“They’re friends of his,” John said.
“He’s pretty bad,” I said.
“What’s the matter with him?”
“He don’t sleep.”
“Hell,” said John. “That Irishman could never sleep.”
“He isn’t right,” I said.
“Hell,” John said. “He’s never right. I’ve had him for ten years and
he’s never been right yet.”
The fellows who were with him laughed.
“I want you to shake hands with Mr. Morgan and Mr. Steinfelt,” John
said. “This is Mr. Doyle. He’s been training Jack.”
“Glad to meet you,” I said.
“Let’s go up and see the boy,” the fellow called Morgan said.
“Let’s have a look at him,” Steinfelt said.
We all went upstairs.
“Where’s Hogan?” John asked.
“He’s out in the barn with a couple of his customers,” I said.
“He got many people out here now?” John asked.
“Just two.”
“Pretty quiet, ain’t it?” Morgan said.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s pretty quiet.”
We were outside Jack’s room. John knocked on the door. There wasn’t any
answer.
“Maybe he’s asleep,” I said.
“What the hell’s he sleeping in the daytime for?”
John turned the handle and we all went in. Jack was lying asleep on the
bed. He was face down and his face was in the pillow. Both his arms were
around the pillow.
“Hey, Jack!” John said to him.
Jack’s head moved a little on the pillow. “Jack!” John says, leaning
over him. Jack just dug a little deeper in the pillow. John touched him
on the shoulder. Jack sat up and looked at us. He hadn’t shaved and he
was wearing an old sweater.
“Christ! Why can’t you let me sleep?” he says to John.
“Don’t be sore,” John says. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“Oh no,” Jack says. “Of course not.”
“You know Morgan and Steinfelt,” John said.
“Glad to see you,” Jack says.
“How do you feel, Jack,” Morgan asks him.
“Fine,” Jack says. “How the hell would I feel?”
“You look fine,” Steinfelt says.
“Yes, don’t I,” says Jack. “Say,” he says to John. “You’re my manager.
You get a big enough cut. Why the hell don’t you come out here when the
reporters was out! You want Jerry and me to talk to them?”
“I had Lew fighting in Philadelphia,” John said.
“What the hell’s that to me?” Jack says. “You’re my manager. You get a
big enough cut, don’t you? You aren’t making me any money in
Philadelphia, are you? Why the hell aren’t you out here when I ought to
have you?”
“Hogan was here.”
“Hogan,” Jack says. “Hogan’s as dumb as I am.”
“Soldier Bathlett was out here wukking with you for a while, wasn’t he?”
Steinfelt said to change the subject.
“Yes, he was out here,” Jack says. “He was out here all right.”
“Say, Jerry,” John said to me. “Would you go and find Hogan and tell him
we want to see him in about half an hour?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Why the hell can’t he stick around?” Jack says. “Stick around, Jerry.”
Morgan and Steinfelt looked at each other.
“Quiet down, Jack,” John said to him.
“I better go find Hogan,” I said.
“All right, if you want to go,” Jack says. “None of these guys are going
to send you away, though.”
“I’ll go find Hogan,” I said.
Hogan was out in the gym in the barn. He had a couple of his health-farm
patients with the gloves on. They neither one wanted to hit the other,
for fear the other would come back and hit him.
“That’ll do,” Hogan said when he saw me come in. “You can stop the
slaughter. You gentlemen take a shower and Bruce will rub you down.”
They climbed out through the ropes and Hogan came over to me.
“John Collins is out with a couple of friends to see Jack,” I said.
“I saw them come up in the car.”
“Who are the two fellows with John?”
“They’re what you call wise boys,” Hogan said. “Don’t you know them
two?”
“No,” I said.
“That’s Happy Steinfelt and Lew Morgan. They got a pool-room.”
“I been away a long time,” I said.
“Sure,” said Hogan. “That Happy Steinfelt’s a big operator.”
“I’ve heard his name,” I said.
“He’s a pretty smooth boy,” Hogan said. “They’re a couple of
sharpshooters.”
“Well,” I said. “They want to see us in half an hour.”
