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The day you realized life with Seamus O'Reily was like being in the ring 24-7 - that was the day you assured your survival.
You always gotta have an eye out, because it could come from anywhere, you explained to Ryan that night, leaning back on the roof of the apartment building, looking up at the grey industrial haze hiding the stars, the horizon lit up like billows of fire by the orange sodium glare of the airport lights on the far edge of the city and your mother not a year in her grave. You were both of you half-gone - Ryan finishing off the dregs of a whiskey bottle Matthew'd swiped from his Ma's cupboard earlier in the evening, you having deigned to slip your new training regimen enough to smoke one of the blunts Ryan liberated from Bridger Street's stash, muffling the sweet humming soreness left in your knuckles and wrists from the day's sparring, not enough to wipe out the sharp prickle of gravel against the heels of your hands on the roof.
Always keep your eye on what's going down around you – that was the first thing Coach Ahearn down at the boys' club taught you, and maybe you aren't as smart as your brother, but you're quick, and you'd got 16 years of living with Seamus O'Reily under your belt at that point, so you only had to be laid out a couple of times with a surprise right hook before you'd learned.
Some people talk about shadowboxing like it stands for something futile, a waste of time and resources chasing something you can't grab, like smoke between your fingers, but every shadow you aim for - every shadow you beat back in a tiny third-floor walkup, every one you punch through in an alley or on a corner curb - it makes you faster, stronger, better, more able to dance back from the momentum of your own swing and stay on your feet, less likely to overreach yourself and stumble.
You watch other boxers in the gym, other fighters on the street – your own brother with all his machinations – the lazy way they lean into their shots and let themselves ride the rebound back, limp and directionless, effortless, from their targets. That's the kind of rocking rhythm that'll lull you to sleep – although maybe it has its place too, like the heavy deep strokes of drills into the bag, a flurry of shots with the knowledge that Mickey Sheridan's leaning braced on the other side, taking the muted force of your punches, holding the bag steady against your blows, ready to switch off in 30-second intervals, back and forth, rocking into the weight of his strokes through the bag snugged up against your chest, down your side, a thudding vibration like the beat of a rabbiting heart, before you switch off again, and then again, the rhythm flowing back and forth between you, give and take, instinctive knowledge like your split-second break to the left on the street, knowing Ryan's breaking right behind you, at your back as you clear a path for him, or like his slow counterpoint breaths in the dark on the other side of the childhood bed you shared in a tiny room of that walkup, assurance you'd both survived another day.
You used to follow him to the bus stop when he left for school, his first year, and he'd have to chase you back, running to catch the bus himself, then, as your mama stood in the dim entrance of the apartment building, barefoot and trapped inside by the dirty slush of snow on the stoop, yelling for you to get your butt back inside, right now. He tried to tell you there was nothing interesting at school – although that was a lie, you learned the next year, because there were crayons in more than four colors, even if they were broken, and chocolate milk when you turned in your lunch token and Legos that you stuffed in your pockets one by one over the course of weeks until you'd patiently collected enough at home to build a small box – one story, one door, one window, blue with some spare yellow blocks thrown in – that you hid under your bed and only took out when your dad wasn't home, when you wanted to dream about being grown up and gone, just a tiny house out in the clear air somewhere, where you and Mama and Ryan could live.
So school was interesting, sure, but it wasn't the first or only time Ryan would lie, and you hated it anyway, like he knew you would, even if he didn't understand why, didn't figure out that it it took him away from you, so you lay alone at naptime with the counterpoint rhythm gone, trying to remember how to breathe in an empty room.
Sometimes you can't believe you didn't grow in the womb at the same time, rocked together by your mother's heartbeat.
You feel too much, Ryan tells you, because Ryan can always tell, can always read you - has always been able to, from the time you got belted for crying instead of crying because you'd been belted, back when dad first started trying to make you into a man. Ryan always could read behind the facade you built up over the years. You never were very good at hiding from the other half of you, the other side of your coin, dark to your light, quicksilver to your bedrock, and maybe that's why Ryan can always tell, even when no one else can see behind the impassive front that's such an advantage.
One scary motherfucker - you've heard the whispers behind you on the street, in the ring, at your brother's shoulder, staring down rivals and opponents and interlopers on Bridger Street turf with the unblinking gaze of a man who grew up across the table from Seamus O'Reily, who learned the hard way to take a blow without flinching, who's not afraid to take a punch. You're built for this, you were made for this; you move like it's your destiny.
City championships next year, Ryan always says. And then the nationals. And then ... the world, Cyril. Cash in on those good looks and that right hook, little brother.
Sometimes, Ryan shows up at the gym, stands outside the ring watching you spar. He thinks it's about strength - about power - but he's wrong. Throwing a punch with everything you've got behind it – that's a newbie mistake, one that'll leave you swinging wild, off-balance and open to whatever world of hurt your opponent wants to bring down on you. That's always been Ryan's problem – with Seamus, on the street, when he fights with Shannon – every single time, he's all-in, like the last round of poker, losing the big picture, the rhythm and the flow, the tightrope balance you find as you slide in under their defenses, more of a dancer than your brother ever could be, shifting just to stay upright when he's found himself against the ropes.
