Читать книгу Spring Street - James Hugh Richardson - Страница 4

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His father was dying.

John Gallant paced the narrow sun-baked lawn between the porch of his home and the street.

Soon, he knew, the door would open and he would be called inside. That would be the end. A sickening feeling of terror gripped him and his heart pounded in his chest.

He took a step toward the door, which was really an involuntary movement. No, he couldn't go in there. The doctor was in a chair at the bedside, watching, helpless. He would only look up and say again that there was nothing to do but wait.

For a moment he hated that doctor because he sat there without doing a thing. His brain, inflamed and racked by the strain, throbbed in his head. He had a distorted idea that the doctor was making a coldly scientific observation of his father's death, perhaps taking mental notes for a paper to be read to a class of medical students.

He had tried waiting inside. That Mrs. Sprockett from across the street, who was with his mother, had whispered to him to be brave. His mother sat very still in her rocking chair, her head bowed, her hand pressed to her eyes. He knew she was praying. Unable to hold himself, he had dropped at her feet and buried his head in her lap. He had cried brokenly, his shoulders heaving spasmodically, and he had felt her hand gently touching his head.

They had not spoken, but the feeling that she was suffering with him had assuaged his agony until that Mrs. Sprockett had touched him on the shoulder and spoken to him.

"Do be brave, John, you must be a man now," she had said, and he had rushed outside to begin his pacing, back and forth, back and forth.

He began his walking again, ten steps across and ten steps back. At first he strode furiously, almost running, uttering queer little sounds like a whimpering animal, tears streaming down his cheeks. Now his throat was swollen and dry and his eyes smarted.

A few doors down the street children shouted at some wild game. Suddenly they stopped and he knew that they had been told to be quiet. He thought he saw their frightened faces as they were told that Mr. Gallant was dying. He remembered how he had been shocked to dumbness years before when someone in the neighborhood had died.

A boy passed on the sidewalk and looked at him with widened eyes and gaping mouth. He hurried by as though he feared that death might steal out from the Gallant house and take him.

Somewhere across the street a phonograph started blaring out a jazz piece. Then it stopped as suddenly as the shouts of the children. A lot they cared, he thought. All his father's death meant to them was the irritation of stopping the phonograph.

The blind on a window of the house next door was pulled to one side, emitting a shaft of light across the path he paced. A head—the head of the little girl his father had so often petted as he strode up the walk when he came home from work—shut off the light. He heard a scuffle of feet and she was pulled from the window.

Mrs. Sprockett's husband, in his shirt sleeves, came over and stood on the sidewalk.

"Is Maude in there with your mother?" he asked.

John looked at him, without a word.

"Beg your pardon," said Mrs. Sprockett's husband, backing away. "She didn't say—didn't leave any word—and the baby—and—"

The crying of the Sprockett baby could be heard faintly.

"I didn't think—I—I——" and Mrs. Sprockett's husband turned awkwardly and went back to the house.

Everything was quiet, so quiet that it startled him. A mocking bird warbled in a tree by the porch. He remembered his father saying one night that there was no music sweeter than its song.

Fragments of memory came to him vividly. His father pulling him from under a bed the night he was punished for stealing apples at the corner grocery store. His father reading David Copperfield to him and their mutual rejoicing when Betsy Trotwood lectured David's firm stepfather. His father closing his eyes and leaning back and a soft smile on his lips as his mother played "Annie Laurie."

These thoughts carried him away so that he stopped quickly when they left him. For a moment he could not realize that death was taking his father. He felt he had been out of his head, walking out there, that it was all a horrible nightmare. He almost began to laugh and dash up to the door to find things as they always had been. He staggered back with an impulse to shout in his agony as realization came back to him.

A wild hope seized him. He had been walking there for hours, for days it seemed, and the door had not opened. Perhaps the doctor was wrong, after all. Perhaps his father had rallied strength and would live. His heart beat exultingly. Perhaps——

And then the door opened.

* * * * *

He knew that his father had left them nothing but what was in the house. He had not spoken to his mother about it. He had been beside her bed until after dawn when, with a gentle sigh, she had slipped off into a merciful sleep.

Mrs. Sprockett, who left them only for a few minutes in the morning, he thanked with a guilty feeling of having not appreciated what she had done. The doctor had spoken to him kindly.

"My boy," he said, "this comes to all of us. Your father passed as gently as he lived. Remember, there's no sorrow nor suffering where he has gone and—be good to your mother."

It was not until after the funeral that John and his mother talked of the life before them. He told her that they would not have to leave their little home, that he would quit school and find work so they could go on together.

"Dearest, dearest mother, you shall be with me always," he said to her. But she replied:

"We owe a heavy debt, John, that must be paid at once."

He saw she was worrying over the expense of his father's funeral. He knew how sensitive she was about debts.

"I can get money somewhere, dearest mother," he said. "Don't worry."

