She pressed her face to the fence and cried out his name, desperate to get his attention and desperate to somehow get him to realize what they were all there for but he could not hear. All his strength into the opponent. Jack had hurt him and he kept punching against the top of his head and into his gut but the young man would not go down to his knees. Down to his knees where Jack would never let him out of this state of surprise and the next stop after his knees would be the ground and then Jack could drive his fist into his temple over and over until the man either cried no more or lost consciousness and then there would be the clang of the cowbell. The crowd booed as the muscled young man covered himself and used the cage to stay upright and Jack punched and kicked and elbowed, going for the finish. But he could not get around that corner and he had no stamina and he began to slow. Like a windup toy that can only go so far.
He stepped away from Ax. Looked at Annette and she was screaming to him through cupped hands but she was drowned out by the crowd. The sweat ran down his face and dripped from his ears and the young man’s blood was scattered across his knuckles. He fought for his breath and lunged toward Ax again but Ax had been waiting for him to run low and he was ready with his bricklike elbow and it caught Jack across the temple. Jack spun and dropped to his hands and knees. An instant shrill pitch ringing in his head and the dirt floor spinning and the cries of the crowd muffled. He squeezed his own forehead with both hands and tried to get his eyes to settle. Tried to squeeze out the ringing. Knew he had to get up and get away but then he felt the large hand wrapping the back of his neck and Ax lifted him to his feet as if he were no more than a puppet without a string.
And the fight was over. His brain ablaze and his vision in circles and he had nothing left to give. With each passing blow to the face or to the head, with each knee into his back and clutch of his throat he had less and less energy to defend himself and it turned into a demonstration of punishment. The young and strong versus the tired and dying. Ax lifted and slammed Jack flat on his back against the trampled dirt, the thud so pronounced that it tempered the crowd for half a second until it could roar again for more. Jack was lifted and thrown against the cage. Face into the chainlinks. Slammed into the posts. Picked up and thrown sideways. The skin of his chest and arms catching and ripping on the jagged bits of the cage. A bloody ragdoll who did not know where he was but only that the end was coming and his eyes filled with dirt and blood.
The young man stalked and teased and he was going to make them all remember the final time they laid eyes on Jack Boucher with this lasting exhibition of brutality. He played to the crowd as he taunted and allowed Jack to get to his feet. Jack staggered blindly, reaching his hands out as if he were a child only beginning to walk, hoping for a larger, loving hand to take hold and lead his way. The crowd howled and laughed. All but one. And she sat in the corner, pleading for him to get away. Not to get away so that he may find a way to win but only to get away so that he may live, watching between her fingers as the young man mocked Jack’s dumb and damaged gait as if they were actors in some morbid vaudeville. And after several steps the young man measured him again and sank his fist into an already broken face. The crowd gasping each time Jack went to the ground. Amazed each time he somehow rose again.
And then in a brief moment of respite, as the crowd was catching its breath. As Jack lay on his stomach and face and moved when no one thought he would move again. As Annette went down to her knees and begged for it all to stop. In that moment of respite a voice from somewhere in the depths of the crowd cried out a single word that all could hear.
Mercy.
There was a pause of disbelief.
And then another voice joined.
Mercy.
Big Momma Sweet stood. Three and four more calls for mercy and then a dozen more in quick succession and she raised the shotgun and there was silence. But before she could speak the voices of the bloodthirsty attacked the voices of mercy. First drowning them out with threats and then putting the threats into action and fists began to fly among the crowd. Those who had called for mercy versus those who wanted none of it and around the cage the crowd swayed and wrestled against itself in a wave of primal chaos.
Annette stayed on her knees and called for Jack. Dug her fingers into the dirt and prayed in frantic shouts for a God to come and save him. Some God. Any God. Get him away from this nightmare. Her voice only a whimper against the surrounding violence and the ears of benevolence far away from this place. Ax began to amble across the floor of the cage. Dumbfounded by the mob of bodies and the way in which the melee seemed to feed on its own energy and not a man outside the cage remained unengaged. It was hit or be hit. Ax looked up at Big Momma Sweet who seemed neither concerned nor entertained as she watched the carnage. The shotgun propped on her shoulder. Ern stood beneath her with the billy club in one hand and the searing iron in the other as the crowd grabbed and struck and tumbled.
What no one but Annette noticed was Jack beginning to crawl. A bloodied and wounded worm working its way across the hardened earth. Working on his elbows. One after another in small increments, making his way toward the corner of the cage. His face in shades of red and his body numb with the pain and his consciousness drifting into a place free and clear of it all. He crept on undetected and he made it into the corner. Put his fingers into the fence and pulled himself to his knees and he took a finger and wiped the blood and grime from his eyes. When he looked up again he did not see the crazed crowd or the bright white lights hanging from the steel beams. He did not hear the voices of hostility or the prayers from Annette.
He saw her again. The same peaceful face and winding white hair of the one who had been there to help him from the wreck. Pensive, motherly eyes. And the sweet voice meant only for him.
On the ground, she said. On the ground right next to you. Only look down and you will see it. Your pants have ripped and it has fallen out and look at it on the ground. It is beside your knee. No one is looking so pick it up. They are too busy with themselves.
Her figure ghostly and her white hair swaying and slinking through the chainlinks and he felt her hand across the back of his head as he looked down to the ground. Her voice serene and steady and telling him it is right there beside you. Pick it up. He wiped at his eyes again and his vision clouded but he thought he saw it. Right beside his knee like she said. The four humps of his brass knuckles.
Go ahead, Jack. Pick it up. It’s okay. No one is watching but don’t wait any longer. Pick it up and slide it on your hand.
He did.
Now, she said. Catch your breath. He is coming. And I will see you again soon. And she will be there with us. She is waiting like I am for you to finish this. She is the only one watching you and she will take you out of here when it is over. You know what to do. He is coming.
