Death, Taxes, and Manhunt

“This Irish fools got a great, big heart He keeps climbin' back into the ring, hey, hey, hey In the low down circles where he holds his court This man, he once was king.” The Dropkick Murphys And so, despite being full up on matchbox cars, our antihero came up short again at ReVival 64. The dastardly Tony Gamble bested Cooley despite all of the stops being pulled out - including a limited edition Jeff Gordon 24 Rainbow Warrior Dupont Hot Wheel. In the following days Cooley found himself by losing himself in various barrooms and opium dens and whorehouses across Tokyo. As always, his trusty sidekick Nick DiSalvo was hot on his trail, but every time found himself just a step behind the Irishman. Everywhere Nick went there were whispers of a grizzled American with beautiful blonde hair pulling some wild shit there a night or day ago.

If the stories were to be believed Cooley had spent his time in Tokyo mud wrestling a troupe of escorts in Ikebukuro, bought a pet panda on the blackmarket in Ameya-Yokocho, mainlined the venom of a Pit viper into his penis at a whorehouse in Kabukicho, and a whole assortment of other nefarious and ludicrous behavior. That was the hard thing about keeping up with Cooley - separating the man from the myth. No one could actually take intravenous pit viper venom into his dick, right?

Well, Nick had watched Cooley fit a baker's dozen matchbox cars into his god pocket less than two weeks prior.

Finally a beat cop in the Shinjuku area slipped him a tip that a blonde haired demon had been on the losing end of a knife fight the night before. It only cost Nick twenty-nine measly yen to find out the white man was seen crawling into Hotel Aland early that morning.

“What the fuck, Cooley?”

The curtains screeched something awful as Nick yanked them open.

I woke up violently. Shirtless in blood stained jeans.

Every cell of my being was on fire. There was vodka in my hair and blood crusted on my lips.

“Christ, did I get stabbed again?”

I had dropped out just shy of getting my medical doctorate, but the searing pain in my rib and blood soaked bandage wrapped around me was a dead giveaway. Yes, yes I had been stabbed. Again.

Nick DiSalvo had woken me up a thousand times just like this. In all tiers of hotels, back alleyways from Dublin to Tokyo, ditches, and even a storm sewer once.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.

My eyes were on fire as I squinted out the sun and tried to scan the room for something to take the edge off. The daylight that came in through the window said it was still morning, but who really knew.

Nick was talking, but I couldn't make any of it out. Each noise was an atomic attack on my senses. That horrible shining sun coming in like a knife splitting through my head. That hangover was going to be one for the history books.

“Where am I,” I asked as I tried to take in the scene. It was a hotel. Judging by the plastic cup filled with warm vodka on the nightstand, not the nicest of places.

It went down in one gulp.

“Little hair of the dog.”

“You have to stop this shit, Cooley. Why do you keep doing this to yourself?”

There was a pack of Japanese cigarettes calling my name from the little table across the room. I pushed up entirely too fast and the world came with me. Luckily my good buddy Nick was there to save the day once again, grabbing ahold of me and moving me to the table.

“Oh, how convenient,” I called out at the line cut out next to the cigarettes.

It was a yellowish white, but it could’ve been anything. I reckoned any port sufficed in the storm and leaned down to paint the inside of my nostrils. Just a little toot to get the juices flowing and we’d be back to almost human again.

As the backdrip kicked in I examined the cigarette pack. These foreign countries all have pictures on them - something that’s supposed to deter you from smoking. This one had a man and a woman sitting on a bed. The woman looked angry - the man, well he had his head in his hands all filled up with fresh shame. I understand, brother.

Although my Japanese was at best nonexistent, I was pretty sure old buddy had a case of limp dick.

“Huh, I didn’t know smoking causes ED.”

“Stop fucking ignoring me, Cooley. You gotta give all this nonsense up.”

I leaned my head back and drew in a deep drag from the cigarette. It went well with the drip, drip, drip of the coke finding its way through my sinuses.

“What nonsense are you talking about, Nick?”

