I watched it swallow the tape. “Pretty good.”
“Now just press play,” and soon we sat in silence as boxers paraded the screen; they arrived like presidents of men. Some were in black-and-white, from Joe Louis to Johnny Famechon, Lionel Rose to Sugar Ray. Then color and Smokin’ Joe. Jeff Harding, Dennis Andries. Technicolor Roberto Durán. The ropes flexed under their weight. In so many of the fights, the boxers went down, but climbed back up to their feet. Such brave and desperate weaving.
Near the end I looked at him.
The glint in my father’s eye.
He’d turned the sound right down.
He held my face, but calmly.
He held my jaws in his hands.
For a moment I thought he might echo the screen, saying something like the commentary. But all he did was hold me like that, my face in his hands in the darkness.
“I gotta give it to you, kid—you’ve got heart.”
The before-the-beginning of that one.
* * *
—
Leading up to that moment, there was a day for Penny Dunbar, a morning, with a sweetheart named Jodie Etchells. She was one of her favorite kids, held back because of dyslexia, and she worked with her twice a week. She had hurt eyes, tall bones, and a big long braid down her back.
That morning, they were reading with the metronome—the old familiar trick—when Penny got up for a thesaurus. Next, she was shaken awake.
“Miss,” said Jodie Etchells, “Miss,” and “Miss!”
Penny came to, she looked in her face, and the book a few meters away. Poor young Jodie Etchells. She seemed near to collapsing herself.
“Are you okay, Miss, are you okay?”
Her teeth were perfectly paved.
Penelope tried reaching over, but her arm was somehow confused.
“I’m fine, Jodie,” and she should have sent her out, for help, or a drink of water, or anything to at least distract her. Instead, though—and talk about typical Penny—she said, “Open up that book, okay, and look up, let’s see, how about cheerful? Or gloomy? Which would you prefer?”
The girl, her mouth and symmetry.
“Maybe cheerful,” she said, and read the alternatives aloud. “Happy…joyful…merry.”
“That’s good, very good.”
Her arm still wasn’t moving.
* * *
—
Then school, it came, a Friday.
I was taunted, by Hartnell and his mates:
There was piano and playing and poofter.
They were virtuosos of alliteration and didn’t know it.
Jimmy Hartnell had that fringe a little longer then—he was a few days shy of a haircut—and he’d leaned and muscled down. His mouth was small and slit-like, like a can just partly opened. It widened soon into a smile. I walked my way toward him, and found the courage to speak.
“I’ll fight you in the nets at lunch,” I said.
Best news he’d ever had.
* * *
—
Then to an afternoon:
As she often did, she read to those kids, as they waited for sight of the buses. This time it was The Odyssey. The chapter about the Cyclops.
There were boys and girls in green and white.
The usual foray of hairstyles.
As she read about Odysseus, and his trickery of the monster in his lair, the print swam over the page; her throat became the cave.
When she coughed she saw the blood.
It splashed down onto the paper.
She was strangely shocked by its redness; it was just so bright and brutal. Her next thought was back to the train, the first time she’d ever seen it; those titles typed in English.
* * *
—
And what was my blood to that blood?
It was nothing, nothing at all.
It was windy that day, I remember, when clouds move fast through the sky. One minute white, one minute blue; a lot of shifting light. There was one cloud like a coal mine, as I walked down to the cricket nets, in the darkest patch of shade.
At first I didn’t see Jimmy Hartnell, but he was there on the concrete pitch. He was grinning the width of his fringe.
“He’s here!” called one of his friends. “The poofter’s fucking here!”
I walked and raised my fists.
Mostly it comes in circles now, in half turns right and left. I remember how terribly fast he was, and how soon I’d come to taste it. I remember the roar of schoolkids, too, like waves all down the beach. At one point, I saw Rory, and he was just a little kid. He was standing next to Henry, who was Labrador-blond and skinny. Through the diamonds of wire in the netting, I could see them mouthing hit him, while Clay watched numbly on.
But Jimmy was hard to hit.
First I was caught in the mouth (like chewing on a piece of iron), then up, and into the ribs. I remember thinking they were broken, as those waves came crashing in.
“Come on, fucking Piano Man,” the kid whispered, and again he came skipping in. Each time he did that, he somehow came around me, and caught me with a left, then a right and another right. After three like that I went down.
There were cheers and checking for teaching staff, but no one had yet found out, as I crawled and stood up quickly. Possibly a standing eight-count.
“Come on,” I said, and the light kept interchanging. The wind howled through our ears, and again he came in and around.
This time, as previously, he caught me with the left, and then that punishing follow-up—but the success of that tactic changed, as I blocked the third punch outright, and clobbered him on the chin. Hartnell went reeling backwards, and he stammered, adjusting, and swept. He took a shocked and hurried backstep, which I followed to the front and left; I committed myself with a pair of jabs, hard above that slit there, above and into the cheek.
It became what commentators of every sport everywhere—probably even marbles—would call a battle of attrition, as we traded knuckles and hands. At one point, I went down on a knee, and he’d clipped me and quickly apologized, and I’d nodded; a silent integrity. The crowd had grown and climbed, their fingers all clenched in the wire.
Eventually, I knocked him down twice, but he always came punching back. By the end I’d gone down four times myself, and on the fourth I couldn’t get up. Vaguely, I could sense the authorities then, for those beaches and waves had flocked; the lot of them were like seagulls now, except for my brothers, who’d stayed. Beautifully—and looking back, not surprisingly—Henry held out his hand, to some fleeing kid or other, who gave him the rest of his lunch. Already he’d had a bet on, and already he’d gone and won.
In the corner, over near the cricket stumps, Jimmy Hartnell stood side-on. He was something like an injured wild dog, both pitiable and grounds for caution. The teacher, a man, went and grabbed him, but Hartnell had shrugged him off; he almost tripped on his way toward me, and his slit was now just a mouth. He crouched and called down next to me.
“You must be good at piano,” he said, “if it’s anything like you fight.”
I searched my mouth with my fingers; the victory of relief.
I lay back, I bled and smiled.
I still had all my teeth.
* * *
—
And so it was.
She went to the doctor.
A cavalcade of tests.
To us, for now, she said nothing, and all went on like always.
Once, though, there was a crack of it, and it becomes so cruel and clean, the more I sit and type it. The kitchen is crisp, clear water.
Because once, in Rory and Henry’s room, the two of them were wheeling and fighting. They’d abandoned the gloves and were back to normal, and Penelope ran toward it.
She grabbed both scruffs-of-the-school-shirt.
She held them out and away.
Like boys hung up to dry.
A week later, she was in the hospital; the first of many visits.
But back then, way back then, that handful of days and nights earlier, she’d stood with them in their bedroom, in that sock-and-Lego pigsty. The sun was setting behind her.
Christ, I’m gonna miss this.
She’d cried and smiled and cried.
Early on Saturday night, Clay sat with Henry, up on the roof.