by Tom Sheridan
The Prince lurked along the edge of the octagon. Glancing the fencing as he went. Franco ready to move in like a crab that couldn’t resist the bait. Then sentenced to death in a cage. Muhammad Walid. Ready to rope-a-dope Franco Foreman.
But did Franco Foreman have it in him? To hold off? The bigger kids on Bunns Lane that wanted to tussle? The best defense was offense. Get after them before they get you. Take them out at the legs. The courts where the big men planted themselves in the post and imposed their will? Not Franco. Kid weaved through traffic in turbo mode. Fuck a cruise. It was his Days of Thunder, and he was Tom Cruise. Fast n furious before there ever was a Fast n Furious. Same on the soccer field. And the baseball diamond. Someone better bat Franco in before the crazy fuck tries to steal home, too. Same for the summer weight room. The kid who ran himself skinny all school year would put on incredible bulk. Like he was the Incredible Hulk. Came back to the soccer team jacked. Before there ever was that Brazilian player. Hulk.
Then. There were those tennis matches. Julie’s one sport. She honed her game for her college résumé. Worked part-time at the pizza place to pay for private lessons. One eight-hour shift for every one-hour lesson. Franco offered a helping hand. Someone to practice against. Julie would stand on one end ready to serve, looking the part in her skirt and visor. (Secondhand, shh.) Franco would stand ready to return. His shoulders swelling out of his beater. Holding his racquet like a caveman carryin a club. He didn’t even have a forehand. Crushed every ball with his baseball swing. Holding that old wooden racquet. Ready to bang like Michael Chang. He’d either hit a winner or an unforced error. At first. He picked up the game over time. Learned to how to keep a rally going so Julie could get her reps. By the time they decided to keep score, he could’ve beaten her 6-0 every time. But he lobbed his serves over. Played her balls sailing long. Hit it right at her when she went to the net. Their points turned into epic rallies. Ones that gave Julie butterflies as she fluttered across the court. Epic rallies that turned into epic matches. Matches that always seemed to leave Franco on the losing end. Anything for his Jewels.
Franco declined Muhammad Walid’s invitation and held back. The temp wasn’t much of a Foreman. As Franco hobbled on his ailing Achilles, he worked on The Prince’s. A tortoise pretending to keep up with the hare. The Prince kept up the pace. But his breathing also crept up. His chest heaved as he heaved punches. He shot at Franco’s legs. But with Franco on the defensive and The Prince a shade slower than in round one, The Prince couldn’t get it done. The Prince resorted to punches and kicks. Some landing but most defended.
The Prince waved his gloves. “Let’s have at it!”
Franco waved his gloves back. “Let’s!” Leszz.
The bell rang. Another round for The Prince.
While The Prince sat and sucked wind in one corner, Franco moseyed over to his militia. They tossed the punch-drunk puncher in his chair. Taz landscaped his bloated face. Joey squirted water that ran back out of Franco’s fist-frozen mouth. Nelly tried to talk some sense into his man beaten senseless. “Keep letting the game come to you. Just going the distance. Breaking his streak. You’ll get another contract.” Franco glanced over at Arturo. Sipping mai tais with the misses. Then looked back to his coach. Right into his emerald eyes this time. “I don’t fight for contracts.”
However it sounded to Thomas Nelson the Ninth, a Son of the Revolution, he heard all he needed to hear. He open-fisted his own chest twice. “Woodbridge Pride.”
General Franco closed-fisted his own twice. “Woodbridge.” Then marched on to the final round of battle.
The militiaman with the mug of welts, bruises, and blood addressed the picture-perfect Prince before him. “Ay Your Majesty. When ya gonna hit me?” Ayuhmahjsteewehyagohimme?
