Читать книгу Marbleface - Max Brand - Страница 5

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WHEN I came to, a voice was saying dryly, with only a slight sneer: "I had half a grand on this bird. I stood to win a hundred. That was all!"

Then I opened my eyes and saw a doctor leaning over me, with what looked like a trumpet pressed against my breast.

He stood up, straightened, looked down at me hard.

"Auricular fibrillation," said he. "Why did you ever let this fellow step into a ring?"

The last part of his speech was addressed to Dutch.

Poor Dutch! He was standing by with a set smile, like a fighter's when he's gone, waiting for the knock-out, as I had waited for it in that last, fourth round.

"Auricular—what you say?" asked Dutch, wrinkling his fleshy forehead.

"His heart's no good. It never could've been much good. Never for years," said the doctor. "You knew that. Don't lie to me!"

"His heart's got something wrong with it, eh?" said Dutch quietly.

"Of course it has. Listen to it yourself, jumping like a rabbit with the hounds at its heels!"

I felt it myself then, the flutter and the failing of it.

The pulsation seemed to be in the center of my lungs, thrusting out all of the life-giving air.

"His heart's gone!" said Dutch, whispering to himself.

I pushed myself up on my elbow. There was an ache under my right eye. I could see the swelling, the discoloration of it. But the pain didn't bother me any.

"Dutch," said I, "I've been knocked out!"

He came over, hurrying. He put his arms under my shoulders.

"Aw, that's nothing," said he. "You slipped. That was all. You give your head a rap on the canvas. Just an accident. You're going to be better than ever. All you needed was a lesson. Now you got it. I always told you that only fools took chances."

I started square up into his face and saw the frown of reproval fade away. An empty, bewildered look came into his eyes.

"All right, Dutch," said I. "I didn't take any chances. You know that. I played the game, but the game beat me. I don't know what happened."

He looked away from me suddenly, like a scared child. He looked at the doctor, as though asking for an explanation. And the doctor was biting his lip and glowering thoughtfully at me.

"The heart's like the mainspring of a watch," he said sourly. "Sometimes it just gives way. The watch begins to tick out of tune. That's all! You understand that? Just begins to flutter."

"What cures this?" asked Dutch, grabbing at me and holding hard.

"Nothing," said the doctor. "This boy will never wear the gloves again."

"You lie!" screamed Dutch, while that had heart of mine froze and was still.

The doctor took a step and put the gloved forefinger of his hand on the chest of Dutch. "Listen to me," he said. "I've seen every fight he's fought. I've backed him every time—after the first. I'm not taking you for a ride. I'm telling you. That's all. Quinidine might bump his heart over the hill and put the rhythm straight again. Nothing else will turn the trick. The poor kid!"

He looked at me, as he said that, then frowned suddenly and left the room.

"All right," Dutch said. "That's easy. Quinidine. That's the thing that fixes you, kid."

It didn't though.

No, it only made me sicker, for a while. I spent six days lying flat, and for six days, they shot the pills into me. Then the doctor gave it up, when the heartbeat had been shoved to a hundred and sixty.

I tried it a second time, and a third time. Three times, they say, quinidine is worth trying. Each time I was beaten!

You know what it meant. I was only a kid of twenty-one. I had been on tiptoe. I was going to be a champion. Suddenly they told me that I was an old man. I had to go slowly upstairs. I'd better eat only one meal of meat a day. Better lie down an hour after every meal. A sedentary life, that was preferable, so they told me.

Me! I'd never pushed a pen across ten pages of paper in all my days! Well, I thought it over for months. I saw doctors all the time. I got so that I was willing to trade the rest of my existence for one year of real life, the sort of life that I had known, the life of a champion, knocking them out.

Digger Murphy came to see me. He was straight. He gave my hand a squeeze. That old has-been had met the champion, on the strength of his win over me, and he'd landed a lucky punch in the second round and now he wore the crown himself!

Digger Murphy!

"You were taking me, kid," he said. "I never got such a slamming. I thought you were all dynamite. What happened anyway? Were you doped? Did the stuff quit on you cold?"

I told him. I told him word by word, no word more than one syllable. He kept listening and he kept nodding. He couldn't look me in the face. It made me sick to see how he took it, like a slam in the chin.

Then he said: "Look here. I've made fifty grand through that scrap. I'm going to make more, too. Any part or all of that is yours."

That was pretty good, I'd say. He meant what he said. He was white.

Finally I said: "Digger, you take and salt the coin away. I'm going to be all right. Don't you think about me."

Digger grinned. "You mean that I won't be champ long?"

I shook my head. "You never can tell, Digger. You're a good old sport and a grand fighter, but you take care of your coin so it can take care of you, one of these days."

He kept on grinning and looking at me askance.

"I know," said he. "I'm not much good. I've only happened on some luck. You could've beaten me in the third. I know that. I'm only a ham, when it comes to the real class. Only I've just had some luck. Kid, let me give you a hand."

I said "no." He got up and left. For three months, I got a hundred dollars in cash mailed to me every week. The sender's name was not given, but I mailed all of that money back to Digger, and finally the coin stopped coming. He was a good fellow, as Irish as they make 'em. Then up came that fellow "Tug" Whaley and knocked Digger for a row of loops, took the crown, and wore it fair and square for five years.

Anyway I got no more money sent to me from old Digger!

By that time I was ready to look around at the new life and the rotten world that I found to live it in.

What a world! An hour in bed after every meal; one feed of meat every day; no running upstairs—I couldn't do anything fast and hard; no running uphill, or running upstairs. Everything must be slow and easy; no emotion. Keep your heart locked up. Smile at everything. Play poker all your life.

That was what I had to learn to do. And that was just how I happened to go wrong. Rather, you can't say that it happened. It was inevitable. What else was there for me to do? I couldn't be a clerk, somehow. That wasn't in me. I couldn't join a profession because I didn't know enough. And I couldn't sponge on my old pals, because I wasn't that cheap.

It wasn't fun. The doctors told me to live like a snail inside a shell. But then along came a physician with a new hunch. He said that the heart was a muscle and, even though it was a damaged muscle, it ought to be worked regularly. He gave me graded exercises, and I was thankful that I had met him when I began to build up—a step at a time. Pretty soon I could ride a horse all day. I could climb a mountain. I could dance, if I didn't speed up, for half an hour at a time. I could even go into the gym and lug around a little at the fixings there.

I had to get rid of nerves; that was all. Every time I got a nerve shock, my heart went smash. But at the end of three months, you could let off a blast of dynamite in my room while I was sound asleep, and I wouldn't be shocked. You could snap your fingers under my nose, curse me, threaten me, pull a gun on me. It made no difference. I kept those nerves as steady as a ticking clock. I had to. It was that, or die.

And this leads me on to my changed way of living.

I had to be a fighting man. I knew that the instinct was in me. Since I couldn't use my fists any more, except for one sock at a time, I began to pack a gun. Not that I was looking for trouble, but with my fighting stamina gone out of me, I felt scared and helpless. Packing the Colt made me feel better. And I used to ride out into the country districts and use that old cannon; I practiced pulling and pointing, when I was in my room. That revolver began to be a part of me.

In the meantime, the doctors had taken out the last of my dollars, and how was I to make any more? Well, with my hands and my face, not in the ring, but at a poker table. That face of mine was made of ice. It told nothing. If it was crooked work that the other fellows tried, my fingers not limber and educated enough to hold their own with most of the card mixers.

I began to rake in about a thousand a week. I was almost able to forget my sorrows, and then came the "bust" that kicked me off the face of Manhattan and landed me out in the cow country.