"But where?"

"Somewhere—I'll get it. Please, oh, please don't think about it any more."

He could tell, however, that she could not put it out of her mind. There was a look about her eyes that told him it weighed upon her. It disappeared when he held her in his arms and comforted her; she tried bravely to hide it from him, but it was there, in his mind, haunting him.

He came to his decision about the money for the funeral director quickly. He told her he was going to look for work and went to George Blake at his Spring street gymnasium. Blake, an instructor in boxing, had seen him spar in amateur bouts and had taken him in tow. He boxed because he liked it; never with a thought of ever fighting for money. Only a month before he had refused an offer of a bout at Jack Doyle's Vernon arena.

"George," he said, "can you get me a bout at Vernon?"

"What's the big idea?" asked Blake with a smile.

"I need the money."

"How soon?"

"As soon as I can get it."

"I'll see Wad Wadhams, tonight," Blake said. "If there's a place on the bill I'll get it for you."

The next day Blake called him to the gymnasium.

"You'll go on in the preliminaries," he said. "Two hundred if you win, a hundred if you draw and fifty if you lose. How's that?"

"That means I must win," John said.

In his pocket as he spoke was the funeral director's bill for $200.

"You'd better get to work right now, then," cautioned Blake. "You're matched with a tough boy, but if you're in any sort of shape at all you should come out on top."

They went to work. As he roughed it with the young fellows Blake sent against him he thought of his mother. Perhaps, after it was all over and their debt had been paid, he would tell her how he got the money. He couldn't tell her now. She had even tried to persuade him to stop boxing for exercise and if she thought for a moment that he had arranged to fight for money——

A fist thudded against his jaw. Absorbed in his thoughts he had left an opening and the boy in the ring with him was quick to take advantage of it. Instinctively he "covered," bending over with his arms wrapped around his head and body for protection until his brain cleared.

Then, savagely, he tore into the boy before him, jabbing him swiftly with his left glove and suddenly sending over his right with a snap. The boy sank to the floor.

"That's enough, Gallant," admonished Blake. "Take it easy."

He lifted the boy to his feet.

As he pounded at the punching bag a few minutes later he promised himself that this would be his one and only fight in a ring, for his mother's sake.

That night, when he left for Vernon, he told her his first deliberate lie.

* * * * *

He was in his corner. A scrawny youth with a twisted nose, a jersey sweater and a husky voice was tying on his gloves.

"Wot's your name, kid?"

The announcer was bending over him.

"Gallant," he answered, after hesitating. The announcer turned and crossed to the opposite corner of the ring and John's eyes followed him. He saw his opponent, a thick-shouldered Mexican, with flashing black eyes, gleaming white teeth, a broad, deep chest tapering to a slender waist.

The Mexican returned his appraising look, and sneered.

Arc lamps threw a heated white light down to the canvas floor of the ring. The chatter and rumble of voices came up from the crowd. He looked out past the ropes and saw faces—hundreds of them—dimly through clouds of tobacco smoke. He could only distinguish those at the ringside. He saw Charlie Chaplin, the famous film comedian, looking at him. There was Jack Dempsey, the world's ring champion, towering up in his seat. There was——

"Come on, kid," the announcer was calling to him from the center of the ring.

John dropped his bathrobe from his shoulders and went forward.

"On my right—the Gallant kid," shouted the announcer, pausing for the laugh that came up from the crowd.

"The what?" a voice asked.

"The Gallant kid, he calls himself," shouted back the announcer. "On my left—Battling Rodriguez. One hundred and thirty-five pounds."

John went back to his corner. He rested his gloved hands on the ropes and scraped the soles of his shoes into a box of rosin shoved beneath his feet by the twisted nose youth, who had a towel thrown over his shoulder and a pail of water near him.

Blake pulled himself up beside him.

"Remember, John, keep cool and keep jabbing that left in his face," he said.

John looked out at the crowd. A thought of his mother flashed into his head and he seemed to see her face in the blue haze of smoke.

"He'll try rushing you—he thinks he's another Joe Rivers," said Blake. "Wait for a chance to soak him."

The gong sounded and, whirling around, he went to the center of the ring. The Battler came dancing out to meet him. They touched gloves for a handshake and each took a step back. The Battler moved his gloves in quick little circles and the noise from the crowd stopped. John forgot everything else, the fight was on.

The Battler feinted, swaying his body from side to side, and came at him. He shot out his left hand, jabbing at the swarthy face of the Mexican. His fist struck only the air and the Battler, his lips drawn back, his eyes blazing, crashed into him.

A fist pounded into his stomach and another ripped into his face. He heard a wild shout from the crowd and the Mexican jumped back, smiling. A trickle of blood dropped to his cheek from a cut over his eye. He heard the Battler's seconds shout to their man to "tear into" him. He watched, his left extended, his right close to his body.

