Fight Song A Novel

Fight Song A Novel - By Joshua Mohr





The plock of despair


Way out in a puzzling universe known as the suburbs, Bob Coffen rides his bike to work. He pedals and pants and perspires past all the strip malls, ripe with knockoff shoe stores, chain restaurants, emporiums stuffed with the latest gadgets, and watering holes deep enough that the locals can drown their sorrows in booze. Each plaza also contains at least one church, temple, or synagogue—a different way altogether to drown one’s sorrows.

After arriving at the office, Coffen hightails it to the bathroom and wildly paper-towels away the pond of sweat from his crack. He works an unfortunate bundle in the back of his unzipped pants with such fury that the flab above Bob’s belt shimmies in a kind of unintentional hula. He splashes water on his face, fixes his tie. He is overdressed and overheated and ready to slog through the stupor of another day at Dumper Games.

Bob plops down at his desk for only a few minutes before the head honcho of the company, Mister Malcolm Dumper himself, walks up, holding something behind his back. Dumper is only thirty, almost ten full years younger than Bob. He comes from family money (his grandfather was a Canadian oil tycoon). To show his north-of-the-border allegiances, Dumper always wears a throwback hockey sweater to work, Wayne Gretzky’s #99 Edmonton Oilers jersey. To make matters worse, Dumper refers to himself as “the Great One,” which was Gretzky’s nickname on the ice.

But the most striking thing about Dumper is his tongue, thick and long, almost the size of a hot water bottle—when he focuses on ideas, crunching around their strengths and weaknesses, the floppy thing sort of lolls out front of his mouth.

“Do you know what today is?” Dumper asks Bob.

Coffen genuinely has no idea. “What is today?”

“The Great One would not forget such a momentous milestone,” Dumper says. “Today is a fine wine. Today is an aged Bordeaux from the Left Bank.”

“What’s the occasion?” Bob says.

“It’s your anniversary.” Dumper pulls a wrapped present from behind his back and extends it to Coffen. “I would never forget what today means to this company because I would never forget what you mean to our little shop here, Bob. Congratulations on a decade of good times and good games, and our future together is as bright as a miner’s helmet.”

Bob takes the rectangular gift from him, surprised by how heavy it is. Surprised by the venomous burn going on in his heart—I’ve been here for ten years?

“Go on and open it, amigo,” says Dumper. Coffen tears through the wrapping paper and stares at it for a few seconds. It’s some sort of bulky wooden clock. He has no idea what to say and goes with, “Wow, I’m so honored by this unique timepiece.”

“It’s a plock. Half-plaque, half-clock. I named it myself.”

On the face of the plock is engraved DEAR ROBERT COFFEN: IT’S ALWAYS TIME TO WORK!

The clock hands are not moving, fixed at midnight.

Bob frowns at the plock, and Dumper must notice his sourpuss face because he asks, “Don’t you like it?”

“My name’s not Robert.”

“Bob is short for Robert. Everybody knows that.”

“Sometimes, yes,” Coffen says, “but I’m only Bob. On my birth certificate, it reads ‘Bob Coffen.’”

At this, Dumper’s frown gets even bigger than Bob’s, the boss’s humungous tongue creeping out and hanging there. After about ten seconds, he reels the lanky muscle back in and says, “Nobody’s name is just Bob.”

Coffen shrugs and says, “Bob is me.”

“But besides this miniscule blip, the gist of the company’s heartfelt sentiments remains the same. Robert … Bob … we at DG value all your effort to build games.”

Bob wonders if a plock is the equivalent of giving a condemned man a final cigarette before the firing squad. He doesn’t want to ponder all the wasted time, tries to distract himself with a task, turning the tragic contraption over in his hands, looking for a battery hatch or a way to plug it in to a power source. “How does the clock half work?”

“It doesn’t,” Dumper says.

“It’s broken?”

“It’s purely decorative.”

Bob wants so much to tell his boss that he quits, but it comes out like this: “Thanks.”

“We’ll get your name right on the next one.”

“Something to look forward to,” says Coffen, speaking at a whisper.

Dumper shakes his head and storms off, muttering, “Nobody’s only named Bob.”

Alone, Coffen spends the rest of the day sitting right like that, not doing one lick of work. He holds the heavy plock and watches how its hands never move. Always midnight. No way to document any of the expiring minutes, but damn if they aren’t all disappearing.





