Moss took the cigarette from his lips and threw it on the floor. A fragment of torn paper adhered to his lower lip and he rubbed it off as he scowled in irritation.
“It wass Downey I wass sore at,” Archie said, a note of pleading in his voice.
“Maybe. But it was me you took it out on.”
“I said I wass sorry.”
“I heard you the first time.” The harsh voice went on. “Maybe I hate your guts, but no boy I ever trained is going to let himself get stopped by that Polack. I told Downey tonight I was through with him.” He scowled at Archie. “A hell of a lot I got you to thank for!”
Archie squinted at the door as he heard the noise of rhythmic clapping from the crowd. This was the second preliminary the crowd had booed. By the time he got up there under the lights the crowd would be in a bad mood.
“What kind of shape are you in?” said Moss.
“This heat iss terrible.”
“It’s the same for Miller as it is for you.”
“He iss used to it. My legs iss like putty already.”
“They were good enough a week ago.” Moss looked him over with narrow eyes. “You bastard! I bet you couldn’t leave the women alone.”
“I wass all by myself for a week.”
Moss lifted his lip. “Just like Downey figured it! You got anything left, or did you leave it where you left your brains?”
“It iss not that. I want my wife to come here, but she hass not answered my letter.”
“She’s a smart girl.”
“It iss four years since I ha? seen her.”
“All right. Forget her.” Moss got to his feet and his thin little body became tense and alert. “Now you listen. Tonight you get it into your head you got nuttin to lose. You’re so low down right now no matter what happens to you, you lose nuttin. Do you know how big that crowd is out there? Less than two thousand people. That’s how low you are. They don’t think you’re even good enough to give their boy a workout.” Moss stood over Archie. “Okay–hate them!” He put the palm of his hand on the lower part of Archie’s face and rubbed it up so roughly that Archie sat up and the angry redness showed in his eyes. “All you got to do now is listen,” Moss added as he watched Archie closely. “No boy I train is going to be taken by that Polack.”
Archie was still staring at him as Moss opened the palm of his left hand where the stop watch usually rested. Now it held a pearl-handled penknife. He opened it and the blade he pulled out was less than an inch long, slim and tapered to a needle point. He held it flat on the palm of his hand.
“Tonight you’re going to do what you’re told. You’re going to keep that left of yours pumping into his puss till I tell you to cut loose with the right. When he comes into you, you’re going to move away from him. If you step in and mix it right away–” Moss jabbed the knife in sharp thrusts towards Archie’s groin–“I’ll stick this into your ass the minute you come back to the stool. You’re going to box and keep out of clinches and watch for his thumbs. In this crowd Miller could chew your ears off and they’d love it. To hell with the heat. You got a left and he hasn’t. Any fool with a left like yours can crucify a roundhouse slugger if he keeps his head, and you don’t even have to do that. All you got to do is what I tell you. Now lie back and rest.”
Archie closed his eyes. After the loneliness it felt good to know there was someone who was looking after him. Charley Moss was his friend after all and tonight he would make Charley proud of him. The horse blanket chafed his back and he turned restlessly. Then he sat up and slid off the table and poised himself on the balls of his feet, snapping punches into the air in an effort to build up his tensions. Moss eyed him critically and his forehead wrinkled.
“Okay,” he said. “Save it. You don’t have to work up a sweat tonight.”
“It iss too hot to lie down.”
Archie crossed the room to a row of hooks and fumbled in the pocket of a jacket hanging from one of them. He came back with a snapshot in his hand and held it out to Moss.
“That iss the boy,” he said.
Moss squinted at the picture through the smoke of his cigarette. “Yeh. He’s a nice looking kid.”
“He iss why my wife will not come to me.”
Moss handed the snapshot back and shrugged. “Women are only good for one thing. It’s something to remember.” He turned to the table. “Come here under the light. It’s time for the bandages.”
