Home to Shawneetown

A Story by Nelson Algren

WE’LL fight you on condition you don’t knock Reno out in the first two rounds,” DeLillo’s manager told me. “After two it’s every man for hisself.”

A hundred dollars, and I pay my own expenses to St. Louis. I took the fight. When you’re managing yourself, you have to accept conditions.

Between instructions and the bell, I worked the lace of my left glove loose.

Early in the round I caught DeLillo lightly with the lace across the eye. He stepped back and complained to the ref. The ref didn’t even waggle his finger at me. Just tightened the lace was all. By the middle of the round DeLillo’s eyelid had begun to swell. By the end of the round he couldn’t see on that side. I could have reached over and belted him out, but I didn’t. I’d give my word.

In the second I got on his blindy side and clipped him on the jaw. He started sagging. I could have finished him off, but I didn’t. I danced him up and down until his head cleared. You see, I’d give my word.

When we came out for the third, I extended my gloves to him.

“It ain’t the last round,” DeLillo told me.

“It is for you,” I told him, and reached over and knocked him cold.

Maybe it’s true I couldn’t fight much. But I always did have color.

One night Beth and I caught the Fight of the Week. The room would have been warm enough without a fire, but Beth has to keep one going all year round because of her pa. The old man was sitting in his overcoat. He was helping us watch Pete Mathias, the middleweight titleholder. Being a fighter is a step up from the mines, to Pa.

Mathias was having more trouble against an opponent no smarter than Reno DeLillo.

“He wouldn’t be taking chances like that against you, Roger,” Pa told me; “he wouldn’t let hisself open against you.”

We let the old man say what he wants so long as he don’t complain. Pa don’t have the right to complain anymore.

Around the eighth round I got the feeling I could whip Mathias. I got the feeling so strong I switched the fight off. Beth smiled just as if she understood.

Beth always smiles like she understands everything about everything. Maybe she does. The idea of my quitting the ring and opening a diner was hers. She found one for sale, too. Two thousand dollars. In Carriers Mills. But were no nearer buying it now than we were four years ago when we got engaged. Which make it appear maybe she don’t understand anything about anything.

My hundred-dollar kayo of DeLillo at The Arena wasn’t featured by Ring magazine. I greatly doubt it will be listed in Boxing Year Book under Great Battles of All Time. When I got into San Antonio I had forty dollars left of the hundred.

I had to fight some fellow Sweetmouth Jenkins at the Army Post Arena there. He got a white manager.

A couple hours before fight time there was a polite rap at my hotel door. The door wasn’t locked. I didn’t bother getting off the bed.

“I’m Jenkins’ manager,” a little man in white seersucker, holding his hat in his hand, told me.

I still didn’t get off the bed. I’d never seen a fight manager holding his hat in his hand till then. It was my first time.

“My boy is a nice boy with a wife and family,” the Polite Manager let me know. “I hope you don’t bust him up unnecessarily, Roger. I’m not asking you not to beat him. Just don’t bust him up. His wife is hardly more than a girl. Roger.”

“Am I fighting Jenkins or his family?” I asked the Very Polite Manager.

“His wife will be down front, Roger. She’s expecting.”

I got off the bed.

“My name isn’t ‘Roger,’ ” I told the man, “it’s ‘Holly.’ What is this anyhow? Would your boy take it easy on me if I had a wife expecting?”

“I regret having brought the matter up, Holly,” he told me, and left just as if I were letting him down. “ ‘Holly’ is my last name!” I hollered after him.

But he kept on walking like he didn’t hear.

Mr. Sweetmouth Jenkins, sitting across the ring from me, had a mouth like a tribal drum. Then here he comes at me with his piano-key teeth sticking out too far — I can feint him with my shoulders. I can feint him with my feet. I can feint him with my eyes or hands. But Mr. Sweetmouth is so busy doing everything wrong he don’t know I’m feinting him. How can I take a man out I can’t set up? He got away from me six times in the first two rounds, and in the third he begun looking good. I could almost hear Mrs. Jenkins saying, “Daddy, you looked wonderful the first three rounds.” Daddy wouldn’t be able to answer because his jaw would be wired. I decided that. I went out for the fourth to nail that tribal drum.

