The Fighter by Darryl Graff

I’m a New York City union plaster foreman.   Last year, I did three Broadway theater restoration projects, back to back.  When I was done with the three theaters, it was handshakes, all around.

“Darryl, you did a great job. We’ll call you again…when things get busy.”

 As they were wheeling me on a gurney into the operating room, the hand surgeon, Dr. Chin, leaned over me and said, “It’s called a boxer’s fracture, also known as a bar room fracture; it’s a fracture of the fourth and fifth metacarpal bone, usually caused by the impact of a clenched fist with a skull, or other, hard, immovable object, such as a wall.”

 Wow.  A boxer’s fracture.  Sounds cool and tough, like, maybe I’m Anthony Quinn in Requiem for a Heavyweight; you know, “Mountain” Rivera.  One way or the other, I’ve been hit a million times.   I was almost heavyweight champion of the world.
       
  I’d had a couple of drinks and smoked one lousy fifty-cent Newport cigarette from the Arab bodega on the corner.   Next thing you know, I’m lightheaded. Dizzy.  Punch drunk.  I go down the subway stairs, head first.

 I heard a woman screaming, “Oh, my God, are you all right?”

 Some guys fight windmills; I fight subway stairs.     It didn’t happen on the job, so there is no workers’ comp check; I have a cast on my hand for a month, so I can’t work at all. So– I’m living on unemployment checks.   Funny thing about being unemployed: I don’t want to go outside and see other people because most of them, unlike me, have jobs.

 The cop shoots the bad guy; the fireman rescues the baby; the nurse saves a life; everyone does something– but me.   So it’s   easier to stay inside the apartment with the curtains drawn, and drink beer and listen to Frank Sinatra records: “Black cats creep across my path until I’m almost mad.   I must have roused the devil’s wrath, ‘because all my luck is bad.”
 
 I’m hungry.  I needed to eat, so I walked down two flights of stairs to Market Street, made a right onto Madison Street, and then a left onto Pearl Street where in between the Alfred E.  Smith Housing projects and the C-Town Supermarket is the Happy Restaurant.   Inside, there’s a large sign with a picture of a slice of pizza; a large sign with a picture of an eggroll, and a large sign with a picture of a gyro: lamb or chicken.

 I have a broken hand– they call it a boxer’s fracture. I’m a union man – my phone hasn’t rung in weeks.   I’m a fighter, and one way or another, I’ve been hit a million times.  I was almost heavyweight champion of the world.

                                                                   End

I am a NYC construction worker and writer.  My non fiction stories have appeared in Akashic Books, Hipocampus Magazine, Foliate Oak,

Da Chuna and elsewhere.