Changeling, and Other Stories
championship, Nick Chip [so they had Americanized Niccolo Chiapetta] of
Buffalo, and Irish Mike McCann...." and the sentence was lost in the
roar of the Garden.
As he came to the center of the ring for the referee's instructions, to
hear the interpretation of the rules of hitting while holding and about
what was and what was not a clinch, he studied the alert, smiling
Italian. Yes, Chip was far and away the best man he had ever met; too
good for him, much too good. If he had only waited a year, waited six
months, even; five or six months more of stiff, good fighting and he
could have taken the Italian easily. A little more experience and a
little more confidence if he could only have waited.
But he could n't wait; he could n't afford to. Neither he nor the old
man could afford to.
They shook hands and returned to their corners. The whistle blew,
ordering the seconds out.
"Don't box him, Irish. Stay with him. Get in close, and when you get
him open, bam! See, just bam!" Old Maher, his trainer, whispered as he
ducked out. "See, no fancy stuff. Just sock him. How are you
feeling, Irish?"
"Fine."
"At 'a baby!"
_Bong-g-h!_ He turned and walked to the center of the ring.
The Italian had dropped into his usual unorthodox pose. His open right
glove fiddling gently at the air, his left arm crooked, the glove
resting against his left thigh. He moved around the ring gently, like
a good woman dancer. About him was an immense economy of movement. He
seemed wide open--a mark for any boxer's left hand. But Irish knew
better. The Latin would sway back from the punch and counter like
lightning. The old champion was wise to lie low and not to fight this
man until he was compelled to.
If he could only spar him into a corner and rush him there, taking the
punches on the chance of smashing him on the ropes.... But the Italian
glided around like a ghost. He might have been some sort of a wraith
for shadow-boxing, except for the confident, concentrated eyes.
A minute's fiddling, shifting of position, light sparring. The
creaking of the boards the _shuff-shuff-shuff_ of feet.
"Ah, why don't you walk in and kill him, Irish? He's only a Guinea!"
came a voice from the gallery.
"He 's a yellow. He 's a yellow, da Irish," an Italian supporter
jeered.
"Irish" could wait no longer. He feinted with his left, feinted again.
The left shot out, missed the jaw, came home high on the head. The
right missed the ribs and crashed on the Latin's back. A punch jarred
Irish on the jaw. An uppercut ripped home under his heart. At close
quarters the Italian was slippery as an eel. The garden roared delight
at the Irish lad's punches, but Irish knew they were not effective.
And the Italian had hurt him; slightly, but hurt him.
A spar, another pawing rush; light, smart blows on the ropes. "Break!
break!" the cry of the referee. Creaking of ropes and whining of
boards. A patter of applause as the round came to an end. A chatter
of voices as the light went up. The clicking of telegraph instruments.
"At 'a boy! Keep after him," Maher greeted.
As he sat down in his corner Irish was grim. Yes, the Italian was too
good for him; he had been afraid of this: that the Italian would
outgeneral him into attacking all the time. A little more experience,
the fights that mean a hundred times the theory, and he would have lain
back and forced Chip to stand up and face him instead of sniping him on
the run. The confidence of six or seven more fights and it would n't
have mattered to him what the gallery was shouting, what the ringside
thought. He could have made Chip stand up and fight, and in a round or
so the Garden would have been with him.
If he had only had a little more experience--if only he had been able
to wait!
Ah, well, what was the use of grousing! He was here to fight.
"Can't you rough him up a little in the clinch, Irish?" Maher whispered.
"No, I 'll fight him fair."
"Just a little to get his goat."
"No."
The lights went out, leaving only the great glare of the ring. The
whistle blew; clatter of buckets and bottles. The seconds clambered
down. The gong clashed shudderingly. The second round.
