It's a Hell of a Thing

By Tim McDowell

Billy River has hit rock bottom. Ten years earlier, he achieved his dream of fighting in Madison Square Garden, but the great Hector Gomez turned his dream into trauma, disfiguring Billy's face and leaving him with a disabling brain injury. Downing double shots of Jack in a smoky bar and shadowboxing with his failed life, Billy shares the story of his shattered life with a dancer and the bouncer. Billy has lost his identity, his wife is about to divorce him, his son despises him, and God seems like an impotent voyeur watching his suffering. Billy fears he is becoming his father, the man he called the "wrath of God," and that he will end up like his sister, who committed suicide. With the help of his two unlikely companions, Billy fights to save his family, discover a God capable of blowing the roof off his heart, and come to terms with his childhood traumas. His son's disappearance and near-death experience is a turning point for Billy and his friends as they face choices and events that could lead to Billy's self-destruction or renewal through forgiveness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Outskirts Press
• Release date: Mar 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781977211767

Tim McDowell

In 2004, Tim McDowell suffered a brain injury that prevented him from practicing law, much like the protagonist in his debut novel, It's a Hell of a Thing. Mr. McDowell has a master's in Social Work from the University of Georgia and a law degree from Emory University. Before his injury, he published numerous non-fiction, legal articles and book chapters. Tim currently lives in Atlanta with his wife of over thirty years. He has five grown children who are now scattered across the country.

Book preview

It’s a Hell of a Thing

All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2019 Tim McDowell

v3.0

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.

This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Outskirts Press, Inc.

http://www.outskirtspress.com

ISBN: 978-1-9772-1176-7

Cover © 2019 Outskirts Press, Inc. All rights reserved - used with permission.

Outskirts Press and the OP logo are trademarks belonging to Outskirts Press, Inc.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

ONE - A BARE-KNUCKLE BRAWL

TWO - DUSK

THREE - HOMECOMINGS

FOUR - THE CATACOMBS

FIVE - ROCKING CHAIR AND HEAVY BAG PRAYERS

SIX - THE SCAPEGOAT

SEVEN - FISHING AND FIGHTING MEN

EIGHT - DADDY’S BOY

NINE - THE DANCE OF DAVID AND GOLIATH

TEN - BREAKING THE RULES

ELEVEN - A FLICKERING CANDLE

TWELVE - ANGELS CHANTING ON AN UNPLUGGED RADIO

THIRTEEN - SISYPHUS

FOURTEEN - THE GYM

FIFTEEN - SNOWFALLS OF TRAUMA

SIXTEEN - THE SECOND HONEYMOON

SEVENTEEN - THE SKY BURIAL

EIGHTEEN - DREAMS WITHERING WITHIN COMPROMISES

NINETEEN - A BLESSING OR A BUSINESS DEAL?

TWENTY - THE UNDERCARD TO THE HECTOR GOMEZ FIGHT

TWENTY-ONE - THE GREAT HECTOR GOMEZ

TWENTY-TWO - THE ANGEL OF LIGHT

TWENTY-THREE - A CHANGE IN GOD’S PLAN

TWENTY-FOUR - SAMUEL’S BLOOD

TWENTY-FIVE - A GLORIOUS RIGHT HOOK

TWENTY-SIX - THE BACKSTAGE ALLEY

TWENTY-SEVEN - THE CREEK

ONE

A BARE-KNUCKLE BRAWL

Billy River drained a double shot of Jack straight up, no chaser. He was brawling with bare-knuckle memories from his life before his brain injury, and they were fighting dirty. He slapped the bar for another round and covered against a flurry of remembering.

Billy and his wife Tracy paid their dues early in Billy’s boxing career. A hot wind whipped through the open windows of their used Buick clunking down a deserted highway toward the next tumble down arena on their Journey to the Garden, as Tracy coined their boxing dream of fighting in Madison Square Garden. Billy stored his boxing equipment in a duffle bag in the back seat, while Tracy stuffed her cornerman and training gear in the trunk. The Buick rattled, and Billy turned to Tracy as he wiped the recycled sweat off his arms. You’re hitting forty again.