Archie held out his right hand and Moss wound the bandage over the knuckles and wrists with expert care. Then he bandaged the left and Archie clenched his fists and knocked the bandages solid until they seemed like parts of his hands. The door opened with a creak of rusty hinges and one of the semifinal boys came in, followed by the bald-headed seconds supplied by the arena. The fighter’s right eye had a mouse under it and his nose was bleeding, but he was pleased because he had won the decision.
Moss picked up a faded green dressing gown with ARCHIE MAC NEIL in a flourish of white letters on the back, and Archie put it on.
“Okay,” Moss said, “let’s go.”
“I whill do my best, Charley.”
“You better had. It’s all you got left.”
As they went out and down the sloping concrete aisle the circus roar of the crowd pounded against the steamy walls of the arena. The crowd was in darkness and suddenly the familiar roar came out of it savagely. But it was not for them; it was for Packy Miller, who had entered the ring from the other side and was dancing about, caparisoned in a shiny black silk dressing gown, shaking hands with himself and showing his grin. Archie looked at this exhibition with scorn. He crawled through the ropes and went straight to his corner, and his back was turned when Miller cavorted over to give him some more of his grin and slap his shoulders with his bandaged hand.
“Get back where you belong,” Moss snarled at him, “before I paste you one myself.”
Miller’s theatrical grin changed to an equally theatrical scowl and Moss turned back to Archie, well pleased. “That’ll bring the bastard out fast,” he muttered.
Archie sat down and let Moss massage his legs. Under the lights it was even hotter than he had expected and he hoped he would not have long to wait. At the same time he found it was easy to sit down. Across the ring Miller was dancing and scuffing his toes in the resin, snapping punches at the air and jumping backwards into the ropes and coming off them with his chin down and his arms driving. Archie opened his mouth wide and yawned to fill his lungs. He felt old. Once he had danced around like that before a fight but now he felt none of the old tension. He wanted to knock Miller out and go home. He wanted to sleep in cool air. He realized that an announcer with a voice like a hog caller’s was baying his name, weight and birthplace, and he got up and bowed curtly. The only applause he got was the sound of shuffling feet, but he was used to being unpopular and did not care. It was fully two years since he had fought with a crowd behind him. When Miller’s name was bayed, the mob roared.
Archie got up and stood erect, then walked to the center of the ring with Moss beside him to listen to the automatic instructions of the referee. Before they turned back to their corners Moss needled Miller once again and Miller made a rush at him which was blocked by the referee. Then Archie was alone in his corner waiting for the gong, with Charley’s salt-and-pepper hair sticking up over the apron at his feet and Charley’s voice snarling at him to keep his left going. In the opposite corner Miller was acting as though he needed all his will power to keep from exploding.
Suddenly Archie felt better. Miller was going to come out fast and he would nail him. He was going to win this for Charley Moss. He loved Charley Moss, by Chesus, he did. Looking sideways he saw Sam Downey’s pale noseless face for the first time that night. Downey was in the middle of the front row with a cigar in his hand. Archie stared at him and licked the back of his right glove, then the gong rang and he slid forward, saw Miller rushing with his chin down and drove his left into the swarthy face, followed it with a short righ
t to the body that spun Miller halfway around, knocked him back with another left, danced, feinted and split Miller’s lips with a left as straight as a piston. He saw the whole face as exposed as a full moon, heard Charley’s scream behind him and let go with the right. It smashed in solid and the next thing he saw was Miller on his haunches with a line of blood trickling out of the corner of his open mouth.
He stepped back and felt the ropes chafe his spine. By Chesus, it couldn’t be as easy as that!
