The Right of the Grave:
A Boxer’s Obsequies
“In private
places, among sordid objects, an act of truth or heroism seems at once to draw
to itself the sky as its temple, the sun as its candle. Nature stretcheth out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts
be of equal greatness. […] Only let his thoughts be of
equal scope, and the frame will suit the picture.” Emerson Nature 17
“So frownd the mighty Combatants, that Hell
Grew darker at thir frown,
so matcht they stood;
For never
but once more was either like
To meet so
great a foe…” (
“Quod me nutrit me destruit” (That which Nourishes me Destroys me, motto,
Marlow’s Portrait)
“O, pardon
me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am
meek and gentle with these butchers!”
Shakespeare JC III.i ll.
254-5
“Victor Hugo’s dead,” they
whispered behind his ear. In the entropic audience’s ejaculations,
the screams, the chants, the heckles, Shaffer felt the rampart’s of his mind collapse.
His swelling right eye—a boil set to pop with another jab—closed tightly,
despite the numbed pain of forcing the swollen flesh. There he sat, breathing
deep, almost deeper than a diaphragm could provide. Sweat poured down with a
great current; the slight wind of the opening auditorium door pursed his hair
on end. The bell rang. He stood and, in a surreal detachment, leveled the big
hick from
He was dressed in a traditional
suit. A small notebook and silver pen were subtly placed
in his pocket. A worn collection of
Here lies another dead American—French-American, his father would say, an unranked middleweight with no name to call him great. Even in this lament, Shaffer felt himself struggle to qualify the sensation. There he stood, pulled back to the social setting as the wet winter winds threw leaves about the casket. Shaffer alone seemed to notice and no one moved to remove them. As a few leaves blew against his arm, he lifted his bruised knuckles to remove them, gently rocking the casket. He put his hand back down. In his heart, he felt a need to break something, to mar the artificial beauty of the casket. The conditioned social consciousness held his rage in place, imprisoned his angst physically but, worse still, mentally. He felt his wrists twisting; the casket groaned quietly. Someone wept aloud and he released his grip. Shaffer opened his eyes and watched his dead friend with the knowledge that the form before him was Victor Hugo. They speak of lucid visions and passions living on in memory; yet, Shaffer had no words for such thoughts. Even so, he felt the dreary reality burrowing inside his chest, like an airy essence infecting his very being. If he believed in a soul, he might attribute the burden to the ethereal side of humanity; yet, he knew these were pale shadows cast recklessly by the mind psychosomatically acting on the body. “Nothing more,” he said aloud. Life ended with the body. Even now, he thought how the image in his head—the young boxer with fluorescent smile teaching a boxer’s footwork his fool friend—could not end, not like this. Dismally, he knew the man would fade graduation into a nostalgic hesitation, déjà vu attached to a mnemonic stimulus. His shoulders shudder at the acknowledgment. Even the wet winds howled their disapproval. Shaffer watched at the moist air stirred the dead pages into turmoil. He felt ignorantly unnatural starring down on the dead man’s face, whose closed eyes were a faux façade to Hugo’s profound gleam. No, he thought to himself, Victor Hugo’s face could never wear death’s veil, not in his mind. A tear pressed violently at his eyes at the deceitful confession. Fight the catharsis as he may, there was a release to the lie, a submission to the purge.
A young women and her escort gently pushed past him, violently ripping him from his delusions. Shaffer slid docilely away. She wept openly, a deteriorating kleenex in her hand. The escort, whose gait had an account’s step, rubbed her briskly with a gloved left hand. His right clutched the casket tentatively, as if he was certain if it was there or not. Still, he shed no tears. The young women looked over her escort’s shoulder. Shaffer pulled his hat down over his face, covering the clear boxer’s disposition. His bruises, though faded to an acceptable brown, still disrespectfully lingered. Under the brim, he watched the young woman visibly morn. He didn’t know her, at least not from the blonde hair, straightened into a sorrowful style acceptable at funerals. Instead, he saw her crimson lips pursed tight. Pale lightening streaks marred her foundation, and whatever rose hue she had artificially applied clearly smeared under her tear’s onslaught. Shaffer quietly looked down on his suit, a loose fitting garment he had picked up at ValuCity before the funeral. It was baggy in the legs, hanging like a kangaroo pouch from his ass. His fedora, hung low like a gunslinger, drew some attention, even at the outdoor funeral. As it was, he looked fifteen pounds heavier and felt vastly out of place.
