“Well, we better get the fuck out of here, then. You’re going to need some sleep, Old Man,” I said.
He shook his head and coughed a laugh. “Saddle up!”
As we rode to the hotel I wondered if there would be a chance I could fight the big fucker at the gym.
Ripp.
Fighting that guy would put me in a damned good mood.
One that just might last for the rest of the summer.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Spring 2014, Austin, Texas, USA
We went back to the gym to fight in the boxing matches we had signed up for, only to find out Ripp had been arrested and was being detained for murdering a man. The stories around the gym varied, and his best friend, the man who was scheduled to fight for the Heavyweight Championship of the World, Shane Dekkar, shared a little information which I suspected was the only real truth we would hear on the matter.
It was still unclear exactly what prompted it, but someone did something to Ripp’s little sister, and when he went to question the man who did what he did, the man pulled a gun. He reacted the way I probably would have by fighting the man, and somehow, in the fight, broke the man’s neck. Now in jail facing murder, his girlfriend, an attorney, was preparing his defense.
Although I really didn’t know Ripp, I felt compelled to talk to him about the challenges not of going to trial, but of living with the horror of taking another man’s life. There weren’t many people a man could talk to regarding such matters, and I felt I could offer him a little advice, possibly helping him accept what happened as being God’s will, and further allowing him to focus on the upcoming trial.
We proceeded with our fights as scheduled, with me feeling uneasy the entire time, knowing Ripp was being forced to deal with so much emotion. I recalled the first time I killed someone, and how difficult it was to accept it as being what was just, proper, and acceptable in the eyes of God. At the time, I had other Marines to talk to, men who had experienced the same things as I. Ripp had no one, or at least I expected he didn’t. Mentally, as we prepared to begin the fights, I considered staying in Texas for a while, hoping to provide Ripp a little support.
The small gym was crowded with people hoping to catch a glimpse of the local hero, Shane Dekkar. Erik knocked his opponent out in a matter of seconds, but his challenger was some kid with a big mouth and a jaw made of glass. As soon as Erik hit him once, the kid wadded up in a ball like a crab.
My opponent was a local who was about as big as Ripp, and twice as pretty. As the crowd cheered in anticipation of me losing my respective ass against the guy, we stepped to the center of the ring and touched gloves.
An extremely informal match, and really for nothing but fun, I had hopes of not only lasting the entire match against the guy, but giving the crowd one hell of a show. It was my understanding the money was going to a good cause, so I felt giving the crowd a good show would allow them to feel they got more than what they paid for.
As the bell rang, I shuffled to the center of the ring and studied my opponent. An apparent right-hander, or at least fighting right-handed, he was in for a surprise. I was ambidextrous, and could fight southpaw or right-handed. I stepped to him right-handed and waited to see what he had planned.
He swung an immediate right hand directly in front of my face.
I don’t know if that was for show or you intended to land it, but you were off a mile, Big Boy.
I leaned back, and as the punch passed my face, I swung an uppercut that landed against the bottom of his chin. A quick left hand to his ribs was rewarded with a shallow cough of breath from his lungs.
As I mentally prepared a left cross, he leaned into me and tried to hug me.
A three round bout for charity and you’re going to try and dance?
I shoved him off, and as our bodies separated, swung a left jab and a right hook, the first connecting with his lower chest, and the second with his mid-section. His wild punch that followed was countered by my left jab – again landing against his chest.
I thought they said you were a pro? I’m nothing but a retired Marine, let’s see what you’ve got.
I stepped away from him and waved my gloved hands toward my chest, indicating I was ready for a fight and he wasn’t bringing it. The small crowd began to cheer, and I heard Teddy begin to talk shit to my opponent. In an actual boxing match what I chose to do would have been considered extremely disrespectful. In the match we were fighting, it was enough to rile the crowd into a wild cheering session. He clenched his already tight jaw even tighter, and came to me like a madman.
It was just what I was after.
He swung a well-telegraphed uppercut, and I leaned back and let it fly by my face. As he stumbled from the shock of missing the punch completely, I leaned toward him and unleashed a five or six shot combination of punches to his face, connecting all of the punches solid.
The small crowd was in an uproar.
As he again began to stumble rearward, I continued with my advance, pummeling him with a series of punches, each one unanswered.
It was exactly what I needed. I felt alive. Every ounce of my frustrations that had built up over the years was being exerted with each punch. As I leaned forward for what I expected to be the punch to end the fight, the bell rang, signaling the end of the round.
Shit.
I went to the corner for a short breather, and was met by Erik and Teddy.
“Holy shit, A-Train, you’re fuckin’ that dude up somethin’ fierce. This fuckin’ crowd is lovin’ it,” Teddy said.
With a mouthpiece in my mouth and no trainer to remove, it, I simply nodded my head in agreement.
“You’re not even breathing hard,” Erik said with a laugh.
I did my best to grin and shrugged my shoulders.
I ran almost every day, and did strength and weight training on a daily basis. There weren’t many men at any age that were in better physical shape than I was, and I attributed it to my Marine training, and still living the life of a disciplined Marine.
