The Beast on Her Leash novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Ironworks

On Saturday night, Bram went out at nine with his hands taped.

I had come down to give Moose his hip pills.

I saw the boathouse light go off, and a battered pickup pulled up the dock road with its headlights dark.

"Where is he going?" I asked Moose.

Moose looked guilty, which was an answer.

I got in my hatchback, and I followed.

I want to be clear that nobody had told me to, and nobody had told me not to.

I had said at the start that every choice was his.

That went for me too.

The pickup crossed the river at Homestead and turned in at a dead steel plant with its windows knocked out.

Forty cars were parked on the gravel.

Inside the old ironworks, under three work lamps, a ring of cinder blocks and rope stood in a pool of light.

Eighty men and a few women stood around it with beer in their hands.

Nobody looked twice at a small woman in a canvas jacket.

I think that was the strangest part.

Bram stripped off his shirt and stepped over the rope.

His opponent was a bald man, with a tattoo of a bulldog on his neck.

A man next to me said, "Crowe's gonna kill him."

"Does he usually?" I asked.

"He never wins on purpose. He just goes till he's tired."

I watched for two rounds.

It was not pretty, and I was not going to pretend it was.

But there was one thing I noticed, and I had spent ten years noticing it in other kinds of animals.

Bram only fought when he was hit first.

He took punches he could have slipped.

He waited for the other man to swing.

In the third round the bald man went down on one knee, and Bram stepped back and let him.

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