Fighting Blood (Witwer)/Round 2
That same night, when they have all went to bed in Mrs. Willcox's boarding house, I sneaked downstairs, got Judy's schoolbooks off the hall rack, and took 'em up to my room because after I have retired I find that me and sleep can't seem to get acquainted. The first one I open up is a French Dictionary. It could of been a Chinese Grammer for all it means to me! The only French I know is "Oo la la" and "Croix de Guerre," and now that the war's supposed to be over, why, both them remarks has went out of use. The next novel is entitled "Al Gebra" and is simply a case of crossing the alphabet with arithmetic. Two passages of Al gets me dizzy. "How much is twice H?" "Divide Y Z by 56." How do they get that way?
They's two books left, and in one of 'em is a note saying Judy has got to read this pair for her English Literature Class. I immediately join the Class. One book is called "The Saint's Tragedy," dashed off by a fellow named Charles Kingsley. The other is "The Last of the Barons," a much thicker book, by Edward Bulwer Lytton. I come near firing 'em out the window when I see Rags Dempster has wrote his name on the first page of both, right under Judy's!
"What thoughts do these books inspire you with?" is one of the questions Judy will be called upon to answer, according to the slip of paper in 'em. Well, I don't know what thoughts they inspired Judy with, but they is a wise crack in each of 'em which makes me do a piece of thinking, and that's a fact!
"Toil is the true knight's pastime!" claims Charles Kingsley, and "To have fame is a purgatory, to want it is a hell!" says Eddie Lytton. Well, if Charles is right, then every day I'm a knight, because I was toiling like a Chinese coolie behind Ajariah's soda fountain. As for Eddie's statement, I didn't know what it is to have fame, but he said a mouthful when he said to want it is a hell. Take it from me; I know! No dope fiend ever craved for a long-delayed pipe like I craved to be a success at something—anything! The only thing I really knew anything about was jerking soda, and I was eighteen. But I hadn't been plied with enough education to grab off a job with a future in it, or even a present, for that matter!
I had fame listed in my mind like I see the race horses listed on the programs at the County Fair at Drew City that summer: "Fame, aged, by Work, out of Ambition!" Well, I was going to lead the field under the wire on this imaginary horse, or croak trying.
I woke up at seven a. m. thinking about the heavy date I got with Knockout Kelly's manager at the Commercial House. Whilst I'm hopping around to keep warm under the coldest needle shower in Drew City, if not in the wide, wide world, I remember what Nate Shapiro says to me after I have put Knockout Kelly on the floor: "You're all through mixin' banana punches and the like, kid—I'll get you more jack for your punches than you'll ever see here!"
I know that means he wants to make a prize fighter out of me, and then I think—why not? I have always made it the point to be healthy, and being born husky I've took the greatest of care to keep myself that way. When I been eating regular, like I had in Drew City for the past year, I stripped at 142, and if I walk under anything lower than five foot ten, why, I got to bend my head. Of course I had never done no fighting in a ring or much anywheres else either, but still I don't ever remember running home bawling because somebody picked on me. I've generally always been able to take care of myself since I've had to, and, to the best of my memory, that's been all my life.
The more I think of it whilst I'm getting dressed, the more I'm keen to say it with left hooks instead of with nut sundaes. It's a cinch I'll never set the lake ablaze whilst I'm buried in a small-town drug store, and the question which kept me awake at night when I was errand boy, newsboy, bobbing boy, and printer's boy is troubling me again. That question is, where do I go from here?
Then, again, boss boxers gets as much for mixing up two punches in a ring as I do for mixing up two million punches behind a fountain. I figure a dozen fights might give me enough jack to lay the foundation of a education and also pull a chair up to a dining-room table three times a day whilst I'm doing it. I seen in the newspapers that Knockout Kelly, for the example, is to get five thousand dollars for boxing Jackie Frayne. And I knocked Kelly flat on his back with one punch! I think with a few more punches I can get a education, with a education I can get Judy Willcox, with Judy Willcox I can get anything!
At breakfast Mrs. Willcox asked me, land's sakes what am I thinking about, when I shake salt and pepper in my coffee and pour the cream on my fried eggs. Without hardly knowing what I'm saying, I tell her I'm thinking about Punch and Judy, which is true, but she stares at me so long I know my face is ted, so I beat it. By the time I have got the fountain all polished up and iced for the day, I have decided to take Nate Shapiro up.
He's named ten a. m. as the time he wants to see me, and it's a good hour after that when I left the Commercial House a different fellow than what I was when I went in there. When I go up to see Nate Shapiro I got matters all set in my mind that I'm going to make my living boxing. Where I come out, I don't know. To be a professional scrapper a fellow needs a whole lot more stuff than just the ability to punch somebody in the jaw and the willingness to accept a duplicate in return. You got to study this game like you study to be a first-class doctor, lawyer, plumber, or banker. But then if you get to the top in it, you can put the first-class doctor, lawyer, plumber, and banker on your pay roll and never miss the money!
"When will I have my first bout?" I asked Shapiro. "In a week or so, that is roughly?"
"Roughly is right!" grins the hard-faced Shapiro. "Roughly is the way I want you to act in your first fight—not bout. But toss you into a ring inside of a week? Be yourself! It'll take you a dozen weeks to learn the first rule of boxin'."
"What's the first rule?" I says.
"Always keep your shoulder blades off the canvas!" says Shapiro. "Don't laugh. Forgettin' 'at rule some day will beat Dempsey!"
"Well, how long before I would fight, then?" I says.
