by W. c. Heinz
I walked into the gym with Herb following me. Cardone was in the ring, boxing with Keener’s other welterweight, and Doc was standing alone near the chairs, watching.
“Did you rest?” I said.
“Yeah. I lay down for a while.”
“You know Eddie’s brother-in-law?”
“I’ve met him,” Doc said, nodding to Herb.
“Say,” Herb said. “What kind of shape is Eddie in?”
“What kind of shape?” Doc said, looking at him.
“That’s right.”
“Lousy shape,” Doc said.
“What?”
“He’s getting in great shape,” I said.
“He’d better be,” Herb said.
“Had he?” Doc said, giving Herb that look.
“Sure he’d better be. He’s fighting a tough fighter. The other guy is some fighter.”
“You think so?” Doc said.
“I certainly do.”
“What business did you once tell me you’re in?” Doc said, giving him that look again.
“Wholesale hardware. Why?”
“Good,” Doc said, and he turned and walked away and I followed him.
“Thanks,” I said.
“For what?”
“Big brother.”
“Isn’t that dreadful?” Doc said.
When Eddie came out, DeCorso and Memphis Kid were with him, and they loosened up for about fifteen minutes with Jay mothering around Eddie. In the ring Eddie went the first round with Keener’s middleweight, just hounding him, and then he worked two with DeCorso, starting to sweat. When DeCorso finished and Memphis Kid climbed in, I got up on the ring apron and stood next to Doc.
“Mind if I join you on the bridge?”
“Any time,” Doc said. “Memphis!”
Jay had finished fingering the Vaseline on Memphis’ face and then he put the mouthpiece in. Eddie was circling the ring, walking around loose-armed, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth, and Memphis walked over to where Doc and I were standing.
“Eddie’ll let you set your own pace,” Doc said to him. “Don’t kill yourself the first day.”
Memphis nodded and then hooked his white rubber mouthpiece out with the thumb of his left glove.
“Don’t worry ’bout me, Mister Doc,” he said. “I keep in shape. I’ll keep his sweat for him.”
“All right,” Doc said to Jay.
“Time!” Jay said, shouting it.
Memphis put the mouthpiece back in and turned and Eddie turned and they boxed the round. Memphis set the pace, not fast but even, moving in and out with that left playing at Eddie and with Eddie making his own moves off it and Memphis catching almost all of them on the elbow or forearm or on one of the big gloves.
“What are you looking for?” Doc said to me.
“Penna.”
I could see Keener watching with Cardone, and Barnum and Booker Boyd standing together and watching and Eddie’s brother-in-law sitting in the front row of chairs, looking up at the two in the ring. I judged that Penna had gone in for his shower.
“What do you want him for?”
“We were trying to convince him that Memphis knows something about fighting. With the big gloves on Memphis, even Penna should be able to see it.”
“Time!” Jay said, shouting it.
Eddie came over, his mouthpiece in his left glove, and Doc took a towel off the top rope and wiped the sweat off Eddie’s face. Jay did the same for Memphis and, with Eddie pacing the ring again, Memphis walked over to us.
“Mister Doc?”
“Yes?”
“I believe I can hit him with the straight right hand.”
“Why don’t you?”
“You want me to try it?”
“What do you think I’ve got you up here for?”
“Yes, sir,” Memphis said, nodding and putting the mouthpiece back in.
“Time!”
“Watch this,” Doc said to me.
“He’s giving a great imitation of the respected champion,” I said, watching.
Memphis was, at that. He was jabbing, then doubling the jab, head-feinting and picking off Eddie’s jabs with the right hand.
“Memphis can imitate any well-known fighter of the last fifteen years,” Doc said. “You name him, and he can ape him.”
As he said it, Memphis let the right hand go. He leaned his upper body a little to his left and let it go straight from the shoulder. When he did, Eddie turned his head so that it just grazed the left side of his headguard and, pivoting back, he drove his own right, hard, under the heart.
“Hold it!” Doc hollered.
