‘Okay,’ she said and let out a long breath. ‘You’re a better liar than Mom, at least.’
He laughed.
‘Please come visit.’
‘One of these days I’ll just get her in the truck, kidnap her, and we’ll head your way like we just robbed a bank.’
16
Horace drank from a gallon jug of water and stared at the sidewalk. He was upset with himself over his worsening discipline with food. For the last six nights he’d finished his workouts by running to Lucky Wishbone, where he ordered the ‘Pop’ five-piece chicken dinner with garlic toast, fries and a side order of coleslaw. It was too much food and it wasn’t good for him, but even so, each time he ate the entire meal and refilled his fountain drink at least once with Coke. The two girls behind the counter flirted with him and no other women in Tucson ever flirted with him. He had even asked one of them out on a date – a skinny, long-haired Mexican girl named Mariana. She told him she had a boyfriend, but after that she only charged him for the three-piece, not the five-piece dinner, and never again made him pay for his drink or side dish.
As he walked home, the same questions came into his head over and over, as they did every night. Why couldn’t his favourite food be something good for him, or at least be Mexican food? And why did Mexican food have to be spicy? And why did it have to be so hot in Tucson? And why was Spanish so hard to learn? And were the Reeses okay? Was Mr Reese really going out to check on the sheep alone? Why didn’t he use a four-wheeler like everyone else? And why did he insist on riding Slow Poke? The horse was old and cataracts had blurred his vision. And why couldn’t the Golden Gloves matches have been four rounds? He would have won if they had been four rounds, wouldn’t he? And why, even after six weeks, was his nose still bleeding all the time?
He went through the chain-link gate and walked alongside the carport until he came to his old-lady guest house. He unlocked the door and went inside to be engulfed in heat. He turned on the AC unit and sat at the kitchen table and became more depressed. He never liked coming back to this house. Never. It only reminded him of his mother and her family, and it always smelled of rotten old-lady air freshener. He changed into shorts and a T-shirt, grabbed his CD player and left. He walked for miles and, in a moment of weakness, went to Zia Records and rebought Slayer’s Reign in Blood on CD. He was ashamed for buying it but he couldn’t help himself, and he listened to it over and over as he walked around the city. It was past midnight when he grew tired enough to go back to his house. He slept under the AC unit until five, and then he got up, put on his running clothes and did his morning workout.
That afternoon, while he changed tires on a white Yukon with tinted windows and custom Tuff rims, he got a call from Ruiz about a fight in Monterrey, Mexico. The bout was in four days and was a preliminary six-rounder.
‘Why so sudden?’ Horace asked as he sat on the shop floor.
Ruiz was short of breath as he spoke. ‘One of the fighters got in a motorcycle wreck and broke his collarbone. The guy you’d be against is using this fight as a warm-up for a bigger fight in November. He just needs the rounds. The problem is, I have to know right now if you can do it or they’ll give it to someone else.’
‘I have to decide now?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Who will I be fighting?’
‘The kid’s named César “El Clavo” Jiménez.’
‘Is he any good?’
‘I don’t know anything about him except he’s twelve and O.’
‘What’s “El Clavo” mean?’
‘“The Nail”.’
‘How much will I make?’
‘I’ll have to do some negotiating, but I can probably get you three hundred. Did you get your passport like I told you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Good,’ said Ruiz. ‘Look, I have to go. You want me to take it?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Horace, suddenly nervous. ‘What do you think I should do?’
‘It’s risky. We don’t know who this guy is and he’s twelve and O. He’s a local kid too. From the area. None of that is good, ’cause you’re green. But it’s a fight and fights are hard to come by.’
‘How will I get down there?’
‘We’ll worry about the specifics later. But one thing to know is you’ll need a day to get there and a day after to get home. Three days off work at the minimum. This isn’t a great opportunity – it’s just the only thing that’s come my way. What do you think?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Horace.
‘Want me to tell them you won’t take it?’
