"Hit the rope, Rob," Reuben called down. "Five rounds warm-up, then five hard."
Rob unsnarled a skipping rope from the pile and took a spot beside the middleweights. After three minutes the buzzer sounded; the middleweights rested but Rob kept on, sweat coming back now, trickling down the knobs of his spine. When the buzzer went again he kicked it up: running in place, double passes, crossovers. The middleweights matched his pace. In boxing gyms, an undercurrent of competition underlay all things: I can skip rope faster, run farther, move slicker, punch harder, fight prettier, absorb more punishment; my mind-body-heart is made of sterner stuff than yours. I can take you down any old time I want, better believe that.
Rob spied two of Top Rank's gym bums perched on the worn bleachers overlooking the ring. Gym bums were a common sight in boxing clubs: old trainers and managers, distinguished by their gray hair, chicken chests, and outrageous tales. You'll find the same breed in barber shops and Legion halls, anyplace men can get away with telling barefaced lies. Today's bums were a pair of grizzled fogies, one black, the other white. Rob never saw the two of them enter or leave, nor did he catch them singly: he'd break from training and see them rowed along a bench that'd stood empty moments before, huddled together as though coalesced from stale gym air.
"Now take a look at that," the white bum said, nodding at the heavyweight, Scarpella. "He's got a punch, yessir, I'll grant you. But now I trained a light-heavy, Johnny Paycheck, once knocked out a horse. Johnny had to pose with this racing horse, a photo op for his upcoming fight; he was smoking a cigar. Smoke must've upset the horse 'cause it blew snot all over Johnny's herringbone blazer. Wellsir Johnny near about knocked the poor beast into horsey heaven." He raised his right hand solemnly. "My hand to God."
Reuben Tully hammered the office window. "Two hundred sit-ups," he hollered down at his son, "and a hundred push-ups!"
Rob grabbed a medicine ball and sat on a mat worn to wafer- thinness over the years. He performed the sit-ups, twisting to work his adductor muscles. Then he flipped over and burned off knuckle push-ups, woofing out breath on each pop.
In the ring Tommy and Scarpella got to work. Scarpella was in his early twenties with ham-sized fists and a shovel-shaped head. He moved as though the ring were a town whose geography he sought to familiarize himself with, pushing his jab out with all the zip of a funeral dirge. Tommy let the kid maneuver him into a corner and bang his body before dropping his right fist, bringing it up through Scarpella's sloppy guard to thump him under the heart. Tommy was going to hit him again when the buzzer went. Like a factory worker who punches out the minute the whistle blows, he lowered his hands.
Rob couldn't help but smile. His uncle earned fifteen bucks a round as a sparring partner. He'd surrendered all dreams of boxing glory, fast cars, and HBO pay per views, the fame and pretty things. The biggest surprise was that it failed to eat at him: anytime he and Rob watched a title fight and one contender took a canvas nap, Tommy'd say, "Jeez, poor guy. Wouldn't want to be in his shoes."
Rob dropped back in on the gym bums' conversation.
"It's common knowledge," the other bum said, "that of all creatures to swim the sea or walk on land, horses have the thinnest of skulls. Thin as eggshell! Now a heavyweight of mine knocked out a donkey. The donkey head's mostly bone, brain no bigger than a walnut—takes a mighty biff. We were training down west of San Angelo and he'd been drinking. He was a Mexie and Mexies'll fight with two broke arms but are not at all keen on training. He's drunk and staggers out the gym. There's this old burro chewing cud; my guy goes to pet it— sour cuss bites him! Well didn't he smack that donkey and it tips right over, four legs twitching up at the clear blue sky. Hang me if I'm lying."
Neither questioned the other's obvious fabrications. Since every word that exited a gym bum's mouth was nearly by definition a lie, it was in their best interest to maintain an air of mutual acceptance, tolerance, or plain ignorance. Without lies, gym bums would have precious little to talk about.
"Robbie," Reuben said, coming downstairs and flicking his head toward the ring. "Quit eyeing your uncle Tommy. May as well watch a cripple fight, for all it's worth—gonna pick up bad habits."
"Well, aren't you a peach," Tommy said.
"You punch like a lollipop," Reuben told his brother. "Head down to the Legion, find some veteran to fight—some blind old biplane pilot. That's about your speed."