Tracy punched the steering wheel. You try driving on this highway. I’m marking time with billboards advertising John Deere tractors and the love of Jesus.

Tracy fiddled with the radio, searching for the Cubs game, and tugged on her ponytail jutting out the back of a Cubs cap. Tracy worked the radio until Harry Caray’s voice sliced through the static. She perked up and set the Buick on a rattling jag.

Billy watched Tracy deciphering the radio’s static into play-by-play, stuck on her ferocious participation in the game. She was the revivalist, the Pentecostal fire, and his second wind that propelled him toward the goals they pinned on their kitchen wall.

After the game, Tracy turned off the radio, and they drove in a silence that felt like a pair of leather high-top boxing shoes laced tight, ready to shuffle on a canvas dance floor. The silence and the hot air swept the topsoil off their dreams and fears. Tracy reached over and gripped Billy’s hand. You know, we’re going to be fighting in a empty arena that smells like a traveling circus or a church revival. But, I want you to know, Billy. I’m having the time of my life with you.

Good Lord Almighty, her confession hit him like an unexpected blast of swing music. In his mind, he spun her away from him, skirt flaring, a smile the size of the crescent moon, and brought her back to his body, his heartbeat, and his awe. We’re inseparable, babe, he testified.

After ten billboards of swing, the music slowed in his mind to Joe Cocker’s You Are So Beautiful, which was their song. A jazz saxophonist named Bone Man sang the song at their wedding, which took place in the ring of their home gym, with teary-eyed old-timers hanging on the ropes and the women wearing throwback outfits from the 1920s or 1950s. Bone Man and his trio took over the ring at the reception, and his gravel voice gnarled and twisted the words of their song into a tender longing for the beloved.

After Bone Man’s aching voice finished the words, he lifted his sax to his lips and took the love song on a ten-minute exploration of melodic improvisation. Tracy and Billy’s bodies melted and melded into one, and they swayed and merged with the riffs softly carrying them toward their future. Tracy’s head pressed against Billy’s chest and the drummer’s brush soothed the ache of their syncopating heartbeats.

When Bone Man finished, the crowd erupted as if they’d been listening on the radio as Joe Louis dismantled Max Schmeling, Nazi supremacy and American racism in the first round. Bone Man wiped his brow with a handkerchief, nodded to his drummer and piano player and ragged it up, sending the joint into a jumpin’ jubilee.

At one point, as Bone Man found a foot-stomping swagger, Billy pounded the heavy bag with the beat. He had done Tracy right. By the gleam in her eyes, he knew he had made her feel like sparkling champagne and the love of his life. In the process, Billy felt like a man of distinction, dressed to the nines, with his beloved on his arm and an effervescent joy bubbling into a sense of immortality.

Where’s your family? an old-timer named One Eye Johnson asked as the jazz pulsed and they shared Billy’s flask.

Billy acted like the music had smothered the question. He shoved his flask into his back pocket and worked his way through the crowd to Tracy. Her smile closed the cut opened by One Eye. He had refused to let Tracy invite his Dad, his Mom or sister Pam to the wedding. Tracy had replaced a dreamless childhood with a future as defined and cut as a hungry boxer in a rundown gym.

Billy pulled away from the memory of their wedding and glanced at Tracy as she continued to drive stoically toward their fight. He cherished her as his emotional cornerman, his spit bucket friend, and his cool jazz lover. Billy softly traced the birthmark on Tracy’s neck, evoking a tender reverence and a hard-thrusting lust. Tracy glanced at Billy and winked. Not until after the fight, Billy River.

