A Machine

I woke up strapped to a bed. You think about this moment when you’re training, but when it happens it’s different. It’s easy to imagine being injured in a fight, or losing consciousness. It’s impossible to imagine regaining consciousness. All my senses started to operate again. My ears rang, like a microphone switched on too close to the speaker. The smell of bleach, the beeping heart monitor. My eyes opened on a fluorescent light in a drop ceiling above the bed. My face was cold but my arms and legs were warm – I was wrapped in a heated blanket. I suspected I had been out for a while – I felt sore from laying in one position. I tried to speak, and felt a sharp pain in my jaw. Whatever I intended to say, I made a grunting noise, then winced. Jaw fractured, wired shut.

Harper hit me hard. In the last memory I have, I see his fist coming at my face. I think about how fast it looked like it was going. I know I’m not supposed to, but I think of him like he’s my old friend, my mentor. I remember thinking of him, “for an old guy, he looks just like a boxer.” His right hand tucked close to his chin, his left hook barreling toward my right cheek. Of course he looked like a boxer. He was only seven years older than me but he’d been a boxer for all seven of those years, plus quite a few more. I remember hoping I didn’t have to box for another seven years before I retired. His glove was less than an inch from my face. I bit down hard on my mouth-guard. The sweat on the back of my head stayed in one place while my head moved. I felt cold arena air on the back of my neck. The blow forced me to look over my left shoulder, toward Harper’s corner. The crowd was yelling, but they’re always yelling. Things went dark.

It was in the first round. I can remember most of what happened before the punch. The bell rings. Coach yells to me, “stay focused,” like he’s been saying for weeks. He knows this fight’s gonna get under my skin. He knows fighting Harper again bothers me, because he beat me so badly last time. Beat me pretty badly this time, too, if the heart monitor is any indication. Coach doesn’t want bad blood getting between me and a win. “Don’t get distracted,” he told me a month prior, while I landed jabs on the heavy bag. “He’s counting on you losing focus.” We danced around a lot, traded mostly body blows. A lot of missed jabs. Then he changed, started moving faster than he had been to start. Then the swing, when time slowed down, before it stopped.

Coach had me convinced this was my fight to lose. Harper is getting old, he said, and I’m younger and in better shape than he is now. One of the papers said I was the underdog, following Harper around like a puppy. A cartoonist drew Harper as a large, handsome man, smacking me in the face with a rolled-up newspaper. Betting odds against me were three to one. Coach told me that was because “only 25% of people can see what the hell is going on.” He also scolded me for thinking about betting odds.

“Last time was a fluke,” Coach told me. As was widely reported, I lost last time because I had pulled punches. Up until that fight four years ago, I thought of Harper as a friend. Then he beat me senseless. He was a better boxer. He had trained me when I first started, before he stopped training younger fighters and came out of retirement. The loss wasn’t so bad, the odds against me then were 5 to 1, but then he bragged about it to the papers. He told the Post I was too naive to hit him hard like I needed to. Called me “green” to the Tribune. It irritated me. I stopped going to Harper’s gym after that, took a month off to be drunk and angry. Then I went to a few other gyms before I met Coach. He was a retired fighter who told me I had raw talent, and good instincts. I started training harder than I ever had in my life. I started to win matches against better and better boxers.

Gus Wider came into Coach’s gym one day. He was wearing a big watch and a nice hat, and had keys hanging from his belt that jingled while he walked. He said a lot of things to me about how good I was in my recent fights. “You’re a machine, kid,” he said. “It’s time to put you to work.” He said he wanted to put me in three fights. The first two were easy to agree to – Lexy Pilovic and Gray Marvin Myers, two guys my age, each with a similar record. The third, Wider said, “is gonna be a surprise, with a big fat payday.”A few months later, after I’d made quick work of Pilovic and Myers, Wider took me to the nicest dinner I ever ate. He told me to get anything I wanted. I ordered Filet Mignon, and he corrected me on how to pronounce it. “The G is silent,” he said. I took a drink of my beer, and he said Harper’s name. I almost dropped my glass. I didn’t just want to avoid fighting Harper, in a weird way, I hated him .Hated the thought of him. But I was under a contract, Wider said. I didn’t hear everything he said, he talked so fast. “Obligation,” he said for the first time. “A big fat payday,” he repeated.