"About six months," says Shapiro—"'at's if you show some stuff!" He comes over to the bed where I have sit down, or rather sunk down, when I hear the "six months!" I'd figured that in six months I'd either be whipped out of boxing or the biggest thing in it. "Don't take it so hard," goes on Shapiro, patting my arm; "I could let you step next week with some tenth-rater, he'd paste you silly, break your heart, cure you of ever liftin' your hands again to even protect yourself and I'd lose a possible champ. Believe me, buddy, I ain't in this box-fight game for the laughs in it. I'm thinkin' of Nate Shapiro first, last, and all the time! It wouldn't hurt my nose if you got yours broke, but it would hurt my bank roll, and 'at's one place I can't take a punch! I know how all you kids feels when you've knocked somebody stiff for the first time. Take you, for instance—you think because you flattened K. O. Kelly with a lucky punch 'at you're the cat's whiskers, now don't you?"
"Well, I—eh—" I begin, the bit bashful.
"Sure!" butts in Shapiro. "Well, don't think too much of that, get me? 'At showed me you could hit—'at's all. You want to remember K. O. had his hands down, and he thought you would hit him the same way he thought you was Lillian Gish! You took him by the completest of surprise. Put six-ounce gloves on the both of you, flip you into a ring right now, and K. O. Kelly would stop you in less than a round, without workin' up a sweat!
"Why, I don't know nothin' about you at all. How do I know you can fight with your pan cut to ribbons, your eye closed tight, or your nose broke? How do I know you'll get up and mix it after a knockdown? I don't even know your name. What do they call you, kid?"
"Gale Galen," I says, getting gloomier every minute.
"'At's a good one too," says Shapiro. "Easy to say, what I mean. I was afraid you might have a monniker which would baffle the announcers."
"Oh, I won't box under my right name!" I says quickly. "I"
"O. K.," Shapiro cuts me off. "If you do business, I'll pick you a good one, don't fret. Less see, you goaled Kelly with a punch, and I got a hunch we ought to build on 'at. They's 'One-Round' this and 'One-Punch' 'at—eh—how 'bout—I got it! We'll tag you 'Six-Second Smith'! 'At rolls off the tongue easy and it means somethin', Yes, sir, 'at 'Six-Second Smith' is goin' to make the boy in the other corner thoughtful, and don't think it won't!"
"It'll make me thoughtful too," I says. "That's some name to live up to! Now, what—er—wages will I get for the six months I'm—eh—learning my trade?"
"I'll see 'at you eat," says this ten-minute egg. "But not at the Ritz! Another thing, and you might as well know this goin' in—you blow up on me in your first scuffle and you'll find yourself in 'Who's Through in America.' I'll drop you like a hot penny! Show me somethin', even 'at you can take it—and you got a million to shoot at!"
I get up after a few minutes and tell Shapiro I'll consider matters again and let him know. I want to see what two people thinks about it—Judy Willcox and Spence Brock.
Well, I ain't been back on the fountain a half hour when Spence comes in for a egg chocolate malted milk. I served him my troubles with the drink.
Much to my surprise, Spence don't go wild over the idea of me becoming a pug. Somehow, he says, it seems to him like a step down, not up, for me to pick out prize fighting as a life work.
"Not so good, Gale!" he says. "Not so good. And—Judy won't like that!"
"Look here, Spence," I says, "I've simply got to make some move which will get me from behind this soda fountain into something worth while! I happen to be big and strong, and that lets me out. What else can I do, outside of being a fighter, with the education I got? D'ye think I want to be a soda jerker all my life?"
"But why get excited over it now?" grins Spence. "You're only eighteen, so am I. We've got our whole life before us and lots of time to choose a career. I'm not giving the future a thought until I leave college, and I'm not entering Princeton until next year. Why, we're going to play around a whole lot yet before"
"Where d'ye get that we stuff?" I butt in with a bitter laugh. Spence, with a millionaire father, classing himself with me! "Did it ever occur to you, Spence, that they's as much difference in our positions as they's miles between here and the moon? You should annoy yourself about the future, with the bank roll you got in back of you! Not that I begrudge you a nickel of it, Spence, you know that. But it's different here. I got to make my own future, and I got to make it now! I ain't going to Princeton next year, or any year; I'll have to take my view of college by hearsay. As for the playing around, fine—when I get somewhere. Right now, work, hustle, study what's going on around me—for that'll have to be my Princeton—till I find out what my particular trick is and then I'll go to it!"
"Atta boy!" says Spence, elias the counter. He's already changed to my way of thinking, like he usually does. "More power to you! Well, that's fine! The first time you box in New York I'll bring the whole gang over to root for you, and I'll be cheer leader!" Then he gets serious and leans over the counter. "Listen, Gale," he says. "If you're not going to box for six months yet, and this Shapiro will only furnish your board and lodging until then—er—well, of course, there's a lot of little things you'll want, and—er—say, I have almost a thousand dollars of my own and I can let you have it—now don't get so red in the face, this would be strictly a loan and you can pay me back when"
"That's fine of you, Spence," I cut him off. "And I'll never forget it, don't think I will. But—I—I got some money from—from my grandfather in Kansas City the other day, and I'm sitting pretty as far as jack is concerned."
Spence gives me a odd look, but I don't flick a muscle.
"Oh, did you?" he says. "Well, I'm glad to hear that. But if you—er—if your grandfather ever refuses you, let me know. See you to-night!"
I don't get a nickel from my grandfather in Kansas City. Iain't got no grandfather. Both of 'em is dead, and I don't think either of 'em died and went to Kansas City. But I don't want to begin borrowing from Spence or nobody else. I don't want nothing gave to me; all I wanted was a chance to make it myself.
