"I'm not telling you this so you feel sorry for him," Pearl said. "He would hate that more than anything. I'm telling you so you understand what you walked away from this week. " She stood up. "Whatever you decide, it's your decision, your fight, your career, your life. " She picked up her bag, but I want you to know what was on that back mat, and I want you to know what it cost him to offer it. She left.
Dawson sat at the table for a long time. EMTT materialized at the other side of the table after a few minutes with two cups of coffee, which he sat down without comment and then went away again. Dawson drank the coffee without tasting it and looked at the window and thought about a man who had taught Marines to survive things that should not be survivable and who was currently fighting something that could not be punched or outmaneuvered and who had decided in the middle of that to spend his Tuesday and Thursday and Saturday mornings on a back mat with a 28-year-old welterweight who had pointed at him across a gym. He thought about the clip on Gunnar Cross's feed. He thought about what he had told his manager.
I'll think about it. He had thought about it. He drove home. He sat in his apartment. He called his manager back.
About what you said yesterday, he started. Good. His manager said, "I've already reached out to a couple of coaches who I'm not changing anything. " Dawson said, "Silence. Gunner Cross wants me to change something. That's why he posted the clip.
He wants me to react. He wants me to make a decision based on what looks good instead of what is good. " He paused. I'm not going to do that. His manager was quiet for a moment. This is a big fight, Dawson.
I know what kind of fight it is. Another pause. All right, your call. He hung up. He got up and drove back to Desert Iron.
It was early evening. The afternoon session was in progress. The gym was full. He walked through to the back corner. Vance was on the bench, water bottle in hand.
He looked up when Dawson approached. Dawson said, "I'm sorry about this week. " Vance looked at him. I let something get in my head that shouldn't have gotten in my head. It's out now, he paused. If the offer still stands, I'd like to continue.
Vance did not answer immediately. He took a drink from his bottle. He looked at Dawson the way he had looked at him on the mat. The same quality of looking patient and without agenda. Offer doesn't stand, Vance said.
Dawson blinked. You walked, Vance said. Not unkindly, not harshly. I don't teach people who walk. That's not judgment.
That's just how I've always done it. If a man walks in the middle of learning, the learning is finished. Dawson stood there. I understand, he said. That's fair.
He started to turn. I said the offer doesn't stand, Vance said. I didn't say anything else. Dawson turned back. Vance was looking at his water bottle.
Something in the set of his jaw suggested that the sentence was not yet complete, though he was taking his time getting to the rest of it. He took another drink. He set the bottle down. Come back Thursday. And he said, 5:00 in the morning before the gym opens.
EMTT will leave the door unlocked. He paused. And don't be late. He picked up his cane. He stood up.
He walked toward the exit without looking back. Tuesday, he did not sleep well. Wednesday, he slept worse. He had, in the 48 hours after returning to Desert Iron and being told the offer was gone, gone through several distinct phases of feeling about the situation. The first phase was relief, which surprised him.
He had expected to feel shame or defensiveness. But the first thing he had felt was relief the way you feel when you have been trying to maintain a position that was costing you more than you realized and you are finally released from the maintenance of it. He had walked away because he was scared of how something looked. He knew that now. The knowledge was uncomfortable, but it was also clean.
The way a difficult truth is always cleaner than a comfortable lie. The second phase was anger. Not advance at himself. The specific anger of a man who has identified his own weakness in a situation that did not require weakness and who cannot go back and fix the identification because the identification happened after the fact. He had been afraid of a clip online.
He had been afraid of his manager's tone on the phone. He had let those fears run a decision that should have had nothing to do with him. The third phase was something harder to name. It had to do with Pearl at the table and what she had told him about the blood work and the diagnosis and the treatment schedule and the bad weeks that were harder than Vance let on. He had spent a day and a half trying to figure out what to do with that information.
He did not want to feel sorry for Vance. Pearl had been explicit about that and she had been right about it and he agreed with her that Vance would hate it. But he also could not unknow what he now knew. Could not un understand the specific weight of what had been offered to him by a man dealing with what that man was dealing with on the three mornings a week that could have been spent on any number of other things. He had settled eventually into a kind of resolve, not dramatic, not performed, the quiet resolve that comes after you have looked at yourself clearly and made a decision about what you are going to do about what you saw.
Thursday morning 4:45 he was in the parking lot of Desert Iron in the dark. The door was unlocked as Vance had said. The gym was dark except for the industrial lights above the back mat which someone had left on. Dawson set his bag by the bench and stood on the mat and waited. At five exactly five headlights swept across the front window and the sound of a motorcycle engine cut out in the parking lot.
Vance came through the door or should over two minutes later. He walked to the back mat without turning on any other lights. He looked at Dawson. Dawson was standing in his stance. The stance Vance had spent two weeks correcting.