As I mentally prepared to step back into the center of the ring and give the crowd what they seemed to enjoy, an elderly man ducked under the ropes and waved his hands.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, this fight is over,” he said.
I widened my eyes and shrugged my shoulders. With his eyes fixed on mine, he shook his head from side to side and walked to the corner of my opponent.
Well, fuck.
After Erik unlaced my gloves and removed them, I pulled my mouthpiece. A few seconds later, and the old man in charge of the gym was outside the corner of the ring beside Teddy and Erik.
Standing beside Erik in sweats, a silk jacket with the gym’s logo on the back, and Kelsey stitched on the front, he pressed his hands into his hips and shook his head. “Jesus Christ. Ripper said you were some Army guy that fought on a military base. You were beating the hell out of my boxer. Just who the hell are you?”
I grinned at his question and did my best not to sound arrogant in my response. “I’m a Marine, I wasn’t in the Army, Sir. And I’ve fought a little.”
“You’ve fought a lot,” he growled, his voice old and gruff. “That guy you were educating on the sport is a local who was undefeated and we’d like to keep him that way. His trainer stopped him from a serious old fashioned ass whipping, that’s for sure. You ever think about considering boxing as more than a hobby?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I might.”
“Let me know,” he said with a nod. “And that’s a mean left hook you’ve got.”
I nodded my head toward him as he turned away. “Appreciate it.”
“But you need work, a lot of work,” he growled over his shoulder as he walked away.
As I stepped away from the ring and toward the locker room, I considered what he asked. I had planned on leaving Kansas, coming to Texas for seven to ten days, and going back to Kansas. Considering Ripp’s situation and my need to find an outlet for my frustrations associated with the war, maybe
making a few changes would be in my benefit.
As Erik and I changed clothes, I made up my mind. I didn’t say anything to him just yet, but I decided to stay in Austin.
At least for a while.
I knew one thing for sure – the more space there was between my ex-wife and me, the better off I would be.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Summer 2014, Austin, Texas, USA
The MC rode back to Kansas, leaving me in Texas. It was understood when the time came to start a chapter in Austin, I would be the president of the chapter. After a few trips back to Wichita to get my truck and most of my belongings, I was happily living in a rental house in the sunny state of Texas.
I found the people of Texas to be quite different than the residents of Kansas, primarily due to their hospitality. While riding my motorcycle down less traveled county roads, off of the highways and interstates, everyone waved at me as if they knew me. While walking past someone in the grocery store I was generally met with a howdy or how are you doing? At first, I dismissed it to the people I was encountering being intimidated by me and their hospitality, at least in person, was done in an effort to comfort themselves. After multiple daily trips to the store to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, and seeing nothing change, I realized it wasn’t done out of intimidation or fear, but simply out of kindness.
I quickly developed a friendship with Ripp, finding him to be someone who caused me to feel comfortable in his presence. His offered friendship was genuine, and although I would have guessed no one could be, he was funnier than Teddy. It was our common bond of dealing with the taking of life, however, that immediately brought us together.
I found another friend in Shane Dekkar, and the old man that managed the gym but claimed to be nothing more than a trainer, Kelsey. Kelsey was gruff, unwilling to smile, and had an all business attitude, but as difficult as he probably was for most people to understand, I felt I knew exactly how he felt.
His stern attitude was a front. He cared deeply about the men he trained, and he took their success or defeat as his own, leaving him no room for an outward friendship. Personally, I admired the man greatly. I found it entertaining that every time he saw me in the gym training, he asked what I was doing there. He fully realized what I was doing there, but his opinion was that I wasn’t going to stay in town for long, leading him to antagonize me about it.
I felt a slight guilt, at least initially, about being away from Kansas, which I had always considered to be home. As time passed, I realized as an adult, I had spent all of my time at war, and if I had to claim a place as home, it would be in the war-torn country of Iraq. For the time being, I accepted Texas as my home, and did so without reservation.
My mind seemed to quickly clear itself not of the images of war, but of thoughts of Suzanne. After considerable thought, the love I had always believed I felt for her was dismissed as comfort. I met Suzanne when I was young, and although I wouldn’t consider myself as ever being a foolish man, I came to believe I attached myself to her to replace what I was missing in my mother’s absence.
Suzanne supported me. She comforted me when I came home from the war after each deployment, cooking me meals, holding me in her arms, and providing me an ear willing to listen and a mind hoping to understand, rarely challenging me or my thought processes.
In short, she was a motherly figure to me.
In the days leading up to and including Ripp’s trial, I felt different. I would never be able to change who I was or what I had done, but my mind, soul, and spirit felt as if they had opened up, revealing a new me. A person who had, in the almost two years since I had left Suzanne, become willing to allow myself to once again feel emotion and become more human and less mechanical.
I knew I would always remain methodical, and slightly OCD in my behaviors, but I hoped the way I was feeling would remain for a lifetime, allowing me to be at peace with myself, the war, and the decisions I had made.
