Wherein I rip off a montage and I earn an invitation.
What followed my indoctrination into bare knuckle hobo boxing was a series of fights as I went up the circuit ladder. We rode the rails, and outside of each town, somewhere near the tracks there was a clearing where the hobos congregated at night. While some came for company, many came just to see the fights.
I won fight after fight and travelled to so many out of the way nowheres that the whole experience is one long blur of trains, punches, and victories. Imagine an Eighties montage of “You’re the Best” by Joe Esposito with me punching hobos and them crumpling to the floor. The montage and music are very important to that image. Otherwise, I look like a psychopath who likes beating up homeless people for fun. That’s not true.
It was only a little fun.
Swearing Jim acted as my manager. I think he was taking bets on me, but I couldn’t be sure. I do know that my opponent sometimes changed minutes before the match. I believe that was related to Jim’s boasts and bets – he claimed I could beat someone in a higher hobo weight class, and suddenly I was fighting a seven foot tall hobo with a scarred face. Luckily, nobody expected that Tennessee Texas Tornado had a very nasty and surprising right hook that I laid them flat with, since it wasn’t in his name. I may have been small and wiry, but I was a tricky bastard. Still am.
After a few weeks of fighting, I had received quite a bunch of renown as a fighter and Jim seemed to be rich – in hobo terms that is. He had one of the biggest hats I’d ever seen. In fact, to call it just a hat would be to understate it. Its essence was a top hat. But somehow this top hat had a bowler hat affixed at an off-kilter angle to the top. It was a serious hat. He had to use straps to keep the hat on his head, since it did not do well with even minor breezes.
I was a much dirtier man for the whole experience. I had developed my own distinctive stench by which other hobos and dogs knew me by. After weeks in their care, I began to discover that many had developed an almost preternatural sense of smell, much like blood hounds. It seems that some hobo customs are almost based on the differentiation of the smells of various other hobos. It was such a developed trait that some could even track where another had gone in the camp by simply following the stench trail.
After a particularly bruising fight with a boxer by the name of Pummelin’ Paulie Patterson, Swearing Jim had an announcement. I was still a little dizzy from Paulie. Five foot nine inches tall, three feet wide (mostly fat) and Popeye forearms covered with tattoos, Paulie was a tough customer. He couldn’t move fast, but his punches were strong. Body punches did not work on him, as I found my fists connecting with an unpleasantly wet-sounding thud on his fat. Only after I learned to dodge his punches and punch him only in the face (or a strange bandage cut on his stomach) did I win. I was still getting my bearings when Jim gave me the news.
“We’ve been invited to the Tournament of Champeens,” said Jim.
“Wow, that’s an honor,” said Kirby.
We had picked up Kirby after my second fight. Jim had known him previously, and knew his work. Kirby stayed on as sort of an assistant and my trainer. When Jim was off arranging matches, it was Kirby that would get me ready for the fight or wipe blood out of my eyes. Kirby was much older than me or Jim, his head almost bald, his gut large though the rest of him thin. The hair he did have was stark white and jetted out from the side of his head, making himself look like a strangely unpainted clown. He was a pleasant fellow, and much less random than most hobos. Some days I wondered why he lived the life.
“What’s this Tournament of Champions?” I asked.
“Champeens,” corrected Kirby.
“That’s just your accent,” I said.
“No,” said Jim, “Champeens.” He handed me a crumpled piece of paper that had all the information on the event. I’ll be damned if everything else scrawled there was spelled correctly, only “Champeens” was misspelled. As if they wanted it that way.
“It says by order of the Emperor,” I said. “I thought you guys didn’t have any organization. Like you were some kind of anarcho-hunter-gatherer society.”
Jim smirked. “That’s what we want you to think.”
“The Emperor is the king of all hobos,” said Kirby. I almost suggested that he should then be called the King, but I let Kirby continue. “While we all have our own business to deal with, at certain times of the year, we all come together for gatherings. The Emperor meets with all the Warlords, and we have a tournament.”
“You have Warlords?” I asked.
“The next gathering is in a few days,” continued Kirby. “Jim and I had agreed we’d get there late, so we could fit in a last minute fight against Postman Pete, but this changes this.”
Jim nodded. “I’ll make sure they know that fight is cancelled. The tournament is much more important.”
“I guess. Are there rewards?” I asked.
There was a pause as Kirby looked nervously at Jim. “You get to fight in front of the Emperor,” said Kirby. “And if you make it all the way, you get to fight the reigning champeen.”
“I think you’ll be ready,” said Jim as he looked at me with a strange glimmer in his eyes.
Add A Comment