My Father's Fighter by Ronald K. Fried

Author:Ronald K. Fried
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504024044
Publisher: The Permanent Press (ORD)

SEVENTEEN

“Who’s Hollis?” Elizabeth asks as she opens the door to our apartment. She wears a frayed, oversized, gray Columbia T-shirt and nothing else. It’s hard to look sexy in that thing, but Elizabeth does. Her matted hair tells me she’s been sleeping, but she’s alert.

It is just past midnight, and once again I am coming home after a night out with the boys. But Elizabeth’s look is more serious than what she’d exhibit if she were only pissed off that I’m late, haven’t called, and smell from too much garlic and wine.

“He’s that kid,” I say.

“That kid? I don’t know what that means,” she says, angry because she dislikes it when I don’t speak in specific ways. She thinks of it as a lack of discipline—evidence that I’m becoming middle-aged and uncrisp.

“You met Hollis in the park,” I say. “He’s the black kid who ran with Mickey and me. I introduced you to him. He’s a fighter.”

“He’s dead,” she says with clinical clarity.

We’re standing in the entryway to our apartment. “Isn’t it nice to have a small room here?” I suddenly remember Elizabeth asking when we looked at the place for the first time.

“Hollis is dead?”

“Harry called five minutes ago. He woke me up.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Harry said Hollis was killed going down into the subway.”

“What?”

“He was going down the stairs to the subway and a gang of kids came from behind him and pushed him down the stairs, and somehow he hit his head.”

“He died from falling down the stairs?”

“He was pushed. He hit his head. Subway stairs are hard. They’re made of concrete and metal. What kind of a name is Hollis?”

“I don’t know. Like the part of Queens. Hollis, Queens. Do you think I should call Harry back?”

“Should you call Harry back?” Elizabeth says, turning towards the bedroom. “What do you think?”

Pushed down the stairs? By whom? I sit down on the sofa and review the scenario. Hollis was seventeen years old. He was a strong kid. He was a boxer with great speed and balance. He was walking down the subway stairs when a gang—rivals of his?—came from behind, pushed him down, and then ran off. Were they trying to kill him? We’ll likely never know. He hit his head. There was blood and the kids knew right away that Hollis was dead—because these were street kids from unglamorous Queens and they knew death when they saw it because they’d seen it before. Is this a trend? Is it starting in Queens, soon to spread to Manhattan where the kids at my school will start pushing each other down stairs? Will I ever walk down the stairs to the subway again without thinking of Hollis lying with a fractured, bloody skull—lying there very much like the knockout victim he would doubtless have become if he’d lived to fight as a pro because, as they say in the gym, there’s always someone out there who has your number?

Elizabeth has gone into the bedroom, leaving me alone with my questions.

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