My Father's Fighter: A Novel

ONE

Mickey Davis’ left hand soaks in an ice-filled aluminum champagne bucket with an orange Veuve Clicquot label on its front. He sits on the floor against a wall in the corner of an unlit and unfurnished room in the shadows of a sunny April afternoon. We are in downtown Brooklyn, two flights above a gym in an attic space that, according to a hand-printed sign on the half-opened door beside me, is a private dressing room. Mickey wears two ancient sweatshirts: a stained red one with its sleeves cut off atop an even older, frayed gray one. The layers of thick cotton make Mickey’s chest and shoulders seem monumental. His legs are extended in front of him on the floor, and an olive green army blanket covers his lower body. A space heater is beside him, no more than three feet away, though the room, like the gym below it, is overheated and smells of stale sweat.

Mickey is shrouded in a mood of exhaustion, silence, and complaint. A clean white towel hangs over the sides of Mickey’s head like an Arab headdress. From where I stand at the entrance to the room, I can’t see the often-photographed, bruised face. Through the towel comes a voice that is familiar from TV, from the interview that followed the only fight of his I’ve ever seen.

I’m cold, he says.

Though Mickey is from Pittsburgh, his accent, now that I hear it in person, is surprisingly southern, and I wonder if he doesn’t exaggerate its twang to sound somehow tougher.

And my groin hurts, Mickey says.

He takes the towel from his head and places it neatly on the floor. With his crushed nose and puffy, scarred brow, Mickey looks almost too much like a fighter: he’s the young tough with a painful past who will die a hero or die a lout. Either way, as those of us who have seen movies like this immediately know, the kid is doomed.

Mickey removes the blanket from his lower body, and I see that four plastic bags are tied to his groin and hips by what look like multicolored belts from terrycloth bathrobes. The layers of rag-like clothing and the grocery bags bring to mind a homeless schizoid—a holy man following his own private religion.

What’s in the bags? I ask.

Ice.

Mickey lifts his left hand from the bucket at his side and holds up an enormous, frozen, reddish fist. He dries off his hand with the towel he’d worn over his head and again lays it flat on the floor with the solemnity of a worshipper caring for his prayer rug.

Mickey looks at the plastic watch on his right hand.

Thirty-two minutes. Doc told me it don’t do no good to ice for less than twenty. I figure a half hour’s gotta be better.

Do you do this every day?

Every day after I work out—which I do six days a week when I’m in training. Also after roadwork and sometimes when I wake up in the morning. When I get out of bed, everything hurts.

Suddenly Mickey is a proud homeowner showing off his favorite purchases.

These two are for my pulled groin, he says, pointing to two ice bags nestled beneath his gym shorts on either side of his crotch. I got that seven years ago in the Olympic trials—which I lost to a nigger from Phillie by a decision in the quarter-finals. Good fighter. He’s dead now. Armed robbery gone bad.

Your groin hasn’t healed in seven years? I ask.

Doc said it would get better in a week. But it’s been seven years, and it still feels like I got a fishhook in there. A little fish hook inside of my groin, mostly my left side but also the right. But everyone thinks I’m a head case.

Mickey, who certainly is a head case, digs beneath his sweatshirt and pulls at his stomach, pinching a negligible role of flab which is visible only because he’s seated and leaning forward.

I’m fat, he says, sounding very much like the rich teenage girls I teach across the Brooklyn Bridge and five miles north of here on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Look at this. I haven’t taken a good shit in two days, Mickey adds. I’m too nerved up. I gotta make 175 in two weeks and after the workout today I was 187.

He points to his knees. The right one is covered with a single blue plastic bag filled with ice, while the left gets two bags. One bears the name of a discount chain called Love and is marked with the store’s logo, a red heart.

The knees speak for themselves, he says. The left one’s worse than the right. The left one I picked up in high school playing football before I dropped out.

Now he turns his attention to his lower right leg.

Shin splints, he says, from roadwork. Doc says it may be a stress fracture, but he’s full of shit. A month ago he told me not to run, so I cut back to five miles a day—down from six point two. Can you do that with a broken leg?

