“High up in the north in the land called Svithjod, there stands a rock. It is a hundred miles high and a hundred miles wide. Once every thousand years a little bird comes to this rock to sharpen its beak.

“When the rock is worn away, then a single day of eternity will have gone by.”

-Hendrick Van Loon

Tom Jones lives in a small frame house at the ghetto’s edge. Tom shares this house with his wife, Betty, a stoic woman who knits for consignment shops to supplement their social security. Tom never did have a job that was worthy of retiring from, not even the roofing job that ruined his hip and put the Devil’s touch of finality upon his lackluster boxing career.

Tom Jones’ life lacks the veneer of success that shields most of us from contemplating the awesome uncertainty of eternity and the rational conclusion that we, as humans, are anything more than a curious stain upon the Cosmos.

Tom’s house, an old JC Penney kit house from the 1920s, is squat, narrow, compact and might be quaint if its white paint had not been begrimed with the soot of city buses chugging by.

Tom Jones’ house might seem quaint if it did not squat in the shadow of the shambles next door, a former orchard house of years gone by, now inhabited by over a dozen junkies and crack-heads subsidized by the State, it’s ground floor infested by the neglected, waifs born to the whores that reside there, rummaging feral and glassy-eyed through the remnants of an ancient gnome garden turned junkyard.

Tom Jones’ life lacked accomplishment, his house stature—but each facet of the situation that was him, glowed rosy-hued, like a reaching, Homeric dawn, compared to his dubious inception.

Mother had been a groupie of the famously hairy-chested and swivel-hipped singer, Tom Jones. In 1972, at a concert in some better town, Mary had thrown her bra up on stage at the celebrity hunk, who then winked at her. Taking this as a cue, Mary made her way backstage, but ended up reclining in the arms of a stage hand with trench mouth instead. The resulting child was inauspiciously named after the intended father. These facts were made known to Tom Jones the younger, the unknown bastard, of the unsavory roadie, by Mary, as she sat drunk one night, mumbling about her son failing to buy her a house as she had expected and being none too surprised, considering his origins.

To spite Mary, more than to satisfy Betty, Tom Jones had bought this house, never to see his wicked mother again. Nevertheless, this house sat in the grips of its own wicked mother, the whore city named Baltimore, but known as Harm City to anyone with a sense of humor and a vague sense of municipal poetics, for Mayor William Donald Shaffer had once christened this ancient refuge for English Catholics “Charm City,” and the obvious pun was too much bad fun to resist.

Man and house lived in the dark shadow of the same wicked nest of evil, her dilapidated battlements soaring like the bones of an experimental beast discarded by an impatient God.

Tom’s hair was as gray as the patina of his long unpainted house as he looked to the sagging face of the sham in the mirror. A man who had managed to win five professional boxing matches should not look so haggard, drawn and sparkless—unless one considered that all five of those fights were won against Titus Healy, of the 80 IQ and the bum shoulder. These wins, had, however, qualified Tom to lose profitably against the rising stars of 1990s Baltimore boxing—none of which rose far enough to be observed twinkling above the wider boxing universe. But a house—not much of one—but still a house, these savage defeats had earned, a place to lay his battered bones until the ticker failed, then he’d go die somewhere fair, like a grassy riverbank, where Betty would not have to find him.

Unfortunately, Tom Jones’ bones, other than the nagging left hip, seemed to be as stubbornly durable as this old catalogue bought house—which he never did buy, but rather won on a bet with Deacon Sanders that he couldn’t go the distance with that Youngstown Ohio boy that left him with a crushed nose and this permanent ringing in his right ear...

Feathery light, gray hair, dripping like metallic water weed from his pumpkin head—his only real recommendation as a pugilist—highlighting his dead eyes—once, blue, now as gray as an overcast day—, separated unevenly by that mashed nose, over that white stubble that might one day become a beard, if he could tolerate the itch long enough, Tom Jones’ visage peered back at him like a mockery. The only thing that might complete the reprehensible sham in the mirror would be a twinkle of fear in those dead eyes.

No fear there—not after eating right hands and left hooks conceived in Ohio, brought over the Appalachians in a minibus and fed to him by that corn fed hand for a half hour at the old Blue Horizon up in Philly.

No fear there.

So he stepped away from the sham in the mirror, the backbone of the Charm City Boxing Club, five strong, with one fat girl, one retarded heavyweight, one lightweight pharmacist, one sweet boxer with bad ribs and a nagging mother—and “Slippy” Braxton, who was supposed to be fighting up at the Parkville Armory tomorrow and had not been heard of since his little brother got popped by those thugs over in Park Heights.

Slippy was not a suspect in his brother’s death, but he had gone underground. Without Tom’s third of the purse he’d have to close the gym—and that gym was the only thing he had ever accomplished in life. This was also Slippy’s chance to break out of Baltimore—this was a real fight with a dangerous New York boy, a boy that was supposed to win, but who Tom honestly thought Slippy could take. This was the chance for the both of them.

He must go.

As he stepped away from the mirror, having decided to forgo the shave or the comb, Betty was standing there.

“You’re goin’ out there tonight? What’s the matter with you? The police don’t even go out there anymore.”

She sounded hurt.

“He’s not answering his phone—it hasn’t even been on. He thinks people can track him with his phone—keeps it wrapped in foil and turned off when he’s not making a call. I can’t get in touch with him except through his brother and his brother is dead. I have to find him. He’s fighting tomorrow night.”

“You bastard!” she mumbled, as she stepped away and the tears rolled over those softly wrinkled cheeks.

Out the door he went, locking up tight behind him.

He stood on the porch for a moment—a concrete slab he had set there himself. He had his phone in his front left pocket, his wallet in his back left pocket, a roll of pennies in his front right pocket, and his bus pass in his back right pocket.

He had forgotten his hat, but was wearing a windbreaker over his sweat shirt, so should be alright for the night, so long as it stayed clear.

He checked his phone for the time and saw a text instead, “You bastard!”

He chuckled, sure that she still loved him, and then erased it, knowing she’d be hurt later to see it on his phone when she checked it to make sure he hadn’t been calling Eddie to place bets.

It was 11:07 p.m., on Tom Jones’ tiny porch, and the first cool breeze of autumn caused him to regret his hat, just as the uneven sound of his crooked stride caused him to regret ever having stepped out onto that scaffold thirty pain-filled years ago.

As he hit the street and looked up to check if the night sky was clear, the first rain drop plopped into his eye.

What could he do but shake his head and hope for the best? Why that raindrop was merely the first punch in this last round of his lifelong fight with his old nemesis—Fate.

“I’m coming Slippy. Don’t you worry, I’ll be there.”