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  When the bout started, Jiménez had come straight at him, and he hit harder than anyone Horace had ever fought. The first round came and went in a haze and he was hammered by dozens of brutal punches. He landed nothing himself. In his corner, Diego yelled at him to move, yelled at him to throw punches, yelled at him to protect himself, but Horace couldn’t focus on anything. It all washed over him. Everything was a blur.

  The second round started and finally Horace began to settle down. He took three hard shots to the face but landed a solid combination. Jiménez countered and pushed Horace into the ropes and let loose a severe series of shots to the body, and Horace’s ribs were injured. But then Jiménez backed off and Horace countered with two good shots, the round went on, and what he realized toward the end of the second was that Jiménez was already beginning to tire. The bell rang, the round ended and Horace was barely winded.

  As he sat down on his stool, Diego gave him water and told him to work the body. He said it over and over until Horace finally listened. The third round came and he did what Diego had asked. He concentrated on Jiménez’s body and with twenty seconds left in the round he dropped Jiménez to his knees with a shot to the kidneys. The crowd booed and cried out. The Coliseo was now three-quarters full, with more and more people entering. They screamed for Jiménez and he got off his knees, wobbly and unfocused, and hung on until the end of the round.

  In the fourth, Jiménez came back. He put Horace against the ropes and broke his nose, cut him above his right eye, and the eye blurred completely. He took nothing but punishment the entire round, but he wasn’t tired and he didn’t feel hurt. When the bell rang, he sat down on the stool, and Diego yelled over and over, ‘Defence, Hector, defence!’

  The bell rang again and the fifth started. Jiménez came out pressuring and again put Horace against the ropes. He threw punches at will until he became visibly tired. He then backed up and, when he did, Horace hit him with a body shot that staggered him. He followed with a combination to the head with such force that it dropped Jiménez instantly. The Mexican was laid out flat on his stomach. He didn’t move for twenty seconds and then finally, with the help of his trainer and a doctor, he sat up.

  Diego hugged Horace and talked loudly as he helped get him out of the ring and back to the dressing room. He beamed. ‘Motherfucker, you hit hard! You hit as hard as any kid I’ve seen in a long, long time. You walk into punches but, man oh man, do you have power.’

  Diego helped Horace sit down in the dressing room, half-blind and bloody. ‘I gotta go, but an old man named Pancho will fix you up. Okay? I’ve already paid him so don’t worry about that. And he’s a good guy and knows what he’s doing. More than I do, anyway. Again, good job tonight, and congratulations.’

  Horace nodded and Diego left. He got himself undressed and showered, but by the time he got out he could barely dry himself. It hurt his ribs just to breathe, let alone move his arms. The old man, Pancho, knocked on the door and came in. He said a few things in Spanish that Horace couldn’t understand and then he sat Horace in a chair and turned his attention to his wounds. He set his nose and stopped the bleeding. He wrapped Horace’s ribs in an Ace bandage and taped the deep cut above his eye, which was now swollen shut. He helped him dress. When he got him to his feet, he led Horace to the top level of the Coliseo and left him in the VIP section.

  The people there, dressed up and wealthy-looking, congratulated him. They said things in Spanish and smiled. Men shook his hand. Diego’s boxer, Adolfo Venegas, won a split decision and afterward people booed and threw things into the ring, because he’d beaten a local fighter. Horace made two trips to the buffet and drank three Cokes before taking a seat at the end of a row to watch the main event. By the time it was over and he saw Diego, he couldn’t get up from his chair.

  Diego laughed and helped him stand. ‘Your ribs?’

  Horace nodded.

  ‘That’s real pain,’ Diego said, smiling easy. ‘To me, that’s the worst pain there is. You gonna be okay?’

  ‘I’ll be okay.’

  Diego took an envelope from his pants pocket and handed Horace nine hundred US dollars and thirteen hundred pesos.

  ‘That’s about seventy dollars in pesos, if you didn’t know. That’ll get you breakfast, lunch tomorrow and a bus ticket back to Nuevo Laredo. Did you eat?’

