Shadowboxing

The heavyweight champion of the world enters the ring.

“Boy, he looks solid, doesn’t he, Jim?”

“Sure does. Confident, like.”

A soft breeze lifts the world champion’s hair.  Goose pimples rise on his thin, bare arms.

“What a physique, what a swagger, what a strut.  Now that is a man.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself, Bill.  His opponent sure is one unlucky son of a bitch – ah, there’s the bell.”

 A boy stands in the middle of an empty street with his fists raised to the navy night.  His audience is the cat rummaging in a trashcan behind him and the birds roosting on the telephone wires.  

Knees bent, he begins to prance back and forth on bare feet, nimble and elusive as the answer to all of this, dodging punches and jabbing at the air with itchy fists.  

It's all dank darkness where the audience lurks – disembodied voices shout technicolored words that flash and explode around his head.  A single dangling light bulb illuminates the action, the blood, the fanatical pummeling.  A yellow bell, round and luminous as a full moon, peers down petulantly, threatening to scream.

“...dodges a left hook, takes a swing – nice uppercut!”

A sweaty-haired boy dances under a solitary street lamp. He’s swinging away, eager to fight the facts, the situation, the score of things.  To imprint a punch on an ugly, matter-of-fact world. 

Scantily clad women with forcibly red lips hold up cards bearing the round number.  The air is beer and sweat, blood and virility, vehemence and color.

“You would never know the world champion has never won a match before in his life, would you, Bill?

“No, no one would.  Why, just listen to that crowd, Jim – they’re on the edge of their seats!”

The boy is eye to eye with thin air and a bruise is blossoming on his cheekbone.  His mouth is purple and blue, for all the world as though he has been feasting on wild berries.  His flailing fists collide with undeniable, rock-hard truth.  Knuckles split and blood splatters the night.

“He’s giving as good as he’s getting!”

“Man, ain’t no one wants to be on the receiving end of that hit.”

“Neither is going to back down.”

“Someone check for a pulse!”

“Starve him of his will, boy.” 

“Yes, grab him by the neck and throttle him – throttle him until the past, present, and future can hear his screams for mercy.”

But the world champion is growing tired, losing his edge, collecting punches in a stance halfway between a proud indifference and a bent-over nausea.

“Ooh, tough blow right on the jaw!”

“He’s still standing though, Bill.  He’s still standing.”

He will tell his children one day about this fight, about the dangling lightbulb and the commanding bell and the crowd that frothed and seethed; about the cat who had observed the lamppost-lit scene with a strange, unblinking – not exactly reverence – but newfound respect for mankind.

The champion begins to cry; not all at once, but slowly, gradually.  Tears ooze one after another from dark lashes and plunge to the gravel, where they extinguish with a hiss.

Telephone poles plunge into wooly, gathering clouds like jabbing spears.  

The cat gives a feeble meow.

The heavyweight champion of the world, the underdog – the man who was once a boy with bleeding knuckles – falls to his knees, defeated once more.

“Good match, sir.  Good match.”

“Knew you had it in you.”