Читать книгу Man of Strife - Grove Wilson - Страница 14

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EARLY in January, Bruce’s son was born. He experienced none of the traditional exaltation of the father when he beheld the infant. Had it come upon him unexpectedly his reaction might have been truer to the novelist’s idea. His reception of his son had been marred by Cora’s attitude. She had insisted upon his presence during her ordeal. She would accept the chloroform from no hand but his. He stood at the head of her bed with the cone in his hand and gave her the kindly fumes at the doctor’s directions.... When her son lay in the crook of her arm, she sighed shudderingly and was at peace....

Bruce had witnessed the tragedy and the miracle of birth. Like other men, he cried out against the pain of it. Nature was a miser who parted with a wee fragment of life at the price of great suffering. She was a ruthless monster who sought to destroy in the moment of creating. She was a fiend who gave happiness only to inflict misery. He thought only of Cora. His son was a blind, feebly crying creature of no importance, red, misshapen, ugly. Cora, with her white face lying against the pillow, framed with two dark braids of hair, was very beautiful. He yearned over her. She had agonized and he had suffered with her. She had passed through shadow after shadow and he had followed blindly. She had parted with life and lived. It was overwhelming.

She had done all of this thoughtlessly, heedlessly, in response to an instinct. Ignorantly she had gone down into the shadow of the valley and ignorantly she had come forth. She had advanced without anticipation; she had accomplished without vision. The Great Mother had laid her finger upon her brow. She had fulfilled her destiny.

What, to Bruce, was this event that had transpired before his eyes, to the completion of which he was a stranger? It was part of him, yet it was remote. It was an actuality but it remained unreal. It was a symbol but he knew not of what. It was a revelation that blinded. It was mysterious, stupendous, foreboding. It left him flat, his face in the dust, while a Voice spoke to him out of the whirlwind. He had assisted at the creation of a Man; his passion had been thus frightfully consummated. He was not exalted. He despaired, and sought refuge in the consciousness of his own ignorance. ...

Life settled down around him. He had passed through two crises and he was emptied of emotion. He gave himself to his work in a bitter effort to retrieve the blunders and shortcomings of the past few months.

“You’ve been damned decent during this spell,” he told Hamblin. “I’ve been a rotten City Editor. I’ll make up for it. Everything is over now, and I can give my mind to the job.”

He tried, seriously, to keep his promise, to make up for it. He threw himself into his work, but the results were not proportionate to the energy expended. He had lost his nerve—there was no longer any “kick” in his effort. He could give the office only an imitation zest. Life had gone dull and inane. The reaction was natural, the diagnosis simple. He was as a boxer overtrained: he was stale. The months had drained his nerves of vitality, robbed him of acuteness. This he did not understand and looked upon himself as a failure, miscast, unfitted for his work. Fitted for what work he could not conceive. With a dependent wife and son he clung to his desk, striving by main effort to make up for the lost fire.

He fell ill. The blood left his face; his eyes were two holes in a blanket, his movements were listless, retarded by pain. He wasted away daily while the abdominal disease wore him down. He could not give up, go to bed, cease worrying and get well. No; or at least he thought he could not do this. He went every day to the office, toiling over the assignment book, wading through mountains of copy, dragging his weakened body into the composing room, with an eye to the appearance of late news.

Cora, occupied with her baby and full of a fast-returning strength, hardly noticed his condition. The change had been gradual and she attributed it to a neurotic brooding for his mother. Hence his health was not a topic upon which she could think reasonably or talk calmly.

One February day, after the last form had gone to press, Hamblin came to him.

“Go home, Bruce,” he said, “and stay there until you get well. You’re in no condition to work. Don’t worry about your job,” he added kindly. “We’ll take care of that for you.”

Bruce, too weak to protest, dragged himself home, to bed. Dr. Wanous was sent for. He suspected typhoid but the blood tests did not reveal that disease. He put his patient on a liquid diet and ordered him to remain quiet. The treatment proved effective. In a few days he was greatly improved and returned to work, but he had no joy in renewed health. The letters from Millie and Mrs. Darton accounted for that. They were studied and subdued screams from the torture chamber. In spite of patient restraint, they were sufficient to wrap him in a flaming bath. In the presence of this suffering, the gathering of news, the distribution of pitiful scandals to a poor little world of morons, the passing on of the weak words of politicians, the recital of wrecks, robberies and murders, seemed a poor business, maintained by fools for idiots. This is not the attitude of mind that characterizes the successful City Editor.

