The Sixth Street Sandman, Chapter 4

If you're a new reader, be sure to start with the previous chapters further down the page.

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Allie replayed the voice mail for the seventh time. It was perplexing, it was frightening, it was exhilarating.

“Miss Caldwell, this is Olin Pond from John Parretta's office. Mr. Parretta requests an interview Thursday morning at precisely 10:40 A.M.” That was the entire message.

“What are you listening to?” Clara, Allie's roommate in Columbus, asked as she entered the room. Allie played the message an eighth time for her roomie's benefit.

“I told you!” Clara said. “You're going to be a feature writer for that paper! It's your first step to the big time!” Clara gave Allie a hug, and Allie returned a smile.

“I hope so,” she said, “but I'm so nervous! Everything has to be perfect. I can't blow this chance.” Clara and Allie had been friends since their second year of college, as Allie was pursuing her double major in Psychology and Journalism and Clara hers in Secondary Education; Clara now taught eighth grade civics and Allie was waitressing in the evenings and spending her morning hours writing cover letters and sending out resumes. She'd been to one interview so far, for a tiny paper in West Virginia, and they hadn't been interested. The Record and Courier was the second paper to call back, of the nine resumes she had sent so far. She received the message on Tuesday; the interview was to be Thursday, and the caller had certainly left no room for negotiation. She was due at the restaurant at 3:00; she would have to be a few hours late, as Broxton was an hour and a half away from Columbus.

“Honey, you are perfect. You'll knock them out,” Clara said, beaming. “You want to go out and celebrate now, or wait until it's official?”

“Oh, I have to be at work in an hour,” said Allie.

“It'll be nice to stop pulling these night shifts, won't it?” Clara said as she poured herself some apple juice.

“And to not have the grease smell all through my hair when I get home,” Allie agreed, grinning.

“Then we'll celebrate Friday,” Clara said, and continued over Allie as she started to object. “That's not floating an idea! You're coming.”

“There'll be more interviews than just this, Clara,” Allie told her. “Three, probably, before they make a final decision.”

“Then we'll celebrate again after the second and again after the third, 'cause the job's as good as yours.” Clara put down a glass of juice in front of Allie, who took a sip from it and set it down, and so they frittered away Allie's last free 20 minutes before she had to change into her work uniform and head off.

Allie took no chances with traffic, and turned off her car in the Record and Courier parking lot—the paper wasn't big enough to require a garage; almost nothing was in this town—at 10:20 in the morning, despite being held up by construction on the interstate. She debated within herself and decided there was no harm in showing up a little bit early, and finally took a deep breath, pulled herself together, took her binder in her right hand, and walked into the building. The receptionist directed her to take the elevator to the fourth floor, which housed the newsroom, where the Record and Courier's staff of about 35 full time writers, editors, artists and such worked their trade, the place where Allie always felt right at home, from the first time she walked into one. There, the receptionist explained in a tone of voice that made clear she would explain it only once, Allie should get off the elevator and walk straight forward the length of the newsroom until she reached the secretary's desk, and announce her arrival there.

She thanked the receptionist and got on the elevator, where she got her breathing under control and smoothed over her brand new interview suit, which she was proud of; she and Clara had spent an entire afternoon picking it out. It was dark blue—Allie always thought dark blue was her best color—with a skirt that stopped just above the knees and a matching professional coat. “Most of these jobs, it'll be men interviewing you,” Clara noted. “No harm in giving them a little bit to look at while you turn the charm on them.”

“I don't intend to sleep my way to a successful career,” Allie commented, and they laughed, but nonetheless she appreciated the wisdom of Clara's observation, and they selected her clothing with all the precision of a bomb squad diffusing a particularly tricky explosive. Now it was show time. This was a job she really wanted, even more than she generally wanted a job: Writing features for the Life section of the paper, the section full of snippets of daily life in a town and a nation, the section where she'd feel the most free, and in a perfect-sized small city. The perfect place to start, even though getting a feature writing job right off the bat was very difficult for any aspiring journalist. She intended to do exactly that.

Heads turned as Allie strode through the newsroom, and especially male heads. Allie was a new presence in what is generally an off-limits area to the general public, but more than that were two notable features about her: First, she was 23 years old and stunningly attractive, a Miss America beauty queen come to living flesh, with playful eyes, perfectly shaped lips that formed a warm, ready smile, and full, long black hair. And second—this caught even the women's attention—it was plain to see that Allie had only one hand. Where her left hand should have been was nothing but a stump crisscrossed with scars.