‘No … Well, maybe I should do it.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I guess so,’ he said, and hung up.
*
Horace wasn’t in the best shape, but then he wasn’t in bad shape either. He’d been training four nights a week with Ruiz, and for the last three weeks he’d been running every morning. He was getting better – even under pressure he was. The time had come to take the chance.
His grandmother used to collect self-help books. She’d go into long spells of melancholy and visit Whitney’s Bookshelf on Main Street and go through their self-improvement section and leave with a half-dozen books. It’s how Horace found The B.O.A.T. – Building the Champion Inside of You: Believe, Overcome, Aspire, Triumph. It was in a stack next to the TV, and every day they watched TV. It was a book he read over and over and the only book he brought with him to Tucson. In the third chapter, it said a champion had to be careful and precise, but there were also times when a champion had to take a chance to get to the next level.
Test your boat, test yourself. Let the bricks (built with honesty, integrity, hard work and service) protect you. Let them surround you during the ongoing war of life and lead you to the next horizon. Let them get your ship through the storm to success.
He found his boss watching TV in his office and asked if he could have the days off. Benny took a can of beer from the fridge and got on the phone with his nephew, who said he would cover the shifts. It was set. Horace worked that evening until seven and then changed into his running clothes and took off down the road. He went past his normal five miles and kept running until his legs were shaking and he had trouble standing.
*
After work the next day, Horace went to the library and looked on YouTube for fights with César ‘El Clavo’ Jiménez, but couldn’t find any. He trained that night with Ruiz, worked the next day until five and then, with a small travel bag and his passport, walked to the bus station and took the night bus to San Antonio, Texas.
It was morning when he arrived. He’d slept nearly five hours in the half-empty bus and felt rested. He washed his face in the bus station bathroom and called a number on the piece of paper Ruiz had given him. An hour later a thin Mexican man with greased-back black hair came into the station dressed in shiny red sweats and black tennis shoes. Horace saw the colour of the sweats, got up from his seat and walked toward him.
‘Are you Diego?’
‘That’s me,’ the man said.
‘I’m Hector,’ said Horace and put out his hand.
The man shook it and smiled. ‘You hungry?’
Horace nodded.
‘Can you make weight if you eat?’
‘I can make it.’
‘Was the bus ride alright?’
‘It was okay.’
‘We don’t have much time. We’ll stop at Cracker Barrel– is that okay?’
‘I don’t know what that is.’
‘It’s a restaurant,’ Diego said and they began walking. ‘They have everything – you’ll like it. After that, we’ll drive non-stop. It’ll be five hours, more or less. If we get lucky, you should get a few hours to rest before the fight.’
Diego led him out of the station into the morning heat. Horace’s shirt grew wet with sweat as they passed through the deserted parking lot and got into a twenty-year-old red Toyota Corolla.
‘Why is it so hot and wet here?’
‘The humidity?’
‘You know what humidity is, right?’
Horace nodded but he wasn’t sure he knew. He’d never felt anything like it, he knew that. It was as if they were walking around in a hot bathtub. He buckled his seat belt and Diego started the car.
‘Ruiz told me you train a boxer who’s fighting tonight.’
Diego nodded.
‘Where is he?’
‘He went down yesterday. If I can help it, I don’t like my guys sitting in a car the day of a fight. Ruiz should have had you come earlier.’
‘He didn’t say anything about that.’
‘He probably just wanted to use the free ride with me.’
‘So it’s okay that it’s free?’
Diego smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not a tightwad like Ruiz. How did you meet that guy anyway?’
‘I moved from a ranch in Nevada. He was the only trainer in Tucson I could find when I looked online.’
‘So you’re a ranch kid?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Like cows and horses?’
‘Sheep.’
Diego laughed. ‘How did you get into boxing?’
Horace shrugged his shoulders.
‘You from a boxing family?’
‘Not really. I guess I’ve always just liked it,’ answered Horace.
Diego nodded. ‘Me too. My dad always liked it, but man, I loved it.’ He turned on the radio and they left.
