they just took a damn shower, but here they were again. It was funky stuff, but every Y I’d ever been in had its collection of guys who liked walking around nude a little too much.
When I got down to the gym, Smitty was talking to Billy, my new karate kid.
“Duff, this kid said something about you being his new senor?” Smitty said.
“That’s sensei,” Billy corrected.
“Yeah, that’s right,” I said.
Smitty rolled his eyes at me, which he did about three times a day since the day I met him.
“Well, sensei,” Smitty said. “You think you’ll have time for a boring old boxing workout?”
“Yeah-I think so.”
I instructed my karate student to sit, watch, and quietly observe everything he saw. He went and sat in the lotus position against the wall. Smitty took me through the recoil drill, spent a half an hour on how I should move to my left to stay away from Marquason’s power, and had me spin out of the corner while he threw punches at me. Then he had me shake it out with some light bag work.
I took the time to drill my drag punch, hoping Smitty wouldn’t be paying close attention. That, of course, was a mistake; Smitty was always paying attention.
“What the hell is that?” Smitty said.
“Nothin’ really. I saw some of the Puerto Ricans doing it at Gleason’s once,” I said.
“You plannin’ something I should know about, son?”
“Nah.”
Smitty gave me eye roll number two for the day and went to his office just behind the old speed-bag platform. I did some stretching and saw Billy out of the corner of my eye, rocking with enthusiasm. I had promised and figured it was time.
“All right, kid. In the ring.”
Billy bounded through the ropes charged up in front of me and bowed.
“WASABIIIIIIIIIII!” he yelled, then snapped his fists down around his belt.
“Wasabi? What’s that all about?” I said.
“It is my unique kiai.”
“Kiai is the yell, right?” I noticed Billy had a brand-new purple zit on his left cheek that looked like a gumdrop.
“Sir, yes sir.”
“Why are you yelling about Japanese horseradish?”
“Sir?”
“Wasabi is that green stuff you get with sushi, isn’t it?”
“Sir?”
“Never mind.”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right, kid, get in your fighting stance,” I said, trying to muster some vigor.
He stepped back with his left leg and with exaggerated motion hurled his arms into a formal fighting stance.
“WASABIIIIIIIII!”
That was going to take some getting used to. I noticed Smitty was out of his office, leaning in the doorway, watching the karate lesson as if he were watching the first inhabitants of Uranus to land in Crawford.
“Stepping forward, high punch,” I yelled. It was a struggle to remember how karate commands went.
“Sir, I am accustomed to hearing the commands in Japanese.”
“Well, you’re going to have to change that.”
“Yes, sir!”
And so it went. I considered having him wax my ’76 Eldorado with the whole “wax on, wax off” deal, but that would mean the kid would probably be in my hair for another six hours. That, and I wasn’t confident the burnt orange finish could handle a waxing. The whole car could disintegrate from shock or something.
I gave the kid a half an hour of training, such as it was. He wasn’t very good, but what he lacked in power and grace he certainly made up for with excitement. When the half hour was through, I bowed him out and congratulated him on good workout.
“Sir, when will I train again?”
“I have to go away for the weekend, kid. I’ve got a fight.”
“A fight? Western boxing?”
“Yep.”
“What shall I work on in the meantime?”
“Uh, let’s see. Just work your fundamentals.” It was the best I could come up with. “And kid, you don’t have to wear a formal karate outfit, if you don’t want.”
“Sir, I prefer to train in my Karateka Nu-Breath Modern Ninja uniform.”
“That would be fine, I guess,” I said and then dismissed my class.
8
I hate the day before a fight.
It was in New York, so we were going to head down to the city at night, go to the weigh-in, have dinner, and go to bed early. Notice I said “go to bed” and not “go to sleep” because I never slept the night before a fight. Before we could leave I still had the morning and part of the afternoon to kill, so I arranged to work some time at the clinic. I didn’t have a ton of vacation time left but I could spare a half a day.
I had a ten a.m. session with Javier Sanchez, a migrant farm worker who came up to Crawford from Florida and the orange groves to work in the apple orchards. Sanchez got busted driving one of the orchard tractors on the Thruway, which was only part of the problem. The other part was that he was two and half times over the drunk- driving limit. I think the troopers got suspicious because he was in the passing lane doing eight miles per hour.
Sanchez barely spoke English and what he did say was mostly unintelligible. He really wasn’t of this culture and he didn’t get how the people in our country operated. He certainly didn’t get this whole human-services deal at all. The idea that the police arrest you and then you have to go some place to talk about things just didn’t make any sense to him. Getting locked up for a year in a smelly jail with little food and lots of bugs probably would’ve made sense, and in many cases might have been easier to take than the Chinese water torture of getting involved in court-ordered treatment.
To make matters worse, he hadn’t paid his clinic bills because, well, he made about a buck-fifty a day and didn’t understand why he was coming to the clinic in the first place. He was one of those victims of the absurd social-services laws. He didn’t have an official address because he lived in a tent on an orchard and he changed orchards frequently. Without an address, a citizen can’t get welfare or Medicaid. He couldn’t even apply for our sliding scale because he didn’t have any of the necessary paperwork like pay stubs and letters from landlords because he got paid in cash and he didn’t have a social security card or a driver’s license. Yet, even with all this bullshit, if Sanchez missed a couple of sessions, the Michelin Woman would make me contact his probation officer and he might go to jail.
Sanchez was half Mexican and half Filipino, and even though he was in his late fifties, he looked seventy. Lots of sun, too much work, and a steady diet of tequila will do that. All in all, he was very likable and I felt for the position he was in. As far as his treatment goals went I didn’t think he was going to be getting any AA MVP awards any time soon, but then again, neither was I.
Sanchez was a half an hour late as usual because he walked three miles each way to the clinic, which he said he didn’t mind. Today, he was wearing faded jeans, ratty Converse All Stars, a wife-beater, and a Chicago Bulls hat. He didn’t look happy and he didn’t smell good.
“Senor Duffy,” he said in his thick and mumbled accent. “Sanchez no money. Sanchez no number house.”
“No number house?” I said.
