Why We Fight

[13]

What if there are no stories, only a series of events happening in loosely connected sequence one after another until it ends for each of us? It's we the people that attribute narratives and plot lines and purpose to help make sense of the potentially chaotic nonsense that surrounds us.

My mother died giving birth to me weeks before my due date. I was a preemie baby. I wasn't expected to survive. My father almost didn't claim me after the miracles that sustained me stopped happening. He named me Thirteen as testament to all I was in his life, the unluckiest thing that had ever happened to him. I represented the loss of his wife, a daughter worth less with each passing day.

I don't remember much of my childhood other than the concept of struggle as a reason and that's just not very interesting when it comes time to tell you or anyone else how I came to be here. I can't put one event after another like we do feet when we walk.  I do remember being shipped to the U.S. and working for a family as, what I understand now, a servant. My value finally fetched by my father, I suppose, if we want to ascribe meaning to it.

I learned a lot of turns of phrase from the older woman there who'd been me till she grew up to become her, the woman I'd replace when her old, cracked andf weathered hands ceased to be useful.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire, she'd say. It felt more like out of the frying pan and into another frying pan, then into another frying pan and into another, ad infinitum. She told me, "everything happens for a reason," and I still dwell on that every day. Who determines what that reason is? And what do they do once they decide?

Me I'm still looking for the reason.



AWE (Alpha Wrestling Empire) HEADQUARTERS
New York City, New York
April 27, 2017

The elevator doors dinged open to reveal Rodney Prentice. Cue awesome freeze frame close-up graphical image!

That's him. In black and white. Okay, back to motion and colour. He stepped out of the elevator and smoothed his shirt over his midsection. This was his first day back at work after a needed vacation to Bermuda and he wasn't happy about it. Sure, he'd come a long way from Leeds, England, he had nothing to complain about, except he actually did.

You'll meet that reason shortly.

Down the hallway he moved with purpose, heading for the office with the double glass doors. He opened them and entered to the sound of fingers furiously clacking at keys on a computer keyboard. Rodney's eyes closed in tempered annoyance as the keys click clacked away at what was approximately 200 words per minute. Impossible it was anything legible. Slowly, Rodney opened his eyes and exhaled,

"That computer's not plugged in."

The fingers stopped typing. Cue another awesome freeze frame graphical closeup of the man at the desk currently looking oblivious as usual.

"....I knew that."

Back to colour and motion. Francis Ford Cuppola was in no way the most difficult boss to work for, but he was likely the most exacerbating. Imagine Inspector Clouseau as your supervisor and you're halfway there to picturing Rodney's predicament. Rodney had answered an ad in a local newspaper years ago to help a "big-time movie producer" and wound up with this guy. They'd been together ever since, all the way to Francis becoming a one-third majority stakeholder in the Alpha Wrestling Empire, right up till he took over the COO position after a series of gaffes and poor decisions from the last two people who'd failed to hold the post, all the way to now.

"Francis, what are you doing?"

Rodney was surprised by nothing anymore save, maybe, the answers to his questions. Baited breath was the best way to describe how he waited for Francis to respond time and again. Francis frowned after a moment of silent explication focused on Rodney before guffawing softly as if getting a joke.

"What do you mean, what am I doing? I work here, ya silly goof."

Back to typing. Rodney's blinks were slow, methodically timed efforts at staving off mind-numbing insanity. It was like that with Francis.

"Francis, the Alpha Wresting Empire has been closed for a month."

Francis again guffawed. It hadn't been a huge splash in the water, or even the most popular of the federations you might find by searching the internet, but for a time it had made a blip on the wrestling radar, and for some that was enough.

"What are you talking about, kid Rod? Under my expert leadership the AWE is still going strong. We just sold out Wembley. I just watched Cosmo Cooper's big-time rematch with Dom DiBoner for the Paramount Championship. The fans loved it. Shyah."

He dismissed Rodney with a playful swipe of his hand.

"No you didn't. That never happened. Those people work elsewhere now."

Francis leaned back in his chair and surveyed Rodney with a growing look of confusion. Rodney could only return the look stolidly, with the ever-increasing patience of a saint.

"But I just—"

"No. You didn't."  Rodney shook his head. Francis sat with his brow furrowing further. 

"Well, how come—"

"Never happened." Francis' otherwise whimsical expression darkened a smidge.

"Huh... so... it's really gone, then?"

"'fraid so, Francis." It was a moment of starkness to get the memo for all involved, from the wrestlers to those involved behind the scenes. The owner had decided not to devote funding to another season of the company, and closed the doors outright. No consultations, and no take-backs. Francis, apparently, was just now getting that memo.

Rodney eyed him at his desk from halfway across the spacious office, a gulf of silence between them while Francis processed. Then,

"Rodney?"

"Yes, Francis?"

"My arm hurts." Rodney blinked and watched Francis, red-faced, inexplicably keel over in the chair. And the rest was a blur of red and blue ambulance lights; a rush down a hospital corridor to the emergency room, and then waiting.

"I'm not ready to lose him," Rodney said to himself despite the ever-silent mainstay of Francis' entourage sitting next to him on the uncomfortable hospital chairs. Sure, why not, another cool freeze frame close-up.

