Bruise by Adrian Markle

Author:Adrian Markle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Touchwood Editions
Published: 2024-04-11T00:00:00+00:00

Age Twenty-Two

It was loud in the city in the morning. Loud and dark. The sounds of the people outside and the traffic, even early, came in through thin windows and rattled around against bare brick walls and woke him most days well before he’d have liked.

He stayed in the room filled with bunk beds above the gym—which he guessed was as close as he’d ever get to living in a university dorm—for visiting fighters, other people who wanted to do camps without the distractions of home, and in his case, the people who didn’t have one. Sometimes it was busy and had a warm energy to it, but now it was only him. He was the only full-timer there. Except for Robbie, obviously, but Robbie had his own little room on the main floor near the boiler.

Robbie had retired after an eight-fight losing skid. When he was fighting, his nickname had been Hands of Stone, but all the punishment he’d taken in the ring had made him slow and now some of the younger guys called him Head of Stone behind his back. He lived in the gym because even before that last skid he’d never really made it off the regional circuit, so he didn’t really have any money.

Jamie crawled out of bed and grabbed the pair of shorts he’d hung from the window to air out. He didn’t want Robbie to hear him. Robbie had trouble sleeping and always came to work or talk with Jamie when he heard him up, but he was too much. He tried too hard.

The sun wasn’t there yet, but it was coming. All the sky he could see through the window was pale, steel blue. The stairs down to the training area creaked. He walked down carefully, pausing every time they cried out and waiting until the silence resettled, reminding himself he was allowed to be there.

He chose not to flick the lights on. He’d just work with the growing dawn that fell in from the high windows. The bag his dad had made at home, the handmade, keg-shaped, brown leather one that sat mostly untouched in their shed, hung down to Jamie’s waist and was for punching only—“manly” in the traditional sense, but restrictive.

They had that kind here too, but his choice was new and black, from Thailand, narrow around—he could wrap almost all the way around it with just one arm—but long, the bottom swinging only inches above the polished concrete floor. There were other types as well—teardrop-shaped ones, inverted teardrops, and an array of Tetris shapes fixed to the walls—but he liked this one, how it was somewhat familiar in shape but new in purpose.

He circled slowly, just touching it, just working through the movements he’d been refining since he’d arrived. He extended a jab, just until it met with resistance, and then twisted his hips and slowly extended his right cross, until it too just barely touched the bag, as if to wipe a tear from a cheek. He had an urge, whenever he threw that right, to drive his fist right through the leather.

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