Three months of my sentence was up and I had three months more to serve when I got time off for good behavior. No, I ain't been in jail, though I might as well of been for all the liberty I got. Out of bed, 6.30 a. m. In bed, 9 p. m. In between, work like a field hand, with a couple of scowling, bull-necked huskies ready to climb my back the second I showed signs of dogging it.
I been training for my first professional box fight.
Where this scuffle was going to take place, how many rounds and how much I was going to get for doing my stuff, was all mysteries to me for a long time. I didn't even know who I was going to battle till a few days before the fight. These little details was in the hands of Nate Shapiro, and it's exactly as easy to get information out of Nate as it is to get sunburned in a coal mine.
While I'm training for my first brawl in a ring, I sit up reading till almost midnight as usual, with the keyhole plugged and a rug stuffed under the door, so's if Nate happens to pass my room he won't see the light. If he'd had any idea that I wasn't pounding my ear, he'd been fit to be tied. Nate ain't much of a reader. A telephone book, a bank book and The Police Gazette, about makes up Nate's library. But it was different here. Lama reading fool! I wade through everything I can get my hands on, from newspapers to encyclopedias, making all stops in between. I gulp 'em all down raw, with a dictionary as a chaser. If it wasn't for that dictionary most of these books could be in code, for all I could read 'em. But with Mr. Webster's famous novel by my side, I'm all set. When I stumble across words which I have never been intimate with, like "obsolete" and "exchequer," for example, why, all I got to do is open up my dictionary and form what I hope will be a lifelong acquaintance with 'em. I met twenty or thirty new words a night in that way alone. Especially "triapsidal," which is anything having three apsis and of course everybody knows what a apsis.
Maybe you think it's funny for a young fellow who was going to be a prize fighter to spend as much time studying bright books as he did studying right hooks. Well, the answer to that one is that I was only going to be in the ring till I'd enough jack to get two things—a schooling and a line on what my trick was, to the viz, what was the game I was born to win at? Fellows has fought for girls, for money, for revengeance, for notoriety, and for fun. I fought for a education!
In the eighteen years I'd been trying to discover what it's all about, I'd tried my hand at nearly everything but selling palm-leaf fans at the North Pole. I couldn't pick my jobs—I had bid teacher good-by too soon. So I took 'em as they come along, hating 'em all, quitting whenever I got a chance to think too long about 'em and getting canned whenever the boss got a chance to think too long about me. But I made up my mind to stick in the fight game till I got enough jack together to educate myself and eat while I was doing it. Even if I couldn't get no college degree, if opportunity ever knocked at my door I at least wanted to be able to carry on a conversation with it!
I learned a good deal from Shapiro and Knockout Kelly, as far as that part of it goes. None of their teachings would help me pass the entrance examinations for Harvard, but they did me a world of good in the school I was entering then. Fighters may be born, but boxers is made!
For three monotonus months my daily routine, with Nate holding a watch on me, started off with a three to five mile trot on the road every morning, wearing three heavy wool sweaters so's I'd perspire off weight. I had a terrible time keeping inside the welter weight limit, 145 lbs. I hadn't stopped growing yet and this daily exercise was filling out my chest and muscles till Nate put me on a diet like I'm a chorus girl. After the cross-country run comes a cold shower, than I flop out on a table and a husky dinge rubber sprinkles me fluently with a mixture of oil of wintergreen and eucaliptus and commences to slowly knead me like dough, working up speed gradually till at the windup he's patting and slapping me till the noise sounds like a couple of crazy motorcycles chasing a runaway horse on a cement pavement. When he got through I'd feel like I had acted as the pavement! Then comes punching a sack filled with sand, which Nate said weighs 250 pounds, but which I'm satisfied weighed that many tons, especially after I'd slugged it for about twenty minutes. Then me and Kayo Kelly and Two-Punch Jackson throwed the medicine ball around till Nate blew the whistle on that. Next I yanked some weighted pulleys back and forth, then shadow boxing, where you act like you was a cuckoo and trade rights and lefts with the air, then skipping rope, and, after a rest, a few rounds of light sparring with Knockout Kelly and sometimes Two-Punch Jackson, which was fifty pounds heavier than me, but called my right hook to the jaw "the cat's cuffs!"
Nate said the worst fault I had then was the habit of leading with my right hand instead of with my left. He spent weeks trying to break me of it, hours drumming into my ears, "Lead with a straight left—then hook your right!" over and over again.
"You got a heart and you can sock!" says Nate, stopping my workout one day, "but you telegraph the other guy everything you're going to do. The worst preliminary boloney which ever rubbed a shoe in rosin would drop you for the count when you lead wit' 'at right of yours! Your left hand's about as much use to you as a pair of dancing pumps would be to a shad. Well, I'll fix 'at to-morrow!"
The next day, Nate begins tieing my right hand behind my back and making me spar with the left only. I took plenty punishment from some highly-tickled handlers for awhile, but at the end of a few days I had uncovered a left jab which afterwards was poison to many's the good boy.