With Clarence, who served as one of his reporters, Bruce had little conversation. Not once, during that black winter, did they speak to each other of the absent mother. Bruce voiced no criticism and Clarence made no defense. In his heart, Bruce realized that their ways had parted. They might meet with outward cordiality, but underneath there would be violent misunderstanding. It was plain that Clarence regarded his brother as something inhuman, a monster who could calmly watch a mother’s death and do nothing to save her. That was his attitude. It was the attitude of the self-righteous, of him who could see his duty and do it, to whom the hands on the clock meant nothing but a sign of the hours of the day.

It was no mean struggle that raised Bruce above bitterness towards this brother. He forgave him because he came to understand him. He understood him so well that their complete separation was revealed to him. Here he recognized no blood relationship. They could meet as men of the world, whose inner selves never touched. This discovery served further to isolate him. It was the exaggeration of youth and egotism that made him seem, to himself, desolatingly alone. No matter. His loneliness was as keen as though it were based on wiser grounds. Hence it induced a quality of aloofness, of mystery. It robbed his association with others of reality. For him men and women were moving dots in an immensity of waste. For them he was bigoted, remote, self-sufficient. His kindnesses were alarming; his philosophy, questionable. He was past finding out; that is to say, he was suspect.

In this metamorphosis of a soul, dumbly trying to find a place for itself in the midst of the little ways of men, he did not wholly lose contact with the passions and reactions of an earlier period. In the exuberance of youth, he had put himself in the hands of a trained boxer....

Mahoney was a lightweight, forty years old, when Bruce, seventeen, went to him. He had long since left the ring and was living comfortably on the broad acres of his Nobles County farm. He was ugly to look at. A bash on the ear had disfigured him. His nose was turned jauntily to one side. A scar slanting upward from the corner of the mouth gave him a disturbing leer. His hair, the remaining fringe of it, was grizzled. His hands were gnarled, with enlarged joints and bones that had been broken. His had been the era of bare knuckles, a round ending only with a knockdown. It was, in those fierce days, a hard, cruel, unremunerative trade. Only the toughest and the cleanest came through. Mahoney had survived.

The boxer had heard of Bruce, whose natural dexterity at defending himself had won him some unenviable reputation. As Bruce stated the purpose of his call, the Irishman smiled, his gray eyes lighting up. A horrid finger pulled at a bony ear as he said,

“Yo’ say will I learn you boxin’? I might. I been hearin’ yer a divil of a scrapper. Put up yer jukes ’till I see once.”

“Without gloves? I thought——”

“Do yo’ do yer fightin’ wid pretty gloves on yer hands then? Put up yer jukes, me braw lad, or—or—out ye go. And don’t iver agin be darkenin’ my door nor settin’ foot on my land or it’ll be the worse for yo’.”

Something hot and mad seared Bruce. He threw away his hat—for what reason he had no idea—and shouted,

“Put up your hands!”

In a moment the expression of Mahoney’s face altered, terribly. A prodigious frown drew his brows together, beneath which his eyes glowed, icy green, murderous. His teeth snapped sharply. He shifted his weight. Bruce struck out, swiftly. In after years that paragon of boxers, Joe Gans, was to call him the fastest man, amateur or professional, that he ever faced. Indeed, his reactions must have been more than normally brief for his flashing fist caught Mahoney squarely in the mouth. The blow had little behind it and it barely drew blood, but it turned the boxer into a whirlwind of attack. He rained blows upon his victim. This outburst of temper doubtless was assumed for he certainly pulled his blows. Otherwise Bruce could not have stood before him for half a minute. As it was, with nothing but rage and youth to aid, the boy fought back. A hard fist caught him on the chin. He went down but sprang up instantly and threw himself at his antagonist, snarling, cursing. He was down and up, down and up, half a dozen times. He stopped snarling. He was quiet, panting for breath, but determined. His fist flashed to the Irishman’s stomach, but with so little drive that it did not even win a grunt. He was down again. As he crawled painfully to his feet, the boxer backed away, shouting,

“Rest, you crazy fool. ’Tis the end of the first round.”

“There are no rounds in this fight.”

“Rest yerself ahnyway. ’Twill do ye no harm. Set down, set down.”

Bruce noticed that the frown was gone and the eyes were kindly. He sat down. Mahoney brought him a dipper of water and as he gave it to him, his great hand rested lightly on the boyish head.