Despite the speech impediment, The Prince heard the message loud and clear. His stiff jab split Franco’s lip before it even finished flapping. But. It was The Prince who scowled. While Franco smiled. With blood erupting out of his lower lip like it was Mt. Saint Helen’s. That extra weight he’d put on in his advanced age was suddenly paying dividends like those stocks he never bought. Sure, him and The Prince had both weighed in at 170 the day before. But that was after Franco’s run. After fasting. He’d put on fifteen pounds of food and water weight since. The Prince, not an ounce to spare, was still at a buck seventy. Franco had taken blows from 200-pound gorillas in unsanctioned MMA cages and unsanitary Jersey clubs alike. The more the petite Prince pummeled, the more Big Franco smiled. Especially when a revelation unraveled. There were still things he needed to teach T. Yeah, Julie had the main things on lock. The do good in school. The plan for your future. The watch who you hang with. But Franco, too, had a few he just couldn’t eschew. The find your passion. The never say die pursuit of it. The be the best version of yourself you can be. Fuck Franco the Hustler. He was Franco the Father. Franco the Fighter. He’d been working toward this moment his whole life. Since 22, when he formally trained for his first figh— No. Since 19, when his best bros were teaching him boxing and wrestling, not to mention all his lifting, so he could bring the heat on the stree— No. Since seven. That first fight. The bathroom concussion. Ever since, the orphan fought his way through the Lane. Trying to build a base for that needs pyramid. The one he saw on his program therapist’s wall. He’d been building that pyramid. Brick. By brick. By brick. Ever since. And it was time to put a capstone on it. The Great Pyramid of Franco. A million sandstorms and still standing.
Franco put everything he had into a jab. His previous half-ass attempts slowed The Prince’s reaction time down. It was like seeing Mo Rivera’s fastball after ten changeups. Good luck. Franco caught The Prince on his nifty nose. Followed it with a combo. The Prince ate the first hit. Defended the next two. But the royalty was on the run.
“Whadaya say now, WOOD!” roared Nelly.
Franco heard the battle cry from the head of his crew. Say what you want about them. A bunch of unknowns. Local friends as much as they were professionals. Small in number. But big in heart. Distinguished in each of their disciplines. A Woodbridge-grown garden. With roots all over Earth. From Bunns Lane to Bangkok. It was Lama who sold The Show on this fight. It was Brazil who got Franco here with juiced-up Jiu-Jitsu. It was Taz who had him ready for any blow n stopped all the blood flow. It was his good ole bro, Joey Yo, who taught him how to throw. Who had his back since kindergarten. And it was Coach Nelson. Who went out of his way to take on The Brawler. And turn him into a top-shelf crawler. Franco’s team. His motherfuckin team. Either a bunch of nobodies from nowhere. Or. The Americans from everywhere. Helping their guy in the game forged from all corners of the earth. Mixed martial arts. M. M. A. Made in the U. S. A.
The Prince meanwhile only hired men from his father’s homeland. For all his money, he had drained his team’s talent pool from oceans around the world to a gulp of the Persian Gulf. His group-thinking goons still shouting in support of The Prince’s streak. “You’ve got him!” “Finish him!”
Franco and The Prince went toe to toe. Blow for blow.
The crowd, all walks of life, yet all True Jersey mahfuckas who’d been calling for this rematch from jump street, OOOHED the surgical strike that landed on Franco’s surgery-needing nose. Then cheered Franco’s slug to The Prince’s now messying mug. The whole crowd on their feet. Praying Franco could pull off the feat. Backwards-hatted dudes wrapped arms as Franco got rapped in the face. Then jumped up and down as Franco went up and down—a jab followed by a body blow. Flat-brimmed homies held their main squeezes. As their main man squeezed The Prince. Power-bombed him to the ground.
When Franco erupted with a trademark ground and pound, the whole place erupted. Freight-trucking fathers and sunnier-prospect sons. Young bucks who put forth their hard-earned bucks. Along with does who made their own dough. Newlyweds. Dudes with dreads. Gals on ladies’ nights. Some for the fights. Others for men in tights. Jersey Janes and Joes of all throws. Firefighters and cops next to ex-cons. Dud
es that work at Exxon. From the gas pump to the penthouse. Ready to pump the roof off this house.
But the Prince’s heel kick interrupted. The plan corrupted.
Franco and The Prince circled despite sucking wind. Despite their heads a hundred pounds. Despite lava flows from their faces to their feet. Like two T. Rexes that got buried in the Big One. Then dug their way out.
That’s when he heard it. “Fran-co! Fran-co! Fran-co!” The fans of The Vault. Giving The Pauper the exalt. For once, Franco was the one getting his due. Which reminded him of another advantage. Straight-up Jersey hustle. Wasn’t Franco busy doing his nightly sit-ups when he sat up and saw The Prince on Letterman? Promoting a movie. The Prince must’ve spent a good month on that role. While Franco was doing Jiu-Jitsu rolls. And wasn’t Franco busy busting out another prison workout when The Prince was getting sent to prison? Domestic violence. A KO unaccounted for on his win streak. His win streak that never took him this far. Into round five. Into the deep blue sea. With nowhere to go. Just him. And Big Franco.
