Page 36 of Our Own Light

“Do you not like boxing?”

“Is that the sport where two men try to beat each other senseless?”

“More or less. It’s not as lawless as you’re making it seem. Well, sometimes it is, like in a few of the neighborhoods in the city, but it’s a real sport, too, with rules and everything.”

“Well, I never watched it. Or listened to it.”

“Really? Haven’t you ever had a... a pretend fist fight with someone? That would be kind of like a boxing match.”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“Not even when you were a kid? When we moved to New York, I’d see kids fighting each other once in a while, but they never looked like real fights. Just kids being kids, having fun.”

Floyd shook his head. When he was a kid, he had been busy on the farm and then eventually he’d been busy in the coal mine too.

“Nope.”

“Really?” Ollie set his tumbler by his feet and stood. He closed both hands into fists. “Let’s try one.”

“Try a boxing match?”

“Come on, put up your dukes or whatever it is boxers say.”

“Ollie, no.”

“Why not? We’ll only tap each other.” Ollie uncurled his fists. “If it’ll make you feel better, we can fight like this instead—open palms. Even though you’re, what, two or three inches taller than I am, I’d put money on me slapping better than you.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Floyd asked through a laugh. “Moonshine takes longer than this to work.”

Ollie took two steps forward and swung his arm, smacking Floyd on the shoulder, the movement surprising Floyd enough to cause him to fumble with his tumbler, sending some moonshine sloshing over the brim. With an irritated sigh, Floyd bent down to place his tumbler down on the porch, figuring he might as well put Oliver in his place. He stood and held up his hands.

“Alright, so, on the count of three, we’ll see who can smack the other first,” Ollie said. “Are you ready to cry, lunkhead?”

“You become odder every day,” Floyd said, though he still readied himself by adjusting his stance to match Ollie’s.

“One . . . two . . . three!”

It was over very quickly. Ollie took two pitiful swings, both of which Floyd blocked with ease, and then Floyd smacked Ollie clear across the face. Ollie shouted an expletive and turned away, covering his cheek. Floyd offered a sympathetic clap on the shoulder.

“Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine,” Ollie said, rubbing his face and laughing. “I kind of forced your hand.”

“Why’d you want to fight each other?”

“I’m not sure.” Ollie touched his cheek with his fingertips. “When I was in New York, I wanted to try it, but of course, I’d been a smidge too old by then. I thought this would be fun.”

Ollie seemed to have been trying to take back a little piece of childhood, one he hadn’t never been fortunate enough to experience before. Floyd felt a warm tenderness flicker to life inside of him, happy that he could provide Ollie with a bit of childhood merriment. Even if their boxing match had been kind of silly.

“Yeah, it was fun,” Floyd said, sitting back down before throwing Ollie a teasing smile. “For me.”

After a playful scoff, Ollie staggered back to his chair, too, though he was intentionally walking in a way that suggested he might need medical attention, stumbling this way and that.

“Sometimes, I think you ought to be in the pictures,” Floyd said.

Ollie collapsed onto his chair in a dramatic fashion and sighed. “What, like an actor?”

“Yeah.”