I couldn’t nail it. He was too strong. He kept grabbing my arms in the clinches and squeezing the muscle. He made me ache all over with his chopping and butting and scratching my face and chest with his head full of wire bristles. Nigger fighters know how to use that patch against you. “I got to start outthinking this cat,” I made up my mind.

I outthought him from the sixth round straight through to the final bell. All the while I was out-

thinking him he was chopping me from one side of the ring to the other till my arms were paralyzed and I was swallowing blood.

“By unanimous decision, Sweetmouth Jenkins!” the announcer made it, “over Roger Holly!”

I got a scattering of applause for having two front names.

But Sweetmouth Jenkins hadn’t beat me. His manager had. It’s what you get not making yourself hostile right from the go. I can still beat Mr. Sweetmouth Jenkins.

But when you’re thirty-two and have been at this trade thirteen years, you’ve pretty well used up your hostility. I caught a midnight bus to Galveston. I had to fight somebody there, I didn’t even know his name.

After the bus lights dimmed and the other riders were sleeping, I tried to get to sleep by remembering the names of men I’d fought. I couldn’t remember more than two or three. I remembered the fights. It was just the names I couldn’t remember.

So I remembered the names of the places I’d fought in. I did better on those. I remembered the Camden Convention Hall in South Jersey and the Grotto Auditorium in San Antonio and the Moose Temple in Detroit and the Marigold in Chicago and the New Broadway in Philly and the Norristown Auditorium and the Arcadia Ballroom in Providence and the Rainbow Garden in Little Rock and the Garden Palace in Passaic and the Armory A.C. in Wilkes-Barre and the Fenwick Club in Cincinnati, and Antler’s Auditorium in Lorain, Ohio. Then I went back to Detroit and remembered the Grand River gym and the old Tuxedo A.C. on Monroe Avenue. Just before I fell asleep I knew those were the names of the places where I’d used up my hostility.

IT WAS getting light across that Gulf-Road land between the Gulf-Road towns when I woke up. I’d made this scene before. The land looked to me the way beds do in cheap hotels where you don’t get clean sheets unless you pay a week in advance.

Bed after bed.

I got a room like that in Galveston. Then I went to look for a corner man. I had to fight somebody calls hisself Indian Mickey Walker.

It isn’t always easy to find somebody to work your corner in these east Texas towns. Sometimes you can find an out-of-work fruit-picker to carry your bucket. If you’re lucky you’ll find an oldtimey fighter, fight-manager, or fight-follower to handle you. Them kind are the ones who don’t take money off you. Yes, I’ve carried my own bucket.

At the Ocean Athletic Club I found a skinny little hustler from New Jersey, calls hisself Dominoes because he’s been hustling domino parlors in the Rio Grande Valley. He’d kept one hand in his pocket so long one shoulder was higher than the other. I bought him a meal. Then I look him back to my room and emptied my little green and white Ozark Air bag on the bed: cotton swabs, surgical scissors, carpenter’s wax, smelling salts, Spirits of Ammonia, iodine, Monsel’s Solution, Vaseline, adrenalin chloride, and half a pint of brandy. I showed him what everything was for except the brandy. He already knew what brandy was for.

I asked him did he know anything about some clown calls hisself Indian Mickey Walker.

“Strictly an opponent,” Dominoes told me. “I seen him fight a prelim at the Garden when he come up from the bushes, but he come up too fast. Went down even faster.”

“All the same he done better than I done,” I had to admit. “Closest I’ve got to the Garden was McArthur Stadium in Brooklyn.”

“Never been there.”

“The McArthur Stadium, or Brooklyn?”

“Neither,” he told me, “but I’ll tell you what I think. I think you need a manager.”

“What for?” I asked the man, “I never needed somebody to tell me the best hand to hit an opponent with is the one closest to his jaw. I never needed somebody to teach me that when you clobber someone it’s a shrewd idea to duck. What can a manager do for me beside robbing me blind?”

