>Look closer. Smell again. It's 1979. Down by the washed-out creek bed, in the clearing in the woods behind the little cinder block house on Barth Road, there are pigs, dogs, roosters, a bull, a horse . . . and a homemade ring. There's a barrel of a man with a dagger tattooed on his arm and a long piece of PVC pipe in his fist. There's a skinny 10-year-old boy. Always remember this: Nothing ever comes from nowhere.
>The boy was five when this started. Big Roy on his knees, cuffing and slapping at Little Roy, taunting him: "What's wrong? Gettin' tired? Told you you were too little. Told you you weren't quick enough. Oh, here we go. You cryin' again? Little girlie-girlie cryin' again?" Yes, Little Roy was crying again, crying rage and frustration at how easily his father dominated him. He would promise his mother every day not to fight Big Roy that night, but then his mind would start imagining new and surprising angles of attack, shocking and unprecedented punches, and by eight o'clock that night, fresh from his bath, he would be flailing and sobbing in his pj's again. It wasn't fair. He had to get close and risk, but his father didn't.
>Now he's 10, with a fight coming up next week on Pensacola Beach against a 14-year-old who's 16 pounds heavier. Nothing new. Big Roy's always throwing him in over his head, daring him to be a man, preparing him for the cruel sport that he, not Big Roy, has chosen. Didn't Big Roy give him a shotgun at Christmas when he was six, have him driving a tractor when he was seven? "Thought I'd pass out cold when I saw that," the boy's mother, Carol, says. Once when the two Roys were fishing, wading in surf up to Little Roy's chest, Big Roy shouted, "Sharks! Two of 'em!" and the boy dropped his rod and went thrashing for land. >"What are you doin'?" the father demanded. >"Where's your rod?"
>Trembling, the boy pointed toward the water.
>"Go get it," Big Roy said.
>"But. . . ."
>"Now!"
