“Shit,” he says, touching the back of his glove to his nose. He pulls it away. A small drop of blood stands out on the red leather. “I think I just lost.”

My mother and I are both laughing.

“You little bastard,” he says. “You’ve got one helluva punch when yer angry.”

“That’s my little champ,” my mother says proudly.

“Now we just have to get you wrestling. Then you’ll really be a bad man, just like yer pop.”

The next day, my father watches me walk into the bar after school, eyes me with a prideful grin as I take the seat beside him. He nods approvingly.

“That’s my boy,” he says.

My mother rolls her eyes. Apparently I’ve developed a hop in my step, am beginning to walk into places with a proprietary air as though I’m the one who grants the patrons entrance each day. It’s a trait I’ve always noticed in my father. A trait I’ve always loved.

3

It’s the first warm day of the year, and outside, the snow and ice have been melting since dawn. From the window outside the principal’s office I watch pools of water gather. My hands are shaking, partly from the fight not yet twenty minutes old, partly from the anticipation of which parent will pick me up. I’m sure one will be livid, the other approving. Aside from the trouble I’m already in I fear this will pit them against one another, that I’ll have to sleep through yells from the room beside my own, perhaps broken dishes and overturned furniture. It wouldn’t be the first time.

The clock on the wall reads three. The fight happened during that rush between the day’s last class and the boarding of the buses. It started during recess, when Donny Smith called me poor because there was a large hole in the front of my sweater. He then went on to say that it made sense I had a shirt with a hole because my mother was a whore and that was all that whores deserved. Everybody in the schoolyard had heard it, and laughed, and then hyped it up for the rest of the day. Jeff was there. He was Donny’s best friend, and with that, the majority of kids took Donny’s side while the rest—a small, embarrassing bunch happy to be included at all—took mine. By the end of the day there was no doubt there’d be a fight. I was nervous as hell and feared being hurt or, even worse, being embarrassed. But I’ve learned over the years that a fear of failure is as good a motivation for success as anything else this world might offer.