The secretary, Olin Pond, was a man of about thirty years, and you could tell he was thickly built even though, clad in a perfectly tailored black suit and green tie, he was the best-dressed person in the office. His features were unremarkable, except for his powerful steely eyes that caused just about everyone they met to involuntarily shudder. His face was hard, chiseled, and he had the look of a man who rarely smiled. He looked up just as Allie stopped in front of his desk and met her squarely in the eyes.

“Allison Caldwell,” he said rather than asked.

“Call me Allie, please,” Allie responded with a genuine, happy smile. “I’ve come for an interview with Mr. Parrella.”

“Your scheduled time is 10:40,” said the secretary, not introducing himself. “Mr. Parrella is a very punctual man. Wait there” – with his eyes he indicated a chair to Allie’s right – “and he will see you precisely at 10:40.” He returned his eyes to his computer’s screen, ending the conversation.

Allie lingered for just a moment as though she was going to say something more, but decided against it and went to sit down. Despite this secretary’s apparent best efforts to make her feel uncomfortable, she was still confident that this job would be hers, her deference with Clara aside. Oddly, it seemed as though she was only more confident than ever after this conversation. She did notice one thing: He never so much as glanced at her missing hand. Virtually everyone who ever met her at least stole a glance at it once during the conversation. His eyes had remained locked onto hers with that harsh gaze throughout.

Parrella was, of course, a different kind of editor, quite a lot different from those she had worked with previously on her internships and summer jobs. She sat down in his office and he immediately went point-by-point through her resume, from memory, and drilled her for details. She had graduated in four years with a double major and a 4.0 average, had received rave reviews from two internships, and asserted in her best clear, professional tone that she was well-qualified for a position that normally required some years' experience.

“No, you're not,” Parrella told her. He was clearly unimpressed by her beauty, her hinting skirt and neckline, or her resume. “I'm glad the world is full of young people that think they can do it all and who the hell are these experienced people getting in their way, and your internship record is impressive indeed, but you wouldn't have the first idea what you're doing, thrown out there as a feature writer, and it would take me months to repair the damage. I have three candidates at least as qualified as yourself and much more experienced.” He stopped there and waited for her to respond, which she did after a pause of not five seconds.

“You don't have any candidates that will bring the kind of vibrancy to your Life section that I will, Mr. Parrella.” She leaned forward just an inch and flashed her best smile. “I'm talented and hungry, and I'm full of energy that I'm going to throw into something, your paper or something else, and make it much better than I found it.”

“Vibrancy!” Parrella recalled years later with a laugh. “What a word. I was hooked. I didn't show it, though.” He told Allie she wasn't going to hack it in the newspaper business with a narcissistic attitude like that, that she had better learn to pay her dues and grovel to her elders if she wanted to get anywhere, and told her to consider his advice in her future job search. “She never flinched,” Parrella wondered. “She smiled and shook my hand, thanked Olin for his trouble and left. Never faltered for a single step. Total confidence, or able to fake total confidence, which is basically the same thing.”

Allie held herself together, somehow, for the long, lonely drive home, and then threw off her interview suit, collapsed onto her bed and cried until it was time to get up and go to work. And as soon as she was gone from the newsroom, Parrella told Pond to cancel the other three scheduled interviews and call Miss Caldwell back on Monday morning for a second interview.

Allie's telephone rang at 9:15 Monday morning, after she and Clara had spent more or less the entire weekend analyzing every syllable, every blink and every hand motion of her entire experience in the newsroom and concluded that John Parrella was a pompous windbag that wouldn't know a good feature writer if one bit him on the nose. That was what Clara concluded, anyway; Allie couldn't quite talk herself into it. She had researched the Record and Courier's history, and Parrella's record with the paper was spectacular.

Allie had just stepped out of the shower when the phone rang and was still hurriedly wrapping a towel around her long hair as she grabbed it and answered. “Hello?” she said in her most pleasant voice. She didn't recognize the caller's number, so assumed it must be one of the companies she'd applied to.”

“Allie, Olin Pond. Mr. Parrella wants to meet you here in his office at one o'clock today for a second interview. Can you make it?” Allie's breath caught, and for a moment she couldn't answer; she put her hand over the mouthpiece and took a deep breath. Part of her wanted to tell Olin Pond to inform Mr. Parrella where he could stick his job; part of her wanted to squeal in delight; part of her wanted to develop a monster headache from the stress. What to do? Pond was still on the phone. Answer him!

“Yes,” she finally blurted, and then looked down and realized she still had her hand over the phone. Calm down, girl! She removed it and gathered herself up, summoning her best voice. “Yes. I'll be there.” Pond hung up without another word.

Clara walked upstairs to find Allie in a tizzy, gathering together her pre-selected second interview outfit, a sharp black pantsuit she had just purchased a few months before. When Allie explained that the Record and Courier had called her back, Clara was incredulous. “Why are you going?” she exclaimed. “After the way he talked to you? Why don't you tell them to go to hell?”

