Fighting Blood (Witwer)/Round 5
What Nate and Kayo Kelly never could understand is that this studying I wear tearing off at nights when I wasn't doing my stuff in a ring was conditioning me for a bigger battle than any I ever had at a fight club—a battle to boost myself out of the ash heap I was born to and make myself mean something! Say, if I ever get elected President, not that nobody has nominated me or nothing like that, but if I ever do, why, my first presidential act will be to draw up a law making ignorance a crime. D'ye think I'll punish the ignorant guys themselves for it? No, sir! I'll send the rich babies to jail which allows ignorance to be committed in their neighborhoods for want of the money to prevent it. The money which would feed and clothe the kids while they're going to school and getting a chance to use their little heads for something else besides hatracks. Then they won't be no more eight-year-old kids with forty-eight-year-old faces selling papers, working in coal mines, in cotton mills and canneries, when they ought to be in school!
Don't get the idea that while I was giving my brains these workouts I neglected my boxing tuition. Nate always followed me around with sarcastic remarks, advice, bawling outs, and the etc., which on top of all the physical culture I was getting every day used to steam me up. But I got to like it and look forward to my daily chores in the gym with a relish, because I knew it all meant something and it was all speeding me along to the top. The way I looked at it, as long as I was in the ring at all I might as well be a champ. I'd rather be a first-class laborer than a third-class king, no fooling. Say—even when I was a newsboy, I sold a mean paper and don't think I didn't!
Well, having got all that off my manly chest, I will now get down to the business of the meeting, which is my fight with the middleweight champion, in which I knock him so cold his name could of been Battling Zero instead of Frankie Jackson, which it was. Although I knock Frankie stiff, I only get a draw on the account of a technicality. The technicality was that I am likewise knocked stiff myself. Laugh that off!
Within a year after Nate has talked me into laying aside my white coat and apron for a pair of boxing gloves, I have fought my way to the right for a scuffle with the middleweight champion. But it takes two to make a quarrel and the champ don't wish to box me no more than he wishes he had pneumonia. He just simply won't romp with me and that's all they is to it. Instead of that, he plays around with the set-ups, knocking over kids which don't know a left hook from the referee's tonsils and collecting anywheres from ten to twenty-five thousand bucks for each of these aggravated assaults.
Nate's worried a lot about the champ refusing to de business with us, because honest I was growing like New York. I'm having a terrible time keeping down to the middleweight limit and Nate's crazy to have me fight the champion while I can still make the weight for him, because he knows I'll win the title as sure as salmon comes under the head of fish. But the champ turns a deaf ear to all our pitiful pleadings to come and get his pasting and be done with it. Even when the newspapers puts him on the pan and Nate says he can have all the money and we'll just take our expenses, why, the safe-playing, money-grabbing middleweight king just laughs at us and then jumps out to some slab like Gazunk, Ia., and flattens some sap which couldn't win a fight if he had the only ticket on one in a raffle.
"If I can't toss you in a ring with this hothouse champeen in a couple of months, you won't be able to make 158 any more than I can make a clock!" moans Nate to me one day. "Here I baby you along, rate your fights till you've flattened everything but the Catskill Mountains and now when you're a cinch for a title this big boloney won't mingle with us!" He walks up and down the room, wringing his hands.
"I'll pick a fight with him on the street, hey?" I says, hoping to cheer him up.
"You do and I'll help him clout you!" hollers Nate. "How many times do I have to tell you never fight nobody for nothin'? Never raise your hands unless they's pennies in it for both of us—don't ever forget 'at part of it. I'm goin' to take you around to every fight club where 'at synthetic champ starts and we'll challenge him from the ring till every time he hears your name he'll get convulsions!"
So we did. But the champ does not get convulsions. Every time he fought around New York I get introduced from the ring and publicly challenge him to fight me. Once I got a idea, and after the announcer has bellered my challenge I whisper in his ear to add: "This is the eighteenth consecutive time 'Six-Second' Smith has challenged Frankie Jackson for a championship bout. He will continue challenging till the champion is shamed into fighting him!" The announcer grins and repeats that after me and half the crowd laughs while the other half cheers. Does that bother the champ? Why, the big stiff just looks up from his corner where he's waiting to go on with some dub, gives me a good-natured grin and says: "You tell 'em, kid; I bet you're the snake's hips, no foolin'!"
I would of smacked him then and there, only Nate grabs me and hustles me out of the ring to the tune of mingled laughs and cheers. When we get down to our seats, Nate turns to me kind of mad-sarcastic.
"Listen," he says. "I've tried everything I know to get this gil to fight us and no can do! Now you claim you ain't always goin' to be a scrapper—you state you got too much brains to be a pug. You're always studyin' and clownin' with 'em books and the like when you ain't workin'. O. K.—less see if it means anything! Less see if your eighty-six carat brain can dope a way to get this champ in a ring with us. If you can't, I'm goin' to throw all them books of yours in the ash can. Now go on, do your stuff!" But my mind is already at work on this problem and I don't even condescend to answer.
Well, if Edison had done the thinking I do that night and half the next day, Heavens knows what he would of invent, but what I invent is a way to get the middleweight champ into a ring with me—object, fisteycuffs! The minute this clever idea hits me I go looking for Judy to get her opinions of my scheme, but she's in the place where she always seems to be those days when I want her and that's elsewhere. Anyways, I go down in the kitchen and there's Knockout Kelly with one of Mrs. Willcox's aprons on, peeling a wicked potato. Kayo is one of the toughest welters which ever clipped a chump on the chin, but around the house he's as mild as any June you ever seen. He's stopped One-Round Michaels in New York two nights previous, but before Michaels went to dreamland he closed Kayo's right eye for auld lang sang. So Kayo is having no little trouble undressing potatoes with only one eye taking any interest in the matter. Nate is mixing a batter under the direction of Mrs. Willcox, and when he sees me he waves the mixer at me.