I certainly couldn’t.

Then there’s the back, he says, meaning his back.

He pulls out two flat blue pads that he’s been pressing against the wall with his lower back.

These are ice bags, too, he says. They’re reusable. An excellent product because they.… what’s the word?.… they like hold onto to the shape of your body.

Conform, I say.

What?

Conform. They conform to the shape of your body.

Anyway, I got pain there, too. Nothing you can do for it. I been to three doctors. They all say the same thing: your back hurts. I been to chiropractors. They’re full of shit. I ain’t gonna let no one who ain’t been to medical school crack my spine or even touch my neck.

With precise movements, Mickey begins to reverently place all the ice bags onto the towel.

And that’s it, he says.

Reaching behind his back one last time to grab yet another blue, re-usable ice pack, he adds, "I forgot about this. I use this one to prevent upper back pain."

He stands slowly like a skinny quarterback who’s just been tackled by two immense linebackers and isn’t sure how badly he’s been hurt.

I’m getting too old for this shit, he says, standing three feet in front of me. But it’s hard to quit when you’re a white guy with only four losses, and a name like I got. They can always use you. You’re like a piece of Kleenex to ’em. You ever see a fighter that wasn’t fucked in the head?

I don’t know any fighters, I say. I’m a schoolteacher. Like I told Harry on the phone, I teach English at a private school in Manhattan.

You’re Vincent? You’re Solly’s son who’s gonna manage me?

That’s me.

I thought you was a writer. A new guy from Newark’s supposed to come down to interview me.

No, I’m Vincent Rosen.

Tell you the truth, Mickey says, you look like half a fag.

TWO

It’s such a lovely afternoon that it feels wrong to be seated in this hangover of a bar with its stale air and jukebox which seems to play only songs by Stevie Wonder or Marvin Gaye. I am now hearing Sexual Healing for the second time, and I’ve only been here for ten minutes.

Why you wanta read something that ain’t true when you can read something that is true? Harry Gainesworth asks. Myself, I don’t read novels. Don’t watch the nonsense on TV. Don’t waste my time with movies. Don’t see the point.

We are at Eddy’s bar, three doors down from the gym. Harry sips bourbon on the rocks; I drink watery draft beer.

Harry, who is Mickey Davis’ trainer, still wears the white knit Kangol cap he wore at the gym where I found him demonstrating the proper way to throw a left hook for a tiny, acne-scarred Dominican fighter. The rest of Harry’s outfit marks him as a dude: pressed green cargo pants worn below his considerable belly and held up by blue-and-beige striped suspenders that rise over Harry’s stupendously powerful back and shoulders. He wears two T-shirts—one white and one gray—beneath the thick, collarless, three-button shirt which I’m fairly certain comes from the J. Crew Catalogue, where its color is described as plum.

For an ex-fighter, Harry’s nose is all but undented. It spreads across his face with only a slight crookedness at the bridge. His teeth also are in good shape considering all the punches they must have taken over the years. Are those caps? My wife would know. Elizabeth prides herself on answering those sorts of questions: has the aging woman had a facelift? Does that hair color come from a salon on Madison Avenue?

Harry’s graying hair is trimmed short, and his skin is a deep shade of brown. His voice, an impressive, gravelly, baritone noise, emerges straight from his belly. All of which brings to mind an aging blues singer who perhaps developed layers of muscles from years moonlighting as a blacksmith.

I get the feeling Harry is in his regular seat. He sits on a stool, leaning his back against the corner wall, with a good view of the front door. The hard-looking white bartender with tattooed arms and dirty blond ponytail, and Eddy, the older black man who owns the place, both greeted Harry by name, though neither gave him a smile. The sun is still bright, and I’m too warm in my light wool sport coat, shirt, and tie. It’s been years since I’ve been in a bar with an air of menace to match this. Harry and I may be the only ones in the place who don’t have a parole officer, and come to think of it, I’m not all that sure about Harry.

"Well, what do you read?" I ask, sensing that he wants to impress the effete English teacher he’s only just met.

