The Fighter

by Craig Davidson

  "I'm not saying that. I'm only saying it doesn't appeal to me."

  "Suffering for the sake of suffering—we didn't raise you Catholic, did we? And you could have gone your own way at any time, but you were scared to. Like you said."

  "That's true."

  "Scared of what, Paul?"

  "Of everything."

  "And after all this what's really changed?"

  "Everything else."

  "Has it?" Jack slid the money across the desk; he pushed down on the stack with his fingertips, forcing Paul to pull it from under them. "Strikes me as a pretty familiar dynamic."

  "This is the last time. And I'll pay you back."

  "Don't worry about it. This isn't a loan."

  Jack had the air of a man who'd come to an awful realization: that nothing he might do for his son, here and now or tomorrow or the next day, would really matter. The realization that a man could spend his whole life climbing onto crosses to save people from themselves, but nothing would ever change. And finally, the understanding that all human beings—even fathers, even sons—were each as alone as dead stars and no amount of toil or love or litany could alter by one inch the terrible precision of their journeys.

  "I'll need my passport," said Paul. "And something to wear."

  "Your mother holds on to passports. In her files upstairs."

  "I don't want to wake her."

  "Your mom," he said, "isn't living with me right now. This ... what's been happening ... hasn't been easy on her."

  "I didn't know. I'm sorry."

  "Nothing to be done for it now. She'll be fine—your mom's a strong woman."

  Jack led Paul upstairs. Signs of neglect abounded: a collection of neckties looped around the banister, a stack of dirty dishes at the top of the stairs. "Maid's got the week off," he joked.

  The bedroom was a pigsty. Heaps of soiled clothes. Greasy Chinese takeout boxes. Jack hunted through Barb's dresser, found Paul's passport, and flipped it to him. He snapped on a light in the walk-in closet and found something to fit Paul.

  "Might be the first suit I ever bought." Jack held it up: cream-toned polyester with wide, winglike lapels, a black open-throated shirt, white vest, white pants. The sort of thing John Travolta wore in Saturday Night Fever.

  "I think it's what they call vintage." Jack ran his finger down a lapel, yanked it back as though cut. "Get a load of those flares—sharp."

  "It's spiffy," Paul said. "I've got to go, Dad."

  "Places to go, people to see, uh? Can I ask you something, Paul? Was I... your mom and me .... were we ... ?"

  "Whatever you may think, none of it is your fault. I don't blame you for any of this, and I don't think there's anything you could have done to stop it. I am what I am because I made myself so. You did the best you could with me and that's all I could have ever asked. I have no excuses for what I am or what I've done or what I've put you through."

  "Need to borrow a car?"

  "That would help."

  "You know where the keys are. Can't promise I won't call the cops the second you're gone to report it stolen."

  "You can't save me, Dad."

  "And I know that, son."

  Chapter 14

  Reuben Tully paced his brother's hospital room, acridly awake. Tommy had been moved to a room with oatmeal-colored walls; he shared it with five—five!—other patients. The ringing splash of urine in bedpans so loud it sounded like someone pissing directly in your ear. Even the meals were crappier. Discount Jell-O. No Name tater tots. Next thing you knew, they'd wheel Tommy's bed out into the hallway.

  Reuben sorted the day's mail. Bills, bills, bills. Tommy's employer wasn't kicking in a cent to cover hospital costs: the accident occurred off-premises, so they weren't liable.

  Kate arrived with coffees. "Thanks," Reuben said, taking his cup. "Any idea where my unreliable lug of a son is tonight?"

  Kate went over to Tommy; gently, she smoothed the lank hair across his forehead. "It's strange," she said, "he looks so restful."

  "Robbie?" Reuben said.

  "I talked to him this morning." "Oh, he still talks? News to me. I can't get two words out of him." He took note of the look Kate was giving him and said, "What?"

  "This isn't easy for anyone, Reuben."

  Reuben bristled. "How am I supposed to make it any easier, he doesn't talk to me?"

  "That's Rob's problem. He doesn't say what he feels."