“Because I want that job,” Allie said. “Clara, after the way he talked to me, he called me back. What's that mean?”

Clara grinned. “It must mean he changed his mind.”

“Maybe. Either way, I'm finding out.”

This time she arrived at fifteen minutes to one and waited in her car for a few minutes, so as to arrive at Pond's desk at precisely 12:55. “Hi, Olin,” she said cheerfully. He looked up at her, gave a very slight nod and picked up his phone. “Mr. Parrella, Miss Caldwell has arrived.” He hung up and paid Allie no further attention; Parrella appeared from his office a moment later and invited her in.

Parrella explained to Allie that she was asking for a job virtually everyone agreed was painfully boring, interviewing and writing features about cooking, shopping, and local activities that no one besides the people participating in them really cared about. The “Life” section was mainly a few local group updates and a few syndicated columns. Allie responded that she didn’t care what other people thought about the section, she thought it was wonderful, that she would be his most faithful employee in writing whatever she was asked, and that she would make very effective use of whatever liberty she would be given to write as she chose.

Parrella told her it would be a while before she had any such liberty. Allie said she didn’t mind that. He asked her what her real career goal was, and without hesitating she said it was nothing more than to have her own column, which she would use to bring individual stories of interest to the newspapers, and most of all she hoped, years down the road, to replace “Dear Abby” with “Dear Allie.”

“Well,” Parrella told her, “We'll find out how serious you are about it, anyway.” He took her back out into the newsroom, to Pond's desk. “Olin, Miss Caldwell will be starting tomorrow as our new Life section feature writer. Do you have time to show her around the office?” Pond nodded. “Give her Mark Richards' old cubicle.

"Allie, you already know my secretary, Olin Pond?” Parrella asked her.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. You'll have an assignment first thing in the morning.” They hadn't talked at all about salary, benefits or any such thing, but she didn't care.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Allie said to Pond with her brightest smile, and she extended her hand toward him for a shake.

Pond, who had just stood, blinked at the outstretched hand, but reached out and took it, once again meeting her squarely in the eye. “The pleasure is mine,” he said in a clear voice. He didn’t smile. He had a grip of iron; he shook her hand once – down, up, back to center – and withdrew his hand. “Permit me first to show you to your office,” he said as Parrella left.

Chapter 3 of The Sixth Street Sandman

From the day he could afford it, Gutshall ran a half-page ad for the Sixth Street Gym every other Sunday, and, once he started his monthly Fight Nights in the spring of 2010, he also advertised that event in a smaller space all through the week leading up to them. Through these dealings he struck up a warm acquaintance with John Parrella, the somewhat eccentric editor-in-chief of the Record and Courier, which was actually a fairly large paper, circulating not just within Broxton but to a sizable population surrounding, and employing some one hundred people.

Parrella was forty-nine years old and had been Editor-in-Chief for eight years at the time Gutshall purchased the Sixth Street Gym in 2008. He came up from nothing, oldest son of a school custodian; his mother died of skin cancer when he was nine. He had a natural sharpness and a nose for business, though, and he stayed mostly clean through high school. He worked his way through six years of college and then clawed his way to the top of the ladder at his hometown Record & Courier with remarkable efficiency, winning more than one power struggle along the way. Taking the oversight of the paper in 2000, Parrella answered to no one; there was, true, a Board of Directors as with any corporation, but Parrella called the shots, and the paper's readership and profitability grew sharply under his leadership.

One of Parrella's many quirky decisions was made shortly after Gutshall took over the gym, when he hired Olin Pond as his executive secretary. To say that no one in Broxton had ever heard of Olin Pond was an understatement. Pond simply materialized out of the ether, and one Monday morning in 2008 he was sitting at the large desk that separated the Editor's office from the rest of the newsroom, surrounded by his work and his personal effects, looking and acting as though he was born there. Parrella's previous executive secretary, a fiftysomething woman named Denise, had been a remarkably talented obstructionist. It took Parrella two years to put together enough of a case to justifiably fire Denise, which was necessary because she had instantaneously—by nine-thirty Monday morning—followed through on her promise to file a discrimination suit that Parrella would spend the next two years defending himself against, both in the courtroom and in public. In the end he won out in both arenas, as every time Denise opened her mouth she proved the claim of every human being that had ever met her that she was just this side of a lunatic.