The schizophrenic strobe lights in the bar jabbed black and white, black and white. Sitting on his stool at the bar with regulars and dancers scattered down the line of seats like stitches of despair, Billy shadowboxed, throwing a tight left hook at an imaginary opponent and bobbing his head and shoulders as if he were slipping punches.

He glanced at Kitty perched on the stool next to him. She was his favorite girl and the reason he came to the club. During his alley cat years after his brain injury, he would have ached for passion with Kitty, asking for a lap dance or going to the VIP room. But he was past lust as an escape. His guilt flogged him every time he had cheated on Tracy. She knew. He didn’t hide the carousing. She had to know, and her silence reminded him of the unacknowledged bruises on his sister Pam’s arms after his Dad beat her.

His son Toby knew. He became Tracy’s confidant and protector and his words hardened into a pickaxe he constantly swung at Billy’s soul. Billy’s cheating became an unforgiveable sin in Toby’s mind.

Billy gradually wearied of the temporary relief of lust. He was growing old and tired. He preferred drinking, talking and reliving his boxing stories with Kitty, telling the tales until he discovered something new.

On Kitty’s side, he speculated that their odd connection was based on the money he gave her on thirty-minute intervals and her gift of empathy, which plumbed the deepest trenches of his stories and identified the emotions he couldn’t feel. She was a hell of a listener.

Kitty adjusted her shawl and clutched his hand. Billy you’re acting a little crazy. Slow it down, babe.

Billy peered into her eyes, her soft brown eyes that felt safe, like sparring gloves. He twisted an empty shot glass in his hand. Sometimes the old memories of Tracy seem sacred, but they hurt.

I can tell. You change when you talk about them. You lighten up a little. Maybe you idealize those times, but who cares.

The images of Billy and Tracy’s barnstorming during the early years, the poor years and the best years seemed radiant white, woven whole and seamless, as holy as the tunic worn by God in the flesh.

Billy stared at the liquor bottles behind the bar. The problem is that the old stories are no longer self-contained and never stand on their own. I start thinking about Tracy driving around town in a green Jaguar with Boomer Eason, and Toby despising me and knowing it’s my fault. Then the old memories turn coarse, like sackcloth.

Billy unleashed a flurry of jabs and hooks, remembering the moment he realized that Tracy was having an affair.

Six months ago, he saw Tracy and Boomer standing beside the Jag in a Target parking lot. Tracy bounced on her toes and lightly touched Boomer’s arm as they worked to fit an outdoor grill into the trunk of the car.

Billy screamed into his hands as the Jag drove off. Tracy was having an affair. Her church retreats and potluck dinners were cover.

Billy slammed his elbow into the side window and honked his horn long and hard. Every sound needed to blare in order to be heard above his screeching and scraping thoughts. Tracy was going to divorce him.

Billy stormed into Target and found the fishing section. A divorce would break the rule Tracy set for him after the brain injury. Billy tore the fishing rods off the wall and hurled them onto the floor.

He knocked over a display of fishing baskets, and they tumbled into a shelf of lures and nets. Tracy first set the rule when Billy’s alley cat carousing had driven him into a psychiatric hospital. Billy rested in his bed in the hospital, doped and docile, slow-witted and dull, body in rigor mortis and flatlined emotions, a penitent drooling for forgiveness for unforgivable sins he couldn’t remember.

Tracy whispered, Never worry, Billy, I will never divorce you.

Billy found a skewed comfort in her words. His behavior hurt Tracy deeply and she probably hated him, but she wouldn’t abandon him. For ten years he had held onto that rule, until the moment he saw her with Boomer Eason.

As Billy ransacked the fishing department in the store, a security guard wrapped his arms around Billy from behind and slammed Billy to the ground, pressing the side of Billy’s face into the floor. He remembered Tracy whispering in the psychiatric hospital, I can’t divorce you. You wouldn’t last a year on your own.

Tracy’s commitment to endure the marriage seemed built on guilt, but he wouldn’t be alone. In his mind, the rule kept them together during the turbulent years when his behavior was out of control. Living alone would have meant total chaos.

