by Bova, Ben
Keeping his eyes on the closest teacher, who was several benches away, Ralph bent down slightly and reached underneath his bench. He pulled and then brought his hand out far enough for Danny to see what was in it.
“Hey!” Danny whispered.
It looked crude but deadly. The pistol grip was a sawed-off piece of pipe. The trigger was wired to a heavy spring. The barrel was another length of pipe.
“Shoots darts,” Ralph whispered proudly. He took a pair of darts from his shirt pocket. They looked to Danny like big lumber nails that had been filed down to needle points.
“You made it all yourself?” asked Danny.
Ralph nodded. He put the darts back in his pocket and tucked the gun inside his shirt. It made a heavy bulge in his clothing.
“Now I got to test it. There’s a spot out in the woods I know. No TV eyes to watch you there. If it works, then tonight I go sailing out of here. Right through the front gate.”
Danny gave a low whistle. “That takes guts.”
“With this,” Ralph said, tapping the gun, “I can do it. Now, you start walking out. I’ll be right behind you. Don’t go too fast. Take it easy, look like everything’s cool. And remember, if you peep one word, I’ll test this piece out on you.”
“Hey, I’m with you,” Danny insisted.
They walked together toward the door, with Ralph slightly behind Danny so that no one could see the bulge in his shirt.
They threaded their way past the work benches, where the other boys were busy on their projects. The two teachers paid no attention to them at all. They got past the last bench and were crossing the final five feet of open floor space to the door.
The door swung shut.
All by itself. It shut with a slam. All the power machinery stopped. The room went dead silent. Danny stopped in his tracks, only two steps from the door. He could hear Ralph breathing just behind him.
“ONE OF THE BOYS AT THE DOOR IS CARRYING SEVERAL POUNDS OF METAL,” said SPECS from a loudspeaker in the ceiling, “I HAVE NO RECORD OF PERMISSION BEING GIVEN TO CARRY THIS METAL AWAY FROM THE SHOP.”
Danny turned and saw all the guys in the shop staring at him and Ralph. The two teachers were hurrying toward them. With a shrug of defeat, Ralph pulled the gun from his shirt and held it out at arm’s length, by the barrel.
One of the teachers, his chunky face frowning, took the gun. “You ought to know better, Malzone.”
Ralph made a face that was half smile, half frown.
“And what’s your name?” the teacher asked Danny. “How do you fit into this? I haven’t seen you in here before.”
“He don’t fit in,” Ralph said, before Danny could answer. “He didn’t know anything about it. I built it all myself. He didn’t even know I had it on me.”
The teacher shook his head. “I still want your name, son.”
“Romano. Danny Romano.”
The second teacher took the gun from the first one, looked it over, hefted it in his hand. “Not a bad job, Malzone. Heavier than it needs to be. Who were you going to shoot?”
“Whoever got between me and the outside.”
The teacher said, “If you’d put this much effort into something useful, you could walk out the front gate, and do it without anyone trying to stop you.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“And, by the way, SPECS won’t let anybody through the door if he’s heavier than he was when he walked in. We’re all standing on a scale, right now. It’s built into the floor.”
“Thanks for telling me,” said Ralph.
“Okay, get out of here,” the teacher said. “And don’t either one of you come back until you’ve squared it with Dr. Tenny.”
Ralph started for the door. It clicked open.
Danny followed him.
Out in the hall, Danny said, “Thanks for keeping me off the hook.”
Ralph shrugged. “And I was afraid you was working for Tenny. With that lousy SPECS, he don’t need no finks.”
“What happens to you now?” Danny asked as they headed for the elevator.
“I’ll get a lecture from Tenny, and for a couple months I’ll have to take special classes instead of shop work.”
“Is that all?”
Ralph stopped walking and looked at Danny. His eyes seemed filled with tears. “No it ain’t all. I thought I’d be out of here tonight. Now I’m further behind the eight ball than ever. I don’t know when I’ll get out. Maybe never!”
