“There’s my buddy.” Chick’s voice sounded farther away than it was; he sat in his wheelchair on the porch. He wore boxer shorts, and his left leg was in a full cast, his right arm too. His chest was wrapped in white tape, his throat was a wide purple bruise, and he had two or three days of dark whiskers on his smiling face.

Leo was still breathing hard from the climb. He walked up onto the porch and shook Chick’s left hand.

“Running for office, Leo?” Chick gestured towards Leo’s outfit.

“No, I just, you know, I got these yesterday.” Leo sat down on a wood stool beside him. “Allie home?”

Chick nodded. He didn’t look like himself with those casts on him. He seemed smaller out of the hospital. Even the muscles in his good arm were small, the veins less pronounced.

“I’m a mess, aren’t I?”

“No. I don’t think so.” Leo heard someone washing dishes inside. Chick took off his glasses and wiped his forehead with the back of his left arm. He kept them off and looked over the rail out at the river and Heywood below, the wooded hills of the national park beyond.

“It’s funny. In the ring I could always take a good shot, but I wasn’t one to take a good beating, comprendo?”

Leo nodded.

“A straight right to my chest here, a good hook to my head there-I could take them if they were spaced apart enough. So I was always jabbing my ass off to keep my man from setting himself for those kind of punches. You hungry? Thirsty?”

“I could use a Coke.”

Chick called out for Tess. His voice sounded reedy and not as loud as it should have. Leo wondered if she’d heard him. The screen door opened. Allie wore cut-offs and one of Chick’s white V-necked T-shirts. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail. Leo stood up.

“Look who’s here, honey.”

“Hi, Allie.”

Allie looked at Leo’s suit, then at her father. “What did you want, Dad?”

“A couple Cokes on ice? Thank you, sweetie.”

She disappeared into the house. Leo sat down and swallowed. He felt like the biggest fool on earth sitting there in that suit.

“What was I saying?”

“Boxing.”

“Yeah, the hits. They were never a big problem because I could duck and back off if I had to, but that wasn’t my style; I was a headhunter. Anyway, I had a lot of knockouts. My last fight I got the crap kicked out of me though, and that’s why it was my last fight, because I got hurt. This French kid-short and tubby too-somehow he could just hit me at will, all to the head. A straight right, another right, an uppercut, then two left hooks. I was out half an hour that time.” Chick put his glasses back on. He looked at Leo, blinked twice, then smiled and looked away. Allie stepped outside carrying a glass full of ice in the cupped palm of one hand, two bottles of Coke by the necks in the other. Chick took his glass and bottle from her. Allie handed Leo his, though she kept her face pointed at Chick. “Let me know when you want to shave.”