Horace leaned against the passenger-side door, closed his eyes and couldn’t help but think of Arnaldo. He had met the man through his grandmother when he was thirteen. Arnaldo was small and wiry with thick dyed-black hair, and he was a bartender at the Banc Club casino. He told Horace he was raised in Italy, but he had no accent of any kind. He also said he had fought in sixty professional fights as a flyweight, but Horace could never find any of his bouts on the internet, no listings for him at all. But his face and nose were those of a battered boxer. He looked like he’d been hit a thousand times and run over after that.
Horace remembered the afternoon he came home from school, beat up and barely able to walk. He’d been cornered by a football player from the high school, a huge white kid named Lester. The kid gave Horace a black eye and broke one of his fingers. He also cracked his ribs –or at least it felt that way as it hurt just to breathe. His grandmother wanted to call the police but Horace begged her not to. So she had Arnaldo come over and teach Horace how to box. They had been working together for three months when it happened again.
Behind Barsanti Park, Horace was jumped. Lester nearly killed him that time. He was six feet tall and over two hundred pounds. Horace had fought back: he broke Lester’s nose and gave him a busted lip. He had power in his punches – even back then, he did. But Lester began throwing wild swings and, under the volume of them, Horace fell apart. He wasn’t sure why he froze but he did. Lester threw him to the ground, got on top of him and began pounding Horace’s head into the dry park grass.
‘Fucking faggot-hippy-powwow-Indian motherfucker,’ he remembered Lester saying. There were four of them standing around and then one of them pulled Lester away. ‘You better watch out,’ the kid had said. ‘You’re going to kill him pretty soon.’
Horace missed three days of school from the beating, but he didn’t mind the pain. He wasn’t bothered by getting hit either. It wasn’t that he liked it, exactly; he just didn’t mind it. He remembered, as he laid on the grass and dirt, bloody and in pain, all he thought about was the fight. His combinations were solid, his jab was improving and he had power. Lester weighed nearly a hundred pounds more than he did, and even so he’d held his own for a little while. The front of Lester’s shirt was covered in blood and Horace knew Lester’s nose would swell and that some of his body shots had connected. He’d hurt the white son of a bitch.
Horace opened his eyes and turned to Diego. ‘How I really started fighting was because there was a white guy, a lineman for the football team, in my town. He had it out for me ’cause I had long hair at the time and I’m Mexican. He was huge, maybe six-three. But I had been training with this old guy, Arnaldo. The football player was tough, but he was slow. I’m not the fastest, but I’m pretty fast. Faster than a white guy, anyway. So I just picked him off, punch by punch, until his friends made me stop. After that, Arnaldo got me a small and big bag and we set them up in his garage and started taking things seriously. We used to watch old fights on the internet together and he’d give me advice. He cooked for me, helped me with my homework. I spent almost every night there. I guess you could say he was like my father and my coach wrapped into one.’
‘He still around?’ asked Diego.
‘No, he died when I was in high school. He got lung cancer. I was with him, though, at his bedside until he quit breathing. Even at the end he was giving me advice, helping me.’
‘I’m sorry to hear he passed,’ Diego said. He grabbed a container of Tic Tacs from the dashboard, took a few and handed the box to Horace.
He took three and again leaned against the window glass and closed his eyes. The truth was, Arnaldo had a vicious temper. He was mean to Horace and mean to his grandmother. He was a drunk who threw things, whose moods were always erratic. It was just after Christmas break when Horace went to Arnaldo’s house for a training session to find Arnaldo gone for good. His grandmother said he had been deported back to Italy, but the people at the Banc Club said he ran off, that he’d been stealing out of the till, embezzling somehow. His car and clothes had vanished, but everything else was still there. No one changed the locks or turned off the power or moved into Arnaldo’s house for nearly six months. So Horace continued going to his garage to work out. He hadn’t liked training with Arnaldo anyway, as all the man did was yell at him to hit harder. ‘Hit harder, Horace. Goddamn, hit harder, hit the fucking bag harder.’ And, worse than that, Arnaldo forgot most of their training sessions, and when he did show up he was usually drunk and just wanted to watch TV.