Chapter Eleven
Danny worked hard for the next two weeks. He paid attention in classes. He passed his first reading test with SPECS, and Mr. Cochran let him pick out his own books. Danny started reading books about airplanes and rockets.
The arithmetic class with Joe Tenny was almost fun.
“You keep going this well,” Tenny told him, “and I’ll start showing you how to work with SPECS on really tough problems.”
Danny smiled and nodded, and tried not to show how much he wanted to get SPECS to work for him.
Danny worked especially hard in the language class, so that the teacher would let him take one of the class’s pocket tape recorders back to his room. For extra homework.
Sure.
The teacher—a careful, balding old man—said he’d let Danny have the tape recorder “in a little while.”
Afternoons, Danny spent mostly in the gym. He took an asthma pill before every workout, but found that he needed another one after a few minutes of heavy work.
Ralph was still showing him dirty tricks, still telling him to “break Lacey’s head open.” Ralph even got into the ring and sparred with Danny.
And Danny took on a job. He joined the Campus Clean-up Crew. It was a pleasant outdoor job now that the weather had turned warm and the trees were in full leaf. Danny spent two hours each afternoon raking lawns, cutting grass, picking up any litter that the boys left around the campus. And he was also learning to spot the little black boxes lying nearly buried in the ground, the boxes that held the cameras and lasers and alarms for SPECS.
The day before his fight with Lacey, Danny’s language teacher finally let him have a pocket tape recorder. But it was too late to try a breakout before the fight. Danny figured he would need at least a week to get the right words from Joe Tenny onto a tape. Then he’d have to juggle the words onto another tape until he had exactly the right order to give SPECS.
Danny wasn’t looking forward to fighting Lacey. It would have been fine with him if he could have escaped the Center before the fight. But he wasn’t going to back out of it.
Maybe Lacey’ll help get me out of here, Danny thought, with a grim smile. On a stretcher.
Chapter Twelve
The gym had been changed into an arena. All the regular equipment had been put away, the ring dragged out to the center of the gym, and surrounded by folding chairs. All the chairs were filled with teachers and boys who cheered and hollered for their favorite boxers. And they booed the poor ones without mercy.
Danny could hear the noise of the crowd from inside the locker room. Ralph had helped him find a pair of trunks that fit him. They were bright red, with a black stripe. The color of blood, Danny thought. One of the gym teachers wrapped tape around Danny’s hands and helped him into the boxing gloves. Then they fit him with a head protector and mouthpiece.
There were no other boxers in the locker room. Danny’s fight was the last one of the evening. Lacey was getting ready in another locker room, on the other side of the building.
“Now remember,” Ralph whispered to Danny when the teacher left them alone, “get in close, grab him, trip him up, push him off-balance. Then hit him with everything you got! Elbows, head, everything. You got a good punch, so use it.”
Danny nodded.
The crowd roared and broke into applause. He could hear the bell at ringside ringing.
“Okay Romano,” the teacher called from the doorway. “It’s your turn.”
The head protector felt heavy, and clumsy. The mouthpiece taste
s funny, like a new automobile tire might taste, Danny thought.
As he entered the gym a big cheer went up. Danny started to smile, but then saw that the cheering was for Lacey, who was coming toward the ring from the other side of the gym.
As he walked toward the ring, boys hollered at him:
“You’re goin’ to get mashed, Romano!”
“Sock it to him, Danny!”
“Hey, skinny, you won’t last one round!”
Dr. Tenny was standing at the ringside steps. His jacket was off. He was wearing a shortsleeved shirt with no tie.
“All set, Danny?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve checked with the medics. They’re not too happy about you fighting.”
“I’ll be okay.”
“Did you take a pill?” Joe asked.
Nodding, Danny said, “Two of ‘em. Before I left my room.”
“Good. If you need more, I’ve got some right here in my pocket.”
“Thanks. I’ll be okay.”
Joe stepped aside and Danny climbed up into the ring, with Ralph right behind him. The crowd was cheering and booing at the same time. Guess who the cheers are for!
