TKO

by Tom Schreck

“Move in!” Smitty yelled. “He’s hurt!”

  I didn’t move. I threw another jab. Strife wobbled again.

  “Move in, God damn it!” Smitty yelled.

  I stepped toward Strife but no punches came. He threw a hook that missed and he went off balance. I have no idea who this guy had been fighting, but I couldn’t picture someone losing to him.

  My third jab landed on his nose pretty hard and it forced him back to the ropes. This time I did move in, and as I did I heard Strife let out a wail, like an exhausted cry. I tried to go on automatic.

  “Finish, Duff, finish strong!” Smitty yelled.

  I hit Strife twice to the body, which doubled him over, and then I hooked him to the head with my right and he wobbled into the corner. I loaded up with my straight left to put him out and I threw it hard and straight. He was hurt and there was no way he was going to last, but just when I thought the ref might call it, the bell rang, ending the first round.

  Back in my corner, Smitty was furious.

  “What the hell are you waiting for? You had him, now take him out!” he said.

  Round 2 started and Strife was breathing heavily; he already looked exhausted. I tried not to think and I moved forward. My jab went through his gloves and sent his head back. I followed with a body shot that made him moan and double over. Then, I caught him with an uppercut. I knew the end was near and I threw my straight left.

  I never saw it land.

  I never felt it land.

  Instead, the world went from vertical to horizontal instantly. A light shot through the inside of my head from side to side and there was a loud ringing. Noise sounded different and things looked like they were underwater. I blinked hard four or five times. I was looking at the lighting stanchions above the ring and they made me squint.

  I realized I was on one knee and the referee was in front of me. He was in an exaggerated counting stance and the first number I heard was seven.

  I went to get up. Nothing happened.

  “Eight,” the ref said.

  I went to push off my knee and my gloves slipped off.

  “Nine.”

  I tried again but wobbled backward in an awkward crouch and landed on the seat of my pants.

  “Ten.”

  The ref was above me waving his hand back and forth. The state doctor was shining a pen light in my eyes, there was a lot of crowd noise, and Smitty was lifting me onto the stool in the middle of the ring.

  Across the way, Rufus Strife had fallen to his knees and was crying into his hands.

  There were ring announcements, then the interviews, but the announcers spent most of their time with Rufus, who shouted and cried and hugged everyone he could. I congratulated him and he hugged me just before I went to the locker room. My head had cleared and I was fine. I’ve taken harder shots, much harder shots, but when you don’t see it coming, ten seconds isn’t a long time to recover.

  The quiet in my dressing room was uncomfortable. Smitty didn’t look at me, Rudy left to get a beer, and I dressed in silence. I showered and dressed as fast as I could because I wanted to get out of there. It felt weird.

  As was the tradition, Smitty drove me home after the fight. We were in the car for forty-five minutes before either of us spoke.

  “Duff,” Smitty said. “How many years I been training you?”

  “Fourteen, Smitty, you know that.”

  “In the last fourteen years, you’ve lost a fair number of fights, right?”

  “Yep, you know that.”

  “In all those fights you lost, when have you ever been knocked out from a shot because you didn’t recoil your left?”

  “Never,” I said.

  “Uh-huh,” Smitty said.

  We drove the last twenty minutes in silence, and I felt lousy about ten different ways, most of all because I let Smitty down. You see, winning fights and moving up is moving up for him too. It was a validation of all the work he’s done. And I lost.

  He pulled up in front of the Moody Blue.

  “Duff, for the last fourteen years, what have I told you after every fight?”

  “That win or lose, you’re proud of me.”

  “That’s right. I’m proud of you tonight too, Duff.”

  “Tonight? You sure? I fought like shit,” I said.

  “Yep,” Smitty said.

  16

  I was drunk by noon.

  Legally, AJ’s isn’t supposed to open until noon, but a lot of times AJ will stay open all night for the guys who work the graveyard shift in the cookie factory around the block. At noon, the Foursome started to come in, and I was praying they wouldn’t grill me about my performance.

  They had all gone to the fight, as did Kelley and some of the people from the office. It pissed me off—I finally got to a point where I get some hometown attention and I lose in the most embarrassing fashion imaginable. There was a lot on the line, I was fighting a fat, out-of-shape guy with a shit record, and he beats me in front of my hometown crowd. Check that, he knocked me out in front of my hometown crowd.

  AJ’s always had the paper and it had a photo of me on the front section of the sports section sprawling to the canvas after I tried to get up. The cute banner above it read, “Dombrowski Falls Back to Palookaville.”

  Sweet.

  TC and Jerry Number One came in together like they often did. They didn’t come in the same car nor did they call each other, they just wound up always coming through the door at the same time. Less than fifteen minutes later Jerry Number Two arrived, followed by Rocco. They always came in the same order, always spaced by the same amount of time.

  I was braced for questions about how it happened or suggestions on how they would have done things differently. I waited for some cockeyed philosophy about how getting knocked out was a good thing followed by a two-hour discussion about the brain science involved in rendering someone unconscious.

  The guys greeted me, said hello, and ordered their drinks. Then, they just watched the TV and the pre-game show for a preseason football game. I waited and they never mentioned anything about the fight.

