August High is what the nurse wrote down on my birth certificate.
Stop me if I’ve already told you the story, but people are usually hesitant to ask, so I often blurt out the details just to let everyone relax.
The story isn’t exactly the kind written by Walt Disney. In short, the woman who gave birth to me was a sick person, addicted to drugs, alcohol and who knew what else. She arrived at the emergency room, so far along my head could have scratched the pavement.
When it was over, and my gigantic ten-plus pound body was barely fit into one of those warming beds, some smart-ass nurse put down High as the woman’s last name. And for my name, she put down August, since it was the first day of that month. Naturally, I became August High.
So, go ahead and get your Are you high? jokes out of the way. Believe me, I’ve heard them all.
My last name was the last thing on my mind inside the ring at Pop’s gym.
Pops is an ancient black man who adopted me from an orphanage by demanding, and I quote, “the biggest, ugliest thing you got.”
I grew up here, in this gym and spent a lot of time here, in the middle of the ring.
Directly across from me was an up-and-coming heavyweight. He was referred to as Decker, and I didn’t know if that was his name, or a cute nickname someone came up with. As in, he decks people with one punch.
It didn’t matter, all I knew was that Pops asked me to fill in for the guy’s sparring partner, who apparently fell off a garbage truck and cracked his skull on the edge of a dumpster.
Pops had given me strict instructions though: I was not to punch back. He’d asked me to fill in because I was the only guy big enough in the gym to withstand Decker’s punches, even with the pads and headgear. Decker was six foot three inches and two hundred sixty pounds. I was six foot six and nearly three hundred. And since I grew up here, under Pop’s tutelage, I knew how to fight. But here, right now, my job was not to fight. It was to be a heavy punching bag on two feet.
Decker grunted and threw a huge right at me. He telegraphed it and I could see it all the way from Toledo so I easily slipped it. Frustrated, he threw a left hook that was way too low. I took it, though, as I’m very used to pain. I stepped back and glanced over at Pops. He shook his head.
The big boxer came back at me, throwing a flurry of punches. Jabs, uppercuts, left hooks, right hooks, he even tried to headbutt me. The problem was, he had a ton of power and no finesse. Which was okay. Technique could be taught, if Decker was humble enough for instruction, which I was doubting judging by the attitude.
He threw two more haymakers which I easily avoided and then he hit me with another low blow.
“Must not have any balls,” he whispered to me as we clinched after the cheap shot. I looked over at Pops. He shook his head.
We separated and as we did, Decker tried to throw a hard elbow that would have broken my jaw, nose or cheekbone. It did hit me, but I’d seen it barely in time to move my head back. It ended up being a glancing blow off my cheekbone.
When I looked over at Pops, he nodded.
Decker saw it, too, because he stepped back and waved me on. “Come get it, bitch,” he growled.
What a nice invitation, I thought, starting forward. Decker didn’t retreat, he walked right at me, which was a very bad idea. A straight right stopped him in his tracks. He responded by trying a left hook, which would have been a serious blow had it landed.
It didn’t.
Telegraphing my own big right roundhouse punch, he thought I was going for the now-exposed left side of his face, in particular his jaw. To compensate, he brought his left hand up and dodged low to his right.
Which just happened to be right where my shovel was gaining speed. There’s the textbook left, and then there’s the uppercut. A shovel hook is a combination of both and when thrown with good speed, it generates massive power. Instead of hitting the opponent higher on the head, say around the temple, the shovel hook goes right for the point of the jaw known as the button.
It was one of my favorite punches because of its power. And this one was no exception. Because his head was moving that way, the effect was increased and the punch landed like an anvil dropped from the Empire State Building.
Now, in a real boxing match, a broken jaw was a definite possibility. In a street fight, it was a guarantee. But with the safety gear, I knew Decker wouldn’t be seriously injured.
He was, however, knocked out cold.
The cheap shot aficionado dropped to the canvas like a pile of horseshit ejected from a Clydesdale’s asshole.
His trainer leapt up and Pop’s expression didn’t change.
I climbed down from the ring and shrugged off my gear.
Pops looked like he was going to scold me, but he was looking over my shoulder. There, standing in the doorway of a boxing gym that smelled of big men sweating, blood and old leather, was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen.
She walked directly over to where Pops and I were gawking.
The apparition had on a cream-colored pantsuit, gold-and-white-checked Gucci shoes, and a watch worth more than the purse in Decker’s next prizefight.
She sized me up and down and made a simple statement.
“You’re August High.”