Other shoppers gawked as the guard led Billy to an office in the back of the store. Billy sat in a wooden chair, waiting for the cops and staring at the floor. His gaze had been locked on the tiles of the hospital floor in the same way as in the office when Tracy whispered, I couldn’t bear to see you alone, living on the street, sweeping out gyms for enough pocket change to buy a pint of whiskey. I couldn’t live with the guilt.

The image of a down-and-out boxer haunted Billy. He had seen too many of these sad cases in the gym as he worked his way toward the Garden. With Boomer in the picture, that future seemed on the verge of materializing. Tracy was breaking the rule.

The manager of the store knew Tracy from church, and he called her. He declined to press charges and the police left. Tracy and Toby arrived in Tracy’s car. Toby drove Billy’s car home and Tracy drove with Billy, looking for answers. During the car ride, Billy stared out the passenger window, unable to talk, refusing to answer Tracy’s questions or explain his actions. Billy’s pride wouldn’t allow him to disclose that he had seen Tracy and Boomer in the parking lot. How many more times would he be in a car with Tracy? How many more days would he live near the park with a lake?

Billy’s throat constricted and he struggled to swallow. For the first time in their relationship, Billy didn’t trust Tracy. During their marriage, Billy had felt anger, hurt, disappointment, guilt, indifference, and disgust, but, not until that moment, had he ever doubted that Tracy had his best interests at heart.

Billy ordered two double shots of Jack. He started drinking again after he saw Tracy and Boomer in the Target parking lot. Kitty lit her cigarette and nodded. I like the image of sackcloth. She waved her Newport like a paintbrush. It captures your grief and guilt. She tapped the ashes into the ashtray. It’s sad when the hurt comes. You turn inward, smoldering, with your shoulders hunched forward and your head lowered, your chin pressed against your chest. You body reminds me of a massive, active volcano. I keep waiting for you to erupt into action.

Billy crossed his arms and rocked forward and back. Usually, I’m watching my family disintegrate in my mind.

Kitty took an extra long inhale and squinted at Billy and her lips pursed. That’s what bothers me. You’re grieving as if Tracy has already divorced you and Toby has already left for college. Do you really want the family to stay together?

Kitty’s words stirred Billy’s seemingly unbearable fears, and for a brief moment he considered the escape of physical intimacy with Kitty. What would it feel like to run his fingers through her wavy hair and brush her tan skin, which was fresh as dew on morning grass? Would she close her eyes and moan as she approached orgasm? Would she whisper or scream his name as her thin body arched like a bow with the strings pulled taut?

The image of Toby’s empty room after he left for college and Billy’s packed suitcases and boxes after a divorce defanged the thoughts of a physical relationship with Kitty. Billy slapped his hand on the bar. Of course. If the family breaks apart, then our history becomes meaningless. The stories will die.

Kitty touched Billy’s hand. You’re going to have to do more than watch. You need to change and give Tracy a reason to stay. Same with Toby, he’s not going to come to you like the prodigal son. He’s lost. You have to search for him and find him.

Billy reeled from Kitty’s flurry. Every one of her punches had landed, but she was advising him as if he was normal. Why can’t anyone understand? I can’t change in a meaningful way. I have a fucking brain injury. The world comes at me as chaos, and I can’t keep pace. This is as good as I get, Kitty. All I can do is watch.

Billy bobbed and weaved, feeling bad about pushing back against Kitty. She didn’t need his crap. She was a single mom just trying to get by. Billy threw a vicious right hook. I can’t believe it’s been ten years. Today is the ten-year anniversary of the fight with Hector Gomez, by the way.

Billy went thirteen rounds with the great Hector Gomez in the Garden. Tracy and Billy had fulfilled their dream of fighting in the Mecca. As Billy wedged his wallet out of his back pocket, he remembered a flurry by Gomez.