"Get out of our kitchen," he says. "Get out of our kitchen, or else grab a towel and get busy on them supper dishes! What d'ye think y'are, a guest here?"
I meekly grabbed a towel and commence giving Mrs. Willcox's china set a good rub down and while I'm doing this I tell Nate the scheme I have doped out to force the middleweight champ to give me a crack at his title. Nate is keeping on mixing this batter while I'm telling him, and by the time I get through he's so excited that he's mixed the batter all over the table, all over his clothes, and all over the floor, and what Mrs. Willcox says to him was plenty. I will tell you my scheme like I told Nate and I only hope you ain't mixing no batter while you're reading this.
Well, my scheme was just this—I aim to show up as a handler in the corner of every boy the champ fights from then on! How's that for a piece of figuring? The way I look at it, after this guy sees me across the ring watching him and seconding the fellow he's fighting about a dozen times, why, I will begin to get on his nerves. He'll get to thinking about me being there and he'll come to look for me and the first thing you know he'll be willing to do anything to get rid of me. He'll be so crazy mad at me that he'll crave me in a ring so's he can ruin me. Then I'll get a bout with him and that's all I want!
Nate says this scheme is the lion's mane and I have missed my calling. I should of been a Pullman conductor, says Nate, which thinks a Pullman conductor has got a better job than President G. Harding.
Without waiting to hear what you think of the scheme, I will tell you that it worked to perfection. I showed up as a second in the other boy's corner just seven times when the champ had enough. At first he seemed to get quite a giggle out of it and he used to work his man close to the ropes where I'm sitting with the water bucket and sponge and he'd call down all kinds of nasty cracks at me. Like, for the example, he'd say: "Here's what you'll get, Stupid!" and with that he'd bounce his unlucky adversus almost at my feet. I never made a comeback. I'd just sit there staring up at him until after a while he got in the habit of looking over his shoulder at me to see if I'm there. He just couldn't help himself. When he got pasted on the chin a few times on the account of that bad habit of looking for me, why, he give in.
One fight he had, with my handling the boy he's boxing, I'll never forget. Here's a kid taking a terrible pasting from a fellow I know I can trim the same wayknow this is America, or even more so than that. A little aggressiveness would of turned the tide of battle for my man, but the fact that he's fighting a champion licks him. Every time he comes to his corner, I'd tell this boy—Young Hunter, his name was—I'd tell him: "This guy is a mark for a right uppercut, at least try one!" And this sap would shake his head and pant: "Try nothin', I couldn't hit this baby with a medicine ball! He must be good—he's the champ, ain't he? I only hope I can stay the limit, 'at's all!"
That's the stuff that losers is made of, in boxing and everything else, too. Why, if I ever tried in my life, I'd try against the champ—the champ of anything! Suppose you do lose? Why, all you lose is the fight itself, ain't it? You win with yourself, because you know you tried your darndest and something inside of you says: "Atta boy!" It's got to!
Well, we finally sign with the middleweight champ, with no more dickering over the articles than they was at the Peace Conference. About all Frankie Jackson didn't insist on me doing was that I should check my right arm at the box office the night of the fight. I have got to make 158 ringside, while he can come in at catchweights. The muss is to be twelve rounds at Jersey City where no referee's decision is allowed, so the only way I can win the title is to knock Frankie stiff. By a odd coincidence, this happens to be my intentions so I don't moan over that part of it. The champ is to get $25,000, win, lose or draw, while my wages is to be $3,500, and how Nate ever pried that out of them hard-boiled promoters is a mystery to me to this day!
I train for this scuffle at Drew City, where I trained for all my brawls and nearly everybody in the town drops in every day to see us work out. From three to five in the afternoon, when Nate lets 'em in for fifteen cents a head, the place was just packed.
But there's one guy which didn't show up at the training camp no more and that's Rags Dempster. This dizzy dumbell was too busy hanging around Judy or calling her up on the phone. I couldn't dope out how he really stood with her—one minute she'd curl her lip at him, the next minute he seems to be sitting pretty with her. I try hard to keep out of his way, for this bird affected me like a red shirt affects a bull. I don't hunt trouble, because when I get steamed up I can't laugh matters off, something has got to fall—the other fellow, or in the contrary!
Amongst the assorted customers which came into the gym to watch us do our stuff was Lem Garfield. At that time Lem was still what Spence Brock called a "miss and thrope." I pass that one. All I know is that Lem had a grouch against the whole human race and he didn't care who won it! By studying law at night he had advanced from the Elite Haberdashery to doing this and that in the law office of O'Leary & Kaplan and he predicted a great future for himself. One thing was certain and that was that Lem couldn't miss being a large help to O'Leary & Kaplan on the account of Judge Tuckerman thinking the world and all of him. The judge gave Lem priveleges in his courtroom which would startle Europe and used to burn the other lawyers up.
Lem was so proud of being even a half-fledged lawyer that he asks me to go over to Judge Tuckerman's court one day with him and listen while he handles a couple of cases. Well as this particular court of law has got a vaudeyville show looking like a dignified funeral, I went with the greatest of pleasure. Out of a clear sky on the ways over to the court, Lem commences to wildy pan what he calls "the interests" and "soulless corporations." I don't know what it's all about, till in a couple of minutes it come out that when the Elite Haberdashery give Lem the gate he tried to plaster himself on the payroll of a soulless corporation, but after one attempt he claimed a foul and quit.
"You give up too easy, Lem," I says. "Lots of fellows has begun with big corporations as office boys and the like and worked themselves up to rich millionaires by simply"
But that's all the encouragement the learned counsel wants and stopping dead in the middle of the street, Lem squares off and addresses me like I'm the Supreme Court.
