscience.”

  “But you can’t fight either. Jesus Christ, you were doubled over with a headache on the way to the nursing home.”

  “I know all that so you might as well quit reminding me.”

  “I swear to God,” she said and she shook her head nervously as she looked across this place. Two drunks stumbled into each other and fell to the ground. A woman stood in the open door of one of the shacks, smoking a cigar and wearing only boxer shorts and a cowboy hat. The bloodthirsty crowd moving toward the lights of the fighting pit, as if slogging to the end of some carnal pilgrimage. She shifted her feet and folded her arms and said I’ve been in some shitty places but this is the shittiest.

  The door opened to the cabin and Big Momma Sweet came down the stairs with a shotgun resting on her shoulder and Ern followed behind holding the branding iron. The crowd noise was gaining strength as the night grew darker and Jack took off his shirt and tossed it onto the ground.

  “I’m supposed to be dragging you out of your grave,” Annette said. “Not helping to shove you in it.”

  “You can’t talk like that. Not now. This is done and there’s only one way out and it leads right through that cage over there.”

  He rolled his head and cracked his neck. Dropped and did a dozen push-ups and then rose to his feet and he stretched his arms over his head. Then he said just promise me that if I’m on the wrong end of this when it’s over you’ll hurry out of here. Don’t wait around. Get to your truck and go but you have to swear you’ll go to Maryann and promise me you’ll sit with her. For a day or a few days or however long you can. Sit with her and read the letters to her. If you believe anything you’ve told me then swear to God you’ll do this for me. Do you believe any of it? Because I need you to. I need you to believe it more than anything in this whole world.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes. Yes dear God yes. I believe it. But that doesn’t keep me from worrying you and me won’t ever have another conversation. From worrying this crowd might eat itself and us with it. I want you to know who I am when this is over.”

  He cracked his knuckles. Pulled back his arms and bent at the waist and stretched his back. He looked over her body and said if you have a deity on there somewhere we can pray to now would be a good time to point it out.

  “I’m serious,” she said. “I want you to know me. To know Maryann. I want you to be here.”

  “I’m serious, too. Pray. Find something to pray to and pray like a lunatic. And you haven’t promised me yet that you’ll go back to Maryann and you have to do that before we say anything else. Before I get in that cage. I have to hear it.”

  She stared at him for a moment. Wanting to make sure she would remember what he looked like before the fight began. And then she said I will go back and be with her. I promise.

  He nodded. Felt the final release. And then he slapped his hands against his cheeks and against the sides of his head. Come on, he said. There is no more time to waste.

  29

  T​HE CROWD WAS FUNNELED INTO THE BARN THROUGH A CATTLE gate. Big Momma’s brutes stood at the gate and one of them waved a metal detector over each man passing into the fighting arena. No guns and no knives allowed. A wooden barrel sat next to the gate and if a weapon was lifted it was dropped into the barrel and became property of Big Momma Sweet.

  But the crowd was familiar with the rule and the barrel stayed empty. They filed in and the two sets of bleachers filled up quickly and then the remaining crowd pushed close to the cage. A suffocating mass of the drunk and disturbed surrounding the cage on all four sides, the smell of whiskey and weed and cigarettes and the men pushing at one another, everyone wanting a better view.

  Jack stood in one corner of the cage and Ax paced on the opposite side. Jack had picked up a folding chair along the way and he set it outside the fence in his corner. Annette sat in the chair with her arms crossed and her leg shaking nervously. A hand ran across her shoulder and she slapped it away and Jack stuck his finger through the cage and said to the scraggly man you better not touch her again.

  “Shit,” the man said. “I ain’t worried about you. You ain’t never coming out of there.”

  The man’s certainty jolted through Annette and she looked at Jack. He spit and then he walked to the side of the cage where Big Momma Sweet sat high in an umpire’s chair she had Ern swipe from a tennis court. The single-barrel shotgun lay across her lap. On the ground next to the tall legs of the chair a low fire burned and the brand of the dollar sign sat atop the red embers. Ern stood next to the pit with the billy club tucked under his arm and gave a salivating stare toward Jack.