Spence has hardly went out when Lem Garfield, head and only clerk in The Elite Haberdashery, comes in for his daily dissipation. Lem's a incurable frosted-chocolate addict, and he admits I compose a wicked soda. I generally put everything in his drink but the day's receipts, and only charge him a thin dime, because, if they's one fellow I felt sorry for, it's Lem Garfield.
Lem was in the same boat I was—he's hungry for education too. The only difference between me and Lem was that disappointment had Lem licked. He'd quit trying. I'll quit trying when I'm dead!
Lem was born in Drew City and at twenty-three he's as gloomy and hard boiled as a guy of eighty. He's sore at the wide, wide world, and I don't blame him, I'll tell you why. When the war was throwed open to all corners, Lem didn't wait to see if his number would win a free trip to Europe in the draft raffle; he throws up his job, hauls off, and enlists. Drew City got hysterical and give him a send-off which would of satisfied Babe Ruth.
As Lem himself says, the day he was born, the day he started for camp, and the day he stepped off the train coming back from the war was the three biggest days in his life! On the last two days mentioned Lem could of married any girl in Drew City, took any job, borrowed any amount of money, even robbed the First National Bank, and he'd of had everybody's good wishes. He was what is known as a "hero," and Drew City went double cuckoo over him. Especially when he come back from France, wounded and with a Croix de Guerre on his chest, pinned there by a big French general on the account Lem goes crazy and captures a German machin-gun nest all by himself.
That got in all the papers, put Drew City on the map, and Lem in the hospital. Now Lem was back of the gent's furnishing counter again, ignored and forgot. Even the kids don't pester him no more to see his medal or where he was wounded. Old Ajariah Stubbs says Lem ain't got no push in him. He had some push in him when he went through them Jerrys, didn't he?
"They ain't nothin' in bein' a hero!" says Lem bitterly, sipping his drink and opening up on his favorite subject. "What good did all them cheers do me? I'd ruther been gave one good job with some kind of chances for advancement in it than a million of them 'Hurray for Lem Garfield's.' Ben Harkins, Joe Keen, Ollie Yerks, and them fellers got out of the draft on one excuse and another—Vince Neil, for example, on account he's got flat feet. As if that made a difference—we didn't have to dance with them Jerrys! But what I mean is this: all them fellers stayed home, tuk advantage of us boys bein' over there fightin' for 'em, and grabbed up all the good jobs. Ben Harkins was gettin' ten dollars a week in the bank when the draft tuk Matt Hamilton, the payin' teller. Ben managed to git himself married—hardly lived with her since—and got exemption. Now Ben's payin' teller and poor Matt's livin' in New York, workin' to-day and lookin' for work to-morrow. Matt got gassed. And that's the way it goes. A feller says anything about it, and they tell him: 'Forget it. The war's over!' As whosthis says, you'll find gratitude in the dictionary!"
"But they made a big fuss over you when you first come back, Lem, didn't they?" I says. I'll never ask Lem that no more. The next second I felt like I had struck a match back of the fountain and immediately seen Ajariah Stubbs's drug store go up in flames!
"Yeah!" snarled Lem, setting his glass down on the fountain with a click. "Yeah—they made a big fuss when I come back, over themselves! Mayor Gedge declares a holiday, Drew City is covered with flags and buntin', all the lodges, Eddie Granger's Vesper Band, and the fire department parades, and the richest men in town was on the welcomin' committee. I never heard so many long-winded speeches in my hull life and everybody learns the entire words of 'The Star-Spangled Banner' for the fust time. They was two pages in the 'Sentinel' about me, and my pitcher and everything. Two weeks later they forgot I ever come back!"
"D'ye think they made all that fuss for my sake? Like fun! It give 'em a chance to be important for one day, and they snatched at it like the fust trout of the season after a fat fly. Them lifelong orators got a chance to orate and strut around wearin' 'Reception Committee' badges, high hats, and swollowtail coats, and that's why they done it! Is any of 'em interested in me now? No. Only to come around and ask me will I vote against the bonus and not ask my country to pay me for fightin' for it. Well, I don't want no bonus—I'm willin' to make my own way and aluss was. I'm agoin' to study law by mail. I've aluss had a hankerin' to be a lawyer, and Judge Tuckerman thinks I'd make a good one. If Drew City was really so all-fired proud of me, why didn't they give me a chance to make suthin' out of myself by fixin' so's I could go to law school?"
Well, I don't know about gratitude, but it did seem to me that Lem had a real kick coming. Maybe he has got a bent for law and would make a lawyer. They's no question but that he loves to argue, and I often heard old Ajariah snort that Lem's "wuss than a Philadelphia lawyer!" Ajariah meant that to be a knock, but for all anybody knew, Lem would make good at it. But how was he going to find out?
Me and Lem was like two fellows without legs and both crazy to be runners. Artificial limbs would help us, but we ain't got the price, and there you are!
Lem argues that thousands of fellows in college is as out of place there as we'd be in Buckingham Palace. Fellows who's talents runs in entirely different directions from anything they're studying. Master plumbers wasting four years jamming their heads with French and Latin, useless to them and to be quickly forgot when they get out. Further authors getting their brains dulled by law, first-class authors studying medicine, boss salesmen grinding away at civil engineering. Whilst on the other hand, says Lem, fellows which would make cracker-jack lawyers, doctors, civil engineers, etc., is wasting their lives in gent's furnishing stores, plumbers' shops, soda fountains, offices, and like that. Why not limit college education to them which deserves it, instead of making it a rich man's way of getting his son off his hands for four years? They ain't half enough colleges now, claims Lem, to take care of the mobs which descends on 'em every year. State universities is snowed under by refugees from the high schools, and private colleges is swamped. So why not go through these millions and weed out for college only the ones which is actually going to benefit by it.