"Years ago mebbe a ambitious young feller could start with a big corporation and work his way up," he begins, in a kind of loud voice, "But, gentlemen of the—eh—but, Gale, he kinnot do it now! If he's got any gumption at all, his ambition's killed when he applies for work. Have you ever saw the application blank a feller applyin' for the portfolio of, say, office clerk, has got to fill out for some of them big corporations? Well if you're the kind of a feller which wants to answer in detail questions so private that they'd make you smack down your best friend if he asked 'em, if you're that kind of a feller, I say to you this afternoon, why go ahead! If bein' asked to fill in rough sketches of your mother, your father, the status quo of your habits, conduct, religion and politics, any sicknesses you're addicted to, what debts you owe and why—if you're the kind of a feller which will supply all that personal information in return for a fifteen-dollar a week job, why do so. But not Lem Garfield—I think too much of my independence!"
He almost bellers the last part of it, slapping himself heartily on the chest, and as it is a hobby of mine never to attract no undue attention on the street, why I tried to quiet him down. Before I can say two and a half words though, Lem's got his second wind.
"It ain't the Big Boss which is responsible for that kind of a application blank," he goes on. "A application blank which loses them big, preedatory corporations plenty of good material every day in the shape of bright, but proud young fellers like me! As the matter and fact, I bet the average president of a big firm would throw them blanks out of his office if he ever seen one. No sir, the feller which gets that application blank up is the same pinhead which has another blank printed which visitors to the office is supposed to fill out. A blank which has sent thousands of dollars away from many a firm—sent away, ragin' mad, manys the man with a big proposition. I got one of them blanks with me—look here!"
With that he pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a silk hat. Here's what it says on the paper:
| Mr. . . . |
| Desires to see Mr. . . . |
| Regarding . . . |
"Now tell me," howls Lem, "now tell me, if you come in a man's office with a big deal to swing his way or a personal matter to talk over, would you fill out that insultin' fule paper for the office boy to peruse?"
I don't get no chance to answer because we're arriving in the courtroom, but I must say this—a few weeks after that I went into Lem's office to talk over a investment with him and before I can see him I got to fill out a blank practically exactly like the one he showed me that day. I guess a man's ideas on lots of things changes with his position in life, hey?
Well, Judge Tuckerman is just coming into court when we get there and the first thing he does is exchange snappy nods with old Ajariah Stubbs which always had a box, you might say, at the judge's hearings. Judge Tuckerman and Ajariah was once the champion quoit pitching team of Sussex County, but rheumatism turned 'em into checker players. The first case before the judge that day is a sport from New York charged with speeding and reckless driving on the State Road through Drew City. Judge Tuckerman asks him what he's got to say about it and make it snappy and the minute the prisoner opens his mouth to speak, why, the judge pronounces him guilty. The victim hollers for a trial by jury, but the judge waves him away. He says you never can tell what a chicken-hearted jury will do, but he knows darn well what he's going to do and he fines this fellow a hundred dollars even. This wakes the prisoner up and he demands to know how Judge Tuckerman figures a fine as heavy as that for a first offense.
"Twenty dollars for speedin'," says the judge, glaring at his prey over his cheaters, "thutty for reckless drivin', forty for argyin' with the court and ten which I saved ye by not lettin' ye have a trial by jury, in which case ye would of had to hire a lawyer!" He bangs the desk with his gavel, "Ah—ptu!" he says, "bring on the next scoundrel!"
The next case panics me and causes Judge Tuckerman to bar me from the courtroom for laughing out loud. This was Ollie Yerks, which wants to sue the Palace Eating House for assault and battery and a week's salary as cook. Ollie claims he got fired without no notice and for no reason at all. Judge Tuckerman calls on Ollie's ex-boss, Red Fisher, to testify.
"Well, Jedge, your honor, sir," says Red. "It's this way, I'm what you call a nervous man—all aquiver, is what I mean, Jedge. Well, Ollie here gits himself a pair of shoes which squeaks somethin' scandalous when he walks around my kitchen. Every time he takes a step them squeakin' shoes goes through me like a knife—me bein' that nervous, like I told you, Jedge. So I says, 'Ollie' I says, 'Ollie, you got to git you some other shoes. Them squeakin' shoes is drivin' me crazy!' Jedge, he jest laffs. Well, next day he's still got on them same shoes and there he is walkin' around my kitchen, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak! Jedge, I git to tremblin' and quiverin' somethin' terrible. So I goes out and I says, 'Ollie, either you or them shoes has got to go. I can't stand that squeakin' and that's all they is to it!' This time, Jedge, your honor, he gives me a ugly look. Well, Jedge, yistiddy, he comes in wearin' a pair of canvas sneakers. He walks back to the kitchen without makin' a sound. I'm jest goin' to thank him, when what does he do but sit down and take off them sneakers and put back on them squeaky shoes again! Jedge, like I told you, I'm nervous. I listen to that squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak for about five minutes and I'm jumpin' and shakin' like a maniac. So I run back to the kitchen and smacked Ollie down and throwed him out of my place! That's all, Jedge, your honor."
"You want your job back, Ollie?" says Judge Tuckerman.
"Yes sir, I do!" says Ollie.
"All right. You go back and hereafter you come to work bare-footed!" says the judge. He bangs with his gavel, "Ah, ptu—next case!"
That's more than I can take! I get a bit hysterical and the judge has me put out. So I don't get to see Lem lawyering after all.