In riposte, Tommy laid his substantial weight on the middle ring rope and extended a beckoning hand. "Why don't you climb on in here and let's go a few rounds, Ruby? Tell you what—the first shot's free."
"I got training to do."
"You couldn't train circus fleas."
"How about you pinch that cut under your nose shut." Reuben demonstrated by pinching his own lips shut. "Give it time to heal."
"Ah...wah?" Tommy raised a glove to his lips, paused, then nodded."...good one."
Reuben smiled, the victor. "Robbie, don't you know it's impolite to stare at cripples? Go hit a bag."
Rob pulled on a pair of sixteen-ounce gloves and approached a duct- taped heavybag. Crouched low, left foot before right, and tipped forward on his toes, he snapped left jabs. He circled the bag, breaking at the waist, shouldering it, uncorking right hooks and doubling up on body shots.
All activity in the gym stopped when Rob hit the heavybag; everyone stopped and stared. He'd hear the whispers: Kid's got bottled lightning in those hands; a little of the ol' boom boom. Boy's so quick you couldn't hit him with a handful of sugar. Tall and in excellent condition, Rob weighed only 164 pounds. But his body had the characteristics of a puppy dog—big bones, huge paws—that indicated he had another growth spurt in him.
Tommy's sparring session drew to a close. Scarpella was wheezing like a busted squeezebox; Tommy patted him on the head and, picking up the same tune he'd been whistling climbing through the ropes, ' climbed out again.
"Don't load up so much," Reuben hollered at his son. "Power thrills but speed kills, Robbie. Get that through your thick head."
"Dogging him somethin' awful today," Tommy said to his brother.
"Mind your business," Reuben told him. "Don't hear me telling you how to drive forklift, do you?"
"Just seems that, Robbie was a dog, I'd be calling the humane society right about now."
"What's he made of, glass? Throw your sweatshirt on," he called over to Rob. "We'll hit the Green Machine."
The Green Machine was an olive-green '69 Dodge pickup donated to Top Rank under dismal circumstances: its owner, an ex-club member, was currently a guest of the state at Coxsackie penitentiary. The club could've found use for used gym mats or even foul cups, but the old green beater served no earthly good; it had sat in the crushed- gravel lot out behind the club for a year until Reuben devised a novel use for it.
Bolting a wooden beam to the cab roof and suspending an old heavybag from the end, he'd created an unorthodox training device. The bag hung four or five feet in front of the truck's grille: the visual effect was of the classic carrot-on-a-stick incentive, with the bag as the carrot and the truck standing in for the donkey.
"Get the lead out!" Reuben shouted at his son. "Quit doggin' it!"
Reuben hopped into the truck. The engine yammered and chuffed. "Come on, you old pig!" The Dodge shuddered to life; the cab filled with greasy exhaust fumes. He cracked a window and said "Put up yer dukes" as he slipped the truck into gear.
Rob backpedaled as the truck came at him at five mph; he threw punches at the frost-glazed bag chained to the beam. The idea was to punch while moving back on his heels—when pursued in the ring, he could lash out and catch his advancing opponent. To mix it up Reuben would set the Green Machine in reverse, forcing Rob into the role of pursuer. Around and around the crushed-gravel parking lot they would go, Rob alternately pursuing and retreating as his father hollered instructions out the window. The engine frequently died;
Reuben would mash the gas pedal and crank the key, beseeching Rob to "keep punching,
keep punching; your next opponent isn't likely to conk out like this damn truck!"
A few other trainers had added the Green Machine to their workout regimen, much to the chagrin of their charges. Boxers complained of sore hands afterward, especially when it was cold and the bag nearly frozen. Every so often the Green Machine vanished from the parking lot—it wasn't hard to steal, as the keys stayed in the ignition. It was always a boxer who'd taken it, frequently the night before his next training session. But the respite was short-lived: sooner or later the club would receive a phone call detailing the truck's whereabouts and Reuben or one of the other trainers would retrieve it.
