The Fighter by Michael Farris Smith BLOG TOUR @michael_f_smith @noexitpress #TheFighter #RandomThingsTours

From the author of Desperation Road, longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award 2017

The acres and acres of fertile soil, the two-hundred year old antebellum house, all gone. And so is the woman who gave it to him. The foster mother who saved Jack Boucher from a childhood of abandonmnet now rests in a hospice. Her mind mind eroded by dementia, the family legacy she entrusted to Jack is now owned by banks and strangers. And Jack's mind has begun to fail, too, as concussion after concussion forces him to carry around a notebook of names that separate friend from foe.

But in a single twisted night Jack is derailed. Losing the money that will clear his debt with the queen of Delta vice, and forcing Jack into the fighting pit one last time the stakes nothing less than life or death.

The Fighter by Michael Farris Smith is published by No Exit Press on 29 March 2018

As part of the Blog Tour, I'm delighted to share the prologue from The Fighter, I do hope that it tempts you!

PROLOGUE 

When he was two years old the boy was dropped off at the donation

door at the Salvation Army secondhand store in Tunica wearing nothing

but a sagging diaper. A Planet of the Apes backpack stuffed with more

diapers and some shirts and mismatched socks and little green army

men was dropped on the ground next to him. Then a hungover woman

banged a scabbed fist on the metal door and a hungover man blew

the car horn and she ran around and got in as the child watched with a

docile expression. Out of the car window the man called out some sort

of farewell to the child that was lost in the offbeat chug of the engine

and then the foulrunning Cadillac rattled out of the gravel parking lot,

leaving the child in the dustcloud of abandonment.

The door opened and two women in matching red Salvation Army

t-shirts stared down at the boy. Then they looked into the parking lot

at the still lingering cloud. Out into a gray morning sky. They glanced

at each other. And then one said I guess we’re gonna have to hang a

sign next to the one that says no mattresses that says no younguns.

The other woman lifted the boy and held him up beneath his arms as

if to make certain he was made of actual flesh and bone. When she

was satisfied she hugged the child close and rubbed her hand across

the back of his head and she said I pity those who have to live behind

me in this weary and heartless world.

The police were called and while they waited the women washed

the boy in the bathroom sink with paper towels and hand soap. Filthy

feet and filthy hands and the diaper was two changes past due. After

they had wiped him clean and filled the trash can with dirty paper

towels the boy stood naked and fresh on the smooth concrete floor

of the bathroom and they admired his innocence and beauty. He was

then dressed in a new diaper and a Spider-Man shirt taken from a rack

in the kids section. The boy did not cry and did not talk but instead sat

satisfied between the women on a tweed sofa marked fifteen dollars

as if he had already decided that this was his new home and he was

better off.

He was better off but this was the beginning of a childhood spent

in the company of strangers. The next ten years saw him move from

one Delta town to the next. Four foster homes and two group homes.

Five different schools. A handful of caseworkers. Teachers whose

names he could not remember and then stopped trying to remember

because he knew he would not be in their classrooms for long. The

steady and certain build of restlessness and anxiety in this child who

was certain neither where he had come from nor where he was going.

When he was twelve years old the assistant director of the group

home told him to gather his things. Again. He sat on the bench seat

of a white van with the home logo on the side and he watched the

fields of soybeans and cornstalks with sullen eyes as he was driven

from the sleepy, bricked street town of Greenwood to his fifth foster

home. Moving northwest and closer to the great river, to the fringes

of Clarksdale, the once bustling Delta hub of trade and commerce

that now wore the familiar faded expression of days gone by. His eyes

changed when the van pulled into the dirt driveway that led to a twostory

home. A white antebellum with a porch stretching across the

front on the bottom and top floors. Flaking paint on the sun side and

vines hanging in baskets along the porch with their twisted and green

trails swaying in the wind. A woman sat in a rocker and she rose to

meet them. She wore work gloves and she pulled them off and tossed

them on the ground as she approached the van as if readying herself

for whatever might be climbing out.

She took him to his upstairs room and opened the dresser drawers

to show him where he could put his things and he told her there was

no use.

‘I won’t be here long enough to mess up the covers on the bed.’

‘Sure you will,’ she answered.

‘No I won’t,’ he said. A twelve-year old certain of the workings of

the world.

‘Are you gonna run away?’

‘I don’t know. Are you?’

‘Because unless you run away this is where you live now.’

‘So you think.’

‘So I know,’ she said.

‘You don’t know nothing,’ he said and he walked out of the

bedroom and down the stairs and out into the backyard. She stood at

the window and watched him between the slit in the curtains. He did

not stop in the backyard but crossed it and walked out onto the dirt

road that ran on and on between the rows of cotton. The sun high

and a short shadow followed him. She did not chase. She stood in the

window and watched until he was nearly out of sight and she was one

step toward the door to run after him when he stopped. A tiny figure

in the distance.

He stopped and stayed in the same spot for several more minutes

and she could not know that he was talking to himself. Telling

himself I don’t wanna do this no more. I don’t know why I can’t have

somebody. With the space between them she could not have noticed

that he looked back at the big house and said that place right there

don’t want me neither and that woman can’t catch me. I’m gonna

take off running and she won’t never catch me. Won’t nobody. I

don’t wanna do this shit no more. She could not have heard him or

seen him with any detail but she waited. Only could see that he had

stopped. She whispered a prayer without moving her lips as if even the

slightest flutter would spook the boy and send him fleeing on furious

and reckless feet. He stood still talking to himself and she stood still

whispering a quiet and motionless prayer. And then from the distant

sky a hawk flew toward the boy. It flew low and its wings were spread

wide and when it reached the vicinity of the boy it swooped and

seemed to hold there out in front of him. Begging the boy to admire

its eloquence. Begging the boy to notice something other than himself

and his troubles. Begging the boy to think of something other than

running from that woman. The hawk rose and fell again and the boy

saw it and his eyes followed the hawk as it turned long and graceful

curves in the bluewhite sky. From the window Maryann spied the

hawk and she shifted her eyes from sky to land, waiting to see what

the boy would do. The breath she had been holding was let go when

the hawk turned toward the house. And the boy followed.

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MICHAEL FARRIS SMITH is a native Mississippian who has spent time living abroad in France and Switzerland. He is the recipient of the 2014 Mississippi Author Award and has been awarded the Mississippi Arts Commission Literary Arts Fellowship, the Transatlantic Review Award for Fiction, and the Alabama Arts Council Fellowship Award for Literature. 

His short fiction has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and his essays have appeared with The New York Times, Catfish Alley, Deep South Magazine, and more. 

He lives in Columbus, Mississippi, with his wife and two daughters. 

Find out more a www.michaelfarrissmith.com

Follow him on Twitter @michael_f_smith