by F. X. Toole
Dan waited for Tim Pat to leave for school the next day, then followed in the pickup from nearly a block back. Instead of going by way of Melrose, Dan and Brigid had taught him, Tim Pat dropped all the way down to Rosewood, then crept along the fence of the Wilshire Country Club. He danced through traffic on Rossmore, then headed for Arden Boulevard, and cut back again toward school.
Seeing Tim Pat weave through traffic had nearly stopped Dan’s heart. When the boy got a short block from school, he slid behind a hedge and waited. He peeked through the leaves, and waited a few moments more. With his books and his lunch clutched to his chest, he began to run to school. Dan sped up, and as he drew closer, he saw two boys on the far side of Arden, one white, and a bigger boy, whom Dan thought was maybe Mexican. The bigger boy was several inches taller than Tim Pat. Dan judged him at ten to twelve pounds heavier, and maybe two years older. A size and weight differential like that were huge to someone Tim Pat’s size and age.
The Latino boy ran across the street and jumped Tim Pat a half block from school. As other kids from Christ the King looked on, he knocked Tim Pat down, then bent down and yelled in his face. He snatched Tim Pat’s lunch, as Dan suspected he would, and yelled some more. As the big kid walked away, Tim Pat caught up to him and tried to grab his lunch bag back. The bigger boy raised his fist, while the white boy kicked Tim Pat in the leg. Tim Pat backed off, fury in his little face and his fists clenched. Dan knew this wasn’t the first time this had happened, knew that this wasn’t the same as when he was a kid—now even children carried weapons. Tim Pat had done the right thing to back off. But backing off was what had caused him to lose weight, backing off was putting worry in his eyes, backing off meant he’d always have to back off.
Dan decided to fill in some blanks. He waited in the pickup and watched as the boy who had attacked Tim Pat crossed Melrose. Dan followed slowly as the kid sauntered up to Gregory Elementary, which was just two blocks from Gower Street and Paramount Studios.
Dan waited for school to begin, and then approached Mrs. Krikorian, the school principal, about the bully. She told him that nothing could be done because the alleged incident had occurred off school property.
Dan said, “Alleged incident. You think I’m lyin?”
“I didn’t say that. Good day.”
That night, just as they were finishing dinner, Dan looked Tim Pat in the eye and asked, “So what’s this kid’s name?”
“What kid, Grampa?” The boy was clearly at a loss.
“The one who is beating you up and taking your lunch.”
Tim Pat looked down at his plate, as a blush of shame suffused his face. “I dunno—I mean I don’t know his real name. The other kids call him Tiger.”
Dan smiled and ruffled his grandson’s hair.
“Tiger, is it? Well now, I knew a Tiger or two in my time, when I was just about your age. And I learned what you have to do about kids like him.”
Tim Pat looked up, an expression of hope dawning on his face. There was also relief there. If anybody had the answer, it would be his grandfather.
“Only one way—you got to hurt this Tiger so bad that he will keep his hands to himself. You have to go at him. You can’t walk away.”
“But he’s biggern me,” said Tim Pat.
“You don’t have to be big to win.”
“I’m afraid.”
“Afraid of what?” said Dan.
“Of Tiger.”
“The worst thing he can do is kill you.”
That shocked Tim Pat into silence, but it was something he would never forget.
Dan said, “The rule is, you must fight according to the rules of the aggressor. He punches, you punch. He fights dirty, you fight dirty, except you fight so dirty he crosses the street the next time he sees you.”
Dan felt a thrill run through him when he saw a spark kindle in Tim Pat’s eyes.
Though Tim Pat knew his grandfather trained fighters, until now he had never shown an interest in the fight game.
“Grampa, I want you to show me.”
Chapter 3
Dan allowed Tim Pat to cock around in the gym on his own for a few days, wanted him to learn how much he didn’t know about boxing. The boy put on beat-up old bag gloves and, without thinking, flailed at the heavy bag. He tore skin from his knuckles. He surprised himself by how quickly he pooped out and had to sit down.
When it was time, Dan and Earl gave Tim Pat his first set of wraps, taught him how to wrap his hands. They supplied a serviceable pair of used eight-ounce professional fight gloves, and would later switch to ten- and twelve-ounce-bag gloves once Tim Pat got into condition and punched with force.
