“How you doing?” he asked, smiling, getting down on one knee and putting his hand on my forehead. His lip was bleeding. I knocked his hand away, and looked down at the fast-moving water in the gutter.
“Man, I is wounded,” he said. He leaned over the gutter and brought some water up for his bloodied lip. “Look, I’m gonna tell you a joke,” he went on. I got up and started to walk back to the awning, and he followed me, taking my suitcase from my hand and carrying it for me. “This man, he in a restaurant, and he say, ‘Waiter, there is a fly in the soup,’ and this waiter, he say, ‘Don’t worry, he can swim.’”
He began to laugh. We stood under the awning, and he continued to laugh at his joke while I looked down the street for the bus. He calmed down and then began to regard me seriously, putting a hand over his mouth.
“Say, you know who I am?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“I guess you heard of Ringo Brown,” he said, “who fight in Griffith Stadium in 1939, ’40, ’41, and ’46.”
“If you’re Ringo Brown, I never heard of you,” I said.
“Aw, come on, man,” he said, smiling. “I fight twenty-three preliminaries and one main event. I lose the main event. You remember Red Hickey, from Delaware?”
“No.”
“I lose to him in a split decision. He was a good boy, but he never did nothing. I was a middleweight.”
“You lost only one fight?” I said.
“Now, I ain’t said that, but I never knocked out.”
I pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. The pack was wet, but I managed to find two dry cigarettes, and I gave Ringo one.
We smoked for a while without saying anything, and then Ringo said, “Say, kid, what’s your name?”
“John,” I said. “John Lionel.”
I saw a bus coming, and I picked up my suitcase and began to move away.
“Where you going?” Ringo asked.
“So long, Ringo,” I said.
As I started to cross the street, he came and grabbed me by the arm. “John, I carry your bag,” he said. “You tired.”
“I’m all right. It’s not heavy,” I said.
“No, I carry it.”
Ringo began to fight me for the suitcase, right there in the middle of the street. He pushed me with one hand and grabbed the suitcase away with the other. I ran over to the bus stop and called back to Ringo to bring the suitcase. The bus had stopped and was letting off passengers. Ringo just smiled at me from the other side of the street. I asked the driver to wait a second, but he took one look at me and closed the door and drove off. I walked over to Ringo and took the suitcase from him. “You’re crazy,” I said.
“They be another bus, John,” he said, smiling. “One as good as another.”
I walked back to the bus stop and decided to wait there, even though the rain was coming down harder than ever. Ringo followed me. “I try to do you a good turn and you don’t let me. Don’t you know that hurt?” he said.
“Get away from me!”
“Won’t even let me carry his suitcase across the street,” Ringo said, shaking his head.
He remained standing by me, his arms folded across his chest. I was beginning to feel faint again — not sick, only weak and tired and a little dizzy — and I put my hand over my face.
“Let’s go to Billy’s and have a sandwich,” he said, slapping me on the shoulder. He pointed to the grocery store across the street.
“No, thanks,” I said.
He said that a sandwich would build up my strength, and that he was hungry.
“I’ve only got a quarter,” I said, “and that’s for the bus.”
“You can clean up at Billy’s. He got a bathroom,” Ringo said. “You can watch for the bus inside the store and keep warm. You can dry off some.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Come on, John,” he said. And then he grabbed my suitcase again and ran off across the street with it and into Billy’s. I was so damned mad I slammed my hand against the bus-stop post, and then I followed Ringo across the street and into the grocery store.
“Here I am, Billy,” Ringo was saying when I went in.
“Yeah, I see you,” a slight, light-brown Negro said. He was the one in the white apron. The three Negroes leaning against the refrigerated case were smiling. Billy looked at Ringo, then at me, then back at Ringo.
“Now what you getting mad at? You mad at me, Billy?” Ringo said.
“What you doing with that suitcase?” Billy asked. “You going to catch a train?”
“Ain’t this Union Station?” Ringo said, smiling at everyone.
“You ain’t funny, Ringo. You just ain’t funny,” Billy said. “Give this man his suitcase.”
“You got to be serious about everything. Nobody can take a joke,” Ringo said, handing me the suitcase without looking at me.
“We seen the whole thing,” Billy said. “We seen this man drop you, Ringo.” Billy looked at me. “He deserved it,” he said.
“You got that same tricky style, Ringo,” one of the other Negroes said.
“He sure know how to fall,” Billy said. “He an expert at that.”
“Aw, man,” Ringo said. “We wasn’t in no fight. I teaching him some things.”
“Yeah, you a real teacher, all right,” Billy said. “You teach any man alive how to fall. But fighting something else.”
Billy smiled at the other men, and then he looked at me. “You been sick, right?” he said.
I said yes, that I had an upset stomach. Billy said there was a bathroom in the back of the store, and that I could use it if I wanted to. I thanked him and said that I would like to clean up.
“I give you something for your stomach when you come back,” Billy said. He took my suitcase and put it behind the counter, and then he led me back to the bathroom and switched on the light for me.
When I got back from the bathroom, Ringo was shadowboxing in the middle of the room.
“Go. Go. Go. Hey!” one of the men said.
I walked over to Billy and stood beside him, watching the performance. Ringo was putting together some combinations to the head and body. “He won’t go down. This sucker’s tough,” he said.
“They all tough, Ringo, for you,” Billy said, and then he turned to me. “I lost more damn money on him,” he said.
I asked Billy if Ringo had fought in Griffith Stadium.
“Yeah, I guess so,” he said. “That was a long time ago. He look pretty good when there ain’t nobody in his way. Say, how you feeling?” Billy looked seriously at me. I told him I was feeling a little tired.
“Well, I got something for you,” he said, walking over to a shelf and taking down a large bottle of Coca-Cola syrup. He poured a little into a paper cup and handed it to me. “Drink that down and you be all right,” he said.
I drank the syrup slowly and watched Ringo jump rope without a rope. His footwork was very good.
“See how his eyes is half closed,” Billy said. “He really happy and stupid.”
The three Negroes who had been leaning against the case stood up, nodded and smiled at Billy, and went out into the rain. Ringo continued to jump rope, but when he noticed that they had gone he seemed to lose interest. Looking distracted, as though he were trying to figure out what he could do next, he came over to Billy and me and broke out into a wide smile. “Hey, Billy, how about making me and John a sandwich,” he said, tilting his head a little in a mock coyness that I hadn’t seen before.
Billy turned to me, and I told him I didn’t want a sandwich. Billy looked at Ringo and slowly shook his head. “Of course, you got the money. Right?” he said.
“John here, he carry the money,” Ringo said.