Old Man Finneran didn’t expect so, either. Nice break having a neighborhood hero and a big breadwinner in the family again. Not that Pop would ask much of Vinnie. Just grub and beer money and maybe a little house in Florida to retire in after a while.
Leo, the brother-in-law, called Eddie to hold half a dozen ringside tickets for him; he was taking two good prospective customers and their wives. “If the kid is really as good as Eddie says,” Leo told Vince’s older sister, “I’m liable to double my sales. Take the boys out to the training camp, get Vinnie to have dinner with ’em at Moore’s—it’ll give my business a shot in the arm.”
“I’ll never forget the first time Eddie fought a main event in the Garden,” Molly said. “He bought me my beaver coat. It’s beat-up now but I still have to use it. I could sure do with a new coat.”
And back in the Finnerans’ cold-water flat, Sally, the sixteen-year-old, was dreaming her tough-minded little dreams, too. This dingy tenement, steaming in summer and bone-cold in winter, may be all right for Ma and Pop. But these days a young girl with her looks wanted something better. A nicer neighborhood, nicer boys, some place you wouldn’t be ashamed to take a nice fellow if you should be lucky enough to find one. A five-room apartment on the Upper Drive. Maybe, if Vince turned out to be a drawing card, he’d do that for them. The sister of the champion.
In the Finneran household the tension mounted as with an army facing invasion day. It was Fight minus eight, F minus seven, six. … Eddie was a busy man, working out with Specs the tactics for the fight, hovering over Vince and watching his diet, on the phone to friends wanting tickets, selling a block of seats around the neighborhood so the matchmaker would be impressed with Vinnie’s following, buttonholing reporters in the restaurants and telling anybody and everybody what the kid brother was going to do to Georgie Packer.
Packer was a Negro veteran who had gone as far as small-club main events and then slid back into the preliminaries. He was slow and wild and his legs were used up after four rounds. He was rough and he was willing and his left hook could hurt you if it landed, but he was pretty well punched out now, his reflexes were gone and this was just another purse for him before he racked up. In public Eddie carried on about what a rugged test this was for Vinnie, but privately he told the chums that Spec had lined up a real soft touch so Vinnie could score in his pro debut. “Packer’ll be packed up and shipped home to Palookaville before it goes halfway,” Eddie promised.
As the days before the fight flew off like calendar sheets in an old movie, Ma was a ghost around the house, moving silently in a shroud of disapproval. She listened and she watched, and felt like throwing them all out of the house, Pop, Eddie, Sally, Molly, Leo, the whole selfish lot of them. She watched Vince closely, too. He listened to the advice Eddie kept telling him, nodding and going over it in his mind. He would look around as if the place were no longer familiar to him and he couldn’t find a comfortable seat to settle himself in. In a sharp voice that didn’t sound like his, he kept saying that he wasn’t nervous, that he felt fine, why should he worry?, Eddie said he had met better boys than Packer in the amateurs, it was just another fight. But his nerves talked back: Who was he kidding? This was six three-minute rounds instead of three two’s, hard six-ounce gloves instead of those sixteen-ounce pillows, and this Georgie Packer was an old war-horse with over seventy pro fights.
The day of the fight Ma was ready to do something about it. Something drastic. She thought of a lot of crazy things. Maybe there was something she could drop in Vince’s tea to make him sick to his stomach so they would have to call off the fight. Or she would pretend she had a stroke so Vince would be too upset to report at the Garden. Then he’d be suspended and the bad dream would be over. She even had crazy visions of going to the other fighter and telling him Vince’s weaknesses as she had picked them up from Eddie’s loudmouthing. But, of course, she couldn’t do that. That was just a whim of desperation. Finally she didn’t do anything but go around the corner to see her favorite priest.
Father Corcoran was a neighborhood boy in his middle thirties who had made a name for himself standing up for the members of his waterfront parish against the mobbers on the docks. He was an old friend of Tunney’s cousin, Ben, the longshore rank-and-filer, and he liked the fights, all right, but he couldn’t see it for Vince. He was a realist and he thought the business was only for those who had nothing better to do. But how to stop it? He could try reasoning with Vince, though it probably wouldn’t do much good if the boy won and found the going easy. Maybe all they could do was to pray that he lose and work it out of his system before the start of the fall term.
