This year’s honorable mention from our Novel Excerpt Contest is “La Lucha” by A.J. Rodriguez. Here, we meet two brothers who are navigating their way through adolescence. Both are boxers as well as altar boys and the push-pull of the physical versus the spiritual is fraught. This excerpt weighs the cost of wanting to belong against the burden of a brother’s secret. It left us needing to know what happens next.
Jesus Rivera
(1985)
His brother won’t let up. Something’s gotten into him. If it weren’t for the headgear, Angel would be splattering Chuchito’s blood all over the ring. Already he feels the red balloon swelling within his cheek. Angel’s boxed him into a corner, but not with any orchestration to his punches. It’s raw talent, clapping Chuchito again and again, upsetting the natural order of things. Because a sixteen-year-old should always beat his little brother’s ass.
And yet, Angel hasn’t been acting little. Puberty’s got him all twisted up. Chuchito knew this was coming, knew as soon as his brother matured into the same weight class they’d be sparring for real and Angel would try to prove he’s a man. Chuchito finds his breath, reminds himself to look past pain and fear and form a strategy. He notices Angel’s forgotten a basic rhythm. His little brother isn’t hunching down after throwing a hook, isn’t recoiling his elbows to his ribs. Angel is showing too much of himself, doing the kind of shit that gets you hurt. Shit Chuchito must correct.
There are moments in the ring when your mind steps into an inhuman—or maybe entirely human—space, moments when you shed the sting of your wounds like snakeskin, and in its place grows the only thing that’ll keep you standing. Determination. The excited kind you might feel when your teacher asks something of the class and you’re the only kid with the answer, so your hand shoots up as fast as light into a bulb. But Chuchito has never been that good of a student. School’s an obstacle course built for a different brain. Perhaps Chuchito’s father, an algebra teacher at the Catholic school he attends, put it best: If you can’t figure out the gifts God has and has not blessed you with, there’s nobody to blame but yourself.
Sometimes Chuchito can’t identify anything but the blessings he doesn’t have. He’s still unsure boxing is one of them, but all he can do now is expose enough forehead to bait Angel and become a lightning rod. Chuchito takes the force of every punch and redirects it back into his little brother’s body, burying everything in his liver and spleen and kidneys. With each hook and kindred thud, Chuchito feels lighter, higher, closer to heaven. But then Hipolito, their trainer, rips Chuchito off Angel and tosses him across the ring.
Adrenaline hogs the spotlight in Chuchito’s heart, keeping the hurt offstage. He watches Angel take off his headgear, revealing an expression free of damage yet lined by the creases and frowns that have come to define his face over these last few months, time in which people have said it’s harder to tell who’s who, as if they’re twins. Chuchito doesn’t know who started it, but he defaults to Father Douglas, their school’s principal. The gabacho has always scrutinized Angel and Chuchito’s appearance, something their own father mimics due to a deep reverence for the priest and everything he represents.
Chuchito notices how the lines cut deep into his little brother’s cheeks and forehead, making him look older, like someone who’s lived his whole life chained to a boulder. The sight brings another blow to Chuchito, one accompanied by the unaddressed complaints of every other blow dealt to him. The agony boots him into a different realm. Like maybe the place Jesus went when those bigass nails pierced his palms. He clings to the ropes like a sailor to a capsizing ship. Hipolito rushes to his corner and sets him upright with those knobbed, calloused hands. Hipolito fishes from his pocket one of those putrid concoctions and slides it under Chuchito’s nose, ramming his consciousness back into his body. Now Chuchito senses the gym’s eyes on him, assessing his manhood. He pushes Hipolito off and mumbles something about hitting the showers. His trainer spits tobacco into a bucket and ponders the ceiling lights.
You chavitos were gonna destroy each other in there, he says.
Long ago, Hipolito was a pro in Mexico, beat some bigtime boxers before getting maimed by the fiercest of them, leaving his skull a moon’s worth of craters, one fit for a mad scientist. Now he’s the best trainer Albuquerque has to offer, and maybe it’s because this city is full of motherfuckers trying to claw out of hell. Maybe this is where people like Hipolito thrive, people with a thick skin and thicker friendship with misery. Two years back the trainer took Chuchito under his wing, causing the chamaco to feel as if he too could thrive, as if he could finally make his father proud and ascend toward the potential God has for him. No longer would he be a lost cause, that boy who can’t wrap his head around the shapeshifting letters in his school books.