A light touch pulled at the crook of his arm and a young minister turned him aside. “The family has asked for you to say something.” Shaffer nodded, more out of respect then affirmation. “You’ll go after Mr. Hugo.” He shifted nervously in his black boots. His boots, hastily polished before the service, collected a light residue of mud as the grass pushed out the snow’s melt. Pushing his bruised hands in his pocket, he made his way back towards the seats. In the distance, a tractor-trailer’s Jake brake rattled loudly. When his attentions returned, he found the mourners had begun to settle around him, though a gathering of people still lingered.
A large party had gathered before the casket, bringing, despite its morose nature, some life to the dreary landscape. Victor had always been a popular person and often surrounded himself with an eclectic bread of friend. Shaffer couldn’t help but think of the mourners as a court, or, in the least, an audience, including a variety of literati, academics and professionals mingling as best they could with mechanics, accountants, and the other denizens hooked by Hugo’s extroverted charms. After locking eyes with a weeping cousin, Shaffer immediately looked towards the casket. Forming a tight outside circle off to the side, a host of well-dressed kids joked with each other. Shaffer cataloged them carefully, though they could have been musicians, amateur boxers, or simply the mundane dregs of society. Shaffer thought of them as insects lured about a pied, pulsing flame. Huge had a great love of dreamers and idealist, and a found passion for spirituality, even if that spirituality was vented into a material outlet, such as the hedonism that cost him his life. Though Shaffer thought more of him as a philosopher and a hedonist, or, as Hugo called it, “anything that covered mind and body.”
Shaffer, a recluse in his own right, wearily glanced over the rout of mourners. He had no love for them and saw each a parasite, draining away from the poor dead body of his friend. Evidence for his accusation lay in the photographers tactless snapping pictures from the road, their great lenses peaking monstrously over the limestone. In the back, a stoic, red-eyed poet scribbled into her B&N journal. The young musicians in the back, shuffling their feet mechanically, swigged quietly out of a silver flask. The middle-age man in the back, a short-brimmed fedora tipped back on his head, flashed a yellowed smile towards him. Dregs, he thought to himself. Shaffer turned his head dismissivly back to the casket.
By then, the minister began the introduction. After a few unrecognized passages from the bible, the minister asked the audience to bow in prayer. Shaffer bowed his head respectfully, though his eyes searched his boats. His mind cooled and he waited, his knees shaking subtly beneath his muscular grasp. The minister concluded with a rehearse “Amen.” A gray-bearded man walked briskly to the podium. The minister extended his hand to help him up, but the gray-beard ignored the hand and sprung passionately onto the mobile stand. Resting his left hand on the podium, the minister stepped carefully away. The old man put both hands on the podium. His eyes fixed on the audience. Even in the intensity of his eyes, Shaffer could feel a beaming compassion radiating from the old man. He took a deep, but measured, breath. His shoulders quaked, like they were trying to contain some deep fluidity, a deluge pent and ready to explode.
The man began in French. Shaffer looked surprised, leaning back in his chair, visibly shocked by the force of the articulation and the confusion of the foreign tongue. “Victor’s father.” A muffled, female voice supplied. “Don’t worry, Lean towards me and I will translate.” Without glancing to see who spoke, Shaffer leaned towards the speaker.