Ma went into the church and knelt before her saint, Veronica. “Oh, Sweet Saint Veronica, intercede with the Heavenly Father,” she prayed. “I don’t know if He knows anything about the boxing game. I don’t know if there’s any way for a boy to be thoroughly defeated without getting hurt. But if there is, please ask Him to bring that defeat to my Vince tonight. Lead him out of the valley of temptation. Give him the strength to turn his back on evil and to find that there are no easy ways and that every man should do a dollar’s work for every dollar. Have him knocked out tonight, dear Lord, and may it not injure his sweet face but only the selfish spirits leeching to fatten on him. In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, amen.”
Vince was sitting stiff and strange in the bare dressing room. Eddie had been getting around giving the big hello to familiar faces and taking bows as the old Honeyboy. People remembered the great fight he had put up with Kaplan and listened respectfully when he talked up Vinnie. “Watch ’em t’night—tuhriffic—a year from now he’s in with the title—a second McLarnin.”
“Don’t just sit there, kid,” Eddie said. “Get up, move around, warm up, you’re on next.”
Vince did as he was told, but he felt stiff in his joints. Beyond the dressing-room door the roar of the crowd sounded like a waterfall that can be turned on and off. He tried not to listen. It had a strange effect on his stomach. It wasn’t fear of Packer, but of something larger, something that made him feel small and helpless, as if he were a leaf carried along by a rushing torrent toward the waterfall.
The last four-rounder was over and the kid who had gone out bouncing on his toes and full of beans came in gasping for breath and leaking blood from one eye. Vince had no memory of being moved through the door down the long aisle to the ring. He was only numbly aware of being in the ring under the bright lights with Eddie rubbing encouraging circles into his back and winking at writers he recognized in the press row. He was only numbly aware of Georgie Packer, a short, squat, dark figure with a boneless nose and thickening scar tissue over the eyes. He was completely unaware of Pop, with the McGanns, and Leo and Molly with the prospective customers, and Sally in a new dress, all looking for the win, with front seats reserved on the bandwagon.
The bell rang and the place hushed. Vince crossed himself automatically and automatically moved out toward the dark, bearlike form weaving in front of him. Packer lunged and Vince flicked a jab and danced away. The jabs irritated Packer like mosquito bites and he lunged in to swat them away and Vince jab-jab-jabbed and skirted sideways. Packer missed a vicious left hook at the bell. Vince was more tired than he should have been when he sat down. Maybe nerves. “Relax, relax, kid,” Eddie said. “It’s all yours. Keep that left in his face but cross with the right. You’re not throwing enough punches. You got the round but you gotta be more aggressive.”
Round Two looked like a retake on Round One with Vince jabbing and floating away. Packer wanted to fight, but he couldn’t. His fights were all in the record book now. Vince’s left hand and the footwork were fancy, but he was reluctant to mix it with Packer. Packer was doing all the leading and missing. Vince was countering, but in a light-hitting, mechanically defensive way. The crowd was stamping its feet in unison to show its boredom. Packer, the old club fighter, answered the crowd’s derision with a clumsy try, grabbing Vince with his left arm and
bringing up a looping right uppercut. It was a wild, unorthodox punch, not the kind that Vince had been trained to counter, and it flushed him on the side of the jaw and knocked him sideways. Before Packer could follow it up the round was over.
