THE RIGHT HAND
by
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Cabrera’s team was enthusiastically responding to the cheering masses, while their fighter stood statue like in the middle of them, head still bowed slightly. Andy saw “Sweet Man” Bubba Dickson looking his way and acknowledged the smile with a hesitant waive. The referee came over with Bigun to inspect Andy’s wraps and the lacing and taping of the gloves. The gloves were white, a Mexican product, and at eight ounces, the lightest allowable for a middleweight contest. Bigun worked the leather hard with his massive fingers, molding the impact area that would cover Andy’s knuckles to ensure a tight fit. Under the referee’s watchful eye he slipped the gloves on, laced them up and ran several revolutions of adhesive tape around the wrist covering the triple knot he had just tied. The referee walked over to Cabrera’s corner for the same ritual. Andy skipped over to the square resin container in a neutral corner and stepped into it, grinding the small pebbles to dust and covering his slick soles with the yellowish powder. He shadow boxed back to his home base and bounced in place, rolling his head and neck one direction and then the other.
He was still warm, but was also conscious of his well-timed sweat beginning to cool. The building was not air conditioned, but had massive fans circulated the air from the ceiling. The night air was most likely cooler outside. “Let’s get this show on the road,” he said to Bigun. The announcer introduced the boxers, Andy and Cabrera both modestly acknowledged the crowd response. There was no doubt where the crowd loyalty fell, “
As the referee finished with, “now touch gloves and come out fighting,” Cabrera finally raised his head to look directly at Andy. His black eyes were glazed, motionless, almost doll like, providing no clues as to the purpose or strategy that lay behind them. Andy was accustomed to the arrogant verbal exchanges at this juncture, the cold smiles and shoves. He once even had an opponent slap him with an open glove across the face to fuel the hostility. But Cabrera’s lack of spirit or emotion of any kind was a first. He merely turned back to his corner, the Sweet Man leading him.
The ring was cleared of all non-combatants, and a sudden quiet overtook the crowd as they waited for the action to commence. Bigun smeared Vaseline on Andy’s forehead and eyebrows, offered him a drink from a plastic squeeze bottle, and then moved outside the ropes. He was still massaging Andy’s shoulders when the bell clanged. “Stay away from him,” was Doc’s parting word of advice.
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About the Book
Andy St. John is a different kind of young man, especially considering the career he has chosen to pursue. College educated, with a comfortable if not privileged upbringing, he walks away from a most certain future of financial stability and success in the business world, to test his skills against other men in a twenty foot square ring. Andy’s opponents are fighting to escape their backgrounds, to rise above the streets, the stereotypes, and futures that are just as predestined as his own, though sadly leading to the complete opposite side of the lifestyle spectrum.
Andy knows that he is atypical. He also realizes that the pure, athletic beauty of the sport he loves is deeply flawed by corruption. The supreme effort it takes to rise above these obstacles, notwithstanding what it requires to simply overcome the primary challenges within the ropes, is enough to make most men seek an easier path. Andy, however, stays focused on the mission. There is such commitment and honesty within his pursuit that many of the people he encounters along the way choose to align with him, if for nothing else than to share in the refreshing spirit and positive force he brings to their lives. There are the others though, with their secretive and greed ridden agendas, who seek only to exploit the talented and popular middleweight. They have the money, the connections and the power, while Andy remains steadfast in the middle – independent and unattached, totally driven and unwilling to compromise his ethics.
From that first boxing match in
“The Right Hand” will hook you early, and keep you engaged as if you were at ringside for a championship fight. Be fairly warned though, there are few missed punches here. It’s a ten round slugfest from bell to bell.
About the Author
Mark Troth was born in
“The Right Hand” is his first novel, and it was over ten years in the writing. His family and career always took precedence, and justly so he says, but then admittedly such priorities resulted in far too many months of creative dormancy as he labored with this effort. Still, the passion continued to smolder. With an appetite for the words and a desire to tell a story that could take him back to the simpler, less structured and somewhat restless times of his youth, he persevered.
Although this story is mostly fiction, it is in some part, autobiographical. In his early twenties, Mark was a professional prize fighter – which was quite the contradiction he feels, for a white college boy from a middle class suburban neighborhood in
Like the novel’s main character, Andy St. John, Mark did not want to look back on his life at age fifty, which is his current age today, and never know what might have been. He took his best shot, and chased a dream.