“My name, like my boys, is Victor. As is tradition in our family, the first-born is named for the great author. But this is no time for this. Let us to the point. Many of you knew Victor in a different light, for he was a brilliance which could not be contained in one shade. He was a worldly man, perhaps burning too bright, as old men say. I remember…” the female translator paused, wetting her lips in emulation of the speaker. “I remember when Victor was young. He was to be a lawyer or a doctor, like his grandfather. But, like all too full of spirit, ‘No,’ he says one day, ‘I will not.’ Like a great force, he sought out all knowledge of all things he could, more in defiance in knowing he could not learn everything. Many of you know how bright this boy was, how he learned so many things so quickly. He knew Art, he knew music, he knew law and medicine…” The old man seemed like he would continue, but he broke off with a weary glance at the audience, as if they thought he was bragging. Shaffer watched the passionate man punctuate the list with gentle gesture of his hand. The entire audience, shocked by the velocity of the speech, sat worthlessly awaiting the continuation. “Somehow, even his father did not know who he was by the end. This fight,” the translator paused again, “This fight that cost my boy his life. So worthless. Such a waste…for the spark that is extinguish cannot be relit.” The translator began to stumble over some of the phrasing, and she stopped to compose her speech.
By the time she had recomposed, the speaker had stopped. A visible tear fell down his face. “So many people gathered to see him, and nothing remains but the vapid smoke of his burning….How long will this last…” the old man visible shook. Whatever forced had restricted his force to speaking snapped; tears fell unceremoniously from his eyes. “I have nothing left to me.” He turned to look down, his back turned to the audience. He raised both hands into the air, “I have nothing now!” he sighed loudly, “and ‘death has robbed my eyes of light!’”
The minister and a young companion scrambled to catch the catatonic man as he fell limp into their arms. The entire audience pursed with silenced concern. Their hesitation., though authentic, was complacent next to the old man’s damning obsequies and, in the thundering silence following, Shaffer shuffled towards the podium, dragging his boot heels in the mud.
They were still easing the old man into his seat when Shaffer took the stand. He looked out over the masses, the same parasitic leviathan that gathered to morn their silent celestial. He took his hat off and sat it beside his muddy boot. The translator, the young blonde who had ushered him gently aside to view the body, bowed her eyes from his view. He focused on her, ignoring the other incubi that lingered before him.
“My name is Shaffer. Victor was my friend. I was going to tell you how we met, but I think that is a personal story, a story that we all share separately with Victor. I don’t know how you knew him, but I know how he knew us. I know that it was more an honor to have known him then it was for him to know you. Like his dad was saying, Victor had a way of inspiring greatness. He taught me something,” he paused and thought for a second, “He taught me something about me that I didn’t know. I don’t know if any of you knew this, or if it is proper to bring up now, when he boxed—I don’t know if you knew he did that—I’d see him and think, ‘Victor knows himself.’ Perhaps we can think that of ourselves, that he knew us for who we are. Now, though he sits there quiet,” Shaffer turned to look down on Hugo. The corpse lay silent. “I can hear him say, ‘What do you think, Shaffer.’ For he believed we were all our own gods walking a shared skies.” He turned back to the audience, an accusatory disposition contorting his words, “Who are you? He asks now…Who are you and where are you going?”
Shaffer took a measured sip of his lager. The bartended was wiping the bar down on the farside. He picked up a bottle of vodka and shelved it near Shaffer, who grabbed his shirtsleeve. In his hand, a wad of money fanned out under the bartender’s nose. “My name is Shaffer. My friend was killed here earlier this week.”
“What?”
“Hugo.”
“Oh,” the bartender grabbed the money from his hand. Shaffer, no expert on bribing people, allowed the money to leave his hand hesitantly. The bartender, who had no experience in being bribed, slid the money into his pocket. The bartender nodded his head to a young girl wiping the far bar down. Shaffer unintentionally noticed her brownish-red hair. “That’s Molly. She was on staff that night. Talk to her.” Shaffer looked at the bartender’s pocket. “She’s a friend of this dead,” Shaffer bristled, “I mean Hugo guy.” Shaffer nodded, though the money in his pocket was reliant on Molly’s cooperation. At least, Shaffer thought so.