  "So, what—he's telling you how he feels?" Her noncommittal shrug made Reuben's hackles rise. "You've been here less than a minute and already you're getting on my nerves. And what's with this 'Reuben' stuff? What happened to Uncle Ruby?"

  Kate flipped him a look: spare, flat. "You know, Rob would never say this, so I guess it falls to me—"

  "And what's that, Kate?" Reuben challenged. "What is it he'd never say?"

  Then Fritzie Zivic was saying, "I brought him here directly," and both Kate and Reuben saw Rob in the doorway, Fritzie standing over his shoulder.

  Rob's hands, Reuben thought. Something's the matter with my son's hands.

  Zivic held his hat to his chest like a policeman come to deliver grim tidings. "I didn't know what he was doing till it was a done thing."

  Rob's hands were bundled in a grimy towel. The towel was dark. The towel was red.

  "What's happened, Robbie?" Reuben struggled against a rising tide of dread. "What have you done?"

  Rob seemed to have aged dramatically in the hours since Reuben had last seen him. The skin ringing his eyes was of such shocking whiteness Reuben felt as though he were staring into the headlights of an approaching vehicle.

  The towel was drenched. The towel was...dripping.

  "Rob ..." Reuben touched his son's shoulder. "What...?"

  Except he knew. From the moment he glanced up and saw his son in the doorway—knew. Where he'd gone, what he'd done, and why. For Tommy's sake, yes, but more than just Tommy.

  And how long had Reuben known—really known? For years. The evidence had been everywhere: in his son's every forced acceptance and grudging nod of consent, every time he'd pulled a punch to spare an opponent or took a punch where he could have given, the forlorn and defeated air with which he laced his boxing shoes. Of course he'd known. Why else would he have been so unrelenting? To push Rob past the point of resistance, after which he'd settle into his role. Jesus, nobody was taking his life away: he would box until he was thirty, maybe thirty-five. Reuben would manage him carefully, bring him up the right way so he could retire with his brain intact and enough money to spend the rest of his days in comfort. On the streets he'd hear "There goes the Champ!" and he'd die knowing that part of him would remain on this earth—in the record books and archived footage—forever. This was Reuben's plan: a wise and reliable plan. A plan for the future. The family's future. And yet always he'd known, in the greater part of his mind and soul, that his son had never accepted his role.

  Reuben and Kate guided Rob to a chair and sat him down. Rob stared, with a gaze of deep absorption, at the halogen lights overhead. Slowly, with great care, Reuben peeled sodden toweling away.

  "Oh, my... oh ... oh ..."

  What they saw resembled nothing so much as what might be found clogging the filter of a slaughterhouse sluice grate. Meat. Red and flayed and broken meat. Everything tangled up, enmeshed, no one part all that distinguishable from the next. Reuben marveled, with knife-edged sickness, at the fortitude it must've taken to commit an act of such desperate aggression against oneself.

  "My god, Rob ..."

  Reuben could not take his eyes off his son's hands. What if they healed that way, skin grafting and bones setting into a scarred lumpen ball? Would they ever be right again? Not right enough so he could box—there was no way he'd ever step inside a ring again—but right enough to grip a pencil? To tie his own shoelaces?

  "I'm sorry," Rob said. "I'm so ... sorry."

  "Sorry? No...you don't have to be sorry. You don't ever have to be sorry."

  "I didn't...
couldn't do it. For you and Tommy and everyone I wanted to but I couldn't anymore and I'm so, so sorry."

  "It's okay," Reuben said even while he felt his whole world collapsing, all the things he'd striven for coming down around his ears. "It'll be okay."

  Reuben set his arms around his son's shoulders. Rob's every muscle tensed; his entire body quaked. Reuben had no idea as to the precise sequence of the night's events, what his boy had been through since they'd last spoken. He only wished he'd known of Rob's intentions: if not to stop him, then at least to have been there for him—his father, instead of some neighborhood bum like Fritzie Zivic. Christ, what were they going to do? Rob was a smart kid, hardworking, but college? No way could he afford it. So what were his options: pouring concrete, snaking toilets, hammering two-by-fours. The same ones open to every go-nowhere do-nothing slug in town. For a soul-destroying instant Reuben pictured his son at the bakery with a bag of enriched flour on his shoulder. Flour in Rob's hair and ears, gathering at the sides of his eyes.

