Chapter 2

It was a gorgeous spring day. It was warm and a little humid. The bugs had started coming out. George was lounging with his back against his backpack. He was on a wooden deck behind a red brick home in a little suburban neighborhood.

“G, you gotta do this, man,” coaxed a boy George’s age. He was Marco, the foul-mouthed friend George could count on to do two things: call George “G”, which George hated since he was nine, and convince him to do something stupid. He’d already done one today. George was sure he was about to do the other.

“What is it?” George asked. He didn’t move from where he was lounging on the deck. He liked Marco’s house. It was a comfortable place to do nothing. There was another boy there, too. Thomas, one of Marco’s friends that George hardly knew. He was there doing nothing also.

Marco had his shirt off and he was carrying his backpack. He pulled from it two pairs of black gloves. They were fingerless, like weight lifting gloves, but they were also padded. They had the letters “Elite” in yellow across the backs.

“You ever seen fight club?” Marco asked.

“No,” George answered.

“We’re going to start our own fight club,” Marco said. He had a crazed look in his eyes. He clearly had a vision for what this club was going to become. “We’re going to fight, like, right now.”

George looked over to Thomas. He was nodding his head appreciatively. “Awesome,” he said. “Give me the gloves.”

“What about you, G?” Marco tempted him. “You ready to throw down?”

George looked at the gloves. “What, we’re boxing with those tiny gloves?”

“Haven’t you ever seen Elite? Cage fighting?” Thomas asked.

George shook his head. He’d seen commercials for it on Spike TV, but he’d never actually watched one. He thought maybe his Dad mentioned once that he had a relative that did it. An uncle, maybe?

“You can punch, kick, trip people, whatever. Just don’t hit us in the balls,” warned Marco.

“You do it first,” said George. He’d never punched anyone in his life, despite his father’s boxing history. George could never get his dad to give him lessons.

“Alright, d****t, I will,” answered Marco.

Marco was muscular, handsome, and Italian, which was why he was so comfortable taking his shirt off whenever. He was also more than a full head shorter than Thomas.

They faced off for a full thirty seconds on the grass lawn behind the deck. Thomas was broad, heavy, and strong, and it was only a matter of seconds before he’d hit Marco in the side of the head with a wild punch that sent Marco spinning. Marco soon tried grabbing behind Thomas’s head, something George recognized from wrestling as a clinch, but Thomas pushed him away like he was nothing and punched Marco again, this time in the mouth.

Marco covered his bright red lip with a gloved hand and started spewing the muffled profanity George knew him for. George wasn’t worried about him. He’d seen real injuries in wrestling, and they were seldom accompanied by the forced, dramatic swearing that Marco was using to demonstrate his pain. To George, he sounded like a character from an R-rated film, the sort where twenty-something year old actors depict teens living a life of parties and romance. George knew real people didn’t swear like that.

So they laughed, even Marco, after the short fight was over. Then Marco wiped his own blood from the gloves with his jeans and passed them to George.

“Put on the gloves, G. It’s your turn.”

George took them, but didn’t put them on. There was a feeling in his gut, and he was trying to remember when he’d felt it before. It was a tense, tingly feeling that ran from his diaphragm to his throat. It tightened his breathing, and made it hard to sit still. Then he remembered. It was the feeling he used to get right before his wrestling matches. He’d never really paid it any attention until now.

“You said we can do whatever, right?” George asked.

“Just don’t hit us in the balls,” Marco repeated.

George nodded, stood up and took off his shirt. He was afraid it might rip if he did what he had in mind.

“Alright!” Marco cheered and clapped as George put on the gloves. They were sweaty inside.

George stood in front of Thomas, who was still bigger than he was. George was average height and broad shouldered, and he had a solid look to him, but Thomas was just plain big.

George heard Marco shout “Fight!” and they began. Thomas immediately swung his meaty fist at George. But George had no idea what to do about the punch, even though he saw it coming. He instinctively pushed both arms straight out in front of him to stop the blow, but it Thomas hit him anyway. George stumbled back, dazed and seeing blue flashing dots everywhere. It was his first time he’d ever been hit in the head like that. He wasn’t even sure where on his head the fist had connected. He still hadn’t felt any of the pain he’d been expecting.

When his vision cleared a second later, he realized he’d turned to his right, and he could see Thomas coming again for another punch out of the corner of his eye. So he did the only thing he knew how to do. He dropped his weight to a crouch like he’d done dozens of times on the mat, and he wrestled Thomas.

At first George satisfied himself by simply putting Thomas on the ground again and again. He’d duck below Thomas’s wild hands and take his legs from under him. When Thomas laid grunting and writhing on the grass, George would let him up and do it again. It was not until Thomas had successfully hit him again that George took him to the ground and pinned him there, placing a knee on top of one of Thomas’s arms and two hands on the other.

Thomas lay helpless and wheezing. “No more,” he gasped. “You win.”

George stood over Thomas and breathed deeply. Something inside him wanted to raise his hands in the air and shout, but he didn’t.  He just grinned.

Behind him, he could hear Marco swearing. “Damn. That was awesome, G. I tell you, this fight club is going places.”

But George heard another familiar voice call his name. He turned and saw his father standing on the deck. He was stern-looking and quiet. “Let’s go,” he heard his father say.