“You mean they don’t want to see us until a half an hour?”
“That’s it.”
“Come on in the office,” Hogan said. “To hell with those sharpshooters.”
After about thirty minutes or so Hogan and I went upstairs. We knocked
on Jack’s door. They were talking inside the room.
“Wait a minute,” somebody said.
“To hell with that stuff,” Hogan said. “When you want to see me I’m down
in the office.”
We heard the door unlock. Steinfelt opened it.
“Come on in, Hogan,” he says. “We’re all going to have a drink.”
“Well,” says Hogan. “That’s something.”
We went in. Jack was sitting on the bed. John and Morgan were sitting on
a couple of chairs. Steinfelt was standing up.
“You’re a pretty mysterious lot of boys,” Hogan said.
“Hello, Danny,” John says.
“Hello, Danny,” Morgan says and shakes hands.
Jack doesn’t say anything. He just sits there on the bed. He ain’t with
the others. He’s all by himself. He was wearing an old blue jersey and
pants and had on boxing shoes. He needed a shave. Steinfelt and Morgan
were dressers. John was quite a dresser too. Jack sat there looking
Irish and tough.
Steinfelt brought out a bottle and Hogan brought in some glasses and
everybody had a drink. Jack and I took one and the rest of them went on
and had two or three each.
“Better save some for your ride back,” Hogan said.
“Don’t you worry. We got plenty,” Morgan said.
Jack hadn’t drunk anything since the one drink. He was standing up and
looking at them. Morgan was sitting on the bed where Jack had sat.
“Have a drink, Jack,” John said and handed him the glass and the bottle.
“No,” Jack said, “I never liked to go to these wakes.”
They all laughed. Jack didn’t laugh.
They were all feeling pretty good when they left. Jack stood on the
porch when they got into the car. They waved to him.
“So long,” Jack said.
We had supper. Jack didn’t say anything all during the meal except,
“Will you pass me this?” or “Will you pass me that?” The two health-farm
patients ate at the same table with us. They were pretty nice fellows.
After we finished eating we went out on the porch. It was dark early.
“Like to take a walk, Jerry?” Jack asked.
“Sure,” I said.
We put on our coats and started out. It was quite a way down to the main
road and then we walked along the main road about a mile and a half.
Cars kept going by and we would pull out to the side until they were
past. Jack didn’t say anything. After we had stepped out into the bushes
to let a big car go by Jack said, “To hell with this walking. Come on
back to Hogan’s.”
We went along a side road that cut up over the hill and cut across the
fields back to Hogan’s. We could see the lights of the house up on the
hill. We came around to the front of the house and there standing in the
doorway was Hogan.
“Have a good walk?” Hogan asked.
“Oh, fine,” Jack said. “Listen, Hogan. Have you got any liquor?”
“Sure,” says Hogan. “What’s the idea?”
“Send it up to the room,” Jack says. “I’m going to sleep to-night.”
“You’re the doctor,” Hogan says.
“Come on up to the room, Jerry,” Jack says.
Upstairs Jack sat on the bed with his head in his hands.
“Ain’t it a life?” Jack says.
Hogan brought in a quart of liquor and two glasses.
“Want some ginger-ale?”
“What do you think I want to do, get sick?”
“I just asked you,” said Hogan.
“Have a drink?” said Jack.
“No, thanks,” said Hogan. He went out.
“How about you, Jerry?”
“I’ll have one with you,” I said.
Jack poured out a couple of drinks. “Now,” he said, “I want to take it
slow and easy.”
“Put some water in it,” I said.
“Yes,” Jack said. “I guess that’s better.”
We had a couple of drinks without saying anything. Jack started to pour
me another.
“No,” I said, “that’s all I want.”
“All right,” Jack said. He poured himself out another big shot and put
water in it. He was lighting up a little.
“That was a fine bunch out here this afternoon,” he said. “They don’t
take any chances, those two.”
Then a little later, “Well,” he says, “they’re right. What the hell’s
the good in taking chances?”
“Don’t you want another, Jerry?” he said. “Come on, drink along with
me.”