Reuben goosed the gas pedal and the truck lurched forward. Rob ducked the bag nimbly, stinging it with a hard right hand. Watching his son through the crack-starred windshield, Reuben marveled, as he so often did, at his unstudied perfection. The way he moved, sly feints and weaves. Incremental movements, nothing frivolous or wasted. The beauty of his style lay in its geometries: the clean angular planes of his body, the straight lines by which he negotiated the distances between his opponent's body and his own. To watch Rob box was beautiful in the way a predatory cat stalking its quarry was beautiful: generations of selective breeding honed to a killing edge. Whenever he despaired that he was pushing his son too hard, Reuben convinced himself that boxing was Rob's life calling—how else could he be so damn good at it?
Of course, it never benefited a trainer to let his boxer know how good he looked.
"What's the matter," he hollered, "got lead in your damn feet? Pitiful, Robbie, just pitiful! Punch like that your next match, you better get used to the view from queer street."
Reuben's goading fell upon deaf ears. Rob knew he was a good boxer, a powerful and perhaps preternaturally skilled one: the whispers and stares told him so. But his skills also scared him. He'd never forget the first time he knocked a guy out: that bone-deep jolt traveling down his arm and his opponent's distorted face rippling from the point of impact, how his eyes closed as he fell away from Rob's glove. Afterward the fighter's trainer found three teeth embedded in the semi-soft rubber of his gumshield. In Rob's eighth fight, he broke his opponent's jaw. Felix Guiterrez was a fellow senior at his high school; he'd seen Felix in the hallway with his mouth wired shut, sucking Boost through a straw in the cafeteria. He felt guilty knowing what he'd done. But on an instinctual level it felt like something he'd practically been bred for—how else could he be so damn good at it?
Unlike some fighters, Rob was not powered by rage, fear, hatred, a desire to break living things. And while he trained hard and fought regularly, he possessed no true love for the sport. He boxed because his father had boxed and because his uncle still did; because his grandfather boxed and so on down the line back to the Heenan-Morrissey mill and beyond; because for generations the hands of Tully men had stunk of walnut juice. He boxed because the Tullys were fighting stock, and had been for as long as anyone could recall. He'd grown up in the gym among fighters; it had been a foregone conclusion that he'd become one himself.
After a half-hour Reuben parked the truck. He stepped out of the cab and booted the door shut—the Dodge's door and rocker panel were cratered with dents, the result of many years' worth of kicks. Rob didn't like it when his father hoofed the Green Machine; to him it seemed the equivalent of kicking an old trail nag who'd only done its job, albeit fitfully.
Reuben said, "You really screwed the pooch today, I don't mind telling you."
"I was concentrating on my footwork."
"And playing pattycakes with the bag. Trust me on this: no boxer's ever signed a million-dollar fight deal on account of his footwork."
Chapter 4
Paul Harris sat on bleachers overlooking an empty baseball diamond. Browned grass, sky the color of stone.
His face still bore evidence of the beating. Lingering yellow traceries ringed his eye sockets. No dentist, so still the open gaps in his smile. Paul hadn't set foot in the winery for a while now; instead he'd spent his days in the field with the pickers.
He'd rise at four o'clock, dress warmly, and slip past his parents' room out into the pre-dawn darkness. The pickers were up by the time he arrived: sitting around the tractor-hub fire, they kneaded tired muscles and wrapped their fingers in tape. The men cinched buckets to their waists and stepped out into the rows. Paul would thread a bucket's nylon strap through his belt loop and grab a box cutter, testing its sharpness by running the blade over his thumb. After finding a quiet row, he'd get to work.
He'd walk in darkness for a minor eternity before the sun rose over the vineyard. The rows stretched on forever: a span of twisted vines and frozen grapes. His right thigh became one massive bruise from the constant bumping of bucket against leg. The pickers were baffled: Wey you looka da bubu, they'd whisper. Nice wa'am office, fine caa and suits—ees out 'ere workin wid us! Paul was looked out for as though he were an accident-prone child: the pickers shared their lunches and taught him to wrap hot embers in tinfoil, dropping them in his coat pocket to warm his hands.
Late in the first week his father had found him in the fields. "What the hell?" Jack Harris asked his son. "I mean, what... the ... hell?'
Paul tugged a pair of ski goggles down around his neck; a figure eight of pale skin ringed his eyes. Jack Harris was puffing. Gobs of mud clung to his pant legs.
"This is goddamn ridiculous—mucking around in the slop."