I learned in the time I had spent with Shane that he met a woman who was in an abusive relationship, and that she eventually left, but only after her partner of ten years decided to beat her unconscious. At the time, Shane and the woman were simply good friends, and Ripp, as any true friend would, refused to let Shane react to the situation.
He insisted on handling it himself, for fear if Shane tried to resolve it, it may tarnish his career as boxer, and more than likely would land him in jail. A true friend, doing what he felt needed to be done to protect his friend and brother.
In dealing with Shane’s wife’s abuser, Josh, Ripp lost his temper and hit the man in the face with a hammer, knocking out almost all of his teeth. He followed up by cutting off the man’s index finger with a pair of shears, and took the finger home as a prize.
Hearing the story, I couldn’t help but laugh, because it sounded exactly like something I would have done. Now, however, with Ripp seemingly winning his trial against the charge of murder, the prosecution was calling the former lover of Shane’s girlfriend, the man with the missing finger, to the witness stand.
It appeared the prosecutor felt the fingerless fool’s testimony would convince the jurors of Ripp’s desire to resort to violence in an effort to solve problems. The problem, in my mind, was not Ripp. It was the two men who had abused the women. One Ripp’s sister, and the other Shane’s girlfriend.
The comparison between Ripp and me came easily, me protecting my Marines, and him protecting his sister and best friend. He was willing to go to any length, including taking a life to protect the people he loved.
And so was I.
Very few men shared our opinions, ability, and willingness to act. Although I had no experience in losing my freedom, I likened being in prison to being dead, and believed if someone like Ripp was going to spend a lifetime in prison for protecting his sister, the sentence should just as well be death.
Watching a friend die wasn’t something I could ever do.
I sat in a park south of the South Congress Bridge and waited for sunset. 750,000 pregnant female bats showed up every spring, each giving birth to one offspring. For the entire summer, 1.5 million bats lived under the bridge, coming out on a nightly basis to hunt for their food. The sight of the bats leaving the bridge was peaceful for me, horrifying to some, and a ritual for others.
There was no doubt people’s perception of the nightly event was different. Each night, the bats flying out from underneath the bridge by the hundreds of thousands at the same time darkened the still sunlit sky to black, providing a perfect comparison between dark and light. Many considered the bats evil, carriers of disease and transmitters of rabies. I found them to be far from it – a necessary evil of this earth – ridding the planet of bugs that were a greater nuisance than the bats themselves.
As the sun lowered itself over the tops of the downtown buildings, a wave of bats blackened the sky as they flew in formation off in the distance to find their meal of a few flies or other flying bugs. I thought of the bat population doubling, and that for each adult bat, there was an offspring. Each year, from what I had learned, the mother bats returned, but the offspring did not; leaving the parent and the child separated for a lifetime.
As much as I distanced myself from some, distancing myself from my true friends or family for a lifetime seemed like an impossible task, and as I watched the last of the bats flying out over the river, I realized I had, although not necessarily intentionally, separated myself from my father since the end of the war.
Be it from embarrassment or from a desire to keep to myself regarding the events of the war, I differed very little from the bats. I sat, staring at the bridge, realizing the bats would soon return to their home – but wondered when, or if, I ever would. After a few more minutes, the sun went down completely, and the sky darkened into blackness.
I stood, walked to my motorcycle, and once again felt as if I was right where I needed to be.
In the home I had created for myself.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Summer 2014
, Austin, Texas, USA
I parked a considerable distance from the home and walked up the block. As I approached the driveway, I verified the address, walked to the garage, and removed the length of wire from my pocket. After fishing it through the upper trim on the garage door, I released the security latch, raised the door, and walked inside.
The entire process took no more than a few seconds. Breaking into someone’s garage took a matter of seconds, and as long as they left their door from the garage to the house open, getting in the home took no more than turning a door handle. It amazed me how people never forgot to lock their front or rear door to the home, but historically left the door leading to the garage unlocked.
I walked to the door leading into the home, turned the handle, and grinned as it opened.
Based on my study of Josh, he should have been arriving in roughly thirty minutes. I calmly walked into the home, sat down on the living room couch, and waited for him to come home.
As I heard the key in the front door, I slumped in the seat and waited for him to come. After confirming he was alone, I stood from the couch and began to walk in his direction.
“What the fuck? I’ll give you whatever you want,” he said, no doubt confusing me for a burglar.
Holding my pistol in my right hand to help convince him I was serious, I spoke calmly, but with a convincing tone.
“I’m not here for your belongings. I’m here to make sure your testimony tomorrow doesn’t land my friend in prison,” I said as I walked toward him.
“I uhhm, I…” he stammered as his eyes shifted to my pistol.
“Listen, I’m going to make this simple,” I said as I placed my pistol on the kitchen counter.
“I won’t testify,” he murmured.
I gazed over the counter and nodded my head. “Yes, you will.”
“And,” I paused and shook my head from side to side as I studied him. “Unless I ask you to speak, do not speak again, or I will cut off one of your ears.”
Hard Corps (Selected Sinners MC #7) Page 8