by Lynn Red
Crag shook his head, trying to figure out what in the world Marlin was talking about. Before he put much brain power into that dubiously useful goal, someone came down the hall, snorting loudly, and pushed open the door.
“Hey, uh, boss?” It was Ralphie, Marlin’s bookie-slash-accountant-slash-ass kisser. Crag got along with pretty much everyone, even Marlin somehow, but Ralphie? He couldn’t stand Ralphie.
Marlin sighed loudly, and popped open one of the flavored, canned, sparkling waters he habitually drank. “What is it, Ralphie? Don’t take too long with your stuttering, neither, we got fights soon.”
Ralphie swallowed three or four times and wiped the sweat off his tip lip with the back of a trembling hand. Crag hadn’t ever exactly figured out why he was so afraid of Marlin, but it was probably because everyone seemed to be.
After all, the crooked croc did have everyone in his “employ” by the balls, one way or the other. With Crag it was working off a debt. He shook his head, refusing to think about that anymore.
He had one fight tonight, and then he got to see that girl, Violet, that he couldn’t get out of his head. The same one he’d been letting run wild in his imagination since about twelve hours before when she stopped him cold.
She wants me to chase her? Crag thought. I’m not gonna let up until I catch her, until I have her for good. She doesn’t know what she’s got herself into, wanting me to chase her. But... I’ve never had anyone get in my head like this.
Sorry, boss, but uh, you know,” Ralphie snorted, breaking Crag’s brief respite from real life.
He knew he couldn’t chase her. Not after tonight. Train kept a-rollin’. Always kept a-rollin’. Unless he got away from Marlin and the fights, he’d never be able to chase Violet.
“No, goddamnit, I don’t know, Ralphie,” Marlin said, the wattle under his head shaking wildly. “Talk! We gotta go, come on, Crag!”
The unlikely threesome made their way from the trailer that served as Marlin’s office when they were on the road – which was almost all the time – and the makeshift stadium. Jamesburg was about an hour’s drive from where they stood.
That meant of course, that Violet was about an hour away.
Once again, as they tromped toward the busily-working road crew, with Ralphie stuttering and Marlin groaning at him, Crag could not stop himself from thinking about her. About the way her eyes flashed when she talked. He lingered for a second, remembering how her lips tasted when he finally kissed her, and how eagerly she’d kissed him back.
Crag closed his big, brown eyes, inhaling deeply. She was right there – Violet was an inch away – he still smelled her hair, that delicate aroma of some flower he couldn’t remember what to call.
“What are you smiling about, you big jackass?” Marlin snapped. “Weren’t you listening to any of that? We’ve got a problem and you’re going to solve it for me.”
Letting the imagined scent of lavender – that’s what it was, lavender – trickle out of his nose. He flared his nostrils, just a little. “No,” he said in his deep, bellowing voice. “What is it?”
“Breaker and that jobber from down south, they’re both sick.” The way Marlin said ‘sick’ meant something else. “Fuckin’ ingrates don’t know a good thing when they have it. Anyway, you’ll cover for them.”
Crag furrowed his brow and took another breath. “Weren’t they fighting each other?”
“Fuck!” Marlin shouted. “I don’t know, were they, Ralphie? I thought this was two different fights.”
Ralphie kept shaking. Crag always thought he’d make a great weasel. Unfortunately for Ralphie, he was just the way he was – not a shifting bone in his body.
“N – n – no, I dunno, boss, yes?” Ralphie stammered. “Let me look.”
“Look! Goddamnit, look!” Marlin swung one of his arms and knocked the schedule card Ralphie was carrying onto the ground. Ralphie stood and stared at him, eyes so wide that Crag thought for a second he was about to turn into a possum.
Crag laughed, but made sure to keep it to himself.
“You knocked it on the gr—”
“Pick it up!” Marlin shrieked, hitting Ralphie on the back of his head. Poor Ralphie’s hair went all over the place – literally – his toupee fell on the ground. “Pick it up and look!”