“He might get you in at the Garden,” Dominoes decided. “Wouldn’t you like that?”

“There’s people in hell would like ice water,” I told him, “but that don’t mean anyone’s bringing the pitcher.”

Indian Walker was a shoeshine fighter. Stands in the middle of the ring with his head down and flails both arms like he’s shining shoes. Built like a weight lifter. More hair on his chest than I got on my head. Some Indian.

The ref was one of them Elks Club athletes who’d refereed so many fights he’d gotten punchy. He likes to show who’s the boss by sticking his head between us and hollering “Break!” so you could hear him in the back of the hall.

He stuck his head in there once too often. The stupid Indian nails him, and down goes the ref onto one knee. The whole house began counting him out. He made it up at eight. After that he stayed out from between us. But every time we clinched, somebody would holler “Break!”

Indian Walker won seven of the eight rounds. One was about even. The ref give me the fight on points. I got the winner’s end, a hundred dollars, for not knocking the referee down.

I HUNG around Shawneetown a week or so. Then I got a call from Twin City.

Some businessmen up there had “discovered” a six-foot-five schoolboy and had bought him half a dozen fast knockouts. They offered me five hundred and expenses to fight him. The reason they wanted me, I guessed, was because nobody has ever had me off my feet in a ring. It would be a boost for the Schoolboy Giant if he should be the first. I told the men to send me a hundred for expenses in front, that I’d want the other five before I got in any ring with a real live giant. Then I phoned Dominoes to meet me in Twin City.

“It ought to be worth fifteen hundred,” I told Dominoes. He understood what I meant. So did Beth. They had to want a tank job. She didn’t say anything. She wanted that diner in Carriers Mills as much as I did.

I took a look at the Schoolboy Giant working out. Some giant. It didn’t seem possible that they were going to let me go after him. He was all schoolboy.

Yet nobody rapped my hotel door. Nobody stopped me on the street. Nobody phoned me for a meet. “Something funny is going on,” I told Dominoes. “Something funny isn’t going on,” Dominoes corrected me.

The weighing-in was in a downtown newspaper office. The room was full of sportswriters. The Giant was undressing in a corner. I began undressing too. I let him walk toward the scales first. He was about to step on the scale when I shoved him to one side.

“Get off that scale!” I hollered right in his ear, and shoved him so hard he nearly toppled. I pointed my finger right up at his nose — “Don’t ever let me catch you trying to get on a scale in front of me! Do you hear?”

After I’d weighed in I stepped down.

“You can weigh yourself now,” I told him.

He weighed 232. I weighed 172. They billed me at 180.

It wasn’t till after the instructions, waiting in my corner for the bell, that Dominoes whispered, “They’re dropping him.”

The Giant’s people were betting against him.

Well, all right. So was I.

He came out into the middle of the ring, put his left foot into one bucket and his right foot into another, extended his left hand and poised his right exactly as he had been told to do. I walked right up on his big flat feet, worked the ball of my wrist into his right eye; then held. I stepped back at the break, missed deliberately with my right in order to catch his other eye with my elbow; then held.

He put both gloves across his eyes, so I walked up on his feet again and butted him in the mouth. He half-turned toward the referee, and said, “He’s walking on my feet,” and I reached over and knocked him into a spin. He caught himself going down by his forearms.

I didn’t go in on him. I waited till the ref got out from between us. The Giant put both arms around me, and he held me till the bell. I went back to my corner wobbling from his hug.

In the middle of the second round he spread those feet again. I walked right up on them and butted him in his mouth again. He turned his head toward the ref to complain again, and I hit him one on the jaw that sent him down on both knees.

He got up onto one knee with one eye shut, the other cut, and his mouth bloody. But he made it up at nine.

He still seemed to be in his right mind so I followed. And he smashed my nose in with a big right hand. I grabbed him around his middle and held. Just held. I thought it was him weaving side to side as I held, but it was me. The ref was trying to pull me off him. I didn’t let go until I was sure I wouldn’t hit the floor.

