The Fallow Season of Hugo Hunter (4 page)

7

I showed up at Hugo’s at ten a.m. with a cup of coffee and a sausage-and-egg bagel, all the better to wrangle an invitation inside if he balked. I never really knew with him.

Outside, among people in town, Hugo had a thirst for attention
I’d
never seen from other people with notoriety, who tended to shy away from it or even greet it with hostility. Long after Hugo had surely met everyone who wanted to meet him, and certainly after his greatest wave of fame, he yearned to be recognized, to be praised, to be approached. I used to think it was a manifestation of the way Aurelia and Hugo’s mother, Helene—when she was still alive—had fawned over him, and the absence of a known father. Later, I discounted that. It’s not a role that Frank necessarily wanted, but he became the de facto daddy the day Hugo was put in his charge. Hugo had a funny way of making you family, and your own desires weren’t much of a determinant. My standing on his doorstep with a food offering proved that.
I’d
long since concluded that Hugo believed he had only one contribution, one thing he could do that no one else could match, and no amount of attention could slake his desire for recognition.

At home, however, he turned inward. We saw it that day we came off the plane from Barcelona, the way he receded into the haven Aurelia maintained for him. After the four dozen fights that followed, home always pulled him back in, safe from a world that wanted a piece of him, Aurelia’s love at the ready to patch his wounds and fill his cup again. He might have been OK if Aurelia could have lived forever, but that’s not happening, not for any of us. I looked over at the spot where Hugo had found his grandmother four years earlier, slumped forward into the soil that held her perennials. Like Aurelia, they were gone.

“Hey, Mark.” The muffled voice came from the other side of the door.

“Hugo. You up?”

“Never went down for good. Been upstairs. Dark up there.”

I stepped back and looked up at his bedroom window. A sun-bleached blanket blotted out the light.

“Can I come in?”

“Maybe some other time. I’m a mess.”

I held the bag up to the peephole. “I brought breakfast.”

A few pregnant seconds passed before the dead bolt withdrew and the door fell open. I let myself in and followed Hugo into the living room.

I hadn’t been in the place since the potluck on the day we put Aurelia into the ground. Save for a robust layer of dust, nothing much had changed.

Hugo lowered himself into a recliner. His robe, open to the navel, sprang a flabby leak, and he looked back at me through sunglasses. Squeaky’s half-assed stitching job had come partly undone, and a trail of dried blood slipped off Hugo’s brow and made switchbacks down his temple.

I stepped over and handed him the coffee and the sandwich, and Hugo motioned for me to take the adjacent couch.

“Thanks for this,” he said.

“Not a problem. Wanted to see how you were feeling.”

He chased his first bite with a swig of Colombian. “Been better. I think that kid had silver bars in his glove.” He cupped his jaw in his right hand and slid it back and forth, Tin Man–style.

I sat forward and ground my palms together. I hadn’t given much thought to how
I’d
open things with Hugo, and I found that I was stuck. I decided to let him eat.

“I dreamed last night,” he said at last.

“Most people do.”

“Yeah, but this was different. It was like I saw things as they actually were. It wasn’t all bits and pieces of random stuff that doesn’t make sense when you wake up. When I had my problem, I used to dream about talking frogs and flying cakes and stuff like that—just way out there kind of stuff. It wasn’t like that, either. I recognized this.”

“You want to tell me about it?”

Hugo folded the foil around the uneaten half of his sandwich and set it aside. Off came the sunglasses. He greeted the scant light in the room with a scowl, and I took grim inventory of the rotting-meat array of purples and greens around his pummeled eye.

“It was a long time ago,” he said. “I ever tell you about the first match I fought?”

He hadn’t, but Frank had talked about it one night after lights-out in Barcelona. He didn’t linger over details—except in the context of a fight plan, Frank Feeney wasn’t a fine print kind of man—but I got the gist of it as he whispered into the space between his comfortable bed and my sleeping bag on the hotel room floor. About the last person he expected to bring him there to Barcefreakinglona was the little black-haired boy Hugo’s grandma had dragged into the gym six years earlier.

“No,” I said. “Tell me.”

Hugo nestled back into the chair and closed his eyes. “It was against Trevor,” he said.

I hadn’t heard this before. I sat there, a little dumbstruck by the idea that after all this time there was something more to learn about Hugo.

“I think Frank had told him to go easy on me. I was scared—so, so scared. Frank didn’t even work his own kid’s corner. He stayed with me, made sure the headgear was on me good and tight, and told me to use the punches h
e’d
shown me. I knew a jab and a right cross. That’s it. My left hook, it still looked like something yo
u’d
build with one of those toy cranes.

