Perry ignores me.

Rube can’t bring himself to look at me.

Instead, he punches the raw meat that hangs down around us, as I take my gloves off, ashamed. There’s another fight before Rube goes on. He punches hard and waits and we know. Rube will win. He has that about him now. I don’t know where it came from — maybe that fight in the school yard. I’m not sure, but I can smell it, right up to the time when the other fight’s over.

When Perry tells him, ‘It’s time,’ Rube punches one last pig and we go to the doors. Again, we wait, and when Perry’s voice comes to us, Rube bursts through the door.

Perry yells again: ‘And now, I think you’ll see something tonight that you’ll talk about for the rest of your life! You’ll say that you saw him.’ All quiet. All quiet and Perry’s voice lowers. Serious. ‘You’ll say, “I was there. I was there that first night when Ruben Wolfe fought. I saw Fighting Ruben Wolfe’s first fight.” That’s what you’ll say …’

Fighting Ruben Wolfe.

So that’s his name.

Fighting Ruben Wolfe, and what the crowd does see is Rube walking towards the ring, in Steve’s jacket. Like everyone else so far, they can smell it. The confidence. They see it in the eyes that peer out from his hood.

His walk is not bouncy or cocky.

He throws no punches to the air.

No step, however, is out of turn.

He is straight ahead, straight out, straight and hard, and ready to fight.

‘Hope you’re better than your brother,’ someone calls.

It hurts me. Wounds me.

‘I am.’

But not as much as that. Not as much as those two words from my own brother’s lips, as he walks on, without flinching.

‘I’m ready tonight,’ he talks on, and I am aware that now, he speaks only to himself. The crowd, Perry, me — we’re all just out there somewhere, unfocused. Now it’s just Rube, the fight and the win. There is no world around it.

Typically, his opponent jumps into the ring, but that’s about it. In the first round, Rube knocks him down twice. The bell saves him. In the break, all I do is give my brother some water as he sits and stares and waits. He waits for the fight with a slight smile, like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be. He makes his legs rise and fall very slightly and very fast. He does it over, over, over again, before jumping up and going out, fists raised. Fighting.

The second round’s the last round.

Rube catches him with a great right hand.

He punches his lungs out.

Then he goes under his ribs.

Even in the neck.

Shoulder.

Arm.

Anywhere legal and uncovered.