by Joe Meno
“They won’t ever know,” Cooke boasted in a whisper.
I saw Brand stiffen. I knew that he was aching to dispute Cooke’s optimism, but the memory of the fight he had just had was so fresh in his mind that he could not speak.
Another day went by and nothing happened. Then another day. The doctors examined the animals and wrote in their little black books, in their big black books, and continued to trace red and black lines upon the charts.
A week passed and we felt out of danger. Not one question had been asked.
Of course, we four black men were much too modest to make our contribution known, but we often wondered what went on in the laboratories after that secret disaster. Was some scientific hypothesis, well on its way to validation and ultimate public use, discarded because of unexpected findings on that cold winter day? Was some tested principle given a new and strange refinement because of fresh, remarkable evidence? Did some brooding research worker—those who held stop watches and slopped their feet carelessly in the water of the steps I tried so hard to keep clean—get a wild, if brief, glimpse of a new scientific truth? Well, we never heard . . .
I brooded upon whether I should have gone to the director’s office and told him what had happened, but each time I thought of it I remembered that the director had been the man who had ordered the boy to stand over me while I was working and time my movements with a stop watch. He did not regard me as a human being. I did not share his world. I earned thirteen dollars a week and I had to support four people with it, and should I risk that thirteen dollars by acting idealistically? Brand and Cooke would have hated me and would have eventually driven me from the job had I “told” on them. The hospital kept us four Negroes as though we were close kin to the animals we tended, huddled together down in the underworld corridors of the hospital, separated by a vast psychological distance from the significant processes of the rest of the hospital—just as America had kept us locked in the dark underworld of American life for three hundred years—and we had made our own code of ethics, values, loyalty.
PART II
Noir & Neo-NOIR
He Swung and He Missed
by NElSON ALGREN
Lakeview
(Originally published in 1942)
It was Miss Donahue of Public School 24 who finally urged Rocco, in his fifteenth year, out of eighth grade and into the world. She had watched him fighting, at recess times, from his sixth year on. The kindergarten had had no recesses or it would have been from his fifth. She had nurtured him personally through four trying semesters and so it was with something like enthusiasm that she wrote in his autograph book, the afternoon of graduation day, Trusting that Rocco will make good.
Ultimately, Rocco did. In his own way. He stepped from the schoolroom into the ring back of the Happy Hour Bar in a catchweight bout with an eight-dollar purse, winner take all. Rocco took it.
Uncle Mike Adler, local promoter, called the boy Young Rocco after that one and the name stuck. He fought through the middleweights and into the light-heavies, while his purses increased to as much as sixty dollars and expenses. In his nineteenth year he stopped growing, and he married a girl called Lili.
He didn’t win every one after that, somehow, and by the time he was twenty-two he was losing as often as he won. He fought on. It was all he could do. He never took a dive; he never had a setup or a soft touch. He stayed away from whiskey; he never gambled; he went to bed early before every bout and he loved his wife. He fought in a hundred corners of the city. Under a half-dozen managers, and he fought every man he was asked to, at any hour. He substituted, for better men, on as little as two hours’ notice. He never ran out on a fight and he was never put down for a ten-count. He took beatings from the best in the business. But he never stayed down for ten.
He fought a comer from the coast one night and took the worst beating of his career. But he was on his feet at the end. With a jaw broken in three places.
After that one he was hospitalized for three months and Lili went to work in a factory. She wasn’t a strong girl and he didn’t like it that she had to work. He fought again before his jaw was ready, and lost.
Yet even when he lost, the crowds liked him. They heckled him when he was introduced as Young Rocco, because he looked like thirty-four before he was twenty-six. Most of his hair had gone during his layoff, and scar tissue over the eyes made him look less and less like a young anything. Friends came, friends left, money came in, was lost, was saved; he got the break on an occasional decision, and was occasionally robbed of a duke he’d earned. All things changed but his weight, which was 174, and his wife, who was Lili. And his record of never having been put down for ten. That stood, like his name. Which was forever Young Rocco.
