by Matt Bell
The contender loomed a foot taller than Kelly but Kelly moved in on him, ducked low under the contender’s sprawl. Kelly was comfortable in the clinch, tried to nullify the difference in reach, but the contender was fast on his feet, technically skilled in a way Kelly would never be. The contender landed a first punch harder than any Kelly had ever suffered and at first Kelly couldn’t find a way under the punches that followed. He took a step back, another. Another punch landed and Kelly thought of the tightrope beam above the plant, the impossibility of walking it backward like the total ineffectiveness of Kelly’s defense, the sudden uselessness of raising his arms, of trying to ball up against the contender—at last the real violence had arrived, the end of the simulation of sparring, the absolute terror of a fighter born to fight—and by the end of the first minute Kelly was forced to embrace his inability to defend himself, the muscles in the shoulders numbed and dumbed by the contender’s fists.
Kelly pushed back in, swung wildly, fought against the gaining lethargy. He crossed his feet, made other mistakes. For the first time in his life he felt his true age, the accumulation of injury obvious in the face of the contender’s still-limitless youth. The gap between them only a few years, a slim fraction of a life. But enough. More than.
The bell rang, the round ended. The water bottle, the towel, the encouraging word. The fight a third over and who knew what the score was.
The bell rang, the next round began.
Kelly knew someone should stop the fight but his trainer was the contender’s trainer and what the trainer wanted was a knockout. One of Kelly’s eyes was shutting, the swell of his brow collapsing his vision on the left side. The contender jabbed, jabbed again, followed with a hook, a cross, more punches Kelly couldn’t track, couldn’t count. The number of punches fewer than you might imagine. Kelly had made himself strong but strength alone wasn’t a strategy. He had made himself tough but toughness wasn’t enough.
With every strike his quiet mind exploded into sound.
The cacophony, the choir: thought, voice, memory, the simultaneous swarm.
Bringer drove a fist through the side of Kelly’s head and for the first time Kelly’s knee touched the mat. The brain suddenly a size too big for the shell. Sparks flooded Kelly’s eyesight as he pushed himself upright but a grin grew around his mouthguard, a wrong-shaped expression easily mistaken for a grimace.
What Kelly saw: the way the contender rushed in, the way he could be goaded.
The bell rang, the round ended.
The water bottle, the towel, the bell ringing again so fast.
The third round began. The contender uninjured, undaunted, moving fast toward Kelly’s corner. Encouraged by the damage he’d done. Kelly protected his face, protected his body, let the injury come. This was the way. Not only to turn the cheek but to offer the entire person. He took one blank step, then another. He was afraid but the fear could make him stronger. He would act out of his fear but first he needed to be scared enough to move.
The contender landed uncounted punches, each one accompanied by a grunted exhalation of angry breath. Their breathing grew sharp, strained. The contender tired now too. Every fighter exhausted in the third round. You could win and still injure yourself with the effort. Kelly dropped to a knee again, invited the overeager rush. It took everything left to stand into the next blow, to take one more punch on his way around the contender—and the gorgeous punch broke every last resistance, exploding a sound inside Kelly’s head, a tearing of some supporting structure twisting free of the skull—and for a moment Kelly found his advantage, its fantastic temporariness, the contender’s body turned sideways, his flank exposed for mere seconds.
Kelly filled those seconds with his fists, held back nothing. There was no future to his strategy, only a winnable present. He heard the dulled and distant roar of the crowd as he drove the contender to the mat, nearly punching him all the way down, as he stepped away from the falling body and into the rising sound.
The old ringing in his ears. The sound of the fire. The sound that existed long before the fire. He spit out his mouthguard, found the name caught behind his teeth.
Bringer, he said. Stand up.
The referee counting: one second, two seconds, three.
Bringer, Kelly said. Come on.
Now the contender standing into the same noise, the cries of the crowd, their vocalized belief in the possibility of his defeat. Now the contender left with no choice, now the outcome requiring a knockout because nothing else would satisfy the crowd. Now the trainer howling ecstatic, in love with his orchestration of the disaster.
Kelly raised his gloves, jerked his fists toward his body, called in the blow. Thou shalt not kill suspended for another minute and a half. He didn’t have any legs left but he raised his gloves and with them he said Kill me and when Bringer came carrying the killing punch across the mat Kelly surrendered into the absolute absence of doubt: If Kelly died the target would go free. If Kelly lived he would take the target. If Bringer struck him right he might never experience doubt again, instead only this fear perfect enough to swallow him whole, a whale of fear, and from inside its black body he saw more darkness, and from the dark he watched Bringer’s last punch leave the shoulder at speed, bringing with it the first pinpricks of light appearing somewhere in the black, stars come to see him home, constellations lit for no one else.
When the punch arrived Kelly felt every higher function stall, his body tumbling, feet turning under softening ankles, calves collapsing, the knees going sideways, the stupid body crashing like a carcass from its hook. The judder of the mat coming up to meet him. Behind closing lids he tried to protect the memory of the impossible thing he’d seen: the knockout blow you were never supposed to see coming, how as it had moved through space to strike his body Kelly knew he would never die. It was as if the match had not actually ended. Before the knockout Thou shalt not kill had been suspended and for as long as the injunction remained absent Kelly might do as he wished.