One week later, I’m still in the hospital. I hope my payday can cover the bills. The hospital room feels like a childhood memory I have of visiting relatives I don’t like. The bad art. The nurse is like my Aunt Claire, who I don’t know but I’m supposed to love. The television is on but muted. If this was Uncle David’s house, he’d have the TV turned way up so he could hear baseball from the porch. He grew up listening to games on the radio, and he didn’t like how television made the game look. He preferred what he imagined. I would watch alone in their parlor and wonder if Uncle David saw what I could see.

The doctor says I have a “petichial hemorrhage” – some bleeding in the brain. I took quite a beating, the doctor says. Nearly broke my jaw and may have snapped a bone in my neck, the doctor says. I’m lucky I woke up, the doctor says. I might have to retire after this, the doctor says. I feel relieved to think this might be the last time I have to recover after a rough fight. And I feel swollen. Everything on my body feels swollen and heavy. My jaw doesn’t hurt quite as bad as it did. The doctor says it appears to be healing and may soon be unwired. Lots of people want to talk to me about the fight, the doctor says. The doctor does all the talking. I blink once for yes and twice for no.

I drift in and out of sleep all the time. I realized after a couple days that I’m in a neck brace. I thought I was strapped to the bed, but I’m strapped to myself. I can’t turn my head to look at Aunt Claire as she wipes my forehead with a sponge. She works without looking at my eyes. I can tell she cares about doing a good job, even if she doesn’t care about me. That’s how Aunt Claire always made me feel. I would watch her make dinner for my parents and me. She cooked with lots of salt, humming to herself. She never seemed to cook for us out of anything other than obligation. Her husband, David, was my father’s brother. To Claire, we were distant family who would show up once or twice per year and use up all of her salt. The nurse wiped my jaw carefully, but not tenderly. I was her job, not her blood.

The smell of bleach, the beeping heart monitor. The ringing in my ears is quieter, but it’s still there. Coach comes to visit me for the first time. I thought about him every day. His voice, my last memory, “stay focused,” runs through my head constantly.

“How are you feeling, kid?,” he asks, in his own gruff but caring way. He knows I can’t answer. “You look terrible.” He holds a mirror over my face, and for the first time since I woke up I look at the damage that’s been done. My face is swollen and bruised. My nose looks like red and black cauliflower peeking out from under bandages. Both of my eyes are barely open – my blinking yes or no must be hard to discern. There are stitches in my bottom lip that I hadn’t felt or noticed. The painkillers they’re giving me must be keeping the sensation at bay. But most surprising was the screws into my head. I’m not just wearing a neck brace, but a halo of metal around my head, held up by four metal rods, which connect to pads which rest on my shoulders. From the halo, screws enter my forehead. Behind my head, two more screws enter my scalp.

“Listen to me, kid. You were a machine out there. I was worried you weren’t gonna make it. But you did what you were trained to do. It was a hell of a fight, and you’re a hell of a fighter. I…,” he stopped, seeming a little choked up. “I want you to know I feel bad about letting you get into that situation. Gus Wider wasn’t looking out for you, and I should have been.” He looked worried for me, but then he walked out of my line of sight and kept talking. I tried to tell him to step back, but I just croaked and winced. He continued, “I still believe in you. You’re gonna recover. You’re gonna be okay.”

After that first visit, Coach would come by now and then. Once he read me newspaper headlines. He seemed to feel guilty. “I don’t want you to get out of touch while you’re in here,” he said. “You’re gonna be up and walking around thinking it’s last month.”

I was no longer losing consciousness, and barely heard more ringing. An x-ray revealed the hairline fracture in my jaw to be well-healed. It was time to take the wire out of my jaw.

My mother and father have been dead for ten years at this point. Removing the wire from my jaw, and speaking for the first time, reminded me of a story my mother used to tell me. She told me several times that a few weeks before my first birthday, I was sitting at the kitchen table in a high chair. My mother was doing the dishes as my father was attempting to feed me some boiled carrots that were mashed into a paste. My father was having frustrations as a new parent. He’d always been great with other people’s children, but I was a fussy, bratty baby – but only with him. And while my father was trying to feed me, he kept saying “Open wide! Open wide!” And I said my first word. “No!” And I said it again and again and again. And it made my father very upset. He dropped my tiny rubber spoon, and asked my mother to try feeding me. She went right to it, and I was immediately a compliant, loving child. She was delighted that I had spoken my first word. In her story, my father then washed the dishes, in a way she described as “pouting,” while I ate my carrots.