Well, I came back to Drew City and I brung Kayo Kelly and Nate Shapiro with me. We all camped at Mrs. Willcox's boarding house and everybody was happy. The three of us being there meant more jack for that dear old lady every week and Nate and Kayo don't like living in the nearest thing they've had to a home since they been kids any more than they like their right eyes. Try to tell Mrs. Willcox that prize fighters is no good! We couldn't do enough for her and she couldn't do enough for us. She wasn't in the position to afford no hired help, and Judy, which was then going to Drew City Prep, is kept pretty busy with her lessons and the etc. Well, me and Kayo and Nate is the official maids and hired men. We all took turns in washing the dishes, peeling potatoes, chopping wood, tending the lawn, house cleaning, and like that. We wouldn't let her do nothing. I wish you could of saw Knockout Kelly, one of the toughest boys which ever laced on a glove, out in Mrs. Willcox's kitchen with a gingham apron tied around him, washing dishes and liking it! Or the hard-boiled Nate Shapiro shaking a wisked dust cloth in the parlor, after I have went through it with a broom and tea-leaves. Kayo Kelly said he bet he'd make a swell housewife for somebody after he got through with the ring.
Of course, the main reason I come back to Drew City was because of Judy. I was so crazy over Judy Willcox that half the time I didn't know if I was afoot or horseback!
I ain't two days back in New York after I went away with Nate, when I get a letter from her and her picture, too. After reading the letter about a dozen times and looking at her picture for a half hour even, I felt like rushing right back to her and Drew City and leaving prize fighting flat on its back! But common sense and Nate Shapiro prevented me. On Judy's picture she wrote: "To Gale Galen, from Judy Willcox, his friend and well wisher." So I had my picture took by a swell Third Avenue photographer, in my ring togs, and I wrote on it: "To Judy Willcox, from Six-Second Smith, her friend and well wisher and admirer and promising contender for the world's welterweight championship."
After that, letters between us flew back and forth like seagulls. But while all Judy's notes is full of best wishes and hopes that I'll be a great man some day and remember Lincoln started life as a lowly rail-splitter and wound up as President and the etc why they is very little mention of "My Darling Gale" or "Your Loving Sweetheart, Judy" in any of 'em. In fact, they is no mention of that at all. If I had a boy friend named Judy, why the letters could of been from him as far as hugs and kisses is concerned. Once she sent me a list of books to get so's to "stimulate my imagination." I got 'em all and read most of 'em, with the kind assistance of my dictionary. I even give one of 'em, Huckleberry Finn, to Knockout Kelly to read, but after a while he give it back to me and says: "Not so good!" I asked him why and he says they ain't no pictures in it.
In all Judy's letters she kept kind of hinting that while she thinks I'm a nice fellow and all that business, why, I am not exactly making myself solid with her by staying away from Drew City. This made me the bit uneasy and then I got some letters from Spence Brock which puts on the finishing touches, you might say. Spence writes that the first time I go to the post in New York, his gang from Drew City Prep will have ringside seats to see me do my stuff and likewise that he's positive I will knock my adversus for a Japanese mock turtle. That's fine and I get quite a kick out of knowing that when I step into the ring for my first professional fight, no matter if all the rest of the crowd gives me the razzberry, why they'll be at least two guys pulling for me—Spence Brock and myself. But what's much more interesting to me in Spence's letter is the news that Rags Dempster seems to be sitting pretty with Judy and her mother. He almost lives at the house, says Spence, and right then and there I get all fed up on New York! It wasn't hard to get Nate and Kayo to see things my way. Kayo was about winding up his training for his bout with Jackie Frayne and when him and Nate was in Drew City before they rented a barn for training quarters, charged ten cents admission and packed 'em in to see Kayo work out.
"With you, a native son, you might say, and Kayo, working out down in 'at slab together," says Nate to me, "I'll crack the yokels for three jitneys a head and take in nickels like a conductor. Less go!"
And that's what we done.
Judy seems to be tickled silly that I'm back at her house and Mrs. Willcox made the same type of fuss over me like as if I was her only son, back from the wars and the etc. I'm kind of leary as to what she and Judy will say with the regards to Kayo Kelly and Nate Shapiro as candidates for boarders, as you know what some people thinks of prize fighters, but they both seem willing to take a chance and afterwards they're glad they did. Mrs. Willcox said we cheered the old house up and made her feel young again and it reminded her of years ago when she had a big family and they was all home. This generally made her begin to weep, because all that family had drifted away from her except Judy, which was the baby, and they're either dead or scattered all over the country. All she ever hears from 'em is New Year's and Easter cards and maybe a lace handkerchief by mail at Xmas. Well, whenever this comes up, I pat her on the shoulder and Nate and Kayo Kelly rushes to the old piano in the parlor. In some way, Nate has mastered the mysteries of piano playing and Knockout Kelly throats a wicked semi-glycerine tenor. So the three of us does some close harmony on "Silver Threads Amongst the Gold," "My Old Kentucky Home," and like that, generally winding up with something good and jazzy. Our combination was a sure-fire gloom chaser and that's a fact!
About the second day I'm back at Mrs. Willcox's again, I find out another reason why she and Judy is glad to have us there. I'm talking to Mrs. Willcox before supper one night and it slips out in the conversation that Mrs. Willcox owes somebody a hundred-bucks and our board bills is helping her save so much a week to pay it back. She says the jack was sent to her in a plain envelope without no writing to show who it's from, by somebody which knew she was short a century on a note due at The First National Bank. When Mrs. Willcox says she's pretty sure who sent it, I made a excuse and ducked, as I am the baby which sent her that money. So now I think I won't say a word to her till she has saved up the hundred, and then I'll give her a wonderful surprise. I'll write her a unsigned letter saying that the promising young prize fighter which loaned her the sugar says to keep it—and she'll never know where it come from!
