Читать книгу Marbleface - Max Brand - Страница 4

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I SHALL never forget that moment, of course. I remember that Dutch—good old fellow—was calling up from under my corner. He was like a happy boy, laughing as he looked up at me.

"I've had 'em fast, and I've had 'em with the kick of a mule, and I've had 'em foxy," he said. "But you got all three together."

I leaned back on the chair and felt the rubbers working on the inside muscles of my legs, and said nothing. I didn't need that massage. My legs were as strong as iron posts. They could stand anything. Road work accounted for that.

But I was luxuriating in things and taking everything that came my way. Then that half bucket of cold water splashed over me.

I don't know what happened. It seemed to freeze me all the way through. Afterward I couldn't catch my breath. I felt as though I had been running a mile uphill, and I still felt that way when the bell rang.

Well, I stepped out, confident, easy, in spite of that trouble with my wind. That would pass, I was sure. It was only like a catch in the side. There before me was Digger Murphy, serious, his face set and pasty white. He knew that I was going to knock him out. And wasn't he ripe for it?

His eyes were uneasy in his head, shifting a bit from side to side. His legs were so far apart that I knew that he was bracing himself for the shock that he expected me to give him.

Well, I stepped in and gave him the left jab, an easy, light one, to feel him out. That jab found its mark, as though he were a man made of putty. He saw what I was going to try and blinked, but he couldn't make his hands move fast enough to block the punch. I hit him, but what I noticed, most of all, was that there was no lead in the wallop. I had expected to daze him a bit, so that I could shoot across the right, which I was holding my hand high for. That right was to end the battle. To show them the real wallop that I carried up my sleeve, you see. To show them that I could take a man fresh out of his corner, after a whole minute of resting, and sock him cold, for keeps. That was what that right was poised and ready to do.

But the left didn't work. There seemed not to be a fist, but just cold mush inside of my glove.

That punch made no opening for me. I could see the surprised look in Digger's face. He was waiting for the sock, and it hadn't arrived. I grinned at him, as much as to say that I was only playing. But it wasn't playing. There was something wrong with me. You see, my breath was still gone. I was sick. I wanted to sit down on that stool again. I wanted to lie down—lie flat. I couldn't breathe. I was out of wind. Yet at the end of the third round I had been ready to do a toe dance!

I would have liked to cut that round short, but I couldn't. Every move of it hangs in my mind. I was the winner. Digger Murphy was finished. I had only to hit him once, yet I couldn't hit.

He was a game one. When that left of mine didn't faze him, I hauled off and socked at him. No, he wasn't ready to lie down. He socked at me, and I put up my right to block the swing. I had the arm there in plenty of time. I should have stopped that punch. I should have been ready to step in and poke him with my left. But the arm I put up seemed to be made of feathers. His sock went straight through it, and he hammered me on the side of the jaw.

I back-stepped, a little groggy, grinned and nodded, as though to invite him to step in and try the thing again. Only I wasn't inviting. I knew that something was wrong. I tried a glance at my corner and could see Dutch looking puzzled and shaking his head. Still he was smiling. He was so sure of that fight!

So was I. I was only waiting for the change, waiting for the wind to come back, waiting for the thing that wouldn't happen.

My legs were bad. My knees had turned to dough. There, where the mainspring of a boxer's action is centered, I had nothing but pulp! In boxing, you do your feinting, your hitting, all with the legs. The arms don't count so much. The feet are what get you out of danger and bring you back into position to hit, throwing the vital weight behind the punch. But my feet were dead under me!

Digger was coming in.

I flashed a left at him. It hit his forehead and bounced! There was nothing to it. He came right on through that feeble barrage and socked me. My perfect fence was full of holes!

His blows went home now and how they came! My body, mind you, was ringed with cushions of hard fighting muscles that were guaranteed to soak up all sorts of shocks and punishment. But the cushions were gone. He seemed to be hitting right into the core of my being. I felt the blows sink through to the backbone. I was jarred; I was sick.

Then I backed away and I saw on Digger's face a look of dull astonishment, almost as though he had received the blows. In the preceding rounds I had been sliding away from or shedding those punches like water.

He was amazed one moment, the next, he was at me, hammer and tongs. He knew the taste of that pleasure of old. He knew how it felt to sink your fists into a pulpy, weak, fading body. I was learning for the first time.

He came at me and he hit hard and with growing confidence—that confidence I was speaking about, which puts a lump of lead in each boxing glove. The lead hit me. It hit me in the sick body and made me sicker. I was thinking yards ahead of anything that my hands could do. They were helpless. And there was no strength in my elbows, where a man needs it for blocking. They were like my knees, just pulpy.

I knew that I was going. I knew that I was sliding. I'll never forget the roar of the house, when I backed away from Digger and the people could see that the smile on my face was frozen. I'll never forget Digger's manager—he'd been silent up to now—jumping up and down and screeching to him to stop me— to knock me for a row of loops! And I knew that he could do it!

I still tried to smile—the foolish lesson that I had learned. And the words of Dutch came drilling into my mind. He was telling me to back away and cover up; that I was all right; that nothing would happen; that Digger was pie for me!

Well, Digger was pie, all right, such pie that I had cut the slice already, so to speak, and could have eaten it at any time during the three rounds before.

But now the case was different. He picked me up and carried me before him like dead leaves before the wind. He hit me in my perishing body. He slammed me on the head.

The I went down. I felt a blow between my shoulders. It was my own head, jerked back before his smashing fist!

And I went down, sinking, crumpling. I seemed to be made of sand. There were no legs under me, to hold me up. I just went on falling, and telling myself that this was ridiculous, and that such a punch never could hurt me in the world. Ten thousand harder ones had glanced from me like water when I was stepping on the sweat and blood-spattered canvas of the gym.

But down I went.

I got up again, but I had to fight to get up. I laughed at myself. I was maddened, because there was no breath in me. But I got up somehow. I put my will power under my knees and pushed myself up, rose and met the shrieking of that crowd. I was the favorite, five to one. They had bet that way on me. I heard them calling me a dirty dog, a yellow traitor, and a lot of names that look even worse in print.

I could still feel my face stretching in the same foolish, idiotic grin, the pretense of not being hurt.

I knew that the sham was no good. I knew that I was a fool to keep on wasting effort on that smile. But it wasn't really effort. It was only the effect of the old gymnasium habit—to sneer at the other fellow when he has hurt you the most!

I saw Digger, with his head cocked wisely to one side, thinking, preparing himself, ready for a great effort. Still, there was an air of amazement about him. He was still feeling the work of my hands. He still felt me right into the core of him. But now he came, side-stepping, sliding, glimmering before my eyes.

I knew what he was doing. I read his mind, miles away. A feint of a low, swinging left to the body, and then a smashing right-hander to the head. I tried to forestall the blows, but it was no use. I was made of paper, wet pulpy paper.

I saw the feint start and end, hanging in the air.

I saw the right begin and the high, sudden arching of the arm to get over my sagging shoulder, then the sudden drop of the clenched fist. But the guard that I put up was no good. The sock came home. I felt it like a hammer stroke in the back of my brain. All the yelling in the house became nothing. I dropped into nothingness.