The referee was one of the gym teachers. He called the boys to the center of the ring and gave them a little talk:
“No hitting low, no holding and hitting, no dirty stuff. If I tell you to break it up, you stop fighting and step back. Just do what I tell you, and don’t lose your tempers. Let’s have a good, clean fight.”
They went back to their corners. Danny stood there, alone now, and stared at Lacey. He seemed to be all muscle, all hard and strong.
The bell rang.
Danny couldn’t do anything right. He charged out to the middle of the ring and got his head snapped back by Lacey’s jab. He swung, missed. Lacey moved too fast! Danny tried to follow him, tried to get in close. But Lacey danced rings around him, flicking out jabs like a snake flicks out his tongue. Most of them hit. And hurt.
The crowd was yelling hard. The noise roared in Danny’s ears, like the time he was at the seashore and a wave knocked him down and held him under the water.
Lacey slammed a hard right into Danny’s middle. The air gasped out of Danny’s lungs. He doubled over, tried to grab the Negro. His gloves reached Lacey’s body, but then slipped away. Danny straightened up, turned to find Lacey, and got another stinging left in his face.
It was getting hard to breathe. No, don’t! Danny told himself. Don’t get sick! But his chest was starting to feel heavy. Another flurry of punches to his body made it feel even worse.
Danny finally grabbed Lacey and pulled himself so close that their heads rubbed together.
“You want to dance, baby?” Lacey laughed.
Then, suddenly, he blasted half a dozen punches into Danny’s guts, broke away, and cracked a solid right to Danny’s cheek. Danny felt his knees wobble.
The bell rang.
Ralph was angry. “You didn’t do nothing I told you to! You got to get in close, hold him, butt him!”
Danny gasped, “You try it.”
He sat on the stool, chest heaving. His face felt funny, like it was starting to swell. It stung.
The bell sounded for the second round, and it was more of the same. Lacey was all over the ring, grinning, laughing, popping Danny with lefts and rights. Danny felt as if he was wearing iron boots. He just couldn’t keep up with Lacey. The crowd was roaring so loudly that it hurt his ears. He tasted blood in his mouth. And Lacey kept gliding in on him, peppering him with a flurry of punches, then slipping away before he could return a blow.
Danny’s chest was getting bad now. He was puffing, gasping, unable to get air into his lungs.
It seemed as if an hour had gone by. Finally, Lacey backed into the ropes and Danny made a desperate grab for him. He locked his arms around Lacey, wheezing hard.
“Hey, you sick?” Lacey’s voice, muffled behind the mouth protector, sounded in Danny’s right ear. “You sound like a church organ.”
He pushed Danny away, but instead of hitting him, just tapped his face with a light jab and danced off toward the center of the ring. The crowd booed.
“Finish him!”
“Knock him out, Lacey!”
The bell ended round two.
Joe Tenny was at his corner when Danny sagged tiredly on the stool.
“You’d better take another pill,” he said.
Shaking his head, Danny gasped out, “Naw... I’ll be... okay.... Only one... more round.”
Tenny started to say something, then thought better of it. He went back down the stairs to his seat.
“You got to get him this round!” Ralph hollered in Danny’s ear, over the noise of the crowd. “It’s now or never! When th’ bell rings, go out slow. He thinks he’s got you beat. Soon’s he’s in reach, sock him with everything you’ve got!”
Danny nodded.
The bell rang. Danny pushed himself off the stool. He went slowly out to the middle of the ring, his hands held low. The referee was looking at him in a funny way. Lacey danced out, on his toes, still full of bounce and smiling.
Lacey got close enough and Danny fired his best punch, an uppercutting right, a pistol shot from the hip, hard as he could make it.
It caught Lacey somewhere on the jaw. He went down on the seat of his pants, looking very surprised.
The crowd leaped to its feet, screaming and cheering.
The referee was bending over Lacey, counting. But he got up quickly. His face looked grim, the smile was gone. The referee took a good look into Lacey’s eyes, then turned toward Danny and motioned for him to start fighting again.