A tornado killed them when I was a senior in high school. I took up boxing a few summers afterward, which helped me deal with my anger. Harper had a gym which offered young boys a chance to learn fighting.

A case worker came in to my hospital room to interview me just as my jaw was unwired. His name was Luther, I think. I didn’t see him, only heard his voice. I spoke for the first time, and remembering my mother I said, “No.” The nurse arched an eyebrow, and asked me to say my name. “Marty Black.” There was an ache in my jaw, but it wasn’t broken. Aunt Claire asked me my home address. “Four fifty five Friar Court, Apartment 108.” It was the first time I’d used my tongue and lips and jaw since the fight. The word “apartment” made my lip stretch, and I could feel scar tissue pulling at itself. Stitches stretching. My lip was swollen.

Luther asked how I felt. “Swelled up. And in pain,” I rasped out. My throat was dry. “Can I have some water?”

I could hear running water. The case worker filled a paper cup in the sink across the room, then brought it to me. I couldn’t tilt my head, but there wasn’t much water in the cup to begin with.

Luther asked about Gene Harper, and I told him how we met. I was older than his other students, but he made an exception. He knew about my dead parents. I was also able to help manage the class as it got larger, and I could rough up the younger boys when they got out of line, which Harper couldn’t do without upsetting the parents. After a summer, he offered to train me, and let me use his gym whenever I wanted. Three years later, he stopped training young men and started training himself to return to the ring. Two years on, I found out we were in the same league. A year after that, I boxed my mentor in a highly publicized local match in his gym. I felt like I was being set up, but eventually I was knocked down. The whole event felt like an excuse for him to gloat over me, once he’d knocked me out.

As I talked to the case worker, I felt a little bitter, like my father doing the dishes, as I realized how good Harper had it after that first time we fought, and before this second time. I found myself upset at the idea of him, knocking me down again, years after my first humiliation.

My best friend in the world Brian Sotheby came home from college to see me.

He cried when he saw my face, only the second time I’d seen him cry, after his father died of cancer during the summer after my parents’ death. He didn’t cry because he was sad for his dad, he cried because he felt guilty being sad for his dad in front of me, who just lost both parents. His mother had died during child birth, he’d never known her. His father was both of his parents, he told me. I told him it’s okay to be sad for just one parent, or for both.

My face is mangled but I’m learning to deal with it. I used to be handsome. Brian and I had hung out for the last time just a couple years ago, when he was doing a work-study at the hospital in our hometown. This fight had added years to my face, he told me. He mentioned reading something about how boxers get older faster than other people do.

He didn’t stay for long, but when he showed up he immediately, unnaturally shook my left hand. We are both right-handed so it was a little awkward. My right hand was broken. None of my guests had tried for a handshake, but Brian knew I wanted one. His handshake respected me, showed me I was still a man to him.

“I saw the video of your fight online,” Brian said. “You were amazing. I don’t care what anyone says, Marty. You looked great.” I didn’t feel amazing, and I definitely didn’t look great anymore. But then Brian said something that caught me off guard. “Your second round was definitely your best, you really wore him down. You were like a machine.”

“Second round?” I asked. “I got knocked out in the first.”

“Yeah, for a second. Thought you’d really lost it then and there, we all did. Never seen Harper hit anybody that hard. Dropped you like a hot rock. But you got up.”

The beeping of the heart monitor increased. The smell of bleach. The lights seemed brighter for a moment. It was then that I realized I hadn’t talked about the fight at all. The caseworker hadn’t asked me about it. Nurse Aunt Claire never spoke about it. The doctor, I can’t recall his name, but he said nothing about the fight. Coach just told me he felt bad about getting the snot kicked out of me. Gus Wider, that snake, hadn’t even been by to check on me. Probably too busy cashing the big fat paycheck he got from my big fat lip. Brian was the first to mention it to me.

I found out right then that Coach was in the room, sitting well out of view. He spoke up. “Brian, this might not be a good time to talk about this.” The heart monitor beeping was still fast – I was embarrassed and upset. Brian and Coach whispered out of sight.

