Connelly watched the eyes of his opponent — a lean Mexican kid — peering at him over raised black boxing gloves, like an alligator's eyes breaking the surface of a swamp. Head down and gloves poised, Connelly moved in.
It was Connelly's last day of sparring before his fight Friday, down in the Everglades. He was going up against a welter named Castillo, a man who'd spent five years in prison in his native Panama. Castillo had caught his woman whispering in some bartender's ear and sliced off that same ear neatly with a switchblade, or so the story goes. Connelly was considered to be an easy go for the ex-con who was looking to inflate his record at Connelly's expense. The last fighter Connelly had beaten was a lumbering thirty-eight-year-old bricklayer who, with his weak record and weaker chin, had no business being in the ring.
That was two years ago, when Connelly was twenty-eight.
Now he circled to his right and flicked out a few quick lefts at the Mexican kid, searching for an opening. Jimmy Eaglin, in a greasy tank top, Bermuda shorts and bare feet, barked instructions from the ring apron. He was Connelly's trainer and the owner of the Melbourne Boxing Club. "Get in his face with that jab, babe! Get that respect with it! Then go underneath — but first you have to get that respect!"
Connelly stepped in and shot off three crisp jabs. His opponent snapped his head left, right and left, slipping each one with ease. The kid then grinned at him, exposing the evil-looking blackness of the mouthpiece between his lips, and came charging in with looping rights and lefts that made Connelly backpedal into the corner. Connelly bent his knees and tucked his face into his gloves, taking cover from the blows that fell on his head and sides and ribs continually, like well-aimed hailstones.
From all sides of the ring, near-naked men and boys who were shadowboxing, jumping rope and hitting the heavy bags erupted in hoots and cheers. Connelly managed to slip out of the corner and land a weak right to the kid's ear that somehow knocked his opponent off balance. He saw the kid reach for the ropes with his glove to steady himself just as he heard Jimmy yell, "Hold up!" The kid dropped his hands and again grinned his black grin. Connelly plodded back to his corner, where Jimmy pressed a towel against the bone above his eye. When he pulled it back it was stained red. "All right, gents," Jimmy said, "that'll do her." He plucked out Connelly's mouthpiece. "You're cut."
"It's nothing," Connelly said. He felt relieved, though.
"You don't want it to open up. We're done here."
The kid crossed the ring to hug Connelly. He was only twenty and had been coming into the gym for about a month, but he'd been at it for some time, you could tell. He was quick and cocky, but still raw.
Back in his corner, Connelly let Jimmy remove his headgear. He tilted his head back while Jimmy squirted water into his mouth and over his head, then held out his gloves to be unlaced.
Jimmy had been a fighter in the mid-seventies with a mediocre record. But in only his second year as a pro, in a bout at the famous Blue Horizon, a cruiserweight from Philly ripped his jaw almost clean off its hinges with one well-timed hook. Two years after that fight, his last, he moved to Florida and opened the boxing club.
He used both hands to wipe Connelly's face with a towel.
"Remember to jab your way in then pivot and come underneath with that right." Jimmy told him. "Then go to the head." Jimmy demonstrated by swaying side to side then shooting his fists at an imaginary opponent. "Set the table then go eat. That's what you're doing, babe."
As Connelly stepped out of the ring, two middleweights who had been waiting their turn climbed in. They jumped in place and threw combinations into the air, waiting for Jimmy, at his place on the apron, to give the signal.
"We'll be at your house at one tomorrow," Jimmy said over his shoulder.
"No word from Miami about the weather down there?" Connelly asked. A hurricane had hit some islands somewhere in the Caribbean, Connelly had seen on the news. He hadn't been paying attention to it, though.
"What, that storm? It's died down already. Don't worry about that. Everything's on."
When Connelly got home, he found Viv asleep on the couch with the TV on. Her skinny white legs hung over the end of the couch, and she had nothing on except one of Connelly's shirts. It was unbuttoned, exposing her flat, boyish breasts. A glass of Merlot stood on the carpet nearby.