“I don’t need it, Jack,” I said. “I feel all right.”
“Just have one more,” Jack said. It was softening him up.
“All right,” I said.
Jack poured one for me and another big one for himself.
“You know,” he said, “I like liquor pretty well. If I hadn’t been boxing
I would have drunk quite a lot.”
“Sure,” I said.
“You know,” he said, “I missed a lot, boxing.”
“You made plenty of money.”
“Sure, that’s what I’m after. You know I miss a lot, Jerry.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well,” he says, “like about the wife. And being away from home so much.
It don’t do my girls any good. ‘Whose your old man?’ some of those
society kids’ll say to them. ‘My old man’s Jack Brennan.’ That don’t do
them any good.”
“Hell,” I said, “all that makes a difference is if they got dough.”
“Well,” says Jack, “I got the dough for them all right.”
He poured out another drink. The bottle was about empty.
“Put some water in it,” I said. Jack poured in some water.
“You know,” he says, “you ain’t got any idea how I miss the wife.”
“Sure.”
“You ain’t got any idea. You can’t have an idea what it’s like.”
“It ought to be better out in the country than in town.”
“With me now,” Jack said, “it don’t make any difference where I am. You
can’t have an idea what it’s like.”
“Have another drink.”
“Am I getting soused? Do I talk funny?”
“You’re coming on all right.”
“You can’t have an idea what it’s like. They ain’t anybody can have an
idea what it’s like.”
“Except the wife,” I said.
“She knows,” Jack said. “She knows all right. She knows. You bet she
knows.”
“Put some water in that,” I said.
“Jerry,” says Jack, “you can’t have an idea what it gets to be like.”
He was good and drunk. He was looking at me steady. His eyes were sort
of too steady.
“You’ll sleep all right,” I said.
“Listen, Jerry,” Jack says. “You want to make some money? Get some money
down on Walcott.”
“Yes?”
“Listen, Jerry,” Jack put down the glass. “I’m not drunk now, see? You
know what I’m betting on him? Fifty grand.”
“That’s a lot of dough.”
“Fifty grand,” Jack says, “at two to one. I’ll get twenty-five thousand
bucks. Get some money on him, Jerry.”
“It sounds good,” I said.
“How can I beat him?” Jack says. “It ain’t crooked. How can I beat him?
Why not make money on it?”
“Put some water in that,” I said.
“I’m through after this fight,” Jack says. “I’m through with it. I got
to take a beating. Why shouldn’t I make money on it?”
“Sure.”
“I ain’t slept for a week,” Jack says. “All night I lay awake and worry
my can off. I can’t sleep, Jerry. You ain’t got an idea what it’s like
when you can’t sleep.”
“Sure.”
“I can’t sleep. That’s all. I just can’t sleep. What’s the use of taking
care of yourself all these years when you can’t sleep?”
“It’s bad.”
“You ain’t got an idea what it’s like, Jerry, when you can’t sleep.”
“Put some water in that,” I said.
Well, about eleven o’clock Jack passes out and I put him to bed. Finally
he’s so he can’t keep from sleeping. I helped him get his clothes off
and got him into bed.
“You’ll sleep all right, Jack,” I said.
“Sure,” Jack says, “I’ll sleep now.”
“Good-night, Jack,” I said.
“Good-night, Jerry,” Jack says. “You’re the only friend I got.”
“Oh, hell,” I said.
“You’re the only friend I got,” Jack says, “the only friend I got.”
“Go to sleep,” I said.
“I’ll sleep,” Jack says.
Downstairs Hogan was sitting at the desk in the office reading the
papers. He looked up. “Well, you get your boy friend to sleep?” he asks.
“He’s off.”
“It’s better for him than not sleeping,” Hogan said.
“Sure.”
“You’d have a hell of a time explaining that to these sport writers
though,” Hogan said.
“Well, I’m going to bed myself,” I said.
“Good-night,” said Hogan.
In the morning I came downstairs about eight o’clock and got some
breakfast. Hogan had his two customers out in the barn doing exercises.
I went out and watched them.