Ralphie didn’t bother responding until he’d set his hair back on top of his head, and looked over the card. “Yup,” he said.
Marlin let his jaw go slack, opened his eyes wide and shook his head back and forth so hard his jowls slapped. “Yup. Yup? All you say is ‘yup’? Yup what?” he was starting to turn a little green.
That wasn’t good.
Crag put his hand on his boss’s shoulder to calm him down. It usually worked. Especially since Crag outweighed him by about a hundred pounds of muscle.
“S – s – sorry boss,” Ralphie said. “I me – mean yup, they’re fighting each other.”
“Fuck!” Marlin shouted. “Okay here’s what we do. You got the main event again tonight, right?”
Crag nodded.
“So that means we move that fight to the beginning of the card, and instead of having those two chucklefucks, we’ll have Crag fight... do we have any extras tonight?” Marlin’s brain was working. He was hatching a plan.
Crag hated it when Marlin hatched a plan because it almost always involved him. After all, Crag was the one in the deepest. He owed Marlin everything and that slimy croc wasn’t ever going to let him forget.
Three years of desperate gambling to pay off debt ended with more debt. And since Crag didn’t have much to his name, he turned to a loan shark to make ends meet. The ends, they never met. The loan shark though, was standing right in front of him in a powder blue leisure suit.
Not like he had anywhere to go, anyway.
“Ralphie!” Marlin shouted. “Talk! Your lips, they move!”
“R – right, sorry, yeah, uh, we got three of them.” Ralphie had a pencil on the draft of the card, and was of course, trembling. “Kowalski, and The Butcher and—”
“I don’t give a shit who else,” Marlin said. “Crag’ll fight all three of them. Fuck it! Give these yodeling morons a show, huh?”
He slapped Crag on the back. As his short, repulsive owner’s hand thumped against his muscle, Crag tensed, wishing he could take Marlin on for once. Hell, that’d be the best show I can imagine, he thought, grinning inwardly. Ring his neck, throw him around the cage...
He let his fantasy get away from him for a minute and started squeezing his hands together, imagining Marlin’s squishy, jelly-like head between them.
“What the hell is it with you and the grinning?” Marlin asked, stopping in his tracks. “You look like some kind of lovesick idiot. I need you to put on your killing face tonight, get me?”
“Killing...” Crag furrowed his brow again. “It’s just a fight though. If I give it my all, I’ll kill those guys. I’ll beat ‘em up, but I’m not gonna kill anyone.”
“You will if I tell you to,” Marlin snarled. He grabbed Crag’s shirt and yanked, forcing the big man to bend over.
Marlin’s breath was sweet with the cigars he chewed all day, and a little sour from the constant stream of whiskey that went down him. “You listen to me, Crag, and you listen good. I know all your secrets, right? I know all about the two hundred grand you owe me, and about how you threw a fuckin’ temper tantrum and ran away from football.”
Crag squinted, but stayed silent.
Marlin slapped him across the face, leaving a red mark, but no pain. “Don’t think I won’t drop you off the side of the world on our next trip. I’ll leave you in the middle of some nothing-ass town and you won’t have a penny to your name. I’ll ruin you, get it?”
“Yeah,” Crag said. “I get it.”
That time, when Crag smiled, it was because he was hatching a plan.
As Marlin stepped away, and Crag made his way back to the lockers where he was going to finish taping up and getting ready for the hell th
at was about to explode, he couldn’t help smiling.
He reached inside the breast pocket of his loose-hanging flannel and fished out his phone. His finger hovered over Violet’s number on the call log. He wanted to tell her he was thinking about her. He wanted to hear her voice again, just to calm his nerves a little.
In his life, his rage took him over plenty of times, but he’d never met anyone who could calm him down.
Until Violet.
Smiling, he put the phone back in his pocket.
There wasn’t any reason to hear her voice. He’d tease himself a little longer, Crag decided.
He took a deep, lung-filling breath.
It wasn’t even a question anymore. He thought about Violet, his little fox.
