A Ballad Between Two Boxers

I awoke in Hell’s Kitchen bored stiff, reluctant to budge, to slide out of bed, to break free  from my hotel room and walk three blocks west to work. Perhaps because I no longer have  aspirations in cinematography, a trade picked up in college, a trade which carried me off to AFI —a  Master’s degree upon which I’ve no desire to reflect —I’m answering to Fate, a ball-busting  blacklister engineering people, opportunity and crisis beyond apertures of Hope or clarity.  

These days I earn a living in broadcast engineering; I assemble flypacks, shade cameras,  troubleshoot projectors, facilitate RF transmission, and maintain high-end production cameras, all  mostly HD. It’s a decent gig that affords ample time, and a reasonable income, to pursue various  hobbies, like writing and reading. The company for which I work, located in Alexandria —a dozen  miles outside the District— sent me to the Javits Center to assist with RF transmission. But it’s this  hotel room, 2802, in Hell’s Kitchen, where I’ve decided to write details of conversation between two retired boxers —professional rivals— whom I recently met and found intriguing. 

The first day on the road began with cold cereal and hot black tea. I was sitting behind a strange desk thinking in silence when my attention fell onto the window curtain. It was bright,  filtering gray-blue skylight against console and carpet where it stretched, like a dying hand, toward  the bathroom and faded. I dressed, washed my face, bowl and spoon with bar soap, shaved, and  headed west on 38th Street, stopping briefly to caress a Percheron in blinkers before my shift. The  horse’s muzzle was freckled, a white star blazed her head, and her warm breath, anointing my face  with friendship, dripped from my cheek like molasses. The stables where she was stalled loomed  three, maybe four stories; it was a crumbling tenement recalling ancient slums once found on this  side of Manhattan. When I caressed her neck she rested her chin on my shoulder, weighing me  down like a tripod. Suddenly, a two-door carriage adorned with bells and ribbons, painted blue with  red edging, rolled down a steep wooden ramp, agitating her. A thin cry, like an Okie’s holler, echoed  warning. 

“She’s a bit ornery, this one is,” said a man wearing jackboots, corduroy breeches, and a  black tailcoat, “so be careful.” He pulled a brush from his coat pocket and dragged it across the  nag’s forehead, eyebrows and lashes carelessly. She popped her head off my shoulder. I took a few  steps back. Gazing this man in livery, I couldn’t decide if he was a driver or a simple-minded stable  hand —coarse, overworked, and uncaring. His face was pale and ghastly freckled whose mug, like  an Irishman’s, was turned upward and ready to spit. I asked, deflecting his annoyance, where he was  from. 

“Because you remind me of an old friend (I lied, I never before had an Irish friend) from  Dublin.” 

He grinned, glanced over a shoulder, toward the stables I think, and brushed a knot from the  Percheron’s mane. 

“Who me? no. My family comes from Ukraine.” 

The nag, wincing discomfort, scored pavement with a hoof; I smelled rock, as if hammer were striking flint. I shuffled back a few steps for safety and noticed her shoe, loose and bent,  projecting outward like a shank. 

“But I’m from Hell’s Kitchen,” he assured me, “a block north ‘fore gentrification. Now I  live up in the Bronx.”

His jaw slackened, as if working a cramp, “but both my parents were from Kiev. You ever heard of Kiev?” 

“Yes,” I said. “Kiev is in Ukraine.” But I challenged back, asking if he’s ever heard the  name “Usyk” before, “our new heavyweight champion.” 

“The one who dethroned the Englishman?” 

“Yes.” 

“Of course,” said the Ukrainian, popping a Winston between his lips and offering me one.  “A fellow countryman. I was a contender myself.” 

He lit my cigarette, butane lingered, and the drag, despite being filtered, burned going down.  I studied his frame, his aspect, thought of his conditioning, and concluded he must’ve been tough  work. 

“You box?” he asked, scanning me head to toe, then up again. 

“No,” I said, “I missed my calling.” 

He looked sidelong, still staring, doubtful. 

“You serious?” 

“Sure.” 

“And who do you like?” He tapped ash then drew. “Canelo or Lucian?” 

“Álvarez”, I said, “though I don’t necessarily trust him.” 

He scraped dirt from his fingernail with an Opinel and contemplated, so I continued without  restraint.  

“Benavidez, Fury, Kovalev and Golovkin all own the jab, which I admire. It sets ‘em apart.” He clicked a brace of smoke rings and asked me how. 

“ ‘Cause a good stiff jab,” I said, my voice shrill, animated, still rising, “is the gold standard  of a thinking fighter.” 

“Not for me it ain’t,” he argued, biting a cuticle —filthy black— and spitting it no further  than his chin. “I snuck behind jabs,” he said, wielding an orthodox stance and rotating, “with feints,  pivots, uppercuts! totally ineffective against my angle.” 