Franco tied The Prince up and served him a dish of Muay Thai. Pumped his knees into The Prince’s body like he was Greg LeMond. And when The Prince dropped his arms to protect his abs, Franco treated him to some of America’s famed Southern Hospitality and threw dem ’bows. And in case he was feeling homesick, Franco split The Prince’s cheek as wide as the English Channel.
Despite the newfound advantages for Franco, there was still one big one for The Prince. Father Time. And this time, he was telling Franco exactly how many ticks were left. 1:02. 1:01. 1:00. Yeah, Franco was finally winning his first round. Yeah, a few more rounds and he might knock The Prince out. But Franco only had a minute. And The Prince, for all his prettiness, was one tough motherfucker. Franco knew going in that The Prince was the most skilled fighter he ever fought. And he now had to admit. He was the toughest, too.
That’s when Joey yelled it. “One Minute Man!” Shouting, in the biggest moment of Franco’s life, the name of a song by Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliot. Franco knew the cue as Joey’s inside jokey way of saying: Time to be a minuteman.
If the colonial militia and the conditions they overcame was one level of tough, the minutemen were a whole other level. They were the Navy SEALS of the Continental Army, as Young Franco would drunkenly drum to Joey back in the day. Ready at all times to get done whatever needed to get done. No matter the weather. No matter the lack of supplies. No matter the chance of demise. Franco’s favorite minutemen? The Blues. From where? Woodbridge. Motherfuckin. New Jersey.
:49… :48… :47…
The Jersey Blue galloped around the octagon with the kick of his old pony. As if the old pony was carrying the minuteman while he dug deep into the recesses of his brain. The minuteman dug and dug. And excavated a final advantage. Wisdom. Franco had been in enough barn burners to know the shared consciousness that comes across two fighters exchanging brutal blows. And the shared consciousness of him and The Prince concurred. This one was gonna be a to-the-bell slug-out. And that’s when Franco pulled the rug out. The thirtysomething able to hear the voice in his head a little more loud and clear with every year. The twentysomething before him still too much of a raging bull to see the way forward in full.
Franco absorbed a jab, ducked a hook, and shot on The Prince’s legs.
As they fell to the canvas, that chinny man in the front row fell into Franco’s view. The sight was enough to allow the pliable Prince to twist. And it was he who landed on top. While Franco fell to his back. Back to the guard. The Prince couldn’t believe his royal fortune. Thirty seconds to go, the fight won on all cards, and he had the wanker lying there like an itty-bitty baby.
:29… :28… :27…
The Prince pounded Franco to a pulp as the seconds wound down. It was so bad, those blue jewels recoiled into their cases. Like pearled oysters slamming shut as a shark attacked.
:13… :12… :11…
Ten. The hand The Dealer had dealt Franco coming into the match. Dealt him a mix of twos and aces over the past four rounds. Franco was sitting at 16. The shittiest hand he could have.
Meanwhile, the chap who once cracked his own wife beat Franco down likewise. To the very last card in the deck. Clubbed him like the king of clubs. Punched as hard as a queen’s diamonds. Spaded him like the jack of spades.
Then. That last card. One that Franco was watching from his back the whole time. The one at the bottom of The Dealer’s deck as he dealt The Prince royal cards left and right.
Words from Brazil rolled around Franco’s head. From countless times rolling on the mats. When your opponent attacks, he’s at his weakest point. Franco tried to capitalize on The Prince being five rounds in and on the attack. But Franco was spent, too. He wrapped his legs around the guy grounding and pounding him to a pulp with every last ounce he had.
Franco ran one leg along The Prince’s neck. Secured the hold with his other. A triangle to choke the bloke. Just one problem. It was secured by Franco’s ailing ankle. His ailing fuckin ankle that could never hold The Prince. Unless. Franco didn’t give a fuck about that ankle. Franco pressed. And pressed. And pressed. Well past the POP. An MMA first. A fighter who finished himself. Only Franco didn’t tap. Didn’t even let up. Only pushed it farther. Like that time he pushed his pony onto a snow-covered road. Barely avoided a wreck in Québec. Had to make the fight that night. For a night like this.