“One! Two! Three! Four!” Hogan was counting for them. “Hello, Jerry,” he
said. “Is Jack up yet?”
“No. He’s still sleeping.”
I went back to my room and packed up to go in to town. About nine-thirty
I heard Jack getting up in the next room. When I heard him go downstairs
I went down after him. Jack was sitting at the breakfast table. Hogan
had come in and was standing beside the table.
“How do you feel, Jack?” I asked him.
“Not so bad.”
“Sleep well?” Hogan asked.
“I slept all right,” Jack said. “I got a thick tongue but I ain’t got a
head.”
“Good,” said Hogan. “That was good liquor.”
“Put it on the bill,” Jack says.
“What time you want to go into town?” Hogan asked.
“Before lunch,” Jack says. “The eleven o’clock train.”
“Sit down, Jerry,” Jack said. Hogan went out.
I sat down at the table. Jack was eating a grape-fruit. When he’d find a
seed he’d spit it out in the spoon and dump it on the plate.
“I guess I was pretty stewed last night,” he started.
“You drank some liquor.”
“I guess I said a lot of fool things.”
“You weren’t bad.”
“Where’s Hogan?” he asked. He was through with the grape-fruit.
“He’s out in front in the office.”
“What did I say about betting on the fight?” Jack asked. He was holding
the spoon and sort of poking at the grape-fruit with it.
The girl came in with some ham and eggs and took away the grape-fruit.
“Bring me another glass of milk,” Jack said to her. She went out.
“You said you had fifty grand on Walcott,” I said.
“That’s right,” Jack said.
“That’s a lot of money.”
“I don’t feel too good about it,” Jack said.
“Something might happen.”
“No,” Jack said. “He wants the title bad. They’ll be shooting with him
all right.”
“You can’t ever tell.”
“No. He wants the title. It’s worth a lot of money to him.”
“Fifty grand is a lot of money,” I said.
“It’s business,” said Jack. “I can’t win. You know I can’t win anyway.”
“As long as you’re in there you got a chance.”
“No,” Jack says. “I’m all through. It’s just business.”
“How do you feel?”
“Pretty good,” Jack said. “The sleep was what I needed.”
“You might go good.”
“I’ll give them a good show,” Jack said.
After breakfast Jack called up his wife on the long-distance. He was
inside the booth telephoning.
“That’s the first time he’s called her up since he’s out here,” Hogan
said.
“He writes her every day.”
“Sure,” Hogan says, “a letter only costs two cents.”
Hogan said good-by to us and Bruce, the nigger rubber, drove us down to
the train in the cart.
“Good-by, Mr. Brennan,” Bruce said at the train, “I sure hope you knock
his can off.”
“So long,” Jack said. He gave Bruce two dollars. Bruce had worked on him
a lot. He looked kind of disappointed. Jack saw me looking at Bruce
holding the two dollars.
“It’s all in the bill,” he said. “Hogan charged me for the rubbing.”
On the train going into town Jack didn’t talk. He sat in the corner of
the seat with his ticket in his hat-band and looked out of the window.
Once he turned and spoke to me.
“I told the wife I’d take a room at the Shelby to-night,” he said. “It’s
just around the corner from the Garden. I can go up to the house
to-morrow morning.”
“That’s a good idea,” I said. “Your wife ever see you fight, Jack?”
“No,” Jack says. “She never seen me fight.”
I thought he must be figuring on taking an awful beating if he doesn’t
want to go home afterward. In town we took a taxi up to the Shelby. A
boy came out and took our bags and we went in to the desk.
“How much are the rooms?” Jack asked.
“We only have double rooms,” the clerk says. “I can give you a nice
double room for ten dollars.”
“That’s too steep.”
“I can give you a double room for seven dollars.”
“With a bath?”
“Certainly.”
“You might as well bunk with me, Jerry,” Jack says.
“Oh,” I said, “I’ll sleep down at my brother-in-law’s.”
“I don’t mean for you to pay it,” Jack says. “I just want to get my
money’s worth.”
“Will you register, please?” the clerk says. He looked at the names.