  It made it worse.

  I decided that the Schlitz wasn’t getting me where I wanted to be, so I ordered a Beam on the rocks. I saw Jerry Number One look at my drink from the corner of his eye like he was trying not to get caught. I thought to myself just how pitiful my existence had become when the Fearsome Foursome had begun to feel sorry for me.

  By three o’clock I had that woozy drunk feeling where it becomes difficult to think about your own thoughts. Things kept coming in and out of focus and nothing stayed in my head clearly for more than a thought or two. I remembered the ref counting seven through ten and how I wanted to get up but I couldn’t. I remembered how it felt to have my body not respond to my brain’s commands. That’s what happens when you get knocked out—time goes by quickly and it takes a while for your body to get your brain’s messages. It’s why you always see fighters arguing after they’ve been counted out. Besides being embarrassed, they don’t believe enough time has gone by and they’re pissed off at their bodies for not doing what the brain told them to do.

  At four o’clock AJ hesitated when I ordered my bourbon. Even as bombed as I was, I knew it took a lot to get AJ to hesitate. The Foursome were back to talking and they were kicking around something about whether cows lay down when it rains because they’re tired or because of the dew point. TC thought the dew point had something to do when the cow had to move its bowels. It faded off after that.

  At eight, I awoke in a puddle of my own drool, my face flat on the bar. Kelley had come in to watch the Yankees game, which was being shown on the ESPN Sunday Game of the Week.

  “Welcome back,” Kelley said.

  “What time is it?” I said.

  “Eight.”


  “Shit.”

  “You all right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sorry how last night turned out.”

  “Yeah.”

  That was all he said, but I appreciated him saying it. We sat mostly in silence watching the Yankees lose to Boston eight to nothing. The Yankees got just two hits in the whole game. I nursed a few Schlitzes during the game, and I was probably still drunk by some official drunkenness measurement. It wasn’t a fun drunk or even an escapist drunk, but rather it was the shitty part of being drunk without any of the positive aspects of it.

  I still couldn’t walk right and I couldn’t think clearly but I felt sick to my stomach, not from the booze but from the fight. It was the type of feeling that drinking will numb a little for about a half an hour while you’re building your drunk. After that there’s no use and you know it, but you keep drinking anyway to avoid feeling that feeling that will now be worsened by the shaky feeling of losing your buzz.

  Kelley took me home and I didn’t argue about him giving me a lift. Al kicked me in the nuts when I came through the door and just like the night before with Strife I didn’t move quick enough to defend against it. My drunkenness was probably scarring Al and I was sure it wouldn’t be long until he would soon start attending BOA meetings—that’s Bassets of Alcoholics meetings.

  I grabbed another Schlitz to help me be drunk enough to sleep. I spilled some down my face trying to drink it with my head on a pillow. Al jumped into bed with me and walked up the length of my body making sure to stride right on my left testicle on the way up. He licked my face and stuck his tongue in my ears and chewed a little. Then he spun around twice and paused with his ass in my face for effect and finally laid down next to me, his back spooning into my gut.

  Apparently, Al didn’t care about me getting knocked out by a fat guy.

  17

  Drunk sleep sucks.

  I was in and out of it most of the night and somewhere around four in the morning I think enough of the alcohol had left my system that I could get some quality sleep. That gave me four or four and half hours of sleep, if I pushed it, before work.

  It wasn’t meant to be.

  First there was the yells, then the loud thwack sound going on outside the Moody Blue. Finally, there was Al’s objection.

  “WOOF, WOOF”—thwack—“WOOF, WOOF.”

  Oh, how I hated life.

  I sat up in bed and got a rush of that queasy, not-quite-pukey feeling. I stood up and realized my equilibrium was off and thought for a second that I was going to blow my cookies right there on my bedspread. Al didn’t help by running circles around me and incessantly offering me his opinion on the yelling and the thwacking.

  Al did one last circle and stopped directly in front of me.

  “WOOF, WOOF, WOOF, WOOF,” Al said, clearly upset that he wasn’t getting the response he wanted from me. Then he jumped up and kicked me in the nuts. I decided that now was as good a time as any to go barf. Al followed me with a steady chorus of WOOFs.

  Having heaved through the basset din, I thought I’d go check out the five a.m. commotion in front of my house. There he was, decked out in yet another Karateka Bad-Breath ninja getup. He was yelling about horseradish and throwing something at the tree in front of the Blue. Against my better judgment, I opened the door.

  “Sir, good morning, sir,” Billy said.

  “Billy, we’ve been over this,” I said.

  “Sir?”

  “Never mind. What are you throwing against my tree?”

  “Sir, permission to demonstrate, sir?”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  “Sir?”

  “Throw the fuckin’ things, will ya!”

  “Sir, yes sir.”

  Billy reared back, yelled “WASABIIIIII!” and threw a metal object into my tree from about forty feet.

  “Nice, kid, what are they?” I said.

  “Sir, they’re Karateka-Brand Titanium Throwing Stars. This one is the six-pointed Okinawan Starfire and the one I just threw is the Yomiuri Four-Pointed Annihilator.”