  Horace nodded and looked at the money. ‘Ruiz said it would be three hundred dollars.’

  Diego laughed. ‘Ruiz wanted me to give you the three hundred and give him the rest, but it’s your money. I don’t want to get involved in any sort of bullshit and Ruiz is the king of bullshit.’

  Horace put the money in his pants pocket.

  ‘You did good tonight,’ Diego said. ‘But you got lucky too. His punches were hard but he was out of shape. I heard he hates working out and likes smoking weed too much. You need to work on how you respond to pressure. You’re right. That’s your main weakness.’

  ‘Do you think you could fix it?’

  ‘I could get it better, but you live in Tucson.’

  ‘If I moved to San Antonio, could I train with you?’

  Diego put his hand on Horace’s shoulder. ‘I’m overextended as it is. But I could help you. You’d have to find your own place to live and a job. And you’d have to pay me. Let’s talk about it some other time, okay?’

  Horace nodded.

  Diego took a card from his wallet and handed it to him. ‘I like you, you’re a good kid, but you’re the type of fighter who’ll end up taking a lot of shots. Especially when they get film on you. Once guys get footage on you, you’ll be in some trouble. And listen, getting hit as much as you’ll get hit changes you. It changes your brain, it changes the way you think, how you respond to things, your moods. It changes your future. I’m gonna to be honest with you: you’re not a good boxer, you’re a brawler, and you’ll pay the price for that.’

  ‘I don’t mind paying the price,’ said Horace.

  Diego laughed. ‘Every kid I know says that without even thinking about what I just said.’

  ‘But I’ve thought about it.’

  ‘You’re really sure this is the life you want?’ asked Diego.

  Horace nodded, but for the first time since he left Tonopah he felt as though he might be lying.

  *

  When he woke the next morning, he couldn’t get out of bed. He leaned on his side and took two codeine tablets from the package of ten Diego had given him. He washed them down with water and looked at the clock on his phone. It was 6 a.m. and very quiet. He closed his eyes and waited for the pills to take effect. He was now a two and O professional boxer. He’d fought in Mexico and won. He beat two undefeated fighters on short notice. He should be elated and relieved, but instead he felt lonelier and more depressed than he ever had.

  It seemed the closer he was to what he wanted, the more lost he became. The sinking feeling that had plagued him his entire life wasn’t going away. It was getting worse. And why did Mexico have to frighten him so much? How could he be Mexican when he couldn’t learn the language and he was scared to even be in the country? Mr Reese had told him that life, at its core, was a cruel burden because we had the knowledge that we were born to die. We were born with innocent eyes and those eyes had to see pain and death and deceit and violence and heartache. If we were lucky, we lived long enough to see most everything we love die. But, he said, by being honourable and truthful, it took a little of the sting out of it. It made life bearable. Mr Reese said liars and cowards were the worst people to know because they broke your heart in a world that is built to break your heart. They poured gas on an already cruel and barely controllable fire.

  As he lay in the small dingy room, Horace tried to find a position on the bed where his ribs didn’t hurt, but he could find none. The minutes crawled by. Why weren’t the pills working? He was tired of thinking and his ribs seemed to hurt worse the longer he was awake, and his nose was again bleeding. He moved to his side and took two more codeine tablets, put fresh
Kleenex up his nostrils and thought of Mariana at Lucky Wishbone. He concentrated on her and his nerves slowly eased, the pain subsided and he closed his eyes.

  He woke next at nine. He tried to sit up but was unable to. He rolled to his side and worked his legs off the bed until they reached the floor. He used the nightstand as support and with great effort stood up and made his way to the toilet. He looked in the mirror and saw one of his eyes still swollen shut and the other black. His nose looked awful, horribly swollen and discoloured. He took a long shower, got dressed and walked down the steps to the front desk. The clerk understood English and called a cab, and the cab took him to a bus station, where he bought a ticket back to Nuevo Laredo.

