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the ropes but his legs were gone, so he ducked his head and put his gloves up to block the shots. But
they got through, anyway.
Somebody s arms went around him, hemming him in against the ropes, and he smelled flowery
cologne and heard a smooth baritone saying, Take it easy, man! It s over. Mears wanted to tell the ref
he could have stood up through ten, the Cuban couldn t punch for shit. But he was too weak to say
anything and he just rested his head on the ref s shoulder, strings of drool hanging off his mouthpiece,
cooling on his chin. And for the first time in a long while, he heard the crowd screaming for the Cuban,
the women s voices bright and crazy, piercing up from the male roar. Then Leon was there, Leon s
astringent smell of Avitene and Vaseline and Gelfoam, and somebody shoved Mears down onto a stool
and Leon pressed the ice-cold bar of the Enswell against the lump over his eye, and the Cuban elbowed
his way through the commission officials and nobodies in the corner and said, Man, you one tough
motherfucker. You almos kill me with them right hands. And Mears had the urge to tell him, You think
I m tough, wait ll you see what s coming, but instead, moved by the sudden, heady love that possesses
you after you have pounded on a man for nine rounds and he has not fallen, Mears told him that one day
soon he would be champion of the world.
Mears wonders if the bestial faces that materialize in the midst of his fights are related to the pain in his
head. In his heart he believes they are something else. It could be that he has been granted the magical
power to see beneath the surface of things. Or they may be something his mind has created to
compensate for his blindness, a kind of spiritual adrenaline that inspires him to fiercer effort, often to
victory. Since his retinas became detached, he has slipped from the status of fringe contender to trial
horse for young fighters on the way up, and his style has changed from one of grace and elusiveness to
that of a brawler, of someone who must keep in constant physical contact with his opponent.
Nevertheless, he has won twelve of seventeen fights with his handicap, and he owes much of his success
to this symptom or gift or delusion.
He knows most people would consider him a fool for continuing to fight, and he accepts this. But he
does not consider himself a greater fool than most people; his is only a more dramatic kind of foolishness
than the foolishness of loving a bad woman or stealing a car or speculating on gold futures or smoking
cigarettes or taking steroids or eating wrong or involving yourself with the trillion other things that lead to
damage and death.
As he lies in that darkened room, in the pall of his own darkness, he imagines attending a benefit held
to raise his medical expenses after his secret has been disclosed. All the legends are there. Ali, Frazier,
and Foreman are there, men who walk with the pride of a nation. Duran is there, Duran of the demonic
fury, who TKO d him in 1979, back when Mears was a welterweight. The Hit Man is there, Thomas
Hearns, sinister and rangy, with a cobralike jab that had once cut him so badly the flesh hung down into
his eyes. Sugar Ray Leonard is there, talking about his own detached retina and how he could have gone
the same way as Mears. And Hagler, who knocked Mears out in his only title shot, Hagler the tigerish
southpaw, he is there, too. Mears ascends to the podium to offer thanks, and a reporter catches his arm
and asks him, What the hell went wrong, Bobby? What happened to you? He thinks of all the things he
could say in response. Bad managers, crooked promoters. Alimony. I forgot to duck. The classic
answers. But there is one answer they ve never heard, one that he s nourished for almost two years.
I traveled into the heartland, he tells the reporter, and when I got done fighting the animals there, I
came out blind.
The reporter looks puzzled, but Ali and Foreman, Frazier and Hagler, Duran and Hearns, they nod
sagely, they understand. They realize Mears answer is partly a pride thing, partly intuitive, a summation
of punches absorbed, hands lifted in victory, months of painful healing, hours of punishment in the gym.
But mainly it is the recasting into a vow of a decision made years before. They would not argue that their
sport is brutally stupid, run by uncaring bastards to whom it is a business of dollars and blood, and that
tragedies occur, that fighters are swindled and outright robbed. Yet there is something about it they have
needed, something they have chosen, and so in the end, unlike the asbestos worker who bitterly decries
the management that has lied to him and led him down a fatal path, the fighter feels no core bitterness, not
even at himself for being a fool, for making such a choice in the folly of youth, because he has forsworn
the illusion of wisdom.
Mears is not without regrets. Sometimes, indeed, he regrets almost everything. He regrets his
blindness, his taste in women, his rotten luck at having been a middleweight during the age of Marvin
Hagler. But he has never regretted boxing. He loves what he does, loves the gym rats, the old dozers
with their half-remembered tales of Beau Jack and Henry Armstrong, the crafty trainers, the quiet cut
men with their satchels full of swabs and chemicals. He loves how he has been in the ring, honorable and
determined and brave. And now, nodding off in a cheap hotel room, he feels love from the legends of the
game returned in applause that has the sound of rushing water, a pure stream of affirmation that bears him
away into the company of heroes and a restless sleep.
-=*=-
Three mornings later, as Mears waits for Leon in the gym, he listens happily to the slapping of jump
ropes, the grunt and thud of someone working the heavy bag, the jabber and pop of speed bags, fighters
shouting encouragement, the sandpapery whisk of shoes on canvas, the meaty thump of fourteen-ounce
sparring gloves. Pale winter light chutes through the high windows like a Bethlehem star to Mears eyes.
The smell is a harsh perfume of antiseptic, resin, and sweat. Now and then somebody passes by, says,
Yo, Bobby, what s happenin ? or Look good the other night, man! and he will hold out his hand to
be slapped without glancing up, pretending that his diffidence is an expression of cool, not a pose
designed to disguise his impaired vision. His body still aches from the Cuban s fast hands, but in a few
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| Cytat |
Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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