A few nights later I happen to pass by the parlor on my ways upstairs to my room and Rags Dempster is in there talking to Mrs. Willcox. As I'm walking by the room he seen me and sneers. Then he tells Mrs. Willcox in a loud voice so's I'll hear it that he thinks she has made a mistake to take in us prize fighters with a young girl in the house. We ain't a good influence for Judy, this fathead says. Why, the big stiff, I would of cut off my arm for Judy, and Nate and Kayo treated her like she was President Harding! I'm glad to say, though, that Mrs. Willcox stuck up for us, so that helped a little. But when I get to the top of the stairs there's Judy just coming down and I get another jolt—a tough one!
Calling Judy the prettiest girl in the wide, wide world is dismissing a million dollars with the remark that it's nice money. Judy begins being beautiful where Venus left off!
I ain't really had a chance to see her alone for more than a few minutes up to this time and as I had some thing very important to ask her, I stopped her. A few hours before I had arranged with Spence Brock to borrow his racing car for a couple of hours to take Judy for a ride. Spence would loan me both his ears and one hand if I asked him. So all I got to get now is Judy.
"Can I speak to you for a minute, Judy?" I says.
"Why, of course, Gale," she smiles, making my heart jump till it would of frightened a doctor. "As many minutes as you want."
"You don't seem to want to see much of me any more," I says, thinking of Rags waiting in the parlor. "I guess I've about wore out, hey?"
She goes to work and pinches my arm, but nevertheless why does her face get red?
"Don't be silly!" she says. "I like you immensely, Gale, and you know it—or you should. I'm awfully glad you're back and I hope, that is, I'm glad you've made up your mind to stay. I—we missed you terribly."
She looks away from me, playing with the lace on her sleeve. A wild idea come to me to tell her how cuckoo I am over her and get either kissed or canned, but in any event be done with it! Then I think of that dizzy sap downstairs!
"I bet you missed me," I says. "With Rags Dempster hanging around like"
Judy leaves go a little exclamation which sounds like she expected me to say something entirely different and she's highly disappointed. She cut me off short.
"When are you going to have your first boxing match?" she asks me.
"Next Saturday night in Brooklyn," I says. "Nate Shapiro just told me today and you're the first one I'm telling. I'm going to fight a fellow called 'Red' Johns, in a six-round preliminary to the Kayo—Jackie Frayne battle."
"Oh, Gale, you will be careful, won't you?" says Judy, suddenly grabbing my arm. "What a horrible name—'Red' Johns!"
"Wait till he hears mine," I says. "Six-Second Smith!"
Judy smiles with me.
"Well, at any rate, please try not to get hurt and—and—if you call me up as soon as the bout is over and tell me how you came out, I'll wait up Saturday night for the call!"
"As a special favor to you, Judy," I says, "I will certainly try not to get hurt, and that ain't changing my original plans much, at that! And I'll sure phone you Saturday night after the massacre; win, lose, or draw—if I'm able. But if you really like me, Judy, why do you let Rags Dempster"
No use! Judy derails me again.
"What did you do with that list of books I sent you to New York, and told you to read?" she butts in, pickin' up a book from the table. "Lost it, I'll bet."
"Well, you'd lose!" I says, and I pull her list out of my coat pocket. "Judy, if a five-year-old kid would begin piling on top of each other the books I've read since I left here, he'd be three hundred years old and in Betelguese when he laid the last one down!"
Judy laughs till it's a wonder Rags didn't hear her downstairs, and I hope he did.
"The ones I liked best," I goes on, checking over the list, "was 'The Three Musketeers,' 'Martin Eden,' 'Poe's Tales,' 'Sherlock Holmes,' and 'Huckleberry Finn,' Like 'em? I love 'em! I look on them books as my pals and I'll read 'em again and again. I'd as soon part with them as I would with my knees, especially that 'Huckleberry Finn'!"
"I thought you'd like that one," says Judy. "Now you must read 'Tom Sawyer,' another one of Mark Twain's, and"
"I'm going to read every story Mr. Mark Twain writes, as fast as they come out!" I interrupt. "Believe me, he tells a dude of a yarn. I've been boasting him to all my friends, because a man which can write like that deserves some encouragement!"
At this point Judy goes right off into a fit of laughing, which they do hear downstairs, and her mother calls her.
"Gale," she says, with her hand on my arm. "Eh—don't—don't say that about Mark Twain to anyone else—that—Oh, about encouraging him. Mark Twain is immortal!"
"There was nothing out of the way in the book I read," I says.
"Not immoral, immortal!" says Judy, getting up, still giggling. "And now I must go, Gale, or mother will be angry. Keep on reading good books. They ee a will help you immensely now, and, later, when you've begun to make big money at your present profession, you can get yourself a tutor—some one to teach you and lay out a regular course of reading for you—history, fiction, essays, and all that sort of thing. I'll help you study, myself, whenever I have time, especially during vacation this summer. Oh, I do want you to be a success, Gale!" she adds, suddenly serious. "And I know you will! It's written all over your face. As you've said, there's too much fighting blood in you for you to give in to the handicap of your lack of education—you'll never remain a prize fighter, Gale, never in this world. Some day I bet you'll be the biggest man I know; and oh—how proud I'll be of you. Why, I'm proud of you now, for trying."
At that minute I wouldn't of changed places with Mr. J. D. Rockefeller. The next second I would of changed places with one of his oil cans. Such is girls!
I ask Judy will she take a ride with me, telling her Spence had loaned me his car. For a instant her face lights all up, and then she bites her lips and says she's terrible sorry, but she can't go. She's already got a date with Rags Dempster! While I'm kind of reeling back against the banister and wondering if all my life this Rags is going to come between me and what I want, I hear Judy explaining that some of the students of Drew City Prep is putting on a play at the school auditorium, and, as all the gang is supposed to go, she had accepted a invitation from Rags. More because she really must be nice to him than because she wants to go!" is how she puts it, and then she squeezes my hand and blows.