Well, about a week before I fight the middleweight champ, Spence Brock asks me up to his house one night. He says his father wants to see me and if he had said the King of Brazil wanted to see me, I couldn't of been more surprised! John T. Brock is president of the Irontown Locomotive Works and you know what a locomotive costs. Why, even if he only sells one locomotive a week, Spence's dad must have a bank roll which would make a millionaire grind his teeth with envy. They live part of the time in a sheik's palace on the lake in Drew City and they got servants and autos and motor boats to the extent of galore.
Anyways, I can't imagine what Mr. Brock can want to see me for. On the ways up to the house with Spence, who's wishing out loud that I was going to Newport with him, I can't stand the strain no longer so I ask him what he thinks is the reason for his father sending for me. Spence laughs.
"I don't think, I know!" he says. "If father has a weakness, it's boxing. He never misses a big fight, no matter where it's held. Well, then, think of the treat for him to talk to one of the principals in a world's championship battle, almost on the eve of the bout. Why, he'll have the time of his life to-night. Honestly, Gale, he'll be more pleased than if you were the biggest man in Wall Street, bless his old heart!"
Well, we finally get to the house and the butler lets us in, taking my cap and the classy belted raincoat. I was featuring then, like I'm the Duke of Diphtheria or the equivalent. I got on my best blue serge suit with a crease in it you could slice ham with, patent-leather pumps, black silk socks, a white silk shirt, and a expensive two-dollar blue silk tie. I got a wow of a diamond scarf pin in it, and altogether I check up pretty snappy, what I mean. Yet in this palace where you sink to your ankles walking across the rugs, with curving chairs and oil paintings and flashing mirrors greeting you at every turn, why, I feel in the whispering stage, like once when I visit the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, Pa.
Mr. Brock is sitting out on the glass-covered pazzaza at a little table and he certainly does look grand—just like one of them wealthy bankers does in the movies. He's a great, big, good-looking, powerfully built man, a man which could no doubt been a good heavyweight when he was younger. They's just a bit of gray at his temples and sitting there in his Tuxedo he sure checks up perfect, for a fact! Well, I'm a little bit scared to be standing there before all these dollars and don't think I ain't, but Mr. Brock gets up and shakes my hand and actually thanks me for coming over, can you imagine that? Then we all sit down and after we get the state of the weather and this kind of thing all settled, why, I soon put him at his ease with me.
Mr. Brock tells me I look fit to lick my weight in wildcats and he likewise says that him and a party of friends will have a ringside box at my fight with Frankie Jackson. He tells me he's saw the middleweight champion start a few times and he thinks I'll be too young and strong for him. I says I hope so. Then Mr. Brock wants to-know have I ever saw the champ fight and I told him how I had hounded him into a match with me by appearing as a second in the corners of the guys he fought. This seems to give Mr. Brock quite a kick. He slaps the table and laughs his head off and his voice is as deep as the Pacific.
"By thunder!" he says. "That sort of thinking is worthy of a better cause, my boy! What do you do when you're not fighting or training—how do you spend your time?"
"Studying," I says. Spence moves his chair closer and keeps looking from his father to me. Spence thinks I'm the elephant's instep and I can see how anxious he is for me to make a hit with his dad.
"Studying?" says Mr. Brock, sitting up. He's got a habit of putting a cigar in and out of his mouth, but he never seems to light it. "Studying what?"
"Everything, sir," I says. "People, books, things that happen to me. I—I—well, I'm only going to be a prize fighter for temporarily. After that, I—" I kind of trailed off, thinking what in the Alabama does Mr. Brock care about my plans? But he seems to.
"Yes—after that, what?" he asks me. I see from his face that he ain't kidding, so I went on.
"After that, I mean after I have made enough money at this game so's I can knock off for a while and look around, why, I'm going to pick out something better and make good at it!" I says. "My first idea was to box myself into a college education, but I guess I'll be too old to start there by the time I have the bank roll. I'll have to pick up knowledge from here and there."
"Well, son," says Mr. Brock, kind of thoughtful, and he flicks the end of his cigar like he's knocking off the ash, though it ain't even lit. "Well, son, I never went to college either. I—er—picked up knowledge from here and there, as you put it, myself. I'm going to send my boy to Princeton, of course, but I'm not sure in my own mind which of you is going to the better school! Adversity has given the world most of its greatest men, just as affluence has killed ambition in many who might have been great. In fact, I rather believe that had I been the son of wealthy parents, my boy would now be the son of poor ones! Well, this conversation is growing rather heavy, isn't it?"
He breaks off suddenly with a smile, throws away his cigar and picking up another one he bites the end off and sticks it in his mouth, but still he don't light it. Before I went home I bet he done that a dozen times without smoking once. Even these well-to-do millionaires has their little odd tricks, hey? Anyhow, Mr. Brock then swings the talk around to boxing. Gee, about the only big fight he's missed was the Battle of Bunker Hill! He remembers exactly how many rounds all the big championship battles went and even what punch won 'em.
His favorite scrapper was Bob Fitzsimmons, and he tells us a dozen tales about Fitz's fights, seeming to enjoy 'em as much as we do and me and Spence just sits there open-mouthed like kids hearing bedtime stories. But every now and then, why, Mr. Brock would switch the conversation to me and my chances of getting somewheres, so that without hardly knowing it I have told him my complete life's history from the time I left the nursery to the time I entered his house.
He acts awful interested and he asks me lots of questions. I told him I thought I had a bent for salesmanship and he tells me to go to it, because salesmanship's as big a game as any in the world. He advises me to take a correspondent's course on business from some good mail-order school and likewise to try my hand at selling things—anything good—whenever I get the chance.
Just before I'm going home Mr. Brock says that he's awful glad to of had this talk with me, but gladder still that Spence had showed the good sense to pick me as a friend. From now on, he says, he'll have his eye on me, and he wants to talk to me again. If I ever want anything, let him know.