I read all the New York papers, read ’em every day. Cover to cover. And I also read history—history of boxing, American history, World War I, World War II. Like that. You probably figure because I’m a black man that that’s all I read—about the black man. But I read any kind of history. Right now I’m reading about Hitler. Did you know that when his troops ran out of Norway he ordered them to kill all the reindeer?

Really?

It’s a fact. There’s a hard-assed motherfucker for you—killing reindeer. Harry sips his bourbon, taking a moment to savor his own words. Hitler wanted to burn all of Germany, but the people around him wouldn’t let it happen. Speer played a role in that, Albert Speer. After Albert got out of Spandau, he lived in Heidelberg, Germany. I boxed over in Germany once. Albert was alive then. He coulda come to the fight. Back then, I wouldn’t a known who he was. Heidelberg’s a nice town. We never bombed it during the War ’cause it had hospitals in it or something like that. I dropped a decision to a local white boy not far from there. Fact is, I boxed his ears off, busted him up. You Jewish, right, like your dad?

That’s right.

I don’t got no problem with that.

Glad to hear it.

Because a lot of brothers do. The fact is, the Jews have a hard-on for the black man. But it don’t matter to me. A black man stabbed me in the belly. Nearly killed me. But that don’t mean I hate the black man.

Harry pauses here. He is the second massive man I’ve met on this day. I’m in pretty good shape for a thirty-five-year-old English teacher, but I have no doubt that Harry, who must be pushing sixty, could pick me up and throw me through the front window of this bar in a matter of seconds. He might even enjoy doing it.

Ain’t no Jew ever stabbed me in the belly, but one or two stabbed me in the back in my fighting days, Harry says, laughing to himself. That’s just the way this business is right now. The black man does the fighting and the white man counts the money. It’s just a fact, and I don’t mean nothing by it, but nine out of ten of the people counting the money are Jews. The rest are Italian, and a few are brothers. Used to be all Mob stuff, but no more. It doesn’t matter, they’re all the same: white or black, Jews or Italians, they’re pimps. Do you know what a pimp is?

You tell me.

A pimp is a procurer of human flesh, Harry says slowly like a teacher in grade school. Understand?

Yes.

What does that mean?

You tell me, I say again, sensing that I might not be the only pompous professorial type in poor Mickey’s life.

That’s a man who sells another person’s flesh and blood, sells another human being’s body, and pockets the proceeds. A slave trader’s a pimp: he hunted down the brothers over in Africa, brought ’em to the good old USA, and sold ’em for cash. Now, some of them tribal chiefs back in Africa lined their own pockets, too—which makes ’em pimps just like anybody else. But brothers ’round here don’t want to hear about that. Don’t wanta know the facts. If you’re Solly Rosen’s son, how come I never met you before?

This is the second time Harry has ended a sentence with a quick question that does not relate to what he just said. It’s like a fighter sneaking in a quick punch just as the bell rings, ending a round.

My father and I were not close, I say. My mother died when I was sixteen.

I guess old Solly wasn’t much of a family man, Harry says. Solly needed action, that’s all. That’s why he got into the game. He just hadda shoot dice. I’m the same kinda man. I love the crap table. But old Solly was fair to me and fair to Mickey. I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it myself for five years. You know the deal, right? Solly got a third and I got ten percent of the action. After expenses, Mickey gets the rest.

That’s what I heard, I say. Why should the manager get a third of a fighter’s pay? Doesn’t that sound like a lot?

Harry laughs his big belly laugh. Back in my day, I was lucky if I got a third after everything got cut up—and we’re not talking about the kind of cash that white boy brings in. What I’m looking for right here is a bigger cut.

More money?

You don’t know nothin’ about this here business, Harry says, pressing his index figure hard against the bar. Solly knew a little somethin’, but you’re going need more help. So I’m lookin’ for twenty percent of the fighter.

This is a negotiation I’ve not anticipated, I realize, so I should take my time.

Is Mickey any good as a fighter? I ask.