:06… :05… :04…
Franco looked out at his Jewels and only understood then what she went through the night she birthed their son. His queen of hearts. Watching her suicide king. As he pressed and pressed. Not even sure if he still had a hold on his ankle, it so infested with adrenaline. He did. Despite the astronomical mix of excitement and fear. Like the last time he held something this tight. When the doc handed him his baby boy. Franco’s triangle strangulation closed in like a satellite triangulation.
:03… :02… :01…
Franco looked to his corner. Through the haze of his hazels. TJ. Joey. Nelly. Brazil. Taz. All hanging over the cage. Shouting. Waving. Five racing hearts. Watching as the final card fell. The five of hearts. It touched down on the canvas along with The Prince’s submitting hand. Twenty-one. Franco had won.
As the 21 brought down the house…
All of Woodbridge went Insane in the Brain. From Colonia to Bunns Lane. From the project projector where Dragon and Lenore shared hugs with hundreds more. To the country club crew outtie in their Audis. Celebrating like it was a banger in Franco’s basement. Back in the day.
Franco took one step on his separated ankle, “Julie!” then went down like a ton of bricks in the middle of Brick City. He tried to army crawl. But he had given the fight his awl. Franco turned on his side. Raised his gloved fist to the sky. Damn. Of all the jams. He heard “Everything I Am.”
Franco’s 20,000 accomplices celebrated the heist at The Vault. They jumped up and down. Hugged it out. Chanted. “Fran-co! Fran-co! Fran-co!” There was an upper deck row of brothers. Who looked nothing like brothers. They hugged and high-fived as one of their own. Claimed the throne. There was the decked lady across the deck who buried her bawling eyes in her husband’s arms. After a final look at her son’s shoes. The red Asics slung over the champ’s corner. And there was the dyed blonde who put forth a day’s pay to watch one of her old students. Of awl her students over awl her years. It was him living her story. The story of little Shirley Lane. From Bunns Lane. She took off her designer glasses. Chalked it up as quite a twist. As she watched Woodbridge’s own…Oliver Twist. She wiped away a tear. And began to cheer.
There was the lady in the tenth row who was ten minutes late to seeing the tenth-ranked fighter. She had come to Newark. Straight from work. Her big blues blewn away by what they just saw. There was that chinny man in the front row whose wife hopped all over him. As if her own son had won. That chinny man who took out a nickel. Hard to say what year it was. It was turned to tails. He was amphibious like that. Across the cage st
ood an applauding man tall, dark, and handsome. He respected the fighter. And already had his king’s ransom. Next to him was a doughy man downing another dirty martini. As incoherent as the crippled cage fighters. Until a little brown security guard told him, Pay your fuckin check, mate. Then dragged his ass out. Put him in checkmate.
As his militia rushed in, General Franco looked to the hill he stood upon before the battle. He thought he was delirious. Thought he was seeing things. But no. Right there upon the hill. It was definitely him. The man himself. George Washington. Holding…a Dunkin’ Donuts cup.
Washington watched as the five patriots fell on their general. The American victory secured, he turned on his heel and headed home. For another night’s rest in Woodbridge. Somewhere other than the Cross Keys this time. Somewhere indoors. On his way out, Washington tossed his fuckin coffee cup. He was more in the mood for tea. Everyone in The Wood would be celebrating and so would Washington. Maybe he’d call up some old friends. Rent Room 112. Throw a little Woodbridge Tea Party.
Franco’s brothers-in-arms wrapped up in arms as they fell on him.
“That’s! My! Brother!” barked Joey as he embraced his brother. “You got more heart than Derrick from the Real World Road Rules Challenge!”
Franco lay on his back. His battered face about to pop. “Nah bro. You do.”
“You’re a bad man!” exclaimed Nelly as he wedged his way in. “In a good way.”
“That’s kinda what I been goin for,” moaned Franco.
Coach Nelson hugged the hell out of his guy.
“The kid from the Lane!” gushed Brazil.
“Looking like dee biggest bum on it,” teased Taz.
TJ made his way in front of Dad. But for the first time since he learned to talk, he was speechless. He finally eked out a “Dad…”
“Son.” Franco pulled T in by the back of his head. Held him tight.