cally effective right cross to Bunkerd’s head: one moment Bunkerd was standing, the next he was flat on his stomach. He got up immediately, but seemed dazed for the rest of the round. ‘When the bell rang, his three cornermen leaped into the ring like attendants at some strange car wash: one sprayed water into Bunkerd’s face, another polished him with an enormous sponge, and a third propped his legs on his shoulders and rubbed them with a big, round ice bag. Throughout these ministrations, Bunkerd stared straight ahead, maintaining a philosophical expression. He went on to dominate the fifth round, with a barrage of low kicks and knees. When the last bell rang, both Bilam and Bunkerd knew that they had put on a top notch show: they marched arm in arm around the ring, and Bilam leaned down and kissed Bunkerd on the cheek. The decision was announced, to the apparent delight of both fighters: another draw.

After d been taking classes for about six months, I asked Bunkerd to tell me more about himself “O.K.,” he said. “Tomorrow after class, I tell you about my life.”

But when I came out of the locker room the next day he was nowhere to be seen. Finally, I found him in a corner near the weight machines, peering at himself in the mirror. He was wearing only his shorts, and holding a pair of tweezers.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello,” he replied, glancing at me in the mirror.

“Is now a good time for us to talk?”

“Yes,” he said, and, with great concentration, plucked a hair from his chin.

“Have you had lunch?” I asked, after a brief pause.

“No.”

“May I invite you for lunch?”

“No,” he said. “I’m O.K.” Then, removing another hair: “Thank you.”

It was shaping up like one of those investigations on “Law & Order,” where all the people in New York are so busy that they can talk to the detectives only while operating jackhammers or restoring Renaissance paintings.

“Maybe we can go to a coffee shop?” I suggested.

“We can talk here,” Bunkerd said.

I went to the front desk and pulled up two chairs. Bunkerd appeared a minute later, now wearing a shirt, and sat across from me, setting his tweezers on the desk.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m ready.”

Bunkerd told me that he was born in December, 1962, on the Khorat Plateau, in a provincial city in the northeast called Nakhon Ratchasima. Like many up-country Thais, he was brought up speaking both Lao and Thai. When he was six years old, his family moved to a rice farm in the northeastern province of Chaiyaphum; they travelled on foot, through a jungle inhabited by tigers and snakes. Bunkerd carried his baby brother in one arm and “some pots and pans” in the other. He attended a Chaiyaphum elementary school for four years, until, at the age of eleven, his parents sent him to work at a neighboring farm.

“I go to somebody’s farm. The somebody tell me, ‘Bunkerd do this, Bunkerd do that.’ I have to do everything—I babysit for him, farming, everything. For one year. And he give me fifty baskets rice.” He looked at me expectantly.

“Wow,” I said.

“Fifty baskets, that’s it,” he said. “Five zero. For one year!”

“That’s not very much,” I hazarded.

“No!” he said emphatically.

Bunkerd knew that he wanted to be a boxer from the moment he heard a Muay Thai fight announced on the radio.

“I thought, Oh, wow, this guy is good! I love the fight,” Bunkerd said. Though he hadn’t yet had any formal instruction, he apparently spent the winter months in an uninterrupted brawl with his brothers. “After the rice harvest, we have no work, we do nothing,” he said. ‘We’re farmers, bad kids. We’re sparring all the time!” They had no headgear, so they wore rice baskets on their heads and used towels for gloves.

“Towels?”

Bunkerd nodded. “Like this.” He removed his shirt and wrapped it around his hand. We both regarded his wrapped hand.

“I’m cold,” he said after a moment. He unwrapped his hand and put his shirt back on. As a child, Bunkerd saw real Muay Thai fights only once a year, at a festival after the rice harvest. During the

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