Well, I sit down on the dark stairway, and it ain't no darker than my chances looks with Judy Willcox! Still and all, why should she bother with me? I ain't got a nickel and I don't mean nothing. Rags Dempster is the only son of a millionaire. What a chump Judy'd be to even hesitate over a choice there, hey? But I can't get through my head what she means by saying she "really must be nice to him!" Then a thought hits me which made me—absolutely sick, no fooling. Suppose—suppose Judy and Rags is engaged!
I don't remember getting my hat or even going out, but the next thing I know I am walking along the street like I'm in a trance. I feel like the whole world has come to a end and I'm the only one left. I'm very much surprised when I look in the mirror of the weighing machine outside Ajariah Stubbs's drug store and see that I ain't as grey-headed as old Ajariah himself!
Stopping in Kale Yackley's cigar store, I got a New York paper and turned to the sporting page to see if they's anything there about my coming battle with Red Johns. A column headed "Frayne and Kelly Await Gong," catches my eye. It's all about how Kayo Kelly has wound up his training at Drew City and Jackie Frayne has knocked off work up in the Bronx, and both "leading contenders for the welterweight title" is on edge for the big fight. The semi-windup will be Battling Young vs. Kid Neil, middleweights. The rest of the card, says the paper, will be composed of four six-round preliminaries. That's all it says. Not so much as a mention of my name.
And then I get it. I'm going to be in one of them six-round preliminaries; and whoinell is interested in the name of a preliminary boy? It seemed to me that's what I'd been all my life—just a preliminary boy! Well, I determine that I'm going to enter one of Life's Main Events some day, and whether I get knocked cold or not is of much less interest to me than whether I get the bout!
Thinking like this, I spread the paper out on Kale's show case, and it's full of this radio business which the country has went double-cuckoo over. Call XZX, clamp the receiver over your ear and get everything from the baseball scores to grand opera, right out of the air! The guy which doped that out was the sparrow's chirp, what? How is it I can't figure out something like that? I think I'm beginning to get the Drew City Blues again, so I tossed the paper away and stepped out in the street. Then, of a sudden, I decide to go around to Stubbs's drug store and see how old Ajariah is making out since I left him, by request.
Now here comes a funny thing. When I went into Ajariah's drug store that night, the old man is so disgusted with the way business has fell off that he's about ready to sell the joint for a plugged nickel. A week after that you couldn't of bought that place for fifteen thousand bucks! And it was me which give old Ajariah the big idea which turned his store into a gold mine. Believe me, that set me thinking! If I could do that for Ajariah, why couldn't I dope out something to put myself over? Or even go around to stores which is on their last legs like Ajariah's was and sell 'em a idea which would bring the business? I thought this worth looking into and don't think I didn't give myself a crack at it, either. I didn't work all the time with nothing but my hands, just because I was a box fighter then!
I found Ajariah back in the prescription room, taking inventory to kill time. He looks gloomy and worried and about ten years older than when I last seen him, which must of made him about 156 years of age. Greeting me with a grunt, he peers suspiciously at me over his glasses. At first, talk comes hard. But finally Ajariah seems glad to get his troubles off his chest to somebody, so he sits down on a stool and we have quite a fanning bee. While he's talking I look around the deserted store and see plenty proof of hard luck. The soda fountain which I used to keep polished till the sparkle hurt your eye, is tarnished and sadly neglected. The crushed fruit sirups has all fermented in dirty glass bowls. The long mirror back of the counter where the bunch from Drew City Prep used to flirt with each other—and with me—is fly-specked and clouded. The whole joint is on the bum, for a fact! When Ajariah growls that he ain't taking in enough jack to pay his ice bill, I believe him. He says he can't understand it—but I can.
In the first place, Ajariah Stubbs knows as much about running a soda fountain as I do about running a submarine. He can draw a glass of root beer and that lets him out. When I worked for him I kept the fountain decorated with fresh fruits and bottles of stuff which would catch the eye and I was always thinking up new drinks with fancy names, even naming some of 'em after particularly good customers, which, of course, tickled 'em. I tried to sell the world the idea that it was thirsty and that the stuff I had on tap was the kitten's vest when it come to quenching. But when I left, the mob from the prep school stopped coming in, because Ajariah wouldn't go out of his way to hold their trade. He liked to be what he calls "independent." About the only time you can be independent and be in business too is if you got maybe the only fire extinguisher to sell there is in Hades!
Ajariah's biggest mistake was looking on his soda fountain as being about the same kind of a accommodation for his customers as keeping postage stamps. Before he realized that the fountain was his biggest money maker, he had killed it dead.
Well, in a few minutes, Ajariah is offering me my old job back at fourteen fish a week—two dollars more than I got before. I told him I was now "Six-Second Smith," the welterweight, and my soda-jerking days was over, but I'd see if I couldn't figure something to help him. I should of been off Ajariah for life, as far as that part of it goes, because he was always riding me when I worked for him and he fired me without a second's notice. But Ajariah's a old man and he's up against it, so why should I rub it in?