Gloves snap and flash and hammer quicker than verbs, pounding and sparking like sixteen-pound railroad hammers striking an anvil. Right left, right left, Gomez’s punches fracture Billy’s face like a jackhammer breaking apart concrete.

A right cross snaps the sweat off Billy’s face.

Exhortations from his corner: fight off the ropes, shift the hips, cover, elbows in, move the head.

Gomez steps back and splinters two ribs. The pain feels unholy, like the Centurion’s spear thrusting into the side of God’s broken body.

Cover! Cover! Cover! Billy slips an upper cut. Gomez hooks to the body, crushing Billy’s lungs. Gomez pounces, smothers Billy in close, steel pistons churning, relentless and mechanical. Billy drops his gloves, right hook to the eye, blood, he peers at Gomez through a red veil. Flashbulbs pop, bloodlust booms from a leather lung near the corner, referee bobs, about to call it.

Right cross to the chest stops Billy’s heart.

The bell, sweet Jesus, the bell.

He wobbles to the middle of the ring, thinking he’s in Chicago at his gym, wondering if Bone Man would be jamming at the Cellar, ears ringing, tasting his blood, face swollen, mouth parched, ‘I thirst,’ cried the Christ.

Billy found an old photograph in his wallet that was torn and bent and slid it in front of Kitty at the bar. In a way, our dream to fight in the Garden betrayed us, he confessed.

Kitty pulled a candle near the picture and squinted as she examined it.

During the fight, the crowd turned for Billy when he was still standing after the tenth round, and the roar sounded like God’s approval. He went down in the thirteenth. The crowd’s roar brought him back to consciousness as he lay on the canvas.

No shame in that. Billy and Tracy had fulfilled their dream of fighting in the Garden. They had earned the pride of achievement, a cup overflowing with water transformed into wine, and they deserved to taste the Canaan miracle on each other’s lips.

Billy watched Kitty’s face as she studied the photo. Billy and Tracy had earned the fulfillment of their dream. The process of changing water into wine had involved long days in the gym and grueling roadwork in the pre-dawn light. They should have had the chance to celebrate in the Cellar with Bone Man. It didn’t matter that he lost. They could take down the goal pinned to the kitchen wall with smiles adorning their faces.

But the beating by Gomez rearranged his face, damaged his brain, scattered his memories and shattered his personality into legion. Their deepest wish had given them over to trauma. Their dream had turned out to be a Judas kiss.

This is a billboard in Times Square, right? Kitty asked.

Billy nodded and double jabbed, grateful for the excitement and lilt in Kitty’s voice. The picture is a little faded, but that’s Gomez and me on the billboard. It was a promotion for our fight.

Kitty tapped the photograph. Billy, you look like such an Irish tough guy.

Billy leaned toward Kitty and peered at the photo. Every sensation pounded his mind like a hammer, sparking random metaphors and associations. The smell of Kitty’s jasmine shampoo enveloped him, and he imagined the spices of the Magdalene. Tracy used to say I had a classic brawler’s face. You know, scar tissue, bent cartilage and broken bones. She said I was a rugged working man, a steel-driving man.

As Kitty studied the photograph, Billy stared into the mirror over the sink behind the bar at his mangled face. He yanked his fedora off his head and rubbed the knots and bumps and unhealed bones in his face and skull that felt like steel bolts. The damage from Gomez’s punches tore Billy’s story off his face, bone-by-bone and muscle-by-muscle.

He rocked back and forth, patting the partially collapsed eye socket on the right side of his face. Blurred vision, blurred brain, and blurred conviction that he was still a man.

Billy pushed on the left side of his mouth, nerve damaged, sagging and numb. He was unable to feel a kiss or a smile.

He patted the divots and dents in his lopsided skull. The surgeons removed a bone flap in his skull to relieve the pressure from the bleeding on his brain caused by the pounding he had taken and the damage from his head violently hitting the canvas in the thirteenth round. Later, the surgeons bolted and screwed the bone flap back into his dented head. Hair never regrew on the scars.

