By Mark Workman
( Editor's note : The following is a fictional short story written by Mr. Workman.)
Main Entry: res·ur·rec·tion
Pronunciation: "re-z&-'rek-sh&n
Function: noun
the rising again to life of the human dead before the final judgment
Weary, he’d driven 2,551 miles in the modest economy car that his girlfriend had rented for him at the international airport in the desert town from which he’d departed 3 days prior. Not wanting to alert the press or anyone else to his final destination, he’d decided not to fly and just drive across country by night, sleeping briefly by day, and think.
He never stopped thinking.
Staying in roadside economy hotels each night along the way, he wore a black knit cap, a black hoodie with the top pulled down over the cap, and dark wraparound sunglasses to hide his identity each time he checked in and out of the hotels. Paranoid about being recognized by passing motorists, he’d even worn the disguise during the long cross-country drive; although he doubted anyone would really believe it was actually him driving that thing.
His face was most recognizable.
Giving his gardener $200.00 for his ratty and dirty work sneakers, he went to great lengths to hide his identity. Devoid of the expensive jewelry he normally wore, he was confident no one would recognize him. He’d even made considerable efforts not to smile so that his gold front teeth couldn’t be seen, not that he had any reasons to smile. He hadn’t shaved in days.
His mission was one of great importance to him, something no one would’ve ever expected him to do, but something he’d needed to do for a long time. He’d known that for years. Aware that things might not go his way, the last thing he wanted was more public ridicule and laughing behind his back if he failed at his task; so he preferred that no one knew what he was doing. It was safer that way, he thought.
Intent on hiding his identity from everyone, he told the desk clerks each time he’d checked into the cheap hotels that he’d lost his wallet during the journey and had no identification. Except for the jerk at the hotel outside of Indianapolis, they all checked him into his room with no ID but made him pay cash in advance; and a few of them made him put up a small phone deposit since he also had no credit card to present.
He even made a conscious effort to speak as little as possible; and he tried hard to change his voice when he had to talk, reducing it to a raspy whisper, pretending he had a sore throat, throwing in a forced cough here and there to make it look good.
His voice was as distinctive and famous as he was.
The rude desk clerk at the Motel 6 Indianapolis just off I-70 had argued with him for 10 minutes about his lack of identification but finally sold him a room when he bribed him with a hundred dollar bill. Having learned long ago that problems were easily solved with cash, as long as you had enough of it, he knew it was the quickest solution with that clown.
Indianapolis had always been a bad luck town for Iron Mike Tyson.
On the 3 rd day of driving, he arrived dead-tired at 3 o’clock in the morning in the small mountainous town in upstate New York, his final destination. He bought a room at a small tourist motel on the edge of town, asking the clerk to put him in the rear of the building away from the other guests, away from the pool and vending machines, anywhere people could gather and possibly recognize him.
Checking into this motel could’ve been difficult since he was especially well known in the area; he’d lived there for a long time years ago. But he’d bought some cheap clothing before the trip to further disguise himself; and his masquerade had worked everywhere else along the trip, so he figured he’d be okay here at his journey’s end.
The desk clerk seemed groggy when he answered the night buzzer; he’d obviously been sleeping in the back room. Immediately noticing the dark sunglasses worn after dusk and the cap and hoodie covering a large part of his face, the desk clerk probably pegged him as a drug dealer or some local guy buying a room to cheat on his wife. Having sold rooms to his type many times before, the clerk paid him no real mind and quickly checked the hugely-built dark-skinned man into his room and then went back to sleep in the area behind the front desk.
Sitting in his cheap motel room, staring out the window at the mountains, he thought of all that had happened over the past few weeks, months, years: the latest humiliating loss to a fighter he should’ve knocked out in one round had he really tried and truly been prepared for; the massive fortune he’d squandered over the years; the fact that he was now, for the most part, broke; the on-going grief with the IRS; the years he’d spent in jail; the 2 divorces; and the children to whom he was now trying to be a real father. He dwelled on it all.
Iron Mike Tyson dwelled hard.
