As a boy when I’d sit in church I’d feel intimidated and inadequate and scared. In later years I’d realize that was design. Church made me feel isolated and failed.

Everybody was in on the secret except me. Everybody knew and loved this man, Jesus, in their hearts. I could not know someone I’d never met. I was terrified of a god who demanded the sacrifice of goats and sons.

The old lady, she’d wail, banging on that old piano, with skinny, arthritic fingers, singing them hymns; blood-curdling loud in that scary-screech owl voice. Singing praise to a god that wanted to butcher me on an altar for crimes I’m sure I’d yet to commit.

Sitting at the old lady’s knee, the only one I’d trusted. Even she won’t let me in on the secret. So I stay here on the outside, siding with my sin.

It was so clear to everyone but me.

Then I realized they’d weaponized religion.

I liked the street on the hot summer day. Everyone saluted and stood tall as the flag went by. Hoisted high by men in crisp and creased uniforms.

I had questions, a lot of things were broken. I had a friend home from Vietnam who said he’d kill me himself before he’d let me go to that Hell hole.

I was no chicken, but I didn’t want to die for no good reason. I only had one life—and the old lady and the church people went to great lengths to scare me—daily—that my end would not be a good one.

The TV, and the president, and some uncles made me feel a coward. Then I heard Ali speak, and he said, “I got no quarrel with the North Vietnam man,” and I realized I didn’t either. For Christ’s sake, I didn’t even know any North Vietnam men, I wasn’t quite sure I could even find it on a map.

Then I realized they’d weaponized patriotism.

My hometown was a small city in the north and it always felt like mid-October. A place that always was always in-between, like summer just passed and winter not quite yet come. Like twilight.

A warm and colorful and dark and foreboding place. Full of life and lifeless. At times quiet and complex and terrifying as a Halloween night, full of cold full moons and witchcraft and things that couldn’t be explained.

It was good to live in a time when everything couldn’t be explained.

We all seemed to live pretty much the same life in that town. Some kids had fathers and families and some had none. Some of the kids were rich and most were dirt-poor. We were all scared of the bomb and the white kids and brown kids and black kids mostly got along, and when we did fight—and I fought a lot, with just about everybody—it wasn’t particularly violent. Fighting was more a sport than a way of war. We collected scabs and scars as tokens of our collective rage.

My friend Archie and me were deadly scared of the bomb. It seemed like every day we hid under our desks, hiding from the coming blast. Archie said he was pretty sure hiding under a desk wasn’t worth a pinch of shit, but we hid anyway. I figured he was right.

Farms we’re nearby and we worked them when school was out. We killed the animals we raised as pets and we ate them because the world has an inherent cruelty that needed to be passed down like a torch, and understood and accepted.

There were a lot of rituals of passage in that town. Rituals of terrible importance that have now faded into memory and dust..

And, every brick and cement building had a yellow and black fallout shelter sign on it. If those signs were meant to comfort us, they did not.

Maybe we got along ok because we all knew any minute the Russians would bomb us, so we figured we might as well stick together.

Wiping his greasy hand across his craggy and pockmarked face; rubbing two fingers hard and deep in his eye sockets until tears appear. “I spose, I shouldn’t a killed her, that girl. The junkie hooker. It wasn’t my fault, entirely, you got to remember, I went there to preach to her, to heal her. I put hands on her and before I know’d what was what I fucked her. Then it all came apart right quick.”

“I kept layin’ hands on her and a prayin’. Then I felt the comfort and presence of the Lord and I know’d I’d done the right thing. I could tell by her sad eyes and the way she smelled her life wasn’t no good and I saved her from that life; in a harsh way, I suppose. She didn’t even put her panties back on and she was a stickin’ that needle-spike in her arm. The devil was in her. I saved her from that.”

“It was Christmas Eve, 1968. I turned on the TV as she lay there bleeding and I saw them Apollo spacemen men showing movin’ pictures of the moon and back to Mother Earth. I heard the one spaceman readin’ from Genesis and talkin’ about all of us on the good earth and I know’d I done right. I kept my hands on her as I watched the spacemen. When the TV program was over I saw the dead hooker’s blood had dripped on my Bible. I know’d that was the blood of the lamb and I’d done Gods work.”

“Then I got the Hell outta that motel, I’ll tell you that, Boy. I know’d I’d done Gods work, but the police wouldn’t a see it that way… Besides, I had my preachin’ work to attend to. Souls to save.”

—Reverend Jimmy B. Tester

Shavers, Spinks, Holmes, and Berbick…

The last fights were as important, as defining, as the early fights. As important as Rome in 1960, as important as Sonny Liston, as Joe Frazier, George Foreman.

Ernie Terrell, 1967, learned his name was not Cassius Clay.

Ali could never retire. Ali had to be whupped. That’s the thing a lot of people never understood. I remember smiling every time he tried. I knew he’d never retire. He couldn’t quit. It wasn’t ego—yes he had a big mouth—but it wasn’t ego. He wasn’t a narcissist, he was beautiful and he knew it.

You don’t climb to champion of the world, not once, but four times, and quit.

You got to be whupped.

I realized last month that I’d blocked out those last five fights. I didn’t want to remember the whupping.

Ernie Shavers was close. Scary close.

Spinks whupped him once, then he came back. I met Spinks. He was a punk. I hated him.

Larry Holmes was tragic. A friend, Holmes beat him bad. It sucked to watch. I remember crying. Larry cried too…

Trevor Berbick—my only reaction was stunned silence.

Trevor Berbick didn’t whup Ali. It was a long march that started with Kenny Norton.

You got to remember the man as he was. From the greatness of Rome to the whupping in Nassau. It was all part of the story. It’s the only way it could have played out.

June 3, 2016… Rest In Peace, Champ.

A lot of people didn’t understand you. They don’t understand the sport. They don’t understand the fight. A lot of us completely understood you.