His father is in the gym tonight, grading tests in a lamplit corner. He had watched his sons spar, and Chuchito fears the result may have driven a wedge into his and Hipolito’s belief. He guns it for the locker room, but his family cuts him off, blocks the door. His father has an arm around his little brother, whispering a lecture into his ear. Then he faces Chuchito, countenance as cold as church stone, and flashes his hand twice, setting a ten-minute timer for Chuchito to get his ass out the door. The chamaco blinks, and in that brief darkness a universe of pain explodes, one he must restrain with a grimace.
When his eyes open, there is only Angel, scowl a wax seal. Chuchito wants to slap his little brother, tell him to stop being whatever this is. He wants to see that baby-toothed smile again. But Angel has already turned around, walked into the locker room. Chuchito follows and hears what sounds like a microwave falling down a flight of stairs. It’s his little brother slamming a locker door over and over. Chuchito retreats to the showers.
He spins desperately under the water, needing it to touch every part of him. John the Baptist wedges into his thoughts. Father Douglas talked about him during last Sunday’s mass, detailing how courageous this man was to remove himself from a sinful world and follow the only law that matters. It was this obedience, this submission, which allowed John to know the almighty, to cleanse the contaminations of others. Father Douglas reminded his congregation that holy water is the medicine of repentance, a light to reveal human souls for what they are: imperfect and corrupted. He said he must lead by example, come to terms with his own imperfections. He said we will all be forgiven if we remain a humble servant of the Lord. Chuchito had listened intently along with the other altar boys, each draped in robes as white and itchy as hospital sheets. He expected more, some kind of greater truth, but Father Douglas stopped his homily short. Chuchito had wondered what the fucken point was, but he asked no one.
Now he hears his full name, the one used by authority figures. Chuchito whips the water off only to find his little brother. With nothing to cover himself, he fastens his jaw, as if rage is a pill you can grind between your teeth. Then he notices the welts on his brother’s torso, the color of neglected plums. He feels Angel’s eyes burrow into him, not on his nudity, but his face, the place where his own wounds are blooming. Chuchito doesn’t look away, and for the longest second, the brothers hold each other’s stare, becoming reflections of one another. Both lifeless and alive. Both aware of pain but not in it.
Pops’s waiting, Angel says. I’ll tell him Hipolito held you up.
A headache smears Chuchito’s vision into a glass of milk. He growls his thanks, and Angel grunts in turn, lips sealed tight once again.
* * *
The next day is Sunday. Chuchito is back with the white-robed altar boys, pretending to read along from the book of Job while some rookie priest rambles about the duty of suffering. Chuchito is comforted by the fog of his mind. He dozes through the mumbling of the responsorial psalms and the acclamation of the gospel and the airless statements on bearing witness to the divine.
Chuchito’s head lulls forward like a vase over the edge of a table, causing him to snap upright just in time to see Father Douglas take the pulpit. The priest isn’t looking at him, but still he senses in Father Douglas’s presence an awareness of his own. Chuchito imagines a whisker stretching from the priest’s silver mustache to his chin, a tripwire that’d send a vibration right into Father Douglas’s mouth if Chuchito were to move an inch. Then the gabacho would be on him and all of it would be happening all over again.
He needs to check on his little brother. Angel is also an altar boy, but Chuchito is several rows behind him, having been placed out of the congregation’s sight so as not to worry them with his bruises. His brother sits with Sam, a blade of grass gabacho who moved to Albuquerque a couple months back on account of his father being reassigned from some military base out in bumfuck Georgia. It was obvious nobody expected Sam to be anything more than a pebble orbiting the world, but his meekness also trigged Angel’s charitable nature. He started joining the gabacho during lunch, teaching him who and what to avoid, always whispering into those flappyass ears. Chuchito can’t help but draw a line from Sam’s arrival to his little brother’s strange new self. Chuchito hates the slouch of Sam’s shoulders, the inward turn of his feet, that apologetic tilt to his brow. Chuchito traces Angel’s rigid posture, the dusty blonde mop of Sam’s hair. His nose squirms, as if inhaling a fart. Angel should know a gabacho will never save him. He should know salvation lies elsewhere, far away from here.
