Each Man's Son

by Hugh Maclennan

  “After Miller, who else do you think you can beat?”

  “If I stay good, I can beat anybody.”

  “I told you to go easy on Wagner,” Moss said. “And look what you did to him. Wagner’s a punch-drunk stumblebum and look how you fought him. Okay. Now Downey’s disgusted. He figured on just so much for your training expenses. Wagner came cheap and now he’s quit. So there’s the picture.”

  Archie bent down and pulled on a shoe. With great deliberation he tied the lace. Then he put on his other shoe and tied the lace of that one and then he got to his feet and faced the trainer. Moss held the roll of bills on the palm of his out-stretched hand while Archie stared at him.

  “Downey’s taking me to New York,” Moss said. “He told me to give you this dough to look after yourself with till the fight.”

  Archie picked the money off Charley’s palm and put it into his pocket. “I whill take this because Downey owes it to me,” he said. “He owes me more than this, too.”

  Skinny in his turtle-necked sweater, his forehead creased with wrinkles, Moss said, “You won’t do yourself any good if you shoot your mouth off to that newspaper guy, either. If you do, Downey will say why aren’t you at Nick’s in New York.”

  “All right. I whill go to Nick’s.”

  “And when you get there Nick won’t have any space for you. Any more than Mooney will have any space here. Take my advice. Live quiet and go out on the roads every day. Downey thinks he has you figured out. Take my advice. Fool Downey and go out on the roads. That’s something he’s not figuring on.”

  Archie stared at him, his eyes beginning to show red around the rims. Then his right hand shot out and caught Moss by the front of his sweater. He twisted the wool into a knot until he had a firm grip on the collar, his knuckles pressing hard on the thin man’s windpipe. Lightly he began to knock Charley’s head against the wall.

  “Now you little bugger, you will lissen to me. I ha? been keeping my mouth shut while I wass bad, but now I am good again and I whill tell you something. Downey iss a son of a whore and you are worse than that. By Chesus, the both of you! You thought I did not know what you wass up to.” The soft Gaelic voice issued from a grim, red-eyed face as Archie continued to emphasize his points by tapping Charley’s head against the plaster. “You little bugger. You are too small for me to be hitting, and Downey iss so fat I would lose my fist in his guts. But by Chesus, I am showing you what I think about you. You can go back to Downey and tell him I whill beat the hell owt of Miller next Friday night. You can tell him the reporter from Newark saw how good I wass and he iss going to put it in hiss paper. After I beat Miller the both of you can go to hell.”

  He released the collar of the sweater and Charley was jaw down and fists up, but Archie stood off on the balls of his feet, watching.

  “You God damn fool,” Moss said finally, and turned away.

  Twelve

  IT WAS SEVERAL HOURS before Archie felt the beginnings of the long loneliness he knew would grow into the final loneliness of the moment before the first gong rang when his seconds would leave the ring and he would be under the lights facing Miller. He moved through the dingy streets of Trenton walking fast on the balls of his feet, occasionally weaving and dancing, so sharp was his edge. He was still intoxicated by the knowledge of how good he had been today and he could think of nothing else. Nothing else mattered beside the great fact that he was good again. The thing was back inside him, the thing that had ridden with him that great night in Providence when he had knocked out Tim O’Leary in three rounds and O’Leary had not once laid a glove on him. This lovely, wonderful thing that enters an athlete occasionally and does his thinking for him, gives him the sweet moment of leisure before every move that makes the move perfect. It was there again.

  He rubbed his clenched right fist into the palm of his left hand and wished to God he were fighting Miller tonight instead of a week from tomorrow. He saw Miller there in front of him–young, swarthy, black-haired, overconfident, a roundhouse slugger made to order for a clean left. As easy to hit as a two-hundred-pound bag. Archie began to laugh aloud.

  He turned a corner into another slum street. The sweat oozing through his pores had already saturated his shirt. He pulled his cloth cap down over his right ear with a remembered gesture of truculence. Since coming to the States he had tried to be what Downey called a dresser, but today he had left his felt hat in the hotel and put on the old cloth workman’s cap that had come with him from Cape Breton. From now on he was going to do things his way.