Just then the Percheron fired off a kick, startling me. I backed a few more paces away.  Bohun, who introduced himself moments ago, grabbed her fetlock, released the shoe, and cast spent iron onto a drain by the carriage. As if flipping a switch he sharpened, was focused and  examined her hoof like a smith, tracing cracked edges with a thumb —flat and square, like his boots.  I let him alone, waved goodbye, and crossed the street, but not without looking back. He pulled a  rasp from his pocket, flipping it between hands like pizza dough, and told me to come back later. “Try tomorrow,” he said, breaking sweat. “Footwork is more effective than throwing jabs.  I’ll show you.” 

I awoke early next morning, before Helios cantered west lighting Manhattan like Fresnels blazing narrow spaces. The window curtain glowed orange, mocking a practical burning at my desk;  windowpanes, resembling a translight, looked false and ran, as I’d been running, a gauntlet of sham.  The idea of slaving away shaking resolution and frame rates, converting both into light then back  into electrical signal, conjured impressions of freedom by falling these twenty-eight stories. By Apollo’s grace I wasn’t expected at Javits before evening. Needing a stimulant for wretchedness I  drank nearly a jorum of tea on an empty stomach and headed west for another look. Walking in  reflection, I stopped for a moment and gazed uptown, everything there looked dismal, gripped in  shadow. “Onward!” I thought, and pushed against my evil genius —this blinding nuclear spectrum  —bouncing off a silver building before me. I continued at pace, through patterns of memory, my  direction a reflex of motion, like a carousel. I looked up from my feet, avoiding swill that stank and  saw, twenty paces out, the same Percheron as yesterday, though not in blinkers, but thrashing on its  side. Her muzzle, once sprinkled with dots, waxed pinked and was bleeding. Her tongue, liberated 

from the bit, hung sideways like a drunk’s. And flashing white against retiary threads her black pupils, spinning hypnotic circles, attested long suffering. The poor beast, kicking and clicking hoofs  like castanets, tore hide off withers on paving stones outside her tenement. She watched me  approach, her tongue floating in a mixture of flocculence and urine, all of which pooled around her.  A half bock away a knacker’s truck idled beneath an evil stench of carcass. The driver’s hand,  gloved in latex and pointing from the window, signaled to a groom rushing to the scene pulling a  hose, spraying pavement and lashing the nag’s eyes with pipe water. 

By the time I poked my head into the stables Bohun, inching his way down the ramp — cheeks drawn, eyes yellow —approached. 

“No carriage rides today, brother.” 

He affixed a kepi onto his head, cockeyed, like a derelict artilleryman, and marched toward  the felled Percheron.  

“One horse down and the entire fleet waylaid.” 

“By whom?” I asked, relieved animal rights had obviously been considered by someone. I  jumped from the sidewalk onto the street, avoiding a vile stream of water rising above the curb.  “City officials!” cried Bohun, venting. “Despots, parasites, bureaucrats!” He poked the  nag’s tumescent belly, still jittering, with his boot. “An exemplary model of democracy,” he warned,  shouldering me across the way, suggesting gojhalka and beer. Knowing I’d have enough time to kip  before Javits, I agreed. We ambled out of Hell’s Kitchen, turned south, and eventually back east,  arriving at a fenced lot near a service station to the left, a pharmacy beyond that, and a half-dozen  tenements crowding the street opposite. Bohun, jamming fingers into his mouth, whistled. “Pan Yurek!” he yelled, smacking a boarded gate plastered with permits, “open sesame!” We waited. 

“He’s just slow,” said Bohun. “Panie, we’re thirsty. I’ve brought company!” he again yelled,  projecting his voice above chain-link. 

I asked if this Panie was a tramp; Bohun hotly objected. 

“Far from it!” 

He aligned his cap, tucked in his shirt, and said the man behind the gate, a Polish nobleman,  is a descendant of the highest aristocracy, “below my Cossack lineage, of course.” I also learned these two friends were once boxing rivals, “long before carriage driving,” said  the Ukrainian, pulling me toward the sidewalk as the gate shook and swung open. Moments later an  etiolated, silver-haired man, slow-moving and disfigured by a game leg, appeared. I was introduced  and followed both men inside. 

Blue weeds and grass, knee high, sprouted from concrete and rubble. Before reaching our  destination—shade beneath a Japanese maple— I checked my pants and ankles for ticks. Pan Yurek, noticing this, laughed and called me a true city boy. 

“They’re no ticks,” he said, swatting faded blades with open hands, “because no deer are  penned in this lot.” 

I looked at Bohun, thinking: “that’s reasonable.” 

“Maybe fleas,” continued the Pole, “on account of rats and field mice, but no deer, and  consequently no ticks.” 

“What if ticks were brought in by rats?” asked Bohun, looking at me with a reassuring wink. “Bah,” said panie, grabbing his comrade’s hand; together they walked to the maple and sat  down, discussing something. I followed, stepping first onto a tire, now a planter of weeds, and  looked around, giving them space. In the far left corner, some thirty paces away, a sort of pissing  hole – an aluminum trough held to a slant by cinderblocks – was stationed by a drum used for  cooking fires. Panie, handing me a paper bag on which to sit, made room between himself and  Bohun. Evidently, he’d been in hiding since the previous evening, following crisis at the stables. 

“She’s not well,” said Bohun, shaking his head dramatically, “the diagnosis, of course, colic.”  Panie winced.  