Then he saw Miller on one knee holding his right glove down on the canvas and he knew he was coming up and was still strong. He saw Miller’s grin indicating to the crowd that he was all right and remembered the measurement of his neck. But in spite of that size-eighteen neck, Miller took a count of nine before he got up and Archie saw, as he slid forward, that the Pole’s eyes were none too steady. He snapped a left into his face and liked the feel of its impact, but immediately Miller went into a crouch with nothing showing but arms, elbows, gloves and the top of his head. Archie crossed his right and felt a stab of pain and wondered if he had broken a knuckle on Miller’s skull. He slammed another right into the pork-barrel body and felt pain again, but he did not believe he had broken any bones in his hand. He decided to work over Miller methodically, but the pork-barrel body exploded against him and his head snapped back in a cloud of stars as Miller butted his jaw in the clinch. Archie felt ashamed to be caught by a butt in the first round, shook loose and went after Miller in a rage. He found nothing but arms and elbows and he seemed to have been punching for hours before the gong ended the round.
“You crazy bastard”–Moss was snarling into his ear–“quit slugging and box him!”
“Work on my legs,” Archie muttered. “They feel like they wass nothing in them.”
He felt Charley’s skillful fingers kneading his calves, but there was no sign of returning life. By Chesus, wass this the time they all waited for, the time the legs went? He told himself he must be careful, but in the next round he let himself be lured into another flurry which ended with Miller wrestling him hard against the ropes. He kept snapping his left into the face in the third round and in the fourth Miller missed such a theatrical swing that he fell down with the momentum of his own blow. By the end of the fourth Archie was well ahead on points and Miller had failed to land a single solid punch. But Archie came back to his corner shaking his head.
“He iss still strong.”
“Keep your left going,” Moss muttered. “That’s all you got to do.”
“By Chesus, I feel like there iss nothing inside of me whateffer.”
“Maybe there ain’t, but there’s enough for tonight. This bum is worse than I thought he was.” Moss looked down at Downey in the front row and jerked his thumb towards Miller’s corner. “How do you like him?” he snarled, so loudly that men three rows behind Downey heard him.
Through a haze of sweat Archie saw the pork-barrel body opposite and could almost feel its strength across the ring. There were six rounds left and he was so tired his loose legs were quivering. That neck on Miller, by Chesus it wass not a neck at all. His head grew out of his shoulders like a gorilla’s.
Archie was thinking about the neck when Miller got into a series of clinches in the next round and he had to keep his head off his chin. It was a bad round of boxing without a single clean punch, but when Archie came back to his corner he told himself desperately that the fight was half over and he was still ahead. He felt water splash over his face and shoulders and gulped for air, but the harder he fought for it the less air there seemed to be. Suddenly Charley’s face was right there in front of his eyes and Charley was telling him to go in and finish it this round. The gong rang and he did not move. He felt a stab of pain in his left buttock and sprang up from the prod of Charley’s penknife and for a moment his head cleared.
Miller was in front of him, chin down as usual, forehead wrinkled, black curly hair sodden with sweat. Archie’s left shot out and cut Miller’s eye. Another and another left, and Miller staggered back with Archie feline and lethal after him. There was a surge from the crowd, a surge like the noise of water when the tide turns, and Archie knew that support was coming to him at last. Miller heard it too, and in one single lucid moment Archie had time to think what a fool this boy was, for though he had just been shaken, Miller picked this moment to charge. Archie’s left flashed out and landed solid. With Miller rushing, that shot would have been decisive if there had been any real snap behind the glove. As it was, it stopped Miller upright and glassy-eyed and the right followed with all Archie had left flickering up through his legs and shoulders and coming out with a bang on Miller’s jaw. Archie stepped back with trembling knees and a white coldness clamping his forehead and knew he was through. Miller rolled heavily on the floor and got his elbows under his chest. The referee was counting as slowly as he could and get away with it. Miller tottered up, turned his back on Archie and grabbed the ropes with both hands. Archie went after him and for several seconds stood there, his brain clouded, not knowing what to do, no reflexes working as he found himself confronted by Miller’s back. He swung his right and it landed feebly on Miller’s hulking shoulders. Then Miller bent down like a crab, lurched around, grabbed Archie by the waist and hung on. By the time the clinch was broken, he was at least as fresh as Archie was. The round petered out in fumbles and clinches and Archie’s legs were weaving when he went back to his corner.
“My luck iss run out on me!” he gasped to Charley Moss and began rolling his head for air.