I walk back to Mrs. Willcox's boarding house on air, and that's a fact. Imagine me spending the evening with a full-fledged millionaire! And this Mr. Brock is a prince too, even, if he has got a million. He couldn't of been nicer to me if I had of been up there to buy one of his locomotives—in fact, he done everything but give me one for a present! Spence is tickled silly at the way the visit worked out. He was crazy to have me make good with his father, and to have his father make good with me, and apparently that's what we done.
Well, I picked out a correspondent's school and wrote for their course in salesmanship, and Judy helped me study it at nights. It was awful interesting too. It gave sample sales talks to hurl at the victim you are seeking to sell something to, and I tried out a lot of 'em on Judy, for what I was trying to sell her was myself! I also practice these sales arguments in the privacies of my room when I'm alone, and one day Nate walks in and hears me almost in a frenzy trying to sell myself a order. When Nate finds out I been arguing with myself out aloud, he runs over to old Doc Talley, which fills me full of bromides and says if I don't stop smoking I'll kill myself. I never smoked in my life, but I wouldn't tell the doc that and make him feel bad.
Besides helping me with my study of the mysteries of salesmanship, Judy kept acting as my teacher in other courses, and while it's hard to keep your mind on anything but Judy while she's around, why, I made some headway at that. The way we did was like this: every night Judy marks a certain subject for me to read in my encyclopedia, and then the next day she asks me all about it, and I repeat what I remember. In that way all this knowledge got plastered in my mind, and it stuck there. For instance, ask me about Henry the 8th, wireless, the city of Washington, who invented the telegraph and why, or what's radium, etc., etc.—ask me any of that and I'll give you the low down in a flash! How bout that?
In the encyclopedia I read about a guy which must of been one of my descendants. In round numbers, his name was Claudius Galen and he bounded around during the year 200 D. C. While they's few which can now recall him personally, they's a whole column in the book about him. It seems he was a Greek doctor and he clicked off a lot of little booklets about medicine, and they was just good enough to get his name in the encyclopedia. Well, don't be surprised if my name don't get in there right under his in a couple of years. "Galen, Gale—Newsboy, errand boy, printer's devil, bobbin boy, soda jerk, boxer, business king!" Just for the fun of it, look in your encyclopedia about two years from now.
Well, the night before I am due to dally and toy with the middleweight champ, Barbara Worthington, one of the rich and swell-looking flappers from the prep school, stakes herself to a dance at her marvelous home. As the richest people in Drew City, the Spencer-Brocks, has kind of took me under their wings—at least, Spence and his father has—why, I ain't barred from these social whirls no more like I used to be when I was jerking soda for Ajariah Stubbs. I get a regular invitation in the mail, though, of course, it's addressed to "Gale Galen," and not "Six-Second Smith." As a matter and fact, I don't believe Barbara Worthington even knew I'm a fighter, or just what I am doing since I left Stubbs's soda fountain. Well, she knows now!
Rags Dempster blows around in his car in the afternoon and wants to know will Judy go to Barbara's dance with him. Judy says no can do, as she's going with me. This gets Rags red-headed, and I know he's going to pull some foul play on me for revengeance before the night's over, but I should worry when the best-looking girl in Drew City or any other city turns down a rich man's son and air for me! Nate acts like a raving maniac when he hears I'm going to a dance the night before I fight for the world's middleweight title, and him and Kayo Kelly hides my best clothes so's I can't go out. But I fool 'em by getting a ready-made tuxedo and all that goes with it at the New York Store, and staying away from Mrs. Willcox's boarding house all afternoon with it on so's they can't lock me in my room. I met Judy at Stubbs's drug store at eight like we framed and everything was jake.
I wish you could of saw Judy the way she looked that night—just looking at her, a thing I did practically constantly, give me more kick than you get from knocking the other boy for a row of silos. She's wearing a lowish cut evening gown made out of blue, and if she don't look like something from Heaven then Lake Michigan don't look the least bit wet. Oh, what a knockout she is—why, she'd baffle the guy which baffled description! She couldn't of been no nicer to me than she was without causing talk, but still and all I have a terrible time at Barbara Worthington's racket. The reason is because I don't dance a stroke!
The minute we get to that party about ninety guys, with Rags in the lead, rushes at Judy, grabs her program, and begins writing their names all over it for dances. The other girls looks daggers at her, and I look bombs at the boys! Judy manages to save me four dances, which we got to sit out on the account of my fatal unability to shake a wicked hoof. The results is that about every time I start a conversation with her, and I'm doing myself some good, some clown butts in with: "Pardon me, this is my dance, I believe?" and I got to sit there like a sap and see the girl I am insane about dancing around in the arms of one of these dumbells. When she dances with Rags, why, I can't even watch it! Believe me, a guy at a party which can't dance has as much fun as a codfish would have in the middle of a desert!
But when me and Judy does get a chance to go out on the lawn and talk, I work fast. Judy wishes me the best of luck in my scrap with Frankie Jackson, and she thinks it's great that Mr. Brock has took such a interest in me. But between you and me, I think it's even greater that she has!
Well, Rags drops out on the lawn every now and then, as he hates to let Judy get out of his sight. Every time he runs into me during the courses of the evening he keeps making cracks which would cause a rabbit to smack a bulldog right in the face. Insulting me in that silky oily manner of his, the words themselves not meaning so much, but the way he says 'em meaning plenty! About a hour of watching Judy being carried off to dance by these fellows and listening to Rags's sarcastical cracks has made me one continual blaze. Rags knows he can ride me heavy this night without no risk to himself, because, naturally enough, I wouldn't think of smacking him for a row of Hindu parsnip bowls in Barbara Worthington's home.