  “How are you gonna play this?” Jack asked.

  “Same as always,” she said. “I’m the bell ringer. When I ring it the fight starts. When I ring it again it’s over. Ain’t no rounds out here.”

  The crowd surrounding them heard their exchange and shouts came straight and strong, heaping down on Jack. Get in there and fight. Live or die. Live or die. Random cries that slowly banded together and turned into a chant. Live or die.

  Jack slapped his hands against the cage and moved back to his corner. Annette had her fingers wrapped through the chainlinks and he moved his face close to hers.

  “You hear that?” she yelled.

  “Don’t listen.”

  “They’re yelling live or die, Jack,” she said and she began to look around as they chanted and raised their fists, a wildfire of energy.

  “Look here,” he yelled.

  She turned back to him with panicked eyes and said what the hell is going on?

  But he didn’t answer and said look at me. Just look at me and let me look at you and focus. He wrapped his fingers around hers and wanted her to belong to him in this extraordinary moment and every moment after. Whether anything she had said or believed was true he wanted it all to be as he touched his fingers to hers and they held together between the chainlinks and he said my eyes in yours and tried to shut it all out. The cries of live or die and the smoke from the pit and the rabid faces surrounding the cage and the might and strength of the man in the other corner. He did not want to see it and hear it and he thought that if he stared at her then he could be somewhere else in these final moments. Keep your eyes in mine he said again and the world shrank into silence. He looked into the black circles of her eyes and deep inside he saw himself leaving this dark land and walking into the bank on a sunny day and paying the house out of foreclosure. He saw Maryann lying in a bed in her own bedroom. Next to the window. Her eyes into the same blue sky she had been under he
r entire life and maybe she would recognize it. He saw maybe a father and maybe a daughter sitting at the same table in the same kitchen where he had sat as a teenage boy and he saw them drinking coffee and trying to figure out each other like he and Maryann had done. This stone that had been thrown into his life from some unknown direction and he heard her say it like she had said it before. You need me. He saw her helping him clean up the damage he had done to the potter’s barn and he saw her walking barefoot in the evening sun. And then he saw himself along a dark road and he saw the wolves that had been lying low in the night and they leaped for him, their sharp teeth snapping at his heels and he saw himself running and trying to get away. And then as the crowd began to chant live or die he saw an open space in the earth and the extended fiery fingers of a flaming hand rising out and reaching for him, charring the nape of his neck.

  “Jack!” she yelled. The three hard syllables of live or die amplified as the voices grew in unison. “Jack, what are they saying? I know you hear them. Jack!”

  She squeezed his fingers and he broke from his trance. Live or die, they chanted. He stepped back from her and turned a slow circle and it came from all sides of the cage. Their thrusting cries and ravenous faces and all the world collapsing upon him as he turned in a circle and felt the weight of his sins. And then Big Momma Sweet raised a cowbell attached to a handle and as he reached out to touch Annette again, Big Momma shook it with vigor and the crowd roared with the clanging and it began.

  When he turned Ax was coming toward him with the ferocity of a man who had been born into a rage and never departed from it. The young man charged and did not swing but instead flailed his entire body wildly at Jack as if to simply capture and crush him. Jack ducked away and sank two hard fists into the kidneys and the crowd dove off into hysteria with the first blows. Jack didn’t wait because he knew it had to happen quickly if it was going to happen so he drove his heel into the back of the young man’s knee. Buckled him. A fist and an elbow into the side of his head and Ax wobbled and fell against the cage. Held himself up and he was bathed in cries of disgust from the crowd as Jack drove a foot into his groin and hit like a hammer and tried to bring him to the ground. Annette stood and clenched the fence and Jack surged with everything available to him as the young man covered himself with one arm and tried to shove Jack away with the other. Behind Annette someone yelled I can’t believe this shit. I can’t believe I bet on this son of a bitch dying and he’s about to straight up goddamn win. She turned around as the man tossed what looked like a carnival ticket to the ground and she knelt and picked up it. Scribbled across the back of the red ticket were an L and a D and the D was circled and it struck her what they meant by live or die.