The Boxer

In the process of editing my unpublishable novel, Freedom Weed, I gave myself the awful assignment of completely eliminating a character. It was necessary, but due to the fact she was a character I based very much on my own experiences as a small town reporter, it was a bummer to eliminate the character. The below is a fictionalized account of an interview I did with a one legged diabetic senior citizen who got a DUI in the parking lot of a high school. 

“They shouldn’t a put me in the drunk tank. They shoulda’ put me in the hospital. I wadn’t drunk—I’m a diabetic senior citizen with one leg ‘fer Christ Sake!” the old ex-boxer screamed, shifting around in his wheelchair, spraying spittle onto Shawna Finnin’s notepad. She should have known this was going to be a pain in the ass when a shit-ass grin slimed its way onto her publisher’s face as he handed over note with the story lead: Randy Pullzman: sited with a DUI last night driving a motorized wheelchair at 3am.

            Randy was a lonely ex-boxer long out of the limelight and happy to talk to Shawna, he was desperate for new company and happy to have the attention of some pretty young thing. He tried to get her to look up from the yellow notepad, but Shawna’s long brown hair slid in front of her face and she unsuccessfully pushed it back behind her ear.

            Randy Pullzman was another typical lead generated by her publisher Brick Martinez. A while back he’d sent her off to visit a sweet old widow who’d garnered some attention making money at local festivals with homemade lotion. “Did I tell you I use horse semen?” The thin, secluded women had said in a shaky voice while sitting with Shawna sipping a cup of Earl Grey tea.

            “You know what else?” Mr. Pullzman continued, pulling Shawna’s gaze from the pictures of him as a young, fit boxer in the ring posed with two gloved fists—a body of fleshy steel. “They didn’t even give me one of those umm …one of those breathalyzer things. They didn’t do that at all. Just threw me in a room and you know what?” Randy’s swollen, purplish hands pushed down on the handles of his Medicaid wheelchair to lean his drooping potato sack of a body a little closer. “When the nurse came in,” he whispered, “I had a blood sugar level of 312.” He shifted back a bit and yelled now, “I wadn’t drunk, I was in a diabetic coma.”

            “The police report said you were in the parking lot of Colfax High School. Is that true?” Shawna asked with her head in her notepad. Randy sighed deeply.

            “You know,” Randy paused to sigh, “I don’t remember a damn thing.”

            “I’m sorry...,” Shawna looked up quickly, then back at her notes. “Then how do you know they didn’t give you a breathalyzer?” Two wet, bloodshot eyes stared back, confused. Shawna thought better than to push. “What do you remember Mr. Pullzman?”

            “Well I was here and I did have one or two drinks after dinner. And from there I woke up in a jail cell with a county nurse telling me I was in a diabetic coma.”

            “Do you have the nurse’s name?”

            “You know…I don’t.” Those old-dog eyes of his looked lost.

            “Okay,” Shawna said. If she was to tell this man’s story she’d have to get people to like him somewhat. Who’s going to finish an article about an old diabetic drunk, killing himself one carbohydrate at a time? “What do you do for living Mr. Pullzman?”

            “Randy. Call me Randy sweetie.”

            “Okay…Randy, what is your job?” He looked back, confused again. “Do you work Randy?”

            “Oh. Yah, okay,” Randy nodded, finally understanding. “No I don’t work. I’ve been on the disability for a long time.”

            “What did you do before that?”

            “How the hell am I supposed to work?” Randy shouted. He matted down some of the dark grey strands of hair onto his scalp. Shawna thought she started to smell the faint whiff of urine. “I only got one leg.”

            “All right fair enough. If you don’t mind: How did you lose your leg?”

            “Diabetes. Doctors had to take it.” For a moment Shawna thought Randy was going to continue, instead he silently sat in front of her, staring.

            “Are those pictures on the wall of you? The boxer?”

            “Yah. I used to be a fighter. Ranked eighth in the country, welterweight. I never got any real big fights though.”

            “Show her the medals,” said a voice from the kitchen. Shawna knew Randy’s caretaker was in the kitchen, but she hadn’t processed the woman washing dishes in the background as a real human being. Much like the mushrooms sprouting out of the floorboards near the door, or the empty dog bowls on the porch covered in grime, or the blankets covering the windows, or the smell of mildew hanging like a sad fog everywhere—the caretaker was just another prop in this trailer home house of horrors. “Show her the medals,” the woman repeated. Shawna was surprised to see what seemed like a young woman in the kitchen with the body of a dancer. After six months in town, Shawna thought she’d met everyone even close to her age, but when the caretaker turned, Shawna struggled not to react. The woman’s face was deeply wrinkled, hiding a past she’d more than likely wish to forget in the deep crevasses criss-crossing her entire face.

            Holding a dish at her side, the woman spoke again. “The medals Randy. Get ‘em out and show ‘em off,” the woman insisted. Her teeth were jagged little rotting rocks.

            “I will,” Randy obeyed as the woman went back to washing dishes. Using his one leg he pulled himself over to some drawers next to a sunken couch and dug out two metals—one bronze and one silver. “There you are,” he said forcing them in Shawna’s hand. “Won ‘em back to back.”

            “How old are these?” Shawna asked slowly.

            “God. I don’t know. Must be just over forty years.”

            Each medal was shiny and polished from constant handling. Randy quickly became lost in the shine of the two metals. The interview was over. It was time to say good bye.

“Bye now,” Shawna heard the caretaker crackle as she stepped over a stray cat playing with a dead mouse on the porch.