The Fighter (8 page)

The
club office was a glassed-in cube accessible by a short flight of stairs. Its
door split horizontally and opened in two portions; the trainers hung out up
there and kept the top portion open so that they could holler directions at
their charges. Reuben sold sodas, snacks, and gum out of the office. Prices
were gratifyingly archaic: 50¢ for a bottle of Coke, 40¢ for a Snickers bar,
25¢ bought you a pack of Wrigley's, and Cracker Jack set you back 35¢. Reuben
iced the sodas in an ancient cooler and popped the tops off with an opener in
the shape of a naked lady, cap slotted between her spread legs.

"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.