His once strong, prominent nose had displaced to the left like a fragment from a cubist painting. He could no longer snap jarring jabs of emotion and light out of his eyes. Scared, dilated pupils were embedded in bruised and swollen eye sockets, like slimy escargot stuck to grimy shells.

Shame. Unfiltered, visceral shame lowered his eyes from the mirror.

Billy smashed his fedora back on his disfigured skull. Some losses were irreversible. Some damages defined him. He slammed both fists on the bar, startling Kitty. He pointed at his face in the photograph. My fucking face is gone, man. I want my damn face back.

On the street, he glowered defiantly at beautiful people and lowered his eyes in the presence of children. All he really wanted was to stare down a mirror without flinching or to flay the flesh off his face and grab bone, metal, and muscle, twisting and yanking, reshaping the skeletal structure.

Billy exhaled loudly to add power to his right cross. I’m a walking taboo against ugliness. People avoid sitting next to me at a game or in a museum or on the bus.

Kitty clutched Billy’s hands and pressed them against her chest. Deep breaths, Billy.

Billy squeezed her hand, acknowledging the warning. She could read his quirks like tea leaves, and she was the only person willing to touch his deformed emotions. Billy tried to throw a punch into the air, but Kitty tightened her grip on his hand. You’ll make it through this, Billy. You made it through the tough rounds with Hector Gomez. You know what they used to say, ‘No one can take a punch like Billy River.’

Billy’s knotted muscles relaxed into Kitty’s words. He could still take a punch. That was his strength and the core of his identity and the hope that he could hang on to Tracy. He sighed. Thank you for that, Kitty.

Kitty pointed at the photograph of the billboard and whispered underneath the waves of heavy metal sound in the club. Hector Gomez looks just like I imagined from your descriptions.

You mean beautiful.

That’s the word you always use.

Kitty studied the photo and waited for the song to end. Billy leaned back and remembered walking the streets of New York before the fight in the Garden.

He trudged alone on Broadway, trying to get his head together for the fight. A light snow swirled in a gusty wind that rattled the metal fire escapes in the alleys. The snowflakes melted on Billy’s navy blue fedora. He imagined the flakes as God’s confetti, celebrating long shots, lost causes and underdogs.

Billy pulled his coat tight, hunched his shoulders and leaned into the bitter wind like a brawler pressing to get inside, taking ten punches to throw one, battling his way through the stylish jab, canvas shuffle, and elegance of a true boxer. Billy convinced himself that he could pull off the upset. His Cinderella story would uncork Manhattan and Harlem, and he would party all night in the fizz and holler of the streets.

After a few blocks, Times Square opened up in front of Billy and the billboard confronted him. The Hector Gomez looming above Billy seemed invulnerable and worthy of reverence.

On the billboard, sweat beaded on Gomez’s face like boxing pearls. His dark eyes hid the secrets and mysteries of the gods. He knew things the rest of humanity had forgotten, and within the dynamics of perfection, Billy was merely a human sacrifice. A long scar down the left side of his face added the aesthetic of human suffering to his beauty, exposing the chisel marks of childhood poverty, tough as scrap heaps and tin roofs and rock quarries.

Billy lifted a glass as a toast to Hector Gomez. He admired the hell out of that man.

Kitty shivered and pulled her shawl around her. What was it like to see your face on that billboard?

Billy bobbed and weaved and faked a punch. To be honest, it messed with my mind. The dream had always been in the distance. There was always one more road trip that had to be completed. In Times Square, the fight became real. Gomez looked invincible and I was embarrassed that I had ever seriously thought about an upset.

Kitty fumbled for her cigarettes and lit one. It doesn’t sound like you were ready for the fight.

You’re damn right! Billy shouted.

Billy scanned the regulars at the bar and lowered his voice. Yes, Kitty, you’re following me.