I'm sitting there thinking just what would build Ajariah's trade up again, when all of a sudden a idea hits me smack between the eyes. Ajariah's droning away about hard times, when I cut him off sharp and made him listen to me for half a hour. That New York paper I seen in Kale Yackley's cigar store gives me the scheme and I passed it along to Ajariah. I told him to have a radio-receiving set, with one of them big horns on it, hooked up in his store. Then every afternoon between, say, three and five, he could give free radio concerts to his customers from the broadcasting stations in Newark. It would be the first and only one in Drew City, and, of course, everybody's read about radio and they'd be crazy to hear it. Anything new will draw a crowd—look at New York, for instance. After he gets his customers inside it's up to Ajariah to make 'em buy, I tell him. For that purpose he wants to hire a first-class, big-town soda jerk, which composes a mean sirup and will mix a cruel drink. A ad in the Newark papers will do the trick. I even wrote on a piece of wrapping paper for Ajariah a couple of signs to have his soda man put up on the mirror back of the fountain: "Try a Radio Sundae!" and "Wireless Phosphate—Something New!"
Well, Ajariah had his radio in four days later and the results made him think I got one ounce more brains than Edison. The Drew City "Sentinel" give the stunt a big write-up and curiosity done the rest. Pretty soon the natives start looking for places in the drug store as early as two o'clock in the afternoon, and—then buy! Besides the soda jerk he got from Newark, Ajariah had to hire Vince Neil to help him out. So that was that!
Not long after this I find out just why Rags Dempster is so unusually popular with Mrs. Willcox and what Judy meant by saying she "Really must be nice to him!" If this double-crossing boloney had been within punching distance when I got this information, why, he would of been a total loss inside of two minutes as sure as there's water in Baffin's Bay! Both Mrs. Willcox and Judy thought that Rags Dempster was the unknown guy which sent them the hundred bucks to pay that note at the bank! Can you tie that? Here I go and put myself in hock to Nate Shapiro for more dough than I ever seen in my life so's to help Mrs. Willcox out of a hole, and the only enemy I got in the wide, wide world gets the credit for it! If that ain't a tough break, then neither was Battling Siki a tough break for Carpentier. It seems they have doped out that as Rags was the only one of their friends with money which might of knew they was in trouble, why, he must of been the one which sent the dough. They figure he kept his name off it so's not to make 'em feel they was charity patients and him being that thoughtful makes him extry nice. Why, this Rags wouldn't give a dime to hear the inside story of why Washington stood up in that rowboat crossing the Delaware, let alone give anybody a hundred bucks! So when even Judy says she thinks it was very "gallant" of Rags to send her mother the money that way, why, I'm fit to be tied. I can see Judy's pride's hurt at taking money from anybody and that she'll be tickled silly when they have saved the hundred to pay it back. I'm getting a pushing around and no mistake, but I get a little consolation when Judy says that Rags Dempster's the last person in the world she wants is be obligated to. I can easy imagine the advantage that false alarm would want to take of it.
To show you what kind of a bozo this Rags was when both Judy and her mother accuses him of being the mysterious Santy Claus he don't deny it. At first I thought maybe he had sent in a hundred, too, but when Mrs. Willcox shows me the envelope the dough come in I know different!
Well, though I am overboard with rage, I don't show Mrs. Willcox and Judy what a four-flusher Rags is, because that ain't the way I work. The person I want to tell that to is Rags Dempster himself. So I go out looking for him without saying a word to nobody. That is, nobody but Lem Garfield.
Passing the Elite Haberdashery I see Lem locking the front door and he calls to me to wait for him.
"Make it snappy, Lem," I says. "I'm looking for Rags Dempster and should I find him they'll be plenty trouble!"
"Humph!" says Lem. "A man in a hurry lookin' for trouble is a man who's sure goin' to git service! Don't have to look for it, feller kin sit right in his room and trouble'll come to him. Too bad Mr. Opportunity ain't more like Mr. Trouble. They say opportunity knocks once at every man's door; goes away if yew don't answer. Humph! Trouble don't knock—Mr. Trouble bust down the door, and if yew ain't in, he waits!"
Then Lem wants to know why I'm gunning for Rags and because I'm just boiling over with the thing, I told him. Right away, Lem changes from gents furnishings salesman into lawyer, jumping at the chance like he always does to turn loose a flock of legal terms. For about five minutes the air is full of ipso factor, in re, habeas corpse and non vult. That's all applesauce to me, but as my counsel, Lem finally advises me to lay off Rags till Mrs. Willcox has saved the hundred bucks she thinks she owes him, and then if Rags takes the jack from her we can have him pinched for obtaining money under false pretenses.
"Can't we do nothing to him now, for obtaining Judy Willcox's friendship under false pretenses?" I says. "That's what I'm interested in!"
"Eh—not legally," says Lem, pursing his lips together like a judge. "I'm afraid the law wouldn't recognize your, now, broken heart, as a corpus delicti! You'd have to"
"Blah!" I cuts him off. "I'll make a corpus out of this Rags myself—maybe the law will recognize that!"
Well, the law did recognize that, for a fact! Two hours later I am marching over to Judge Tuckerman's court with Constabule Watson, and all the kids in Drew City is trailing after us. I am credited with assault and battery, to the viz., I socked Rags Dempster, and instead of tying into me like a man, why, he squawks for a cop. Me and Lem runs into Rags down near the railroad station. Rags tried to duck me, but I nailed him and politely asked him to tell Mrs. Willcox that she don't have to pinch and squinch every week to get that hundred bucks together for him, because, as the matter and fact, he never sent her a nickel. Rags gets red and wants to know how do I know whether he sent the money or not. I says because I am the guy which really done it! This stops him for a minute, then he busts out laughing and says I'll have a fine time proving that, because the hundred was sent "anonymously"—whatever that is. So I tell him that I don't want to prove nothing with the regards to myself. For my part, Mrs. Willcox will never know where the sugar came from, but I want him to own up that he didn't have nothing to do with it, so's that Mrs. Willcox and Judy won't feel that they're under obligations to him. Well, Lem being there and hearing all this seems to steam Rags up. He lets forth a sneer and says where would a fellow like me ever get a hundred dollars? I says I borrowed it—which was true—but Rags says I'm just a tenth-rate liar and I probably stole the money from Ajariah Stubbs while I was working for him.
