“Don’t be a shiny-eyed little boy!”
“What does that mean?”
“Suppose it were reversed. You’d have done the same. And forgotten it. You — wouldn’t have expected Jack to keep paying and paying for the rest of his life just because he happened to be alive, would you?”
“No, but—”
“When he could have paid back the money he chiseled out of you, he made no effort to do so. When you walked out, he was perfectly happy to pick me up on the rebound, without the slightest twinge of conscience. Good old Lew — good old sucker! You make me sick!”
“I’m not doing this for Jack.”
“And I insist that you’re not doing it for me. I won’t allow that.”
“So I’m doing it for myself. So I’m broke. Jud said you’d drive me out there. Let’s put the show on the road.”
He had expected that the fifteen-mile ride would be grim and silent. Instead, Ivy chattered with pleasant, formal gayety all the way. The fight was not mentioned. The quarrel was not mentioned. They found the mailbox and turned down the steep driveway to the camp on the lake shore. The lake was small and blue and pretty. The camp itself was small and rustic, with a big front porch. Near the camp was a barnlike structure which Lew guessed must contain the equipment. The electricity was turned on and the water was hooked up. Inside was the smell of dust and spring spiders and closed windows. There was a carton on the kitchen table, a stock of canned staples.
They went out onto the porch and he said softly, forgetting the quarrel and the tension, “It’s like shutting a door behind you and thinking you’d never open it again, and then you’re back in the room you left. But I feel like an — I can’t think of the word.”
“Impostor?”
“That’s it. But it’s work I know. It’s something I learned to do.”
She turned quickly toward, him, both hands resting light on his forearm. “Lew! Lew, don’t try to — to prove anything. Don’t try to prove you’re as good as you ever were.”
“I know I’m not.”
“Luck, Lew! The best.”
She left. He stood and watched as she backed the car around in the narrow place, watched as it dug slowly up the hill in low, disappearing around the bend, the small bright face of the boy turned to watch him, ray gun waving in the late afternoon sunlight. He stood there long after he could no longer hear the car, wondering why it never seemed possible to do anything in life with a clear and uncluttered motive, why all actions had to be compromised by strange and conflicting intangibles. He was a big man, and thickened tissues had destroyed the original mobility of his features, so that he seemed to be filled with a somber, watchful reserve. He thought of Ivy and his heart turned over, but his face did not change.
That first evening he sat on the porch and watched the lake until the black flies drove him inside. He ate sparingly, found the bedclothes, made up his bed. The sheets had a damp smell of winter about them. A nightmare awakened him, cold and sweating: He was in the ring with Sammy Hode. Hode had iron gloves, and each blow tore through Lew’s body, rending it as if it were damp paperboard...
He took it easy the first few days. The man came out from the city by bus and walked down to the camp. He was a round, impassive Negro, an excellent cook, a relentless housekeeper. His name was Oliver.
Lew gave a lot of thought to how he should train. He was powerful enough. The meaty fibrous layers of muscle rolled hard under his skin. He weighed two hundred and seven on the camp scales, and it would not be much of a problem to bring that weight down to around one ninety-eight without weakening himself. The problem was that of too much intractable toughness in the muscles. He had to limber them, loosen them, make them slide more easily under the skin. With a more resilient muscle tone his arms and legs would respond more quickly and lithely to the messages sent by the brain along the nerve threads, messages that had to be answered in the quickest possible fraction of a second.
He saw that the orthodox training methods would do him little good. Road work would stiffen his legs, would hamper mobility without increasing stamina. Yet it would improve his wind. He compromised by substituting swimming for road work. He gave up cigarettes with an abruptness that left his nerves on edge. The swimming loosened his muscles, improved his wind. He needed to improve his quickness of eye and of reflex. With a certain grim amusement at himself, he sent Oliver into the village to buy tennis balls. Then, doggedly, he started to teach himself to juggle. His hands were slow and clumsy at first, the tennis balls bounding away in all directions. But he persisted, hour after hour, while Oliver would shake his head and mutter and raise clouds of dust with a violent broom. He had no way of measuring improvement in quickness, but he thought he could detect a quickening response.
He phoned Jud Brock. “Jud, I could use one good man.”
“One?”
“A good fast light or middle with no punch and a lot of class. He doesn’t have to know Hode’s style. Can do?”
Jud was silent for a time. He said, “I’ve got one — an Italian kid. I see what you’re trying to do. Pretty smart, son.”
“How much will he cost?”
“It’s on the house, Lew.”
“No. I want to pay.”
“Hell with that! How’s it going?”
“I can’t tell yet.”
“Expect him tomorrow. Nice kid — his name is Rillo, Jimmy Rillo. Newspaper guys have been haunting me and Jack. I told Jack to keep his mouth shut about where you are, for a while.”
“Good. I’m not ready to show off yet? And start lining up a heavy with the kid’s style.”
“A hitter?”
“By then it won’t matter. But let me pay.”
“We’ll talk about that. Oliver okay?”
“Fine. He’s helping me set up the ring. Send up a new turnbuckle, will you? The threads are stripped on one we have.”
“Sure.”
The next day Jud Brock arrived with Jimmy Rillo. Jud said, “Decided to come at the last minute. I’m here as a spy. Boy, you look brown enough.”
“In the ring I have to look healthy, Pop.”
“Jimmy, take it easy on this old man Barry. He’s fragile.”
“He sure doesn’t look it, Mr. Brock. Nice to meet you, Mr. Barry. I saw you fight Mickey Noonan in Cleveland. It was the first big fight I ever saw. I guess I was about seven years old then, Mr. Barry.”
“You better call me Lew, Jimmy. You okay to try a few minutes right now? I want to find out a few things about myself.”
“Sure, Lew. I got my stuff right here.”
“This I have to see,” Jud said softly.
Oliver taped their hands and they put on the big gloves, the headguards. The ring took up two-thirds of the floor-space in the big shed. Sun shafted golden through the high windows, and dust motes drifted in the beams.
Five years, Lew thought, and here you are back in the ring. And that last time you had the right all waiting and ready, waiting for that big brown left shoulder to drop so you could slam it in on the unprotected right cheek, which was the only way anybody ever got to Louis, and you got your chance — but your timing was off and you missed and he killed you.