“The fighting. Fucking Christ man, someone stabbed you. There’s a whole lot of shit you’re good at, Cooley, but fighting ain’t on that list. You keep rolling the dice and coming up short - and for fucking what?”

“Shits and giggles,” I coughed out.

“Goddamnit, Cooley - some scumbag in one of these bars is going to eighty-six you. While you’re at it, give up the fucking wrestling, too. You’re a millionaire. You’ve got more money than you can spend. I’m not keeping score here, but you’re 0 for 2.”

All the people watching PRIME saw the losses to Harrison and Two-Bit Tony, but none of them had seen the ones before and between.

Truth be told, I’d been having my shit pushed in for quite some time.

This wasn't just a bad run. Nick wasn't keeping score (he really was), but if he had been, he'd of probably given up hope on me long before any of this. Before PRIME, before sherpa-ing my friend Rob Williams through his death march, and maybe even before the High Oct... other place.

“You gotta give it up, Cooley. You're not a spring chicken anymore. How many more of these do you have in you? Don’t do this Manhunt bullshit. It’s probably all predetermined anyways.”

“I have to do this, Nick. This isn't some choice. I'm not a masochist and I don't like losing, but there isn't anything else for me to do.”

There was genuine concern on Nick's face. He looked like he may cry.

"How many more of these do you have in you, Cooley?"

I remembered the cigarette as it began burning my fingers. I watched it burn for a moment before dropping it into the overflowing ashtray and immediately lighting up another.

"You're right, Nick. I don't know how many more of these I have in me. I'm thirty-five now. Most of the people I know are probably worrying about what's going on in the stock market and making time to watch their favorite show with their wives. They get up and take their snot-nosed kids to cheerleading or basketball every weekend. And here I sit, bleeding out in... are we still in Tokyo?"

"Yeah, we're still in fucking Tokyo."

"Of course we are. This is all there is for me, Nick. You've been with me long enough to understand that I can't stop. I can't back down. There's no quitting."

It was silent for a long beat. Nick's internal struggle was visual. The poor boy had always worn his feelings on his sleeve. It was one of the things I'd loved about him.

Finally, he gave in.

“Fine. Fuck it, fine. I tried to talk some goddamn sense into you. You want to kill yourself slowly with all these drugs and whoring and the fighting, be my fucking guest. Please, for the love of fucking GOD, at least tell me: why?”

It was a fair question.

If I was someone like Nick and I loved someone like me, someone wholly incapable of loving themself, I might not get it either. It would only be natural to him why he kept doing it over and over again, expecting a different result.

From the outside looking in, this probably all looked like some self depreciating, masochistic thing.

It was time to put on my serious face.

I owed him that much. He was the one that had sat by my side in the hospital after Jace Parker Davidson laid waste to me during the gauntlet.

Yet here we sat, me signing up to go into another gauntlet. Sure, this place wasn't the same as the other, but the outcome could be.

“Well, Nick..”

To understand my masochistic desire to fight, you must first understand my bloodline.

I’m not the first Jackson Cooley. Not even the second.

No, that distinction was Daddy’s. Jackson Cooley the second. Some called him Junior, but rarely to his face. He was about the meanest Irish bastard God ever put on the Earth. He never knew anything but fighting.

The senior Jackson Cooley was a dock worker who liked drinking a lot more than working. When he wasn't trying to duck out of work or in the barroom, he liked to play the bongo drums on his wife and kids' dome pieces. Couple that with Daddy growing up the only white boy in The Fifth Ward in Houston. The Bloody Fifth they called it. He was never one to turn down a fight and believe me, there was no shortage of boys in the neighborhood trying to beat his ass.

"In my neighborhood, you got good at fighting or you got dead," he used to say. He got good enough to earn some respect around the area. It didn't stop people from tying him, but he caught the eye of The Cut Boys. 

Soon he was running numbers for them. Didn't take long for him to graduate to collecting debts. Break a nose here, dislocate a finger there. He was good at earning. 