When he opened his eyes the contender was already leaving the ring, the trainer and his assistant both by the contender’s side, the crowd heading out into the night satisfied, high on the simulated destruction of a man. Kelly was alone upon the mat with the ringside doctor, who checked Kelly’s open eye, pronounced him concussed, guided him to the locker room. The doctor tested his reflexes, listened to his breathing, bandaged a cut atop his bruised cheek. Kelly measured the tightness in his chest, the numb ache in his limbs, said nothing. He was seeing two different rooms, one out of the closed eye, one out of the open eye, but he didn’t describe either to the doctor. He hadn’t eaten a meal all day but his stomach felt full, bloated. He’d known it could come to this but he kept quiet, wanted the ticking clock in his chest left untouched.
Or else not a ticking but a thudding, the wet slop of uneven blood forced through the centermost chamber of his body, a wet clock counting down to calamity.
After the doctor left Kelly opened his locker, found the promised cash waiting for him in an envelope folded into the back pocket of his jeans, the envelope thinner than he expected but the money all there.
Outside in the parking lot Kelly fell asleep behind the wheel of the truck, the engine off, the cab cold. He woke up, turned the key, put the truck in gear. The engine rumbled to life, the dash lit, its dials incomprehensible enough Kelly knew there was more damage. Or else his life had become a dream, because here was the impossibility of numbers and letters in dreams. He was tired but even tired he was strong. He thought something was punched loose and he thought it would let him do anything. There were a certain number of hours of night left and they would have to be enough. It would be over by morning or else it would never end.
11
HE HAD PRETENDED HE HADN’T built the body for this purpose but here was the powerful body in perfect motion: The target stepped out of his car, turning to lock the car door as the left fist stru
ck his head twice, as the other arm snaked around the head, catching under the chin with the crook of the elbow, the same hand catching the opposite bicep. The right hand gripping the back of the skull, pushing forward. The elbows brought together, a steady pressure, the free hand squeezing the hold shut.
After Kelly let go he had to mind the seconds, work fast against the count. As soon as oxygen returned so would the world, beat by beat: the parking lot outside the apartment complex, the lit rooms above, the television glares and radio bass. He picked the dropped keys off the pavement, opened the trunk of the target’s car, lifted the groggy target inside. The body heavy and already stirring so he had to strike the target again, every movement nervous now, less controlled, until Kelly landed a punch across the side of the face disorienting enough to let him get the target’s hands behind the back, to get the wrists taped. The legs were stronger, took longer spins of the tape. He didn’t want to suffocate the target but he had to cover the mouth too, ran the tape around the head once, twice, trying to keep it below the nose but working fast.
Kelly shut the trunk, got behind the wheel, locked the doors. He checked his phone, considered the time remaining. It was late but there was plenty of night left. Had anyone seen him? Most of the apartments he could see were dark. The rest were lit by televisions, monitors, the eyes inside the apartments pointed anywhere except the windows. If you lived in a place like this maybe you tried not to look at it.
Now the black plant rose again before Kelly, some beginning and middle and end all contained within the plant’s long decline, its still-undemolished structure. Kelly navigated the plant’s expanse of concrete and brick, its streets that would have been strange in the uninhabited deep of the night even without the new snow falling wet and heavy, the slush on the road making the unfamiliar car harder to handle. He parked the car in a brick alley, close to the entrance to the underground. He stepped out into the falling snow, opened the trunk, waited until the target’s eyes found him before displaying the black pistol. He gave orders, explained next steps: How the tape around the ankles would be cut. How the target would get out of the trunk but not run. How running was the biggest mistake the target could make. How they would walk from the car through the open wall of the nearest building. How inside the building there was a broken floor, an aperture beneath which he would find a subtle path down into the basement. How you had to know to look for it. How in the basement there was a hallway that led to a room. How inside the room a metal chair waited. How the target would sit down on the chair.
When the tape was cut the target tried to run but the pistol was there to strike the back of his skull, to prod his stumbling in the right direction: the entrance to the building, the closed door, the collapsed floor, the pitched descent. The gun held the target steady while Kelly worked the padlock installed at the door, then again in the low room, when the target couldn’t find the chair where he’d been ordered to sit, instead reeling around the dark like Kelly had in the ring, the world he’d believed he inhabited having ended so violently it was as if it had never existed.
A sweep of his headlamp revealed the low room as he’d imagined it, untouched since he’d last visited, its square space separated from the world above by a difficult distance. A home for spiders but not much else. Even the rats gone for ages. When he turned off the lamp a stratum of darkness filled the vacuum. He listened to his breathing, listened to the other’s, the crying and the heaving. There was enough tape around the target’s body to make it hard to move, hard to breathe. The crying a nasal wheeze, signaling disbelief in what was happening. Kelly was having trouble too. Both of them together now.
