Chapter 31
The next day, Manny and I drove to the gym, a dojo that had boxing rings in constant use, though he and I hadn’t fought with gloves in two years. We toyed with the idea of getting into Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu but it seemed like one of us was always recovering from an injury. Today we wanted to sweat.
We ran the stairs, and did box jumps until our feet hurt, and we jumped rope, and did burpees, and squats and lunges and pushups and inverted pushups, and ran the stairs again.
Soaked and disgusting, we switched to the bags.
I pounded on a heavy bag while Manny worked the speed bag.
His hand-eye coordination was stronger than mine and the speed bag sang—alternating hands and double-taps and side-to-side and reverse strikes, like a drum line beat.
A muscle in his jaw stood out and his shoulders flexed and bunched and the bag rapped the swivel plate like thunder, louder and louder, more force than usual, like he was pushing the thing, until with one mighty pop the bag broke.
He punched it hard enough that the air burst through the bladder as the straps tore.
I’d never seen that happen. Panting, he snarled and grabbed the ruined bag and ripped it all the way off. Everyone in the dojo stared.
He snatched his gym satchel and walked outside for air, like Achilles leaving the field of battle.
I joined him fifteen minutes later. In the cool November air, his body still steamed.
“In the books,” I told him, “Gimli would tell Aragon what’s bothering him.”
“I’m not Gimli, you stupid burro.”
“We should mount that busted bag on the wall.”
He still held the bag in his fist, which was bleeding. He raised it, like he hadn’t noticed, and he said, “The doctor knows the gender.”
“The gender of Noelle’s baby?”
He nodded. “Yesterday. The ultrasound. After they finished, the doctor said she had a strong guess, and did we want to know?”
“Noelle declined,” I guessed.
Another nod. “Simon. Doc knows, we don’t.”
“Did the baby look Hispanic?”
“Beck said I shouldn’t ask.”
“Are you reconsidering the paternity test?” I said.
“No. I don’t know. I don’t want a baby. I’m already a dad. Stepdad. Whatever it is I am to Kix, that’s enough.” He shook his head, looking at his sneakers, and the muscle in his jaw flexed again. “But.”
“But,” I said.
“Giving the baby away is the right thing. Beck’s starting to look at the people who want a baby. The applicants. To pick one. She asked me to help,” he said.
We leaned against the Tesla. He’d driven his own car, the Camaro, across from us. The insurance company would be dumping money into my account soon for me to replace the ruined Accord, but I was secretly enjoying the electric car. Maybe the FBI wouldn’t miss it.
“I don’t want to raise the baby. I don’t want to give it away.
I don’t want Junior to have the baby. I don’t want to pick the baby’s parents.
I don’t want…” He dropped the ruined speed bag and pinched at the bridge between his eyes and took a deep angry gulp of oxygen.
Not everyone should be a parent. For example, Theo Cardot.
Or Adolf Hitler. Or Spider-Man or the Apostle Paul or Mike Tyson.
Manny put himself in that category, a human who shouldn’t be in charge of a child’s well-being.
To get where he was, from where he started, monumental sacrifices were made, leaps in maturity and culture and discipline.
The cost had been great, shedding his softer parts.
But being built of iron didn’t insulate him from the core drives that make us image bearers, and the price of his loss was pain.
He and Noelle were Americans who asked not what their country could do for them, but what they could do for their country. They were humans willing to break their bodies for the sake of others. To preserve life at the cost of their own. Abortion had never been an option. Which left hard decisions.
He dropped his hands to his upper thighs like he needed the support and he drew in enough air to inflate his lungs to bursting and he let it out at the clouds, and he said, “I gotta pick the least bad option—let a good family raise the baby, so I don’t break it.”
“The child is yours, isn’t it,” I said.
“Of course it is. Junior doesn’t even have balls.”
“I knew it.”
“So I gotta let someone else raise my baby,” he said. “It’ll be hell.”
After that searing truth, I found no useful words. Better to admit the torture than ignore it, though. So we stayed like that, with no words, leaning against the car, for a long time, and it kept hurting.