But what he pondered most was that last loss in the ring; how he’d quit and the resultant humiliation he continued to deeply suffer. Why had he really done it? Why? He wished that he could go back 15 years and change so many things, make so many things right that he’d so very clearly made wrong time and time again.
Everything in his life had always happened for a reason; but he was having a real hard time finding the reason for all of these bad things that kept happening to him and to what end they would finally lead him. He knew that much of it was his own doing; but he had to break the bad streak.
Before leaving the desert, he’d made up his mind that he was going to fire everyone in his camp including his manager and the latest trainer-of-the-month, everyone, all the way down to his ass-kissin’ overpaid maid who never stopped telling him how great he was even when she really knew he was now crap. He was going to rid himself of every single person in his life that bled him dry and sucked the life out of him and never stopped lying to him, telling him what he wanted to hear. He was done with all that and those kinds of people.
Was there anyone on the entire planet that he could really trust? Was there anyone in the boxing world that he could even attempt to trust? Hell no , he thought to himself. He’d tried many times and had been let down every single time. Well, there was maybe one person he could trust, and he would see him soon; but the thought of that encounter made him more nervous than any championship fight he’d ever fought.
There was a whole lot of history with that person.
Sitting at his motel room window in a wobbly old chair that seemed ready to collapse at any moment, Iron Mike rolled his bottle of medication back and forth between the palms of his hands—that garbage the doctors had put him on to calm him down— and wondered if his old friend would turn him away or be glad to see him.
Would he slam the door in his face, screaming at him, "You treated me like dirt and now you want to come back? Get outta’ here!" He could see it happening and probably deserved every bit of it should it go down that way, but he hoped not.
His plan was his only chance for redemption, his only hope to turn the tide on a career that had gone oh so wrong so long ago. It was his only hope for that final glory that he so desperately needed and absolutely had to have. He couldn’t and wouldn’t go out this way. No way .
Now 9 o’clock in the morning, he’d been unable to sleep since he arrived there 6 hours earlier. Exhausted, yet very restless, he was unable to even lie down for a few minutes of rest. Continuing to stare at the old telephone on the bedside table, he tried to find the courage to pick it up and make the call he needed to make, but he just couldn’t do it.
Slinging the bottle of anti-depressants across the room, he knew that the only way he could do what he needed to do was to just show up at his door, knock on it, and just say what he had to say to his face. If not, he’d never do it.
Worrying that his trip was all a big mistake, he thought of just getting into his rental car and driving to the nearest airport and flying back to Arizona, living the rest of his life in shame, his legacy topped off by that degrading ending in Washington, DC. But he knew the agony of doing that would be far greater than anything that could happen when he went home and asked him to take him back.
Feeling dead inside, as if there was nothing left of him, nothing left of his future, nothing left to give as a human being; he had to make that phone call. He just couldn’t let it all end that way. He had to have one final chance, a real chance, not like the other ones. But it had to be done correctly this time; and he needed him to make it happen.
Without him it was pointless to even try again. He’d learned that lesson a few too many times already. If he couldn’t patch things up, then it really was all over for him; and he needed to accept that fact and move on with whatever life he had left.
The public, the fans, his family, everyone had lost faith in him. He’d become a living, breathing and walking joke. He couldn’t even look his kids in their eyes without feeling shame. He wondered how much grief they endured at school, the other kids taunting them, telling them how their daddy was a coward who quit. The mere thought of it ate him alive inside.
The chances of him coming back one more time and having anyone take it seriously were nearly impossible. Would anyone even pay to see it? He’d already told the world he was done; and his many comebacks had grown old with the boxing fans because they always ended the same way: wrong.
But he knew that the one thing he could do to make the world think he’d regained a portion of his senses, his sanity, was to go home, go back to the beginning, and reunite with Kevin Rooney, something he should’ve done years ago.
Ego’s a deadly disease.
He would go back home and unearth the raging desire that he once possessed and turn it into a roaring conflagration inside him, stoking it daily with the guidance and wisdom and truth he once enjoyed, and then use it once again to set the entire world ablaze.