“You’ll do, me lad, you’ll do. You’ve had yer first lesson and ’tis no more than a lesson. I’m too auld a man to be wastin’ me time on a raw braggart who has no guts for punishment. Yo’ can be as clever as yo’ like, but ’tis punishment yo’ll get if yo’ go into this trade of mine. Many’s the lad comes to me and says, ‘Mahoney, will ye larn me boxin’?’ ‘I might,’ says I. Some of them goes down once and stays down. Some of them goes down two, three, four times and stays down. The stay-downers I kick out. Now and then there comes one as won’t stay down till they’re out. Him I larns to fight. Yo’ve got a quick and shifty way with you, will make it a joy to larn you, easy and light, the things I larned hard as hell. ’Tis no trade for a white goose, this one. ’Tis bitter as new whiskey, and that’s a fact. What makes one man take punishment, and another not, I dunno. What makes one faster with his fist and his head and his feet than another can ever learn to be, I dunno. Why a fighter’s head will tell him what’s happenin’ before it happens, I dunno. But what makes a fighter I know well enough and ’tis the lust to kill: ’Tis that and ’tis nothin’ more than that. When two killers meet, the one that’s the killin’est wins. You’ve got the eye. A bit back, there was hell’s fire murder in the look of it. Yo’ can depind upon it, me boy, there’s Irish blood in the veins of you. I het yo’, not once but half a dozen times, hard enough to sind a glass jaw to the hospitler. Yo’ don’t know nothin’. Yo’ve ivery thing to larn, but glory to Gawd, yo’ve got them things no man could larn you. Come round tomorrow and we’ll go at it right. No more bare fists. Eight-ounce gloves will make your jukes fly like chained lightnin’ when yo’ put on the little fellows or go at it with naked hands.”

Every day for four months, he boxed with Mahoney. Every day he rehearsed alone the things he had learned. He put on the gloves with no one but Mahoney. He became an adept in his school. The time came when, balanced on his toes, his feet would carry him, with swift, unerring reaction, out of harm’s way. And only just out of harm’s way. His head would automatically swing to one side the fraction necessary to permit a blow to slide harmlessly by. He learned to hit the spot at which he aimed and to drive his blow home with all his weight. Every parry is a blow, was Mahoney’s slogan, and his inside thrusts were beautiful and dangerous. It would be too much to say that Bruce became a finished boxer. A game so involved and subtle is not learned that quickly. Nevertheless, when he took his last lesson he was his teacher’s superior. This does not mean that he could have whipped Mahoney: it means he could outpoint him. In a finished fight the Irishman would have killed him.

Only once did Bruce use his knowledge professionally. That occurred at Crystal Lake, Iowa, the summer following his gruelling work with Mahoney. Crystal Lake was only a small body of water and had no significance as a town. Bruce was there for the Fourth of July celebration. The day was hot, no breeze stirring, and the high growing trees, with their heavy shade only muffled the heat. Farmers and the residents of small towns had assembled for drink, sports, oration, fireworks and dance. The leading event was a fight between Pugg Swift and Hammer Bell to take place on a canopied raft moored well out in the lake. Pugg did not arrive. Late in the day word was received that a train wreck would make it impossible for him to arrive. Bell was on hand and, fight or no fight, he must be paid. The promoters were in despair.

Bruce had boxed with one or two of the town boys. He was known as young, strong and skillful. The managers appealed to him. He flouted the idea. Thompson, a young banker from the town in which Bruce temporarily lived, begged him, with tears and sweat running down his fat cheeks, to save them. Without a fight they would lose five hundred dollars—a colossal sum. Bruce wouldn’t have to do much—merely face a professional fighter for eight rounds—be mauled and bruised and beaten by a man who outweighed him ten pounds. It looked like a small affair to the anxious business men. For this trifle they would pay him a hundred dollars. Thompson himself volunteered to act as his second. A hundred dollars! That fall Bruce was going to Winona to enter school. He yielded.

For the only time in his life Bruce sat in a corner of a roped-in arena and looked out upon the excited fans. Red-faced and beery, they glistened with sweat. The raft, with its canopy, was a bake oven. Bruce, fighting in running trunks and sneakers, stretched his wet arms along the ropes and calmly studied the crowd. He was without a sense of fear, but he was nervous. He was determined to earn his hundred dollars at the cost of as little punishment as possible. Opposite him lounged Bell. Bruce noticed that his ribs did not show; he was fat. The boy decided upon a Fabian policy; he would keep away, just far enough away. He knew that for twenty-five minutes, unless he were badly hurt, he could endure any strain of activity. He could not hope to stand up and exchange blows with that powerful man and last the limit. His feet must save him. They had already received their instructions. Time was called and the two men came out of their corners.

As they faced each other, less than a yard apart, in the center of the ring, Bruce noticed that there were wrinkles around Bell’s eyes and here and there a white hair showed in his black thatch. One, two; one, two, three—Bell’s gloves shot out, but Bruce was away from the first thrust and under the next swing. As he came up, he shot his fist hard to Bell’s neck and they fell into a clinch. With his mouth close against Bruce’s ear, Bell muttered, “Take it easy, kid. We don’t get any more money for killin’ each other.” “All right with me,” Bruce told him as they broke.