“The thing is, telling Trevor to take it easy was about the worst thing he could have done, because that wasn’t Trevor’s way. He came across the ring and hit me directly in the eye, and I started crying. I just dropped my hands and bawled, and Frank was in the ring lickety-split and hugged me and told me I didn’t have to fight.”

Hugo dropped his head, and his shoulders heaved. I looked at my hands.

“Grammy, she was so worried that night that something was going to happen to me, and I was so ashamed of what
I’d
done—or what I hadn’t done. Sh
e’d
told me that I was his boy now, that what Frank Feeney said was the law as far as I was concerned, and I was afraid that
I’d
let him down and that he wouldn’t let me fight anymore. On the drive home, Frank’s talking to me, he’s telling me that I’ll be measured as a man by whether I get in that ring the next time and fight. I’m in the backseat, I’ve got this bologna sandwich next to me that I can’t bring myself to eat, it’s gone all soggy, and I’m trying to listen to him, and Trevor is mocking me and laughing at me because he’s given me a black eye.” Hugo pointed a finger at the same eye, mangled this time by Cody Schronert, and I wondered what he must have thought of Squeaky Feeney’s proximity to both of those indignities.

“It was snowing that night,” he said. “Frank pulled up in the slush next to the house and he let me out. He says to me, ‘Next time, you’ll get back in the ring, Hugo. You’ll get back in there, and you’ll fight, and nobody will care about tonight. You hear me?’ And I’m all, ‘Yes, sir,’ because Grammy told me to be sure to call him sir all the time.

“They were just about to leave, and I tapped on Trevor’s window. He rolls it down, and I point at my eye and say, ‘It doesn’t hurt.’ I did it to impress Frank, not to agitate Trevor. But you know what? I think he’s hated me ever since. Which is cool. If I was him,
I’d
probably hate me, too.”

At last, I looked up at him.

“So that was your dream?”

Hugo smiled. “Mostly. I’ve been thinking about it all morning. It woke me up about five, and I couldn’t get back to sleep. It must mean something, right?”

“You mean beyond the fact that it all actually happened that way?”

Hugo motored on through my answer. “I think it’s about loyalty. You know, I was scared of Frank from the beginning, scared and respectful. But that night, I knew—I knew he cared about me. And from then on, I cared about him. That’s how it worked. He was for me, I was for him.”

I nodded. “You’ve been lucky, Hugo.”

Hugo pushed himself out of the recliner and pigeon-toed into the kitchen to toss the rest of his sandwich and the paper cup. I held my spot. When he came back in, he hung his hands atop the doorjamb.

“I’ve been reading Grammy’s old ladies’ magazines when I’m on the shitter,” he said. “You know what self-awareness is, Mark?”

“I’m aware of it.”

Hugo smiled at the slight wordplay. “I’ve been working on it, trying to understand it, because I took the little quiz in the magazine, and it said I’m not very self-aware. You want to know what I’ve decided?”

I chuckled. “Sure.” I was still trying to sort out the hilarity of Hugo Hunter reading
Cosmopolitan
with his drawers around his feet.

“I didn’t ask for any of this to happen. I didn’t. I was good at it, and they kept putting better and better people in front of me, and it just happened. Every time you put my name in the paper, it either has words before it, or it has a comma after it and then some phrase. That phrase is the definition of me, at least according to your article.” He reached for an end table, fetched the morning’s sports section, and read aloud. “ ‘Billings boxing star Hugo Hunte
r . . .
the former Olympia
n . . .
’ Today, according to you, that’s who I am.”

I looked again at the floor. Swear to God,
I’d
never thought of things this way before, and I picked up what he was saying with such clarity that guilt and shame crowded in on me.

Hugo’s voice grew faint. “I don’t want to be that anymore. I just want to be Hugo. How do I do that, Mark?”

8

No matter what the kid chose to do with his life, he was never going to be just Hugo. When he was born, in 1975, the five most popular boys’ names were Michael, Jason, Christopher, James, and David—a whole passel of biblical hosannas right there. The neighborhood where he ran in subsequent years was thick with Jeffreys and Kevins and Richards and Jeremys, and on the South Side of Billings a fair number of Juans and Joses and Estebans, too. You couldn’t have turned up another Hugo in Yellowstone County. Maybe not even in all of Montana.

I’d
have liked to ask his mother why she didn’t think twice about hanging such a mouthful of a name on her son, but I never knew Helene. I do know, however, that Hugo didn’t see it as an albatross. He told me as much the first time I met him, in the spring of 1991 when he brought home a national Golden Gloves title and forced us—I’m speaking here of the
Herald-Gleaner
—to acknowledge him.