I’ve had four or five white boys I brought along over the years. After a while, they all have the same problem: they think they can fight. Harry laughs appreciatively at his own joke. But Mickey ain’t no bum like they say he is, he adds. You want some advice?

Sure.

You don’t got to do nothin’. Solly didn’t do nothing but front Mickey some money when the kid was dead broke. I handle the fighter. The fighter does the fighting. Solly’s lawyer handles the deals. You just come along for the ride, collect your money, and after the fight’s over, you jump up into the ring and get your picture in the paper.

I consider offering Harry fifteen percent, but then I let it go.

You want twenty percent? I ask. That seems fair.

Harry’s mouth smiles, but he’s probably thinking he should have asked for more. He extends his thick hand, and we shake.

This is easy money, Harry tells me. We got a white kid that can fight a little. But that’s the fight game. Pimps, slave-traders, promoters, managers—like I said, they’re all in the same line of work.

I look into Harry’s eyes, but say nothing, and for an instant he seems contrite—afraid he’s hurt my feelings.

But hey, you never know, he says. Solly was different. You’re his son. Maybe you’re different, too. Welcome to the business.

THREE

Boxing guys are like vain old women, I tell my wife. They talk about themselves constantly. It must come from being interviewed by reporters all the time.

You talk about yourself all the time too, Elizabeth says.

As we sit on the couch of our East 92nd Street apartment, we can hear the voices of school children heading one block west to Central Park to catch the last minutes of daylight of what has turned out to be the first truly warm spring day of the year. As always when I hear kids in the street, I think of Stephen Dedalus’ remark in Ulysses when he hears the cry of boys at play, points out the window of his headmaster’s office and says, That is God. What does that mean? I remember asking my favorite professor at Columbia, though I can’t remember his answer.

Elizabeth has just come back from a run in Central Park. She still wears her little black gym shorts, but she’s changed into one of my white sleeveless T-shirts. She wears no bra. We are drinking white Burgundy, one of the pricey bottles she keeps buying by the case as she mocks my insistence that we can’t afford thirty-dollar bottles on a regular basis. But now she’s leaning back against the arm of the sofa and her legs are resting on my lap so that I’ve got half a hard-on, and all I think about is screwing and I don’t care about anything else.

Maybe this fight business will do you some good, Elizabeth says, knowing she’s pissing me off. Maybe that’s why your father set this up.

When Solly died six weeks ago, he left me, his only child, a boatload of money and asked that I take over management of his fighter. It was a request only, his lawyer told me, and carried no legal obligation. Neither was his fighter obliged to accept me as manager. But we all seem to be moving forward, as I imagine people say in the corporate world. I have become the manager of my father’s fighter, and it strikes me this may be Solly’s last jab at me from beyond the grave.

I still think my father got me into the fight business out of spite, I tell Elizabeth. He left me little choice: if I don’t get involved, I’m the ungrateful son who takes the money but denies daddy’s last request.

This deflates Elizabeth, but she knows I’m mad at her for taking my father’s side, arguing that I could use some toughening up. I am so pissed off that I may not try to fuck her before dinner after all, though I continue to massage her taut runner’s calf which—as I never tire of telling her—feels very much like a firm breast.

Do I want to pick a fight, or do I want to taste the dried, salty sweat on her shoulders, her neck, and the inside of her thighs?

So what are you going to do? she asks.

Solly said almost all managers are thieves, I say. So if I try to do this—and I’m not a thief—I won’t do any harm. I’d be obeying the Hippocratic oath.

Elizabeth nods. I look down at her chest where I imagine her heart to be, though whenever I point to my own heart, Elizabeth corrects my command of anatomy with what I perceive to be derisive pleasure. Still, in our hearts, we are joined, deeply joined I’d even say, and when she’s cruel to me—or just slightly cruel or mocking—I try to remember that. Sometimes during a big argument, of which thank goodness there are not too many, I stop listening to her and glance down at her heart. Then I look at her breasts, and then all I want to do is fuck her.

I drain my first glass of burgundy and pour us each a second. I put my right hand on the inside of Elizabeth’s left knee and begin to rub—an action which also forces her