Last year, he left his groceries in the trunk for two days.
He’d just gotten the call—a number-one contender fight. After alternating wins and losses, he’d strung together four in a row, evading a cut from the roster by the slimmest of margins. The old-timer, the journeyman. Not a has-been but a never-was. In spite of—no, because of the doubters and their calls to leave his gloves in the middle of the cage. No one would have thought less of him if he’d quit on his own terms. The game had passed Xavier “Scarecrow” Wallace by. Too many young bucks on the come up looking for a steppingstone to the next level. The cage had no place for old toothless lions fighting for their pride.
And then four in a row. No tomato cans, either. Championship kickboxers. Jiu-jitsu aces. Each one the next big thing. But none of them had the grind in them. All talent and hormones. Cardio made cowards of them all. Xavier dragged them into deep waters, the championship rounds where lactic acid torched muscles. Where deep breaths provided no oxygen, only the desperate need to breathe deeper. Faster. Shoulders ached. Submissions lacked squeeze. Punches lost their snap. Kicks sloppy, thrown with languid legs, hinging and pivoting at the joints from sheer momentum. Break the spirit and the body follows fast behind.
But he’d paid a cost for his time in the deep end, too. Worse than the patchwork remnants of stitches in his forehead; worse than the accumulation of crackling scar tissue above his jagged orbital bones; worse, even, than the seemingly interminable, intensifying headaches. Worse than all that was the forgetting.
Mild at first. Patches of time gone, sketches of memories swiped from a chalkboard where only the faintest outline of the words and images remained. More and more often, feeling that he’d been somewhere, done something, though never sure how, when—or if. The ravages of age, he told himself, nothing more. Some days he almost believed that.
When the contender call came, he’d been ready. The weight didn’t come off as easy as it had a decade ago, so he’d kept his diet tight. A fight meant keeping it even tighter. Temptation beckoned when the refrigerator was bare, so it was off to the grocery store for the usual sus