On the heels of that lawsuit, it came as even more of a surprise that Parrella hired a male into a position that was filled almost universally by females. John Parrella was no discriminator; as his attorney, Carl Williams, pointed out often during Denise's assault, he had seven major departments—World News, National News, Local News, Sports, Life, Layout and Editing, and Advertising—and all of them except the Sports department were headed by women, a ratio nearly unheard-of in newspaper circles. Parrella, who wrote editorials on a near-weekly basis, wrote in his typically ultra-blunt prose on April 9^th, 2009:

This didn't happen because I set out to hire women, understand. If all of the best people available to head my departments had been men, I assure you that I would today be employing six men out of my seven department heads and would not hesitate for a second to hire them. As it happened, the best candidates were women, and I hired them. I could not possibly care less what race, gender, color, religion, social status, or lifestyle type you may be. If a one-eyed sewer rat showed up at my office and proved itself a better writer than anyone else I was employing, you can bet that today's front-page story would include “By Carl the One-Eyed Sewer Rat” in the byline.

Parrella didn't run his office in any recognizably common style, and as it happened, what he called his executive secretary would in many other companies be called an office manager. Denise had been responsible for most everything that happened in the office. Parrella preferred to steer the direction of the newspaper, insisted on seeing every page and reading every word, every day, before the paper went to publication, and used whatever extra time a day offered him to maintain his connections around the city and the newspaper industry. As such, he did not want to be bothered with the happenings in his office, and delegated to his secretary almost everything. If he hired somebody, from a new feature writer all the way down to a janitor, Denise went through the résumés and pared them down before he ever saw them, and sometimes even conducted interviews. If a writer had a problem, Denise was the person they had to go to. Parrella was never, or almost never, personally rude or even condescending toward his employees; he simply didn't have the time to run his office, and so he permitted his secretary to rule with an iron fist if she so chose.

That was why Denise had to go, and why Parrella finally fired her one spectacular Friday afternoon, when she could be heard on the next floor down screaming and ranting. When Parrella first came on, he retained her from the previous administration, and it took some years before she developed into someone he felt he couldn't trust.

He actually didn't fire her until he already had her replacement lined up. He mentioned to his friend Trent Gutshall that he was having real problems with his secretary and planned to fire her soon, and Gutshall told him he had another friend from out of town that was an experienced secretary looking for work. Parrella got a number and made a call, and a week later he met Olin Pond at a local Chinese restaurant, not wanting Denise to have any idea what he was planning.

It was, Parrella recalled, an active interview. Pond shook his hand but never smiled, but then, neither did Parrella. “I explained to him what I expected of my secretary,” the editor recalled. “He sat and listened until I was done, and then said 'You can call the position a mailroom clerk if it makes you happy, but you're looking for an office manager.' I said, yeah, so what are your qualifications? He went down the list—it seemed like he knew every computer program ever conceived by man—and then went and told me that frankly, if I wanted the secretary or manager or whatever to stay out of the writers' way, stay behind the curtain and make sure everything got done on time, he was my man, but if I wanted a micromanager to harass them on my behalf, he could recommend eight or ten people he didn't like that would be great for that job. It sounded like sarcasm, but there wasn't a touch of irony on his face. That was Olin Pond.

“I told him, you're qualified, but I don't really want to hire you, and here's why. Denise is going to raise a ruckus—she's already starting, actually—and you're going to take crap every day because a secretary's supposed to be a woman. I can probably find a woman just as qualified as you are and save myself the headache. He said, 'fine, hire somebody inferior for all I care. If you don't want to hire the best candidate because you're worried about getting panned for hiring a male, I don't want to work for you, anyhow.' Looked me dead in the eyes and told me exactly what he thought. It was the most honest interview I ever had. Before or since, I've never interviewed anybody that didn't care in the slightest about impressing me. I told him he struck he as a jackass; he praised my correct appraisal. I thanked him for his time, not really in a sincere way, and left.

“Funny thing, though. I fired Denise the following week, spent the week interviewing fifteen applicants, and then decided Olin was the guy I needed. I knew he wouldn't be popular around the office, but I knew I could trust him. He was the most direct, honest man I ever talked to.”

Chapter 2 of The Sixth Street Sandman

This is a more serious story/book project. Chapter 1 I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with, so I'll start you off with Chapter 2, which is an appropriate beginning.

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Broxton, Ohio, was a sprawling, half-alive, half-dead city of about 30,000, 27,760 of which were born there and 23,000 of which would die there; it was in this regard just like a hundred other small cities in the Rust Belt. Situated five miles off the interstate about two hours from Pittsburgh and about two hours from Columbus, the Wal-Marts and McDonald's of the world comprised Broxton's major industry.

