The Fighter

Chapter 14

Reuben Tully paced his brother’s hospital room, acridly awake. Tommy had been moved to a room with oatmeal-colored walls; he shared it with five — five! — other patients. The ringing splash of urine in bedpans so loud it sounded like someone pissing directly in your ear. Even the meals were crappier. Discount Jell-O. No Name tater tots. Next thing you knew, they’d wheel Tommy’s bed out into the hallway.

Reuben sorted the day’s mail. Bills, bills, bills. Tommy’s employer wasn’t kicking in a cent to cover hospital costs: the accident occurred off-premises, so they weren’t liable.

Kate arrived with coffees. “Thanks,” Reuben said, taking his cup.

“Any idea where my unreliable lug of a son is tonight?”

Kate went over to Tommy; gently, she smoothed the lank hair across his forehead.

“It’s strange,” she said, “he looks so restful.”

“Robbie?” Reuben said.

“I talked to him this morning.”

“Oh, he still talks? News to me. I can’t get two words out of him.” He took note of the look Kate was giving him and said, “What?”

“This isn’t easy for anyone, Reuben.” Reuben bristled. “How am I supposed to make it any easier, he doesn’t talk to me?”

“That’s Rob’s problem. He doesn’t say what he feels.”

“So, what — he’s telling you how he feels?” Her noncommittal shrug made Reuben’s hackles rise. “You’ve been here less than a minute and already you’re getting on my nerves. And what’s with this ‘Reuben’ stuff? What happened to Uncle Ruby?”

Kate flipped him a look: spare, flat. “You know, Rob would never say this, so I guess it falls to me—”

“And what’s that, Kate?” Reuben challenged. “What is it he’d never say?”

Then Fritzie Zivic was saying, “I brought him here directly,” and both Kate and Reuben saw Rob in the doorway, Fritzie standing over his shoulder.

Rob’s hands, Reuben thought. Something’s the matter with my son’s hands.

Zivic held his hat to his chest like a policeman come to deliver grim tidings.

“I didn’t know what he was doing till it was a done thing.”

Rob’s hands were bundled in a grimy towel. The towel was dark. The towel was red.

“What’s happened, Robbie?” Reuben struggled against a rising tide of dread.

“What have you done?”

Rob seemed to have aged dramatically in the hours since Reuben had last seen him.

The skin ringing his eyes was of such shocking whiteness Reuben felt as though he were staring into the headlights of an approaching vehicle.

The towel was drenched. The towel was… dripping.

“Rob…” Reuben touched his son’s shoulder. “What…?”

Except he knew. From the moment he glanced up and saw his son in the doorway — knew. Where he’d gone, what he’d done, and why. For Tommy’s sake, yes, but more than just Tommy.

And how long had Reuben known — really known? For years. The evidence had been everywhere: in his son’s every forced acceptance and grudging nod of consent, every time he’d pulled a punch to spare an opponent or took a punch where he could have given, the forlorn and defeated air with which he laced his boxing shoes. Of course he’d known. Why else would he have been so unrelenting?

To push Rob past the point of resistance, after which he’d settle into his role. Jesus, nobody was taking his life away: he would box until he was thirty, maybe thirty-five. Reuben would manage him carefully, bring him up the right way so he could retire with his brain intact and enough money to spend the rest of his days in comfort. On the streets he’d hear “There goes the Champ!” and he’d die knowing that part of him would remain on this earth — in the record books and archived footage — forever. This was Reuben’s plan: a wise and reliable plan. A plan for the future. The family’s future. And yet always he’d known, in the greater part of his mind and soul, that his son had never accepted his role.

Reuben and Kate guided Rob to a chair and sat him down. Rob stared, with a gaze of deep absorption, at the halogen lights overhead. Slowly, with great care, Reuben peeled sodden toweling away.

“Oh, my… oh… oh…”

What they saw resembled nothing so much as what might be found clogging the filter of a slaughterhouse sluice grate. Meat. Red and flayed and broken meat.

Everything tangled up, enmeshed, no one part all that distinguishable from the next. Reuben marveled, with knife-edged sickness, at the fortitude it must’ve taken to commit an act of such desperate aggression against oneself.

“My god, Rob…”

Reuben could not take his eyes off his son’s hands. What if they healed that way, skin grafting and bones setting into a scarred lumpen ball? Would they ever be right again? Not right enough so he could box — there was no way he’d ever step inside a ring again — but right enough to grip a pencil? To tie his own shoelaces?

“I’m sorry,” Rob said. “I’m so… sorry.”

“Sorry? No… you don’t have to be sorry. You don’t ever have to be sorry.”

“I didn’t… couldn’t do it. For you and Tommy and everyone I wanted to but I couldn’t anymore and I’m so, so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Reuben said even while he felt his whole world collapsing, all the things he’d striven for coming down around his ears. “It’ll be okay.”

Reuben set his arms around his son’s shoulders. Rob’s every muscle tensed; his entire body quaked. Reuben had no idea as to the precise sequence of the night’s events, what his boy had been through since they’d last spoken. He only wished he’d known of Rob’s intentions: if not to stop him, then at least to have been there for him — his father, instead of some neighborhood bum like Fritzie Zivic.

Christ, what were they going to do? Rob was a smart kid, hardworking, but college? No way could he afford it. So what were his options: pouring concrete, snaking toilets, hammering two-by-fours. The same ones open to every go-nowhere do-nothing slug in town. For a soul-destroying instant Reuben pictured his son at the bakery with a bag of enriched flour on his shoulder. Flour in Rob’s hair and ears, gathering at the sides of his eyes.

“You didn’t have to do this,” he said. “You could have told me.”

But was that really true? Perhaps there was no other route his son could have taken: only an act of this magnitude — an act of zero recourse — could steer him off the path he’d been set upon. Bonds of family are the fiercest, and can only be broken by the most extreme strokes.

“We’ll be okay.” If his words lacked conviction, at least his voice was steady.

“We’ll figure all this out.” He touched his lips to Rob’s forehead.

“You need a doctor. Kate, stay here.”

Reuben shot Fritzie an unforgiving look as he shoved past him out into the hallway.

“I’ll go with your dad,” Fritzie said meekly. Murdoch padded into the room and sat by Tommy’s bed; he started to chew on a dangling IV tube.

Rob could still feel the lingering wetness of his father’s lips on his forehead.

When was the last time his dad had kissed him — as a baby?

Kate’s expression was caught somewhere between dread and wonder. “You’ve destroyed them,” was all she could say.

“I’ll never box again.”

She smoothed the sweaty hair on his forehead. Though the sight of his hands obviously made her queasy, she smiled.

“What are you smiling at?”

“Nothing. They look awful, Tully. A busted jigsaw puzzle.”

“You’re still smiling.”

“I know I am. I’m sorry. I don’t know why.”

Rob found himself smiling as well. Still in shock, he figured. He glanced at Tommy and wondered what he might make of all this, were he awake. Then he thought of them in their little house on 16th Street. Sitting on the porch with his uncle on a warm summer’s night: a cold soda, the fireflies and stars. Brief, sure, but then the good times always seemed too brief. Who was he to ask for any of it over?

“Do you want me to get you anything?” Kate asked.

“Just sit with me, okay?”

His hands were blazing. He heard the whisper of Tommy’s breath. He sat with his uncle, each man in his own place.

Both of them waiting.