Thereafter for five more rounds, they gave a pretty exhibition of sparring. It was only in the seventh round that Bell cut loose. The blow rocked Bruce. He could thank some fighting ancestor on the Spanish main for the hard jaw that saved him. At the double-cross, rage gripped him and the green image of murder slipped into his eyes. But he remained calm. Not for nothing had he been beaten, day after day, by Mahoney. The insane desire to kill could exist side by side with a clearly functioning brain. He avoided the next rush obviously meant to put him out, but when Bell, confident and determined, drove in again, he stood still, let his head roll out of the way and flashed his glove, with the weight of his shoulder behind it, to the exposed chin. He followed with a left to the stomach and for the rest of the round hit his opponent at will. Twice Bell went down before the impetuosity of youth.

During the last intermission, Bell looked across at him and made a slight deprecatory motion with his glove. At the gesture the rage went out of Bruce. After all, the blow might have been accidental. What did it matter? There were only three minutes left. But for that one punch he had enjoyed the bout and was unmarked except for red splotches on the body.

The final round was a tame affair. Bruce was content to keep out of the way, the memory of that one blow making him cautious. It was well for him that he was not lulled by overconfidence. With only a minute left to go, Bell grew vicious. Bruce shifted out of his way, but there was no mistaking the meaning of those fierce jabs. Again he rushed and again Bruce slipped away. Then he was at Bell’s right side and for a split-second an exposed ear caught his eye. He hit it, with all his one hundred and forty pounds back of the blow. Bell went down but he struggled up, fell into a clinch, begged Bruce for Gawd’s sake to remember their agreement, and the fight was over.

Bruce felt no exaltation at his success. He knew that he had met a third rater, grown old. In his ears, during the bout, there had been the fierce, profane, obscene words of the fans as they sought to excite the fighters to a keener and bloodier conflict. They were animals and neither their praise nor their censure could be important. In the arrogance of youth awaking, he turned his back upon them and strode away.

As he lay half-dressed in the shade of a tent with the flaps up, his late enemy came to him.

“Come with me, kid,” Bell begged. “Come with me. You got a lot o’ stuff. Me, I’m gettin’ too old fer this game. I’ll learn yo’ some things yo’ don’t know and I’ll get yo’ fights. Me and you’ll make a keg of money. I’m sorry I hit yo’ but I done it to see if yo’ could absorb it. You ken. I’ll make somethink out o’ yo’, kid.”

“It’s no use, Bell. I don’t like the game and it doesn’t fit in with my plans. No use talking about it. I’m going back to school.”

“What in hell a fighter wants o’ school, I dunno.”

“That’s it. I’m not a fighter. There isn’t anything in your line to tempt me....”

For years after that fight the killing instinct lay dormant, lay so quiet that Bruce believed it had died. He found, however, that he carried it with him, must, probably, carry it with him to the end of his days.

Spooks was a bench-bred bull terrier given him by one of his reporters. With sensitive, sharp nose and narrowly cut ears which he erected straight like sentinels at attention, with creamy-white coat, not a black hair on him, he was an expression of instant, living beauty. Bruce always took the precaution of muzzling him when he let him out for a run. One morning he heard the uproar of a fight and saw that Spooks and a pit-bred terrier were mixing it. Running out, he came around the house in time to see the owner of the pit-bred dog kicking Spooks.

At the sight he discovered that he was still a killer. He shouted,

“Why in hell do you kick the muzzled dog? What harm can he do?”

“I’ll kick what I damned well please,” snarled the man, driving his boot into Spooks’ ribs.

“You dirty coward of a pup,” cried Bruce and said no more.

Sprague, the kicker, hit out as Bruce neared him, and was knocked down. Bruce dragged the dogs apart and, holding Spooks with one hand, knocked Sprague down again when he had struggled to his feet. Then he took his dog into the house and returned. Sprague had had enough. “I’m no street fighter,” he announced with dignity.

“Then you shouldn’t go round kicking other people’s muzzled dogs,” Bruce told him. “That’s one of the best ways in the world to get a scrap.”

Afterwards, he felt better. The conflict and burst of rage had freed inhibitions. He was swept out of his morbid, introspective state and experienced, temporarily, a renewal of interest in outward things, an interest that included his son. For the first time he gave the child deliberate consideration. He found him mildly amusing—no more than that. The sense of fatherhood was not yet awakened. He could not yet forget his sensations at his son’s birth. He could not yet thrill in the presence of an unfolding human soul. Not yet were the scales lifted from his eyes, and he found this man child only mildly amusing.