  Then he remembered his eyes. His fingers probed at the scar tissue on his lower forehead and felt the hard, lacerated scar over his left eye. After Chip had done that to him Archie had apologized to Downey for not winning. By Chesus! And Downey had sent him in against Chip only ten days after the fight when Ryan had opened the cut for the first time. Why? He knew why now. Because Downey was playing with the promoters, and when the promoters had wanted a substitute for a highly advertised fight in Baltimore, Downey had obliged with the eyes of his own fighter. By Chesus, he said again to himself.

  Then he remembered that he was all alone. They thought he was stupid. They knew this was his last chance and he would have to make the most of it. They knew he couldn’t complain or prove to anyone that he was getting a raw deal. He stopped on a corner and gave a twitch to his cap, hoping it made him look tough, but his blue serge suit was too well pressed and there was something too Highland about his features to classify him easily with the middle-European and Sicilian laborers who lived in this district of Trenton.

  Again Packy Miller jumped into his mind’s eye. Miller had shoulders. He had a banging hook, he bulled his way in close and already he had a reputation for being a dirty fighter. Archie grinned. He wasn’t afraid of Miller. It was only a dancer with a fast jab he was afraid of now, not a slugger. His watch showed five o’clock and it was still eight days and maybe five hours before he would actually face Miller. Suddenly he felt frightened. This was one thing they had never done to him before. They had never left him all alone, telling the local gym that he would finish his training in New York and telling him to stay where he was.

  He wondered if he ought to go to New York. If he did, what was to keep them from offering him a new partner and then fixing it for the partner to butt his eyes open before the Miller fight? Archie shook his head. He was unaccustomed to thinking. All he wanted to do was to fight. He decided to stay in Trenton and do what Moss had said. He would go out on the roads every morning. He would keep in condition by shadow-boxing and skipping rope all alone, and his wind and legs would be so good for Miller he would surprise them.

  But the loneliness flooded into him. As he passed the shutter door of a saloon he stopped to look over the top of it. He saw the hats of the men inside and smelled malt and whiskey spills and tobacco smoke and remembered when he had been sent out after supper with the enamel pitcher in his hand to bring home the rum to his father. He remembered his mother dying in the back room of the one-story house, crying over and over to herself, “Och–och–och ay!” because she would never get better and her husband was no good and had shamed her all her life before the neighbors. Archie pulled at his cap and walked away from the saloon. He remembered how he had handled Ed Wagner that morning and his spirits rose. He felt his whole heart lift up and swim on the sudden glow of good feeling and he wanted to share it with somebody.

  “I will ha? a little one,” he said to himself as he turned back. “The good God knows how bad I need it.”

  At the bar, clutching his whiskey glass and looking up at the picture of the naked woman hanging over the mirror, Archie told himself they would be proud of him in Broughton when they got the news of the fight. He stood very still, gripping his glass in a huge hand. After a while he reached inside his coat and took from his pocket a worn piece of paper with ruled lines and a message written in pencil. He spread it out on the bar and hunched over it, guarding it with his hands as he read it again.

&nb
sp; ARCHIE DEAR, the men are all talking about the fight and I hope you win. Alan and I are all alone here and it has been a long time. There is not much money left. Will you come home soon, Archie, for we want you.

  Your wife, MOLLIE

  He kept trying to think and after a time he folded the letter and put it back in his pocket. Then he reached for the glass, saw it was empty and asked the barman for another one. The redness had left his eyes now and he merely looked sad. “She iss too good for the likes of the bitches I know here,” he muttered into the whiskey. He tried to think of her and felt ashamed. Then he thought of her some more. “Oh Chesus, but when she loves a man he knows it!” She wass not a bitch, she wass a lady, she wass his wife, but oh Chesus, when she had loved him!

  He finished the second drink and his face became more Highland and sadder than ever, and now he began to feel truculent. It wass the boy wass the trouble with her, it wass the boy she would never leave. She would always be thinking first of the boy.