The punch had driven Memphis against the ropes and the follow-up hook caught him flush on the cheekbone as his head dropped as Doc hollered. Now Eddie grabbed Memphis under the arms, and Memphis held Eddie and straightened up.
“Now let’s take it easy,” Doc said, calling it to them.
“How’d you like that?” Jay said, walking over to us.
“Fine,” I said.
“Eddie’ll do that to the champion, too. They’ll see who’s a great champion. Eddie is liable to kill him.”
“Watch the time,” Doc said. “How’s the time?”
“Time!” Jay said, shouting it.
“You all right?” Doc said to Memphis.
“I’m all right,” Memphis said, breathing hard and about to crawl through the ropes, but stopping now and straightening up. “He sure did time me, Mister Doc. He’s real sharp.”
“He’ll be sharper.”
“Nobody figures to counter my straight right. They figure to slip it or block it now, but not to counter it. Nobody ever did.”
“All right, Memphis. Thanks.”
Eddie worked only one round on the big bag and one round on the speed bag and then went in to cool out. Doc and I had started out toward the kitchen to avoid Eddie’s brother-in-law, when Penna came after me.
“Hey!” he said. “Eddie wants you. He’s in the dressing room.”
“Where were you when Memphis was boxing?”
“Right under a good old shower.”
“I’ll see you later,” I said to Doc. “Why don’t you buy Herb a drink?”
“I’ll buy him a mickey,” Doc said.
When I got into the dressing room, Eddie and Memphis and DeCorso were having their hot tea. Jay was making a project of picking up around the room.
“Whose towel is this?” he was saying, holding up a towel.
“That’s mine,” DeCorso said.
“How about that punch?” Jay said to me.
“Good.”
“How about it, Memphis?” Jay said.
“Skip it,” Eddie said.
“You want me?” I said to Eddie.
“Sure. I want to finish telling you about the stickball game.”
“Good. I’m listening.”
“We played stickball a lot, and this Tony could hit them a mile. I think it was Tony hit it this day, and it hit the back of this car—a parked car—near where the back slopes up by the back window. It was a rubber ball—you know?—and it took off up into the air. Well, Helen and this other girl—I think her name was Alice—were walking down the sidewalk and we hollered and they looked up and they could see the ball starting to come down. This other girl, she put her arms up over her head, like girls do, but I remember that Helen just stood there, looking up and waiting for that ball, and when it came down she just stuck her hands out and she caught it, just like nothing.”
“How come you’re telling him that?” Jay said.
“Because he asked me if I could remember the first time I ever noticed Helen. That was the first time, when she caught that ball. I remember that all the guys cheered.”
“Thanks, Eddie,” I said.
“Does that help you? I mean, can you use that?”
“I might. Do you, by any chance, remember what Helen was wearing?”
“It was the summertime. I think she had on a light
blue dress.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m just trying to be helpful,” he said.
14
I awakened as soon as the hand turned the knob. It was deep dusk in the room, with the dark green shades drawn, and I was conscious of the rain dripping somewhere outside and then of the light from the bulb in the hall reaching into the room and the silhouette of Jay standing in it and straining to see me.
“You awake?”
“Yes, Jay.”
“It’s still rainin’.”
“So I hear.”
“It’s seven-thirty.”
“Oh?”
“We didn’t go on the road, but we’re goin’ down to the gym. Eddie’s gonna loosen up.”
“Good. I’ll be down.”
“He’s not gonna do anything, just loosen up and skip rope, but you said you wanted to be around, whatever we do.”
“That’s right, Jay.”
“If I was you, I’d sleep.”
“I’ll be down, Jay. Thanks.”
“Okay, but I’ll close this door. Maybe you’ll go back to sleep.”
When he shut the door and the room was darkened again, I lay just listening to the rain. I had left the window open about six inches below the shade, and the rain dripping on the sill sounded like it was falling right in the room.
