Draw the Line

chapter four

I don't know why I still get nervous. I've been in more fights in my life than I can even count.

Growing up with three brothers, it's kind of a given that you have to learn how to defend yourself since our idea of playing looked more like WWE Death Matches than anything else. But it was thanks to my piece of shit dad that I really learned how to fight.

He'd take us out back and have us spar each other, calling out advice or criticism whenever one of us would get a good punch in on the other. He said the lessons were so that if anyone ever messed with us, we'd be able to "defend our blood" — which really meant defend the ego of a washed-up, old pro-fighter that used to be known for something other than getting drunk in the bar downtown.

Most of my fights were defending my little brothers from the groups of older assholes who always tried to jump them or defending myself from anyone who wanted to fight me just for the bragging rights. Just to be able to say they beat me, the son of Creekview's famous heavyweight champion. I was known as Cliff Costa's protégé, the son that inherited his quick fists and warrior's mind, and everyone with a solid punch and inflated ego was eager to knock that title from my hands.

I took my dad's warning seriously, though. I wasn't just defending myself; I was defending our family, our name, and most importantly, his legacy. And no matter how much I hated him, I knew what his name meant to him. Which is why no matter who called me out, no matter how unfair the matchup, I never walked away from a fight. And more importantly, I never lost.

When I was accepted to USW with a full-ride basketball scholarship, I thought I'd be leaving the bloody fists in Creekview. I thought I'd move away from the shit hole town thirty minutes south of Pullman and build a new life for myself outside of my dad's shadow. And I did. I left my dad and his precious legacy behind, thankful that it didn't have the chance to taint my life here, that it couldn't change the way people viewed me. Because it's the excitement, the awe that always comes first, and then the inevitable confusion is quick to follow. Cliff Costa was a two-time heavyweight champion...he made millions...and then the implied question lingers in the air — how the fuck is your family so poor?

I've made so many excuses for my dad over the years to try to save him from the shame and embarrassment, but he doesn't make it easy. Everyone in Creekview knows they could find him shit-faced in the run-down bar on the edge of town from sun up to close. He's as permanent a fixture there as the tables and rickety old stools, pining for the days before he flushed all his money away at the casinos a few towns over. 

So, when I left Creekview, I did it to cut ties with that life. Of walking into USW as Micah Costa, the new basketball recruit. Not Micah Costa, two-time heavyweight champion Cliff Costa's son.

I've managed to keep that tie buried for the past three years, and I have no intention of digging it up now.

But it was a hell of a lot easier to forget he even existed before everything went to shit last year. Before his diagnosis. Before he started to fall apart. It was easier to keep him locked away as a skeleton in the closet before my mom called me and begged me to talk to him again, pleading that I see him because he "didn't have much time left."