I choked back some choice remarks which I wanted to make, and asked Rags to put up his hands. He says he wouldn't lower himself, so I lowered him with a right hook to the jaw, placing it carefully so's not to mark him. He's a good two inches taller and fifteen pounds heavier than me—but soft, awful soft, and his heart's made of dough. When he got up he blowed a police whistle, and that's why I'm leading the parade to Judge Tuckerman's with Constabule Watson.
The first case before the judge that day is Lafe Weston, charged with selling bootleg in his near-beer saloon.
"How d'ye plead?" growls Judge Tuckerman, squinting at Lafe over his cheaters.
"Jedge," says Lafe, wetting his lips with his tongue, "they ain't been a drop of hard licker in my place since prohibition. This here's nothin' more or less than a put up job!"
"Guilty, eh? I thot so!" barks the judge, paying no attention to Lafe's indignant stare. "Where's the evidence?"
"Constabule Watson puts a bottle on the judge's desk and the judge takes a good long drink.
"Whoosh!" he says, making a terrible face and gulping down about half the water in the pitcher in front of him "Whoosh!" He bangs on the desk with his gavel and Lafe trembles, "You old scoundrel!" bawls Judge Tuckerman, red in the face and trying to get his breath, "What d'ye mean by selling sich stuff as this—d'ye want to poison me? I fine ye"
Lafe's so scared at the way the judge is gulping and gasping that he must of forgot where he's at. He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a flask.
"This here's real stuff, Jedge!" he says eagerly, "I"
"Ha!" says Judge Tuckerman, grabbing the flask. "More evidence, hey?" He sniffs suspiciously at the flask, takes a long swallow and puts it down, smacking his lips. "Ah!" he says, clearing his throat and looking around the court room. Then his wandering eye falls on the anxious Lafe and he shoves one hand in his pants pocket. "Ah—ptu!" he says, kind of dreamy, "How much is that?"
Lafe gives a start and everybody busts out laughing, which brings the judge back to himself. If his face was red before, you should of saw it now! "Order in the court!" he bawls, banging with his gavel. "What d'ye think this is—a theayter? One more cackle out of you idjits and I'll fine the lot of ye for contempt! Lafe Weston, I fine ye fifty dollars and costs and don't tell this court ye ain't got no money, because that's dern good licker and ye must be gettin' fancy prices for it—if ye ain't, your a dern fule!"
Lafe paid up.
Well, I'm next and I ain't feeling any too good after seeing what a beating the judge give Lafe.
Rags gets up and tells the judge he was walking down the street, minding his own business, when I rushed up and knocked him down. Not a word about what we was arguing over, or what he called me. Judge Tuckerman squints hard at Rags and then he scowls at me.
"In trouble agin, heh?" he says. "What ye got to say for yourself this time?"
"He called me a crook and a liar!' I says, still red-headed.
"Are ye?" says Judge Tuckerman. "Answer yes or no!"
I made a quick step toward the desk, but Lem Garfield pulls me back. He tells Judge Tuckerman he's my "attorney" and likewise a witness for me. Rags jumps up and hollers that Lem is a gents furnishing clerk and not no lawyer, and, besides, he can't be my lawyer and a witness too. Rags was out of luck! The judge likes Lem for what he done in the war. He's one of the few which ain't forgot. So Judge Tuckerman bangs on his desk with his gavel for silence. After he gets it he asks Lem how he's feeling and did them new goloshes come in from the wholesale house yet, and then he tells him to present my case. When Lem gets through, the judge discharges me, glares at the trembling Rags, and soaks him the costs of my arrest.
"I ought to commit ye to the State insane asylum!" says the judge to Rags while Rags is frisking himself for the fine. "For anybody which calls a prize fighter a crook and a liar to his face is either crazy or has a suicidal mania!"
So that was all settled.
Well, Spence Brock heard I was pinched and he came rushing down to see what he could do for me. Lem Garfield tells him what made me sock Rags and Spence tells Judy in school the next day. All about who sent her mother that life-saving hundred bucks and everything. When I come in from the training camp for supper that night Judy done everything but kiss me and Mrs. Willcox even done that! Rags comes around about eight o'clock to "explain" matters to Judy and she won't even see him, but she sits out in the swing on the back porch with me and we talk over—tots of things. She wanted me to take the sixty-four bucks her mother had already saved up toward the hundred I loaned her, but I says to keep it, and if she will help me with my education this summer in exchange, I'll feel I'm getting the best of it. So that's what she done.
Well, the big day finally arrives when I am to step into a prize ring for the first time in my life. I'll never forget it as long as I live, don't think I will! The night before I went to bed at 8 p. m.—and fell asleep at 4 a.m. I got up for breakfast at 7.30, and in the three and a half hours I slept I fought this "Red" Johns a world's series! In one of the imaginary battles I had with him, he knocked me down fifteen or twenty-one times, hitting me the last time with one of the ring posts. Rags Dempster was referee and Judy Willcox was one of my seconds. Some dream! Knockout Kelly slept like a top as usual and Nate had to drag him out of bed, though he was going to fight the same day. For Kayo's fight with Jackie Frayne he's guaranteed five thousand berries. I'm going to get a hundred and a half for displaying my wares in the first preliminary and they's only seventy-five profit in it for me at that, as I got to slip Nate half.
