Theo was not a violent man.
Well, I mean his love of a fight was as boundless as the will of any person, but there was never any malice in his bones. He fought with pride, a quiet smile on his face and a focus to his eyes that refused to look away from a challenge. He had a direction to the way he spoke that was in many words simple.
He lived for competition; Theo was a man who liked to be so out of a fight that his opponent was already starting to think about dinner. He liked to be beaten blue and then firmly shoved against a wall just so he could stand up again and plant two knuckles either side of his opponent’s nose. That was life to Theo: he would howl laughter and then beat his chest with joy until his friends thought him to be mad, he would sing songs of his homeland late into the night and stand upon the edges of the day so proudly that the tide could not help but return to lap at his ankles.
‘Timber falls so sweetly,’ he once said to me through a broken nose and enough cotton bandages to hold his face together, ‘like a sack of potatoes from a truck they go, whump, down to the floor,’ he clapped his hands mirthfully and flashed to me a jagged smile that would put fear into the heart of any grim reaper who were to collect him.
Theo always called his opponents timber, ‘no matter how mighty they stood, enough chops and they would fall,’ he would say, ‘just be making sure you step aside when they do.’
He loved boxing, it was the pulse that drove him forward, three rounds were barely a kiss and twelve still felt like a prelude.
The first time I watched him box he had almost twenty years of life on his opponent, and the bout was to be over by the time they first touched gloves.
The unlucky bull was a thuggish southpaw too dim to know that he had been hit, and a man who had survived on his power and reach alone. Theo had fought this fight before, he knew every step and every strike that would lead the bull to a mistake, he had made these movements under the northern skies, and their memories danced upon the edges of his reflexes.
The guard should be low, draw them in; Theo was so small a target to this young bull that everywhere looked like an opening, he bucked and reared but with each glance came a stout reply falling into his ribs or landing upon his chin. By the fourth round the bull was dazed and standing through dumb pride alone, Theo had won. One jab cut into the man’s ribs, and he fell along with it, blood needn’t be spilt, it was never a fair fight.
He was an indentured sailor when he first learnt to box.
Fired by the rage of his youth Theo woke with fright and attempted to swallow the day whole before it chose to swallow him. Actions became blurred by mistakes and by the afternoon a stomach of rum had urged Theo to throw vitriol at anyone who looked even half-interested at having an argument.
He lived by the docks back in his homeland all those years ago, and on that day, he found out how many sailors a man had to fight to get a job on a freight liner.
So it was with a hangover and a few less teeth that Theo went to sea.
He learnt patience on those early days at sea. As night fell Theo would have to fight for his food, a dozen challengers would knock him down again and again long after he could no longer raise a fist in reply. He became known as the dog of Marseilles upon that first voyage, rabid with fight and refusing to take a backward step; Theo would learn from every loss, he would see the punch as it was thrown, step, stay steady, return. Over three years he had fought in every fight that a man could imagine, and he had become strong.
As he left the ship on that final day at sea, they would call him wolf, a watchful fighter so quick to land his blows that there never chance of counter. No longer impetuous with youth, Theo had left them as equal. Life had honed his actions and Theo had marched beyond what anyone believed him able to.
I’m not sure he ever said that it was going to be his last fight, but we knew that age had made him slow. A foundation unsettled for the first time, all Theo could do was to walk forward and hope his jaw didn’t fail him like his legs had begun to. The punches hurt more than they had before, every bump dropped his guard, and a stray blow would land before his was able to return the favour.
By the first round he was bleeding and after the eighth the referee had seen enough. Theo laughed and laughed after the knockout, ‘there is not enough blood in hell and the devil will never stop me. Take my skin, take my eyes, I still stand!’
I have still never seen a fighter leave a ring with more energy than when he had entered it. Stepping out from the ropes, Theo walked as if the air was barely able to contain his joy, he stood against the crash of any tidal wave and his voice called out to shake down the clouds from heavens. But that was Theo, he knew that no moment of life should ever be considered an ending, he knew that the next fight was only just beginning.
I never saw him fall, even in death he lived like the Iron struck against the coals, a shower of radiant embers brought to life from his shaking hands.
I hope the devil knows how to box because he’s just gained an opponent unbroken.
So long, wolf.
J.McCray
2021
Sunday Short Stories 