It made me wonder how Joe would like his ride on a slow grey train where the years chug by.
Barney said, “The trouble is, it won’t be just him that’ll be hurt. It’ll hurt Johnny and Sis. And me.”
“Sis?” I asked, confused.
“Yeah. You remember her. My daughter. She was running around with Joe before he went overseas. Now, even though he’s all different, she won’t let herself see the change in him. I never wanted her to get tied up with a fighter, Wash.”
“Have you tried to talk to her?”
“You can’t talk to them, Wash. They know everything at that age. They got to get hurt all by themselves. The trouble is, when it happens, it’s going to hurt me too. She’s a pretty gal, Wash, but stubborn. You can’t tell her what’s ahead. Hell, I’d rather see her running around with Jug Hoffman who hasn’t had half the education that Joe has had. Jug is a gentle guy and he goes at this fighting like it was a business, which it is. Joe has made it a kind of religion. I guess Jug wouldn’t mind either. I’ve noticed the way he looks at Sis. Like a guy on the desert looking at a glass of water. And there’ll be trouble if Joe ever sees him looking at Sis like that.”
“Where is she?”
“Living down in the village. Working in a candy store so she can be near her big fighting chump. Joe’s got his toughest fight yet coming up the night after Jug’s, otherwise he’d be down in the village tonight.”
Barney gave me the small room at the end of the upstairs hall, and for a long time I stayed awake, thinking how glad I was that I had come back to the things I knew and understood — but there was a little cloud in the air, and I had a hunch that I was going to be in on the blow-off.
My first contact with Joe came sooner than I thought. After breakfast I went down to the shack and spent some time pasting the heavy bag, loosening up, getting the right roll into the punches. Then I took a long trot along the lake trail, puffing hard. At lunch I could have eaten the table right along with the food,
I took a quick nap after lunch and then wandered out to the ring. Fat Stan, giving away weight and reach, was going a round with Joe Rye. They were using the face masks and the big gloves. I watched, because I wanted to see how good Joe was. He was like a big cat — alternating between slow stalking and blinding flashes of speed. Fat Stan hadn’t lost any of his art. He rolled the sting out of Joe’s punches, slipped a lot of them, blocked others and jabbed his way out of trouble. But it wasn’t the kind of fighting you expect to see at a training camp. Behind the mask, Joe’s face was set and blood-less, his eyes narrowed. I could see that Fat Stan was working hard to keep away from bad trouble.
Suddenly Stan was trapped in the corner over my head. He bounced out, jabbing, and then tried to slide along the ropes. In doing so, he made the mistake of carrying his elbows high and straightening up too far. Joe put his shoulders into a heavy left hook that landed just above Stan’s belt. Stan whoofed and doubled over. Joe chopped him once in the kidneys and once behind the ear. Stan dropped onto his face. Joe swaggered away from him.
Stan got up, pulled the mask off and said, “What the hell do you think this is?”
Joe turned and smirked at him. “What’s the matter, dearie? Does ims wanna dance instead of fight?”
“I don’t want no clown showing off at my expense,” Stan snapped.
Joe pulled his own mask off and dropped it on the canvas. He walked toward Stan, his lips drawn back from his teeth, saying, “Fatso, I’m going to show you what a licking really is.”
Stan looked pretty uncertain and I could see the trouble ahead. Without thinking, in order to divert Joe, I said, “Could I try a round, Joey?”
Joe stopped and looked down at me. “The name is Mr. Rye, eight ball. Climb in and have some.”
I pulled off my sweat shirt and climbed in. I put the mask on and Stan tied on the gloves.
I said, “Okay,” and moved out and touched gloves with him. This time he was fighting somebody with more weight and a better reach. I was curious to see how he’d act. He jabbed lightly, feeling me out, and I countered with a jab of my own and a light left hook to the head. My timing was all shot; it was no longer instinctive. I had to plan out each move ahead like a man playing checkers. There wasn’t any of the deep singing in my throat like there used to be. My rhythm was gone. And even when I told my right arm to shoot out there, it went out too slow, and it didn’t hit where I wanted it to. This boy was a lot different than the Sonny Vine I had chopped down. I could see why, if Johnny wouldn’t handle him, some other manager would.
He jabbed and then rushed me into the ropes, swinging lefts and rights. I caught some of them on my forearms and felt the others light flares in my head. It was too rough against the ropes, so I covered up, bending far over. He tried to hook me in the face but couldn’t get past my arms. I saw his feet back away, so I straightened up and followed him on out with jabs that weren’t as fast as they should have been.
Even so, it surprised him, and he got his feet tangled trying to move off to my left. He tripped and his left swung back instinctively to protect himself from the fall. It gave me a clear shot, and I had the punch well started before I pulled it back. As I yanked it back, he got balance, and brought the left around and hit me high on the head. It was a good punch, slamming me back across the ring, fighting for balance. As I bounded off the ropes he was on me. I could see the right coming up the slot, and I told my right arm to get over in the way. It moved but not fast enough, my wrist brushing the glove as it came up and exploded on my jaw with all the weight of his rush and my bounce off the ropes. It was like being hit with a sledge, and the mask didn’t give me much protection.
When I could see clearly, he was standing in the middle of the ring, untying his right glove with his teeth. His mask was on the canvas at his feet. He said, “Washburn, you’re a disappointment to me. I thought you’d be rougher than these other bums. Maybe I didn’t know enough about the game when I used to watch you. You used to look pretty good.” By the time I had the gloves off, he was already gone. It was just one of those things.
Johnny Rye got back late in the afternoon, and after I took a shower for dinner I walked out onto the porch. He was sitting on the railing, smoking a cigarette. He looked up and smiled at me. “How does it feel to be back, Wash?”
“Great, Mr. Rye.”
“Why the formality, Wash. You used to call me Johnny.” I couldn’t tell him how I’d had a recent lesson about calling people by their first names.
I just grinned and said, “Okay, Johnny.”
“I hear you mixed it up a little with the kid this afternoon, Wash. What do you think of him.”
“He’s okay, Johnny. He can fight.”
“He’s really okay?” Johnny seemed pathetically anxious for my good opinion, and that was strange, because he had been judging fighters when my ambition was to grow up and be a traffic cop. It embarrassed me to have him ask in that tone of voice; it wasn’t like Johnny. He was always so sure of himself and here he was begging for good words from a jail bird Nigra. He was up against something he knew in his heart he couldn’t handle, and so he was going around trying to make himself feel good. Hell, I couldn’t tell him that his kid was smart enough and fast enough but too loaded down with hate and cruelty, could I?
So I just said, “He’s a real good boy, Johnny. Real good.”
Johnny grinned, “Took you, didn’t he, Wash?”