There was one particular small business that made Broxton different from the rest of the dusty towns of the northeast, and it was called the Sixth Street Gym. Located in the southwest corner of downtown, right on – get this – 6^th Street, the Gym was, to all normal appearances, nothing special. It was sufficiently spacious, clean, modern, and had most of the amenities you expect of a gym, cable TV and all that. Gyms these days tend to serve the same purpose as singles bars, only without the alcohol and its often-unfortunate effects on one's personal standards. The Sixth Street Gym was really not very notable in this regard, though, as there was a large and trendy Summit Athletic Club just outside of town that served that purpose. The Summit, like most modern “athletic clubs,” were heavy on the aerobic classes and yoga classes and were heavily female on the membership rolls; the Sixth Street Gym was heavy on the standard strength-training equipment and had a male majority in its membership. People come and go all the time in the trendy clubs, but gyms like Sixth Street thrive on their regulars, the guys that are there four, five days a week at predictable hours, and so it had taken on a culture all its own. There was something of a tough-guy, no-nonsense feel to it. It was the place the people who consciously avoided the trendy appearance went to work out.

The Gym had been around for fifteen years, since 1987 to be exact, but when the Summit opened to much fanfare in 2002, its membership took a serious hit, and it fell afterwards into a slow decline cycle. Membership stabilized within a few years to the point where it could pay the owner's bills, but couldn't do much else.

Trent Gutshall bought the Gym in 2008. Though the Gym was a favorite of locals, Gutshall was no local, having moved from northern Pennsylvania for the express purpose of purchasing and taking management of the gym. He was but twenty-three years of age when he purchased the Gym for $650,000, but he had a vision for it, and he spared no effort in molding it into his mind's image. He laid out to replace the equipment, he made it a point to make the town luminaries familiar with him, and he advertised aggressively, particularly in the town newspaper, the Record & Courier.

And he introduced Fight Night. For years the Sixth Street Gym hosted boxing training, off and on, as a very small side business. Gutshall made it the centerpiece of his business plan, and traveled frequently to the surrounding cities to advertise Sixth Street boxing and bring in interested young guys. It didn't have much impact at first, but over the next three or four years, guys began drifting to him, showing up from Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Columbus, and training at his gym. Turnover was high, as many of these guys were bums, scoundrels, and losers; not a few simply disappeared, never to be seen again, probably incarcerated or dead. But a few of them stuck around, and then a few more of them stuck around, and before long the Sixth Street Gym had gained for itself a reputation as a boxing Mecca that spread a ways outside of Broxton's city limits.

As his boxing business grew, Gutshall hired a few trainers, mostly old guys who used to be fighters, or amateur trainers, in dusty days long gone and had been bouncing around for longer than Gutshall had been alive. It's a funny thing about boxing, though: Sometimes the very wisest old gurus are the guys who have been bouncing from town to town and state to state for twenty-five years and don't have two dimes in their pockets to buy a roll of Pez with. I don't mean to suggest that Gutshall was rolling in money; most of the fighters that came to him couldn't afford much in the way of club dues, so Gutshall was making enough to pay the mortgage on a little house three blocks from the gym, and that was about it. He didn't have anywhere close to the resources to attract big-time boxing experts, and wasn't sure he wanted them even if he could afford them, based on his occasional encounters with boxing bigwigs. So like the fighters themselves, old trainers came and went, and over time he found himself employing a handful of good ones, or at least sensible ones.

But Gutshall didn't get into this business to get rich quick. Heaven knows that there were a hundred better ways to lay down a six-figure investment and get a fast return on your money than buying a vaguely dilapidated, shrinking gym in downtown Nowhere, Ohio. Gutshall was there because, having spent the better part of a year traveling about the northeast and studying all the possibilities, this seemed to him the best place to plant the seed that he intended to nurture into a small empire. He went to Broxton to build a premier boxing gym. Oh, there would never be really all that money in it. If he did really well, he figured, he might reach the high five figures a year in personal income, fifteen or twenty years down the line. Certainly enough, for him.

Trent Gutshall would later recall that he couldn't exactly identify when, or even how, he became interested in boxing, or when his mild interest developed into serious interest. He was not much of a fighter himself. He'd fought a few basically casual matches in the local gym in his own hometown, three rounds mostly, twice five, and won a couple, lost a couple, and after getting severely knocked out in the second round against the only good fighter he faced, and waking up in the hospital, he decided to hang up his gloves and keep whatever remained of his mind.

But he stayed seriously interested in boxing. He never went to college; after two years of working odd jobs in high school, he had showed up at enough local fights to get to know the people who ran them, and secured a prestigious post as a trainer at Bad Billy's Boxing outside of Pittsburgh. In this case, “trainer” meant “guy that squirted water into the fighter's mouth and rubbed him down” primarily, and he only worked one fight a month, two if the schedule was really packed, and he was paid $30 per fight, but Gutshall didn't mind any of that. He loved just being around the ring. He was quiet and ponderous by nature, rarely opening his mouth until he was certain of what exactly he wanted to say and how and when exactly he wanted to say it. He did the “trainer” thing for a year, and the guys he worked with at Bad Billy's, the real trainers, started to notice that on the irregular occasions when Gutshall did say something, he had unusually smart things to say, subtle observations that would often lead to real improvements in the fighters he was working with. So Bad Billy called Gutshall, who was then 21 years old, and asked him if he wanted to come down and work with the fighters in the club a couple days a week. The pay was lousy, but Gutshall had a knack for picking up odd jobs, so he began making the two-hour drive three days a week, leaving home at seven in the morning and often not returning until eleven at night.