  From there he took a bus to San Antonio, where he had a two-hour layover. He asked a lady at the Greyhound ticket counter if San Antonio had a Church’s Chicken, and she looked on her computer and found one. He took a cab there and ate fried chicken, coleslaw, fried okra and macaroni and cheese, and got back just in time for the bus to Tucson.

  17

  Mr Reese sat on the carpet in the living room watching a DVD called Yoga Therapy for Back Pain. The sun had come over the Monitor Range and was streaming through windows into the old ranch house. He wore faded grey sweats and moved and stretched along with the young woman on the TV. Mrs Reese, who was in the kitchen making breakfast, came into the room from time to time to watch. ‘Is it helping?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he replied.

  ‘They say it takes a while.’

  ‘You know, all this makes me think of my dad.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘My mom and aunt used to have to roll him out of bed sometimes, he’d get so tight. He probably never stretched a day in his life.’

  ‘Like father, like son.’

  ‘He’d be laughing at me if he saw what I was doing.’

  ‘He’d be happy you were taking care of your health,’ she said and moved closer to the TV and squinted. ‘She sure has a nice figure.’

  ‘She does.’

  ‘I wish I had a figure like that.’

  ‘I do too,’ he said, and smiled.

  She pushed on his shoulder and went back to the kitchen, and he continued to follow the routine. When the DVD ended, he got up from the mat, turned off the TV and changed into his work clothes. They ate oatmeal in the kitchen while listening to the radio. Afterward Mrs Reese cleared the plates and Mr Reese, Little Lana and the black mutt he’d bought from the two boys, whom Mrs Reese had named Ely, went outside.

  Inside the barn were the two Massey Ferguson 399 tractors. Morton’s, now a parted-out relic, sat in the far corner. Mr Reese had rebuilt his engine and scavenged the good parts off Morton’s and was now nearly done. He put Morton’s cab on his, replaced his tires with Morton’s new ones and attached the air conditioning. A small radio sat on the workbench and both Ely and Little Lana sat on horse blankets and watched as the old man worked.

  At noon Mrs Reese rang the same bell that had always hung from the porch awning. She began bringing lunch down to a picnic table in the front yard. Mr Reese washed up in the barn sink and made his way toward the old cottonwood tree that gave shade to the table. The dogs trailed behind him, panting in the midday heat. They ate turkey sandwiches, carrot sticks and potato chips and drank iced tea. Afterward Mrs Reese rubbed heat lotion on Mr Reese’s back, and he took three ibuprofens and went back to the barn.

  It was late afternoon when he came up the porch steps and knocked on the front door. Mrs Reese opened it.

  ‘I’m too dirty to come inside but I want you to put on your overalls, grab two beers and meet me outside.’

  She smiled and shut the door. Little Lana and Ely were next to him on the porch. ‘Down and stay,’ he said gently, and the dogs laid down on the porch. He went back to the barn and started the tractor. He drove it out of the barn and up to the front-porch steps, where Mrs Reese came from inside holding two cans of beer and dressed in a pair of paint-stained overalls. He helped her inside the tractor cab, she sat on his lap, and he drove them down the gravel drive, away from the ranch.

  ‘How did you do it? How did you get it to run?’

  ‘A lot of trips to the auto parts store,’ he said, and smiled.

  ‘And now it even has a cab,’ she said. ‘You won’t get beat up by the wind and sun all day.’

  ‘We got lucky. Morton’s transmission was shot, Eddie didn’t take care of the engine either, but he sure put the bells and whistles on her. He even put on new tires four or five years back.’

  ‘See, kids do some things right,’ she said and opened the cans and handed him one.

  ‘And I have a present,’ he said.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Are you hot?’

  ‘I’m frying like an egg,’ she said. ‘Why can’t you open the windows?’

  ‘I want you to hit that.’ He pointed to a black button.

  She hit the button and cool air came from two vents in front of them. ‘It even has air conditioning?’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Yep,’ he said.