Connelly dropped his gym bag by the door and went to the bathroom mirror to inspect his eye. He saw the tiny slit just over his eyebrow. Jimmy had rubbed Vaseline on it to stop it up. It would be all right by Friday. His nose had swelled a bit, thanks to a pair of the kid's straight rights, but that would be okay, too.
He turned on the hot water tap, let it run as hot as he could stand it, and shoved his head under the sink faucet. Connelly felt the water running through his hair and down his neck and shoulders. Some time last year, two days after a fight in which a Ukrainian with a lethal left hook clubbed him around for four rounds, Connelly had felt something in the right side of his chest, like a white coal lodged just beneath his skin. After a month or so, the sensation was replaced by numbness. Then it spread to his shoulder and upper arm and even to part of his back. He didn't feel the hot water so much on these parts of his body. He never mentioned it to Jimmy, or anyone else. It would eventually go away, he thought.
When he walked back into the living room, Viv was sitting up, yawning. "Hey, you." She held out her arms. Connelly leaned over to give her a peck but she grabbed his neck and held on.
"Come on, Viv. Let go."
She released him after biting him lightly on the chin. "You're in one of your moods, huh?"
"I'm not in any mood. I just don't feel like it. Not now." The Mexican kid may have busted a rib, Connelly thought. They were only supposed to move around today, that's all. He eased himself onto the carpet, pulled his sweat-soaked shirt off and lay back. He closed his eyes.
Viv picked up her glass, emptied it in a couple gulps, and walked past him into the kitchen. He heard her refilling the glass. The news was on TV. Connelly turned his head to see. The hurricane had swept through the Dominican Republic, causing mudslides that left a black landscape littered with broken tree trunks and bodies. But the mountains of Hispaniola have slowed the storm down, the newscaster said. It's not likely, but an area of low pressure over Cuba has the potential to help turn the storm north and the warm waters of the Florida straits could re-energize it.
Viv sat back on the couch, her glass full, and crossed her bare legs. She had buttoned the oversized shirt.
"You want any dinner, then?" She stared at her glass as she spoke. Connelly sat up and leaned his back against her legs. They needed to be shaved.
"Not just yet, thanks."
"You smell. Get off me," she said.
Connelly didn't move, though. "I'll shower in a minute. I just want to sit here now." He slid his hand over the sole of her tiny foot, fingering the callused toes and the hardened skin at her heel. Her waitress uniform hung over a chair. She had worked the breakfast shift.
Connelly felt something on his neck. It was her hand and it slid up into his hair and stayed there.
"So you're still going Friday?" she asked quietly.
"Jimmy's bringing the van around one."
She took her hand away. "What if the hurricane hits, are you still going even then?" Her voice was hard.
"It'll never reach us, Viv. And besides, it's already died down."
When he'd first met Viv at the Acropolis, the restaurant where she worked, it scared and excited her that he was a boxer. But since she'd moved in with him, a year ago, she'd been to only one of his fights — the night he'd fought the Ukrainian. He was knocked down twice in the third round and once in the fourth. The last time he didn't get up for several minutes. Afterward, when he found her standing outside his dressing room, Connelly saw her reaction to his face. His right eye was closed and swollen shut, and that side of his face was puffed up. It looked like a nest of scorpions had stung it. She stared out the car window and said nothing during the ride home.
On the TV screen Connelly saw pictures of the flooded streets of Santiago. In the wake of the destruction, bands of drunken looters waded shirtless through waist-high water, balancing air-conditioners and televisions on their heads.
After a time Viv said, "You know, when I was a little girl I actually used to root for the hurricane. I thought with all that wind and everything something exciting was going to happen." She put her fingers in his hair again. "My aunt told me a story once. There was this woman that she knew in her village in Puerto Rico, a crazy lady that talked to herself. And every time a storm came she would run out to the village church, completely naked, and climb up on the roof and tie herself to the bell tower."
"Yeah?"
"God knows what she was thinking. She even did it when Hurricane Benito blew in, about ten years back. Who knows, she probably expected to feel the thrill of her life."
Viv's fingers slid down Connelly's neck then up to his ear.