  He ordered still another drink and put down half of it. “What does she know about it?” he muttered to the whiskey. “It” was everything he had undergone since leaving home. “It” was Downey and Moss and the gravel-voiced men. “It” was the loneliness. “It” was the crowd roaring for the other man, the man they had bet on to knock him out, and “it” was the answering roar in his own brain saying that if only the good God would clear the blood out of his eyes he would show the crowd what he could do, but always the blood kept blinding him and when he could see again in the dressing room there was nothing better to look at than the sour face of Charley Moss.

  Charley Moss? Maybe he wass wrong in pitching him around today? Charley wass under Downey too. It wass Downey wass the big bastard.

  He looked up and there was the naked woman in the picture smiling especially for him. All naked and smiling down. He began to smile back. “By Chesus!” he said aloud. He studied her thighs. They were half again as large as the slim thighs that curved down from Mollie’s hips. He nudged the man standing nearby and pointed upward with his glass. “That iss a bitch,” he said. He remembered the first time he had seen Mollie. It was the evening after he had first fought and beaten a grown man and she was the daughter of old Rorie MacIntosh who thought so much of himself he would never speak to Archie because Archie’s father was Sandy Long-Hair and no MacIntosh thought any of the Long-Hairs had ever been any good. But that night he had seen Rorie’s daughter for the first time.

  He looked up at the picture again. “There iss other women,” he said.

  The man next to him had moved away and someone else had taken his place. Archie felt that he was being watched sharply, so he turned around to find out who was staring, and then the new man next to him said, “Archie MacNeil, for the love of God. I thought it wass you. Ciamar ha she?”

  Archie answered in Gaelic and the sound of the words made him feel warm, but he still didn’t know who the other man was. He was medium-sized with high Scottish cheekbones, good color in his face and a graying mustache. He looked old-fashioned and proper among the Polish and Italian workmen who were drinking at the bar. Then he said his name was MacLeod–John George MacLeod from Big Bras d’Or and he had worked in the steel plant in Sydney for seven years before coming down to the States for the money.

  It was four years since Archie had listened to a Gaelic accent, and its likeness to his own made him feel suddenly shy. The other Cape Bretoner beckoned to the barman for two more drinks. When they arrived he set one up in front of Archie with an air of some formality.

  “I hope it iss all right, Archie MacNeil, for you to be drinking before a fight?” he said.

  Archie picked up his glass and downed the brown stu?. “I always take a little one when things iss going good.” As he began to smile the grimness left his face and he looked like a boy. “It makes me feel fine.”

  “And what would be the harm in one little drink when you know when to stop? Look at John L. Sullivan, now, what he did, and he neffer knew when to stop at all.” MacLeod turned his back on a hulking Pole who seemed eager to get into the conversation. “There wass a man from Cape Breton knocked out John L. once–did you know that, Archie?”

  “There wass no man in Cape Breton I could not beat, and I am telling you–” Archie shook his head for emphasis. “I would not ha? the weight for John L. John L. could knock a silver dollar into a mahogany bar without brass knuckles, even.”

  “No, it iss true, what I am telling you. And you can go home and ask Magistrate MacKeegan and he will say I am right. Hootie MacDonald from Whycogamagh knocked out John L. Sullivan one night in Boston. He iss Dr. Hootie now, but then he wass a young man and he wass in a place where John L. was boasting he could whip anyone in the world, and that wass too much for Hootie. So he stood up to him. Right there. And when it wass over, it wass John L. wass on the floor.”

  “Och!” said Archie. And a moment later, as MacLeod still looked at him with open eyes waiting to be believed, “Maybe he did and maybe he did not. And maybe John L. wass as drunk as Paddy’s pig. John L. used to say a man wass not drunk when he fell to the floor. He wass only drunk when he began to hold onto it.”

  Archie turned his attention back to the picture of the naked woman. By Chesus, but that wass a fine pair of legs. That wass the woman he wanted, and he wass what a woman like her deserved to have.

  MacLeod’s voice lilted in his ear again. “The Yankees ha? their money on Miller for Friday night and I ha? to laugh. Two days ago I bet on you because I come from Cape Breton and I know what you can do. And look now!” He took a rolled copy of the Newark evening paper from his pocket and pointed to a small paragraph on the sports page. “Look here what it says, and it iss their own paper, too. It says you are so good it iss crazy to give Miller better than even money. On Friday night next week, my glory, but there will be a time!”