So how did you get ready for the great Hector Gomez?

Billy took a deep breath and exhaled. It didn’t happen until right before the fight when I was walking the short tunnel to the ring. The flashbulbs were popping and I thought ‘fireflies.’

Fireflies?

Yeah. Tracy, Toby, and I used to walk from our house to a park with a lake and ball fields and gardens. We would sit in a gazebo near the lake at twilight.

Twilight was a crease of magic between day and night. A deep red shimmered on a glassy lake, evoking the stained glass color in a cathedral he attended as a child. Shafts of God’s imagination pooled on the cathedral’s marble floor, and Billy wanted to dance in the aisles, transfigured by colors that were beyond the heartaches of his family.

Tracy and Billy would sit on the bench underneath the gazebo and wipe clean their emotional and relational slate. They rested in a calm silence that soothed their hearts like a caesura in a love song. Their words bloomed like the azaleas along the path to the gazebo. They carefully pruned any accumulated resentments or betrayals. After they nurtured their relationship, they held hands and watched the fireflies glow.

When the fireflies started lighting up, Toby and I would chase them in the field. When we caught one, our fists glowed like lanterns. Toby called them magic lanterns. I taught him to clutch the fireflies lightly so that he wouldn’t crush them. He let the light blaze for a few seconds and then released them back into the twilight.

Kitty slapped her hands together. I think I get it. In the tunnel, you let go and your fear stopped crushing the moments. You held the experiences lightly.

Billy reached for Kitty’s hand but pulled back. He never initiated contact, feeling unclean and deformed. He felt isolated in his ugliness. That’s exactly right. My mind became hyper-alert, spotlighting details—the sharp looking bow tie on the ring announcer, the rabid, contorted face of a spectator near the front, the spangles on the dress of a rich lady, the drops of sweat from my body beading on the canvas, and the flop and bounce of Gomez’s white tassels as he danced in his corner.

Billy studied Kitty, who clutched her necklace with a picture of her son. The fireflies made you think about your son.

How did you know? Kitty asked.

You’re clutching your necklace. How is he doing?

Kitty ran her hand through her wavy hair. Well, last week was my boy’s fourth birthday. Once again, my parents didn’t show or call. I’ve forgotten if they disowned me because I’m a single mom or because I didn’t get an abortion or because I work in a strip club. So here I am, still dancing to make enough money to take care of my son.

Billy squeezed his hands into tight fists. His heart was like a cornerman’s bucket, spilling over and sloppy with father pride and protective instinct. I’m proud of you.

Kitty smiled. Last week, he said my smile looked like a hammock. You know, my parents still suck, I have roaches in the apartment, and I pay too much rent, but my boy doesn’t see those things. He simply grins at me in his bed because I have a hammock smile.

Billy touched the side of his mouth. His hammock had collapsed. Those moments have withered with Toby. Billy tapped You Are So Beautiful on the bar. My boy’s new mantra is: ‘I’m never going to be like you, Dad.’

Kitty snapped her lighter. That would kill me. Literally, it would kill me.

Billy used to fish the lake with Toby when he was young, sunlight transfiguring water into glittering fragments of immortality. After Billy’s brain injury, the fishing trips ended and they lost the dazzle and sun-glitter of father and son. Toby was college bound.

It was too late, too late, too late to fish with his son.

Billy growled and mumbled to himself, ranting in the tongues of a God he hated.

Kitty inhaled deeply as she leaned toward Billy. Billy, I’m worried about you.

Billy snapped his head toward her. He trusted her observations and intuition. He bobbed and weaved and let fly a series of hooks. Why?

You’ve lost your self-awareness.

Billy froze in the middle of a right hook. Kitty’s words suggested Billy was in the middle of a psychotic episode, functioning in blind spots with reality just off the edge of his peripheral vision. He didn’t want to go back to the psychiatric hospital. It leeched the pizzazz out of his world. Explain, Billy whispered.