That stuck to him like nothing else in the world but Lili.
At the end, which came when he was twenty-nine, all he had left was his record and his girl. Being twenty-nine, one of that pair had to go. He went six weeks without earning a dime before he came to that realization. When he found her wearing a pair of his old tennis shoes about the house, to save the heels of her only decent pair of shoes, he made up his mind.
Maybe Young Rocco wasn’t the smartest pug in town, but he wasn’t the punchiest either. Just because there was a dent in his face and a bigger one in his wallet, it didn’t follow that his brain was dented. It wasn’t. He knew what the score was. And he loved his girl.
He came into Uncle Mike’s office looking for a fight and Mike was good enough not to ask what kind he wanted. He had a twenty-year-old named Solly Classki that he was bringing along under the billing Kid Class. There was money back of the boy, no chances were to be taken. If Rocco was ready to dive, he had the fight. Uncle Mike put no pressure on Rocco. There were two light-heavies out in the gym ready to jump at the chance to dive for Solly Classki. All Rocco had to say was okay. His word was good enough for Uncle Mike. Rocco said it. And left the gym with the biggest purse of his career, and the first he’d gotten in advance, in his pocket: four twenties and two tens.
He gave Lili every dime of that money, and when he handed it over, he knew he was only doing the right thing for her. He had earned the right to sell out as he had sold. The ring owed him more than a C-note, he reflected soundly, and added loudly, for Lili’s benefit, “I’ll stop the bum dead in his tracks.”
They were both happy that night. Rocco had never been happier since Graduation Day.
* * *
He had a headache all the way to City Garden that night, but it lessened a little in the shadowed dressing room under the stands. The moment he saw the lights of the ring, as he came down the littered aisle alone, the ache sharpened once more.
Slouched unhappily in his corner for the windup, he watched the lights overhead sway a little, and closed his eyes. When he opened them, a slow dust was rising toward the lights. He saw it sweep suddenly, swift and sidewise, high over the ropes and out across the dark and watchful rows. Below him someone pushed the warning buzzer.
He looked through Kid Class as they touched gloves, and glared sullenly over the boy’s head while Ryan, the ref, hurried through the stuff about a clean break in the clinches. He felt the robe being taken from his shoulders, and suddenly, in that one brief moment before the bell, felt more tired than he ever had in a ring before. He went out in a half-crouch and someone called out, “Cut him down, Solly.”
He backed to make the boy lead, and then came in long enough to flick his left twice in the teeth and skitter away. The bleachers whooped, sensing blood. He’d give them their money’s worth for a couple rounds, anyhow. No use making it look too bad.
In the middle of the second round he began sensing that the boy was telegraphing his right by pulling his left shoulder, and stepped in to trap it. The boy’s left came back bloody and Rocco knew he’d been hit by the way the bleachers began again. It didn’t occur to him that it was time to dive; he didn’t even remember. Instead, he saw the boy telegraphing the right once more and the left protecting the
heart slipping loosely down toward the navel, the telltale left shoulder hunching—only it wasn’t down, it wasn’t a right. It wasn’t to the heart. The boy’s left snapped like a hurled rock between his eyes and he groped blindly for the other’s arms, digging his chin sharply into the shoulder, hating the six-bit bunch out there for thinking he could be hurt so soon. He shoved the boy off, flashed his left twice into the teeth, burned him skillfully against the middle rope, and heeled him sharply as they broke. Then he skittered easily away. And the bell.
Down front, Mike Alder’s eyes followed Rocco back to his corner.
Rocco came out for the third, fighting straight up, watching Solly’s gloves coming languidly out of the other corner, dangling loosely a moment in the glare, and a flatiron smashed in under his heart so that he remembered, with sagging surprise, that he’d already been paid off. He caught his breath while following indifferent gloves, thinking vaguely of Lili in oversize tennis shoes. The gloves drifted backward and dangled loosely with little to do but catch light idly four feet away. The right broke again beneath his heart and he grunted in spite of himself; the boy’s close-cropped head followed in, cockily, no higher than Rocco’s chin but coming neckless straight down to the shoulders. And the gloves were gone again. The boy was faster than he looked. And the pain in his head settled down to a steady beating between the eyes.