We sat on the ring apron at Feeney’s gym and talked. Tried to, more like it. Most of Hugo’s answers were monotone and as briefly worded as he could manage. Back then, we had little inkling of the media darling he would become. He couldn’t tell me how he beat opponents, just that he did it. He had little to say about school or girls or growing up. He was close to being of age for a driver’s license, a milestone to which he was oblivious.

But when I asked about his name, he prattled on like an old man about the weather.

“You know anything about poetry?” he asked me.

“There once was a man from Great Falls—”

“Real poetry.”

“It’s not really my thing, no.”

“My mom was a poet. She named me after her favorite poet of all time, a guy named Richard Hugo.”

“Wait,” I said. “I know that name. Montana guy, right? Wrote about small-town bars and stuff.”

“Washington guy,” Hugo said. “But, yeah, he taught at the University of Montana. My mom, she was one of his student aides.”

“No kidding?” I might have feigned wonder then, just to keep the kid talking to me. That I knew anything of Richard Hugo could only be attributed to the fact that I lived in Montana and read a newspaper once in a while. Years later, though, Hugo Hunter would give me a book of the original Hugo’s poems on a flight to London, and
I’d
break into tears right there in business class at the beauty of the gesture and the words on the page.

I think that’s something we—me, Frank, Squeaky—lost sight of in the later years, when Hugo was less this enthralling kid and more a slouching-toward-middle-age man on a dubious streak of fuckups. He had a remarkable blend of attributes—the shy bookworm with the tactical mind and a willingness, even an eagerness, to put a man on the ground and keep him there. Helene and certainly Aurelia gave him the sensitivity, and Frank gave him the gravitas.

After the interview, I hung back to chat with Frank. Hugo shook my hand and called me “Mr. Westerly,” a nicety I short-circuited on the spot, pointing out that I was only thirteen years older than he was.

“So wha
t’d
you think of the kid?” Frank asked.

“What’s not to like?”

“His patience, or lack of it. Kid presses too much, too hard sometimes.”

“That’s your department, coach.”

Frank wasn’t a laugher. About the most yo
u’d
get from him was a little double-clutch chuckle. I felt honored to elicit it.

“You know, Mark, you should hang around here more often.”

“You need someone to mop up the spit?” No chuckle. Damn my overreach.

“I’m serious. Hugo’s going to be a big story.”

“How big?” I thought of Gene Trimear and his blind spot to sports that weren’t played with a scoreboard or some sort of flung projectile.

Frank grinned like h
e’d
eaten a flock of canaries. “Big like this: Next June, we’re going to Phoenix for the boxing trials. Hugo’s beaten every other lightweight on the list. That means we’re going from there to Barcelona.”

“You sound certain.”

Frank nodded, his face mugged by a smile. “I am. He’s going to be a star, Westerly. Huge.”

9

Hugo called me Friday morning to ask if I could take him to Billings Clinic at nine thirty.

“You’re lucky I don’t have a life,” I told him.

“I was counting on it,” he said.

Smart-ass.

We drove along Broadway, Hugo staring peaceably at the unfolding road and me stealing glances at him as we went. The stitched-up eyebrow looked better, moderately.

“Where’s your car?” I asked him.

“In somebody else’s driveway.”

“Huh?”

“Sold it.”

“Who you seeing at the clinic?”

“You know. Frank told you.”

“I’m confused,” I said. “I thought you said you didn’t want to do this anymore.”

“Look, man,” Hugo said. “You can just drop me off at the corner, OK?”

“No, I’ll take you.”

“Enough with the questions.”

“OK, OK.”

I turned into the tangle of lots around the hospital and clinic and found a parking spot. “You want me to wait here?” I asked.

Hugo sat still, hands squeezing his knees.

“Hugo?”

Softly now, he said, “You can come in.” And then: “Hey, Mark?”

“Yeah?”

“This isn’t going to hurt, is it?”

I sat in the waiting room for the balance of the morning and beyond—long enough to skim every back issue of
Sports Illustrated
, and even most of an
Us Weekly
, which let me know at last what a Kardashian is, a bit of knowledge
I’d
just as soon give back.

I’d
spotted the woman at the reception desk on our way in. It took a lot to ring my bell—for a long time after Marlene, I couldn’t really bring myself to contemplate being with a woman, and even after I grew tired of my own touch and tossed off my vow of celibacy, I tended to keep some distant boundaries. I told Trimear once during a smoke break—the only time I could stand to be around the haughty prick—that my ideal woman lived four blocks away and had something better to do six days out of seven. He laughed and told me not to worry, that my balls would drop someday.