“Acorns,” said Bohun, now addressing me, “they’re too rich. Never more than a handful,  and that only on occasion.” Again he shook his head, solemn and recalcitrant.  Pan Yurek, pushing a dog’s-foot cigarette into his mouth, objected. “Autumn is here,” he  said, lighting it. “You admonish me for acorns yet lash her mercilessly up to Columbia!” He tapped  a rasp against his boot, flicking manure chips to the center of the lot.  

“Who’s to blame,” said Bohun, glancing around, “if Fate grinds her down as bad as this lot?”  I followed his gaze onto a window frame reflecting sunrays into a radiator; it reminded me of  sunset gilding alleyways and bridges. I asked Pan Yurek how long this lot had been vacant. He blew  ash, reigniting coal, and said for many years.  

“My bedroom was at the top,” he added, pointing to the sky with his thumb, “and faced those remaining tenements there.”  

“A storybook ghetto from the old days,” affirmed Bohun, reaching over me, patting his  comrade’s back with false confidence.  

“I’ve never imagined anything as durable as a city,” said panie, “morph into shadow like  present-day Manhattan.”  

Bohun opened his mouth, his gullet bursting impatience, unprovoked spleen; but Pan Yurek  beat him to the punch.  

“I conclude all matter —bilious as mankind himself— is vile illusion.”  

“Can we at least have beer,” quipped Bohun, “before pushing mysticism onto new  listeners?”  

Pan Yurek dipped into a cooler, handing us each a Ballantine.  

“I give no thought to mysticism,” countered the Pole, tapping my can then draining his.  “My affinity to life is reason; to inertia, survival and every necessary antecedent.”  Bohun guzzled his ale and belched. It sounded wet, foamy and it stank. He spat bitterness  from distance, which his mood seemed also to follow.  

“Survival,” said Bohun, wielding his fist in triumph, “is the heart you’ve always lacked on  canvas!” 

I glimpsed Pan Yurek; he blushed. 

“Rubbish!” he said. “I’m discussing capitalists, lenders, abandoned lots neither you nor I could ever afford!” 

“Ah ha!” hissed Bohun, crushing his can. “So freewill finally dictates a desire to buy and sell  property, does it? —hand me gojhalka, you Judas!” 

Pan Yurek, reaching into a pocket, withdrew a pint. He uncorked it but gave me the first  pull, which was smooth, like potato vodka. 

“Who’s arguing freewill?” said panie, snatching the bottle from my hands and pushing it into  Bohun’s, appeasing him. “I’m protesting effects of discomfort. If I were sated, economically,  buying this lot would never creep into my mind.” 

The Ukrainian held the bottle to air, gazing its contents, distilled clear and potent.  “You’re sentimental,” he said, drying his lips before pulling again, “and lash out because you  live in the stables like a rat. But I’ll restrain,” he said, tossing gojhalka back to panie, “since the  notion of freewill evokes my good conscience.” 

“How so?” I asked. 

But the Ukrainian rudely dismissed my question, as if it somehow reeked diplomacy, and  said: “I never kick a horse while it’s down.” 

“Where do you live again?” I asked, already forgetting. 

“The Bronx.”

“With his niece!” shot the Pole, aiming for the Cossack’s heart. “The lout! At least I’m not  living like a leech!” He spat his cigarette, drenched with saliva, and lit another. “My conscience runs  easy nonetheless,” he added, flicking words from his tongue like ice, “though not on account of will,  or self-interest, but of compassion.”  

Bohun nudged my elbow, as if preparing me for a joke. 

“Not an ounce of spiritual reflection,” he said, also lighting a cigarette. “And so an atheist to  the core, this miserable one is.” 

“You’re no better living as a Christian, driving horses to their death than I…!” he shouted,  his gray eyes flushed red, now turning black and filling with blood, “… who upholds, and lives by,  universal codes of morality!” 

Bohun snickered and hissed through teeth as if blowing a kazoo. 

“Upon what cloud have your thoughts now alighted, panie?” 

Pan Yurek, mortally offended, knuckled the Ukrainian’s shirt like a playground bully. “Toleration!” 

I leaned back, pressing my shoulders against chain-link, making space.  

“Gentlemen,” I said, “It’s a beautiful morning. Please!” and gently pushed Pan Yurek’s arm,  which fortunately unlocked his fist. 

The Pole, dilated but silent, took a long, robust drag that crackled like cereal as the  Ukrainian, lowering his fist, wiped sweat onto a knee.  

I was thirsty and asked panie for another beer.  

Pan Yurek, with little thought, reached into his cooler and pulled out three more ales, tossing  one first to his rival. 

As we sat and drank, Hypérion’s angle —still low and sloping —reflected off our eyes and converged, as if collimated by one lens, into the middle of the lot.  

Pan Yurek, wiping brine from his cheek, quietly mumbled thoughts agitating his heart. “What’s the good word, panie?” said Bohun, blinking at life-affirming rays before him. “To Polka!” said Pan Yurek, offering a benediction from which he hoped to preface our conversation. 

“She was a fine horse!” said Bohun. 

We touched cans, pulled, and together walked back into the belly of Hell’s Kitchen.