Fight of the Century
In 1971, we lived next door to a retired airline pilot. When we arrived five years earlier I was only seven, but I could tell he and his wife liked to party more than my parents, always offering up another gin-and-tonic with lime on their screened porch. They had two adult children of their own who may or may not have lived there, and one, Jack, who fell the year between my brother and me. They were so different, I don’t think any of them even went to church.
That same year, at ages fourteen and twelve, my brother and I were deemed old enough for BB guns, essentially shotguns with much less firepower. We asked for them for Christmas, and although Dad himself didn’t own a gun, in the morning, to our joy, ours were standing by the tree.
My brother never really took to his much, but as it grew warmer, me and a couple of friends would take ours down into an undeveloped swampland to shoot at the mossy stumps, rotted trees, and elusive bullfrogs. We were supposed to be careful and usually were. I’d never tell my mother this, but if you got hit, it was probably on purpose.
And it fucking hurt. One day I was walking up the hill from my house, unarmed, when my outer thigh suddenly stung like fire. At home I found a red BB welt.
It had to be Jack, whose bedroom window was just beyond the woods from where I got hit. Did he somehow know that I had recently used the spare key they kept at our house to enter theirs while no one was home (overcoming wild fear and heavy guilt), to check out a stack of Playboy magazines his older brother kept right beside his bed?
Doubtful, unless Jack was home when I went in and stayed completely quiet the whole time. No -- it was just that he didn’t like me, and for that I couldn’t blame him.
For a while, I’d been acting like a real dink. I had started a neighborhood war when I beat up this snotty kid at the bus stop who had purposely stomped on my foot earlier at school. His older siblings took exception, and then my brother and mostly everyone else got involved. There were insults, fisticuffs, terrible acorn ambushes, one bonafide rumble at night, and seemingly ever-changing sides. When all was said and done I was still friends with the kid, who gave me a magazine from his waterproof stash in the woods.
Following the war, I was walking with a friend when we came upon Jack and my brother sitting on the wooden post fence at the end of Jack’s front lawn.
“Watch this,” I informed my friend, before shoving Jack backwards off the fence.
There was a silence, then he got up, came around and got me down, punching me repeatedly in the head. I thought I was going to die. I overheard my brother suggesting: “He’s had enough.” Progress, I guess: he usually rooted for the other guy.
I never bothered Jack again, and I didn’t say or do anything about the sniper shot, though his aim at that range was impressive.
On the night of the first Ali/Frazier fight, the fight of the century, my brother and I were sleeping over in Jack’s room. We each had a sleeping bag and his mom would bring in snacks. We were fooling around with a portable cassette recorder. Only when we played it back, for some reason, our voices were sped up. So when Jack called out, “More onion dip, Ma!” on the tape it was hysterical.
Jack wasn’t into sports and didn’t care about the outcome of the fight. I was a Joe Frazier guy: low, scrappy, not kind on the eyes, a bull in a china shop. My brother, Muhammad Ali: loudmouth, pretty as can be, lightning fast and extremely dangerous. Frazier was champ, Ali contender at Madison Square Garden.
I almost forgot about it. We were listening to Jack’s radio, when the news came over: Frazier had defeated Ali in a hard fought fifteen-round decision, knocked him down for the first time in his career, and was still champ.
“Congratulations,” Jack said to me. My brother rolled over.
Fin