The world could destroy him but first he would become a destroyer too.
Now he watched the contender sparring, the contender’s trainer watching too. If any of the others were boxers going anywhere he couldn’t tell. He didn’t know how to measure a man’s quality except to throw himself against the man. A more personal metrics. The others had names but Kelly wouldn’t use them, kept to guy or sport or champ. They called each other words he wouldn’t repeat. He wasn’t ignorant and as they exchanged punches he hoped they knew. He respected their difference, wanted to see it preserved. There was no equal ground anywhere but the ring was close. The body the most personal tool, its absolute lack of any privilege you didn’t make yourself. Fists like meat mallets thudded against his skin and he felt the muscles beneath wearing thinner, he no longer had any fat on him so it was like their fists were striking his bones. He went down on one knee and the other man didn’t stop swinging because another time Kelly hadn’t either. There was a frustration in the others at his insistence on standing again, asking for more. They weren’t supposed to be going this hard but Kelly always forced the blow.
At work he carried gunmetal gray file cabinets to stairwells on his broadening shoulders and dropped them down two or three or five stories, let them crash off banisters all the way to the ground, where they’d wait in the pluming dust to be dragged out across the ice. He worked with other men but they had their own tasks and he barely saw them, acknowledged them less. Every possible friendship had ended before it began. The other men just pale shades of the better men he’d known at other jobsites, separated from him by a veil of disinterest, their comradery living in a world he could see but not touch.
In the absence of time and charity his meals with the girl with the limp reverted to meat and potatoes, everything starch and protein. Winter vegetables, carrots and beets, frozen foods. Cans of beans and cans of soup. They let the hockey games play through dinner so often they only spoke during the commercials, their voices loud over the volume of Budweiser, Labatt Blue, Molson Ice. One night she looked surprised as she reached out to touch his beard, his temples — he was going gray but you couldn’t tell until he got a haircut. He had stopped buying fresh food, stopped replacing his clothes. He was getting ready to leave again but he wasn’t leaving her, he didn’t think. He had started to notice how much more space he was taking up on the couch, the way his neck stretched the collars of his t-shirts, his thighs pulling his jeans tight into his crotch whenever he sat down. He knew how to throw a powerful punch without breaking his own wrist but he couldn’t stop his skin from splitting across the knuckles. She picked up his hands and frowned at the damage she found.
Is this from the gym? she asked. Don’t you wear gloves?
He said, Gloves and helmet. Mouthguard. Hand wraps and taped ankles.
He said, The gloves protect the other person. Not the striker but the one struck. Every punch you throw opens you up. You have to be willing to hurt yourself.
Be careful, she said. You’re not young anymore. We’re not young together.
She said, What will happen to me could happen any day and I can’t do anything to stop it. But this is something you’re choosing.
She wasn’t wrong. He had begun wearing the watch’s orange jersey underneath his other clothes, its mesh scratchy against his skin, under flannel or sweater or sweatshirt. He hadn’t expected there to be so much power in the bright fabric but its intention clung to its flesh, authorized his vigilance. Now the jersey stunk no matter how he washed it, its material discolored under the armpits and around the neckline. He rinsed it every night in the sink but too often he put it back on before it was fully dry, wrapping himself in the smell of laundry soap, unscrubbed sweat.
He hid the jersey from the girl, felt more naked than ever when he removed it in the secretive dark of the bedroom. She was worried enough, already had her reasons. There was a space growing between them, the case shortening his days and nights, constraining the chances for him to be with her, the attention she received. He thought he would make it up to her soon, ask her to move in or to move to a new place together, somewhere they’d have no previous history. A new beginning. He would ask her soon but not until he closed the case. He wanted to be with her but he didn’t want the case to come along.
How to protect yourself from the blow you can’t see coming. This was what the other boxers talked about, beside the mats, in the locker room, while lifting heavier quantities of dull-black weights over their heads, straining thighs and calves and backs and shoulders. Chalk everywhere, on their hands and arms, the floor and the benches, and always the same topic: how to protect yourself from the invisible blow. Because it was the blow you couldn’t see coming that knocked you out. If you stared into every punch you could never be put down. The illusion of control. Self-determination in battle. Kelly didn’t believe in anything else he’d once believed in but he thought he might believe in this. To stop escaping what was coming. The recognition of the inevitable, the way a boxer’s knees might be buckling before the blow landed, the eyes rolling back, the mouth slacking open to utter some last dumb sound.
In the morning the trainer approached Kelly in the locker room to pitch the fight, Bringer’s first. The trainer said he would train them both, with his assistant serving as Kelly’s corner man. There was no conflict of interest because no one — not the contender, not the trainers, perhaps not even Kelly — actually expected or wanted Kelly to win.
I think you’re wrong, Kelly said. I could beat him.
No, the trainer said. But I want you to think so. I’m betting on you believing.
Kelly shook the trainer’s hand, saw how the trainer knew the truest shape of his heart. His ability to keep fighting even after he’d been hurt. How even if he knew he would be hurt badly it didn’t mean he wouldn’t fight back, wouldn’t push against every fist in the world. Always he had left behind what he’d done by giving up the portion of himself it lived within. With enough versions of himself he might compartmentalize anything. Diminishment could be a path to action and if Bringer did nothing else he might diminish what little resistance remained.
The boy wakes up in the middle of the night. A nightmare. He’s back in the blue house, back in the basement. But this time it’s not the man in the red slicker in the chair. This time it’s the brother.
The boy’s ankles are handcuffed to the bed. He can move but he can’t leave.
He is naked but there is a blanket covering him. His body exposed but hidden.
He waits quietly. This is the brother. He is not in danger.
But then the brother says, Watch me.
The brother says, Watch this.
He says, Boy, just watch, and then the boy watches. The brother walks away from the bed, into the dark corners of the room. He’s looking for something but the boy can’t see what.
But I can. He’s donning the red slicker, slipping inside it one arm at a time.
When the brother comes back into the light the boy starts to scream.
And then whose dreams are these.
The man in the red slicker — is he a person or an action? An action that until I found the boy I had never been able to name?
Who do I see when I picture the kidnapper?