“Number 238, Mister Brennan.”
We went up in the elevator. It was a nice big room with two beds and a
door opening into a bath-room.
“This is pretty good,” Jack says.
The boy who brought us up pulled up the curtains and brought in our
bags. Jack didn’t make any move, so I gave the boy a quarter. We washed
up and Jack said we better go out and get something to eat.
We ate a lunch at Jimmey Handley’s place. Quite a lot of the boys were
there. When we were about half through eating, John came in and sat down
with us. Jack didn’t talk much.
“How are you on the weight, Jack?” John asked him. Jack was putting away
a pretty good lunch.
“I could make it with my clothes on,” Jack said. He never had to worry
about taking off weight. He was a natural welter-weight and he’d never
gotten fat. He’d lost weight out at Hogan’s.
“Well, that’s one thing you never had to worry about,” John said.
“That’s one thing,” Jack says.
We went around to the garden to weigh in after lunch. The match was made
at a hundred forty-seven pounds at three o’clock. Jack stepped on the
scales with a towel around him. The bar didn’t move. Walcott had just
weighed and was standing with a lot of people around him.
“Let’s see what you weigh, Jack,” Freedman, Walcott’s manager said.
“All right, weigh _him_ then,” Jack jerked his head toward Walcott.
“Drop the towel,” Freedman said.
“What do you make it?” Jack asked the fellows who were weighing.
“One hundred and forty-three pounds,” the fat man who was weighing said.
“You’re down fine, Jack,” Freedman says.
“Weigh _him_,” Jack says.
Walcott came over. He was a blond with wide shoulders and arms like a
heavyweight. He didn’t have much legs. Jack stood about half a head
taller than he did.
“Hello, Jack,” he said. His face was plenty marked up.
“Hello,” said Jack. “How you feel?”
“Good,” Walcott says. He dropped the towel from around his waist and
stood on the scales. He had the widest shoulders and back you ever saw.
“One hundred and forty-six pounds and twelve ounces.”
Walcott stepped off and grinned at Jack.
“Well,” John says to him, “Jack’s spotting you about four pounds.”
“More than that when I come in, kid,” Walcott says. “I’m going to go and
eat now.”
We went back and Jack got dressed. “He’s a pretty tough-looking boy,”
Jack says to me.
“He looks as though he’d been hit plenty of times.”
“Oh, yes,” Jack says. “He ain’t hard to hit.”
“Where are you going?” John asked when Jack was dressed.
“Back to the hotel,” Jack says. “You looked after everything?”
“Yes,” John says. “It’s all looked after.”
“I’m going to lie down a while,” Jack says.
“I’ll come around for you about a quarter to seven and we’ll go and
eat.”
“All right.”
Up at the hotel Jack took off his shoes and his coat and lay down for a
while. I wrote a letter. I looked over a couple of times and Jack wasn’t
sleeping. He was lying perfectly still but every once in a while his
eyes would open. Finally he sits up.
“Want to play some cribbage, Jerry?” he says.
“Sure,” I said.
He went over to his suitcase and got out the cards and the cribbage
board. We played cribbage and he won three dollars off me. John knocked
at the door and came in.
“Want to play some cribbage, John?” Jack asked him.
John put his kelly down on the table. It was all wet. His coat was wet
too.
“Is it raining?” Jack asks.
“It’s pouring,” John says. “The taxi I had, got tied up in the traffic
and I got out and walked.”
“Come on, play some cribbage,” Jack says.
“You ought to go and eat.”
“No,” says Jack. “I don’t want to eat yet.”
So they played cribbage for about half an hour and Jack won a dollar and
a half off him.
“Well, I suppose we got to go eat,” Jack says. He went to the window and
looked out.
“Is it still raining?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s eat in the hotel,” John says.
“All right,” Jack says, “I’ll play you once more to see who pays for the
meal.”
After a little while Jack gets up and says, “You buy the meal, John,”
and we went downstairs and ate in the big dining-room.
After we ate we went upstairs and Jack played cribbage with John again
and won two dollars and a half off him. Jack was feeling pretty good.