He’d chase her, because that’s what she wanted. But there wasn’t a chance in the world that he wasn’t going to catch her.
Again.
That thought – that one thought – brought such a calm serenity over Crag Morgan such that he’d never felt before. He had no idea what it was, why he felt it, or anything else. But he did know that he wasn’t ever going to lose the little fox.
No matter what it took.
Crag squeezed his fist. For some reason, he felt like he was going to enjoy tonight. He just hoped that when he started to see red that he could pull it back. He’d always been able to stop himself before, of course... but all it would take was one time, one glance, one word from Marlin at the wrong time, and...
Well, he preferred not to think of that. Once more, his finger hovered over the picture he’d snapped of Violet at his cousin’s apartment when she wasn’t looking. He touched it, and stared.
Her eyes, that curious, wonderful purplish-blue that had hooked him like a drug the first time he stared into them... the delicate line of her cheekbones, and the soft curves of her hips. He took a deep breath and willed his heart to stop pounding.
Then, he reminded himself that he’d be with her before long.
Before long, he’d hold her hand, he’d kiss her again, and they could make love under the stars, in her bed, in the car – he didn’t care. Maybe, Crag thought, maybe they could maybe someday curl up in a place they could call home.
He was getting ahead of himself, sure. But he knew it, and honestly, Crag didn’t care. He’d made up a whole life inside his head that was just for him and Violet. A perfect world where there were no Marlins to yell at him, where there was no anger to pound in his temples.
A world where he didn’t have to fight except if he wanted to go to the gym and spar a few rounds. The world he’d dreamed up was a world where he could finally let his guard down. Be vulnerable, be happy.
What was the world coming to? Crag scoffed a laugh and swept his hair back away from his face, tying it into a short ponytail. A werebear who’d rather be vulnerable and cuddle instead of fighting and bleeding and roaring?
Even though, at right that moment, Crag couldn’t figure out quite what had happened to his mean streak, he did know one thing – just thinking about Violet made him happier than he’d ever been. Touching her? Kissing her? Making love to her again?
He had to put that out of his mind if he was ever going to manage to fight tonight instead of grabbing the guy he was in the cage with and dancing.
At that, he laughed. Laughed. How long had it been? He couldn’t even remember.
-15-
Crag
When the audience started roaring, Crag felt like Crag. The old, comfortable feeling of rage bubbled up inside him. Crag hid in his anger, hid when he fought. He didn’t have to be anything – didn’t have to be anyone. Didn’t have to feel, he just had to exist.
But for him, the fights were easy. He wasn’t scared – hell, he hardly even knew what fear was.
That is, until he laid eyes on her.
Violet, his little fox, the girl he had decided he wasn’t going to let get away. He’d done that too many times, thrown away too many chances. Not this one. Not the one that mattered most.
Grinding his teeth together, Crag remembered how her lips tasted when he kissed them, how the sweat on Violet’s chest felt running down his. He remembered the way his heart pounded in his chest the first time he saw her, and he remembered how much it hurt to have to leave her behind – even though it wasn’t forever.
It was like a piece of him got torn away. After their run through the forest, after kissing her again, after watching her climax and kissing her while she contracted on his fingers and whimpered... losing Violet was the only thing Crag... Ash... whoever he was, had ever really feared.
When he was alone, being quiet with his Violet, his heart was still. It didn’t burn, he felt no rage. Then, he was Ash. But right then, as he was waiting behind the slipshod velvet curtain that separated the lockers from the front of the house, he was alive with a whole different kind of peace.
He squeezed his hands until his huge knuckles popped. The tape underneath his thinly padded gloves squeaked a little more, but his habitual fist-clenching made sure it was ready to go.
Marlin – that sleazy, nasty, greaseball – was out in front of the house hyping up the crowd.
“Ya buncha country clowns!” the crocodile shouted into the mic with his fake accent. “You never... and I mean never seen anything like this.”