He approached her from behind, “My name is Shaffer.”
“I know who you are. You cost Jim,” she gestured to the bartender, “five hundred bucks by beating that Texan last week.”
“He
was from
“No
he wasn’t. He was from
Shaffer gave her an unseen quixotic look before returning to get his beer. On the way back to his seat, a medium-size party of laughing college kids stumbled in. Shaffer glanced over them, watching as they were carded by the large bouncer at the door. Like with most bouncers, he saw the guy was a pseudo-bodybuilder. Too much muscle, he thought to himself. Shaffer had seen his share of idiots with a six months fight time wax the floor with them. He sat down.
Molly kept her back to him. There was enough grime and spilt alcohol on the shelf to keep her facing away from him without seeming rude. He fought the urge to ask her if she saw his fights. He felt embarrassed, both for the thought of her watching and the thought of him asking. To the point, he thought to himself. Still, his eye hesitated over her form. He closed his eyes and began, “Tell me what happen to Victor.”
“He bled to death on the floor.”
“How?”
“Well, from the size of the hole in his artery, the pool of blood on the floor, and the amount of alcohol the asshole drank every night, I’d say it was hemophilia and a bad right that put him in the ground.” Molly stopped wiping the shelf. “Listen, I’m not such in a great mood. Go read a newspaper about it or something.”
“I read the newspaper. They’re saying they were mutual combatants and Hugo knew he had a blood problem…the other guy didn’t.” He composed himself, “I want his name.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m going to kill him.” Shaffer took a drink to wash the words from his mouth.
“Don’t be melodramatic.” Molly sighed. She turned and looked at him. “It wasn’t his fault.”
“It wasn’t who’s fault?”
Molly thought for a second. He refused to admire her, though he felt a general attraction to the girl. He had to admit it to himself. In his head, he felt juvenile for feeling an attraction to some random girl, but given the bestial feeling in his heart and mind, he fought frantically against the salacious feelings towards her. Even in the repression, he felt there was something primitive about the whole scenario, a need more than anything else. The desire to kill some unknown entity overwhelmed him and cemented his determination to avenge his friend’s death. Revenge was no need. Vengeance, after all, is a social idea, an individual moral need meant to right an individual wrong.
Inadvertently, he found himself staring into her cool green eyes. She didn’t move. Between the two, Shaffer could feel the tension, a momentous natural, but uncivilized, yearning. A need, he thought. In the heat, maybe even to advert the infernal urge, she began a mumbled story. “Victor’s party started the fight. One of the guys started screaming something or other at another guy, that guy shoved him and then a small fight broke out between them. Victor was talking to me at the bar,” her fingers spred a small pool of moisture over the lacquered wood, “and he leapt right in, never stopping to look, or ask or anything…just leapt into the fight. He just came out swinging and the bar broke out. Mike, the other bartender, he called the cops. But, Victor…
“He was knee deep in it.”
“He was, and then he ran into this other guy.”
“His name?” It was more of a statement that came out of Shaffer’s mouth, but he knew Molly was now protecting Victor’s murderer. He didn’t blame her. The price of her implication was life.
“It was fair. The guy even backed off Victor for a second to allow him to get up.” Her green iris shuttered like REM sleep, a nostalgic dream parading abstractly before them. “But Victor ended up going down again…” she ran painted fingertips through her hair, “glass bottles broken on the floor, like beer bottles or something….on the floor. It was the glass…under the arm. It wasn’t even that wide of a cut. He saw it and tried to get back up. The guy just watched him. I tried to stop the bleeding, but he pushed me away. I swear, Shaffer. I tried. He didn’t want me to help. He just walked out the bar and I couldn’t leave…he just walked into the street to die…”
“Alone.” Shaffer concluded. “That sounds like him. Movies and books, Molly.”