  “Kid, that shit is illegal as hell.”

  “Actually, sir, as a practicing martial artist, I am allowed to practice with them.”

  “If you say so. Look, kid, I’m going back to bed.”

  “Sir, when will we train again?”

  “Kid, I’ll let you know. I’m taking a bit of a break.”

  “A break, sir?”

  He looked at me in disbelief and sadness. It was tough to handle, but I didn’t feel up to heading to the gym and going through the motions with this kid. I didn’t feel like facing Smitty, and I certainly wasn’t up to the sensei routine.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. He bowed and turned to head home, but today he walked.

  I went back to bed and tried to sleep, but it was useless. Hungover and pissed off was not the ideal way to go to any job, but it was definitely not the best way for me to face the Michelin Woman and Abadon. On this particular Monday, we had a treatment team meeting and that meant a double dose of Claudia’s officiousness and Abadon’s patronizing arrogance.

  The queasiness didn’t get better as the early morning wore on. In fact, it got worse. I felt carsick driving to the clinic, and I felt carsick walking to my cubicle.

  “You all right?” Monique asked when she got a look at me.

  “It wasn’t the best weekend I ever had,” I said.

  “Didn’t you have a big fight?”

  “Yeah, I got knocked out. Suffice to say, it didn’t go well.”

  “I’m sorry, Duff,” Monique said.

  I tried to round up the files I needed for the meeting, but I just couldn’t muster the energy or work through the apathy. I grabbed a handful of some of the charts and headed in ten minutes late. Claudia was at the head of the table with her ultra-cool clipboard with the calculator built in, and Abadon was at her right hand like some sort of twisted version of that last supper painting. I sat down, trying to minimize any attention, and Michelin flashed me a dirty look for being late.

  Monique continued to present the case that I interrupted and updated us on Sabrina Shakala, a woman who was mandated to treatment for beating the shit out of her drug-dealing boyfriend. She was on probation and the boyfriend wound up in jail and frankly, I thought Sabrina was functioning pretty well. Anyone who can knock out a dealer’s front teeth with a portable CD player was all right with me.

  I must’ve let my eyes close because I heard Abadon’s voice and it startled me.

  “Duffy, are you with us or are you still on the canvas?” he said.

  “What did you just say?” I felt my neck twitch.

  “Sometimes an individual who has had a concussive episode will have delayed neurological reactions—like narcolepsy.”

  Both sides of my neck twitched and my face felt on fire. Monique kicked me twice under the table. When I get angry enough it’s tough for me to speak, and that’s not a good thing because I wind up expressing myself physically.

  “C’mon, Duff, or I’ll start counting to ten … ,” Abadon said.

  That was it.

  I threw my hot cup of coffee at Abadon’s head. I missed but it smashed against the wall and splattered all over Claudia. I was on my feet and on my way toward him when Monique got in between me. At five foot four and a sleek 130 pounds, it wasn’t her physical presence but her innate authority that stopped me. Abadon was on his feet, beet red and breathing heavy.

  “C’mon, asshole. I’ll show you some fuckin’ neurological damage,” I said, my ability to speak returned.

  Abadon gritted his jaw and flexed his weight-room muscles but before he could say anything, Claudia ordered me into her office. Her big blousy polyester top was splattered with coffee. I didn’t move right away and neither did Abad
on, but Monique touched my shoulder and sort of steered me out of the conference room toward Claudia’s office.

  “Effective immediately, you are suspended pending termination approval from the board of directors. You are to go home immediately and not be on these premises until you are notified in writing,” Claudia said. She was even more humorless than usual.

  I didn’t feel like saying anything.

  Instead, I signed the suspension form and headed home. My blood pressure was up from the combination of alcohol withdrawal and dealing with Abadon. It wasn’t Claudia’s authority that kept me silent, it was the desire to get the hell out of the office and go home. I knew the consequences were significant, but in the immediate moment it was good to get out of there. I grabbed my keys and split.

  I would’ve joined the Foursome for an early start on drinking, but the thought of it made my stomach flip. That, and I wasn’t crazy about the potential future I was developing as an alcoholic. I figured the safest thing to do would be to head home, get kicked in the nuts, lie on the couch, and do nothing until I could think straight.

  Al was confused by my early arrival, but he quickly adjusted and we watched Hawaii Five-O together. It was one of the episodes where McGarrett is pitted against his archrival, Wo Fat, who was played by the same guy who I think wound up as the funky blind Kung Fu master on David Carradine’s Kung Fu TV show. I thought about why I knew that and also about how unfair it was that just because an actor was Asian it meant he was limited to playing stereotyped roles. Then, I thought, when you’re a short, fat, bald guy with slanted eyes, you really would struggle to get the Cary Grant roles, wouldn’t you?

  I went in and out of sleep until about four when I must have really fallen out, because it was a knocking on the door followed by Al’s alarm system that rousted me at about eight thirty. I came to and dreaded seeing my pizza-faced ninja falling on his head on my front lawn. It took me a while to get off the couch, but when I went to the door I was pleasantly surprised. It was Trina.

  “What are you doing here?” I said at the door.

  “There’s a sweet greeting,” she said.