He always did this. Said it got the audience warmed up and mad. And then when they got mad they bought more beer, then when they bought more beer they bought more “shit from the nacho stand” as Marlin put it so nicely.
Slapping himself on either side of his face, he really became Crag. On the one hand he loved his parents for calling him something so perfect for his two careers – the first one in pro football that ended so badly, and now the one in the cage that was going so well. On the other, he hated that for everyone in the world except two people, one of whom was five years in the ground, “Crag” was all he was.
This was a weird night. A really weird one. There was no one in the organization anywhere near as big or as powerful as Crag, but then again, there weren’t any other werebears. He’d managed to keep that particular secret between him and Marlin for all the years they’d been together, but... one day it was going to slip.
But tonight he was going on twice. He was opening the night which never happened, ever. Marlin never wanted to play his trump card right away. But tonight, he wanted “explosions” as he put it.
Tonight was the sort of night Crag hated the most, though he tried to put it out of his mind. The fights were in Kentucky tonight, North Carolina tomorrow. That’s a hell of a jaunt, and so whenever they did this in a town Marlin was relatively sure they wouldn’t be going back to, it was “fire sale” time.
Marlin gave local kids a cut of the money they brought in to steal wallets, pick pocket people, nab purses from underneath bleachers and bring him credit cards. Whatever didn’t get spent at the concessions or on beer or on crooked gambling schemes run by Marlin-employed bookies got taken by... being taken.
Crag hated it, but he’d never seen any reason to get out of the life. For a long time he just quit caring. Waking up in the morning left him with the taste of ashes in his mouth.
After Violet? Those ashes were gone, replaced by the taste of her lips, the scent of her hair. It was the first time in years that he had hope in his heart instead of anger.
After he flew into a rage and destroyed the entire team’s locker room, Crag had just run away from football. His agent kept trying to get him to come back for a couple of months – he kept saying that sort of thing just happens – but Crag wanted out anyway. He wanted to be left alone. He didn’t want microphones stuck in his face, or questions thrown at him like he was a gorilla at a zoo.
He wanted to be back in Jamesburg, in a quiet little house, on the side of his mountain. That’s all he wanted.
Except now, there was something else.
Someone else.
Crag wished he could see her. He wished that he could tromp out into that cage, feel the blood rush thr
ough his body, swelling his muscles and his ego. Then he’d stomp the shit out of whomever it was he was thrown up against. One guy, two guys, six, he didn’t care. He’d wade through an army if he had to if it meant he got to have his Violet.
It was stupid, he thought. Stupid to pine over some girl. But goddamnit he felt like he had a real connection. One he hadn’t exactly had with anyone since his brother... but this was even more, even crazier. But still, he couldn’t stop himself.
He realized with a gulp that the next time he saw those gorgeous, pale, half-yellow eyes, those perfect hips, those beautiful curves, that he was going to tell her he loved her. If that wasn’t enough of a chase, he didn’t know what was.
Crag intertwined his fingers and cracked his knuckles by squeezing them together.
“Oh my God, look!” Marlin was shouting. “There’s a kid with a mullet halfway down his back! I ain’t seen one of those since the 80s!”
A round of boos and hisses was his reward. Something hit the side of the cage – probably a cup or a thrown beer bottle. Crag always thought the cage wasn’t really so necessary for the fights, instead it was just to keep Marlin safe from the audiences.
Still, they ate it up, and he wasn’t ever going to quit.
He saw the hand signal. Marlin had got them pissed enough that it was time for a frothing, screaming, rampage of a fight. He wiggled his fingers behind his back.
The house lights all shut off at once.
“And now,” Marlin crooned. “Something you’ll never see again. A man so big, so strong, that he’s pulled trees out of the ground. I know because I watched. But first, his opponents. Yeah, I said opponents, like more than one.”
Crag popped his thumbs inside his fists. He was ready. Even if he didn’t like everything surrounding the fight, this was a release he needed, one that he craved nightly. As much as he hated Marlin and everything else going on around the promotion, he had to admit to himself that he loved this part.