The stale room burst with human activity. Kelly started the generator, let its hum fill the two heavy lights set facing the target. Now there was a darkness where Kelly could retreat, a space beyond the light the target’s vision wouldn’t be able to penetrate. Kelly had forgotten to don the mask but he did so now, the welder’s shield heavy upon his swollen face, burdening his skull. He returned in silhouette, palmed the target’s bound face and pushed it back, applied some pressure. The muscles moving the bones, the teeth and the tongue trapped behind the tape, everything he touched young and healthy, no sign of sickness in the body.
Kelly had waited, watched for borders, thresholds, a birthday. He’d had to make the target a man so he could hurt him like one.
Not a man but a bully, he heard someone say. The face of a bully.
The mouth below his hand was trying to speak too but the words were muffled by the leather of the gloves covering the face, the duct tape beneath. Kelly pictured the head of a horse, then a wasted ape. Something dumbly animal. But who was he picturing. And was it ever the victim who stopped feeling human first.
He used a pair of scissors to open the target’s shirt but he finished the cut with his hands, ripping the fabric to expose the target’s chest, the belly, the arms, the back, the skin swallowed in hurt, heaving with sweat. He was having trouble seeing the target through the harsh glare of the lights but by their glow he knew his own body’s recent unfamiliarity, the largeness of every part of it, the way his straining muscles had stretched over his frame. He was the heaviest he had ever been, possessed a certain enormity he hadn’t imagined possible. Now he thought the deep gravity of the world dragged upon him, the way that gravity grew the lower you sank, the way his hands were not any larger than before but their thickness increased. His thighs squeezed into his pants, feet squeezed into tight boots. His neck a widening trunk for his heavy head, his head lean and strained with veins but weighted with memory begetting action, weighted with the mask and its slim slot of vision. All of it another mistake. As if improving the body were the same as improving the man. As if physical strength made moral right.
When the flesh was exposed he opened one of the duffel bags on the floor, empty except for one last folded item. He shook out the folds, then draped the red robe around the target’s shoulders, pulled the hood up over his head. The target tried to throw off the garment but there were ways to stop his struggling. What was done to the boy couldn’t be undone. Kelly could punish the people who hurt him but it would not rewind the clock. These things happened and somehow he couldn’t help them happening again. He had lived a life meant to avoid the problem and he had slipped once, had sworn off children of his own, but had loved a woman with a child, had loved the child. Then love had not been enough.
Understanding required argument. The scrapper thought the sound of fists was one place they might start their speech. His hands already aching. His theologies had grown muddled but he said he believed even a single crime could charge you. Everything was equal, every action and word that crossed over from intent to occurrence. The scrapper needed to transfer the fear from one body to the other. He put bruised fists to use, he moved through the tools. He kicked the chair, then righted it again, its frame heavy with the target’s taped weight. Perhaps there were deep rituals in the world but he was making this one up as he went. The sound from behind the tape turned his stomach but didn’t unturn his hand. He wondered at the words, trapped inside the other’s mouth, tasting of the tack of tape. The lungs full of beggared screams, unable to push them out. He heard his own voice speaking but he struggled after the words. There was a certain lack of comprehension he had grown accustomed to but how quickly this encounter had moved beyond any previous threshold.
Are you a boy or are you a man, Kelly heard the salvor ask. Because if he was a boy, then what different crime was this. Age was not enough. Age was hardly fair.
What if something horrible happened to you. What if some years later you passed it on. How long did your guilt indict you. What was the lasting effect of having been younger, of having been unhappy, of having been made mean and dumb in your unhappy youth.
Kelly knew he wasn’t different. One day someone might come for him too. An angry child grown stubborn and brave or else a champion sent on the child’s behalf. But first anything to
protect his boy. Not his by birth or his by the law. His by the saving. His by the carrying up out of the earth. His by the taking, the better but not dissimilar version of this act.
The other had taken a boy and watched him. Now Kelly had taken a brother and hurt him.
It was a cheap escape to already render the act in the past tense. He rejoined his thinking to the present: He was hurting the brother, between some times of not hurting him. How far could he go and remain Kelly. How much farther could he go as the salvor. How he could go much farther by giving in to the scrapper. How he thought the scrapper could go all the way.
Beneath the lights Kelly watched the glassy eyes, the fading consciousness. There was blood trickling from the tape around the mouth and how long had it been there.
Kelly shut off the lights, removed the mask. He went into the far corner of the room and spit up into the dust. He took off his coat, the heavy flannel beneath, left the orange jersey sweat slicked against his skin. The low room wasn’t warm but his body was. When he returned to the front of the chair the target was awake, choked against the tape, his eyes wide and panicked. The target knew where he was again. Who he was with.
The man in the red slicker. Kelly’s father, his grandfather, himself. He could change roles with the brother and there would be no diminishment of what happened next, no matter who was in the chair.
A voice spoke, asked a question. Another spoke next, answered.
Because you hurt my boy.
The sudden appearance of the possessive. My girl, my woman, my boys, all my children I couldn’t risk. My parents, wasted and devoured. Myself, who had made nothing lasting and good. A person who couldn’t even speak the names of the people he loved. Who once prayed for the shapes instead of the persons within. Who saw the faces falling through his prayers and could not give them the names to lift them back up.