The ride home was uncomfortably quiet. George should have known his father might come looking for him after he didn’t find him at home. Sometimes, after Ignacio would come home from work, he wouldn’t wait for George to come home before assigning him chores or wanting to see his homework. George was frequently at Marco’s house, but he was seldom up to anything he thought was trouble. George had assumed Marco’s fight club idea harmless enough, though he thought his father might give him a lecture about safety. But George wasn’t prepared for the painful quiet of that car ride home.

“Dad, we weren’t really hurting each other,” he said.

Ignacio said nothing. He just continued driving.

“Seriously, we were just rough housing, you know, like we boys like to do. Marco only got a bloody lip because he’s careless. I didn’t even do it.”

Still, his dad was quiet. He parked on the street in front of their small home.

George’s conscience was screaming. He didn’t think he’d done anything very wrong. Rough, maybe, but nothing really dangerous or illegal. Yet he knew the signs of when his father was truly, sincerely, disappointed in him. Maybe even furious with him.

“C’mon, Dad, I know you’re mad. Are you going to say something? Do you want me to be more careful next time�",”

“Go inside,” his father interrupted. “You have homework to do, right?”

George looked at him for a moment. He wondered if he would ever know what was bothering his dad at that moment. Then, without speaking, he went inside, leaving his Ignacio alone in the car.

Ignacio did not come inside for a long time. He’d been praying. He turned on the computer sitting in the hutch in the kitchen and searched for something on Google. He found it quickly. He picked up a cordless phone and dialed a California area code.

 

Ricardo sat in his office holding a small framed photo. He wasn’t looking at it, but his thumbs were running along the edges of the wooden frame in a way he’d done thousands of times. The edges were beginning to wear.

The phone rang.

“Hello, Ricardo?”

“This is Ricardo,” the man said. The voice was familiar to him. He put the photo back into its place on his desk.

“Ricardo, this is your cousin, Ignacio.”

“Nacho?” He smiled and ran his fingers through his slightly thinning hair. “Nacho, how have you been?”

“Good, Ricardo. Really good. How are you?”

Ricardo started pacing leisurely around his office, like he was taking a walk with a friend. He was still smiling.

“I’m always good. You know me. Always so busy, and that makes me happy,” he said. “I haven’t talked to you for a few years now. How’s your boy? George, is he in college now?”

“High school, but not for long. He’s graduating in June. He’s really good, Ricardo. He’s a really good kid.”

“He’s like you then,” joked Ricardo. He’d stopped in front of a photo on his wall. It was besides the pictures of famous fighters holding trophies and championship belts, but this photo wasn’t like them. It was of two teenagers. They were facing each other in the classic face-off pose, only neither boy could stifle their smiles. One held up his fists like a boxer. The other one held his hands open in a grappler’s stance. They both looked alike. Fit, dark haired, and happy.

Ignacio laughed. “No, he really is a good kid. He doesn’t get in trouble like I did. Or you.”

“Is he a boxer like you? Does he hit like a truck, just like his old man?” Ricardo asked. He was looking at another photo. It was one of the boys from the other photo, only older and wearing boxing gloves and shorts. He was facing the camera in a boxing pose.

“No. Actually he’s a wrestler. For two seasons, now. He’s good. He works hard at it.”

“Oh, so he turned out more like me, then,” laughed Ricardo. He’d sat down again. “Jeez, Nacho, I’m sorry I haven’t called you. I meant to. I just got so busy around here.”

“No, Ricardo, don’t worry. It’s fine. Really. We got busy here, too.”

Ricardo nodded, but he didn’t say anything.

“I need a favor.”

Ricardo sat up straight. “Of course, Nacho. Anything.”

“George is graduating soon.”

“Does he need money for college?” He winced a little. He’d hoped this wouldn’t be about money. A relative asking for money is delicate business.

“No. No, I didn’t call to ask you for money, Ricardo. We’re doing fine. It’s just that George doesn’t have any plans. No goals. He hasn’t applied for college. He doesn’t know what he wants to do. All he wants to do is fight.”

“Well, if you remember, Nacho, I don’t compete anymore. None of my students do. Not for a long time.” He picked up the photograph again from his desk and started rubbing the wooden frame with his thumb again.

“I remember. That’s the point. I don’t want him competing. He’s got this friend here who got him into backyard fighting, almost like we used to do. It needs to stop before he goes too far with it. But he needs an outlet, you know?”

Ricardo was rocking back and forth in his chair, listening closely. He’d heard this story from many parents before. He was no longer aware of the photo frame in his hand.

“You want to send him here,” Ricardo said. It wasn’t a question.

“He just needs time to figure things out. He’s not a lazy kid. He just hasn’t decided what he’s going to do about his life yet. But if he waits around here to figure things out, he’s going to get in trouble. He’ll be like we were.”

Ricardo was quiet. He drummed his thumb against the photo frame, and then he finally looked at it. It was a picture of an old man. He was wiry, bald, and wrinkled, and he was grappling with a younger man in the photo. The younger man looked like a younger version of the old man on his back. They were even wearing identical white kimonos, the traditional uniform of many martial arts. Though it looked as though the older man was about to choke the younger man from behind, they both were smiling.

“Send him to me,” Ricardo said. “I’ll help him keep busy until he figures himself out.”

Ricardo could hear a sigh of relief.

“Thank you.”

“Anything for you, Nacho. You know that.”