Dan, as always with a new fighter, and just as often with an experienced fighter, began with the floor, with the feet, with balance. He would also make proper breathing part of the formula. Tim Pat learned that he could move and punch. He also learned that he didn’t have to move excessively, learned that a quarter of an inch could be enough to slip a punch. Boxing was hard to learn, regardless of age, but once the fighter finds ways to mine boxing’s secret treasures, the pain of learning is worth it, and good fighters keep panning for more—especially when that “click” travels up from the fist to the shoulders, and the opponent hits the canvas like a lead bar.
Once Tim Pat developed stamina on the big bag, and learned the mechanics of punching, Dan bought a set of casters and attached them to an old chair. Dan or Earl would sit in the chair to be at Tim Pat’s level, using their feet to propel themselves around the hardwood floor while they called combinations and held the punch mitts for him. The boy developed a first-class jab and a cracking right, could go to the belly with it, or to the jaw. There wasn’t time to teach Tim Pat more moves. But he wouldn’t need them, not in a street fight, not if he stuck with what he was learning, and landed with power. On Saturday mornings, they took Tim Pat to a downtown gym, had him box with other beginners his own size so he would know what it was like to get popped. The little guys wore headgear and sixteen-ounce gloves that looked like leather balloons on them. Soon he and the Mexican kids became pals. They began calling Tim Pat “el Zorro Blanco,” the White Fox. His first bloody nose didn’t bother the White Fox one bit. Dan saw Brigid in his little face.
Earl had Tim Pat going three-minute rounds. Little guys his age only go one minute in competition. Earl was as tickled with Tim Pat as if the kid was his own.
Earl said, “We gone get respect, boy.”
Dan and Earl put more pressure on the kid, tried to rattle him, popped him with the flat side of punch mitts upside his ear to see if noise would shake him, to see if he’d back down. Tim Pat kept coming.
Tim Pat was in his fourth week of training. His grandfather had been driving him to school every day. Dan sat him down.
“You’re lookin good,” Dan said, “but this deal with Tiger won’t be easy, okay?”
“Okay.”
“If he knocks you down somehow,” Dan told him, “you got to get up quick so he can’t kick you. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“If you knock him down, don’t kick him, but if he tries to get up, knock him down with your fists again before he’s all the way up, and keep doin it until he doesn’t want to get up.”
“That’s dirty fightin, Grampa.”
“It’s the way he’ll fight you if he gets the chance, that’s the way it is. Remember what I said about fightin by the rules of the aggressor?”
“But this is against the rules of boxing that you taught me.”
“Fightin Tiger is not about boxing, okay?”
“Okay. But when are you going to stop driving me to school?”
“When I think you’re ready.”
A week later, Dan said, “Now you teach me.”
“Huh?”
“You explain the jab to me.”
Tim Pat made a face. “Well, first, see, you gotta stand like this with your dukes up and your chin down behind your left shoulder. Then you push hard with your rig
ht foot, off the ball, like this, and let the jab go quick, not hard. At the same time that you move in off the back toe, you make a quarter turn to the left; that lines you up again and makes him miss.”
“If you do it right.”
“If I do it right.”
Dan said, “What if the other guy’s moving, too?”
“You got to move with him,” said Tim Pat. “You can’t always throw a perfect punch, but if you got your balance, you can always throw a good one.”
“Attaboy,” said Dan. “What about the right hand?”
Tim Pat described it and did it. Dan held up his right punch mitt. He said, “One-two.”
Tim Pat made the move quick as a whip. Bang-bang, gunshots. While boxing with the Mexican kids, Tim Pat had also learned the rudiments of how to catch and counter. He loved to train, became a student of the game, watched Dan’s tapes of old fighters, sat with Dan and Earl and watched the new guys on TV.
“What about a one-two off a head fake?”
Tim did it. The fake was bait. Make the other guy think apple and give him an orange. Dan hugged his grandson.
“When can I walk to school again, Grampa?”
Dan dared to dream that this little kid might one day go where he had almost gone.
“Soon,” Dan said, “soon.”