"Thing was, this wasn't just some summer storm. This was a big one. It ripped the church completely out of the ground. You can guess what happened to her."
Viv got up, turned the TV off and kneeled beside Connelly. She pressed her mouth against the back of his ear.
"Let's go lay down, baby," she whispered. "I'll rub your back."
"I can't lie on my stomach right now."
She leaned back and said nothing for a time. Then she got up and snatched her uniform from the chair.
"Where're you going?" Connelly asked.
"Sandra asked if I could work her shift tonight." She looked at him. "I may as well go."
Connelly heard her in the bathroom — faucet running, hairspray hissing, drawers opening and shutting.
How could he explain it to Viv? It was nothing anyone could explain. He just knew, whether he won or lost, that it was an awareness that existed in the ring. It was something almost holy, and it only happened inside the ropes. Sometimes he held onto it for the just briefest moment. Other times it flowed though his veins for hours afterward, like a liquid euphoria. It was during these times that he didn't want Viv to touch him. Once, when Viv had tried to caress his chest as he lay in bed after his first fight, he caught her wrists and said, "Don't." Her hands had felt so foreign on his skin. He'd just wanted to lie still until it streamed out of him.
Today, though, it had not come. His insides felt bruised, swollen, and that's all he felt. Often he wondered if it would ever stop coming. But he didn't want to think about it.
Viv kissed him goodbye and shut the door behind her. They lived on the sixth floor and Connelly went to the window to see her walking, head down, out to the green Dodge. She didn't look up.
The fight was in an auditorium on a Seminole reservation, about twenty minutes from Miami. There were eight bouts on the card and Connelly would fight third.
The storm had not died down as expected. Instead it tore into Cuba, pummeling houses and ripping off rooftops. There was no official evacuation in Florida yet. The auditorium was only about half full.
Three other boxers from Connelly's gym were also fighting. Alex Johnson, a bantam, won his fight over a guy who mostly danced in and out and threw punches that were at least two feet short of their mark. Tired of this, Alex came out in the second round and drilled a right into his opponent's temple and ended it. Hector, a thick-browed Hispanic also in Jimmy's stable, won his by letting his opponent, a kid in his first-ever pro fight, punch himself out. In the last round the kid, breathing heavily, swung and missed once, twice, then collapsed.
Then it was Connelly's turn. He stepped through the ropes and began bouncing up and down, rolling his head from side to side and knocking his red gloves together. Across the ring he saw Castillo staring right at him through the white lights. Castillo kept his head slightly bowed and rested his outstretched arms on the ropes — a king cobra tattoo coiled around one bicep. He didn't move at all. Connelly could see that his lips were moving, forming silent words as Castillo stared at him. This was to be Castillo's first fight since he'd knifed a man.
From the apron, Jimmy told Connelly to keep it circling his way, this guy leads with both his right and his left, Jimmy told him.
At the bell Castillo shuffled out, shoulders hunched, and Connelly met him with a few jabs, testing his reach. Castillo kept his hands up and moved forward, but didn't throw any punches. Connelly remembered to circle to his right, and as he did he saw his opponent cut the ring off in one loping step and come flying in with a straight hand that smashed against his neck. It felt like Castillo had hit him with a shovel. The next thing Connelly felt was the top rope supporting his back; he saw a flash of Castillo's poisonous eyes just before a swarm of fists stung his head and body from every direction.
Connelly buried his face in his gloves and dug his elbows into his gut. He noticed the noise level of the auditorium had exploded and now continued in a loud drone around him, like a vacuum cleaner. Castillo was trying to close the show early, and with that opening demonstration he'd won everybody in the crowd over.
The referee stepped in to break them after Connelly managed to hold Castillo's arms in a clinch. They circled in the ring's center and Castillo charged again, this time leading with his right. He slipped under Connelly's weak jab and threw four or five savage hooks to the ribs. Connelly jabbed him off but he came snorting back, his head down and his nostrils flared.
Again Connelly wrapped him up and held on. In the clinch Castillo hissed in his ear, "Bring it on, maricon — ain't you got nothing else?" and butted him hard over the eye, on the referee's blind side, before breaking. When the referee shoved them apart and stepped back to let the fight continue, the bell clanged to end the first round.