Then I came up fast and skulled him in his mouth again but forgot to pull back. He butted me back so hard I had to grab and hold again. The Schoolboy Giant was catching on. I went back to my corner with blood in my hair.

Dominoes cleaned my head and got the cut in it closed, all the while trying to tell me something. I couldn’t make out what he was trying to tell, but I didn’t have to. I knew what to do now.

A right uppercut is a sucker punch. If you don’t time it exactly, you leave yourself wide open to your opponent’s cross or jab. You have to think ahead to land it. You have to anticipate your opponent’s moves. It’s a good punch to throw at an opponent who fights a little lower than you do. But if you are lighting one a full head higher than you, you have to bring him down to you. There was plenty of it to bring down. I went for the body.

A right to the heart, a left to the solar plexus. The Giant lowered his head, his arms crossed level with his heart. I pivoted on the ball of my left foot until my right glove was almost touching the floor. Then brought it up. He pitched face forward as if he’d been blackjacked.

I watched his legs while the ref counted him out. The doctor was working on him half a minute before his calves twitched. The last I saw of him, two handlers were dragging him to his corner with his toes Scraping the canvas.

Dominoes gave me interference to the locker room. Some kid waiting there threw a handful of popcorn in my face.

“Lock the door,” I told Dominoes as soon as we got inside.

Then I threw up.

A POSTCARD from Shawneetown was waiting for me at Boise. All it said was Everyone Here Fine Don’t Get Hurt.

I read it sitting on a locker-room bench. After I’d read it I put it with Beth’s other cards telling me Don’t Get Hurt. Then I put on my trunks and went upstairs to the gym.

There was a poster next to the door. It said Cowboy Goldie Williams vs. Roger Holly. I began throwing my left into the heavy bag.

A good many people don’t remember I began fighting as a left-hander. A good many people don’t even remember I began fighting.

A lanky young fellow in blue jeans and Spanish boots stopped to watch me. I paid him no heed.

“You left-handed?” he finally asked me.

“No,” I told him, “right-handed.”

“Then hit it right-handed,” he told me.

“I’m developing my left,” I explained.

“Developing?” He looked like he couldn’t believe his ears — “at your age you’re developing something? Hell, you’re old enough to be Cowboy’s old man.”

“Reckon I could be his old man,” I admitted, “if I’d married when I was fourteen.”

“Nobody gets married that young,” he decided.

“But it don’t make no difference,” he filled me in — “Cowboy Williams is going to beat you silly. He’s going to gouge you ‘n’ bust your eardrums, too. He’s going to pound your kidneys. He’s going to crack your ribs. He’s going to bust your jaw. He’ll give you con-cussions!”

“What do we do following that?” I asked him, “play unnatural games?” And went back to the bag. I wondered who had sent him.

When I climbed into the ring that night I found out who’d sent him. The fellow who came down the aisle in a white satin robe was the same fellow. Cowboy Williams had sent hisself.

A fighter so keyed up as to play trick or treat before a fight is likely to start fast, I guessed.

I guessed just right. He came tearing across the ring, and I caught him coming.

All I had to do was step aside to let him fall.

I kept an eye out for kids holding popcorn bags on the way to the locker. We made it without trouble.

While I was dressing, the promoter came in and sat down on the bench.

“I can get you on at the Tulane Club,” he told me, “five hundred and expenses.”

“I’ll take it,” I told the man. “Who do I have to kill?”

“Your worry will be how to keep from getting killed. You’re fighting the Pride of New Orleans.”

“Who’s the Pride of New Orleans?”

“Johnny St. Francis. Stay in shape.”

“I don’t have to stay in shape to beat nobody named St. Francis,” I told the man.

I stay in shape all the time: I don’t drink or cat after women. Because in this trade if you stay out late on Monday, you still feel it Friday.

I didn’t know till we got to New Orleans that Johnny St. Francis was unbeaten. Twenty-two professional fights, fourteen wins by kayo, six by decision, one no-decision, and one draw. Mr. St. Francis could hit, it looked like.

He didn’t look like a hitter. A college boy, nineteen or twenty. Six feet high and not a mark on him. Mr. St. Francis could also move around, it looked like.