The service ends and the organ blares, smacking Chuchito with a wall of sound. Brain shrieking, he stumbles through the chancel’s backdoor and finds his way to the storage room where he likes to nap before Sunday school. Chuchito is thankful for the state of his face, how the stains of blood around his eyes granted him an excuse from communion duty. In the storage room, he fishes out a kitchen timer, cranks it to ninety minutes, and sinks into a pile of old altar linens. The fog thickens, and Chuchito’s thoughts dissolve into a comfortable nothingness.
* * *
The ringing sprays Chuchito like machine gun fire. He wobbles from the storage room, reminding himself that each step is one closer to home. Then again, he doesn’t really want to be there .
Chuchito has reached an unspoken compromise with his father. The latter will not put the former on blast during Sunday school as long as Chuchito arrives early and helps organize the classroom. Chuchito is greeted by the boom of classical music. His father has a whole cabinet of this shit, hundreds of tapes that never fail to elicit a rant about how the closest mankind ever got to the almighty was in one of these crusty-ass German symphonies. Chuchito understands their beauty, but it doesn’t stop a crescendo from driving a spear into his skull. He watches his father shut his eyes and inhale deep, right in the middle of adjusting a stack of bibles. It’s an embarrassing sight. Or maybe what’s embarrassing is Chuchito’s jealousy of the music, his desire to be the thing that sparks wonderment in the heart of a person who—no matter how often they hurt and anger—he will always feel the need to please.
My Lord, Chuchito’s father says. Is there any clearer evidence of God’s grace?
Chuchito doesn’t reply, having meandered to the opposite corner. He concentrates on the erasers in his hands, on making sure the entire surface of one smashes into the entire surface of its twin.
You’re making a mess. You need a more delicate touch.
Chuchito huffs an acknowledgement and focuses on the chairs, positioning and repositioning them as the hynas pull up, always first to class, always stealing glances at the Rivera brothers and the rippling muscles under their t-shirts. But now Angel isn’t even here, and Chuchito is sick of changes. He approaches his father and tells him that he’s going to find his little brother. His father grins, as if Chuchito has answered an essential question. He hates how this approval slides between his ribs and rises in his chest like a golden loaf of bread.
The refectory, the parking lot, the bathroom, each empty location shoves a spoonful of anxiety down Chuchito’s throat. The least desired path is now the only one. Chuchito must head toward Father Douglas’s office. Pace reduced to a shuffle, he passes the vestry and notices the door is shut. A rarity. Chuchito pulls the handle—maybe to prolong his journey—maybe because this door has a curious gravity to it. Either way, what he discovers is the clearest and vaguest image he’s ever seen. Every overlapping contour of every bare appendage is perfectly apparent, perfectly articulated. Yet these definable parts are not connected to a definitive body. There are just two different colored threads coiled into one rope. Sam and Angel. The gabacho and his brother on a bed of white robes, a bed to resolve every question with an answer so obvious and wrong. Once again infinity exists in the smallest timeframe, and once again it begins and ends with eye contact. First Angel is a deer in headlights, the hallway’s brightness pushing his lids back with surprise and panic. Then pupils shrink and Angel stares at Chuchito blankly, a canvas as white as a bolt of lightning. The pain is a noose, and all Chuchito can think is: I will never know what to do with this.
And it’s as if these words had been spoken aloud. Because Angel’s face crumples like he’s been told a family member has died. His frown convulses and spasms, trying to find its shape. Or maybe it’s finally refusing to mirror Chuchito, refusing the conclusions he’s reached. In the end, it doesn’t matter, because Chuchito slams the door, leaving the pair of naked boys to their darkness. The final picture in his mind is Angel holding Sam. Tight and protective as muscle around bone. The way an older brother might his younger.
Chuchito concentrates on the grain of the vestry’s wooden door, wrestling with a thought he knows is bad but also undeniably true.
If he had a key to this door, he would lock it.
Behind him, down the hall, another door opens. Father Douglas’s shadow creeps from his office. Chuchito is almost relieved, almost grateful for the single thing that could scare him into running back to his father’s classroom.
* * *
Sometimes what frightens Chuchito most is how good he is at deleting shit from memory, how easy it is to redact words from his narrative and move through life as if the gaps between sentences, between scenes, is the way the story’s meant to be read. He skims over the paragraphs of his day, going through the motions and repeating them again and again until he’s back in the gym a week later.
Hipolito is deciding sparring partners. He examines the topography of Chuchito’s face, the violet lakes blotted onto his skin.
Bueno, he says. This ain’t gonna cut it, chavito.