If you simply walked in the door and started watching Gutshall, you would have a hard time finding evidence that he was doing anything. He would just stand, or just as often sit, nearby and watch a particular fighter work for awhile. He especially liked to hang around while a fighter was sparring. Of course here and there he carried water or towels or spit buckets around, but he kept that work to a minimum so he could spend his time with the fighters. Bad Billy paid him by the day—$50 a day for eight hours' work—but Gutshall most often gave Bad Billy ten or twelve hours, usually as long as it took for the last fighter to call it a night.

Perhaps if I was a better writer, I could give you a clear picture of what Bad Billy—yes, he was a real person—was like, but I'm not coming up with anything more descriptive than this: Bad Billy Jensen was a jackass. He wasn't personally much of a boxing guy; he was a businessman who also had partial ownership stakes in a car dealership and a contracting company. Oh, he fancied himself a boxing natural, like Gutshall, but the difference between them was that Billy didn't have a clue.

Bad Billy's Boxing made only very modest profits, but Billy liked owning it because it made him just that little bit more of a prominent citizen in the community, and because he liked boxing. He didn't like it anything like how Gutshall liked it—Gutshall was drawn to the science, even the artistry, of it all, the science of survival, as he called it in his own mind. Bad Billy, on the other hand, liked it for the same reason many casual fans pay to watch fights. He liked watching grown men attack and try to injure each other. Oh, he'd call it the sweet science and talk big about how scientific the sport was and what incredible athletes boxers were—it made him sound smart for being in the business—but the guys who really understand boxing, almost to a man, share their wisdom in relatively rare and relatively short observations here and there. Like Trent Gutshall.

Bad Billy was still in the boxing business because of Hurricane Bert Halama. Hurricane Bert had been a pro welterweight back during the late sixties and early seventies, and his calling card was that it was so rare for a Hurricane Halama fight to reach a decision that it was often said that judges weren't needed when he fought. Cane, as everyone called him around the gym, was now nearing seventy and still every bit the pepperpot. He took the guys Bad Billy brought in, a surprising number of whom were preppy types who were there because their parents paid dues in advance and they thought they were bad stuff, and either made them into something resembling boxers or drove them back home to their plasma TVs with his relentless pressure.

Despite the nickname that belied his own style, Cane didn't force everyone to fight the way he did. “These boys' teeth would be flying in all different directions if they tried that against a real fighter,” Cane laughed when asked about it. He taught them aggressive fighting—Cane couldn't stand a fighter just darting around with his hands in front of his face for eight rounds; “What're you in the ring for if you don't wanna fight?”—but he ragged on them incessantly to keep their hands up, to keep their feet under them, to always protect themselves. Every couple weeks Cane would let a few of the fighters actually fight each other for three or five rounds, but for the few good ones—and Cane trained some good ones—it was hard to find good competition for them.

Bad Billy would wander across the floor now and then and yell at some random fighters to get mad, to fight like they mean it, to stop being a girl, etc. Probably it gave him a rush to insult guys much younger and stronger than himself. He would frequently come across Trent Gutshall sitting in a chair, watching a fighter work a bag with his feet tied together by an eighteen-inch length of shoelace—one of Cane's favorite old balance-teaching tricks—and start yelling at Gutshall to get busy and earn his paycheck. Bad Billy was never around past five, and so he didn't know Gutshall was usually around until eight or nine in the evening, because Cane never told him; and Gutshall didn't know that Cane talked Bad Billy out of firing him twice a week on average, because Cane never told him that, either. But Cane knew Gutshall had something to offer, so he talked Bill Jensen into hiring him and then made sure he stayed there.

Trent Gutshall was a quiet man by nature, but every man has his breaking point, and in 2007 he reached it with Bad Billy Jensen. Jensen stormed into the gym at about 2:30 on a Thursday afternoon, already worked into a froth (allegedly over having discovered his wife had been running around with one of his car dealership's managers) and happened upon Gutshall sitting quietly in a chair, eyes off in space, not apparently paying attention to anything in particular. He immediately planted himself about eight inches from Gutshall's chair and screamed at him to get off his keister and do some work for once in his life. Gutshall just blinked and looked up at him the way you'd look at a man who just threatened to kill his poodle if you didn't do exactly what he said.

