Pugilists live a make-or-break life. Few fulfill their dreams. I often wonder, “Where are they now?” A flash fiction story. (Image by pinterest)
The Final Count
As a pugilist, he thought he knew corners.
After all,
He’d stumbled into,
Been backed into,
More than his share of corners.
This was different.
He lay in bed
Fingering his glasses.
Should he wear them?
Leave them?
Did it matter?
His eyes dropped from the ceiling
To the backlit corner window.
Green and red neon rolled its pattern outside.
From beneath a flapping window shade,
Sticky air carried the sound of his only friend,
A gimpy-legged pigeon always awkwardly prancing and cooing
From the 10th floor ledge.
Eyes back to the ceiling.
So many fights.
So many bells now only in the distance.
In all his memories,
He’d never had to consider a corner this ominous,
But tonight...
Tonight he was up against a real contender,
A massive force never faced before,
And there was nowhere to run.
He stood and stepped forward to the ledge—the center ring.
The mammoth shadow of his past,
The one his fists could never hit,
The one who would force him into the ropes someday
And deliver the blow a long time coming.
Some people called it
“The forever-darkness-without-light knockout.”
He was okay with his decision.
He was ready
Until...
Until that beat up warrior,
Like an ever faithful sparring partner,
Had to stand there on its gimpy leg,
Stare at him with its only good eye,
And coo his encouragement again.
He leaned down for a final touch of its feathers.
"Tough love doesn’t come cheap I guess, eh?"
“Care to join me…just for a couple of seconds?”
As the concrete-mat rushed up at him, all the bells faded behind,
but not the simple cooing echo of his friend.
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The first was with a powerful guy who was in training for the Olympic try-outs. He knocked me silly, until he started to razz me. I broke his jaw with one punch. The second was against a smaller person who acted more like a girl. He nailed me between the eyes. I woke up about 5 minutes later. He was long gone.
You reminded me of The Boxer by Paul Simon. One of the most poignant songs out there that stands in the shadow of Simon and Garfunkel's many hits.
My father was in the Golden Gloves in the late 30s. He was small as a teenager so probably fought in the featherweight category until he grew, perhaps because of the regimen, unlike his older brother who didn't, but died a short man last week 15 days short of 102 still only 5' 2", to 5'11" and 180 pounds. He loved watching boxing but never talked about his own. He had hearing loss that may have been caused by his cauliflower ears. He said he had ruptured eardrums that kept him out of service in World War II. Thank goodness.
Ron