Before Chuchito can protest, Hipolito has a paw squeezing his neck. He hands the chamaco off to a gym volunteer, one of those viejos who wants to believe in a reality where young men and violence aren’t such destructive siblings. But instead of paying attention to the punch mitts waving at him, Chuchito glances back at the ring where Hipolito has slotted his little brother against Gram, a cocky-ass gabacho with the straightest teeth. He was supposed to spar Gram for their third bout, the first being a narrow loss for Chuchito, the second resulting in a victory as merciless as the guardrails of practice fights allow. This triumph had felt like the first real accomplishment of Chuchito’s life, something that prompted his father to nod like he does when reading a favorite bible verse. It was exhilarating to watch Gram’s acne-spotted spine curve in defeat, this gabacho assuming the shape of shame, contours so unfamiliar to him but as recognizable to Chuchito as the right angle of a crucifix.
He’d been waiting to rekindle that feeling, had convinced himself it was needed to flush all the shit stewing in his life. Chuchito had been confident in his ability to break Gram again, to take that breaking one step further and snap his spirit in two.
But now his little brother is taking a right hook from Gram without a single tremor. He is dodging a jab and another jab and an uppercut before building a concrete bridge right into Gram’s intestines, a bridge he rebuilds over and over. It’s as if Angel wants to show that another boy can’t leave a mark on his body, can’t prove he’s ever been touched. People start to notice. One by one, candles of conversation and training extinguish until there is nothing left but the pummeling of flesh and the seething of Angel’s breath and the sputtering hose of Gram’s throat.
’Ijo de la chingada, Hipolito roars from the corner. ¡Basta, ya basta!
But Angel keeps bearing down on Gram, gloves interrogating each inch of white flesh as if all the answers he’ll ever need are buried somewhere within it. Chuchito starts for the ring, understanding his responsibility as older brother. But then Gram resorts to the only move that’ll save him. The gabacho wraps Angel in an embrace, snug and desperate, as if saying goodbye to a loved one forever. Now Chuchito is staring into the vestry again.
Here is a secret in all its nudity. Here is a beautifully bleeding wound.
Chuchito shutters, turns around, and realizes he hasn’t walked far. The volunteer is merely a few feet away, still with the punch mitts ready. Visible in the background is Chuchito’s father. His arms are crossed. He is glaring not at the ring but at Chuchito, neck angled sideways, as if waiting for his eldest to hand in a test or come clean with a lie. Chuchito focuses on the volunteer’s mitts and starts tossing his limbs all wild and angry. The more his vision sways, the more Chuchito thinks of his father’s shaking head. His chin a pendulum of dissatisfaction.
* * *
The next day seems overcaffeinated. Every breath of the congregation is a desperate pant that laps at Chuchito’s neck, denying him the ability to ignore the world. Father Douglas is barreling through his homily, the snow of his skin melting under the heat of his face. He snarls out warning after warning of eternal damnation, his words piling up like rubble, blurring his protestations into something incoherent. Still, Father Douglas spews his words with venom, and it feels as if they were tailor made for Chuchito’s sin-loving soul. His hands are fastened together, fingers stabbing and scraping his palm. Chuchito looks down at the line of indents that have turned his flesh white. He sees blood throbbing beneath the surface.
Angel isn’t beside Sam. They’ve chosen opposite ends of the altar boys’ cluster. Chuchito had noticed this divide at the start of service but didn’t pay it any mind, committed instead to deletion. Yet as mass progressed, Chuchito sensed a rigidity in the air, all the other chamacos stiffening like frightened rabbits. Frustration bubbles inside Chuchito’s head, frustration at how shit keeps veering away from normalcy, even though he can’t pinpoint a time when normal ever existed. Or how it ever could.
At the service’s conclusion, Chuchito is tasked with fetching another bottle of sacramental wine. The congregation is exceptionally large today, exceptionally thirsty. Chuchito meanders through the chancel, the blood of Christ sloshing around its container. He hands it over and hears his name called from somewhere in the pool of freshly nourished souls. It’s his father. He beckons Chuchito, grinning so wide his lips split like a failed seam, making visible the razorblade of his impossibly white teeth. And though Chuchito can’t explain why, he knows that when he thinks of his father in the future, this will be the face he remembers. He will remember its creases, how they resembled the engravings of a mask, accents of something meant to conceal another thing. Chuchito will always be searching for the face within his father’s face, but the more he looks the more lost he will become.