We're well warmed up to matters and Lem's addressing me like he really is a district attorney, and I'm a jury, when there is a interruption in the shape of Constabule Watson.
He marches right up to the fountain, glaring at me from under his bushy white eyebrows. I got a feeling that I am right on the brinks of having a lot of bad luck, because day before yesterday I liked to run over him with our delivery flivver.
Ajariah Stubbs comes out from behind the prescription counter to say hello to him and then stops short when Constabule Watson growls at me.
"Git off that air white coat and come over to the courthouse with me, you young hellion! I got a warrant fur your arrest fur reckless drivin'. Should be for aggravated assault and battery. You come near killin' me yistiddy!"
Ajariah opens his mouth like a fresh-caught bass and stares from me to Constabule Watson, like he thinks his ears is lying to him. But Lem, the coming lawyer, is all business.
"Let's see your warrant, constabule," he says, very important. "Don't yew say a word, Gale, till I get a chance to look into this!"
"Fust thing you know I'll 'rest you fur interferin' with a officer of the law," snorts Constabule Watson. "You keep your long nose out o' this, Lem Garfield, or it'll be the wuss fur you! Better git over to your shop. I see Nate Miller in there after a pair of overalls and no one to wait on him."
Lem beat it.
"Land o' Goshen!" says Ajariak. "What's all this to do about? What did you say this young scallywag done—steal suthin'?"
While Constabule Watson's telling old Ajariah the details of my horrible crime, I slipped off my white coat and apron and put on my cap. We all go over to the courthouse together. Ajariah locked up the store and come with us, because a hearing in Judge Tuckerman's court is more fun than any circus you ever seen. More fun for everybody but the prisoners!
I guess everybody in the State of New Jersey has heard about old Judge Tuckerman, mostly because of what he does to auto tourists which speeds over the State road through Drew City—a road which would make a ballroom floor look bumpy and rough. There's about eighty-six speed traps along the two-mile straightaway, which is kept in repair by auto drivers from all over the country, Judge Tuckerman receiving the donations by the via of stiff fines and stiffer costs. He ain't so particular about the fines, the State gets that, but the costs has got to be paid because they go to him as wages.
Judge Tuckerman is old enough to of knew Adam personally, and he's got a way of looking at you over his glasses which makes you think that even if you didn't do whatever you're accused of, why, you probably would of done it if you'd had the chance. He won't let no lawyers plead in his court, because he says they's no lawyer living which knows half the law he does, and him being a judge proves it. Pleading not guilty is the same as contempt of court, on the account Judge Tuckerman claims you must be guilty or you wouldn't be dragged up before him. Once the judge grabs up his gavel, pounds on his desk and opens up court, why, all friendship ceases!
Well, they's about a dozen cases brought before Judge Tuckerman this day, running all the way from speeding to assault and battery. I don't think the judge wasted a half hour on the lot of 'em. Every one of the prisoners pleaded innocent, but that made no difference to Judge Tuckerman, which found 'em all guilty, sometimes before they got two and a half words out of their mouths, and slapped on the fines and costs with a lavish hand. I'm still laughing at these samples of Tuckerman justice when my case is called.
The judge frowns heavy at me when Constabule Watson got done telling him how I nearly run him down with our delivery flivver.
"Let's hear what ye got to say, young feller," says Judge Tuckerman, squinting at me over his cheaters. "And don't tell no more lies than ye have to! How d'ye plead?"
Well, I seen what the rest of 'em got by pleading innocent so I thought I'd save time. "Guilty!" I says promptly.
Instead of pleasing Judge Tuckerman, this honest confession seems to get him good and sore! He looks at me in a kind of pained surprise. I guess he thought I had deliberately spiked his guns, stopping him from giving me a good bawling out and then worming a confession out of me. He loves to do that, and I just kind of ruined his day for him by pleading guilty right off the bat.
"Well, I'll just make a example of ye for bein' so smart!" he growls. "Thutty-five dollars fine and fifteen dollars costs. Maybe that'll take that grin off yer face!"
It did, for a fact! I ain't got fifty dollars any more than I got three ears. Fifty bucks is a month's wages—a pile of money! Old Ajariah is scowling at me something fierce, but still he's my only hope. So I took a deep breath and turned to him.
"Mr. Stubbs," I says, "can I—eh—I—will you loan me fifty dollars, please? You can take it out of my pay, as much as you want a week."
Old Ajariah gives me a indignant whinny and glares at me.
"I'll do no sich thing!" he grunts. "And ye ain't working fur me no more, ye young rip. I'm gettin' shut of you right now! Ask some of them rich friends o' yourn—them shameless young baggages from the school, with their short skirts and boys' haircuts, and them good-fur-nothin' cubs which hangs around my sody fountain. See if they'll help ye, now you're in trouble!" And he looks around the courtroom, grinning like a shaggy old wolf, which is what he reminds me of just then.
I felt like hollering at Ajariah right there in court that if it wasn't for the "shameless young baggages" and their boy friends from Drew City Prep coming in for sodas every day, he'd have to close up his drug store. But I got other things to think about right then. I got to get hold of fifty bucks or—then Judge Tuckerman bangs impatientty on the desk with his gavel.