  "You didn't have to do this," he said. "You could have told me."

  But was that really true? Perhaps there was no other route his son could have taken: only an act of this magnitude—an act of zero recourse— could steer him off the path he'd been set upon. Bonds of family are the fiercest, and can only be broken by the most extreme strokes.

  "We'll be okay." If his words lacked conviction, at least his voice was steady. "We'll figure all this out." He touched his lips to Rob's forehead. "You need a doctor. Kate, stay here."

  Reuben shot Fritzie an unforgiving look as he shoved past him out into the hallway. "I'll go with your dad," Fritzie said meekly. Murdoch padded into the room and sat by Tommy's bed; he started to chew on a dangling IV tube.

  Rob could still feel the lingering wetness of his father's lips on his forehead. When was the last time his dad had kissed him—as a baby?

  Kate's expression was caught somewhere between dread and wonder. "You've destroyed them," was all she could say.

  "I'll never box again."

  She smoothed the sweaty hair on his forehead. Though the sight of his hands obviously made her queasy, she smiled.

  "What are you smiling at?"

  "Nothing. They look awful, Tully. A busted jigsaw puzzle."

  "You're still smiling."

  "I know I am. I'm sorry. I don't know why."

  Rob found himself smiling as well. Still in shock, he figured. He glanced at Tommy and wondered what he might make of all this, were he awake. Then he thought of them in their little house on 16th Street. Sitting on the porch with his uncle on a warm summer's night: a cold soda, the fireflies and stars. Brief, sure, but then the good times always seemed too brief. Who was he to ask for any of it over?

  "Do you want me to get you anything?" Kate asked.

  "Just sit with me, okay?"

  His hands were blazing. He heard the whisper of Tommy's breath. He sat with his uncle, each man in his own place.

  Both of them waiting.

  Chapter 15

  Paul drove the QEW north toward Toronto. He'd taken his father's Corvette Stingray—why the hell not? The highway was empty and quiet; Lake Ontario swept off to the east and nightlong valleys twisted west to the escarpment. Over the Burlington Skyway, past Stelco smokestacks pumping effluvia into the charcoal sky. He tuned the radio to NEWS 640: Earlier tonight, an explosion rocked the InoDyne Animal Testing Center in midtown Toronto, leaving four dead. A rogue animal rights group has claimed responsibility for the blast....

  He felt queasy and pulled over, jerking the door open in time to puke a stream of yellow gruel over the breakdown lane. Three great heaves from the gut. For thirty seconds he stayed that way, his body leaning out over the dirty slush, but that was it. He was empty.

  The Corvette skirted the city on the Gardiner Expressway. The slender spike of the CN Tower, the bleached bubble of the SkyDome. Three o'clock in the a.m.; spider legs of pale pre-dawn light skittered over the horizon.

  Pearson airport sprawled across a flattened scrim on the city's western edge. Shark-colored planes eased down on gentle trajectories to meet halogen-lit runways.

  Paul parked in the short-term lot and killed the engine. He grabbed his father's suit off the passenger seat, tossed the keys under the seat, and set off toward the international terminal.

  Once inside he made a beeline for the nearest restroom. He shucked his clothes and donned the button-down shirt, trousers, and flared jacket. He stuffed his old clothes in a trash can and kept only his sneakers, rinsing them under the tap to wash away the blood.

  He considered himself in the mirror. The suit made him look like he'd wandered off from a Captain & Tennille theme party.

  He grabbed a handful of toilet paper, wet it, and wiped his face. The paper clumped and shredded; bits snagged on his stitches. When he finished he looked, if not presentable, then at least human. Grabbing the stacks of money off the countertop and stuffing one into each pocket, he headed into the terminal.

  The departure board loomed above the ticket counters. Destinations ticked past: Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney, London, Moscow, Barcelona, Sao Paulo, Caracas, Monterrey.

  Eenie, meenie, minie, moe, catch a tiger by the toe...

  Edinburgh.

  ...if it hollers...

  Cairo.

  ...let...it...go...

  Napoli.

  ...eenie...