It was two rounds later before Miller was sufficiently recovered to make a fight of it, two rounds in which the men had lurched around the ring while the crowd booed them. Now Miller was strong again. He wrestled Archie against the ropes and got in four slugging body slams. As Archie staggered, Miller kept after his body, clinched again and savaged the scar tissue over Archie’s eyes with the palm of his glove. If Miller was in front of him now, Archie did not know it. The roar of the crowd was something he remembered having heard a long time ago. He saw nothing but the red haze which kept renewing itself in front of his eyes and he felt hardly any pain from the reverberating shocks pounding against his ribs and stomach and the sides of his head. Even now Miller was unable to land a clean punch, but the pounding told. When Archie went down he seemed to be taking an endless time about it. As he lay on a heaving sea he heard a voice screaming that he was yellow. He crawled up out of the tumbling waters and a renewed reverberation told him he was on his feet again, but everything faded out quickly this time. A round later, when he foundered finally into the red thunder inside his own head, he had no knowledge of the fact that he had gone to the floor seven times and come up seven times before he fell for the eighth and last time.
In the front row under the lights, in the heat, smell and roar of noise, Sam Downey stared up at Charley Moss with his little mouth making a circle like a baby’s as he sucked on his cigar. Three seats down the row a red-faced reporter leaned towards him and yelled, “What did you bastards do–dope him?”
Downey turned his noseless face and lifted his pudgy hands in a gesture of resigned disappointment. He took the cigar from his mouth and pointed it at the glaring lights over the ring.
“It’s hot in here,” he piped. “Archie comes from a cold country. He never could fight in heat like this.”
Eighteen
NEXT MORNING in the Broughton hospital Ainslie remembered to look at the sports page of the paper. He read the brief account of the fight before Collie McCuen came into the common room and began to rage about what a sordid spectacle it had been, adding that if Archie had been properly handled he could have beaten Jack Dillon.
Ainslie had no idea who Jack Dillon was. He tossed the paper onto the table and put on a fresh gown as he wondered why it mattered to anyone but speculators who won a prize fight. In the operating room he forgot about Archie MacNeil and about everything else but the condition of the gall bladder from which he was removing three stones.
In
the rest of Broughton men talked over the fight on their way down in the cages and behind counters. None of them could understand how a man could be so superior to his opponent and still be beaten like that. They felt the luck must have been against him, a superstition which more or less satisfied them all. It made them feel at one with Archie because they knew that luck was certainly working against themselves.
Breakfast was scarcely over before Alan discovered that something was wrong. Mrs. MacDonald came in from next door and spoke to his mother in the parlor and they talked in voices so low he could not hear what they said. When they returned to the kitchen he could see that his mother was not only afraid but was also very sad and he knew it was because of his father. She never looked that way except when it was about his father. It was the same way Mrs. O’Connor had looked when her husband was killed in the pit.
Then Angus the Barraman came in and his presence made Alan sure that something terrible had happened, for he should have been down in the pit at this hour. A few minutes later they were joined by old Mr. MacIvor who had not been inside their house for more than a year. Alan stood by the kitchen window pretending to look out while he listened. Angus the Barraman said something and he heard his mother shushing him and Angus stopped what he was saying in mid-sentence. Then she touched Alan on the shoulder and led him into the parlor. She took a book of pictures and laid it on the table before him, but it was a book he had looked at so often he knew it by heart.
“Now be a good boy and stay in here. We have things to talk about together and you are not old enough to understand.”
When she went out she closed the door behind her and Alan heard the kitchen door close, too. He crossed to the window and looked out, feeling the fear grip the inside of his stomach. It was a lovely day after a night of rain and the sun was shining over wet ground. A stalk of wild grass was bearded with raindrops glistening like rainbows in the sun, but his fear prevented him from enjoying them. He left the window and opened the parlor door without a sound, tiptoed to the kitchen door and put his ear against the crack to listen. Angus the Barraman was talking, and his voice was more lugubrious than usual.
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