But the times were changing. Drugs were taking over and they brought in a different type of violence. You know, the stuff you hear about in movies. Nobody had baseball bats and switchblades anymore. Shortly after he got my mama pregnant, most of his crew was cut down during a deal gone bad. He knew that was the end of his criminal career, so he scraped together what he could and whisked mama off to Las Vegas before I was born. 

The Land of Milk and Honey. 

Daddy’s talents served him well there and in no time he was making a good living bare knuckle boxing. The shelf life for a bare knuckle boxer is pretty short and the old man knew he needed something real to take care of me. He wanted to go legit. So he started training to wrestle.

He was good. Damn good. It wasn’t long before he was signed to a real promotion. Killer Cooley. Real creative, right? He didn’t care - this was his shot to be something more than his dad ever was.

For once in daddy’s life, everything looked like it was going to work out. He was finally able to take a breath. He loved the sport, the fight, the roaring crowd. He was fearless. I remember watching him flying through the air like an acrobat - one of those Wallendas - landing on a whole crowd of guys and bringing them all to the ground.

You can plan a pretty picnic, but you can’t predict the rain. Climbing the ladder to the title - literally and figuratively - he fell from grace. Another guy pushed the ladder in his first shot at one of the big boy belts in a ladder match and Daddy landed on the top turnbuckle in a God awful fashion. They said they’d never seen a pelvis in so many goddamn pieces. Daddy learned to walk again, but not right, and definitely not good enough to fight again.

He never lost his love for it, though. Never even blamed the guy who took his career. So he trained guys - opened a little gym on the outskirts of the Strip. They said he was the best and they weren’t lying.

While my friends woke up and watched Saturday morning cartoons, I was watching replays of the greats. My nights were spent at Daddy’s gym. I was nothing but a snot nosed kid running water and towels for these hulking gladiators, but I watched. I watched cause I wanted to be just like that man.

And so I learned what a plancha was and a full nelson and how to take a fall. I learned all of it from my Daddy - the best in the business.

He’d let me get him in a sleeper and he’d say, “See how that feels, boy? Just wait until your little arms are big enough to get the whole way around another man’s throat.”

We’d go see shows together, you know, in the city. It was like watching hockey with Wayne Gretzky. All the subtle, little things that make it beautiful he would call out. "Look how that guy dropped his elbow" or "You see how that one is using his legs to get extra leverage?" He could always pick the winners before the bell even rang. A guy could be undefeated or three times the size of the other guy, but Daddy would say, “That sumbitch has the intangibles. The grit.” 

I swear, the man was never wrong when it came to fighting.

When I turned eighteen he took me out in the desert with a bottle of Vodka and we got drunk and counted the stars in the back of this F150.

“Pretty soon you’ll be a man, son. You’re gonna have to make up your own mind about what you do. I’ve taught you all I know about fighting. Every lock, strike, and dive - but it’s up to you what you’re gonna do with it. If you want this, you gotta work and earn it.”

So my training began. Twelve hours a day, me and Daddy would run matches and run and lift weights. When I wasn’t getting tossed like a rag doll by Daddy and his students, I was running odd jobs. Painting fences and moving TVs and even babysitting. It didn’t matter what it was - I was obsessed.

I wanted to be like him. I wanted to make my Daddy proud. I wanted to finish for him what he never got the chance to.

He made me train with him for a year before he let me take a match. A real match.

Killer Cooley 2 Vs…. honestly, I don’t even remember what the guy’s name was.

Now look, I’ve been humbled before, but this was something else.

This was Atlanta at Superbowl 51. I was Buster Douglas and this guy was Mike Tyson. I went into that ring feeling like the Challenger rocket and I blew up just as spectacularly.

Nothing worked. That man beat me like I owed him money. The fans laughed at first, but even they began to feel bad for me after a while. There isn’t much in the world worse than getting your ass beat black and blue in front of a silenced crowd.

The three count was a sweet release.

Give me death before giving me that experience again.