Bring me home.
He lifted his hand to touch her face but she was a fading apparition and then gone. He then looked at the brass knuckles across the fingers of his right hand. The scarred, bloodied right hand. And then he sucked in a big breath and closed his eyes and in the caverns of his eroding soul he searched for every fragment of hate and resentment and the fragments came with sharp edges. He found the rughaired boy and the blank faces of a woman and a man who emptied him into this world and he found the anxiety of abandonment and the black hours of childhood loneliness and the desolation of the unknown. He found the fanged faces of addiction that had lived with him in the musty rooms and he found the long and lasting losing streaks where he flushed away the work of generations for the sake of simple, selfish thrills. He found the self-loathing that he did not have the guts to rail against and he found his own drugged eyes looking back at him in the mirror of disgrace. He conjured all the hate and all the regret into one single fit of rage and when the young man reached to grab him again by the back of the neck, the fighter rose and spun around and delivered the brass knuckles to the space between the eyes with one final fist of fury.
There was a crack
. A suspension of the moment as the young man waited for gravity to decide in which direction his muscular body would fall. And then as he collapsed to the ground a shotgun blast blew a hole in the metal roof and interrupted the carnage. The crowd ducked in unison with the blast and then one by one they let go of one another. Pulled one another to their feet. Looked to Big Momma Sweet who was holding the shotgun tilted down into the cage, a ribbon of smoke curling from the barrel.
And with a stunned silence they looked upon the grotesque figure of Jack Boucher. Standing over the body of the motionless giant. The blood and sweat covering Jack’s body and dripping from his nose and chin. A puddle of salvation forming in the dirt between his feet.
I wish I knew who I was, he said to her one evening. A lavender dusk and the last smooth band of sunlight drawn across the horizon.
He didn’t know where the words came from and after it was said he looked around as if they had been spoken by a third among them. Maryann stopped rocking and she crossed her hands in her lap. He turned his head away from her and hoped that maybe she hadn’t heard what he said. He had turned nineteen only months before and finished high school only weeks before. A packed duffel bag sat next to the closet door in his bedroom and in a few days’ time he would leave and drive to Texas. Follow the fighting circuit back across the South. Try to make a name for himself. The beginning of a cycle that would not end. He had been talking about it since he turned eighteen and she had tried to dissuade him. Tried to talk him into finding another life. One without the risks. But he believed that the risks belonged only to the man standing opposite him and the lure of the road was too strong for his young and searching heart.
A breeze rustled the leaves of the trees and crickets called out into the early night. He stood up and leaned on the porch rail and his hair had grown long and it blew across his eyes.
That’s something you’ll never know, she finally said.
It was not what he had anticipated. He had said the words that had been rumbling inside of him for his entire life and he had said them to this woman so full of optimism and grace believing she would let them land softly in a cloud of consolation but instead she delivered the blunt and direct. He looked at her. A shadowy and vague figure in this dream time between day and night and her eyes were not on him but still fixed upon that distant world. Then he said I guess not. I already gave up anyhow.
She halfsmiled and said no you haven’t given up and there’s no reason to. But we always are looking for who we are. You. Me. All of us. And that doesn’t have anything to do with your blood. She touched her hand to her chest and said it is in here and then she pointed to her head and said not so much in here. Because you never stop wanting to know who you are and when you think you have it figured out life has a way of tapping you on the shoulder and shifting what you thought you knew.
He stood upright. A long silence between them as they watched the last light of day sink into the earth.
Life drove up to my house in a white van about seven years ago, she continued. It gave me something strong. It gave me something honest and tender and it asked me to become something else and I thought I was ready for it. But I wasn’t. And I know I’m different than I was before you came here. And that is what I mean. You will want to know who you are today and tomorrow and the next day for the rest of your life. And that is good, Jack. Some days you will think about it more than other days. It would be sad to me if you didn’t think about it at all.
He walked to the far end of the porch and back again. Sat down in the rocker.
What do you see way out there? he asked.
It depends, she said.
On what?
I’m not exactly sure.
So what do you see out there? he asked again.
The wind died down and the earth seemed to pause while waiting on her to answer. Jack stood and folded his arms and leaned against the porch column. A wild screech pealed across the land and the first stars appeared in the crown of the sky. I see it too, he wanted to say. Whatever it is that you see I think I can see it too. He wanted to tell her that but he wanted more to hear what she would say, so he kept quiet. He leaned in the dark and waited for her words to come like some prayer that he would always remember. I see it too, he thought. Way out there.
She stood and walked over to him. She took his hand and raised it with hers and together they pointed into the distance, out toward this cobalt canvas of questions and then she lowered their arms and they stood together in the gulf of night as if waiting for something impossible to happen. And then she opened her lips and whispered. I don’t know what I see, she said. That’s why I keep looking.
Acknowledgments
My thanks go to Ellen Levine and the team at Trident Media Group. To Lee Boudreaux, Carrie Neill, and all the hardworking crew at Lee Boudreaux Books and Little, Brown. To Jason Richman and Yuli Masinovsky. To No Exit Press and Sonatine Editions. To the Mississippi Arts Commission for its financial support. To my friend Bryan Hilliard. And most of all to my little fighters, Brooklyn and Presley, and to Sabrea, the toughest gal on the block.
About the Author
Michael Farris Smith is the author of Desperation Road, Rivers, and The Hands of Strangers and is the recipient of the 2014 Mississippi Author Award. His short fiction has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and his essays have appeared in the New York Times, Catfish Alley, Deep South Magazine, and more. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife and two daughters.
michaelfarrissmith.com
Also by Michael Farris Smith
Desperation Road
Rivers
The Hands of Strangers
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The Fighter Page 18