A despicable truth about the human animal


Bob’s bike ride home that evening starts off much like the morning one. He is sweaty. Annoyed. He pedals past a billboard advertising Björn the Bereft, a magician/marriage counselor performing a few shows in town on his national tour. Coffen scowls at the billboard, knowing he and Jane will be catching the act this coming Friday. Actually, it didn’t sound like the kind of thing that Jane would want to do in the first place, but she had been so insistent, Coffen went along with it—of course he went along with it! Isn’t his fat ass oozed all over a bicycle seat because Jane wanted him to ride it, whip himself back into shape?

Coffen’s not on the bicycle by himself: There’s a corporate rucksack slung across his chest diagonally, the bandoleer of the working stiff. It pushes twenty pounds tonight because of the weighty plock.

He pedals and pants and perspires, turning onto a quiet stretch of residential road, riding in the bike lane, next to tall oleanders that line this street. His subdivision, his house, his wife, his kids, his computer and online life are only another half mile ahead.

Here’s where Coffen’s archenemy, Nicholas Schumann, pulls up next to Bob and his bike. Schumann slows his SUV, revs the engine, rolling down the passenger window so he can scream out at Coffen, “Shall we engage in a friendly test of masculine fortitude?”

Schumann is a douche of such a pungently competitive variety that he carries a picture of himself wearing his college football uniform in his wallet. And shows it to people. Bob will be huddled with the other dads of the subdivision at one barbecue or another and Schumann will whip out the photo and talk about how he single-handedly guided Purdue to an overtime win against the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame and how nobody thought they had a chance, but as the quarterback he had to keep his team focused, poised, grinding, etc., etc. All the neighborhood fathers hang on Schumann’s probably fabricated remixes from his glory days. He has these dads trained to sniff out Bob’s lack of interest in sports and has even said things in front of them like “Gentlemen, it appears that Coffen doesn’t enjoy the great American pastime of pigskin.”

They shake their astonished heads. Their eyes eyeing Bob like he pissed in the damn sangria.

“You really don’t like the pastime of pigskin?” the disgusted dads ask.

“Football’s fine,” says Bob.

“Football is like storming the beaches of Normandy,” Schumann says, the dads all nodding along. “It is a bunch of samurai let loose on the field to kill or be killed.”

“I give up,” Coffen mutters.

“That’s your problem,” says Schumann. “You can’t give up. Not when Notre Dame’s linebackers are blitzing your back side. Believe me, that’s a life lesson.”

Now, Coffen answers Schumann’s request for a duel of masculine fortitude by saying, “You wanna race me?”

“Psycho Schumann wants to rumble.”

“You have an unfair advantage.”

“You’ll have to be more specific,” Schumann says. “I have about thirty advantages over you.”

The plock’s weight makes the bandoleer creep into Coffen’s skin. “I mean the SUV is your advantage.”

“I won’t go over seven miles an hour. Come on: Let’s see what you’re made of.”

It’s a despicable truth about the human animal that people often thrust themselves into the crosshairs of unwinnable equations. Logic is meaningless. Lessons learned get heaved from windows. All that life experience jets the coop with myopic majesty, and it’s here ye, here ye, gather round and take a gander as another dumb man makes a monkey out of himself.

Coffen’s particular monkey-ness on this particular evening lies with the plock and the self-hate at being honored for wasting ten years of his life on a job that does nothing productive or interesting, a job that shines the light on the fact that Bob himself has settled into curdling routine. Rationally, he knows he can’t beat Schumann—not piloting a bike while Schumann has a combustible engine—but Bob doesn’t care. He can’t care. There have been too many unwinnable contests in his life, and at this moment Coffen is hell-bent on seeing how he does against the Notre Dame pass rush, how he stacks up to what might be categorized as an insurmountable obstacle. Is he the kind of underdog that flouts expectations, or is Bob Coffen as miraculously pitiful as the subdivision fathers say?

So there Coffen is shirking the boring tradition of reason. There he is yelling to Schumann, “You’re on, you rat bastard!”

And thus, the contest is underway.

So far, so good—Schumann stays at seven miles an hour. Coffen pulls ahead. He’s winning! He’s a full SUV-length ahead, and his lead is growing; all the sweating and panting and pain from the clawing bandoleer jabbing into Coffen are worth it. Adversity is a stepping-stone. It’s in contests such as these that people disclose the true fight in their hearts, and Bob wants so badly to have fight left in his, despite the last decade’s evidence to the contrary.