The Battler rushed again, swaying from the hips. John's left fist found its mark. He jabbed—once, twice, three times—and lashed out with his right. The blow glanced off the Mexican's shoulders and they clinched. He felt the Battler's strength in that clinch and he realized it was more than his. The referee called "Break!" and they pushed away from each other.

He must keep his head. The Mexican was fast; he pounced like a panther. Blake's warning came back to him—"keep cool and wait." That was it, wait, wait for a chance to land a blow that would end the fight.

He shot out his left again as the Battler came at him. It missed and the strength he put behind it carried his head forward. Like a flash the Mexican's right crashed to his jaw. John stumbled to his knees. The referee was over him.

"One—two—three—four—five—six——"

He felt his head slowly clearing. What a punch that Mexican had! He must get to his feet and cover.

"Seven—eight——"

He found strength to jump up. He saw nothing before him. He heard shouting, miles away, it seemed. His arms were heavy when he lifted them to his head. He tried to set himself. His body reeled as the Battler pounded him, his head, his face, his back.

Back across the ring he staggered until he went down again.

"One—two—three—four——" the referee's arm waved up and down in front of his face. His arms, holding up his body from the floor, began to sag. Blood poured from the cut over his eye. Faintly he saw the sturdy brown legs of the Mexican dancing before him.

"Five—six—seven——"

He pushed himself up to his knees.

"Eight—nine——"

He got to his feet, his arms hanging loose at his sides. The Battler swung forward on his toes for another rush. He tried to lift his hands. They were like dead things. He tried to run out of the way of that tornado of blows and he tottered back against the ropes.

The gong rang and saved him.

He sank into the canvas camp-chair that was pushed under him in his corner and gulped at the wind fanned into his heaving lungs by the towel flapped up and down by the twisted-nose second. A sharp pain as the cut over his eye was burned with caustic brightened his brain.

"Has he had enough?" he heard the referee ask Blake, who was behind him.

"No, give me a chance," he gasped.

"Let him try another one," Blake said.

The pounding of his heart slowed and his head cleared so that he could make out the figure of the Battler leaning back in his chair, his arms spread along the ropes, smiling.

A second massaged his arms and he felt life coming back into them. Blake whispered in his ear:

"One punch will end that Mex. boy; try to land it this time."

John nodded. He must land it. He MUST WIN. For the first time since the fight started he thought of why he was there. If he could only rest here a minute more—just until his head cleared a little—the gong rang.

He rushed and saw a look of surprise cross the Battler's face as he dodged to one side. He hooked at the black, shaggy head with his left and felt his fist crack against the Battler's ear. He swung his right with all the strength he had in him and grunted as he felt it sink into the Battler's stomach. He stepped back. He heard shouting. He saw the Mexican double over and cover his head with his arms.

"Atta boy!" someone in the crowd yelled.

The Battler uncovered slowly. He went in again, jabbing with his left. It struck the Battler's thick arms wrapped around his head. With a spring like a cat the Mexican was on him. He shot up his right and it pounded into the Battler's ribs. He tried to wrestle himself out of the clinch into which the Mexican had thrown himself.

The referee tore them apart.

"None of that," he said to the Battler. "Stop holding in the clinches."

The end came a minute later. They were roughing it in the center of the ring and the crowd was on its feet, howling. The Battler swayed far to the right, the glove of his right hand almost touching the floor. John brought his guard down, fearful that the punch the Mexican was swinging was aimed for his body. He started a counter-blow with his right and the Battler's fist rose high and crashed against his jaw.

A white flash blinded him as he dropped. He was down for the count of eight. He was "out on his feet" when he struggled up again. He smiled feebly and pawed in front of him with his left. The Battler brushed it aside and as John fell forward in a last desperate effort to clinch, his right went over. The smack of the Mexican's fist as it landed the knockout punch sounded like the slap of a paddle on water.

"Eight—nine—you're out!"

They carried him to his corner, the Battler on one side, the referee on the other. As through a fog he saw the Mexican dance back to his corner to be received joyously by his seconds. He saw Jack Dempsey looking up at him, nodding his head and smiling. He saw a terribly anxious look on a pale, strained face he slowly recognized as that of Charlie Chaplin.

He closed his eyes. If they would only let him alone and stop throwing water on him. He could not see out of one of his eyes. They tore the gloves from his hands and the sharp odor of smelling salts bit into his nostrils. His head ached, his lungs burned.

"Come on, kid, get back to da dressin' room," a husky voice said.

He pulled himself to his feet. He was whipped. His only chance to get money to pay for his father's funeral was gone. So weak that his body shook and his legs trembled, hysterical tears sprang to his eyes and he sobbed—gasping sobs that choked him.

The hot tears smarted like salt in the cuts on his cheek as he stumbled up the aisle toward the dressing rooms.

Someone came running up behind him. A hand grasped his arm and he heard a voice say:

"Just a minute, my boy, I want to talk to you."