I wanted to lie there and just listen to it and then, perhaps, fall into sleep again, but after a couple of minutes I got up and found the door and opened it halfway, so that the light from the hall would come in, but not too bright, because I did not want to raise the shades and see the rain. Then I dressed up to the waist and took my towel and soap and went down the hall to the bathroom and then washed and came back and finished dressing.
In the gym Eddie was skipping rope, wearing a gray sweatsuit and his ring shoes. The four ceiling lights were on, up among the red white and blue paper streamers, and Jay was leaning against the bar, the towel over his shoulder, and Doc was sitting on one of the wooden folding chairs near the ring, the two of them watching Eddie.
“What are you doing here?” Doc said, when I walked up to him.
He had on a pair of dark blue trousers and a light blue V-necked sweater and he needed a shave. Sitting there, in the pale mixture of the yellow light from above and the gray light coming through the windows, he looked very old.
“Don’t you remember me? I’m a member of the club, too.”
“You work at this, don’t you?”
“Not any harder than you do.”
“I don’t want him to break the schedule,” Doc said. “I let him sleep an hour longer, but if he doesn’t do something in place of the roadwork and sleeps all morning it’ll throw him all off.”
“Let’s hope we don’t get three or four days of this rain.”
“It’s raining for the other guy, too.”
There is always the other guy. You do not just turn in your corner and walk out and meet a stranger. Even if you never saw him before the weigh-in, you have known him and he has known you for all of this long while, and I watched Eddie and listened to the tick of the rope and the pat of his feet in the big quiet room. Then, in the rhythm of it, my mind moved away from me and I saw the room as from a high, far rafter and in the room the three of us focused upon the one, the one, spring-footed and loose-wristed, sweating in his circular cage of rope and staring, darkly, out through it.
“All right!” Doc hollered to him. “Break it up.”
Eddie gave the rope a half-dozen double-timed whirls, and on the last one turned toward the bar, passed the rope into his right hand and, whirling it a half turn, flung it in an arc toward Jay. Jay put his hands up, and got one hand into it as it hit him and the wooden handles clacked on the floor.
“What are you tryin’ to do, kill me?”
“All right,” Doc said. “Walk around a while.”
I watched Eddie walk, sweating, rotating his head, walking past the bar, rotating his shoulders, making a tour around the chairs in front of the ring and starting the circuit again. When a man runs or walks on the road it is conceivable that he is finding a world bigger than his room, but when he walks in a place like this it is for only one reason, and I tried to picture the other man in his own place but in this same moment.
On such a morning of rain and grayness there in Summit, I wondered, did he lie in bed in one of the bare rooms above and behind the gym on the side of the hill? I wondered if he, too, walked his gym, for it is important. When a match is made what each man does with the same moment is a part of it, just as every act a man has ever performed, every thought he has ever possessed and that made him as he now stands become moves in it, for time has now revealed that these two have been in combat forever.
“All right,” Doc said. “That’s enough of it.”
“Good,” Eddie said, walking over to us. “Hello, Frank.”
“Good morning.”
“You want your tea in your room or down here?” Jay said.
“In the room,” Eddie said. “My clothes are up there.”
He was sitting on the bed now, with just the white terrycloth robe on and a towel around his neck, the hot teacup cradled in both hands, blowing across the top of it and sipping from it.
“What do you think of my brother-in-law?” he said.
“He’s quite a brain,” I said.
“What?”
“He has what they call a good head on his shoulders.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Yes.”
“Who?” Jay said. He was sorting his rolls of gauze and tape again on the table.
“My brother-in-law.”
“What’s the matter with him?”
“You tell me.”
“When he was here yesterday,” Jay said, “he was asking me how many rounds you worked every day since you’re here. He wrote it down in a notebook. He wanted to know how far you run on the road, to write that down, too. What’s he want all that for?”
“Don’t ask me,” Eddie said. “You should have asked him.”
“I make it all now,” I said. “He’s not in wholesale hardware. That’s just a front. He makes book, and he’s getting ready to establish his line on the fight.”