Next, Schumann has the vehicular gall to shatter the established ceiling of seven miles per hour. He pulls up even to Bob, flashes a Nicky All-American grin. Then he pulls ahead. Schumann toots the damn horn, toying with Coffen, slowing down and saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, they’re neck and neck going into the homestretch … ”

“You’re speeding up,” Bob says.

“Are you questioning my honor?”

“What’s the speedometer say?”

“I fight fair and square,” says Schumann, shaking his head, looking sinister. “Until I don’t.”

Here’s when a certain self-celebrated college football hero reveals the existential interior of a rancorous cheater, edging his SUV a bit into the bike lane, almost clipping Coffen. Bob swerves into the rough patch of dead grass along the side of the road. Only a few feet before he’d be rammed into those unruly oleanders.

“Watch it,” Bob says.

“Do you know what your problem is, Coffen?”

Still edging the SUV …

“I’m being run into an oleander?”

“You don’t have any balls,” Schumann says.

Bob will not be testicularly ridiculed. Hell no, he won’t. Last week, last month, for the last ten years, yes, ridicule away, mock Bob like it’s nobody’s business. But tonight he’s turning things around. Tonight, he hemorrhages pragmatism. Tonight, he cremates common sense, sends its ashes up into the atmosphere in a stunning cloud. What have these things brought him besides boredom, mediocrity?

“F*ck yourself, Schumann!” Bob says, taking his left hand off of the handle bar in preparation of giving Schumann the bird, except once his hand moves, the plock’s weight makes the bike go herky-jerky, balance faltering, front wheel turning quickly to an unanticipated angle and Coffen flies over the handlebars.

He is airborne. He has left the bike behind and travels a few feet ahead of it, though this trip will be short-lived and soon his voyage shall transition into an excruciating landing.

The bike crashes, and so does Coffen.

The valiant Schumann doesn’t even pump the brakes. He keeps driving. It’s funny how people expose their camouflaged spirits in moments of emergency. Bob watches the taillights disappear.





Hail Purdue


If somebody were to gaze down at Coffen’s particular subdivision from the great subdivision in the sky, it would be shaped like a capital Y. Currently, he hobbles from the main gate, down at the bottom of the Y and up toward the fork, where he’ll veer left to reach Schumann’s—his own light gray palace much farther down the same street.

“Coffen?” a voice says.

Bob limps in the middle of the road. There’s blood dripping from his brow. He’d been so mired in savage thoughts that he hadn’t heard the whir of an electric car coming up next to him.

“Hey, Westbrook,” says Bob.

“What’s the other guy look like?”

“Schumann.”

“Wish I looked like Schumann.”

“No, it actually was Schumann.”

“He kicked your ass?”

“He ran me off the road. I’m going to kick his ass now.”

Westbrook, unlike Schumann, can keep his vehicle at a steady speed, chugging next to Coffen down the darkened block. “You’ll be massacred,” Westbrook says.

“That’s why we play the game.”

“What game?”

“Purdue versus Notre Dame.”

“Which one are you in this metaphor?” asks Westbrook.

“I’m Purdue. I’m the underdog.”

“At least let me drive you to his house. You look like a hammered turd.”

The two men near the Y’s fork. “I have to do this on my own, Westbrook. If our paths should cross again, we’ll toast to my victory.”

“Our paths have to cross again. You still have my tent poles, remember?”

And with that, Westbrook speeds off. Coffen’s solitary limp powers on.



Bob stands in front of château Schumann, weighing what he should do next. Does he ring the doorbell? Does he hunt for an open window? He hadn’t really formulated any kind of plan, per se, as he lurched here. He felt like he’d know what had to be done once he arrived, inspiration striking as he stood on Schumann’s green lawn. But really, the longer he hovers on the grass, he’s losing some of his anger, his gall. Maybe he should just go home. Maybe he should err on the side of caution. Maybe he should go lick his wounds and try again tomorrow.

A meteorologist might call the conditions an unusually warm night.

If Bob had built this, if this current scenario were one of Coffen’s video games, then this would be the final level. You won the whole thing if you conquered the neighborhood bane. You got fifty thousand bonus points if you decapitated him. You were labeled the “Subdivision Badass.” The surviving neighborhood dads basked in your splendor at the barbecues, their wives all randy for you, swooning each time the winner, Bob Coffen, came by the house returning tent poles.

