7 March 1980
Tremble
“This can’t be it,” Nat said.
“Oh, this is it, all right,” Little Manny said. “What’d you expect? Madison Square Garden?”
They stood in front of a dark equipment yard, surrounded by high-chain link topped with loops of razor wire. A good city block back into the yard, Nat could see a few dark shapes of people moving into and out of a huge sheet-metal warehouse.
“Not too late to back out, kid,” Little Manny said.
“I don’t back out,” Nat said. “I’m not a guy who backs out.”
The words seemed to tremble slightly as they rose up from his lungs, making him feel like a layered being with his steel only on the outermost skin.
“Yeah. Tell me all about it. I noticed that about you. I’ll be sure to carve that on your gravestone.”
“Thanks heaps,” Nat said.
? ? ?
“That’s a welterweight?” It came out of Nat’s mouth before he could stop it. He hoped the crowd noise had swallowed his words. That Little Manny had never received them. He looked down at the little man, who was just opening his mouth to speak. “Yeah, yeah. I know. I know. Don’t even bother to say it. You warned me. I know.”
The first fight was already in progress. No announcer, which seemed weird to Nat. The seats consisted of a bunch of folding chairs scattered at random. Maybe a hundred guys sat around the ring, cheering and booing and drinking beer and hard liquor out of translucent plastic cups, the bottles sitting on the concrete floor at their feet.
The dominating boxer had a smaller fighter on the ropes, pummeling him. Nat waited for a bell to ring, or an official to pull the big guy off. Then he reminded himself. At least he hadn’t said it out loud, to Little Manny, and opened up another opportunity to be reminded that he’d been warned. Because the smaller fighter was pinned on the ropes, it was hard for him to fall. And as long as he wasn’t on the mat, the fight would go on. But it looked like nothing more than a bloodbath to Nat. The kid on the ropes had completely given up fighting, and just held both gloves in front of his face while his big opponent landed blows to the head on either side of them. It got clearer by the second that only the ropes held the poor guy up at all. The crowd went crazy. Really ate it up. I guess I was warned about that, too, Nat thought.
He felt a deep and growing sensation of heat, melting heat. It started in his lower gut and groin and poured down through his thighs, making them feel wobbly and weak.
The poor kid on the ropes finally went down by the quickest route possible. His knees buckled, folded up, and he just sank away from his opponent, as though a trap door had blessedly opened under his feet to swallow him, leaving nothing left for his opponent to strike.
Nat watched the count, but couldn’t hear it over the wild noise of the crowd.
He looked around and saw, with a jolt of panic, that Little Manny had disappeared.
It had never felt so important to him to keep someone he knew standing by his side. Someone he trusted to be solidly on his team. His mind shifted back to last night’s amateur fight. Looking up to see Nathan and Carol in the audience cheering for him. He wished he could transport himself back there, somehow.
Little Manny appeared suddenly in front of him, and he sighed with relief.
“You wanna go next? Get this over with? The next fighter didn’t show.”
“Wonder what happened to him.”
“Prob’ly had a brain left in his head, unlike you, and backed out.”
“Yeah, OK,” Nat said. “I’ll go next. Get this over with.”
“OK, go change into your trunks.”
“Where?” Nat asked, looking around.
“Men’s room, I guess.”
? ? ?
Nat stood a moment in front of the filthy mirror in the tiny, filthy toilet. The bare light bulb over his head seemed to show everything for what it really was. Nothing hidden. No lies.
He took himself in. The boxing trunks and belt. The six-pack abs. The biceps. The pecs. No head guard. No tank top. Just him, and his months of hard work.
I look like a fighter, he thought. You look like Jack, his head said back to him.
Nathan had said boxing was a dream, until Nat did it. So, tonight was the night. Tonight the dream was real.
The door pushed open a crack and Little Manny stuck his head in.
“Enough with admiring yourself, Cinderella. It’s time to roll.”
? ? ?
Little Manny hovered over Nat in their corner of the ring, holding out Nat’s mouth guard. Nat opened up to receive it. He barely felt himself doing it. He couldn’t hear himself think over the noise of the crowd. Every movement felt like a walk through a vivid dream.
Ironic, he thought. Tonight it’s not a dream, but it’s never felt more like one.
“OK, here’s what I’m thinking for a strategy. Just guard. Just keep your guard up. Don’t try to get fancy, because I don’t think you’re going to throw a punch that’ll faze him much anyway. So don’t even leave yourself open. The idea is to hold in a few rounds, so just stay away from him and keep your guard up.”
Nat wanted to say something like, thanks for all your confidence in me. But he settled for a weak nod instead.
“On your feet, kid.”
Nat stepped into the center of the ring and touched gloves with his opponent. A white guy with his wiry black hair shaved short, who Nat had sized up as a good two weight-classes too big. Maybe even light heavyweight.
The guy sneered at him. It was a sarcastic smile that seemed to say, this will be easy.
The warm, melty feeling in his groin intensified. It felt more liquid this time, and he glanced down to be sure he hadn’t literally urinated on himself. Thank God he had not. Thank God it was only a sensation.
He returned to his corner as instructed. Found Little Manny’s face, because it was something familiar. The only thing familiar. Then he looked away again, because he didn’t like what he saw on that face.
The bell in his vivid dream rang.
Nat stepped in boldly, but the monster fighter of this dream stepped in faster, and threw a punch. Nat felt as though he’d seen first the monster, then the monster’s fist, approaching in slow motion. He blocked the punch, but was surprised by the force of it hitting his gloves.
Three more landed, each equally surprising.
He heard Little Manny shout something about footwork.