John had a bag with him with all his stuff in it. Jack took off his
shirt and collar and put on a jersey and a sweater, so he wouldn’t catch
cold when he came out, and put his ring clothes and his bathrobe in a
bag.
“You all ready?” John asks him. “I’ll call up and have them get a taxi.”
Pretty soon the telephone rang and they said the taxi was waiting.
We rode down in the elevator and went out through the lobby, and got in
a taxi and rode around to the Garden. It was raining hard but there was
a lot of people outside on the streets. The Garden was sold out. As we
came in on our way to the dressing-room I saw how full it was. It looked
like half a mile down to the ring. It was all dark. Just the lights over
the ring.
“It’s a good thing, with this rain, they didn’t try and pull this fight
in the ball park,” John said.
“They got a good crowd,” Jack says.
“This is a fight that would draw a lot more than the Garden could hold.”
“You can’t tell about the weather,” Jack says.
John came to the door of the dressing-room and poked his head in. Jack
was sitting there with his bathrobe on, he had his arms folded and was
looking at the floor. John had a couple of handlers with him. They
looked over his shoulder. Jack looked up.
“Is he in?” he asked.
“He’s just gone down,” John said.
We started down. Walcott was just getting into the ring. The crowd gave
him a big hand. He climbed through between the ropes and put his two
fists together and smiled, and shook them at the crowd, first at one
side of the ring, then at the other, and then sat down. Jack got a good
hand coming down through the crowd. Jack is Irish and the Irish always
get a pretty good hand. An Irishman don’t draw in New York like a Jew or
an Italian but they always get a good hand. Jack climbed up and bent
down to go through the ropes and Walcott came over from his corner and
pushed the rope down for Jack to go through. The crowd thought that was
wonderful. Walcott put his hand on Jack’s shoulder and they stood there
just for a second.
“So you’re going to be one of these popular champions,” Jack says to
him. “Take your goddam hand off my shoulder.”
“Be yourself,” Walcott says.
This is all great for the crowd. How gentlemanly the boys are before the
fight! How they wish each other luck!
Solly Freedman came over to our corner while Jack is bandaging his hands
and John is over in Walcott’s corner. Jack puts his thumb through the
slit in the bandage and then wrapped his hand nice and smooth. I taped
it around the wrist and twice across the knuckles.
“Hey,” Freedman says. “Where do you get all that tape?”
“Feel of it,” Jack says. “It’s soft, ain’t it? Don’t be a hick.”
Freedman stands there all the time while Jack bandages the other hand,
and one of the boys that’s going to handle him brings the gloves and I
pull them on and work them around.
“Say, Freedman,” Jack asks, “what nationality is this Walcott?”
“I don’t know,” Solly says. “He’s some sort of a Dane.”
“He’s a Bohemian,” the lad who brought the gloves said.
The referee called them out to the centre of the ring and Jack walks
out. Walcott comes out smiling. They met and the referee put his arm on
each of their shoulders.
“Hello, popularity,” Jack says to Walcott.
“Be yourself.”
“What do you call yourself ‘Walcott’ for?” Jack says. “Didn’t you know
he was a nigger?”
“Listen—” says the referee, and he gives them the same old line. Once
Walcott interrupts him. He grabs Jack’s arm and says, “Can I hit when
he’s got me like this?”
“Keep your hands off me,” Jack says. “There ain’t no moving-pictures of
this.”
They went back to their corners. I lifted the bathrobe off Jack and he
leaned on the ropes and flexed his knees a couple of times and scuffed
his shoes in the rosin. The gong rang and Jack turned quick and went
out. Walcott came toward him and they touched gloves and as soon as
Walcott dropped his hands Jack jumped his left into his face twice.
There wasn’t anybody ever boxed better than Jack. Walcott was after him,
going forward all the time with his chin on his chest. He’s a hooker and
he carries his hands pretty low. All he knows is to get in there and
sock. But every time he gets in there close, Jack has the left hand in
his face. It’s just as though it’s automatic. Jack just raises the left
hand up and it’s in Walcott’s face. Three or four times Jack brings the
right over but Walcott gets it on the shoulder or high up on the head.
