A Book of American Martyrs(166)

Well, once in a while one of the Latinas would say sucking in her rib cage and smiling at him sidelong Hey Ernie, think I could be a boxer? Like M’lissa Hernandez? and he’d say with an indulgent smile like you’d smile at a young child Sure.

Soon then, she’d disappear. Got engaged, got married, moved away. It was rare that any female had a true interest in the body’s fitness. Their care was for how they looked, in the eyes of men.

This girl, he could see was different. Her face was plain like something scrubbed with a rag. Her eyebrows were heavy but her eyes appeared to be lashless. Stone-colored damp eyes and skin the hue of a tarnished winter sky or a porcelain sink covered by a thin film of grime. Could be eighteen, or twenty-eight. The kind of female that matures at a young age. Thick-waisted, wide-shouldered. Probably her thighs were large as shanks of beef and tight with muscle. Beefy at the knee. Broken fingernails and dirt ridged beneath. Couldn’t expect makeup to improve this girl’s looks in the ring and especially on TV where every blemish is exposed yet you could see (almost, he could see) that she might be attractive to a certain set of boxing fans who’d get off seeing a female of this type homely and stolid like somebody’s bitch-sister pummeled, knocked down, humiliated and bloodied by one of the rising stars in female boxing—that’d be some kind of sexual charge. Maybe.

Did he want to make money off that? He did not.

Still: someone else would. He could think of plenty.

Up to the WBA, the promoters. Don King.

You had to respect the clueless ones. Desperate ones. Male, female. Most were male. Most were black, from Dayton. This girl wasn’t local but had to be from Ohio, possibly West Virginia. The damp yearning eyes fixed on his face. Mouth reminded him of some kind of mollusk. Not-great teeth.

“You done any boxing? Ever?”

Shook her head no. Like the question was just a vexation like a buzzing fly.

“Karate?”

Shook her head no.

“Any kind of athletics? Basketball?”

Shook her head yes. Frowning to signal that hadn’t turned out too well which he’d already know seeing she was short in the legs and arms.

“Like, high school?”

“Yeh.”

“How recently?”

“Few years.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Two-three years.”

Her reply was tentative, uncertain. She wasn’t one to remember dates precisely. But if this was accurate, it meant she was still young—not yet twenty.

“Why d’you think you want to box?”

“ ’Cause I think—I’d be good at it.”

“What’s the evidence?”

Staring at him with her damp stone-colored eyes. Evidence?

The very word seemed to baffle her. He could see her brain shifting, thinking like the old computer in his office where the miniature whirling rainbow icon was what you’d get when the computer was baffled.

“I—I’m strong. Pretty strong. I can lift heavy things—boxes, weights . . . I know how to protect myself. Nobody gives me any shit. I don’t back down from nothing.”

Seeing he wasn’t laughing at her but appeared to be listening she continued saying she’d seen plenty of boxing on TV. Her and her brother, that was mostly what they’d watched when they were kids. Their favorite boxers were Mayweather, Gatti, de la Hoya, Roy Jones, Mike Tyson—“Not how he is now but how he was then.” She spoke earnestly, frowning. As if he might not understand the distinction of Mike Tyson now and Mike Tyson then.

Also, she said, she’d seen some female boxers on TV—impressing him by knowing their names: Hernandez, Gogarty, Crowe, Johnette Taylor—she was sure she could learn to box as good as they did.

Now he had to smile. Not a mean smile but the girl picked up on it.

“They had to start out like me, didn’t they? How’m I so different from them?” Her voice had a sudden edge of belligerence to it, that surprised him.

“Depends if you’re that hungry. That desperate.”

She laughed, uncertain. Not sure if this was a joke.

Many things were jokes, she knew. Didn’t matter if you found them funny.

“Y’know, Johnette Taylor was trained here?”

Had not known. Mortified by not-knowing.

Not exactly true that Johnette had “trained” for her pro fights in this gym but he’d seen the promise in the girl at age sixteen for (maybe) women’s Olympic boxing which was being talked about then—but had not (yet) been approved. Soon as Johnette turned at age nineteen pro she left Dayton: new trainer, new manager, Cleveland-based. He had not followed her career after she’d lost the WBA women’s welterweight title a year ago and there were rumors of injuries.

“Y’think you could learn to box like Taylor? Eh?”

Shyly the girl nodded her head yes.

Her face was mottled with embarrassment. She smiled inanely. He wondered if she was just slightly retarded—speaking at a pitch that was audible seemed to require an effort from her, a measure of audacity. As if she had been made to believe that no words uttered by her, no expression possible from her, could be of the slightest interest to another person; yet, she had the audacity to imagine that she could become a professional boxer . . .

And how much effort had it required for her to enter the gym, step inside this place almost entirely male, and smelling of bodies, funky sweat-smell, and everybody in sight male, at the machines, at the heavy bags, speed bags, in the badly stained ring (two lanky-limbed young guys in their twenties, black-Hispanic, eight-ounce gloves, headgear, sparring with quick sharp fists), loud voices entirely male, and on the walls posters and photos of male boxers. She had nerve, at least.