The Fighter by Craig Davidson Read Free Book Online Page B

five-gallon drums once containing oleo lard. The walls were
hung with cobwebbed Golden Gloves belts and framed photos of young boxers who
now made their living as plumbers or foremen or short-order cooks. Handwritten
signs rife with misspellings: club dews must be paid at the START of the MONTH!!! CLUB TOWULS ARE FOR SWET ONLY, not BLOOD!!! use
lockers at own risk—not responsibul for LOST gear!!!
    Written
above the wall-length mirror in neat block letters:
    WE
ARE EDUCATED IN PAIN.
    Top
Rank was operated by a consortium of managers and trainers— Reuben Tully was
one of them—who collected dues to pay the rent and sent whatever was left over to
an absentee landlord in Boca Raton. In exchange for this stewardship, they were
given free rein to train their own prospects.
    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