Mister Mississagi nodded though Rodney didn't notice, leaning forward staring at the floor. Then the news came. Francis had made it through the bypass okay after suffering a major heart event and every bit of Rodney's exacerbation at his boss softened thereafter as Francis was given a recovery bed.

Days later, Rodney walked beside Francis as Mississagi pushed the wheelchair Francis was seated in into the hospital courtyard with a sense of muted concern at how close it had all come to changing.

"Nice outside, hey guys?"

Rodney looked skyward into the overcast clouds and glanced at Mississagi.

"Sure, Francis." He smirked. "It's perfect."

"What will I do now?" Francis murmured to himself in a rare moment of self-awareness while Mississagi carefully wheeled him along the curving scenic sidewalk through a copse of evergreen trees.

"Take it easy?" Rodney let his hand pat Francis' shoulder. It was of little comfort to the aged director who, in spite of himself, had made a career of staying busy, working hard, and doing double what he needed to.

"I can't retire, Rod." His tone somber, very unlike him, Rodney thought. "I need something. I need to do something. I can't just sit here." He shifted to try to stand up, but Rodney stopped him.

"Just relax for now, Francis." You never recognize how old a person is until their frailty makes itself apparent. Perhaps, Rodney thought, we just assume we're all immortal until reality tells you otherwise. Rodney eyed his employer now set into his wheelchair noticing suddenly more gaunt to his features than previously, that certain gleam in his eye missing ever after the heart attack. His speech was less assured and certain of itself. It put Rodney off guard.

"Where's Thirteen?" Francis asked. Rodney thought about it.

"Probably where she always is." Somewhere a woman about 5'5, toned and fit, worked up a sweat in a darkened training gym. Probably working her arms between the jutting wood of a Muk Yan Jong as the sound of flesh careening expertly against wood sounded off the walls in between breaths of the woman bobbing and weaving against a shadowy opponent she could visualize as anyone. Thirteen had made herself scarce since the memo that closed the AWE.

"You know," Francis said staring blankly into the copse of trees, "she's the only one who really wanted that job at the AWE, Rodney. The COO job."

"I know." Rodney responded, not enjoying the sudden introspective version of his employer more commonly represented by humorous bouts of obliviousness than someone reflecting on others in any sort of profound way.

In that gym, her hair separated into French braids, Thirteen worked against that training dummy and blew off the steam that kept building. In between sparring with that, she'd kick the heavy bag ever harder and work out her strikes on the speed bag, her mind running a silent race toward what move to take next. 

"She was actually born to do this fighting thing, Rod." Francis said, his fingers reaching out to brush against some pine needles and pick some off the branch to look at while he was wheeled through the courtyard. "She was good at the wrestling thing, she probably would hev done right by that company had I not... had it not closed."

"I know."

"Maybe, maybe I should help her out, hey? Maybe that's what I can do?"

"How would you help her out, Francis?"

"I don't know. Get her back doing the thing she loves, you know? Maybe I can give back rather than taking all the time."

"You mean live through her?"

Francis was silent, sliding the pine needles against the top of his other hand in contemplation before he glanced up at Mississagi with a silent gesture to stop the wheelchair before he looked to Rod.

"That's what I want to do, Rod. Can you help me do it, Rod?" The entreaty of a man Rodney had only recently begun to see as old stopped him in his considerations. They exchanged the look before Rodney said,

"Okay. I'll help. I'll get her on the phone, and—"

"No, no." Francis gripped Rodney's arm forcefully, pleading up at him. "I want it to be a surprise, Rod."

Rodney blinked, that characteristic blink returning as Francis stared up at him with the gleam also returning to his eyes.

"I don't think that's a good idea, Francis. I mean—"

"She'll love it, Rod." He smiled up to Rodney before gesturing to Mississagi to continue pushing the wheelchair through the courtyard, and reinvigorated sense of purpose filling Francis as Rodney watched and mulled.



Another day of railing against nothing. Working against myself. Training is a habit, a reflex. I do it because I have to. I never stopped after I stepped away from the competitive side of the business. I always found time to watch how others prepared, how fighters moved in the ring and compared my own technique with theirs.

Devotion and dedication are the same. I never cared about winning, or telling people how authentic my efforts were compared to everyone else, and I didn't care about trying to shoot people down, I cared about trying in general, being grateful that I could; I care about being better than I was because I guess I never saw a peer if I'm honest. It was a competition with myself, and there were many who could never understand that, or would attempt to attack and deflate it.

And now there's not much fighting left to do, and I wonder if I got it wrong. If maybe the shit-talking dummies might be right. There'd be no harm in that, and if there was I wouldn't care. Toweling off after another workout, the best reason I've come up with for why I fight, or why I train to fight the fight I'll likely never fight again, why I do what I do is because.

That's it.

The second I find comfort I recognize it's time to quickly become uncomfortable again, start moving, keep struggling. That is purpose.

Just exiting the gym I find myself swarmed with a small sea of reporters and a microphones stuffed in my face.

"Are you looking forward to your first fight?"

What?

"How does it feel to make the shift to the Unleashed circuit?"

"I did what now?" My face must be worn with confusion and dismay. Cue unnecessary freeze frame close-up.

Then back to colour and motion. Yup, that's me. Stunned, and the rest is struggle until I discover that my name is on the roster over at Unleashed, and I've got a fight booked in... Serbia? I heard that first from a reporter.

Guess I found another reason to fight.