The Fighter
Authors: Craig Davidson
The Fighter
Craig Davidson
First
published 2006 as a Viking Canada Book by Penguin Group, Canada
First
published in Great Britain 2007 by Picador
an
imprint of Pan Macmillan Ltd
Pan
Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke
and Oxford
Associated
companies throughout the world
Copyright
© Craig Davidson 2006
A great fighter is a man alone on
a path.
He must feel that he is the
maker, not made.
He must feel that he fathered
himself.
Gary Smith
'Cause all I ever wanted was just
a little thing
—just to be a man.
Chester Himes
Table of Contents
They
say a man can change his personality—the basic essence of who or what he is—by
five percent. Five percent: the total change any one of us is capable of.
At
first it sounds trivial. Five percent, what's that? A fingernail paring. But
consider the vastness of the human psyche and that number acquires real weight.
Think five percent of the Earth's total landmass, five percent of the known
universe. Millions of square acres, billions of light years. Consider how a
change of five percent could alter anyone. Imagine dominoes lined in neat
straight rows, the world of possibilities set in motion at a touch.
Five
percent: everything changes. Five percent: a whole new person.
Considered
in these terms, five percent really means something.
Considered
in these terms, five percent is colossal.
I
wake in a dark space. Blinking, disoriented, a dream-image lingers: a nameless
face split down the center, knotted brain glimpsed through a bright halo of
blood.
A
tight bathroom. Peeling wallpaper, mildewed tiles. Stripped bare, I wash myself
at a stone basin. My body is utilitarian: bone and muscle and skin. A
purposeful body, I think of it, though from time to time I miss that old spryness.
To look at me, you might believe I entered the world this way.
My
legs: crosshatched with scars from machete wounds I took in the northern
plantations harvesting sugarcane before moving south to the cities. An
arrow-shaped divot is gouged from my right shank: on sleepless nights I'll run
a finger over the spot, the hardness of shin- bone beneath a quarter-inch of
scar tissue.
My
chest: networked with razor wounds, mottled with chemical burn scars. Lye
fights—our fists wrapped in heavy rope smeared with a mixture of honey and
powdered lye. A sand-filled Mekong bottle stands beside the cot; I hammer my
stomach for hours, hardening my flesh for combat.
My
hands: shattered. Knuckles split in dumdum Xs humped over in skin that shines
under the bathroom light. They've been broken—how many times? I've lost count.
So brittle I once cracked my thumb opening a bottle of soda.
Blind
in one eye: those damn lye fights. My upper incisors driven through my gums,
half embedded in soft palate. Cauliflower ears—
jug ears,
my old trainer would've said—and my hearing cuts in and out like a radio on the
fritz; when it goes I'll smack the side of my head, the way you would a finicky
TV to get the picture back. A raised line runs from the base of my scalp to a
point between my eyebrows: my skull was split open on the concrete of an empty
oil refinery. An unlicensed medic—there's no other kind around here—wrapped a
leather belt around my head to keep the split halves together. This wound
healed into a not-quite-smooth seam like blocks of wax heated along their edges
and pressed gently together.
They
say a man's body is a map of his existence.
I'm
shrugging on a pair of floral-print shorts when the telephone rings. It's a
warm evening; the air is heavy with the scent of something, though I can't
quite place what.
The
phone falls silent. I know what the caller wants. I know what night this is.
During
World War II the roof of the Boeing aircraft factory outside Seattle was
camouflaged to look like a fake city. There were little buildings, the same
shape as regular buildings, only about five feet high. The streets were made of
burlap; the trees were wire mesh topped with green-painted beach umbrellas.
They even had mannequins: mannequin mailmen and milkmen; mannequin housewives
pinning laundry on wash lines. A Hollywood set designer oversaw the whole
thing. The buildings and houses had depth to them—glimpsed from overhead by a
Japanese bomber pilot, it would look like a quiet residential neighborhood.
Under this fake city was the factory, where construction went on around the
clock. During wartime, a B-17 Flying Fortress rolled off the line every
seventy-two hours.
I've
come to realize all societies are much like this. On top you've got the world
most live in, a safe and sanitary place, airbrushed, a polished veneer—a world
I now find as fake as those five-foot buildings and mannequins must have seemed
from ground level.
Underneath
lies the factory, which few know of and fewer still venture into.
The
place where the war machines are built.
The
streets rage with bicycles and Tuk-Tuks and pickup trucks. An old woman skewers
shark fins on a length of piano wire in the greasy light of a deli. Clusters of
shirtless men crouch in fire-gutted alleys passing bottles of Mekong. One
shouts as I walk past—catcall or cheer? I've never learned the language.
Young
foreign men all around. Talking too loudly, spending too much, laughing at
nonsense. Drunk on Mekong, some will return to their rented rooms with
cross-dressing locals they've mistaken for women. There was a time when I could
count myself one of their number. Their life was my life, their wants my own.
But now, recalling the man I once was, it's as though I'm considering someone
else altogether.
A
figure stands before a metal door set into an alley wall. His face, half
shrouded by the lapels of his duster coat, is netted with old razor scars. The
nickel-plated hammers of a Rizzini shotgun jut through the folds of his coat.
"You
on tonight?"
When
I nod the man steps aside.
"What're
you waiting for, asshole—the Queen's invite?"
The
door is gunmetal gray, set in a brick wall touched black by old fires. I knock.
A slot snaps back. A pair of dark considering eyes. The deadbolts disengage.
The
hallway is lit by forty-watt bulbs behind wire screens. Cockroaches feast on
mildew. I roll my shoulders and snap my neck, limbering. Quick jabs, short
puffing breaths. I plant my lead foot the way my trainer instructed years ago:
Pretend a nail's pounded through the damn thing, okay? Turn
on that point, now, pivot hard. Work that power up through your feet, legs,
hips and arms and hands—bam!
Another
door leads into a prep room the size of a tiger cage. Wooden benches set at intersecting
angles. The smell of resin and sweat and wintergreen liniment. A chicken-wire
ceiling allows bettors to size us up before placing wagers. They can be real
bastards: my scalp is pitted with burns from the Zippo-heated coins they flick
through the wire.