CHAPTER TWELVE: HUGH MADDOX
Well, here I am, telling her everything. I’m glad this moment is finally here, even if it means I lose my anonymity, my hiding place, and her. I feel like I’m in a confessional booth, which makes me think that maybe I should have taken church more seriously. Or therapy.
You’re only as sick as your secrets. Who said that? I always liked it and believed it, even though it never got me to share any of them until now.
Sam’s concern is genuine. I can tell that she wants to say more than she is and I love her for it. But I have too much left to say before we can go...wherever we’re going to go.
“Andrew kept showing up at the gym beat all to hell,” I say. “I knew what he was doing and I couldn’t make him stop. So I did the only thing I knew how. I offered to go with him to watch his back. He was so happy. He knew that if I just saw him fight in one of these illicit gigs I’d see that I was wrong about him. I’d see that he was ready.”
I can still see the kid in my head. I can still hear his loud laugh, and see the awkward way he moved when he first started fighting.
“His first fight--the first one I saw him in--was in a warehouse on the outskirts of Brooklyn. Shabby, shitty business. The kind of place where people wind up brawling for YouTube hits. I tried to get him out of there as soon as we got there, but he was determined. I couldn’t drag him out of there in front of everyone; it would have wrecked his self-image and whatever reputation he had gathered among these guys.”
“So he fought?” says Sam.
I nod. “Right before it started I saw the other guy tuck a roll of quarters into one of his fists. There was a lot of betting action going on. I tried to tell Andrew what I had seen but it was too late. I could have broken it up. I should have. I trusted that he’d be able to dodge, or grab the guy, get his hands open if they went to the ground, and then everyone would see that he was trying to cheat. You can really fuck someone up with even a little extra weight in your hand.”
“I’m sure.”
“The irony is that, as soon as the fight started, it happened just like I hoped it would. Andrew wasn’t the best striker yet, but he was a devil if he could drag you down. Grappling with Andrew on the mat was like being in the water with a shark, even if you were good. There was no margin for error. Just like I had hoped, he got wrist control, popped the guy’s hands open, and out rolled that pack of quarters.”
“Was that the end of the fight?”
“Ha! You didn’t know Andrew. That was just the beginning. Andrew jumped up, grabbed the quarters, handed them back to the guy, called him a little bitch, and told him to feel free to use them because he was going to need all the help he could get.”
“Sounds like I would have liked him.”
“Everyone liked Andrew. Except the guy he had just humiliated. And it didn’t stop there. They fought for another six rounds with only fifteen second breaks in between. It was brutal. The other guy was getting the worst of it. Totally outmatched. Andrew was punishing him for trying to cheat. That’s one thing most people don’t know about fighters. At least, people who think we’re all just dumb thugs. They think there’s no honor, no code. But most of us got into martial arts for the ethos. There’s something pure in it when you start, even if you forget it.”
“That makes sense. I used to love Bruce Lee.”
“Who doesn’t love Bruce Lee? But Andrew was punishing the guy. I could tell that he could have finished the fight at any time. Put the guy out of his misery. But he wanted him to suffer, so he dragged it out to teach him a lesson. Unfortunately, he created an opponent who had nothing to lose. Then he got him so blind with rage that...it went bad. Oh God.”
I rub my face. It’s like no time has passed at all and I’m right back there in that warehouse, waiting for what I can’t stop.
“Do you want to pick this up again later?” says Sam.
“No. If I stop now I might never start again…Andrew finally took the guy down for the last time and got him in a rear naked choke. There was no way out but the guy was tough. He wouldn’t tap and soon he was asleep. Andrew got up and collected his money while the guy’s homies picked him up and tried to revive him. As soon as he was mobile, he came up behind Andrew and kicked him in the side of the head.”
“Oh my God!”
“It was a hard shot, but nothing that we hadn’t seen before. But it knocked him sideways. Just one of those freak things. Andrew fell and hit his head on the side of the table that people were using for their drinks. One of the corners hit his temple and that was it. He died minutes later of a massive brain hemorrhage.”
There it is. Out in the open. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more Andrew.
Sam wipes a tear from her eye. “So that’s why you quit?”
“Not entirely. First of all I wanted revenge. Of course. But that kind of thinking isn’t sustainable. The guy who killed Andrew was plugged into a couple of gangs. That was a fight I eventually would have got the worst of. I wasn’t going to start carrying a gun and getting in shootouts every day. But the other part of that was that cops raided the warehouse right then. They rounded us all up. Medics saw what happened to Andrew. One of them, a fan, recognized me and took me over to talk to a couple of detectives.”
“Did they help you get the guy?”
“No, that guy was done either way. He wound up going to prison. The whole thing was illegal. None of us were clean, guilty by association just by being there, including me. My agent would have gone berserk if he’d known I was there. Sponsors would have dropped me in a flash unless they put some gross ‘bad boy in underground pit fighting scandal’ spin on it, but that’s not what I wanted my championship reign to be about. Not that that’s what mattered. Andrew was what mattered and he was gone.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” she says.
“I should have stopped him.” There’s nothing she can say to change what I know, but it’s nice to hear. I want to believe her, but she’s wrong. “And I could have.”
“We make our own choices. It’s not our friend’s job to drag us away from things. He would have resented you.”
“But he would have lived.”
Sam turns off the recorder. “Look at me.”
I look at her. She’s staring back with all the conviction a person can have. “I want you to say “It’s not my fault,” she says.
“I can’t, Sam. And even if I could, I let those detectives let me off. I should have taken my lumps for being there in the first place. Everyone else had to. I had always sworn that I would never play the ‘I’m an important guy’ card to get out of trouble. But I did and I’m fucking ashamed of it.”
“Does being out here help?” She gestures at the basement walls. “Do you feel like you actually escaped?”
“Of course not. But I don’t have to deal with the memory of him everywhere I go.”
“It doesn’t sound like that’s true. You’ve got a picture of him on the wall. You can’t atone forever, Hugh. What do you want from your life now? There’s got to be more than this. You’re more than a beard and an ax and a cabin. That sounded dumb, I know, but you’ve reduced yourself to less than you should be. You’re a special person and I don’t need to know you any better than I do to know that. So I’m going to ask you again, what do you want from your life?” Her fiery speech has lit up her cheeks with a sexy flush. Her rapid movements make her body sway and bounce in all the right ways.
“You really want to know what I want?” I say. Because I can suddenly think of something.
“Tell me.”
I stand up. “Come here.”
She stands up and walks over to me. “Now what?”
“I believe in fair play and I think you got some of my best earlier. Now I want you to get on your knees. And you’re going to take more than a minute.”