The great strength of a fighting man is his pride. That was Young Rocco’s strength in the rounds that followed. The boy called Kid Class couldn’t keep him down. He sat down in the fourth, twice in the fifth, and again in the seventh. In that round he stood with his back against the ropes, standing the boy off with his left in the seconds before the bell. He had the trick of looking impassive when he was hurt, and his face at the bell looked as impassive as a catcher’s mitt.
Between that round and the eighth Uncle Mike climbed into the ring beside Young Rocco. He said nothing. Just stood there looking down. He thought Rocco might have forgotten. He’d had four chances to stay down and he hadn’t taken one. Rocco looked up. “I’m clear as a bell,” he told Uncle Mike. He hadn’t forgotten a thing.
Uncle Mike climbed back into his seat, resigned to anything that might happen. He understood better than Young Rocco. Rocco couldn’t stay down until his knees would fail to bring him up. Uncle Mike sighed. He decided he liked Young Rocco. Somehow, he didn’t feel as sorry for him as he had in the gym.
I hope he makes it, he found himself hoping. The crowd felt differently. They had seen the lean and scarred Italian drop his man here twenty times before, the way he was trying to keep from being dropped himself now. They felt it was his turn. They were standing up in the rows to see it. The dust came briefly between. A tired moth struggled lamely upward toward the lights. And the bell.
Ryan came over between rounds, hooked Rocco’s head back with a crooked forefinger on the chin, after Rocco’s Negro handler had stopped the bleeding with collodion, and muttered something about the thing going too far. Rocco spat.
“Awright, Solly, drop it on him,” someone called across the ropes.
It sounded, somehow, like money to Rocco. It sounded like somebody was being shortchanged out there.
But Solly stayed away, hands low, until the eighth was half gone. Then he was wide with a right, held and butted as they broke; Rocco felt the blood and got rid of some of it on the boy’s left breast. He trapped the boy’s left, rapping the kidneys fast before grabbing the arms again, and pressed his nose firmly into the hollow of the other’s throat to arrest its bleeding. Felt the blood trickling into the hollow there as into a tiny cup. Rocco put his feet together and a glove on both of Kid Class’s shoulders, to shove him sullenly away. And must have looked strong doing it, for he heard the crowd murmur a little. He was in Solly’s corner at the bell and moved back to his corner with his head held high, to control the bleeding. When his handler stopped it again, he knew, at last, that his own pride was double-crossing him. And felt glad for that much. Let them worry out there in the rows. He’d been shortchanged since Graduation Day; let them be on the short end tonight. He had the hundred—he’d get a job in a garage and forget every one of them.
It wasn’t until the tenth and final round that Rocco realized he wanted to kayo the boy—because it wasn’t until then that he realized he could. Why not do the thing up the right way? He felt the tiredness fall from him like an old cloak at the notion. This was his fight, his round. He’d end it like he’d started, as a fighting man. And saw Solly Kid Class shuffling his shoulders forward uneasily. The boy would be a full-sized heavy in another six months. He bullied him into the ropes and felt the boy fade sidewise. Rocco caught him off balance with his left, hook-fashion, into the short ribs. The boy chopped back with his left uncertainly, as though he might have jammed the knuckles, and held. In a half-rolling clinch along the ropes, he saw Solly’s mouthpiece projecting, slipping halfway in and halfway out, and then swallowed in again with a single tortured twist of the lips. He got an arm loose and banged the boy back of the ear with an overhand right that must have looked funny because the crowd laughed a little. Solly smeared his glove across his nose, came halfway in and changed his mind, left himself wide, and was almost steady until Rocco feinted him into a knot and brought the right looping from the floor with even his toes behind it.
Solly stepped in to let it breeze past, and hooked his right hard to the button. Then the left. Rocco’s mouthpiece went spinning in an arc into the lights. Then the right.
