Dementia Pugilistica
by Joseph Johnston
"I'll catch you by the gym or at Fat Mike's," the Champ hollered with a grin from the back of the blue Crown Vic interceptor as it barreled downtown, red and blue lights reflecting off the brown brick of the old high school. The first signs were too slight to register.
"Is this your toothbrush in the fridge, Champ?"
We didn't know what was happening. How could we? I suppose we should have known something when he stopped wanting to go to the movies. He loved the movies. He always wanted to go to the movies and get nachos after and talk about the movies but then one day, "I can't go to the movies anymore. They make me too nervous."
It's too bad. He was a dragonfly. A spry, swift, and quick fighter, the direct descendent of a Colorado brown bear father and a red-tailed hawk mother. Mean and strategic in the ring but honking blues from a bass harmonica while stomping his rotund right foot at the bar after fights. Everybody loved seeing that big foot stomping the floorboards into sawdust. He was the jolly king and we the court. We'd have followed him anywhere.
Then that last punch. You know, the one that unlettered him. Didn't knock him out, though. Uh-uh. Not the Champ. The Champ never went down. But if you were ringside and saw that punch, that last punch, you just knew he wasn't going to be the same. He disappeared for awhile after that punch. Then we'd see him in the barber's chair
8