What a spirited service, his father says. Did you feel God’s glory at work.
Yes, sir, Chuchito replies.
Much to think about in the Father’s homily today, no?
Yes, sir.
Chuchito senses his father’s eyes claw at his own like a dog digging for a bone. He remains still, playing a version of dead, hoping it will make this shit pass quicker.
Speaking of Father Douglas. He’d like to see you in his office—before our class—just for a moment.
Chuchito’s heart starts beating fast as hummingbird wings.
I advise you to arrive early, his father says, hand stroking Chuchito’s shoulder. You are excused, son.
Chuchito responds with a thank you, and the words leave a mouth he can no longer feel, a mouth he’s handed off to someone else.
* * *
Chuchito hasn’t sat outside Father Douglas’s office in over a year, time that parallels his immersion into boxing, time in which his body has grown out of its childish shell into something that can stand on its own two feet and fight back. Still, while waiting, emotions are at war in Chuchito’s gut. On one side is terror. On the other is eagerness, a desire to demonstrate worth.
Chuchito hears his full, Christian name—the most Christian name there is. The name of someone meant to be sacrificed. Chuchito looks down the hall and sees Father Douglas coming his way. The priest is much closer than Chuchito had expected.
My child, Father Douglas says, opening the door to his office. What a blessing it is to see you.
The mouth that no longer belongs to Chuchito replies with mumbled appreciation. The war inside him is at a stalemate; the soldiers have fled the battlefield. What’s left is a dull anticipation for the finger that will flip the light on, the thing that will illuminate the exact purpose of this visit. Father Douglas takes a seat behind his desk, his smile thin, spine as stiff as a cane or paddle or the rounded end of a broom stick.
How’s this fighting venture of yours coming along? he asks. Down at that colorful little gym.
The lids blink. The arms remain limp. And the mouth responds with a single word. Good. Father Douglas hardens his smile in kind, emphasizing his crow’s feet, so deep and numerous you’d assume nothing but kindness from this man. He keeps his face level with Chuchito while groping his pocket. What he produces gives the desk a metallic kiss. Father Douglass returns his hand to his lap, and the naked thing greets Chuchito by reflecting the office’s brightness back at him. It is a key, small and ordinary with silver teeth no sharper than the ridges of torn cardboard. It is also the biggest force in this room, a portal to a place where things are buried. Objects. Memories. Parts of one’s self.
The eyes that no longer belong to Chuchito are settled on the priest, avoiding the key, what it unlocks, which is, simply, a filing cabinet tucked in the office’s corner.
And your brother, Father Douglas says. How’s he faring?
Angel? a voice asks, one that cracks through the mouth that no longer belongs to Chuchito. It’s not his voice, rather the echo of a younger self, a confused and uncertain ghost reanimated by this deviation from the priest’s script.
Yes, Father Douglas says, brow rising with curiosity. How is he doing? In his schooling. His athletic endeavors.
The throat clears itself, and the mouth replies slowly, He’s good, Father.
Have you witnessed anything different about him lately?
Different?
Shifts.
Shifts?
Changes in temperament. The company he keeps.
I don’t think so, Father.
The priest’s elbows are on the desk, his pink fingers knit like the zipper of Chuchito’s jeans. He leans forward, dunking his head into the afternoon sunlight streaming through the office’s window blinds. The eyes that no longer belong to Chuchito veer toward that window, a reflex caused by Father Douglas growing nearer. The priest never shuts the shades completely. The outside world is always in view, fenced off only by these flimsy aluminum slats. Chuchito first noticed this at nine-years-old, right after he learned what the key unlocks—after he learned what a flat or rounded or cylindrical piece of wood can do to a piece of flesh, a cavity, a heartbeat. And when Chuchito climbed that mountain of agony for the first time, he saw what lies beyond the blinds: a vacant field the size of two boxing rings, mostly dirt scattered by patches of thirsty grass. No one hangs there. It’s too rough and arid and exposed. Yet the field’s emptiness was where Chuchito could put himself, not in the space but as it—not as its embodiment but the lack thereof, its perfect absence of feeling. It wasn’t a comfort or escape. It was just how Chuchito found nothing, the state which allowed him to kill the minutes spent here, year after year of the key and the cabinet and the reward Father Douglas would give after teaching Chuchito his lesson. The grey lips parting. The grey mustache pricking his bare waist.