This isn’t a video game, though. Unfortunately not. This is Bob Coffen fresh off falling from his bike, almost being rammed into the oleanders. This is Bob nursing a suspect clavicle and ribs from landing on the plock. This is Bob deciding to swallow another snort of pride and limp home defeated.

Yet right as he’s about to surrender, there’s a noise coming from inside Schumann’s house. This is a noise Bob knows.

Screechy.

Mewling.

High-pitched.

It’s bagpipes.

Yup, those are bagpipes coming from Schumann’s.

And the spot of pride-swallowing that has been slowly working its way down Coffen’s esophagus gets thwarted, deemed irrelevant. He can’t go home. No way. He can’t pretend that this never happened, Schumann leaving him in the street like roadkill.

These brash bagpipes push Coffen to retaliate. Here he is bleeding on the grass. Here he is bleeding and Schumann is in there merrily bagpiping songs for his family? Here Bob is feeling so alone in his life, feeling so separated from his own wife and kids, and the Schumanns are happily huddled by the hearth appreciating a bagpipe recital? And why had it been so easy for Schumann to abandon Bob in the street back there? Why was it so easy for people to abandon Bob Coffen? First his father had walked out, then the few girlfriends he had throughout his twenties, and now he and Jane had wilted into the ultimate cliché—a sexless marriage. They had a life much like the subdivision itself: walled off from everything, even each other.

All these things inspire an elegant gush of rage in Coffen. He notices an American flag that hangs from a silly stick outside the château, and he thinks that maybe he can indeed think about this as a video game—maybe the hero can snatch the skinny flagpole. Maybe he can position himself in front of the huge picture window in Schumann’s living room—maybe this hero can pull back his arm to heave the patriotic javelin, the American flag whipping behind it—maybe Bob Coffen is in fact this hero.

He feels the bruised clavicle burn even though he’s using the opposite arm to throw the javelin, not that the agony much matters, no way, because nothing’s going to keep Coffen from doing this.

He watches the javelin sail, the flag waggling behind it.

Bob watches and admires his toss as it glides toward the window.

Watches its trajectory and thinks: The HOA will not be impressed with what’s transpiring on one of its hallowed lawns. Bob thinks, I might be stepping in some serious shit, but oh boy, does sticking up for myself feel good.

Yes, if this were a video game, the picture window explodes!

Sure, if this were a video game, Bob’s well on his way to winning.

But in Coffen’s reality, his aim isn’t such great shakes. His javelin misses the huge picture window. Misses it badly. His heave is over near the front door and knocks off a flowerpot that’s suspended from a support beam. It shatters on the porch.

The sounds of breaking terra-cotta halt Schumann’s bagpipe recital. Commotion in the douche’s lair. Footsteps stomping, dead bolt turning, and any second Coffen will hear a stampede through the door, and the featured brawl can commence, pitting the underdog versus Notre Dame.

Schumann opens the front door, holding his bagpipes, spies Coffen out on the lawn. He yells back into the house for his wife and kids to stay put, he’ll handle this. It’s only Bob. Then he says in a calm voice, “Your head’s bleeding pretty good.”

Coffen nods.

“Look,” Schumann says, “let’s not make things any worse.”

“You can’t smear me into the oleanders.”

“Seriously, your head is pouring blood.”

“And my shoulder’s hurt, too.”

“I’ll take you to the hospital.”

Coffen stares at the bagpipes, limp in Schumann’s arms like a sleeping toddler. Bob wipes some blood from his face and asks, “What song were you playing before?”

“Huh?”

“What song was that?”

“The fight song of my alma mater. Called ‘Hail Purdue.’”

“A fight song?”

“Our call to arms.”

Having fought for something—having fought for himself—Bob feels like he needs to hear the song in its entirety. He fancies himself victorious in this situation with Schumann, despite the mangled bicycle, the bleeding head—despite the fact he’s only hours removed from somebody honoring him with a plock, probably the most malicious prize ever designed. Always midnight. Always lying about how much time has gotten away from him. Always Robert.

“Before we go to the hospital, will you fire it up again?” Coffen says.

“Why?”

“I want to hear the song.”

Schumann looks momentarily confused, then shrugs. He gets the bagpipes going, those gigantic, funereal squawks. Coffen stands on the lawn listening to “Hail Purdue” coat the whole subdivision in celebration. For some reason, Coffen has brought his hand up and placed it over his heart like he’s pledging allegiance to something.