I didn’t need anyone to tell me I wouldn’t last ten rounds against this athlete. I went out and bought a pair of Sammy Frager five-ounce gloves, of which three ounces is in the wrists. I thought that just maybe I might get away with them. At the weigh-in I gave them to the referee. He looked like a doctor.

“Do me a small favor,” I asked him, “let me use these tonight.”

We were standing next to a scale, but he didn’t put them on it.

“Beautiful gloves,” he told me. “How much do we owe you?”

“Not a dime,” I told him, “they’re on the house.”

He came into the dressing room that night and handed me the gloves and then left me and Dominoes alone. No deputy. Nobody. I’d never had anything like it happen to me before.

Dominoes pulled on white tape tight as I could stand it without stopping the circulation. Then he put black tape over the white. Then he put white tape over the black. I was loaded.

We’d hardly finished taping when someone knocked. Dominoes stepped out to see who. He stepped back in and shut the door behind him.

“There’s a fellow out here wants to know if you’ll take five hundred to let St. Francis go the distance,” Dominoes told me.

“We take it,” I told Dominoes. So out he steps again and steps back in and closes the door again and hands me five C-notes.

All I did for the first two minutes of the first round was test myself to see how I felt. I began feeling kind of limber. So I go in and hit St. Francis with a left hook, and he starts to go down. I grab him and he’s still falling. Then we’re both falling all around the ring, me trying to make it look like it’s me that’s out on his feet. I leaned him against the ropes with my weight against him so he wouldn’t slide onto the floor, and all the while the crowd hollering for him to finish me! I leaned on him till the referee pried me off. By that time the boy had come around.

All I did the next two rounds was miss punches by the yard, dance St. Francis up and down, duck, bob, weave, clinch, and complain to the ref to keep the stinker going. The crowd didn’t care for it.

“If you don’t start fighting, you’re not getting paid,” the ref told me at the end of the fourth.

“I got to get rid of this kid,” I told Dominoes in the corner, “he’s going to faint on me.”

“Better not,” Dominoes reminded me.

The crowd had its blood up. They’d paid to see a fight. I hit the Pride of New Orleans with another left hook, and he went out cold, arms stiff at his sides.

Dominoes picked up the stool with its legs sticking out and ran interference again for me back to the dressing room. As soon as he’d locked the door, someone began pounding on it.

“Coming under the door,” I hollered, and slipped the five bills underneath it.

I’d beaten three unbeatables in a row, all by kayo. So a magazine did a story on fighters, bush fighters without managers. I was the best of a bad lot it said.

“I always knew you were a bad lot,” Beth said when she’d read it; “I never dreamed you were the best.”

Then she smiled as if she really did know what it was all about.

“Maybe you can’t fight too good, honey,” she told me later, “but you do have color.”

THE poster said Sol Schatzer Proudly Presents — I couldn’t read the rest because Dominoes was sitting with his head against it, pretending to be on the nod.

I read the contract in front of me through twice. Both times I stopped where it said In event challenger establishes legitimate claim to title, he herewith agrees to purchase managerial services of co-signer.

“I can beat Pete Mathias without a manager,” I told Schatzer.

“It’s the customary contract,” he told me. “I don’t have all day. So sign.”

I pushed it back to Schatzer.

“You know what you are, Roger?” Schatzer told me, “you’re an Agony Fighter, that’s what you are. You know what else you are, Roger? You’re an Agony Man, that’s what you also are. You can’t fight, and you won’t let an opponent fight. You can’t make money for yourself, and you won’t let somebody who can make it for you. You don’t want a manager? Has somebody been around here lately asking? Somebody phoning to ask could he manage Roger Holly? Who been asking? Who been phoning? I’ll tell you who: nobody, that’s who been phoning to manage Roger Holly.”

“I just got me a manager,” I told Schatzer, and nodded toward Dominoes, on the nod under the poster of Pete Mathias.

“That’s a manager?”

Schatzer jumped up, raced around his desk with the contract in his hand, and shook Dominoes like a half-empty sack. Dominoes opened one eye. Schatzer pushed the contract into his hand.