But now, peering through the window again, something’s off. The field is as hollow as ever, but its image is unsteady, vibrating as if there’s an earthquake. Then his chair moans. Chuchito lowers his gaze to discover the shaking is from a leg that no longer belongs to him, and the more he watches it, the more he feels the vibration spread to other body parts. Somewhere Chuchito thinks he hears the screech of a kettle. An ear-splitting reminder that everything has the potential to burst.
My child, Father Douglas says correctively. What is your experience with Sam Fletcher?
The vibration is now neck high, making it impossible for Chuchito to swallow, to ingest that name. The only words that squeak out are None, Father, and they are spoken by the ghost, that child who will never be big enough to accommodate what he’s been forced to take.
And what of your brother’s relationship with Sam?
What relationship, Father?
The priest’s smile slackens into a concerned pout. He places a hand on the desk, fingers drumming next to the key.
It has come to my attention that Sam and Angel have developed a certain fondness for one another, he says. And I fear the nature of this fondness may be corrupted by the unnatural. If these suspicions are true, then what’s at stake here is the very sanctity of the boys’ souls. Father Douglas fixes his stare onto Chuchito, undressing his frame. My child, he continues, should you know anything about this—anything at all—you can aid in their salvation. You have a chance to show your dear brother a most saintly act of love.
Every muscle that no longer belongs to Chuchito is straining to keep the vibration from hemorrhaging through its face. Even though Chuchito understands what the priest wants from him, the ghost is still confused. Why does he have to be the one to name it? Why can’t Father Douglas? Isn’t he, as Chuchito’s own father asserts, the one ordained with responsibility? If not him, then where are the decision makers? Who are the ones that made it this way? The ghost had asked similar questions when it was alive, when Chuchito first met the key and the instruments in its cabinet.
Just as it seems like the ghost will split Chuchito open, a sunbeam gashes through the window and floods his vision with a knee-buckling whiteness, as if he’s been punched. Now Chuchito is back in the ring. In front of him is no longer the priest, but an opponent who’s cornered him. His fighter’s instincts take over, that determination he’s worked so hard to hone. It detonates inside him, scorching down any sentiment of concern or remorse for anyone other than himself—especially his little brother. Chuchito doesn’t think of how Angel has his own history with this office, how he’s sat in this same chair, bent over that same desk, has had to leave the same parts of himself behind. Chuchito doesn’t think of what belongs to Angel, which belongings they may share. The only thing that matters is getting out of the fucken corner. Chuchito glances at the key on Father Douglas’s desk, and all he thinks is this cannot, will not, happen. He will not endure a finger or tongue or penis inside him ever again. Now Chuchito remembers the vestry, how he wanted to keep what he saw locked up forever. And wouldn’t Angel be better off without that shit in his life? Isn’t this the opportunity he’s been hoping for, a chance to get rid of Sam for good?
Here is the key. Here is the answer.
Your suspicions are correct, Father.
Silence overcomes the world. Chuchito waits for Father Douglas to unleash something, to reveal his fate. But he provides nothing, and Chuchito doesn’t know whether to feel disappointed or ecstatic, which merely gives rise to anger.
May I be excused, Father?
The priest gives a slight nod, and as Chuchito leaves, Father Douglas thanks him for doing the right thing. My child, he adds. The daylight is brilliant at this hour. Take it in. Witness God smiling down on you from the heavens.
I will, Chuchito lies before slamming the door.
He struts through the hall, back toward his father’s classroom, heart booming with triumph. When he passes the vestry, he sees it is open, just like it should be, the robes hanging evenly, a single curtain of white. At first this calms Chuchito, but then its emptiness reminds him he is alone. Dread starts falling around him like a soft, unrelenting snow.
Now come thoughts of consequence, thoughts of his little brother, his face, what Chuchito will see in it, if he will see anything at all. Chuchito approaches his father’s classroom, and a final piece of knowledge strikes him.
This was the last fight he’ll ever win.
A.J. Rodriguez was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is a graduate of Cornell University and the University of Oregon’s MFA program. His work has received the Granum Foundation Prize and been supported by MacDowell, Yaddo, the Kerouac Project, the Hawthornden Foundation, and the Elizabeth George Foundation. His stories have won CRAFT’s Flash Fiction Contest, the swamp pink Fiction Prize, and the Kinder/Crump Award for Short Fiction from Pleiades. Others appear in Guernica, The Common, New England Review, and elsewhere.