The first day Tim Pat walked to school, he went the regular way, the Melrose way. He was already past the church and turning into school when Tiger made his move. Dan and Earl had taken Earl’s van by way of Rosewood. They sat thirty yards down the way and faced the action from Tiger’s side of the street.
Tim Pat was shaking. He hoped Tiger didn’t notice. Other kids on the way to school made a loose circle around them and watched, waiting for the usual outcome. Some were bigger than Tiger, but none stepped in to help Tim Pat. In the past he had hoped for help, but now he was hardly even aware of the growing crowd.
Tiger said, “Gimme that bag, sucka.”
“Take it away from me, punk.”
“Huh?” Tiger grunted, taking a step back.
Something had changed, but Tiger wasn’t sure what. The other kids were as astonished as Tiger.
Tim Pat started doing his footwork, circling his opponent, and said, “Go ‘head on, thief, try and steal it.”
Tiger threw a wild right hand at Tim Pat’s face. Tim Pat was waiting for it, slipped under it. As Tiger turned to charge again, Tim Pat tossed his lunch bag at his feet. Tiger didn’t know what to believe. When he looked down at the split bag, Tim Pat nailed him with a right-hand shot to the gut, just like Earl had said. Tiger gasped, doubled over, rocked back. Tim Pat hit him with another right lead to the chest bone. Tiger came back throwing wild, windmill shots, but they were arm punches that quickly tired him. One of the punches caught Tim Pat on the cheek and split the skin. When Tiger saw Tim Pat wipe at the trickle of blood, he was sure Tim Pat would quit. The other kids thought the same as they milled around, yelped and laughed. Tiger was able to grab Tim Pat, and tried to kick his legs out from under him, but Tim Pat broke the hold and spun away.
Tim Pat gave a head fake like the one he’d given Dan back at the gym. When Tiger went for it, Tim Pat hit him with a crisp one-two combination that bloodied the other kid’s nose and sat him on his ass. Tiger started to get up, but when he was halfway, Tim Pat cracked him in the face again, knocked him back to the sidewalk, where Tiger watched wide-eyed as his blood plopped onto his dirty sweatshirt. He made a rush to tackle Tim Pat from the ground, but Tim Pat was too quick for him. Tiger tried to stand again, but his knees wobbled, and Tim Pat fired two stiff left jabs to his forehead that put him back down. Tim Pat’s face was flushed, his freckles had disappeared into the red. It had all happened in less than a minute.
Tim Pat said, “Get up and I’ll knock you down again.”
Tiger stayed down. Other kids, all colors of kids, felt Tim Pat’s victory as their own, envied his scraped knuckles and swollen eye. Twenty-plus high-fives, even from girls. Tim Pat was on his toes. He was King of the Swings.
Other kids had lost lunches to Tiger, and two of the bigger boys stepped in for their own revenge. They tried to kick him, but he managed to scuttle away. Dan and Earl saw it and raced over to shove the kickers away. Tiger slumped onto his side. Tears streaked his cheeks. Earl herded all the kids toward school.
Earl said, “Go on, now, or I’ll tell Sister.”
That was enough, and the crowd broke up. Tiger had never been so glad to see grown-ups.
“Where’d you come from, Grampa?” Tim Pat asked.
Dan pointed. “Earl’s van.”
“Didja see me, Earl, didja?”
Earl said, “Boy, you made me proud to know the White Fox.”
Tim Pat said, “You see my fast hands, Grampa? I didn’t get tired one bit.”
“You’re the best, Timmy.”
Dan nodded over to the van and Earl nodded back. He guided Tim Pat back to it and both got inside. Tim Pat was suddenly aware of his swollen left hand.
“I forgot and hit him in his head bone, Earl.”
Earl patted him. “Now you know why fighters wear gloves.”
“Did I really do it okay, Earl, did I?”
“Damn straight ya did,” said Earl.
Dan helped Tiger up and wiped his face with a clean cloth from the van. The boy tried to keep from sobbing, but was unable to quiet his heart.
Dan picked up Tim Pat’s split brown bag, wrapped the cloth around it, and turned back to Tiger. The kid was staring at the bag.
“You want this?” Dan asked quietly.
Tiger nodded, but didn’t speak. Dan handed Tim Pat’s lunch to him. Tiger looked inside.