He’s just like all these hookers. The only thing he’s afraid of is
another one of the same kind. He’s covered everywhere you can hurt him.
He don’t care about a left-hand in his face.
After about four rounds Jack has him bleeding bad and his face all cut
up, but every time Walcott’s got in close he’s socked so hard he’s got
two big red patches on both sides just below Jack’s ribs. Every time he
gets in close, Jack ties him up, then gets one hand loose and uppercuts
him, but when Walcott gets his hands loose he socks Jack in the body so
they can hear it outside in the street. He’s a socker.
It goes along like that for three rounds more. They don’t talk any.
They’re working all the time. We worked over Jack plenty too, in between
the rounds. He don’t look good at all but he never does much work in the
ring. He don’t move around much and that left-hand is just automatic.
It’s just like it was connected with Walcott’s face and Jack just had to
wish it in every time. Jack is always calm in close and he doesn’t waste
any juice. He knows everything about working in close too and he’s
getting away with a lot of stuff. While they were in our corner I
watched him tie Walcott up, get his right hand loose, turn it and come
up with an uppercut that got Walcott’s nose with the heel of the glove.
Walcott was bleeding bad and leaned his nose on Jack’s shoulder so as to
give Jack some of it too, and Jack sort of lifted his shoulder sharp and
caught him against the nose, and then brought down the right hand and
did the same thing again.
Walcott was sore as hell. By the time they’d gone five rounds he hated
Jack’s guts. Jack wasn’t sore; that is, he wasn’t any sorer than he
always was. He certainly did used to make the fellows he fought hate
boxing. That was why he hated Kid Lewis so. He never got the Kid’s goat.
Kid Lewis always had about three new dirty things Jack couldn’t do. Jack
was as safe as a church all the time he was in there, as long as he was
strong. He certainly was treating Walcott rough. The funny thing was it
looked as though Jack was an open classic boxer. That was because he had
all that stuff too.
After the seventh round Jack says, “My left’s getting heavy.”
From then he started to take a beating. It didn’t show at first. But
instead of him running the fight it was Walcott was running it, instead
of being safe all the time now he was in trouble. He couldn’t keep him
out with the left hand now. It looked as though it was the same as ever,
only now instead of Walcott’s punches just missing him they were just
hitting him. He took an awful beating in the body.
“What’s the round?” Jack asked.
“The eleventh.”
“I can’t stay,” Jack says. “My legs are going bad.”
Walcott had been just hitting him for a long time. It was like a
baseball catcher pulls the ball and takes some of the shock off. From
now on Walcott commenced to land solid. He certainly was a
socking-machine. Jack was just trying to block everything now. It didn’t
show what an awful beating he was taking. In between the rounds I worked
on his legs. The muscles would flutter under my hands all the time I was
rubbing them. He was sick as hell.
“How’s it go?” he asked John, turning around, his face all swollen.
“It’s his fight.”
“I think I can last,” Jack says. “I don’t want this bohunk to stop me.”
It was going just the way he thought it would. He knew he couldn’t beat
Walcott. He wasn’t strong any more. He was all right though. His money
was all right and now he wanted to finish it off right to please
himself. He didn’t want to be knocked out.
The gong rang and we pushed him out. He went out slow. Walcott came
right out after him. Jack put the left in his face and Walcott took it,
came in under it and started working on Jack’s body. Jack tried to tie
him up and it was just like trying to hold on to a buzz-saw. Jack broke
away from it and missed with the right. Walcott clipped him with a
left-hook and Jack went down. He went down on his hands and knees and
looked at us. The referee started counting. Jack was watching us and
shaking his head. At eight John motioned to him. You couldn’t hear on
account of the crowd. Jack got up. The referee had been holding Walcott
back with one arm while he counted.
When Jack was on his feet Walcott started toward him.
“Watch yourself, Jimmy,” I heard Solly Freedman yell to him.
Walcott came up to Jack looking at him. Jack stuck the left hand at him.