I rushed to the back and directly into the showers and it had nothing to do with the loss or the fans or the embarrassment. Nope, none of that. I stayed in that shower until the water ran cold and my lips were purple and I was shaking cause I couldn’t think about looking my Daddy in the eye after that.

Sure enough, he was waiting for me in the locker room.

So there I stood, all bruised and beaten and shaking in my little towel in front of my Daddy. In front of Jackson Cooley II, the meanest son of a bitch to ever come out of The Bloody Fifth. I didn’t know what he was going to do or say. Hell, if I were him I would’ve probably slapped me around. Spit and cussed about what kind of an embarrassment I was.

A stain on the name Jackson Cooley.

I bit my lip to fight back the tears as he put his gnarled hand under my chin and made me raise my eyes to look at him. Couldn't tell what might come next. Was he going to slap me? Disown me? Maybe, worst of all, he'd be indifferent. 

“I’m going to quit,” I cut through the silence before he could let me know how let down he was. Always strike first, just like he had taught me. 

A smile fell across his pockmarked face.

I was shocked. His boy just got twisted around like a carnival pretzel and then spent the next hour crying in the showers and this man smiled. That's just the kind of guy he was, though. 

“Boy, this moment will stay with you the rest of your life. You get to choose what you do with it and I urge you to choose carefully.”

What? What was all of this?

“B-b-but I just got my shit kicked in. That was awful. I’m not made for this.”

“Look, boy, this ain’t about winning or losing. I never cared about being the best and neither should you. All you gotta do is be the best that you can be. And I promise you, you are made for this. If you want to go the rest of your life questioning and wondering what would happen if you actually found the way to let it out, I won’t stop you. But you will never find a moment of rest. There ain't no quitting in this life: it's fight or die.”

And so I always came back to fighting.

Bare knuckles. Wrestling. Whatever, it didn’t matter.

There is a warrior in me and I will let him out one day.

My Daddy died a few years ago. I keep his picture in the jacket pocket of my blazer. Everytime I’m tried, he’s right there with me - whispering in my ear that there isn’t a such thing as winning or losing. You fight or you die. That’s it.

Yeah, the scorecard is much heavier in the “L” column than the “W” column, but they haven’t found a way to kill me yet. There isn’t a man alive that can kick my ass so bad I’ll stop showing up.

Do the losses bother me? No, not at all. I love being bested on national television by the likes of Harrison and Tony Gamble. And if you believe that, I have some nice lake front property I'd like to sell you in Reno. Maybe they're better men, who knows? What am I going to do, though, quit?

No. I resolved in that locker room, in front of my Daddy and all I hold holy that I would never quit.

I may not be what they want. There isn't some beautiful story to tell here. I'm not a man evolving in front of the eyes of the fans and the critics. I'm here to fight. I'm going to scrape and bite and punch and bleed all over your precious heroes and villains. 

This is a higher calling than finding some stupid kid who was kidnapped or being forced to be mean by some gang. I'm not trying to win the love of a woman and I hate my country. You can bet your ass that I won't ever have some stupid pet goat or koala. Keep your stupid nicknames and all of your cute little inside jokes. None of that holds weight on the field I'm playing on. Hell, keep throwing the losses my way. 

Yeah, they hurt, but they don't hurt worse than quitting. 

I am not here to do this for you. This is for me. This is for my Daddy. 

That night, in the locker room, Daddy gave me a little piece of paper. It was well worn, the years of wear showing in each crease and fold and crinkle. It was a poem. I'd never even seen the man read. 

You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years, and get pats on the back as you pass. But your final reward will be heartache and tears if you’ve cheated the man in the glass.

So do your worst, PRIME.

Give me Terminal Cancer. Let me that big dancing, Russian bear throw me around. Glue me to the mat, take my neck. 

I promise you, I won't stop. 

I'm here for one of two outcomes. Either they're going to kill me or you're going to put my Daddy's name on one of those belts. There isn't anything in between.  

So, Nick, you see - I don't have to win the Manhunt. And I sure as hell don't have to quit.

All I have to do in this life is die, pay taxes, and fight.