Rocco spun halfway around and stood looking sheepishly out at the rows. Kid Class saw only his man’s back; Rocco was out on his feet. He walked slowly along the ropes, tapping them idly with his glove and smiling vacantly down at the newspapermen, who smiled back. Solly looked at Ryan. Ryan nodded toward Rocco. Kid Class came up fast behind his man and threw the left under the armpit flush onto the point of the chin. Rocco went forward on the ropes and hung there, his chin catching the second strand, and hung on an on, like a man decapitated.
* * *
He came to in the locker room under the stands, watching the steam swimming about the pipes directly overhead. Uncle Mike was somewhere near, telling him he had done fine, and then he was alone. They were all gone then, all the six-bit hecklers and the iron-throated boys in the sixty-cent seats. He rose heavily and dressed slowly, feeling a long relief that he’d come to the end. He’d done it the hard way, but he’d done it. Let them all go.
He was fixing his tie, taking more time with it than it required, when she knocked. He called her to come in. She had never seen him fight, but he knew she must have listened on the radio or she wouldn’t be down now.
She tested the adhesive over his right eye timidly, fearing to hurt him with her touch, but wanting to be sure it wasn’t loose.
“I’m okay,” he assured her easily. “We’ll celebrate a little ’n forget the whole business.” It wasn’t until he kissed her that her eyes avoided him; it wasn’t till then that he saw she was trying not to cry. He patted her shoulder.
“There’s nothin’ wrong, Lil’—a couple days’ rest ’n I’ll be in the pink again.”
Then saw it wasn’t that after all.
“You told me you’d win,” the girl told him. “I got eight-to-one and put the whole damn bankroll on you. I wanted to surprise you, ’n now we ain’t got a cryin’ dime.”
Rocco didn’t blow up. He just felt a little sick. Sicker than he had ever felt in his life. He walked away from the girl and sat on a rubbing table, studying the floor. She had sense enough not to bother him until he’d realized what the score was. Then he looked up, studying her from foot to head. His eyes didn’t rest on her face: they went back to her feet. To the scarred toes of the only decent shoes; and a shadow passed over his heart. “You got good odds, honey,” he told her thoughtfully. “You done just right. We made ’em sweat all night for their money.” Then he looked up and grinned. A wide, white grin.
That was all she needed to know it was okay after all. She went to him so h
e could tell her how okay it really was.
That was like Young Rocco, from Graduation Day. He always did it the hard way; but he did it.
Miss Donahue would have been proud.
I’ll Cut Your Throat Again, Kathleen
by FREDERIC BROWN
Magnificent Mile
(Originally published in 1948)
I heard the footsteps coming down the hall and I was watching the door—the door that had no knob on my side of it—when it opened.
I thought I’d recognized the step, and I’d been right. It was the young, nice one, the one whose bright hair made so brilliant a contrast with his white uniform coat.
I said, “Hello, Red,” and he said, “Hello, Mr. Marlin. I—I’ll take you down to the office. The doctors are there now.” He sounded more nervous than I felt.
“How much time have I got, Red?”
“How much—oh, I see what you mean. They’re examining a couple of others ahead of you. You’ve got time.”
So I didn’t get up off the edge of the bed. I held my hands out in front of me, backs up and the fingers rigid. They didn’t tremble anymore. My fingers were steady as those of a statue, and about as useful. Oh, I could move them. I could clench them into fists slowly. But for playing sax and clarinet they were about as good as hands of bananas. I turned them over—and there on my wrists were the two ugly scars where, a little less than a year ago, I’d slashed them with a straight razor. Deeply enough to have cut some of the tendons that moved the fingers.
I moved my fingers now, curling them inward toward the palm, slowly. The interne was watching.
“They’ll come back, Mr. Marlin,” he said. “Exercise—that’s all they need.” It wasn’t true. He knew that I knew he knew it, for when I didn’t bother to answer, he went on, almost defensively, “Anyway, you can still arrange and conduct. You can hold a baton all right. And—I got an idea for you, Mr. Marlin.”
