“Come see the sensational, supernatural, sidewinding swipes of Sentinel City’s fastest son: The Duke!”

There used to be posters. Slung up to telephone poles, they announced the matches that in their day were the best way to spend a night. In this city under run down hotels, shitty bars, in abandoned warehouses, anywhere we could set up some rope. It was the fire in the streets, illegal yet on any given night there were cops, crooked or not, in attendance. It was intoxicating, it took men and made them lions for as long as they could hold on, it was bare knuckle boxing.

I grew up on the south side in a row of apartments that were a testament to how shitty a building can get while still standing. I think the city would have fire bombed the fucking place if they even gave it a thought. Part of learning to tie my shoes was kicking the cockroaches from their midnight campground. Shaking them out like a trove of brittle leaves collected on a fall day.

My father was a hard worker despite his immediate shortcomings. Trudging out before dawn with his tool belt slung over his shoulder and heavy boots creaking against the floorboards.

It wasn’t so much an obstacle that resulted in our life there but a lack of inertia. Why pay more if there is no where else to go. I think my mother also lived in the area but for as much as my father talked about her she could’ve been dead. The only time he spoke to me was when he was seated at the kitchen table. The bare bulb extended overhead as his communion with a bottle of whiskey turned into a lengthy confession. He alluded to a score of potential half brothers and sisters of mine in the neighbourhood. I always thought about them, kids on the playground, the legions on the bus and sidewalk, then later, each opponent in the ring. With each blow it could have been my own blood I was spilling on the ground, my own flesh I pounding.

The only other thing my father imparted to me with was a fucking mess. I came home late and the kitchen light was still lit, dangling like it was always about to fall. There was blood everywhere. My father’s frame lay on the floor. On the ground beside him was a kitchen chair overturned and a twelve gauge shotgun. My old man’s vacant neck made me aware of the bits of red and miscellaneous colours splayed across the kitchen cabinets: what was left of his head.

Any empty bottle of Maker’s Mark and a manilla envelope streaked with little bits of gore were all that sat on the table. The envelope was blank. I ripped it open and inside was one thousand dollars cash and a letter:

Son,

I’ve left you all I could. The rent is paid till the end of the month but I can imagine you’ll want to find a new place. First of all, I am not sorry. You are a man now, as much as you’ll ever be, and I am sure you can take care of yourself.

You are probably wondering the “why?” Son in this life things happen and as pertinent a question as “why,” is we rarely get the luxury of an answer. All you can do is accept what has happened and realize there is an ebb and flow to life that has no concern for your needs or preferences. You must act on your own behalf to ensure your survival.

Son, there is something you should know about your family. Generations ago or so my father told me our ancestors were cruel and hard-hearted men. We attacked and burned a caravan of gypsies alive. There was one old woman who stumbled out of the inferno. With her dying breath she cursed our blood. Always would the men die a violent death. A lonely violent death.

There will be a day where and it might make no sense why, you will be standing on one end of a shotgun. When that trigger is pulled you will die. There is your luxury. There is your reason.

I folded the letter and put it back in the envelope Then I grabbed a duffel bag took what I needed from my room and left. I was sixteen.

For the last fifteen years I have scraped through the darker corners of Sentinel City. A path like a drunken taxi driver weaves to and fro, across familiar avenues.

I picked up jobs here and there mostly through the connections in the gangs I ran with. I lived in shittier apartments and kept to myself if there wasn’t any action on the streets.

Boxing. The memory of when I started crumpled and left in the gutter. It might of been my whole life. As if I hadn’t existed before I stepped into the ring. Pounding into another man’s flesh, each blow tolling the end like the final church bells at a funeral. My life washed away, if not for my father’s letter stuck in the top drawer of my nightstand. It left a subtle and ominous presence that I could not dispatch nor could I completely ignore.

The nickname, the Duke. My career in boxing got to the point where I put enough bodies on the ground that someone remarked, “Man, you’d even put John Wayne on his toes.” Or maybe I just liked Stagecoach. Either way the name stuck. The way I figured it was only John Wayne who could have ever given me trouble. Only problem is that the fucker died.

Then there was one night in a cramped hole under an old magic store downtown this wop from the north side laid me out. I’d been knocked down before but never out. What was even more humbling was a strong-arm to my back and a boot in the ribs. Someone thought I wasn’t supposed to lose.

After being tossed into the back of what I thought was a Buick I wondered if my father had been a fighter. Then the trunk popped open. Two barrels stared me in the face and I thought, “This is it? It can’t be this fucking simple.” A voice commanded:

“Get out of the car.” I staggered out and stared at the shadowed figure dumbly. “What? You think we’re gonna shoot you? You dumb fuck, a corpse don’t pay out. Just don’t fucking lose to no more wops.”

A slam of car doors and the pale glow of tail lights proceeded past a sign that read: “Sentinel City limits” then, well then, I started to walk.