However, when Rags sees he ain't getting no action by picking on me, he plays his ace! I am standing out on the porch looking in at the dancers and waiting for Judy to come out, when along comes Barbara's mother and Rags. I drawed back in the darkness so's they won't bump into me, and I hear Rags telling Barbara's mother that he thinks she ought to know that one of her daughter's guests got in under false pretenses. He says the boy they call Gale Galen is really a prize fighter named Six-Second Smith, and he will point me out to her.
I got one look at Mrs. Worthington's face when she hears that "prize fighter" thing, and that look is plenty for me! I am starting for my things, when I think I better wait and tell Judy I'm leaving. But I don't get much chance. Mrs. Worthington and Rags has saw me, and the next thing the butler comes over with my hat and coat, looks at me like I'm something the cat dragged in on a rainy night, and says in a zero voice that he'll show me the exit. Rags walks over to us, grinning like a hyena, which is what he reminds me of very much.
Then the music stops inside and Judy comes out with the fathead she's been dancing with. She sees me and Rags standing there, and the butler holding my hat and coat, and she trips over to us looking questions by the score. Rags makes no attempt to hide the pure delight he feels at me getting the air and getting it publicly too, because lots of the others is whispering together and looking over at us.
"What's the matter, Gale?" says Judy, passing Rags up.
"Why—eh nothing, Judy," I says, taking my things from this lump of ice called the butler. "Nothing at all, I—I'm going out and get some air. I'll come back to take you home at whatever time you say—that's if you want me to come back for you."
"Oh, why lie about it!" butts in Rags with a snarl. "Mrs. Worthington has quite naturally refused to have her home turned into a lounging place for prize fighters, and, of course, she resents her daughter having had to associate with one, even for"
He stops short when Judy swings around on him and gives him a glare. Then she turns back to me and smiles her sweetest. "Wait until I get my wraps, Gale," she says, "and I'll go with you!"
They's two faces you should of saw—mine and Rags!
Well, it broke perfect for me, and I could almost of thanked Rags for getting me the gate. Not being fluent at dancing, I didn't like the party anyways, and would of busted away during the first five minutes if Judy hadn't of been there. As it is, I got her all to myself on the account of Rags knifing me. She probably never would of left I'd asked her; now she gets her cloak and takes my arm, paying absolutely no attention to the frantic Barbara Worthington, the cuckoo Rags, and the pleading guys which had dancing engagements with her. When we get outside we find the night is perfection itself, soft and warm and a new moon shining its head off. Borrowing from the nerve I was saving for my clash with the middleweight champ the next night, I ask Judy will she take a walk to the lake with me, as it's still fairly early. Judy waits so long to answer that I'm just on the brinks of begging her pardon for asking, when she suddenly says "Yes!" and then I'm almost afraid to breathe for fear I'll bust my luck. She stops me from getting too sentimental when I commence thanking her for leaving the party with me. She says she could hardly do anything else when her escort was asked to leave. We are sitting on the bank of the lake, hid from everything but each other.
"Then you didn't do it for me, Judy?" I says, terrible disappointed. "You mean you would of left with anyone under the same conditions?"
Judy commences plucking at the grass and keeps looking away from me.
"I wouldn't have been there with anyone, Gale," she says slowly, "or—here!"
Well, I ain't exactly stupid, and the rest of the conservation is nobody's business, now, is it?
We got home about eleven, and Nate's sitting on the front porch waiting for me with a four-alarm fire in each eye. He says nothing at all till Judy goes upstairs, and then he gives me a terrible tongue lashing for staying up late the night before the biggest fight of my life. When he gets all through I says I agree with every word he's said, and was he ever in love? With a wild yell Nate throws up his hands and, grabbing a pillow from the porch hammock, he chases me upstairs to bed.
At a quarter of ten the next night I am clambering through the ropes at the Superba A. C. in Jersey City, with Nate, Kayo Kelly, and Shiney Jepps, my handlers, trailing after me. For the first time since I been a leather pusher I get a frenzied outburst of applause before I show my wares. The reason for that ain't hard to guess. I am going to fight a champion, and the average fight fan loves to see a champion unchamped. After I rub my shoes in the rosin and sit down on the stool in the corner Nate has picked out, I look around at the ten thousand-odd excited customers which has come to see me and Frankie Jackson prove that self-defense is not only a plea but a art. The champ has resorted to the old trick of making me sit out there in the ring and wait for him, the objects being to get me nervous; but that's a waste of time on Frankie's part, because I have become nerve-proof. I'm telling the truth when I tell you that this battle don't bother me no more than any other. As far as that part of it goes, no matter if I fight Dempsey, I'll never again get the kick out of a box fight that I did out of my first one! I guess it's the same way about a man's first anything—hey?
No—it's the crowd which gives me the kick now. It always does, and I look around and study 'em with as much interest as they're studying every move I make. For a few minutes I got the undivided attention of bricklayers, bankers, lawyers, pickpockets, doctors, shipping clerks, yeggs, actors, sporting men, and other leather pushers who may box me later and come to see what I got. All around the ring, right under the ropes in a solid bank, is the hard-boiled sport writers and their telegraph operators. Behind 'em the ringside boxes with plenty of guys in evening dress. I see Mr. Brock, and his friends, and he nods to me. I don't know whether or not he wants me to recognize him when he's with his swell friends, but I take a chance and wave a hand at him. I get a broad smile and a couple of nods back. Shiney Jepps is massaging my stomach. Kayo Kelly, which has just knocked Georgie Neill stiff in the semi-final, is working on the back of my neck and kidding me. Nate's bending down over the ropes, talking to the reporters. I rinse my mouth from the water bottle and wonder whether I'll leave the ring on a shutter or middleweight champion of the world. That's the only two things can happen. I'll never leave any ring able to walk if I'm licked—that's a promise I made to myself!