“What the fuck are you two on about?” I cursed. “I thought I lost in the first round.”

Coach leaned over me, and he had tears in his eyes. “Kid, you fought for four rounds.”

It made sense. I remember getting hit once, but clearly I got hit plenty more.

Brian spoke back up. “The video is incredible,” he said, “like nothing I’ve ever seen. You got knocked down in the first and every other person in the arena stood up because it looked like it was all over. You were down for five seconds before you moved.”

Coach interrupted. “I thought he killed you he hit you so hard.” He paused, and hung his head for a moment. “But I kept yelling your name, he said to his feet. I kept tellin’ you to get up. And after a few seconds where you laid there, staring at the lights, you got up. Weren’t even wobbly. Just stood up.”

Brian continued, “You looked like… surprised. Like you didn’t think he could hit you that hard.”

“I didn’t,” I said. “That’s the last thing I remember is thinking, ‘damn, he’s about to hit me pretty fuckin’ hard.’ Then he knocked me out. I thought it was over.”

Brian laughed, “Are you kidding? You’d barely got started. That was the end of the first round. The bell rang right as you hit him the first time. You swung again right after the bell and missed. The ref pushed you back and you went to your corner.”

Coach leaned over me again. “You don’t remember this, kid?”

“Not at all. I thought I lost before the round ended.”

Coach, still leaning over me, turned to look at Brian, shaking his head. “Unbelievable. Nobody would believe this. I swear, I asked him if he was okay between rounds and he seemed fine. His eyes were a little wide, but he kept saying, ‘I’m fine, I’m fine.’” He looked back down at me, “You said you were fine. And that next round was maybe the best I’ve ever seen you fight.”

Brian sounded excited, as Coach looked back at him. “You were a machine, Marty. You whipped him so bad it was like you were mad at him. You didn’t fight dirty at all, but it just didn’t seem fair. He barely hit you once, maybe twice. Any time he hit you, you didn’t even flinch. One time he punched you at the same time you punched him, and he fell backward. It was like he bounced off of you.”

Coach looked down again, “The crowd was so loud I couldn’t hear myself think. People were throwing plastic cups, hollering. That kinda energy, it just makes a fighter feel great, it reminded me of why we do this.”

Brian’s excitement was making the beeping even faster. “By the third round I think everybody in the room lost their voices. It was a little quieter. And Harper finally seemed to wake up, like he was asleep the whole second round. He got some good shots in, busted your lip up pretty bad.”

I was embarrassed not to have been around for my best performance ever. It was like finding out I’d done something embarrassing while I was drunk. After Harper beat me the first time, I remember waking up in a stranger’s house. I’d been getting hammered every night, and I assumed someone from the bar had taken me home, but I didn’t know who. I came to on a couch in the living room of an apartment in my building, Apartment 608. As it turns out, I somehow walked up five extra flights of stairs on my way home. I passed out in an unlocked apartment, I figure. My keys were laying on the hallway floor at my apartment door. I dropped them there, I supposed.

Brian’s excitement seemed to wane suddenly. “Then the fourth round. You were on fire again.” Coach stared at him and leaned back, out of my line of sight. I tried to sit up in my bed, but I was still restrained.

Coach spoke softly. “In the fourth round, you beat him bloody. He was knocked down twice – you almost won by TKO. But then, you opened up on him about two minutes in. He was on the ropes.” He cleared his throat. “You jabbed him eight or nine times in the jaw, and his gloves fell. He might have already been knocked out. And then you hooked him – hard – with a haymaker that made his big first round punch look like nothing. So many people gasped, it sounded like they did it all in unison. You hit him so hard you broke your hand.”

Brian broke in. “You won, Marty. All you did was win. And after the ref raised your hand, you walked off.”

Coach put a hand on my chest. “You collapsed in the shower after the fight.” He sounded desperate. “You kept telling me you were okay. Harper, though…”

Coach trailed off, and stepped back, and I heard Luther’s voice. “Gene Harper is dead, Marty. We have reason to believe you killed him intentionally.” He stepped forward, and leaned over me in a dark blue uniform. His breast pocket read Lieutenant Ernst. “Now that you’ve recovered, I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

The heart monitor beep beeping. The smell of bleach, and my own nervous sweat. My restraints. I closed my eyes, and I said, “no.”