Finally coming to the conclusion that he could no longer continue living his life the way he had been for years, certain he could no longer live in the old house that he’d built, his only alternative was to burn that old house to the ground, forcing him to build a new and superior house in which to live. That new house , that new life, would be his at any cost.
But that new house would have to be built in the mountains of upstate New York, his old home, far away from the strip joints and bars and bloodsuckers and other temptations that had now destroyed him. He knew this more than he knew anything else in his life, if he knew nothing else at all.
He would rise from the dead a great ironclad phoenix, towering above the ashes of self-destruction that he’d created, turning those same ruins into a new energy of pure unbridled demolition, now reborn mightier than ever before. And his final judgment would be not that of a loser but of a king. He would be a laughingstock no more. God would not deny him his true and final destiny.
His final judgment day was now here.
Reaching over and taking hold of the phone’s receiver, old and beaten much like himself, he paused, still unable to pick it up and make the call. He knew he had to just get in the rental car and go to his house, ask him to take him back, beg him to take him back if that’s what it took. But could he do that?
He was a proud man.
Deciding to not even bother changing into his real clothes, he got up and left the hotel room in the embarrassing rags he had worn across country and drove to Kevin Rooney’s house in the gray rental car.
While he drove, he thought of the strange parallels between his life and that of the great heavyweight champion Jack Johnson. He knew a lot about boxing history. When he was a kid, his legendary mentor, the late boxing trainer and manager Cus D’Amato, had made him watch every fight film ever made, and those films had taught him so much.
He thought of how Jack Johnson had become the first black heavyweight champion of the world in 1908 and how he was hated by white society for brutally taking the crown from their beloved white heavyweight champion, Jim Jeffries. Knowing that no one on the planet at that time could beat Jack Johnson, the US government began a vicious and illegal campaign to take the title from him outside the ring and get rid of him once and for all.
His only crime was marrying a white woman.
Driving through the small town, Iron Mike thought of how he’d become the youngest heavyweight champion of all time at age 20 nearly 2 decades ago; how he’d become the undisputed heavyweight champion shortly thereafter; and how it all began to go downhill not long afterwards. He’d become so gigantic so quickly; money rolling in quicker than his accountants could count it; everyone wanting a piece of him—leeches crawling all over him.
And then that night in Tokyo happened. It still chewed away at him inside.
It was way too much for a young man of his early age. Like Johnson, it was a woman that became the reason they all began to hate him and do everything they could to get rid of him. He knew what really happened in that hotel suite in Indianapolis; but that didn’t matter to anyone.
That whole trial—her lies; that scumbag prosecutor out to lynch him and make a name for himself; the whole stinking persecuting affair—was only about one thing: money, his money and how they could all take it from him and then put his violent criminal ass in prison where he belonged.
The world hated him from that moment on. Nothing else really mattered from that day forward. He was just a lying black rapist thug who hurt that poor little girl . Yeah, right. That’s the only way people could see it; it was the only way they wanted to see it; and there was nothing he could say or do to change any of that. Nothin’.
Branded for life.
Turning the corner in his rental car, he could see the house in the distance. Growing increasingly nervous, he thought of making a quick u-turn in the middle of the street and just driving to the airport; but he knew if he did that it would definitely be the final end for him. Just call it quits once and for all.
Sweat ran down the inside of his arms and he gripped the steering wheel tightly as he pulled up to the front of the old white house in which he’d lived for years as a much younger and happier man. Well, he remembered it as being happy, if that was even truly possible for him.
He thought of those early days when he dreamed of becoming the heavyweight champion of the world and what that meant to him at that time. He thought of how life was so much different and easier back then; how he didn’t look into the eyes of every person he met, wondering what their true motive was and what they really wanted from him.
Back then he was just a kid with a ton of talent and promise who listened to every single word uttered from the mouth of some old white man who knew a lot about boxing. But he loved that old man and owed him a lot, everything, for all he’d become, for better or worse. He wished that old man hadn’t died; maybe things would’ve turned out differently for him.
Had he not come to Catskill years ago, had that old man not brought him there and cared for him and about him, he might’ve ended up dead by the time he was 20 rather than become the youngest heavyweight champion of all time.