“Did you (expletive) hear me!?” Jensen demanded after Gutshall had remained silent and continued staring at him for five long seconds. Their faces were two feet apart at most.

“A deaf man in North Pittsburgh could have heard you,” Gutshall deadpanned.

The gym very suddenly fell silent.

Jensen stood very still for a second—one second—and then, before anyone could even recognize what was happening, violently shoved Gutshall, one hand on his chest and one in his face, backwards. The chair, and Gutshall's weight, fell to the floor with a reverberating thud.

“Get the (expletive) out of my gym right now, you (profanity), and don't you EVER show your face here again!”

Gutshall made no response, lying quietly on the floor, still, in fact, holding the half-sitting position in which he'd fallen, his bent knees up in the air. That would have been the end of it, except that Jensen's rage was out of control; and before leaving, he kicked at Gutshall's side, hard.

Gutshall would forever be a legend in his own right around that gym for what happened next. He grabbed Jensen's foot as it made contact with his side and violently twisted it forward. Jensen voiced a cut-off scream—pain or rage, who could tell?—as he fell with tremendous force, landing hard on his left shoulder on the stone floor. His collarbone broke with a sharp crack! that every man in the gym heard. Jensen screamed again. Bill Jensen did not know that Trent Gutshall had been taking martial arts lessons for a few years by then, and had shown himself quite competent at the study.

That was the last time Trent Gutshall ever saw Bad Billy Jensen's face. Without another word, he got up and calmly walked out of the gym.

And that was Trent Gutshall: Quiet, reserved, and willing to take a lot of crap before he began to grow annoyed, but not a man you wanted to push across the line. In his business dealings he reflected this personality just as well as in his personal conduct. He was conservative but not too conservative, unafraid to purchase new equipment or hire better employees when he felt reasonably certain he would be improving the Sixth Street Gym in the long run. Though he was anything but a gregarious media personality, Gutshall made it a point to install himself as a fixture in the community, not because he cared for the attention, but because it was good for business. He appeared at every community function, sponsored the prize-winning float in the Broxton Thanksgiving Parade, and even wrote editorials with some regularity for the Broxton Record and Courier, the local newspaper, sometimes concerning his business, but just as often writing about some event that was only notable within Broxton's boundaries.

The Life and Times of Alan Emery, Chapter 1

This is a baseball story, so if that's not your kind of thing... sorry. I don't know whether I'll ultimately run with this, but it's a first-person narrative of a kid pitcher.

I was 16 years old in the early spring of 2002, early March, still over a month from my 17^th birthday, when the loudmouthed kid who seemed a little too smart even for the honors classes showed up to try out for the school baseball team. Baseball wasn't any kind of a big deal in Elmwood, Maryland; our high school boasted about 400 students, and athletics in general wasn't the essence of life the way it is in western Pennsylvania or the South or Texas. The football team was the most important by far, of course; baseball was pretty minor, only important when the team happened to go deep into the state playoffs, which happened about once every twenty years.

All but about four of the guys on the baseball team were also football players; much of the football team switched over to baseball (and track, and to some extent soccer) once football season was over. Football ended in early December, and the baseball tryout took place on March 3; the season began March 31. For intents and purposes the coaches had already set the roster, from supplementing the returning members of last year's team with various underclassmen football players they'd already talked to. Every year a handful, five for six maybe, of dreamers showed up for the tryout, and every year they were rejected by the coaches and ridiculed and harassed in that particular way high school jocks are so good at.

I couldn't stand the jocks, which made it all the stranger that I was bothering myself with trying out for the baseball team. What was more, I had never been suspected by anybody in school of being even the poorest imitator of an athlete; I was six foot two and about 195, true, and over the past year I'd developed my muscles pretty well, but I wasn't especially fast or coordinated and held my own, but no more, playing basketball or ultimate frisbee in gym class. In the deep end of a pool, I could tread water long enough to survive, tops, two or three minutes.

“Baseball team?” my friend Bill Goldstein, who would go on to be valedictorian of the class, exclaimed when I announced my intent at lunch one day, amid general laughter from the rest of the table. “Yeah, you can throw, but why would you want to hang out with jocks three hours a day?”

“Good point,” I said. “But ten bucks says I'm the best pitcher in the school, right now. I don't know. I guess I just want to find out.”

“Like... you'll get dumber, every day, just being in the same room with those guys,” said Matt Long with a snicker. He was a dead ringer for Cosmo Kramer, hair and face and all, only with slightly darker skin. “Aren't these the same guys that swirlied you in the locker room last year? I'm pretty sure Redman's on the baseball team.”