  ‘Did Morton rob a bank?’ she said, and laughed.

  ‘He might have,’ Mr Reese said and put his right arm around her waist. ‘You steer and I’ll do the pedals.’

  Mrs Reese laughed again.

  ‘Jesus, I love to hear you laugh. It’s been a long time.’

  Mrs Reese kissed him, took a drink of beer, set the can in a holder to the right of the seat and put her hands on the steering wheel. ‘Where should we go?’

  ‘How about Hawaii?’ he said.

  18

  As the weeks went on, Horace spoke to people less and less, and then Benny went on vacation. He left Horace in charge but the customers that came mostly spoke Spanish. Even when they spoke English, Horace had begun to lose his already feeble ability to talk to strangers.

  He got up each morning and did his workout and went to Máximo’s. Three nights a week he ran to Ruiz’s gym for sessions, but that left four nights and two full weekend days alone. Sometimes on the weekend he would just lay in his house in front of the AC unit and watch TV. He’d get up only to eat, use the toilet and, in the evening, when it had cooled, go to Food City for groceries or to Lucky Wishbone, where he’d get dinner and try to talk with Mariana behind the counter.

  He figured this loneliness was also a test. A test of stamina and courage and fortitude. The quest to be a champion, he supposed, was a lonely quest. But what he also began to understand, which he hadn’t thought of before, was that loneliness was also a sort of disease. It wasn’t that he was just tested by loneliness: he was infected by it. He began not picking up the phone when Mr Reese called, and once, when his aunt invited him to eat Mexican food, for no reason at all he told her he couldn’t go.

  When Benny came back from vacation, Horace realized that he hardly spoke to Benny anyway. And Benny seemed to have no real interest in him. At the beginning, it had been Horace asking questions, Horace starting the conversations and asking about Benny’s life. But slowly he quit and when he did there was nothing left but silence. With Ruiz he just played the part of a boxing student, and during their time together Ruiz never once asked how he was doing in Tucson or where he lived, what his work day was like, did he have brothers and sisters, did he have a mom still alive or a dog or a cat?

  Horace was alone in the city and he realized that being alone in the city was worse than being alone on the ranch. Because when he was alone on the ranch he had the dream of the city, the dream of what he would become in the city. But now he was there and he was still alone. He was just himself in another place.

  *

  Two months passed when Horace came to the gym to see Ruiz throw a towel across the room and wave him over. His face was red and bloated, and deep bags were under his eyes. He coughed. ‘I’ve thought more about our conversation last night, and I have to tell you, Hector, you’ve upset me. You go behind my back with Diego and now you’re in a fight that could get you killed. I know your eye s
till gets blurry and we both know your ribs still hurt. The whole thing looks bad for you, and it also makes me look like I don’t know what I’m doing, that I don’t take care of my fighters, that I put my fighters in bad situations. I thought we had an agreement, and the agreement was that I was to represent you.’

  ‘Diego called me yesterday,’ Horace said. ‘He offered me the fight. I said yes because he needed to know right then. But the second I hung up, I called you. It happened that fast and I told you that – over and over, I did. I don’t know why Diego didn’t call you. I wasn’t going behind your back. He asked if I was working with you and I told him I was. Anyway, you’re the one who always says you’re too busy to find me fights.’

  Ruiz saw Horace was becoming angry. He could see his feet tapping on the worn concrete floor. He could see his hands becoming fists. He sighed and shook his head. ‘Okay. Diego’s the real son of a bitch here, Hector. That’s what’s going on.’ He spit on the floor and his voice grew quiet. ‘But I gotta say, I really don’t know why I do this anymore. All the goddamn backstabbing. I’ve been thinking more and more about selling the gym. I could work for my brother-in-law in heating and cooling. Then everyone would get off my back and I’d just show up for work and make money. An easy check. I put my heart and soul into this place, and for what?’ He shook his head and again spit on the floor. ‘Look Hector, I’m just not sure I can work with you anymore.’