“Who does that? It was such a small cut.” Her green eyes sparkled in a lethian light, almost abyssal in their gaze. Shaffer, ignorant of the depth of her pain, traced her sight over to a table, where a young man sat smoking. A bottle of untouched tequila kept company with a jigger equally untainted. He didn’t move to smoke. An eerie, mornful air crept over him, the air of an untouched sepulcher. Shaffer saw him with the same fatalistic attraction that he saw Molly. He stood, unconscious of her fingers tearing at the skin of his hand.
The younger man looked up from his cigarette. Shaffer stood a distance, watching him coolly. “Victor Hugo was my friend.”
He returned his gaze to the tequila, responding only after Shaffer stomped his foot. “Who? Listen, I’m busy.”
“You killed him the other night.” To this statement, the man looked up at him. “Victor Hugo,” he paused pointing over at the bar, “was a friend of mine.” He licked the inside of his mouth. “Get up from the table. You’re going to apologize tonight.”
“I’m sorry.” He said, the mournful eyes which spoke the words never left Shaffer’s face. “No one should have died. For fuck’s sake, I didn’t mean to kill him.”
“The point stays the same. Get up.” Shaffer didn’t approach him, but the man understood his intentions. He looked longingly down at the tequila.
Someone was screaming over his shoulder. It was the bartender. “You go outside. I don’t want anymore bullshit in here. You go outside. You go outside if you’re going to beat each other, you fucking monsters, you barbarians. Go outside. Kill yourself in the street.”
Shaffer took a step back, giving the man room to stand. He waited until the other man had exited the door, and he walked briskly after him. There was an uncertain step to his walk. He crushed his mental inhibitions, allowing the swelling in his chest to pull him outside.
The door swung open with a shove. The man waited patiently for him in the alleyway. Shaffer stepped over the alley grime, imagining each pooling puddle to be Hugo’s bloody ruminants. He pulled off his jacket and tossed it aside. The man did the same. They watched each other, each fearing the other might use the opportunity to attack. Shaffer didn’t, but was weary of the other man. Victor, the man who introduced him to boxing, was no professional, but he could hold his own in a fight. Shaffer had no urge to join Hugo in the grave’s rot.
By the time Shaffer brought his fists before him, a crowd had gathered. They formed a ring around the fighters, very similar to a high school fight. Shaffer took a watchful eye off his opponent to glance at the crowd: wide-eyed college kids, a drunk, middle-aged woman, the bouncer and a few other bar patrons, and two loose-tie businessmen, their pants legs rolled carefully up. Several people he had not seen in bar surrounded the two fighters. Something was surreally wrong with the crowd, but Shaffer pressed forward. He took a step towards his opponent, who threw a tentative jab at him. Shaffer stepped away, and blocked the follow up jab with his elbow. He feigned to the right and threw a light, defensive straight, which his opponent stepped away from. It stayed this way for a few seconds, neither fighter weighing in with much moment.
Molly pushed her way before a growing crowd. The alley had already begun to crowd, but it was her face which brought first blood. Shaffer took a weary glance to his right, just enough to draw an accidental landing. His opponent’s feeling jab caught him on the unprotected chin. His head jerked back just enough to shake his footing. He brought his arms up, blocking the oncoming blows. His opponent must have seen the fortitude he had awakened in Shaffer, for he launched a series of follow up strikes, including a hook that caught Shaffer behind the ear.
Shaffer dropped his chin, and struck a hard left straight right into his opponent’s face. The blow sent his opponent, the smaller of the two, into a defensive crotch. Shaffer stuck a low hook, sending shiver’s up the other man’s stomach. “Jesus, Will, move!” someone shouted from the crowd. Shaffer pulled back. Will? He thought to himself.