In his corner Connelly opened his mouth for the water bottle Alonzo, his second, held poised. He swirled the water and spit — it tasted like rust. His tongue felt a gash on the inside of his mouth. Jimmy, his face only an inch from Connelly's ear, shouted instructions: "When you're in that squash come out and dig into him with those uppercuts. He's only worried about throwing his own. He's not covering." Then he added, "Just stay with him, babe. You'll get through this all right." Connelly felt Alonzo smearing grease above his eye, exactly where he'd been cut two days ago. He thought of Viv and imagined her in the apartment, preparing a bath for him. Maybe lighting candles, too. He heard the bell.
This time Castillo practically sprinted out to meet Connelly. He threw a frantic left-right-hook-right combination, and as Connelly absorbed the assault he noticed his opponent's eyes had narrowed into filmy black slits. Something had changed. It seemed that Castillo smelled something he wanted to destroy with his fists, not a target like the gut or the jaw, which he could only bruise or even break, but something deep inside Connelly, something he sought with an animal's intensity. Castillo came at him.
Connelly snapped two clean lefts at Castillo's forehead, but his opponent came grunting right through them. Castillo swung, first a wild right then a left, like a man trying to bring down a building with only his fists. Again Connelly backpedaled and teetered against the ropes, head tucked and knees bent, trying to hold fast onto something that he knew he could not hold. Connelly saw the brown blur that was Castillo step back and grin. He could hear Jimmy screaming something, but the voice seemed to come from another time in Connelly's life.
"Bueno! Finish now! Finish!" Castillo's trainer screamed from his side of the ring. Connelly saw a frozen shot of him, a huge black figure with a shaven head, his contorted mouth spewing instructions in machine-gun Spanish.
Castillo dropped a knee and stabbed Connelly in the sides and gut with murderous uppercuts that felt like a long, thick blade being shoved clean into his flesh and through to the bone of his spine. A hot liquid flooded Connelly's eyes and nostrils. Something gurgled in his throat before it went back down. His pushed his mouthpiece forward with his tongue then spit it out to get air into his lungs.
Connelly fell to one knee and hunched over, arms limp and forehead almost to the canvas. That's when he sensed something leave him. He knew that whatever it was, he would never feel it inside him again.
When he got to his feet, he heard the referee shouting at him: "… six, seven, eight!" The ref yanked his gloves roughly and asked him if he could go on. Connelly looked at Castillo, who stood in a neutral corner with his muscular legs poised, ready to pounce again, then at Jimmy, who already had both hands on the bottom rope.
When Connelly dropped his hands and shook his head, the referee hugged him with one arm and waved the other in the air, signaling the end of it.
That night, in his bedroom that was lit by a vanilla candle, Connelly lay on his stomach and Viv rubbed her small hands up and down his back.
During the long ride back in the van, while the other fighters had talked excitedly about their bouts, Connelly sat up front with Jimmy. The radio in the van gave new reports of the hurricane; it was still far from Melbourne, but it was heading in that direction.
Only an hour before, they had all stood in the dressing room, embarrassed, while Connelly vomited over the toilet. When Connelly got dressed, he told Jimmy he'd probably take it easy for a while. Jimmy nodded. He seemed to know what this meant, and he wasn't going to argue. Jimmy had other boys in his stable, and he knew where they were going.
Now, with a bandage over his eye and a feather pillow under his throbbing ribs, Connelly let Viv glide her hands over his shoulders and back. He could feel her fingers pressing over most of his skin, and welcomed her touch.
He felt her take her hands away and after a moment he sensed something different, something fluttering along his back, up his vertebrae, moth-like, up to his neck until he stopped feeling it.
The numbness was still there, it had even spread, but he was sure now the feeling would come back. It had to. When he is not hanging around the boxing club, Frank Drouzas reads screenplays for Acclaim Film and Television and works on his novel. So far, he has been in the ring three times, with varied success.
This article appears in Dec 20-26, 2002.