  Tokyo.

  ...meenie...

  Rome.

  ...minie...

  Kabul.

  ...moe.

  The girl behind the Thai Airways counter clocked his approach with a mixture of professional decorum and abject horror: a wretched ghost in a cast-off leisure suit who wouldn't have looked out of place haunting an abandoned discotheque.

  "I'd like a ticket to Bangkok. Your earliest possible departure."

  The ticket agent cleared her throat and asked mildly, "Will that be round trip?"

  "One way."

  Her lacquered fingernails tapped the keyboard. "Our next flight departs in one and a half hours. Business or personal, sir? The Customs officials will need to know."

  "Ever seen a guy more in need of a vacation?"

  The ticket cost $3,400. He paid cash and headed toward the departure gates.

  "Sir?" "Hmm?"

  "You're bleeding a little."

  The terminal was deserted. A janitor guided a miniature Zamboni across the floor, leaving strips of wetly polished tile. Through soaring plate-glass windows he saw mail jets and freight carriers taxi into lit bays. A family dressed in Hawaiian beach finery was sprawled over some padded benches. Paul wondered whether he'd be allowed through airport security. He was a little beat-up, sure, but it didn't make him a flight risk—did it?

  He lay out on a bench and slipped into an exhausted sleep and dreamed he was on a trawler.

  It was nighttime; penlight stars winked. He stood on the gunwale but could see no horizon, no line where water gave way to sky. The water was shiny as patent leather and so depthless he felt a touch of vertigo.

  "There you are."

  A man clambered up a ladder from the engine compartment. His face was squarish, knotted, weather-roughed. White powder had dried to a crust around his eyes.

  "You were expecting me?"

  "I was, eventually," the captain told him. "Wasn't sure what you'd look like—it's tough to tell from the inside."

  "I'm sorry—inside what?"

  The captain walked to a boom jutting off the starboard side. He picked up a tin bucket and dipped it over the side. When he set it on deck Paul knew at once that it wasn't water in the bucket. Too dark, syrupy, and red.

  "Inside of you," the captain told him. "Your heart."

  The vista reconfigured to fit this understanding. No horizon: only the curved rim of Paul's aortic chamber. What he'd mistaken for stars were gleaming white nodules lodged in the meat of his atrial walls. The opening and closing of his pulmonary valves created soft waves. Like being in a massive unders
ea cavern.

  Paul placed his hand on his chest: not the slightest tremor.

  "My own heart." There was no reason to doubt it. "Am I dead?"

  The captain considered it, then shook his head. "Neither you nor I would be here, that was the case."

  "How long have you been ... ?"

  "As long as you've been," the captain said, simply.

  "And are there others like you," Paul asked, "in... other parts of me?"

  He shrugged, as if Paul had tendered the prospect of life on remote planets. He bit the end off a cigar, spat the stub overboard, and lit it with a wooden match.

  "I'd really rather you didn't," said Paul.

  "This?" The captain indicated the cigar. "My friend, it's the least of your worries."

  A winch was attached to the boom and the captain cranked it; wet rope wound over a metal drum. He cut Paul an exasperated look. "Pair a broken arms?"

  Paul took hold of the winch. The currents were stiff; he was sweating before long.

  "What are you fishing for?"

  "Not fishing," the captain told him. "Dredging."

  A net rose from the dark bottom of Paul's heart; the captain swung the boom and spilled the catch over the deck. Amidst the pulpy tissue and clotted blood monstrous shapes flapped and heaved. They were white, whatever they were, whiter than the nodule-stars, eyeless, faceless, boneless as jellyfish. It wrecked Paul to know such things existed somewhere within him.

  "What," he struggled, "what are they?"

  The captain's features creased with disappointment. "Hoping you'd be able to tell me."

  They held no universal shape, no unifying properties at all. Some were large, others quite small. If anything, they resembled shreds of animate blubber. Paul imagined a huge formless mass rotting in a lightless cavern of his heart.

  "Nothing you'd want to eat," the captain said. "No nourishment at all." He lowered his boot onto one. A wet squitch. "They're not at all hardy and happy enough to die. Hell, seem only grudgingly alive in the first place."