*
At Cracker Barrel they ate breakfast and then they got back in the car and passed into Mexico at Nuevo Laredo. They stopped only once, at the halfway mark to Monterrey. It was a small roadside convenience store with nothing around it. Horace got out of the car but was too nervous to ask the clerk if she spoke English, and Diego had to buy him a bottle of water and point to where the bathrooms were.
It was late afternoon when the outskirts of Monterrey appeared, and soon they were trapped in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Horace looked out at the sprawl: houses, apartment buildings, construction sites and gigantic industrial complexes. It was the biggest city he had ever seen and Diego said there were more than four million people in the area. An hour passed in gridlock and then Diego turned off the main highway. He drove side streets for a half-hour and then parked in front of a blue building with a metal awning. Above it, in art-deco red neon, it said Coliseo.
Men were breaking up the sidewalk with a jackhammer across the street and a group of women passed directly in front of them as they got out of the car. The signs were in Spanish and all the people they passed spoke Spanish and Horace realized, for the first time, that he really was in a different country. He’d never been in another country.
They walked under an overpass and went by a dozen shops until they came to Hotel Victoria, a weathered and rundown two-storey hotel. Inside, Diego spoke Spanish to a clerk and received a key. He took Horace upstairs and opened the door. Inside was a twin bed, a desk, a dresser, a small bathroom and a TV. ‘This is your room,’ said Diego. ‘The promoter is paying for it. In the future you should tell Ruiz that you want to stay in a nicer place.’
‘Are you staying here?’
‘No way,’ he said, and laughed. ‘We’re staying at the Hilton.’ He looked at his phone. ‘You can stay here and rest for an hour or you can come with me now and check out the arena.’
‘I’ll go with you,’ Horace said with growing nervousness.
Diego hand
ed him the room key and they walked back to the Arena Coliseo. It was four in the afternoon and the place was deserted. They saw a red ring in the middle of the main room. Tecate beer banners hung from the base and the ring was surrounded by blue chairs. Further back, bleacher seats rose up on all sides.
‘Will the place be full?’ asked Horace.
‘I’m not sure of the numbers,’ said Diego. ‘But it’ll be mostly full, I’d imagine. The main event, Moreno versus Rivera, should be a decent draw. I’ll show you your dressing room and I’ll look after you during the fight. I owe Ruiz a favour so I’ll be in your corner. Do you know anything about the guy you’re fighting?’
‘No,’ said Horace.
‘Nothing?’
Horace shook his head. ‘Do you?’
‘Supposedly he hits like a sledgehammer,’ Diego said, and smiled. ‘I guess that’s why they call him “The Nail”. But you never know what to believe … Anyway, after you’re done, I’m afraid you’re on your own. I’ll have my hands full.’
‘Don’t worry. Ruiz already told me.’
‘Did he give you the bus times to Nuevo Laredo?’
Horace nodded.
‘From there they have a few buses a day to get you to San Antonio, and after that you have the return to Tucson.’
‘I have the schedule in my bag.’
‘Good,’ Diego said. ‘Then I’ll see you later.’
*
It was past midnight and the streets alongside the Coliseo were crowded with traffic, and music poured out of cars and from clubs on the main avenue. Horace made his way down the sidewalk, past streams of people, and walked slowly back to the Hotel Victoria. He unlocked his room door and struggled to lay down on the bed. He thought maybe his ribs were fractured, but Diego said he didn’t think so, although he also said there wasn’t much they could do if they were. His nose was again broken and his right eye was swollen shut. There was a cut above his right eyebrow that had been taped, and again, no matter what he did, his nose kept bleeding. Diego said some fighters broke their noses and some didn’t. ‘You have a great chin and a weak nose,’ he had told him. ‘That’s called luck.’
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