A sudden flash of a memory. The old gym. Little Manny’s voice. “Watch Jack’s footwork. When it comes to footwork, he’s the king.” It woke him up, and he began to dance away from the punches. At least make himself harder to hit, a moving target. Minimize the number of blows that would land.
Jack would want me to fight this one, Nat thought.
He threw a punch, but it bounced off the monster’s gloves.
After that, it seemed he had no choice but to dance, evade and protect. He was able to kill well over a minute just by being hard to pin down.
Each second seemed to last minutes, but the bell was coming. It was right around the corner. He knew it by feel. Every cell in his body knew the length of two minutes in the ring. It should come … right about … here.
No bell.
Nat continued to dance, taking blows to his gloved fists and occasionally his head, thinking his timing had been off by a few seconds.
Still no bell.
That’s when it dawned on him. This was an unregulated fight. No one was keeping watch. They could ring that damn bell any time they wanted. Or not. And every time they did, it would cost somebody a hundred bucks. So why should they?
The thought moved down from his head and through his body as a distracting moment of shock.
Before he could regroup, the monster landed a body blow to Nat’s right side that broke several of his ribs. Or cracked them at least. He heard himself involuntarily release a big sound. A cross between a grunt and crying out loud. It ashamed him, but he couldn’t help it. It just all happened so fast.
The crowd noise intensified, if such a thing were possible, inside Nat’s skull.
He raised his gloves again to defend himself, but the right didn’t come up as high as he expected it to, as he told it to. As if the pain tied it down closer to his waist.
The final blow hit him in the right temple.
He heard the crowd suck in its collective breath.
His head whipped around, painfully wrenching his neck and sending his mouth guard flying. Time dealt a weird, uneven wrinkle. First he hovered too long, out of balance and destined to go down, hanging at an impossible angle for an impossible length of time. Then the mat smacked him without any intervening fall.
The jolt to his ribs felt searing, but he found himself unable to express anything about it.
He lay with his eyes open. He vacantly saw the crowd on its feet now, cheering and sloshing beer. The scene in front of his eyes moved from crowd, to dim, to dark, then back to crowd again. Back to dark. Back to crowd. It felt surprisingly satisfying to lie entirely still. Appropriate. The ceiling lights at the far end of the building glowed with light haloes. He heard the counting but it sounded muted, muffled. Drawn out and far away.
He might possibly have lost a few brief segments of time, but he wasn’t sure.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. “You OK, kid? Can you get up?” Little Manny.
“I’m fine, yeah.”
“Can you get up?”
“Yeah.”
“Here, I’ll help you.”
“I don’t need help. I’m fine.”
Nat placed both gloved fists on the mat and raised himself to his knees. The haloed ceiling lights began to spin in a broad circle around him, making him feel as though he might throw up. The crowd was booing. Booing him? That was too hard to figure out. But he knew they’d been doing it for some time. It just hadn’t quite broken through.
Little Manny stuck a hand under each of Nat’s armpits and tried to help him to his feet.
“I’m fine. I told you.” He knocked the hands away. “I’ll get up on my own.”
He rose partway to his feet in the wildly spinning ring, then had to brace himself on the mat again to keep from falling.
He made it on the second try.
He ducked carefully through the ropes and followed Little Manny toward the door.
The crowd booed him. A guy threw a cup of freezing cold liquid on him, and he felt bits of ice slide down his back and chest. Another guy aimed a beer bottle at him and he dodged it, causing the room to spin even more violently. Again he worried he might vomit.
He ducked after Little Manny out into the cold, quiet night of the equipment yard. The noise from inside sounded blessedly muffled and far away. Unreal.
“Why did they boo me?” Nat asked, his voice not sounding like his own to him.
“Why not?”
“It’s not like they had money on me to win.”
“I think they wanted a better show. More than two minutes.”
“That was more than two minutes. They should’ve rung the bell. They owe me a hundred bucks.”
“Good luck collecting. You sure you’re OK?” Little Manny pried open one of Nat’s eyelids and peered in at close range.
Nat reflexively shook him off again. Pushed him away. “Stop it. What are you doing?”
“Doesn’t matter. I can’t see in this light, anyway. Ready to go home, kid?”
“Oh, yeah. Definitely. I definitely want to go home.” He began to walk toward the street.
“Hey. Cinderella. Forgetting something?”
Nat turned back to face his trainer, still not clear on what he was forgetting. Little Manny glanced down to a spot below Nat’s face, so Nat looked down, too. He was wearing only his boxing trunks. He hadn’t even taken his gloves off.
“I’ll go get your clothes,” Little Manny said, and ducked back inside.
Nat lowered himself gingerly on to a stack of three or four wooden pallets. He looked down at his gloves and felt suddenly desperate to have them off. So he tore at the tape with his teeth, which he knew from the start was pointless, then gave up and wedged his wrists between his bare thighs.
He looked up at the sky, and saw stars. It seemed so out of place. How could the stars be shining over a place like this one?
The heat of exertion began to wear off, leaving him shivering in the cold. To his great humiliation, Nat found himself blinking back hot tears. To be seen that way by Little Manny felt unimaginable. It even embarrassed Nat to cry in front of himself.
He fought desperately to beat them back again, but was only partially successful.
He looked up to see Little Manny standing over him. Was it pity Nat saw in his eyes? Or was he just reading his worst fear into the scene before his eyes?
“Come on, kid. Let’s get you home.” He turned and walked toward the street.
“Little Manny,” Nat called. And Little Manny turned around. “Thanks for coming here with me.”
Little Manny passed the words off with a wave of his hand. “You coming? Or do you like it here?”
“I’m coming,” Nat said.