Danny managed to take two steps toward Lacey, and then the hurricane hit him. Lacey swarmed all over him, anger and pride mixed with his punches now. He wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t worried about whether Danny might be sick or not. He attacked like a horde of Vikings, battering Danny with a whirlwind of rights and lefts.
Danny felt himself smashed back into the ropes, his legs melting away under him. He leaned against the ropes, let them hold him up. He tried to keep his hands up, to ward off some of the punches. But he couldn’t cover himself. Punches were landing like hail in a thunderstorm.
Through a haze of pain, Danny lunged at Lacey and wrapped his arms around the black waist.
He leaned his face against Lacey’s chest and hung on, his legs feeling like rubber bands.
The crowd was making so much noise he couldn’t tell if Lacey was saying anything to him or not. He felt the referee pull them apart, saw his worried face staring at him.
Danny stepped past the referee and put up his gloved hands to fight. They each weighed a couple of tons. Lacey looked different now, not angry any longer. More like he was puzzled.
They came together again, and again Danny was buried under a rain of punches. Again he grabbed Lacey and held on.
“Go down, dummy!” Lacey yelled into his ear. “What’s holding you up?”
Danny let go with his right arm and tried a few feeble swings, but Lacey easily blocked them. He felt somebody pulling them apart, stepping between them, pushing him away from Lacey. Through blurred eyes, Danny saw the referee raising Lacey’s arm in the victory signal.
Chapter Thirteen
Somebody was helping him back to the stool in his corner. The crowd was still yelling. Danny sat down, his chest raw inside, his body filled with pain.
“The winner, in one minute and nine seconds of the third round... Lacey Arnold!”
Joe Tenny was bending through the ropes, his face close to Danny’s. “You okay?”
Danny didn’t answer.
Another man was beside Joe, frowning. Danny remembered that he was one of the doctors from the hospital.
“Get him back to the locker room,” the doctor said, angry. “I’ll have to give him a shot.”
“Can you stand up?” Ralph’s voice asked from somewhere to Danny’s right. He realized then that he couldn’t see out of his right eye. It was swoll
en shut.
“Yeah... I’m okay....” Danny grabbed the ropes and tried to stand. His legs were very shaky. He felt other people’s arms holding him, helping him to stand.
Lacey was in front of him. “Hey, Danny, you all right?”
“Sure,” Danny said, through swollen lips.
Back in the locker room they sat him on a bench. The doctor stuck a needle into Danny’s leg, and within a few seconds his chest started to feel better.
The doctor growled to Tenny, “You should never have let this boy exert himself like that.”
Joe nodded, his face serious. “Maybe you’re right.”
“I’m okay,” Danny insisted. His chest really felt pretty good now. But his face hurt like fire and he felt more tired than he ever had before in his life.
“This whole business of staging fights is wrong,” the doctor said.
Joe said, “If they don’t fight in the ring, they’ll do it behind our backs. I’d rather have it done under our control. It’s a good emotional outlet for everybody.”
Danny turned to Ralph, who was sitting glumly on the bench beside him. “Guess I didn’t do too good.”
Ralph shrugged and tried to cheer up. “Yeah, he smacked you around pretty good. But that one sock you caught him with was a beauty! Did ya see th’ look on his face when he hit the floor? I thought his eyes was going to pop out!”
Just then Lacey came by, a robe thrown over his shoulders and his gloves off.
“Good fight, Danny. Man, if the ref didn’t stop it when he did, my arms was going to fall off. I hit you with everything! How come you didn’t go down like you’re supposed to?” He was grinning broadly.
“Too dumb,” said Danny.
“Smart enough to deck me,” Lacey shot back. “Got me sore there for half a minute. Well, anyway... good fight.”
Lacey stuck out his right hand. The tape was still wrapped around it. Danny was surprised to see that his own gloves had been taken off by somebody. He looked at his hands for a moment, then grasped Lacey’s. It was the first time he had ever shaken hands with a Negro.