Walcott just shook his head. He backed Jack up against the ropes,
measured him and then hooked the left very light to the side of Jack’s
head and socked the right into the body as hard as he could sock, just
as low as he could get it. He must have hit him five inches below the
belt. I thought the eyes would come out of Jack’s head. They stuck way
out. His mouth come open.
The referee grabbed Walcott. Jack stepped forward. If he went down there
went fifty thousand bucks. He walked as though all his insides were
going to fall out.
“It wasn’t low,” he said. “It was a accident.”
The crowd were yelling so you couldn’t hear anything.
“I’m all right,” Jack says. They were right in front of us. The referee
looks at John and then he shakes his head.
“Come on, you polak son-of-a-bitch,” Jack says to Walcott.
John was hanging onto the ropes. He had the towel ready to chuck in.
Jack was standing just a little way out from the ropes. He took a step
forward. I saw the sweat come out on his face like somebody had squeezed
it and a big drop went down his nose.
“Come on and fight,” Jack says to Walcott.
The referee looked at John and waved Walcott on.
“Go in there, you slob,” he says.
Walcott went in. He didn’t know what to do either. He never thought Jack
could have stood it. Jack put the left in his face. There was such a
hell of a lot of yelling going on. They were right in front of us.
Walcott hit him twice. Jack’s face was the worst thing I ever saw,—the
look on it! He was holding himself and all his body together and it all
showed on his face. All the time he was thinking and holding his body in
where it was busted.
Then he started to sock. His face looked awful all the time. He started
to sock with his hands low down by his side, swinging at Walcott.
Walcott covered up and Jack was swinging wild at Walcott’s head. Then he
swung the left and it hit Walcott in the groin and the right hit Walcott
right bang where he’d hit Jack. Way low below the belt. Walcott went
down and grabbed himself there and rolled and twisted around.
The referee grabbed Jack and pushed him toward his corner. John jumps
into the ring. There was all this yelling going on. The referee was
talking with the judges and then the announcer got into the ring with
the megaphone and says, “Walcott on a foul.”
The referee is talking to John and he says, “What could I do? Jack
wouldn’t take the foul. Then when he’s groggy he fouls him.”
“He’d lost it anyway,” John says.
Jack’s sitting on the chair. I’ve got his gloves off and he’s holding
himself in down there with both hands. When he’s got something
supporting it his face doesn’t look so bad.
“Go over and say you’re sorry,” John says into his ear. “It’ll look
good.”
Jack stands up and the sweat comes out all over his face. I put the
bathrobe around him and he holds himself in with one hand under the
bathrobe and goes across the ring. They’ve picked Walcott up and they’re
working on him. There’re a lot of people in Walcott’s corner. Nobody
speaks to Jack. He leans over Walcott.
“I’m sorry,” Jack says. “I didn’t mean to foul you.”
Walcott doesn’t say anything. He looks too damned sick.
“Well, you’re the champion now,” Jack says to him. “I hope you get a
hell of a lot of fun out of it.”
“Leave the kid alone,” Solly Freedman says.
“Hello, Solly,” Jack says. “I’m sorry I fouled your boy.”
Freedman just looks at him.
Jack went to his corner walking that funny jerky way and we got him down
through the ropes and through the reporters’ tables and out down the
aisle. A lot of people want to slap Jack on the back. He goes out
through all that mob in his bathrobe to the dressing-room. It’s a
popular win for Walcott. That’s the way the money was bet in the Garden.
Once we got inside the dressing-room Jack lay down and shut his eyes.
“We want to get to the hotel and get a doctor,” John says.
“I’m all busted inside,” Jack says.
“I’m sorry as hell, Jack,” John says.
“It’s all right,” Jack says.
He lies there with his eyes shut.
“They certainly tried a nice double-cross,” John said.
“Your friends Morgan and Steinfelt,” Jack said. “You got nice friends.”
He lies there, his eyes are open now. His face has still got that awful
drawn look.
“It’s funny how fast you can think when it means that much money,” Jack
says.
“You’re some boy, Jack,” John says.
“No,” Jack says. “It was nothing.”