The droning hum of the mob suddenly turns into wild yells and the stamping of thousands of feet. Frankie Jackson, the champ, hops over the ropes and walks to my corner. His hair's all nicely brushed back, he's freshly shaved, and as he bends over to look at the tape on my hands, the muscles in his tanned arms ripples like little snakes under pieces of brown satin. I can't help thinkin' what a swell-built fellow he is!
"You big stiff!" Nate snarls at him. "You weigh one sixty-five if you weigh a ounce. You got nearly ten pounds on us!"
Frankie grins pleasantly at Nate and shakes my hand warmly.
"Good luck, Kid!" he says. "I hope you can hit!"
"Same to you, Frankie," I says, returning the handshake; "I hope you can take it!"
Honest, you may find it too much to believe, but they ain't no hard feelings at all. Iain't got nothing against Frankie Jackson and he ain't got a thing against me. Yet in a minute we'll be tryin' our darndest to half kill each other, because that happens to be our trade.
A dozen guys which don't mean nothing and some which does is introduced to the impatient crowd, and they all challenge the winner. Then one after the other they come over to Frankie and then to me, shake our hands, and wish us luck. Nate, having picked my gloves from the new set throwed into the ring, begins lacing 'em on my hands. Over the tick—tick—ticky—tick—tick—tick—of the telegraphs under my stool, Nate's pouring a continual stream of instructions in to me: "Make him come to you and look out for his left to the heart! Don't lead with 'at right of yours—he don't like it down below, so work on him heavy in the clinches!" All that and plenty more.
Then he whips off my bathrobe—the blue silk one Judy give me—and jumps down out of the ring. With my gloves on the top rope, I turn around and face the mob which is going nuts with excitement now. The lights go out all over the house, except the blinding ones right over the ring. Then the bell and the panic is on!
Still smiling pleasantly, Frankie Jackson stabs his long left into my face and I come back with a left and right to the body that draws a howl from the customers. Frankie backs away, the smile gone and a thoughtful look on his face. I crowd him to the ropes, and after missing two well-meant rights, I manage to sock home a left hook to the heart which makes him gasp and dive into a clinch. "How d'ye like him, Frankie?" bellers a elephant's voice over the continual roar.
Frankie don't like me at all, and he proves it by slamming away with both hands to my mid-section till the referee breaks us. One of Frankie's seconds yells for the champ to quit slugging with me and box me instead. Frankie nods and begins dancing around me, shooting that left into my face like a piston rod. I get sick of this and rush him, but he ain't there, and I nearly sprawl on my face when I miss a right swing. The attendance laughs and this steams me up. I took six left jabs from Frankie without a return to get home one right hook. The punch hit Frankie on the side of the head and turned him completely around, making the guys which was just laughing at me go insane screaming for a knockout.
But this baby knows too much for me! He clinches till his head clears, and then the smile comes back and so does the dance, and for the rest of the round he kept away, picking my punches out of the air and cutting me to pieces with that vicious left jab. It seems I just couldn't keep my face off it! At every opportunity I ripped rights and lefts to the body, but as this guy was always going away when the wallops landed they did little more than sting him. I rushed him again just before the bell, and took a straight right on the jaw that didn't do me a bit of good.
A left I couldn't hold back hit Frankie on the nose a second after the gong—it was a pure accident, though some of the mob hissed. I held out my glove to Frankie and panted: "I didn't hear the bell, Frankie, excuse me!" Frankie shakes my glove. "That's all right," he grins. "I didn't hear it myself." A good kid, hey?
The next six rounds was about duplicates of the first. The champ had settled down to a campaign of simply sticking his left in my face and trying to wear me down with body punishment in the clinches. He never let me set to crash him with my right, which had give him plenty of respect for me after a few applications. Frankie could hit, himself, and don't think he couldn't, but his trick was boxing. He had the prettiest left I ever see in the ring, and on his feet he was chain lightning! In them early rounds he went around me like a hoop around a barrel, keeping out of danger himself and piling up points till he was first and I was nowheres. Unless I could land a lucky punch, it looked like Frankie would beat me from here to Hawaii!
In the middle of the seventh round Frankie must of made up his mind that he had wore me down to the point where I was ready to take a dive, because he suddenly begins swapping swings with me. It took less than a minute to show him his mistake. Frankie feinted with his left, and when I fell for it he drove a wicked right to my stomach. I missed a right and left to the jaw, but landed one right square on his mouth, and he went back on his heels like he run into a fence.
I'm on top of him in a instant, pumping both hands to the body till he's forced to cover his wind, and the second his arms slid down I crashed a right flush or his jaw. The champ fell sideways, rolling over on his back and then struggling to one knee, while the maniacs outside the ropes leaps on their chairs yowling like wolves. The referee pushes me away and begins to count, but Frankie is up at "seven," full of fight and rarin' to go. Same here! We stood toe to toe in mid-ring and slugged till the crowd shook the roof. Neither of us heard the bell, and our handlers has got to jump into the ring and tear us apart!
Round Eight was very slow, as the pace was beginning to tell on us both. We spent this frame mostly in clinching and getting-our wind, and turned four deaf ears to the customers' indignant bellers for us to fight.
The ninth round was the busiest! Frankie come out at the bell with a cold determined look on his face, and he met my wild rush with a volley of straight lefts that brought the blood in a stream. I steadied myself and drove a hard left to Frankie's right eye. Another left to the same place closed that thing for the rest of the fight. But I paid heavy for them two wallops! Coming out of a clinch, the champ throwed me off balance with a left hook to the head and then swung his right to my jaw with everything he ever had behind it.
I see the punch coming and try to duck, but I'm a bit too late. Frankie's glove lands fair and square on the side of my chin and the floor comes up and hits me plunk in the back. It was a terrible punch—terrible! The hardest wallop I ever been hit in my life! The whole side of my face is numb, and when I open my mouth to breathe I come near screaming with the pain. Getting up off that mat was quite a trick, but I beat the count by a eyelash. I'm swaying back and forth on my feet in a neutral corner, when the bell saves me.