"Can't pay the fine, hey?" he says. "The idea! A strappin' young buck like you and you ain't got fifty dollars, eh? Wal—thutty days in the workhouse!"
Blam!
I feel like the courthouse has fell in on me. Thirty days in jail! Why, thirty minutes in a cell would drive me cuckoo! I been up against it good and plenty many times since I been a kid, but jail is one thing I've missed. It would about kill me, I'm satisfied of that! I stand there kind of dizzy till Constabule Watson grabs my arm and leads me over to Jeff Haines, Judge Tuckerman's clerk. Jeff's running a ink roller over a piece of paper, and he suddenly reaches out and snatches hold of my wrist. "Ever had your finger prints tuk?" he says, with a nasty grin.
Well, this here's too much. You'd think I was a burglar or something—take my finger prints! I jerked my wrist away so hard I pulled Jeff Haines half-ways over his desk, and the sticky ink gets all over his clothes and face, which tickles me silly. Constabule Watson reaches for me, when they's a commotion at the door of the courtroom and in rushes Nate Shapiro.
"Where's 'at kid from the drug store?" he bellows.
I waved my hand to him. Never again in my life will I be so glad to see Nate Shapiro, no matter what he does for me! Judge Tuckerman bangs with his gavel and splits a glare between me and Nate.
"Who d'ye think ye be, a-bustin' into my court like this?" howls the judge. "I fine ye twenty-five dollars for contempt of court, and if ye don't pay it I'll send ye to jail!"
Nate, which looks relieved when he sees me, just sneers. He pulls a roll of bills from his pocket that no grayhound in the world could jump over, and he throws a few of 'em on the desk. "Shoot the piece, grandpa!" he says. "There's the twenty-five fish, and 'at's all you git if you cry your eyes out!" He turns to me: "You in a jam?" he asks quickly, paying no attention to the judge's red face.
In a low voice I told him, kind of hurriedly, what was what. Nate grunts and hands the raging Jeff Haines my fifty-dollar fine.
"'At's seventy-five bucks I'm in you," he says to me. "C'mon, git out of here before this old hick takes me for his winter expenses!"
Well, getting the air from Ajariah Stubbs, and Nate Shapiro coming to my rescue at the critical minute, just about decided me what to do. I walked back to the Commercial House with Nate, and before I left him I had signed a contract with him, fixed legal by Mr. Tompkins, the recorder of deeds and notary public. Nate agrees to room, board, and clothe me till the time I'm able to earn my first jack in the ring; after that I'm to give him fifty per cent of my wages. He promises he'll rush me along to the top, but he says I got to be satisfied with small purses at first. This kind of casts me down a bit. I ask him what he means by "small purses."
"Oh—a couple hundred bucks a fight," he says, carelessly.
Two hundred dollars a fight and Nate Shapiro calls that small! Why, I'd been working twelve hours a day for nearly four months for that much jack. And, just think, if I fought every night I could make fourteen hundred dollars a week! I told Nate that, and he grabs my arm and swings me around. "Are you tryin' to kid somebody?" he snaps. I shook my head, and Nate gives me a long look. Then he laughs "Well, you don't know what it's all about, for a fact!" He says. "Fight every night, hey? How d'ye git 'at way? You work twice a month and stay perpendicular whilst you're in there, and I'll be tickled!"
I figure I'll tell Judy all about this after supper that night and see what she thinks about me becoming a boxer. Of course the thing's done now, but still and all a few words of encouragement from her would help me a lot. But once again I find luck's against me. Judy has went out canoeing on the lake with Rags Dempster.
A little later Spence Brock picks me up downtown in his new racing car, so I hop in beside him and tell him all the various adventures which has happened to me since he seen me that morning. Spence listens with the greatest of surprise and attention, and when I tell him about how old Ajariah Stubbs throwed me down, why, Spence swears they will never be another boy or girl from Drew City Prep go into his store, not even to use the phone. That cost Ajariah about $100 a week. While we're talking, Spence swings the car to the bridge over the lake, and half-ways across we get a blowout. I jump out to help Spence change the shoe, and happen to glance down at the water. Drifting along so's they'll pass right under us is Rags and Judy in Rags's canoe. The are lights along the bridge shows their faces up plain as day.
Spence hears me grind my teeth, and he pats my arm sympathetically, because he knows how I feel with the regards to Judy. The canoe's still drifting, when suddenly Rags gets up and starts towards Judy's end of it, feeling his way carefully so's not to upset it. Half rising, Judy calls to him to go back, and she sounds real scared. But Rags keeps coming on, laughing kind of nasty, and Spence whispers, almost to himself: "The big hound—not so good, Rags!"
Not so good? Say—my nails is biting into the wooden rail of the bridge, and I feel the blood trying to burst out of my temples. I'm glad I never felt that way in the ring. If I had, I'd of killed somebody! Without much idea of what I'm going to do, I throwed one leg up over the rail, and just then Rags makes a swift grab for Judy. She breaks away, and the canoe tips over, dumping 'em both in the lake.
Spence stands there petrified as the canoe rights itself and slowly floats away, but I reach the top of the rail in one bound as Judy comes coughing and spluttering to the surface. Then I jumped in after her. The last thing I remember is Spence's yell and Judy looking wild-eyed at me ashit the water a foot from her head. Not having saw me before, she must of thought I fell right out of the sky! Then I went down, down, down. They say the lake's fifteen feet deep under the bridge, but I don't believe it. I bet it's fifteen hundred! I took in about four gallons of muddy water and come up fighting for air. One look shows me Judy, Spence, and Rags swimming around the canoe like they've lived in water all their lives. Nobody in no danger there. That's all I see, except Spence thrashing the water toward me when he spots my head. Then I went under again.