I never really had a type when it came to women. Marlene turned out to be everything
I’d
never choose, exacting on things that didn’t require precision, a talker far beyond the necessities of conversation, demanding of grace while stingy with it when others transgressed. That last part may be unfair. I was a chronic transgressor, forgetting social engagements—or worse, remembering and just not wanting to go—and far more absorbed in my own world than in hers. I know it must have been lonely for her to live with the likes of me, even before the end came.
I’d
been living with myself since she left. I knew.

My point is, we fell in love before we recognized that we weren’t right for each other and never would be. By then, my pioneer urge to outlast my troubles had kicked in, and we were really doomed.

There was nothing about the woman at the desk that demanded my attention. She was pretty enough, a little plump, looked eight or ten years younger than I was, give or take. Nothing about her was remarkable, except for the fact that I just couldn’t take my eyes off her, couldn’t stop thinking about her gentle, genial way with Hugo when he checked in. So I stepped out of my usual character.

Two hours into a wait that ended up being three, after enough surreptitious glances to ensure she didn’t have a ring on her finger, I ambled up to the desk during a lull in patients. “If I have a complaint about the magazines, do I talk to you?” I asked.

Her smile was like melting butter. Smooth and warm. Honest to God,
I’d
have handed her my wallet if sh
e’d
asked.

“Sure,” she said. “I can’t do anything about them, but I’m happy to hear you out.”

I held up the
Sports Illustrated
I’d
been reading. “It’s just that you have two kinds of magazines here, and they’re like polar opposites. This one”—I shook the magazine to make sure she saw it—“is all testosterone and beer ads. The other ones are all estrogen and feminine hygiene products. What about people who aren’t manly men or girly girls?”

During my spiel, which I made up on the fly, she twinkled. I’m serious. She was like a gem, and I was smitten in a way that demanded I follow my faux outrage as far as it would take me.

“You mean, what about magazines for someone like you?” she said.

“No, I’m a manly man.”

“Then what’s your complaint?”

“I’m arguing on behalf of the people. Not necessarily for me.”

“There’s nobody here but you.”

“Theoretically, I mean.”

“I see.”

“You’re not buying this, are you?” I said.

“Not especially, no.”

I lobbed the magazine into the nearest chair. “OK, then, I’m going to have to hope that you at least think I’m cute, or sufficiently interesting to make cute not a make-or-break proposition.” I puffed out my hollow chest.

“
I’d
say you’re safe.”

Those four words—OK, six if you count the contractions—brought my pecker into the proceedings. First time in the better part of a year without pharmaceuticals. Who’s the lucky boy?

“What would you say if I asked you what’s going on with my friend back there?” I said.

“
I’d
say that he’ll be up here soon enough and can tell you himself, if he wants to.”

“Privacy stuff, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“Would a safer question be what are you doing tomorrow night?” I tried to put on my best apple-polisher smile, which elicited a grin in return.

“Maybe.”

“How do we turn that into a yes?”

She pulled a brochure from the reception desk and wrote her name—Lainie—and phone number. She handed it to me.

“You call me this evening and ask me properly,” she said. “Now please sit down. Your friend will be out shortly.”

I jaunted back to my chair, impressed with myself. Maybe bravado suited me after all.

The exam hurt Hugo, just not where you could see it.

He walked past me without a look. Lainie had to chase him down with a slip of paper containing details of his next appointment. He took it, stared at the words as if they were written in a lost language, then continued on. I jogged to catch up to him.

“Wha
t’d
he say?” I asked.

Hugo shuffled onward, not looking at me.

“Come on, man. It can’t be that bad.”

“Can’t fight,” he said.

“In two weeks? Ever? What?”

“Can’t fight.”

“Hugo, what did the man say?”

He offered no acknowledgment of me. We walked a line through the foyer to the street, Hugo in a dazed march while I tagged after him, hectoring, like a needy child.

In the parking lot, Hugo stopped. He turned a circle, staring into the distance.

“Where’s your car?”

I pointed down the row we stood in. “Right there.”

“I have to talk to Frank.”

“Sure.”

“
I’d
walk, but I’m tired. I need to talk to him.”

“Yeah, sure, Hugo. Of course.”

“If it’s any trouble—”

“Hugo, get in the car.”

I pointed out the direction again, and as we covered the thirty or so yards between us and my old Malibu, I set a hand on Hugo’s shoulder. I don’t know when I let him in, when I relaxed the pose as objective journalist long enough to let myself love him, but whenever it was, it couldn’t be undone, even if
I’d
wanted that. Some days I felt like an older brother. Others, like this one, when Hugo’s vulnerabilities seemed to overwhelm him, my role was almost that of a father. I tried to stay on the safe side of almost. It was a dangerous piece of hubris, the idea that I could light the way for Hugo.

Because, really, who the hell was I?