Nate jumps into the ring before the sound of the gong has died out and helps me to my corner. He shoves half a lemon into my lips, and I knocked it on the floor with my glove. I can't get nothing into my mouth—I can hardly get it open! The crowd and the ring and Frankie and everything else is mixed up and going around and around and around. Nate is examining my jaw, and wow how it hurts! I dimly see Nate bend down and whisper, and another guy is pushed up through the ropes. This bird fingers my sore jaw, and then him and Nate talks. I can't hear what they're saying, and I'm wondering is the fight over or what's the idea? Nate leans over to me.
"We're through, kid," he says. "You got a fractured jaw!"
"What d'ye mean I'm through?" I manage to get through my lips. "I got this guy licked!"
I get off the stool and I won't sit down. Quitting is one habit I never picked up. Never!
Suppose I do quit and get away with it, as Nate's raving in my ear, why, that would only encourage me to quit again. Nothing stirring! Nate tries to push me down, and we struggle around while the mob's wondering what it's all' about. The reporters comes crowding into our corner, and then the bell rings for the tenth round. I remember breaking away from Nate, and that's all I do remember till I'm sitting in my dressing room when the fight's over. But here's what "Tad," the famous sport writer, says about that brawl from then on. I clipped it out of the paper:
Gents, this was one for the book! When "Six-Second" Smith flopped on his stool at the end of the ninth frame, it looked like it was time for the customers to go home and argue about the fight. But this two-fisted fighting fool from Drew City had other plans for the evening. With his jaw fractured in two places, his body a raw red from Jackson's terrific pounding in the clinches, Smith raved and struggled with his frantic pilot, Nate Shapiro, who wanted to throw in the old towel and save his boy from further mutiliation or the knockout that seemed as certain as sunset. With only half a minute before the bell, Shapiro, seeing no chance to keep Smith in his corner, drew on his canny ringcraft in an attempt to save a hopeless situation. He knew that if the champion discovered what he had done to Smith's jaw, he'd simply crack him there again and it would be curtains. So he told Smith to drop from the next body punch, take a count of nine, and then get up bent over as if badly hurt. The foxy Shapiro hoped this would make the champ think he's busted one of Smith's ribs and cause him to devote all his attention to Smith's body, leaving the burn jaw alone.
An old trick, men, but it worked! Jackson slammed a left to Smith's wind early in the tenth and Smith went down as if hit with an axe. He was up at nine, staggering over to the ropes with both gloves pressed against his stomach and an agonized expression on his face. The champion rushed in to finish his man and was met with a terrific overhand right to the head that buckled his knees and put the house in an uproar. Smith then dove into a clinch, where he hung on like a summer cold till the referee pried 'em apart. For the rest of the round, Smith fought a strictly defensive battle, keeping his ruined jaw well covered and occasionally shaking the puzzled champion with a right.
The eleventh round was just one clinch after another and the crowd whistled and hooted, not knowing that one of these boys was fighting with a broken jaw and the other one fighting with a slowly breaking heart, as he slammed this battered gamester in front of him with punch after punch and saw his victim still erect and trying! Down in the press coop, we're getting the big kick. We know what the crowd don't—that a single punch on that broken jaw will win the fight. The champ don't know that, either.
Then comes the twelfth and last round and one of the most thrilling finishes to a championship fight in the annals of the ring. Both boys came out with a rush at the bell—the champion determined to finish the thing, Smith, his jaw the size of a house, determined to die fighting. Both miss rights to the jaw and Jackson then shows he has learned Smith's secret. His eye is fixed on that swollen jaw and he pins Smith on the ropes, swinging desperately with both hands to the face. Drunk with punishment, Smith weaves back and forth in front of his executioner, stabbing out feebly with his left, his right cocked and set ready for the opening he's hoping against hope will come. The arm-weary champ rips a left to the wind and then hooks his right to the busted jaw. The sport writers wince with that blow! But "Six-Second" Smith, this fighting maniac who lives on punishment, rebounds off the ropes and tries two well meant uppercuts, both of which miss. The champ, now sure of himself, measures the reeling Smith with a light left and then sinks his right into the heaving stomach before him. The mob is triple cuckoo as another right to the jaw hangs Smith on the ropes. Then comes the fireworks!
Nate Shapiro, seeing his man helpless, reaches for the sponge and tosses it over the ropes. He's excited and a burn pitcher. The sponge goes clean across the ring and out on the other side! But while it's still in mid-air, Smith fairly pushes himself off the ropes and faces the champion. Jackson sets himself for the finisher, not seeing the sponge. Neither does the referee, though ten thousand voices are calling his attention to it! With a superhuman effort, Smith hooks the champ fair on the jaw with a terrific right. Jackson falls flat on his face, his head bouncing as it hit the canvas. He's as cold as a pawn-broker's eye and no mistake! Smith totters on his feet for an instant, looking at the insane mob with glazing eyes. Then he topples in a heap over the champ's prostrate body. At that same minute, the bell rings, finding both boys on the floor at the end of the most sensational fight the writer has ever seen. If you missed it, it's your own fault!
That's all they is to that, except the newspapers called it a draw. After he's been brung to life, Frankie Jackson comes into my dressing room while a doctor is setting my jaw. When Frankie finds out he broke it in the ninth round, and that I fooled him into losing the chance to knock me with a punch at any time after that, he's burnt up! But he leans over to shake my hand.
"You're a rough kid," he says, "but you can't take it!"
I moved the doc's hands away from my busted jaw. "And you're a fast boy, Frankie," I says, "but you can't hit!"