The day of the fight we went up to New York on the 4.06 p. m. local and with us goes half of Drew City. Spence Brock and nearly all the fellows from the prep school comes along to root for me, with pennants and horns like they was going to a football game, except none of the girls is with 'em. I am trying to laugh and kid and act like taking part in a mere prize fight is nothing at all in my young life, but I'm as nervous as a cat on a picket fence. From the time I got up in the morning till the time I stepped into the ring, I feel like I'm on my way to the electric chair and that's a fact! Every little thing which happens that day seems just like the stuff I've read in the papers about guys which is going to be executed. For instance, at breakfast Nate makes the crack that they's nothing wrong with my appetite, and I think of "The condemned man ate a hearty meal!" Then he makes me get my hair cut close so's it won't flop in my eyes when I'm in there trying, and that reminds me of how prisoners' hair is cut when they're going to be bumped off. Mrs. Willcox mentions me in saying Grace at lunch and I feel she's praying for my soul, which is soon to leave me. If one church bell had tolled while I was on my way to the train, I think I would of fainted!
Neither me or Kayo Kelly is allowed to have any supper, but that's no loss to me, because eating is the last thing I'm thinking of. At seven o'clock we are in the dressing room at the club-house and "Shiney" Jepps, the dinge rubber, and Nate is getting me ready for the—eh—ring. I nearly said gallows! The noise of the mob outside in the arena comes in to me like the boom of the ocean on the beach at night. The grimy dressing-room, lit by a couple of dull yellow wire-screened electric lights smells like a hospital ward. Arnica and aromatic spirits of ammonia, I recognize, but they's another smell I don't. It's like ether. "'At's collodion," says Nate, when I ask him. "Stops bleedin'!" I didn't ask him no more questions after that. Stops bleeding—woof!
After I've stripped and got into white trunks and ring shoes, Nate wraps a roll of soft bandages around each of my hands. That's to protect the knuckles and give me more of a grip when I'm punching. All the time, him and Kayo keeps up a running fire of kidding and funny stories, but I can see they're just trying ta keep up my spirits, because when Nate laughs, only his lips is care free, the rest of his face is set! And every other word from Kayo Kelly is, "How d'ye feel now?" till Nate shuts him up. I can feel that in spite of their joshing, Nate and Kayo and even "Shiney" Jepps, who's kneading my stomach and the back of my neck, is darn serious. You can bet I know that when I walk out there in the ring before that howling mob I ain't going to get no gym workout, I'm going to be in a fight!
Now from all this, maybe you think I'm a trifle yellow and that I was scared stiff. Well, I wasn't scared. If I was faint-hearted, I'd never of took up box fighting to begin with. But you want to remember that all this grim preparation was brand-new to me and where I'd been boxing with Kayo Kelly and my own handlers before a couple hundred people at the most and nearly all of which knew me, I was now going out in a strange town before eight or nine thousand hard-boiled fight fans, which never heard of me before in their lives. When I start down the close-packed aisle to the ring with Nate and my seconds, I want to tell you I was a bundle of hair-trigger nerves and if somebody had of blowed a auto horn behind me I'd of jumped right clear through the roof!
I hear every word about me on that trip down the aisle, the longest trip I ever took in my life. "Who's 'at guy?" "He looks pale!" "Not so good—this 'Red' Johns is a terrible gorilla, he'll murder 'at kid!" All that and more, stinging me like red-hot needles. Climbing through the ropes, I stumbled and lost my balance and the customers howls. "Fall through 'em, kid, you'll git knocked through 'em in a minute!" and—some other stuff, which I bet none of them babies would of dared said to my face if they was alone. The glaring lights over the ring, after the gloomy dressing room, blinds me, and it's a couple of minutes before I can see where I'm at. Tobacco smoke is drifting over the ropes till breathing is quite the feat. Nate guides me over to the rosin box and I rub my shoes in it, so's I won't slip in ducking a punch or trying to land one. The next stop is in "Red" Johns's corner, where he's already awaiting, covered with a dirty red bathrobe and surrounded by his handlers. He never even looked up when Nate bends over to examine his bandages and holds my hands up so's his seconds can see mine. But I looked at "Red" Johns with great interest! I see a carrot-headed, bull-necked assassin, with hair on his chest so thick I thought at first he was wearing a red sweater. His nose is almost flat on his face. A tough-looking baby if they ever was one, I'll tell the cross-eyed world!
I'm just back in my corner, staring out at a crowd which would make it look like they was only two guys at the Battle of the Marne, when Nate pulls my mouth open and shoves in a rubber teeth protector.
"Don't swalley 'at!" he grunts, beginning to lace on my gloves. "Now remember, this chump's a sucker for a straight left. Don't go rushin' out there to trade swings with him, or he'll flatten you! Jab his head off with 'at left first, then cross your right. You lead with your right to this guy and he'll goal you sure!"
The gong rings a half dozen times and the crowd quiets down. People is still coming in. Some is carrying on conversations with their backs to the ring. What do they care about the prelims! The announcer raises his hand.
"Over here, 'Red' Johns of Brooklyn. In the other corner, 'Six-Second Smith, eh—" he grins, "the Drew City Cave man! One hundred and forty-five pounders. Six rounds!"