I couldn't swim a stroke. A swell rescuing hero, hey?
Spence, which has win cups in interscholastic swimming races, was the real hero. He had to rescue me! By some expert juggling we all managed to get in the canoe and to the bank of the lake, where we got out, all set-ups for pneumonia if it happened to come along. Spence runs to his car and gets the lap robe to wrap around Judy, and while he's gone Rags looks at me and sneers.
"What do you think you are—a movie hero?" he says tome. "Imagine going overboard to save a person's life and not even being able to swim!" He laughs long and loud.
None of that water has soaked through to my temper yet, and I'm just going to tie into him when Judy lays her wet hand on my equally wet arm.
"You—you can't swim at all, Gale?" she asks me, her eyes opening wide. Even bedraggled from the ducking in the lake, she looked like a million dollars.
"No, I can't, Judy," I says, getting good and red. "But I didn't think of that when I jumped in. I was thinking of—Oh, what's the use, I just made a fool of myself. Let's forget it!"
"I'll never forget it, Gale!" she says kind of soft, and her hand's still on my arm. "I think that was wonderful. Wonderful! That was real courage—Oh, if you had been drowned! You knew you couldn't swim and that the lake was deep, and yet"
This is steaming Rags up. He takes out a wallet and removes a bill, stepping over to us.
"Here, boy," he says, offering me the bill, "get yourself some dry clothes and—eh—run along now. If there's any change, you might—eh—buy yourself some swimming lessons!"
I knocked the bill out of his hand and he would of surely followed it to the ground if Judy hadn't pushed quickly in between us. She gives Rags as two-handed a bawling out as I ever heard in my life, and when she got through, Rags looked like a whipped stray dog.
Spence come along at the tail end of the thing, and his eyes twinkled as Judy wound up by turning her back on Rags and taking my arm to Spence's car. After changing the punctured shoe Spence drove Judy and: me home, and she insisted on spreading half the fap robe over me. We held hands under it like a couple of kids all the ways to the house, and if you could ever see Judy you would know that a little thing like being ducked in a lake is nothing compared to that!
Well, Mrs. Willcox is scared stiff when she sees us come in looking like a couple of drownded rats, but Judy laughs things off and runs up to change her clothes while I go to my room and do likewise. I'm just about dressed when Judy knocks on my door and says to come right down to the parlor when I'm ready, because her mother is making us both something hot to keep off a cold. So I go downstairs, and there's some hot lemonade and Judy's dissolving rock candy in it. She's got some kind of a Japanese kimona on and she's just a magazine cover come to life.
It nearly drives me crazy when I think I've got to leave Drew City for a while, and maybe Rags Dempster with all his money will get her, before I've had a chance to make good. When Mrs. Willcox comes in I tell 'em both all about what happened to me during the course of the day and that I'm going away with Nate Shapiro to be a boxer, because I want to make enough money to educate myself and get somewhere. Then I'm coming back to Drew City
I stopped there, looking hard at Judy, and she knows what I mean, for she gets a beautiful red which don't escape her mother, who looks from me to Judy a bit sharp, but says nothing.
The three of us talks things over for quite the while. Judy don't seem to be a bit against me being a boxer, but she also thinks I might go just as far without a college education.
"You know, Gale, that Ingersoll said college was a place where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed!" she says. "And I—I don't like your going away one bit! That is, I—I mean—" She breaks off, blushing again, and Mrs. Willcox butts in to say she thinks I'm all wrong to leave Drew City to go out in the world and try to get famous. I'm too poor to be proud, she says, and on top of that, pride is sinful.
Then she tells me what the Bible says about it. She thinks I should stay in Drew City and take up some good trade like drug clerk, steam fitter, garage mechanic, or the like which, she says, "will pay you your good twenty-five to thirty dollars a week some day!"
It also slips out, while Judy fidgets and coughs, that Mrs. Willcox's a hundred dollars shy on a note held by the bank and due in a week. How she's going to get the century is something she don't know. This bothers me not the little, and I am thinking is there any way I could scare up that hundred bucks short of burglary and get it to that dear old lady without her knowing who sent it, when the doorbell rings. Judy seems glad of the interruption to her mother's hard-luck story and runs to the door.
Mrs. Willcox peeps out the window through the curtains.
"Why, it's Mr. Dempster!" she says in a pleased voice.
I liked to fall out of my chair! What is this fathead doing around here after what just happened at the lake? And "Mister" Dempster! This big stiff's only about my age—but he's "Mister" and I'm just Gale. Still, if money gets a fellow attention in Wall Street, why shouldn't it in Drew City?
Judy walks in ahead of Rags without saying a word. She looks meaningly at me and then back to Rags, very stern and cold.
"Well?" she says to him, eighty below zero.
But with Mrs. Willcox, it's different! She runs and grabs Rags's hat and coat and pushes a worn chair back of the curtains on the sly, and generally acts as flustered as if Rags was the Prince from Wales. This gets Judy's goat and ruins my animal, especially when Rags acts as if this was only what was due him.
"I—ah—I wish to apologize for my conduct at the lake, Judy," he says. "And I'm sorry for—ah—what I said to you, Galen. Your going into the water under the circumstances was very—ah—courageous, even if you were unable to be of the slightest assistance, and, in fact, had to be rescued yourself."
He had to tag that on at the end with a faint, nasty smile, to make it look to Mrs. Willcox like I'd kind of bungled things all up. But Judy looks agreeably surprised and kind of winks at me from behind him to take his outstretched hand, I didn't want to—I know this fellow is simply stalling—but I shook hands.