His opponent—Will, Shaffer questioned again—juked right and stepped forward into his left uppercut, smashing Shaffer in the jaw. The bare-knuckle punch sent him reeling backwards. The deadly force of the blow broke his concentration, and he found himself face-to-elbow against the brick wall. Some shouted to “move”; some urged a “kill.” Will kept up the force, causing Shaffer to weave in his blocking. Under pressure, he forced himself to lower his defense and start swinging. A lucky elbow struck Will’s fist, and the other fighter hesitated enough to give Shaffer and out. Shaffer forced Will back with a shove, and followed the momentum with a reeling step giving him some distance away from the fighter.
Shaffer was near Molly now. Though he didn’t see her, he could hear her voice. It wasn’t so much a word she screamed, but a long and high urgency. He ignored her and pressed his own attack at the opposing fighter. He shook away the numbing of his elbows and tried to keep the blood flowing in the bruising muscle and flesh. He brought his hands up. Will had backed off. Shaffer wasn’t certain if Will was giving him breathing room or was recomposing himself. Either way, Shaffer needed the rest from having his back against the wall. It was time, he thought to himself, to end this.
Though he was unaware of the time of the fight, he could feel the culminating momentum inside him. Instead of numb or tired, he felt idiotically maniacal. Was this the feeling of murder? The sensation of entropy and destruction pulsed inside his flesh. He felt cool yet rushed. Something in his chest urged action and the blood surged through his body. He aggressively approached Will—a name which served to hate well enough. He dodged a few light jabs, and rounded on a missed straight. Will staggered as Shaffer’s hook landed, and he forced Will against the wall. Will must have sensed his entrapment. He threw a wild haymaker up and over Shaffer’s reacting duck. Rising up, Shaffer caught him with a right uppercut that drove his head back into the brick. The crowd cheer, any hesitation bleeding away; Will’s eyes focused forward, blinked a solitary time, and rolled quietly back.
Shaffer felt cold, shivering at the sweat on his barearms. His wifebeater stuck to his tense muscles, and his chest heaved with exertion. The individual urgency was missing; in the bleak void which filled him, he felt his mind reeling. Will stood against the wall, but Shaffer saw the slow cascading of his limp form, like a frozen waterfall defrosting. His knuckles bled hesitantly, like a certain fear of their bloody misuse filled his hands with obstinacy. His peripheral vision swelled at the jeering crowd. Rain had suddenly begun, though Shaffer felt it had started long ago or had long been coming. The winter squall, mixed with the frigid rain, did nothing to hamper the jubilance of the mass surrounding him. Will’s flesh still reverberated from the wall’s impact, the particles of blood and sweat beaded, and were thrown from his hemorrhaging body. As he lowered his fist, he could not feel any wake of vindication. He tired, sucking breathe deep into his burning lungs. The sickness that filled his lungs purged any feeling of benevolence from his body. He turned away from Will, allowing the form to topple muted behind him.
He stooped to retrieve his clothing. The crowd slapped him in congratulations. Shaffer fought to stifle the indignant anger—the same anger which flood his destruction of Hugo’s assassin—towards the crowd. The bloody spectacle made him ill. And, as they cheered him in his steps away, he felt the sudden urge to turn maul them, to destroy any pleasure they maybe feeling at his vile performance. He felt used; he felt insatiable. The hunger for divine fulfillment had left him abyssal. Raising his surprisingly sullen eyes, he saw Molly standing between him and the end of the Alley. Her eyes were bloodshot and she wore a catatonic gaze. Suddenly, in that judging voyeurism, Shaffer felt weighed and found wanting. When he did find the strength to meet her eyes, in the final footsteps that brought him past her, he saw a rich, woeful look, an awful divine sight that shook him to the core. Decades from then, lying in a medical ward from injuries and bruises in the accomplishment of his champion pursuits, he would berate himself still, not for Will’s pummeling and ultimate survival, but for the hubris which carried him into certainty. Even with the belt resting around his waist, he breathed loosely from a wound that marred any glister. It was a feeling of utter failure he would feel forever, the grave of his own ruination to the acclaim of the cheering, jeering multitude.