The mob has begun on me before I'm half-ways to the middle of the ring for the referee's instructions. "Where d'ye get that 'Six-Second' stuff?" "He means he'll last six seconds!" By this time I'm so up in the air I don't know if I'm in Brooklyn or Brazil! "Red" Johns leers at me. I'm trembling and tingling all over and I can't stop it and that makes me crazy mad at myself. This "Red" Johns looks like he feels the only way he can lose is for me to pull a gun from my shoe and shoot him. He's been through this a hundred times—this is my first. Somebody's yelling: "Hey, Gale! Hey, Gale!" I peer through the smoky haze over the ropes and I see Spence Brock, jumping up and waving a pennant. In the box with him is Rags Dempster and some of the other boys from the prep school.
I'm goofy, no fooling, but I manage to wave back my glove. I don't know what it's all about—I'm in a trance. Rags curls his lip and whispers to the fellow next to him and then they both laugh. I go up in the air a couple of thousand feet more. "Knocked cold in my first fight before Rags Dempster!" begins running through my crazy mind. I can picture him telling Judy how it happened. I don't hear half what the referee's saying, but he winds up with: "Fight hard, hit clean, and break when I tell yuh!" A hoarse whisper hits my ear: "I'll spill you in a minute, you big hick." . . . That's Mr. "Red" Johns, and while he's saying that he's shaking my glove with his, very politely. You should of saw his face—like a tiger's! Well, this about ruins me. I go back to my corner and Nate whips off my bathrobe, then slips down under the ropes, leaving me all alone under them terrible lights—all alone except for the hard-faced referee leaning against the ropes, and "Red" Johns with his back to me across the ring. "Red" Johns has got hold of the top rope with his gloves and he's bending up and down, limbering his leg muscles. I just stand there facing the mob and I see nothing but a howling jumble of blurred, cold sneering faces. Nate shoves his head up under the lower rope:
"Remember, make him come to you—don't go after him. And what ever you do, don't lead with 'at right!"
I hear this "Don't lead with your right!" over and over again, but I'm thinking of what depends on me winning my first start, of Judy, of that sneering Rags out there, and then, to show you how cuckoo I am, I puzzle over what part of a minute is six seconds, that being my ring name. Thoughts is shooting through my head like a news-reel movie being run too fast. I get on one thought and another one blurs it out. Can I last six rounds? Can I keep this scowling, hairy cannibal away from me that long? Then I think this—why try to keep him away at all? Why not rush right in and
The bell clanged out and I jumped a foot! The mob's yelling its head off again. I shot out of my corner like a bullet from a rifle and now my mind's clear of allbut one idea and that's to knock "Red" Johns cold and do it swift! All the careful instructions which Nate hammered into me for three weary, heart-breaking months of training is gone and forgotten. He might as well of told me nothing. I forget that Nate says leading with my right leaves me open to a fatal counter. My first—and last—punch in that fight was a right hook to the jaw. It socked against Red Johns's quickly upraised glove. It drove that glove back against his chin with a loud "Zop!" and Red Johns crashed to the canvas. I put so much stuff on that wallop that the force of my own swing carried me half-ways across the ring and I had to jump to miss stepping on Red Johns's body.
The crowd's standing up on the chairs, screeching like cats and dogs and I hear the whistles and horns the gang from Drew City brung with 'em. The referee shoves me against the ropes and begins counting. At "eight," Red Johns kind of quivered, rolled over on his stomach, then stretched out flat. The referee grabs my wrist and holds my arm up to the crowd.
I have trained three months for a fight which lasted just sixteen seconds.
I was reaching down to help Red Johns's handlers earry him to his corner, when Nate jumps through the ropes and grabbed me away. Nate is terrible excited. He don't know what he's doing. He throws his arms around me and kissed me; can you beat that?
"Sweet Mamma, what a socker you turned out to be!" Nate bellers. "You're the bee's knees, for a fact! But you do what I tell you hereafter, get me? You lead with your right to anybody again and I'll crown you with a bucket!"
He throws me bathrobe around me and we walk over to Red Johns's corner. Red's come to, but they still got ammonia under his nose. He just found out he was stopped with a punch and he's crying like a baby. I go to shake hands with him and he pushes my glove away.
I got plenty applause leaving the ring, but I just remember that now. Right then, I'm still hypnotized, I can't believe I'm awake! I phoned Judy from the box office of the fight club. I just says: "Well, I won!" and hung up—I squared myself with her later. I tell you I'm still goofy and—terrible sleepy! I didn't even wait to see how Knockout Kelly made out with Jackie Frayne. I went right to the hotel where I was to stay overnight with Nate and Kayo and went to bed, clothes and all.
The next morning I bought a copy of every New York paper printed and took 'em up to my room in the hotel. I figure they'll be full of how I win my first battle. Well, on the sporting pages they's about a column on the Kayo Kelly-Jackie Frayne muss. It seems they fought a tame ten-round draw. Down at the bottom, it says this:
"Six-Second Smith, a newcomer around these parts, stopped Red Johns with a punch in the opening frame of the first preliminary. They are welterweights. Red waited too long!"
One of the biggest events of my life is just a laugh to the Big Town sport writers! But I can still see Red Johns hitting that mat. He kind of bounced a little, then settled down flat on his back, and under them terrible lights his face is like wet chalk. I sit there on my bed and wonder how long it'll be before I'll be laying flat on by back under the lights, with my face looking like wet chalk?