Vince turned to a neutral corner instead of toward his stool. The crowd laughed and shouted. Vince thought he was in a basketball game and the other team had scored a basket. Eddie ran out and rushed him to their corner. The sharp tickle of smelling salts was in his nose and ice burned into his neck. “Sucker punch … Don’t let ’im get set … Move around and throw more rights …” He heard Eddie in his ear and then the mouthpiece was being pushed into his face, a wet sponge came down smack on his head and many hands were lifting him to his feet and shoving him toward the middle of the ring. Before he could do any of the things Eddie had told him, Packer was on him again, walking in and punching and brushing off the jabs and hooking to the body. Packer was after him and somehow none of the things that had held them off in the amateurs would work on this one. Packer charged in and bulled him into a corner with his body so the kid couldn’t dance around and use the footwork. Packer just leaned his head on the kid’s shoulder and banged away. It wasn’t a science, it wasn’t an experiment, it was a fight, and Vince felt cornered and helpless against the swarm of punches. The mouthpiece was choking off his breathing, felt too big for his mouth, if he could get rid of the mouthpiece he could suck the air in, get a fresh start … Then wham something harder than a leather glove could possibly be struck him in the mouth and the mouthpiece flew out and Vince was sagging to his knees to look for it when the bell rang at last.
Eddie and Specs ran across and dragged Vince back and worked over him feverishly, Eddie wild-eyed, frantic, a lose to a punched-out bum like Packer meant curtains, no soap, no money, no ride, no meal ticket, back to the street corners with the Hell’s Kitchen cowboys. “Kid, you gotta do it, you gotta do it, take the play away from him, punch hard, baby, please kid, we’re countin’ on ya, Vinnie Vince Vinnie can ya see me?, are ya listenin’?, don’t let us down Vinnie boy …”
Over Specs’ and Eddie’s shoulders the referee was leaning in to watch the boy’s eyes. The handlers were so busy pumping false strength and bogus courage into their bewildered fighter that they didn’t notice the referee until, just as the ten-second warning buzzer sounded and Vince was trying to find his feet, he staggered up into the arms of the official. “Sorry kid, that’s all.” He went over and raised Packer’s hand.
An old sports writer turned to a colleague. “His name may be Finneran, but he’s sure no Honeyboy. Honeyboy liked to fight.”
“I saw this kid in the gym, he looked good,” the other man said.
“A gymnasium fighter,” the old sports writer said. “I’ve seen hundreds of ’em. They fight because someone teaches ’em how and everything they know goes out the window the first time they get tagged.”
“I wonder if this new boy from St. Paul is any good,” said the other writer, ready for the next fight.
Leo had planned to take the prospective buyers back to the dressing room to see Vince after the fight, but now he thought he’d forget the whole thing. He felt a little embarrassed in front of his customers for having done so much talking about the boy.
Pop was quiet too. McGann had been polite, but in a kind of laughing way, as he said, “Don’t take it to heart, Finneran. One lad who can use his mitts and another with a head on his shoulders, that should be enough for any man.” Pop nodded. It would be hard to go back to the Monday morning shape-up. Seven-thirty in the morning. The same old grind.
Specs stood outside the dressing-room door while Vince got dressed. “I suppose I could get him another fight, but I think I’d be wasting my time. The boy doesn’t take much of a punch. He c’n box but he’s got no heart for it. He’s gonna get hurt and he won’t make no money.”
“Okay, okay, I got my eyesight, I could see it,” Eddie said.
“I’m sorry, Honeyboy, it could of been a nice thing.”
“The hell with that,” Eddie said. Even the night he had decided to hang up the gloves, he hadn’t felt so lost, so empty and the hell with everything. “I’m gonna go out ’n drink whiskey.”
The flat was quiet when Vince came in. Sitting there waiting was Ma and nobody else.
“Vince?”
“Yes, Ma.”
“Let me see how you look.”
She led him toward the lamp. There was a bruise on his jaw and a swelling around one eye.
“I lost, Ma. I was NG.”
“I heard about it on the radio.”
“Looks like I better keep that delivery job after school.”
“That’s right, Vince. Get into your pajamas. I’ll make you a sandwich.”
She went into the kitchen and she thought how Pop and Eddie and Leo and Molly and Sally must be feeling. Well, it served them right. It wasn’t that easy. When would they ever learn it wasn’t that easy?
Eddie didn’t come in until after four when all the bars were closed. He had trouble finding his way to the bathroom in time to throw up.
“Eddie, is that you?” his mother called from the bedroom.