"Thought I'd try something different."
"What's so different about it? People have picked grapes for centuries—that is until a few of us wised up and hired someone else to do it for us."
"It's honest work. The great outdoors. Fresh air."
"Fresh air? Have you been reading Iron John or something?" Jack looked ready to grab his son's arm and drag him back to the office. Harsh and forcible: jerk the ball-joint from his shoulder socket, if need be. But some fresh element in his son's bearing steered him off this course of action. "I know what you're trying to prove, but it's all a bit silly."
"Compared to what," said Paul, "that art show Mom dragged us to?"
"Oh, what are you bringing up that nightmare for?"
"It's the sort of thing I think about out here. Ridiculous stuff."
A few months previous they'd attended a conceptual art exhibit at his mother's request—the artist, Naveed, was the son of his mother's Pilates instructor. The opening gala was a black-tie affair at a downtown gallery; the exhibit was tided "The Commercialization of Waste." A huge vaulted chamber displayed various bodily wastes. Milk jugs filled with excrement. Jars of piss on marble colonnades. Egg cartons full of toenail clippings. A salt shaker full of cayenne pepper flakes—in actuality, scabs. Naveed was dressed in flannel jammies, the sort kids wear with the sewn-on booties. He made sure to clarify that every ounce of waste had been produced by his own body. The smell was ungodly. Everyone must have been thinking the same thing: Sperm in Ziploc bags and turds in milk jugs—this is art? Paul and his folks had left without a word.
"What I'm trying to say is," said Jack, "this environment doesn't suit you." He lowered his voice, as though fearful the vines were bugged. "What if someone sees you—a potential investor?"
Paul razored a grape cluster free and dropped it into his bucket. "No, I'll stay. This is real life, right? This is good for me."
"Vitamins are good for you. High colonics are good for you. This is idiotic."
But Paul felt better than he had in years. Up before dawn, ten hours of backbreaking field labor, collapse into an oblivious, dreamless sleep. The air was so cold and the labor so demanding that its effect was to flatten out his mind. Hours would pass without a single concrete thought: just empty, static wind gusting and swirling through his head, snatches of songs repeating themselves in an endless loop. The seething anger that so often manifested itself in other forms—as cold nausea, as nameless dread—was, if not erased, at least temporarily buried under the weight of physical exhaustion.
Jack grabbed the bucket at his son's wai
st and shook it violently. "I was out here when you were a baby," he said. "It was not good. It was miserable and torturous but it needed to be done so's I could get that." He pointed at the winery. "A means to an end."
"But you turned out all right, didn't you? Who's to say those days weren't the reason?"
Jack picked up a clod of earth and crushed it between his fingers. "Y'know, I said to myself, Let him go. I said, He'll come around. But you're out here all day and I may as well be living with a phantom for all I see you around the house. Your mother's worried sick—"
"Is she really?" Paul hadn't spoken more than two words to his mother in days; he wasn't altogether sure how she'd taken to his new endeavor.
"Sure she is," Jack said. "We're all worried. And I don't get it. Some shitkicker beat you up. Big deal. I never told you this, but I took a shit- kicking for a gas-n-dash years ago. This pump jockey whapped me over the head with a squeegee and had me seeing stars. Then he dragged me out behind the lifts and put the boots to me. I was in such bad shape he had to let me go: the cops would've booked me on attempted robbery, but I would've made damn sure he got booked for assault."
Paul laughed. "Why didn't you ever tell me?"
"Why the hell would I? It's not my habit to go around telling stories that cast me in an unfavorable light."
Jack looked at his son. In truth, the kid looked pretty good. He'd shed a few pounds and packed muscle onto his legs and shoulders; in all, he looked more like the son he'd imagined. Perhaps getting the stuffing knocked out of him had done him some good. Still, it was as if he'd taken a step down the evolutionary ladder—become stronger, harder even, but less cultured. Even now Jack could smell him: ripe and musky like the first whiff of a logger's shack. Problem was, his son's devolution was a threat to their shared futures. What self- respecting woman would marry a man who picked grapes all day and came at her with calloused, purple-stained fingers? How could he pass the business down to a son happy to occupy the lowest rung on the ladder when he'd been earmarked for the highest?
The Fighter Page 5