  Archie felt the beginning of an annoyance against MacLeod. What did he know about it? It was easy to talk with money. All MacLeod wanted was to boast to the foreigners in his factory that he was from Cape Breton, too.

  “There iss something else you will want to hear,” MacLeod went on, unconcerned with the change in Archie’s mood. “I ha? been down here three months only. So I can tell you that one day before I left Sydney I wass in Broughton and I wass in the store. I saw your wife there, Archie, with the little boy. She wass fitting him to a new pair of shoes.”

  Archie’s fingers tightened on his glass. “What did she look like?” he said.

  “She looked pretty good to me.”

  “And the boy?”

  “He iss getting to be quite a big little bugger, and my glory, but your wife iss proud of him! People ask when you will be coming home to see for yourself.”

  Archie turned on him. “And what business is it of theirs if I come home or not?”

  “It iss none, but they would all like to see you.”

  “By Chesus, nobody can make me go into the mine again!”

  MacLeod picked up his own glass, at last sensing Archie’s rising mood of anger.

  “They can say what they God damn well please,” Archie said hoarsely, “but I whill not go into the mine again. That iss what she wanted and she iss one of those that know how to make you ashamed of yourself. For the sake of the boy she would make an ox out of me, but I saw what she wass after. She iss one of those that will ha? their way by being nice no matter what the hell you do, but by Chesus, it will take more than her, or you either, to get me back to the mine.”

  He picked up his glass, saw that it was empty, and shoved it out of reach on the bar. “They can say what they like. And she can think what she likes. And the little boy can grow as high as the wheels on top of Dominion Number Two, but I whill not go back to the mine again.”

  MacLeod made haste to call for another drink, and when the barman had filled their glasses he again moved one before Archie with careful formality.

  “It wass not the mine I wass talking about,” he said humbly. “I wass not even
thinking about the mine.”

  “There are some that whill live their whole lives like oxes and cows,” Archie muttered. “I am not one of them.”

  “I wass only meaning if maybe you could ha? a fight in Sydney now,” MacLeod put in tentatively. “If you could beat a big Yankee in Sydney–why, there would not be enough tramcars in the whole of Cape Breton to take the men from Broughton to see it, and from Reserve and Glace Bay and Port Morien and New Waterford, moreoffer.”

  Archie’s anger disappeared as suddenly as it had come. “That iss different,” he said gravely.

  “It would be a great day. In Sydney it is hard telling who would make the purse big enough to get a Yankee worth knocking out, but it would be a great day just the same. They think it an awful shame for you to waste your fighting on those that can’t appreciate it down here.”

  Archie raised his glass and poured down the drink in a single gulp. Then he felt the haze spread through him and knew he had taken too much, for he was feeling the beginnings of the sadness even though it was still daylight. It was not unhappiness such as city people know. It was concerned with no one thing in particular, for it was the primitive sadness of his whole race. He began to hum a song, and as MacLeod recognized the tune he joined him, singing the words in a melancholy cadence. Horo ma Nighean Donn Bhoideach, Hiri mo Nighean Donn Bhoideach, mo Chaileag Laglach Bhoideach…

  MacLeod stopped singing in the middle of a bar as he saw Archie’s face rough with the growing redness about his eyes.

  “I whill go home when I am the champion,” said Archie. “I could beat efferybody in Canada, the heavyweights too, and what difference would that make? I could go up to Montreal and knock out that bugger Masson if he would step into the ring with me, and what would the Canadian title be? They think they are better than the Yankees, but I–tell–you…” his fist pounded the bar…“it does not matter how good a man iss up there in Canada, the Yankees ha? got to say so before anybody in Canada will believe it. And that iss why I am going to beat the hell owt of Miller. And after Miller I will beat the hell owt of them all, and I will do it my own way.” He was shouting hoarsely now, his face dark with rage. “Then in Broughton they will not be able to say I am no good and why didn’t I come home sooner.”