“Why have you been takin these little kids’ lunches, son?” Dan asked.
Tiger looked up, didn’t blink. “‘Cause’m hungry.”
Dan returned to the van. He had no feeling of victory, and knew Earl felt the same. At least Tim Pat had slain a dragon, and the odds were that he wouldn’t have to fight to keep what was his anymore. Dan used Earl’s car phone to call Sister at school. He told her the story. She was silent throughout.
When Dan finished, Sister said, “Sometimes that’s what it takes. Our Lord told us to turn the other cheek—but we only have two.”
Dan said, “I’m goin to put ice on my little guy, Sister, and if it’s all right, I’d like to give him the day off.”
“He deserves it,” Sister said.
Earl drove back to the shop and Dan iced Tim Pat’s hand and eye. The cut wasn’t big enough to be a problem but would leave a little scar Tim Pat would be proud of.
“I whupped him, Earl. He ain’t takin my lunch no more—ever.”
Earl said, “Ain’t nothin like winnin, baby.”
Tim Pat asked, “Was I really good, Grampa?”
“Like a champ!”
Looking back, Dan thought, oh so many times, that it should have stopped there. But he was a trainer; he had a fighter to bring along. It was Tim (as he now insisted on being called, except by Earl and Dan) who said he wanted to fight in the next “kids’ tournament.”
The idea scared Dan, but it also pleased him.
“What do you think, Earl?” Dan asked.
Earl turned and looked at Tim Pat. “It’s a hard row to hoe, boy.”
“Not for me, Earl,” Tim said. “You and Grampa are gonna train me, and we’re all goin to the top.”
Next day, ropes were whapping, bags were banging in the gym. The lights were up and the three-minute/one-minute timer was on. A dozen pro and amateur fighters were training. Five trainers, at one time or another, were yelling at them, either from outside the ropes during sparring sessions, or off in a corner trying to convert bad moves into good.
Tim Pat had warmed up and was sweating. His gloves were laced, and he was up on the balls of his feet. Earl fed off the kid’s energy, and began to feel like a pup himself. He pulled the rolling chair over, slipped his hands into the punch mitts. Other fighters stopped to watch, some to smile.
Many wished they had Earl in their corner. He called shots to Tim Pat, and the kid fired them nonstop.
“Jab. Jab. Double up. Do it again. Gimme three jabs. Jab. Three more. One-two. One-two. Three jabs. Again. Double up. Jab. One-two-hook.”
Tim Pat got the one-two off, his shots quick and crisp, but he missed cranking the hook because his balance was off.
“Damn!”
“Don’t cuss. Jab. Jab. Two of ‘em. Jab. Three, do it quick, bang-bang-bang. Two more. Two of ‘em.”
Tim Pat’s left shoulder was on fire.
“One-two-hook!”
Tim Pat missed the end of the combination again. He said, “What’s wrong with me, Earl?”
Earl said, “Not a thing. Hooks is a bitch.”
Tim Pat said, “You cussed.”
Earl said, “I’m sorry, I won’t do it again. Jab.”
Tim Pat jabbed until his left arm began to droop. He looked quizzically at his glove, then moved off to the side before dropping it. Earl liked seeing Tim Pat move out of range before dropping his guard.
Earl said, “Don’t worry about it, even small gloves are heavy for your size.”
Tim Pat said, “How about me throwin a lead hook, Earl?”
“Too soon. Lead hook comes once you got the regular hook right. When you get it, the lead hook’ll be easy.”
“Hooks’re hard, Earl.”
“Jab.”
Earl would stay away from the hook, let Tim Pat forget about it, would slip it in when Tim Pat wasn’t ready for it. He kept the kid jabbing and throwing the right.
“Jab, jab, one-two!” Earl stopped at the bell and said, “Like your granddaddy says, be slick. Set the man up. Make him think right, then you go left.”
Tim Pat said, “I got all that in my head, but I still can’t throw the hook.”
Earl said, “Watch. Bring the hook off the one-two, or off the jab, like this.”
“That’s pretty, Earl.”
Earl had Tim Pat demonstrate the move in front of the mirror in slow motion. He got it right, and Earl had him do it faster. Tim Pat got it right again.