He thought of his old trainer he’d come all the way across country to see and how Kevin had taken care of him years ago; taught him so many things; how he’d changed him into that of greatness, someone other than a criminal running the streets of Brooklyn beating people down for their money.
What an ironic joke, he thought. Cus had brought him there to save a kid from a life of beating people down for their money just to turn him into a man who beat people down for the viewing pleasure of the world; and while the world watched him do it he took their money—300 million dollars of it.
It was the same only different.
Getting out of the car, his hands and knees began to shake and he felt a nervousness he’d never known before. No fight he’d ever fought had made him feel this way. He hoped that he could just make it up the steps to the front porch and bring himself to knock on the door. Maybe Kevin wouldn’t even be home.
Still gripping the car’s door handle, unable to let it go, he feared that maybe this was all a big mistake. He could just leave Kevin a note and then go back to Phoenix and wait to hear from him. Maybe that was the best thing to do, make it easier on both of them.
No . He didn’t want to be afraid anymore. He now had to find a courage and strength that he had never possessed before if he was going to take this all where it needed to go, where it had to go. He pushed the door of the rental car shut and walked away from it when he suddenly heard a car door slam shut behind him.
"You lookin’ for me?" he heard behind him.
Iron Mike turned around and saw his old trainer, Kevin Rooney, standing behind him. He tried to find the words to answer his question, but he couldn’t seem to locate them, despite having rehearsed this moment over and over in his mind countless times during the long drive across country. He nodded affirmatively, saying nothing.
Kevin walked over to him, stopping a few feet away from him, staring at him, saying nothing, thinking of all that had happened between them, quickly reliving all of it in his mind, seeing their entire past together flash before his eyes: the good, the bad, the ugly.
Iron Mike nervously stared back at him, not sure what to do or what to say. He put his hand out to Kevin, hoping he would take it, but he didn’t move a muscle.
"I’m sorry for it all," Iron Mike said.
Kevin slowly walked over to him and put his arms around him and said, "I’m glad you’re home. You been away too long."
Welling up with emotion, his eyes filling with tears, Iron Mike put his arms around him, patting him on his back. "I can’t go out this way. I just can’t." Shaking his head, finding it hard to make eye-contact with his old friend, he asked, "Will you help me?"
Looking up at him, Kevin said, "A lot of time has gone by, Mike. Harsh words have been said. Don’t know anymore if that’s a good move for us now." Removing his arms from around Iron Mike, he said, "Might not work out."
"I’ll make it work out," Iron Mike said, grabbing Kevin Rooney by both shoulders, squeezing firmly. "Please."
Staring intently into Mike’s eyes, "Don’t come back here and put me through this if you’re not really serious about it," Kevin said. "I can’t watch you do this to yourself anymore. It ain’t worth it, Mike."
"I’m dead serious," Iron Mike said. "Dead serious."
Looking away and thinking for a moment, an intense look washing over his face, Kevin said, "If for one single second I think you’re not serious; if at any time I think you’re coastin’ and not givin’ it your all, its over. I’m not gonna’ be the latest new ingredient added to this long-runnin’ fiasco, Mike." Glaring straight into Iron Mike’s eyes, Kevin asked, "You understand me?"
Nodding yes, he said, "Yeah, I understand, Kevin."
Kevin put both his hands on Iron Mike’s shoulders. "Then let’s get some breakfast and you get some rest. You look like Hell, Mike. Then we’ll get right to work. You got a long way to go before you’re right again; a lot of work. It ain’t gonna’ be easy."
"I’m sorry about the past," Iron Mike said to him.
Turning to walk into the house, "Leave the past where it belongs, Mike…in the past," Kevin Rooney said. "It’s dead and gone now."
Relieved, Iron Mike nodded, and the two of them smiled at each other and walked into the old white house, just as they had done so many times before, so many years ago.
As the front door shut behind them, Kevin Rooney asked Iron Mike, "What’s up with the funky-lookin’ clothes and that piece-a-crap car you drivin’?"
If you have any comments about this fictional short story, you can email Mark Workman at boxingmarkva@aol.com .