Chad Sanderson

C h a d   S a n d e r s o n

    The Boxer

I sit alone in the bathroom of Stan Howard High School’s gymnasium. An announcer’s voice echoes between the walls of tile and falls flat near toilet bowls tinged a corncob yellow. All I can smell is piss. The sour-sweet odor comes from everywhere at once and  makes it difficult to breathe. There is a clang, and an older black man, his fat sagging around the waist and nipples, emerges from a stall completely naked. He looks at me with misshapen eyes, like gooey eggs cracked into a black frying pan.

You fightin' boy? You a fighter? You a boxer?, the old man asks, scratching a dark spot on his belly. I nod. So you a boxer?, he says again. Well that’s good. My uncle was a boxer. Got knocked out one night and didn’t wake up. Better not get knocked out. He coughs into his chest, a vacuum-picking-up-pennies type of cough.

I tell him I don’t plan to and he ignores me, becoming lost in his armpit. Outside, the crowd roars, and between cheers I hear the soft shriek of a woman. Her low wail transforms into a painful moan that persists until it reverberates off the ceiling and I can’t escape it. My baby…My baby…

The old man snorts. You somebody’s baby too, ain’t you? He says, and he stares at me for a long time. He stares at me until my legs feel hot, and the smell of piss comes up again from nowhere and overtakes everything.

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