“I can just see that,” Eddie said. “A guy like him.”
“He says to me,” Jay said, “he says: ‘How does he sleep?’ I said: ‘Whatta you mean, how does he sleep? On his back, on his side. I don’t know.’ He says: ‘I mean, does he sleep good all night long.’ So I said: ‘Sure, he sleeps good.’ What does he think I do, sit up all night and watch you sleep?’”
“It reminds me of the second Louis-Walcott fight,” I said.
“What about it?” Eddie said.
“The AP sent a psychiatrist to both camps to analyze the two fighters. Walcott’s people didn’t want to let him talk to Walcott, so he started on Dan Florio. When Fred Gardner and I got out there Dan was blowing his top. He said: ‘You know what the guy asks me?’ We said: ‘What?’ He said: ‘How many times a day does Walcott go to the bathroom? What does the guy think I do here?’”
“What happened then?” Eddie said.
“The last we saw of the psychiatrist, he was sitting at one of those tables under the trees in that kind of a picnic area, interviewing Curtis Hatchet Man Sheppard, who was one of Walcott’s sparring partners.”
“What could he get from him?” Jay said.
“So yesterday,” Eddie said, “we’re sitting there talking, Helen and Herb and me, and he says: ‘Now, if you win, you should have one or two more fights and then retire.’ I said: ‘If I win? Whatta you mean, if I win?’ He says: ‘Well, you know what I mean. The other guy is a good fighter, and accidents can happen.’ I said: ‘Stop it, will you?’
“So Helen says: ‘Don’t get sore.’ I said: ‘Who’s sore?’ So she says: ‘Well, the other fighter feels the same as you do, too. He’s just as sure he’s going to win as you are.’ I said: ‘What? What’s that got to do with it?’”
“
Finish your tea,” Jay said.
“How do you like that?” Eddie said, looking at me.
“I don’t.”
“Why do they act that way?”
“Well, I can’t speak for your brother-in-law.”
“Believe me, nobody has to.”
“I prefer to believe, though, that your wife is just instinctively preparing herself, and you, too, for the possibility that exists in her mind that the other guy, who has a chance to win, might. That’s all it is.”
“When you’re a fighter you never think of that. Believe me, I never once think anybody I fight can lick me, especially this guy in this fight.”
“But your wife isn’t a fighter and, if something goes wrong, she doesn’t want her whole world, and yours, to collapse.”
“Nothing’s going wrong.”
“Of course not, but you asked a question.”
He drank the last of the tea and put the cup down next to the radio on the bed table. He turned on the radio and waited for it to warm up and tuned in music.
“Many’s the time,” he said, “I wished I was in some other business for just that reason. I mean when other guys come home from work they can talk about it with their wives and their wives understand what they go through.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
“You don’t think so?”
“How can they understand? I don’t care what the business is. Unless they’re in it themselves they can’t really understand what it’s like.”
“So Herb says: ‘If you win, have a fight or two and retire.’ Right now I’m fighting the best I ever fought. I win the title, I’m on top. Why retire? I like it. I spent nine years learning the business and he wants me to retire. What else can I do as good as I can fight?”
“I agree,” I said, “but what intrigues me is the thought that probably not one person in the thousands—millions on TV—who watch a fight even thinks that a fighter has a brother-in-law.”
“I suppose they think you just go and fight.”
“That’s right.”
We could hear a pounding on a door or a wall somewhere, and some muffled shouts.
“What’s that?” Jay said, looking around.
“I don’t know,” Eddie said. “Let’s see.”
When we got out into the hall, Doc, in a flannel robe, was opening his door, and Memphis, Booker Boyd and Barnum were coming out of their room. We were all looking at the door to the room where Polo and Schaeffer slept, and wedged across it was a piece of two-by-four, with one end sharpened, that appeared to have been used once as a stake. Wrapped around the stake and around the dooknob, with a glob of knots, was a heavy twist of old clothesline.