Then Rags sprang his real surprise. He offers me a job in his old man's carpet factory, and he does it in a silky, politely insulting manner which would of made a starving beggar turn the offer down if he had breath left to refuse! Looking past me, like I'm a horse, or the like, he's talking about, he tells Mrs. Willcox I'll have a opportunity to learn a good trade in the carpet mill and not be a "unskilled laborer" like I am now. He thinks he might get me ten or twelve a week to start. Not in the office—oh, no! I haven't got enough schooling for that, and then they have to be—ah—particular—but in the mill.
The high and mighty tone of his voice gets me red-headed! I can read faces better than Judy or her mother—I've saw more, for one thing—and I know Rags is simply doing all this to devil me. He knows darn well I wouldn't be obligated to him for as much as the correct time, but he's making plenty display before Judy and her mother. He goes over very big with Mrs. Willcox, for she immediately tells me I'm getting the chance of a lifetime and I'll be crazy not to take it.
Even Judy seems to think that way too, telling me—in one quick whisper which sent my heart pumping like a hydraulic drill—that she don't want me to go away. But I licked that temptation before it got its hands up. I wasn't going to be buried in no Drew City carpet factory before I'd had a chance to see for myself am I a false alarm or do I mean something! So I thanked Rags as polite as I could, but I says I got something better in view. Then I says good night all around and went up to my room.
The next morning, after I pack, I went down to the Commercial House, and for one solid hour me and Nate Shapiro argued each other black in the face. Only by flatly refusing to leave Drew City with him do I finally get what I'm after. I got a hundred bucks from him and mailed it to Mrs. Willcox in a plain envelope, with nothing to show who it come from. So that was that.
Well, Drew City's only thirty-eight miles from New York, and I figured I can maybe run down for Sundays. I promised to write Spence every few days and let him know how they're breaking for me, and then I go back to the house for the big farewell to Judy and her mother. Now that Mrs. Willcox seen I was determined to go, why, she cried a little bit and actually kissed me on the forehead, saying she had come to look on me like a son. And even though she thought I was making a big mistake, she hoped I had all kinds of good luck and would be a good boy in New York as I had been whilst I lived in her house.
Well, I'm kind of upset myself. Mrs. Willcox had always been nice to me, but I never thought she liked me like that, and darned if I don't begin gulping and wiping my own eyes. I think maybe if Judy had asked me right at that minute to stay I might of chucked the whole thing! But Judy don't come in till after Mrs. Willcox had gave me a little Bible with my name in it and a homemade strawberry shortcake to take to New York with me, because she knows I'm crazy about it the way she makes it. Then Judy come along.
Girls change their feelings like you change a collar! From the way she acted the day before I think I'm sitting pretty. She couldn't of been nicer, but now it's different. Before I can say a word she tells me very sarcastic it's too bad I don't find Drew City attractive enough to suit my exacting taste, and she hopes I have a nice time in New York. I says I don't expect to have a nice time or a nice anything till I see her again, but that I got to go where I'll get a chance. I took hold of her hand and says to please not be sore at me for leaving, and that some day maybe I'd be able to buy Drew City and give it to her to play with. But Judy says I could of done as well there as anywhere, and that's just a excuse to get away.
To change the subject, I ask her will she give me one of her pictures. She says am I afraid I will forget what she looks like, and I'm nervous anyways and that puts on the finishing touches! I was going to ask her would she kiss me good-bye and I'd of probably got slapped in the face, but now I just tipped my cap and blew.
I'm still thinking about her and what a sap I was to leave that way, when me and knockout Kelly and Nate Shapiro gets into New York at noon. Two hours later Judy and everything else has been knocked out of my head for the time being at least. Nate has me put on the gloves at Lefty Mullen's gym with Knockout Kelly, and I learned about boxing from him!
It come about like this: After we get our suit cases parked in a hotel on Sixth Avenue, we go up to this gym, where lots of fighters around New York trains. Nate wants to see how I strip and if I know anything at all about using my hands. Well, he gets me a pair of red swimming shoes, and laces on the first pair of boxing gloves I ever wore in my life. In ring togs, Knockout Kelly is standing by watching me, with a terrible scowl on his face. All the ways up in the train he ain't said a word to me nor I to him. Knockout Kelly's real name is Mendal Nussbaum, and when stripped for action he's certainly one tough-looking baby, for a fact! Even though I did knock him down a couple of days before, I can't help feeling how much better it would be for me if we was both friends.
Nate finally calls him over.
"See what he's got," he says to him, nodding to me. "No playin' rough—just feel the kid out. If you deliberately crash him, K. O., I'll see 'at you git the same!"
Kelly just grunts, sizing me up with his beady little red eyes. Nate pulls out his watch. "Less go!" he says.
I could see and feel how awkward I was the minute Kelly put up his hands. He stuck out his left glove, and it connected with my nose, bringing salty water out of both my eyes. Then his right thudded into my stomach, and I commence to feel terrible sick. Kelly stepped in and clinched with me, roughing me around while he whispers hoarsely in my ear: "That's just for a starter, you big yokel! I'm gonna slap you for a Chinese ash can and send you back to that slab in Jersey on a shutter!"
Up to that time I hadn't been a bit sore. I didn't mind getting hurt. I expected to at first, knowing nothing at all about the fine points of the game. But this kind of stuff's different! I wrenched away from Kelly and swung my left glove at his jaw. He ducked his head and I missed a mile. Then he come up grinning under my arms, landing both his hands to my face—hard. I think I see a opening and I drive my right hand into it. It hit the air, and the next thing I know I am sitting on the floor, which for some reason is going around and around and around!