Kitty squeezed his hand tightly. Your sweatshirt is stained with spaghetti and you smell like a homeless man from the Uptown viaduct.

Billy smelled the stench on his sweatshirt. His social skin, as his sister Pam had referred to clothes, always reeked of sin. He stretched his sweatshirt away from his body to examine the stains. After the injury, poor personal hygiene had kept Tracy out of the marital bed. During his psychotic episodes on the street, his hygiene offended society and the normals pushed and prodded him out of every social space.

Billy refocused on Kitty’s analysis. Your shadowboxing is strange and exaggerated today and you’re shit-faced drunk.

He shadowboxed because he couldn’t sit still without confronting the dive bar gestalt of a failed life. He could hold his damn liquor, though. He drank shots to feel his esophagus burn and know he was alive.

You’re talking too loud and fast.

He was trying to keep pace with chaos.

Your religiosity is off the chart, and you’ve said that’s a warning sign.

Man, his religiosity riled him up. The God he hated wouldn’t let him be.

Kitty’s observations seemed right on point, but they infuriated Billy to the point where he slammed his fists on the bar. In his off-kilter condition, he wanted extremes and melodrama, not reality or self-awareness. He needed metaphors with roots gnarled into ancient history in order to survive a life disfigured by trauma.

You’re ready for a fight, confrontational and bent toward violence.

Hell, yes. I’m a boxer who measures success in punches landed, Billy responded.

Billy, you don’t see it do you? You’re not just fighting your usual grudge matches with your dad or God. I think you’re on one of your self-destructive spirals.

The nihilistic suicide of Samson attracted Billy. Blind Samson, sheared of his nazirite strength, straining, pushing on the pillars, bringing down the Philistine temple, burying the anti-hero and his enemies under stone and marble. But the reality of self-destruction was traumatic, and it couldn’t be transformed into myth.

Kitty, my sister Pam almost died from a botched abortion, but she made it through that. Years later, she committed suicide. Actually, I believe my father’s abuse killed Pam. She once told me during our teenage years that ‘the bruises never go away. They turn into the blues, which are the bruises of the heart.’

Kitty recoiled as if she was startled and then tightened her shawl around her shoulders. That’s beautiful poetry. It’s horrible and hopeful, brutal and almost mystical. Her face looked saturated with a pain that overflowed into her voice. Every word felt like a teardrop pattering on Pam’s poetry. What about your bruises?

Billy spun a coaster on the bar with his fingers. My Mom protected me from most of the physical abuse. Pam wasn’t so lucky. I feel kind of responsible, since I was the favorite.

Billy tapped the coaster and then slid it down the bar toward a regular’s beer. Pam’s fate haunts me. I think a lot of my self-destructive behavior relates to my guilt for being spared from my Dad’s abuse.

Billy pulled up the sleeve of his sweatshirt and rested his hand on the bar, palm up. He tapped his wrist. Kitty squinted and pulled a candle close. She gasped and covered her mouth. Two faint vertical scars ran down Billy’s wrist. I call them the ‘railroad tracks.’ They remind me of a song Pam loved by Peter, Paul and Mary named ‘500 miles.’

Billy whispered a few lines.

"If you miss the train I’m on

You will know that I am gone

You can hear the whistle blow …

Lord I’m five hundred miles from my home."

Billy glanced at Kitty. It was Pam’s escape fantasy song. She would stare out the window and say, ‘If you hear the whistle blow, baby brother, just know that I’m safe far, far from home. I’m resting in a Pullman sleeper free from the fear of Dad.’

Kitty traced the scars like she was reading braille, trying to decipher Billy’s soul. Billy regretted showing her the railroad tracks and unsettling her. "You know, I thought I had dug down to the bone with a shard of glass. But I didn’t cut deep enough. Something Pam once told me kept blaring in my head. She had just received a scholarship to Carnegie Melon for her painting and she believed she was