Maybe you aren't as smart as your brother, but you're quick, and you have years of living with Seamus O'Reily under your belt, so you only had to be laid out a couple of times before you learned: Hit first, hit fast, and don't let up. You've learned to get your opponent on the ropes upfront. You're big, and you dress even bulkier, and no one expects a lug like you to move whip-fast - they're always wary, with half an eye on Ryan, and so people are always looking the wrong way when it hits them.
When you hit them, like some force of nature.
The Fist of God - you've heard the whispers behind you on the street, as you stand in doorways and the entrances to alleys, while you lean against the edges of pool tables in back rooms and bars in strip clubs, always at Ryan's shoulder. The Fist of God, but you feel like God, Himself, when the punch lands, like a force of nature, like the energy of the earth is moving up through your body and your arm to knock your opponent flat, like a current moving through you and your target, a back and forth rhythm.
It feels righteous, and better than anything's felt since the first time you brought yourself off in the musty shower stall of that tiny apartment, shaking, cheeks burning, the feel of Tommy Britt's lip splitting under your fist behind the Quik Mart burned into your brain and the ashen copper-sour taste of stolen cigarettes and blood and bile still in your mouth before your dad started pounding on the door and demanding to be let in, goddammit, how much hot water did you think there was, you good-for-nothing little prick?
It feels righteous and it feels terrifying, and you clench your fists white-knuckled at your sides when the strippers lean into you, when the girls outside the gym and in the back rooms of bars press slips of paper into your palms, when Shannon's friends or her sister whisper together and smile sly in your direction. Girls make you nervous - they always have, so small and easily breakable, and you remember your mama, the shadow of bruises across her cheekbone, like a necklace draped over her collarbones, circled like cuffs around her wrists, and you remember her lying in a hospital bed fragile and hollowed out by the cancer.
You clench your fists white-knuckled at your sides and listen to Ryan and Shannon scream at each other as they fight, and you leave the house when they fuck, and you stand in the shower, alone at the gym, shaking, cheeks burning, with that sweet humming ache in your knuckles and an overused wrist, the memory of righteousness like a force of nature surging through your body, a rabbiting heartbeat throb vibrating deep and the copper-salt taste of blood from a bitten lip still in your mouth, never washed away by the hot water pounding down.
You feel too much, Ryan tells you, over coffee, hot and thick and sweet, and he kicks your ankle under the restaurant table as helpless embarrassment burns through you, and you roll your eyes and kick back, hard and a little bit mean, trying to shove out a clear space to breathe, because you don't say those things out loud, either of you. Ryan doesn't say he's sorry either - well, he says he's sorry a lot, but always when it's bullshit, so he never says it to you, not when he means it. He'll pick a fight, instead, push you, goad you into shoving him, like he needs it, like the only way he can get absolution for whatever he thinks he's done is at your hands. In the grey morning light, diffuse and blown-out like an overexposed photo, you can see a bruise coming up on his collarbone, half-hidden by his shirt collar, in the shape of Shannon's mouth, you can see his thumb stroke across her knuckles as they hold hands on the other side of the booth, and Ryan always could tell, always could read you when no one else could.
You spent another year with Seamus after that night on the roof, another year in the ring, 24-7, another year in that tiny third-floor walkup, before Ryan dragged you out, a bruise already coming up shadowed across your cheekbone and the taste of blood in your mouth as he slammed the door in your father's face and shook you, out on the landing, shook you until your teeth rattled, like he was still bigger than you, and Old Mrs. Lannahan banged on the wall two doors down and shouted at you both to shut the hell up.
You can't even lay low, you dumb motherfucker? he'd hissed at you, but you'd never been afraid to take a punch, not since you got belted for crying, back when your dad first started trying to make you into a man.
I want to make my brother proud of me, you'd said, and you could take whatever punch you needed to.
Ryan thinks he's a dancer, always with the fancy footwork, some kind of intricate combination to pick his way around the obstacles in his path, ducking and weaving, a desperate move when he's up against the ropes, trying to slip the jab that's coming his way.
You know you're a fighter, and you may not be as smart as your brother, but you learned the hard way to take a blow without flinching, and you only had to be laid out a couple of times before you learned that slipping the jab left you open for the followup right hook.
Jesus Christ ..., he'd said, scrubbing a hand over his face before pulling you in, scent familiar from years of hand-me-down clothes, and you stood together outside the door of a tiny third-floor apartment, chests rising and falling in a back and forth rhythm, slow counterpoint breaths an assurance you'd both survived another day and, You're coming with me, he'd said, and he'd dragged you out, not yet grown up but still gone, out into the air still shadowed by grey haze and a bright glare on the horizon, but clearer, at least, with some kind of breathing room between the shadows.