"Time!" hollers Shapiro and bends over me, dousing me with a wet sponge. "I hope 'at showed you somethin', kid," he says. "Never lead with your right—it leaves you wide open for the other guy's counter. Y'see, Kelly just stepped aside and dropped you with a left hook. Well, 'at's all for now!"
"You better keep that baby in a hothouse!" snarls Kelly, looking terrible disappointed. "He'll never get nowheres. He's got a glass jaw and he's as yellah as all the lemons in the world!"
"Shut up!" bawls Shapiro, pushing him away. "I'm"
I'm on my feet by this time and the dizziness has went. My jaw's so sore I can hardly close my mouth, but that "yellah" stuff set me ablaze! All the things which had happened to me in the last two days comes to a head. Getting pinched, doing that fool dive into the lake, having Rags Dempster lord it over me, leaving Drew City, and Judy's cold good-bye. Now this guy calls me "yellah" and likewise knocks me flat. Too much! I ain't figuring on starting my climb to the top this way. My mouth is twitching into a silly grin, like it always does when I'm crazy mad. I can't control that to save my soul, and that nervous flickering of my lips seems to make a lot of people think I'm faint-hearted. I pushed the surprised Shapiro away and stood in front of the leering Kelly.
"Put up your hands!" I snarls, as tough as him.
Then the fun began.
Kelly sent a wicked smash at my face, but I expected this one and kind of clumsily ducked it. It only hit me a glancing blow, but they was force enough in it to knock me aside, and the next punch, catching me off balance, floored me again. I bounced right up, but I'm goofy, for a fact! They's at least three sneering Kellys in front of me, the way it looks to me. He stepped in close again and—well, it just rains boxing gloves on my face and body. I don't know how many times I hit the mat, whatever it was it was enough!
I know the last time I crawled to my feet I happened to glance at my heaving chest and I see it's splattered with blood, I guess from my face, which feels like I been hit with a broken bottle. Out of the corner of my right eye I see part of my nose swelled up like a cabbage. I can't breathe through it at all. My left eye is closed tight. But they's a few marks on Knockout Kelly too. His lips is puffed and a red trickle's coming from one ear. Oh, this box fighting is no child's play. Whatever I made at it, I earned!
Kelly seems to be hitting me almost whenever and wherever he wants, but I feel his blows is getting weaker. I don't hit the floor no more than that terrible left glove of his socks against my chin. I'm only pasting him once to ten of his, and then only by dum luck. Yet when I do land on him, he doubles up and grunts and his breath's coming in gasps.
Then for the first time I caught him fair and square on his concrete jaw, and he went down on his back with a crash. My hand feels num. I hear Shapiro and some other people yelling, but I can't believe they're in the gym, their voices sound so far away.
Kelly stays a long time on one knee, it seems to me, and then's he's on his feet, and I let him hit me three or four times without even trying to clock the punches. What's the use? I don't know enough about the game to block him, anyways. I'm willing to take these wallops to get one more in on his jaw. I see another chance and I let go with both hands, first the left and then the right.
My left caught him on the bridge of his nose and I felt it give, and then, to my great surprise, Kelly's face turns a bright red all over and it even goes down to his white trunks—like he'd stood under a shower composed of grape juice! My right glove socked him over the heart and he fell in toward me, his hands dropping down at his sides. Honest, he's laying on me like a dead man.
Some voices hollers "Finish him, kid!" and now that I think of it afterward, I'm sorry to say I pushed him off and tried to do just what the voices said!
But you want to remember that Kelly had beaten and battered me around that gym till I was no more the Gale Galen of Drew City than I am Prince of Wales. As I shoved Kelly off he managed to land a weak punch just on the line of my belt. I took careful and deliberate aim at his jaw and was just going to let go when Nate Shapiro grabbed me around the waist and pulled me to one side. Knockout Kelly slumped half to the floor in the arms of two other fellows.
"Feel hurt anywheres inside, kid?" says Nate anxiously in my ear. They's a crowd around me. Somebody says: "Who is he?" Shapiro says, very proud: "Six-Second Smith, 'at's who he is!"
"I ain't hurt inside or anywheres else either!" I says, shaking myself. "How long was we fighting—a couple of hours?"
"I guess it seems 'at way!" grins Nate, running his hands all over me, like a doctor looking for breaks. "You stepped four and a half minutes with the toughest egg in his class. Kelly's got a draw with the champ. Sweet Papa, if you only knew somethin'! Well, I'll fix 'at part of it. You got a heart and you can sock—I'll teach you to know your right glove from the time-keeper, and if we don't cop the title in a year I'll quit managin' pugs and go to work!"
Kelly comes stumbling over at this minute and growls at Shapiro:
"What did you stop it for? They was nobody hurt! I wasn't out. I was stallin'—you didn't have to save me!"
"You, you big boloney?" sneers Shapiro, draping a bathrobe around me like I'm a cracked race horse. They's two fellows rubbing me with oil. "I wasn't even thinkin' of you! I didn't want this boy to break his hands on you—he ain't got no bandages on. D'ye think he's yellah now?"
Knockout Kelly grins kind of sheepish. Then he reaches down and shakes my glove. "It's all fun, ain't it, kid?" he says through his puffed lips. "I think the two of us could lick any sixty cops in the world, how 'bout it? Cheese, but you got a sweet right!"
"And, cheese, but you got a sweet left!" I says, shaking his glove.