American War(74)

Bragg leaned over to Sarat. “Your old neighbor has a busted foot,” he said.

Taylor from Patience shifted hard onto his right leg, his left foot swollen and purple at the ankle. Only he, the champion Wraith, and one of the last-minute entrants, a behemoth named Grayson, remained.

As it did toward the end of every Yuffsy, the cage, whose padding was now streaked with drying blood, looked too large for its occupants. Instinctively, the men stepped back from each other and took a moment to catch their breath. A large gash had opened over Grayson’s right eye; he wiped the blood with the compression sleeve on his arm. Soon the crowd grew tired of inaction, and began heckling the men, demanding action.

It was Taylor who moved first, limping toward Grayson. But before he got to him, Grayson raised his hand in surrender and made for the door. A chorus of boos erupted from the balcony, the crowd enraged that a man they believed still capable of fighting had chosen not to. They tossed peanuts and popcorn at the fighter as he left, calling him a coward and an embarrassment to the cage. Grayson made no response. Quickly he was shepherded beyond the great double-doors to the fighters’ quarters, a repurposed exhibition room in the bowels of the old museum that once housed the bones of dinosaurs.

Two men remained, and although one of them had gone into the ring the favorite, the other now commanded the audience’s affection. A few cheered because they knew the hopeless challenger came from the site of the famous Blue massacre, others because they knew he had failed to win a Yuffsy in twenty-three tries, a record. But most cheered because of an innate desire to back the underdog. That he stood no chance against his youth-armored opponent only endeared him further to the roaring crowd. Instinctively, they expected of him the same chivalrous defiance they believed they themselves, placed in the same position, would show.

The champ approached. He was wiry, his veins embossed in skin. The challenger struggled to hide his impairment. But it was more than the useless left ankle—which forced him now to skip and skitter where he stood—that hobbled him. It was an exhaustion in the very being of him, the weight of all his previous fights compounded.

The champ saw his advantage and played it. A swift kick to the swollen ankle brought the challenger down. Quickly, the champ jumped onto him and with a barrage of three quick punches, broke the challenger’s nose along the bridge, where it had been broken many times before.

In such instances, when a Yuffsy was down to just two men, one of whom was obviously on the verge of defeat, a broken nose was the customary way to end the fight with mutual dignity. All the challenger had to do was tap out or lie still on the ground; the crowd would not begrudge him for doing either. The champion, kneeling atop the challenger, paused and waited.

But the challenger refused. Instead, the bloodied, broken fighter swung a fist upward at his opponent. So surprised was the champ by this that he failed to block it, and the punch landed square on his jaw, although it had so little weight behind it that it did no damage. The champ responded with another barrage; the challenger’s head knocked side to side as though readying to come loose from his spine.

Once again the champ waited, and once again the challenger refused to submit. He swung from where he lay, this time unable to close his fist, such that he succeeded only in slapping the champ on the shoulder.

The crowd, now uncertain, grew quiet, nervous with the thought that the champ would inevitably lose patience.

But instead, the champ stood up. He left the challenger where he lay, a crimson halo on the padding near his head. He walked to the edge of the cage, near where the trainers were seated. He raised his hands in exasperation.

“What are you waiting for?” said the champ’s trainer.

“I gave him a chance to go out easy,” the fighter replied. “What do you want me to do, kill him?”

“If he don’t want to get killed, he’ll tap out,” the trainer said. “Do your goddamn job.”

As they spoke, the challenger stumbled onto his one working foot. He limped toward the edge of the cage and threw himself against the body of the champ. There was nothing left of him now but weight, and with it he knocked his opponent back against the side of the cage and onto the ground.

The champ screamed in pain as he fell. An unsmoothed protrusion in the mesh of the cage had cut a deep gash all the way along the length of his chest. Blood poured from the wound and spilled out the boundaries of the ring.

In a moment, the champ was standing again. Enraged, he knelt over his motionless opponent and beat him until the trainers and the crowd and all who watched knew he was dead.



THE LIGHTS ROSE, the crowd dispersed. Usually the young men who came to watch the fight left afterward with adrenaline coursing through their veins, and were apt at the slightest provocation to start brawling with one another in the back alleys south of the boardwalk. But on this night the crowd was muted, and diffused quietly to the Imperial and the other Reynolds Street bars.

Adam Bragg Jr., fully drunk now, invited the sisters back to the Woodrow, where he and his entourage had booked every room for the weekend. But it was clear his interest lay in only one of the twins, and both declined.

Sarat and Dana stood awhile on the boardwalk, watching the docks. In the wake of the big winter storms, the wash often broke over the seawall. Tonight the water moved like black molasses. Even the massive freight ships, the first of which should have started to arrive at port by now, were nowhere to be seen.