“Manager! Read a contract your fighter won’t sign! Read, Manager!”

Dominoes tore the contract in two and let the halves fall to the floor.

“I don’t know what you’re getting so excited about, Roger,” Schatzer told me when he’d caught his breath, “all I’m doing is protecting myself. If you should get lucky against Mathias, I lose my title. All the contract means is I manage you. Don’t I have a right to protect my own interest?”

“How much does the co-signer take?” I asked Schatzer.

“Twenty-five percent, clown,” Dominoes said like talking in his sleep.

“All right, Roger, I’ll level with you,” Schatzer began leveling. “Just for the sake of the argument, let’s pretend you do have a chance against Mathias.”

“I didn’t say I had a chance, Mr. Schatzer,” I told him in a respectful tone. “I said I would, I can. I know I’ll beat Mathias.”

“OK. So you can beat Mathias. So can Al Ostak. So can Vince Guerra. So can Lee Homan. So can Indian Walker — and every one of them can whip you and hold the title longer and draw better, too. Am I right or am I wrong?”

“I have a decision over Walker” was all I could think to say.

“I know about that decision,” Schatzer found me out. “Indian Walker is a washed-up Has-HadIt Has-Been. But he can still beat you.”

“Then why not offer him the fight? Why offer it to me?” I really wanted to know.

“Because then he’ll get thirty percent of each man in a rematch,” Dominoes cut in again, “and three guys he can get thirty-five percent out of.”

“You stay out of this,” Schatzer told Dominoes.

“I can whip Indian Walker,” I told Schatzer.

“You can’t even whip Sweetmouth Jenkins,” Schatzer told me.

“I couldn’t untrack myself that night.”

“All right,” Schatzer said, glancing at his watch, “go ahead and whip him. Whip anybody you want. Whip Mathias if you want to. How you’re going to get into a ring with him without me is where you got a little problem.”

It was true that any one of those fighters could whip Mathias as easy as I could. It was true that there were just as many fighters who could take me. It was true that, if I got the title, I wouldn’t be able to hold it long. It was true I never drew big.

And what was truest of all was that, if I didn’t get this chance, I’d never get another.

“Give me the damned paper,” I told Schatzer, and signed it.

“I’m sorry I had to speak to you like I did, Roger,” Schatzer told me. “I did so for your own good. Actually, I have nothing but admiration for you.”

Three days before the fight Schatzer sent for me. He came right to the point.

“I’m seeing you get five thousand dollars before the fight, Roger,” he told me.

“I don’t get it,” I told him.

“In small bills. The day before the fight.”

“I still don’t get it.”

“For not straining yourself to win, clown.”

“Let me maul it over in my mind a couple days,” I told Schatzer.

I didn’t tell him I wasn’t going to take the five thousand. If I let him know I wasn’t going to take it, he might have Mathias fake a training injury. It the light were postponed, I’d never get another chance. Nobody would be demanding to know when these two tigers were going to do battle. It would just mean somebody else taking the title off Mathias, that was all.

I put Dominoes in the gym to watch Mathias.

“He don’t have to fake no injury,” Dominoes reported back; “when he cuts out of the gym, he puts on a pair of foggy-type magnifying glasses so he can tell a taxi from a police car. But he’s going to go through with it all the same. Schatzer must have a fix with the commission medics.”

“He must need the money pretty bad,” I told Dominoes, “he must need the money real bad.”

It’s never bothered me to climb into a ring first and wait in my corner until an opponent comes down the aisle and climbs through the ropes to the house’s applause.

When Mathias came up the aisle everyone applauded, and half the house stood up to get a better look.

I could see him coming better than most, being higher up. He was in a flashy green silk robe. But the way he was coming, between two handlers, both of them half a head higher than he was, I saw what Dominoes meant. They kept him between their shoulders as they came to keep him walkingstraight. When they reached the ring they waited till he got a hand on the top rope. Then one kind of half-boosted him into the ring. Mathias raised his gloves over his head and held them there until one of the handlers shouldered him toward the corner. Then he just stood there until the other handler put a stool up.