“That'll stop when I'm throwing shutouts,” I said, waving off his point (which was true; that had happened.) “To these guys, athletics is all that matters. If I'm better than them, they won't do a thing.”

“Come on, Emery,” said Matt. “You're not better than them. You're just going to make things worse.” I had a long history of not getting along with some of the more insufferable jocks, like Dave Redman, a junior (like myself) who figured to be the staff ace this year.

“We'll see. You got to remember, Long, as hard as I can throw, I might get paid a million bucks a year to throw baseballs, if I don't blow my arm to pieces first. Might as well try it.” It didn't do much good. The general consensus of my friends was somewhere between incredulity and ridicule. What else would friends be for?

The jocks' reaction to seeing me show up for the tryout ranged from smug ridicule to downright jackassish ridicule. Officially, nobody that wasn't on the baseball team last year was yet on the team this year, and all had to try out; of the 25 spots on the roster, 14 belonged to returning players (ten seniors and four juniors), leaving 11 still up for grabs. Realistically, all 11 were pretty much accounted for by J.V. players, sophomores that played on the J.V. team last year as freshmen. I hadn't played competitive baseball since my last year of Little League, when, despite being the third-oldest kid on the team my last year, I was also the second-smallest, and played right field and hit eighth. I'd never even tried out for the middle school team. I was in the honors classes; I was one of the eggheads, and ran with the band geek crowd (even though I wasn't in the band). The jocks thought I was the world's worst joke.

16 kids showed up for the tryouts: the 11 that essentially already knew they were on the team, and four other guys from the J.V. team that weren't going to make the cut. Plus myself. Even the coaches snickered and made comments between themselves that I couldn't quite make out.

They started out by having us all run, from home plate to the center field fence and back. Of the 16 of us, I was the sixth one to finish, which was better than I expected to do at running; it was never especially my strong suit. Three of the J.V. guys lagged somewhat behind the rest. The coach didn't tell them to go home, but everyone involved knew that would be the end of them.

Then we all went out and lined up on the right side of second base, and one by one the manager sent us out to shortstop and hit sharp grounders, five for each of us. I didn't embarrass myself, but I wasn't really any good at that. Then we shagged flies in the outfield, and I did embarrass myself there; I lost one of the three flies in the sun, and it fell about four feet behind me. Dave Piedman yelled at me to get back to English class before I got towel-whipped to death. I ignored him. It must have seemed to them that I was steaming and trying to keep my semi-famous temper in check, but really I was just annoyed at the jokes and waiting.

Hitting was next. They had a three of the upperclassmen pitchers take turns pitching to us. I stepped in against Dave Redman and struck out three straight times. Redman was supposed to be taking it easily, just mixing a few fastballs and curves, but he was clearly bearing down on me, pitching at full live-game intensity just to embarrass me. He did a good job. I did a fine job, I thought, of recognizing balls from strikes, but of the seven or eight times I swung, I doubt I got within six inches of the ball once. Most all of the real players were laughing openly at me and making wisecracks now.

“Go home, Emery,” said the manager after Redman had finished striking me out the third time. “You ain't going to make it, son.”

“Not at hitting, sir, I agree,” I said, stepping away from the plate and dropping the bat. “I'm a pitcher. You ought to at least try me there.”

“Go home,” he said, and then turned his head away from me. “McMarlon! Step up!” Marc McMarlon, sophomore, would be the starting second baseman, it was already assumed.

“Oh, c'mon, coach!” yelled Ken Baier. Ken was the superstar of the soccer team and the baseball team, a center fielder that could fly and hit, a sometime pitcher that was there to throw to the guys trying out, a senior, and the quintessence of the prototypical jock. “Let him pitch! I'll step in for him!”

“Yeah, let him pitch,” said Redman. “He hasn't sucked enough yet. Let him suck some more.” He made an obscene gesture, causing general laughter. I was officially the head clown of the circus now.

Even the coach couldn't help but be amused. “Okay, Baier, we got a few minutes. Get out of there, McMarlon. Come on, son, get your glove and show me you're a pitcher.”

Nobody bothered to catch; I'd just have to throw against the backstop. Redman never had any intention of swinging at my first pitch, but it blew past him, hit the center post of the backstop, and ricocheted back and hit him in the hip.

The laughter and voices instantly stopped. Now everyone was staring.

Redman swung at my second pitch, and I think it hit the backstop before his bat passed through the strike zone. He was hopelessly behind it. The third pitch he timed correctly, but still missed it by eight inches; not only was it thrown very hard, but it moved.

I threw about 25 pitches, only those first three of them to Redman or anybody else. When I was done, the coach told me to go home, and wouldn't discuss the matter any further. But I couldn't help but notice that nobody was laughing now.