“Yeah, ’s me. Go t’ sleep, Ma, I’m aw-right.” Eddie felt very weak. He felt as if he was going to pitch head first into the can. He’d sleep it off and then go down to Paddy’s for a beer. There was a kid washing dishes in there who was pretty handy with his dukes, Paddy said. Maybe Eddie could get a-hold of him and …
He threw up until his stomach was emptied and then he groped his way to the narrow bedroom he shared with Vince. He fell into bed, and in a little while he was snoring through his broken old fighter’s nose and dreaming his ex-fighter dreams. The dishwasher at Paddy’s was turning out to be a champ and Eddie was up there with the Nat Lewis sport shirts and the big suites and the fancy broads, and everybody was saying See if you c’n fix me up with a pair for Friday night, Eddie, Honeyboy, Eddie, old pal.
THIRD NIGHTCAP, WITH HISTORICAL FOOTNOTES
IT WAS ONE O’CLOCK and the waiters were wishing the two young men would go home when Mead came in and sat down. “Hello, Sheridan. Hello, Peters,” he said, and paused for their invitation to join them.
Sheridan and Peters exchanged a look that said they were ready to leave, but would have to linger. After all, who were they, young writers who had written a mediocre Broadway success in collaboration, to walk out on the author of The Days Beyond? That play had been required reading in Baker’s course when they were at Yale ten years ago.
Mead saw the look in their eyes, for he was a student of looks and eyes, but he didn’t care. It was late and he was lonely. Bending his tall, unathletic body to the table, he slid into the booth. His dark, heavy-lidded eyes twitched behind their thick lenses as he observed his youthful, not yet twitching companions. His long, nervous fingers reached out for things with which to occupy themselves, arranging the water glass, a fork and several matches into various designs.
“Have a drink, Mead?” Sheridan said, trying to keep the scholastic awe out of his voice.
“Thanks,” said Mead. “Maybe one. A nightcap.”
Sheridan beckoned the waiter and caught Peters’ eye again. To such a man we owe a debt, he signaled. Even two drinks and twenty minutes’ conversation is not too much.
“Can you imagine?” said Mead. “They don’t even know who Firdausi is. Can you imagine living in a town fifteen years where they never even heard of Firdausi?”
“You mean Joe Firdausi, the agent?” Peters said. They were writing a farce comedy at the moment and keyed for wit.
“An agent they would have known,” Mead said. “Up at Vonn’s party, I’m talking about, playing Who Am I? So I take Firdausi, you know, the Persian epic poet, and everybody screams it shouldn’t count because he’s too obscure.”
Mead drank the straight Scotch the waiter brought him without asking, and it was only when he tried to raise the glass to his lips that Sheridan and Peters saw how drunk he was.
&n
bsp; “‘Obscure!,’ I told them,” Mead continued, “‘So obscure the encyclopedia gives him a full page, that’s how obscure!’ So then Birdie Slocum, that noted historical scholar, says, ‘I never heard of such a man.’ So I told Birdie, ‘That’s because his name has never been in the Hollywood Reporter.’”
“Did you really tell her that?” Sheridan asked.
Birdie Slocum was the wife of Mead’s producer. Mead twirled the empty whiskey glass idly. The young men looked at each other guiltily. They knew his reputation for post-facto courage.
“I don’t know how to play that game in this town,” Mead said. “If you pick Churchill or Eisenhower they get sore because they think you’re insulting their intelligence. And if you pick anything tougher than that, they think you’re trying to show off.”
Peters and Sheridan said nothing. They were afraid Mead was going to ask them if they knew who Firdausi was. “Have another?” Sheridan urged.
“Well, all right,” said Mead. “But this is the nightcap. Firdausi. The greatest poet in the history of Persia. The author of The Book of Kings. Even the savage tribesmen in the hills recite Firdausi.”
The waiter brought Mead his drink and he raised it in toast. “To Firdausi,” he said, “whom Birdie Slocum will never know.”
“And last week it was Tilly,” Mead was saying into his empty glass. “And Vonn wouldn’t count him either. Can you beat that, a German and he never heard of Tilly? Tilly, the Catholic general. The Thirty Years’ War. It’s like an American not knowing Washington.” He removed his glasses and rubbed his red eyes irritably. “And the week before that, Vico, the Italian philosopher. And before that, Timothy Dwight.”