It showed up in Jersey. Micky couldn’t go. Junior stood up at the whistle and I dropped off the apron of the ring and pulled the stool down. Junior shuffled his feet in the rosin, yanked on the top ropes and turned at the bell. The other kid was willing enough. Both of them were green. The other kid clipped Junior twice. Junior shook them off and stalked the other kid. He got him right over my head in the corner. First there were two green kids, and then all of a sudden there was just one scared kid. A few thousand years of civilization was peeled off Junior. Usually during a real mix-up, the crowd roars all the way through it. They started roaring as Junior caught the other kid with a left, right and left. But then, as the kid sagged and Junior hooked him back upright into the corner, not letting him fall, the roar dwindled off. The ref came trotting over, but not before Junior sledged the semi-conscious kid three more times.
As the ref pulled Junior back he hit the falling kid one more time.
There was a big sigh in the place as several hundred people exhaled slowly. Junior shook his head as though he didn’t quite know where he was. Then he smiled down at me. It took them a long worried time to get the wobbly kid over onto his stool.
He was still as limp as a rag as they hustled him up the aisle.
On the way back on the train with our kit on the seat beside him, he didn’t seem to want to talk. He had that look on his face. Beat down, jaded. A joe coming out of combat has that look. An emotional hangover. Too much women will give the same result.
A few days later Keno Morris came to the Clarry with his kid sister. We took a table down in the grill for five. Micky, Junior, me, Keno and Shirley Morris. Junior was the only one Shirley didn’t know, of course. Shirley is crisp. That type. Took a business school course after high school and at that time she’d been working for a year in an insurance office in Manhattan, taking the train back every night to East Orange where Keno still bunks in with his folks. Maybe there are a hundred and fifty thousand Shirley’s in New York. Quick and trim. Dark suits. White collars and cuffs. But too many of them have the thin little lips that go with thin little lives. At fifty-five they’ll still be drying nylons in hall bathrooms. The ones like Shirley are marking time. There the lips are warm, the eyes level but with a hint of laughter, no matter how brittle the conversation is. Girls made, in heart and body, to have kids and a man.
They were both cool about the introductions, Junior and Shirley, and from then on they ignored each other. But you could feel how it was with them, even then. It made for a funny kind of strain, made all of us talk too loud, laugh too loud.
Then Micky said, “How about it, Keno? You’ve had enough lay-off.”
Keno grinned his slow grin. “That’s why I brought Shirley along. Moral support. I want to quit, Mick. Hell, I know how much I owe you. You brought me right up to where I could knock on the door. But they wouldn’t let me in. I didn’t quite have it. I never will have it. I could go on with it, but it won’t ever be like it was. It won’t ever be fun again. I could get another shot in a year maybe. But I’ll be thirty in a month. The legs are about to go.”
There was a long silence. Mick sipped his coffee and put the cup back down. Keno and Shirley were watching him anxiously.
“How you fixed, Keno?” Mick asked quietly,
“Close to forty, with no taxes to come out of it. I’ve got my eye on a good drive-in, Mick.”
“Luck, Keno. I was going to sound you out about quitting. You get in a jam, I can maybe book you a couple of deals to help out.”
Shirley leaned over and impulsively kissed Micky’s dry cheek. The old goat blushed like a sub-deb. He said quickly, “Junior here is going to help build up the Brownell bankroll. Someday he’s going to be as good as you were, Keno.”
“Better,” Junior said lazily. It was like a slap in the face. In the stunned silence he stood up, yawned and said, “Goodnight all. Nice to meet you and your sister, Morris.”
“Where,” said Shirley as soon as Junior was out of sight, “did you get that!”
Micky briefed her. “What’s he got?” Keno asked.
“Everything,” Micky said, and added softly, “I hope.”
“But he’s wrong inside,” Shirley said. “He’s wrong, Mick. I feel so sorry for him. He needs somebody, dreadfully.”
Keno, still sore, said, “He needs a thump in the chops, Sis.”
But Shirley didn’t hear him. Her eyes were far away. And probably her heart too.
By June the string was up to nine. One boy managed to last until the sixth round before the fight was stopped. The name, Junior Franklin, began to get into the fine print in the sports columns. He was a killer, but unlike most killers, he was unpopular with the fans. The fight crowd could sense the contempt in him from the moment he came down the aisle. He didn’t acknowledge either cheers or boos. He had a habit of staring distantly down into the ringside faces.
But no matter how he fenced and sparred and danced in the beginning of a bout, everybody knew that sooner or later the lid would blow off, and people held their breaths waiting for that moment. One old guy died of a heart attack during that fantastic third round of his fight with Sailor Duval, the round where Junior and the Sailor stood flatfooted in the center of the ring and traded right, left, right, left, right, left for endless eternal seconds until at last the Sailor faltered, moved slowly backward and dropped on his face at the ropes.
Junior changed physically. Hours of ducking, bobbing, weaving strengthened the neck muscles. He went from a fifteen and a half collar to a seventeen. His square wrists thickened. His face was saved by the fact that he was devilishly hard to cut, and his nose had a wide strong bridge to begin with. Stripped down he was a beauty, with deceptive shoulder spread, lean legs, flat hard belly and symetric chest.
He was still willing to work, but I could sense the impatience building up in him. He wanted to be on top so badly that he hurt. And he started to needle Micky for bigger and more important matches. Micky kept saying, “When I think you’re ready for ’em, Junior, I’ll match you. You’re coming along nice.”
And Junior started staying out late. He was off the liquor, and he made up the rest by sleeping until noon. Anyway, there wasn’t much Micky or I could do about it. Junior wouldn’t answer any questions as to where he had been or what he had been doing. He seemed to grow more distant from us, more apart, as the months went by.
Then Keno came to town with fire in his eyes. He got to the point at once. “The society kid is running around with Shirley,” Keno said huskily, “and I want it stopped.”
“How did they get together?” Micky asked curiously.
Keno flushed and kicked at the rug. “Shirley phoned him.”
“Then aren’t you sort of working at this from the wrong end?” Micky asked mildly.
“She won’t listen to me, or to the folks. I told her that guy’s poison. She’s been taking late trains, getting home one, two o’clock in the morning and then getting up at six thirty to get to town in time for work. It isn’t good for her. She locks the door to her room and Mom says she hears her crying in there. The other night she didn’t come home at all. It either stops, or I’m going to shoot a couple holes in your prize boy, Mick.”
“Oh, fine!” Micky said wearily. He sent me in to wake up Junior. In ten minutes Junior joined us, his hair still wet from the shower, a robe belted around him.
He raised one eyebrow in a slightly nasty way as he saw Keno.