Taking Punches

a short story

original art by Kody Kohlman

Saturday evening I was flipping through the channels and came across an old boxing match. One of those classic reruns: the 1982 Heavyweight championship, Tex Cobb vs Larry Holmes. Sick of the news, I cracked another beer, adjusted my back pillow and settled into the recliner.

Dolores made a good lasagna that night. The house still smelled like ground beef and tomato paste. I always said she must be part Italian. That had become our joke—my Dolores is Irish as a Kennedy.

She yelled in from the kitchen. “Hal, what are you doing in there?”

The crowd cheered and cheered as Howard Cosell introduced the fighters.

I wouldn’t have thought it from looking at him but Tex had never been knocked off his feet. The big man strutted around his corner with a nose hammered down like a 16-penny nail. I thought: hell, any man who can take a beating and stay on his feet earns my respect.

We get ready for first-round action! Cosell squawked. The bell rung and Cobb came out swinging like a barroom brawler. Holmes ducked, laying a combination across Cobb’s sideburns. The crowd roared.

Dolores came into the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron. “Hal, can we talk?”

Every night she wanted to talk. She sat down at the walnut desk in the corner of the room and untied the apron, folding it neatly like some kind of satin blouse.

“Will you speak with someone at school tomorrow?” she asked.

“Tomorrow is Sunday.”

“I don’t have money to buy groceries.”

I took a drink. “Put it on the card.”

A class professional versus a club fighter, said Cosell.

“I’m worried.” Dolores picked at her fingertips. “If you’d only try talking to them again.”

“They gave me their answer.”

“Please, Hal. Won’t you just—”

“Jesus H. Christ, Dolores.” I twisted around and the pain shot up my back. “I’ve already asked them a thousand ways.”

Despite his number of KOs, Tex is an arm-puncher. There’s not a lot of crispness to his punches.

Dolores ran her hands over the grey in her hair. “So, you’ve given up then.”

“I have not given up.”

“Then what would you call it?”

“Thirty-five years of my life!” I swallowed the rest of my beer and jammed the can in beside the cushion. “Don’t act like I had a choice in it.”

“Hal, all I am saying is—”

“Listen. I can’t change their minds. I’m a shop teacher. No high school wants shop class anymore.”

Blood from the nose of Randy “Tex” Cobb! Cosell declared.

I lowered my voice. “Things have changed, okay? Kids don’t care about the trades. Learning how to accurately use a miter saw, that’s for gorillas.”

Larry counter-punching beautifully.

Dolores’s lips tightened. She hadn’t seen what I had. She hadn’t been hammered by these young parents. Like when Ricky Tallet’s mother got up at parent-teacher night and yelled in front of everyone: “I want my boy to get into college! He needs to be learning computer science, not carpentry. This is the 21st century!”

It made me sick. Never mind Ricky Tallet was a fine woodworker, a real talent. I’ll never forget the smile on his face when he finished his wall clock project. The pride he’d gotten from it . . . what a waste.

Cobb’s arms hung on the ropes between rounds. His head must have been carved out of Mount Rushmore, and he certainly has a granite chin, but is this a palatable match? You decide.

“Can we just talk about how we’re going to pay our bills this month?” Dolores tapped the walnut desk in front of her.

That desk.

We weren’t even married when I’d built it apprenticing for Arthur Jacques. Like it was yesterday I remember hauling it into to our first apartment. The thing took up half the living room—we’d laughed about that for a long time.

“Let’s sell the desk,” I suggested, knowing what it would do.

“Hal!” Dolores spread her hand on the lacquered wood like I was going to wrestle it out to the truck right there. “This desk means so much.” Wrinkles spread down my Dolores’s cheeks.

Look at how swollen the poor man’s face is. There’s no sense in letting him stay, hoping he’ll get a lucky punch in, because it isn’t worth the price.

“We just need to make ends meet until we figure this out,” she said. “You’ll find work again. I know it.”

“How?” I hooked my thumb on my collar. “I’ve been working my whole life. All I have to show for it is this bad back. I’m not a young man, anymore.”

Dolores picked her fingers again and started to say something but cut herself short.

“What?” I said.

“No. It’s foolish.”

“Tell me.”

“Well—” Tears crept into Dolores’s eyes. “Maybe you could ask someone for a loan.”

All of my friends were retiring and for the first time in my life I couldn’t put food on the table. I hadn’t made that many mistakes. I stared at my lap, shaking my head. What the hell happened?

Dolores was crying now. “I’m sorry.”

Lord knows, maybe this man can stand up and take it for 15 rounds. What does that prove? Who knows what the after effects will be.

I swallowed hard. I’d never meant to hurt her like this.

“Dolores . . .” I pushed off my chair and shuffled toward her. Then I unlocked the bottom desk drawer, removing a creased envelope.

Dolores wiped her eyes. “What is this?”

I stared at the ceiling tiles, watching the lines disappear into the corners. “I haven’t been honest with you.”

Dolores’s lips parted as she opened the envelope. “I don’t understand.”

“After my back went, they started coming. When I got the first check—” I scratched the stubble on my jaw. “Ah, hell, Dolores. You know I’m not one of those people . . .”

Dolores took my hand into hers, her skin too rough for such a good woman.

I glanced at the television. Cobb was still on his feet. Only the muffled sound of him taking punches broke the silence in the room. He wouldn’t go down.

He just wouldn’t go down.

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Watch the fight for yourself (along with Cosell’s commentary). But be warned—it’s a bruiser.