“He can’t see me,” I whispered to Dominoes.

“Hell, he can’t even see the stool,” Dominoes whispered back.

“This is going to be awful” was what went through my mind.

I didn’t know how awful it was going to be.

Mathias kept his eyes on the floor during instructions. All I could see of his head was where he’d combed back a few strings of red hair to cover a bald spot, and a little pink horseshoe at the tip of his nose where the bone had been taken out. It must be filled with wax, I thought. When I tap him in the forehead, the horseshoe will get red. When I hit him squash on it, it’s going to pour blood. And something about the way he was standing made me think he wasn’t listening to the referee. Then the crowd whooped, and he didn’t hear the whoop. Something more than his eyes was wrong with Mathias. His handlers steered him back to his corner.

Mathias came out of his corner and hit me in the mouth with his head. He slipped my lead and threw a right hand that near tore my head off at the neck. I moved back, mulling him to give my head a chance to clear. He caught the nape of my neck in his glove, jammed his iron jaw into my shoulder, and whack-whack-whack-right-left-right, I got hit by three house bricks from this deaf-blind tiger. What has he got in his gloves went through my mind, holding on hard. I stepped back to ask the ref to examine his gloves.

I came to in my corner with water dripping off my chest onto my trunks.

Mathias was standing in his corner waiting for the bell to spring upon me. All I could do was hope he’d wait until it rang.

“He’s blind as a bat. How does he know where I’m at?” I asked Dominoes.

“He’s listening,” Dominoes whispered back.

“He can’t hear.”

“Stop scraping your shoes against the canvas. He’s catching the vibrations. Get up on your toes — if he can’t hear you he can’t find you.”

And the bell.

I came out tippy-toe, stuck a glove in Mathias’ face, and tippy-toed away quietly. Mathias wheeled and went for the opposite corner.

“Wrong corner! Other corner!” every fink in that house stood up hollering. Talk about your informers! If there’d been a Stool Pigeon’s Convention in town, every single delegate had come just to help Pete Mathias find me.

Between rounds he didn’t sit down. Just stood there boggling his head about trying to find out where I’d gone. Just before the bell his handler would whisper something in his ear, and at the bell he’d come right at me. That handler kept telling him where I was.

What could I do? Change courses? All I could do was to hope he wouldn’t put his glasses on.

The way I lasted through that fight was by grabbing his left glove in both of my own and holding on to it for dear life for as long as the referee would let me. Once I stuck my head under his armpit to keep him from digging that iron chin into my shoulder and striking me. From this purely defensive position Mathias was so hampered he couldn’t do anything but smash the wind out of my lungs, bang my ears till they rang, pound my kidneys to shreds, and rabbit punch me at will — all the while one of his ears was unprotected. Once I got my teeth into it good, but the ref pulled us apart and waggled his finger at me.

“I’m sorry I hurt him,” I apologized to the referee.

That seemed to make Mathias mad. He clamped a headlock on me and began choking me to death. The ref stood ready to separate us the moment I began giving the death rattle.

“If that’s how you men want to fight, it’s all right with me,” he told us.

“I didn’t mean to hurt him,” I explained.

That made Mathias really mad. All I remember of that fight after the eighth round was somebody who kept hollering, right below me in my corner, “You got him, Roger! You’re getting your blood all over him!”

And then on an old scarred bench was a swab stick, the cardboard core of a roll of gauze, and the top of a Vaseline jar. And I knew that that was all that I had to show for getting my face punched in for fourteen years.

On the evening of the first day that we opened the diner in Carriers Mills, Beth turned down the lights and switched on the TV for our two customers.

It was Indian Mickey Walker, challenger, against Pete Mathias, titleholder.

Walker knocked old Pete out in two minutes and twelve seconds of the first round. I switched the set off and went back to waiting on the two customers.

They say I couldn’t fight much. Beth says at least I had color. And nobody can say anybody had me off my feet. Not even Pete Mathias.

But people keep running so fast these days, backward sometimes, you can never be sure what they might do to you by mistake.

I can still beat Mr. Sweetmouth Jenkins.