He walked slowly forward over the white canvas under the bluish white
arc-light, to meet his man, and then suddenly from his walk he jumped,
as some jungle thing might jump. He jumped without setting, without
any boxer's poise. Right for the poised, alive body he jumped. And
his hands hooked for drive and uppercut. He could feel the sense of
shock as they both went home, but to unvital points. The left hand
thudded on the neck. The right crashed on the Italian's left arm. He
was in close now, driving short lefts and rights to the body, but he
was handling something that bent and sprang back like a whalebone, that
moved, swayed with suppleness like some Spanish or Argentine dancer,
and soon elbows locked his arms subtly, and he could do nothing.
"Come on, break!" The referee was trotting about the ring like a
working terrier. Peering, moving from right to left. "Break! Break!"
His voice had the peculiar whine of a dog on a scent.
He stood back, sparred a moment. Again Irish rushed. He felt on
either side of his face sharp pains as of slaps with the open hand on
the cheeks. Irritating things. He could feel the Latin shake as the
left hand caught him flush on the ear. A tattoo like taps of little
hammers played at his body. Irish's right glove came full into the
Italian's ribs. He could feel the rush of air through the Italian's
teeth. He brought the hand up with a short chop on the Italian's neck.
A scuffle; a semi-wrestle. And again his arms were locked.
"Come on, boys! Come on! Break quick!"
They stood apart, sparred. Irish feinted with the left hand. Feinted
with the right. Changed feet quickly, right foot foremost now.
Pivoted home with the left hand--Joe Walcott's punch. The Italian
side-stepped, and caught him on the ear as he swung to the ropes.
Irish turned quickly. A flurry of gloves. Light lead and counter.
Clinch.
"You're good, Nick!"
"Y 'ain't so bad yourself, Irish."
As the bell finished the round and he walked toward his corner, he was
surprised, looking down at himself, to find angry red welts on his body
where what he thought was a light tattoo had been beaten....
Yes, he thought between rounds, another little while, another pound of
experience, and for all his cunning, his generalship, he could have
beaten Nick. And then between him and the championship there would
have been only the champion, and the old champion's day was past. He
was getting fat, and satisfied, and drinking--and that was bad! And
going around the country to Boston and New Orleans and Seattle, beating
third-raters and then mainly on points, and lying low, very low indeed,
whenever Nick Chip's name was mentioned, or even his, Irish Mike
McCann's. Only another six months and he could have taken on the men
the champion had beaten: Paul Kennedy of Pittsburgh, and the clever
Jewish lad who went by the Irish name of Al Murphy--that fight would
have taught him a lot--and the Alabama Kid, the hunched Negro
middle-weight who hit like a flail, and Chicago Johnny Kelly--who
fought with his right hand first, a hard lad to reach, but he could
have beaten him. Could have beaten them all.
He wanted to be champion--knew he could be, with time and experience.
And what there was for him in the championship was not personal glory
and not money, but a strange pride of ease that was hard to explain.
All he could do well was this athletic feat of fighting with gloves.
There was intuition, a sort of gift. His body balanced right. His
left hand moved easily. His right was always in position. All his
fights he had won easily. But he had never been up against any one as
good as this Italian veteran.
It seemed to him only right that an Irishman--or an Irish-American,
which was better still--should hold the middle-weight and heavy-weight
championships. Fighting--clean, hard struggle--was the destiny
apportioned to them. He knew enough of the history of his race to
remember they had fought under every banner in Europe--the Irish
Brigade at Fontenoy, and the men who were in the Pope's Zouaves, and
Russia and Germany knew them, and the great regiments the English had,
Munsters and Leinsters and Enniskillen Dragoons, and in New York was
the beloved Sixty-ninth, the Fighting Sixty-ninth.
Vaguely in his mind there were thoughts which he could not translate
into words, it not being his craft, that there was some connection
between the men who fought in a padded ring with gloves and the men who
went gallantly into battle with two flags above their heads, the flag
they served faithfully and the little wisp of green they loved. The
men in the ring stood for the green in the field, perhaps. And we
should see in the Irish boxer what the cheering ranks of Irish going
into battle were. Fight squarely in the ring, fight gallantly, fight
to the last drop, and win gallantly and lose gallantly. And let no man
say: There is a dirty or mean fighter. And let no man say: There is a
coward.
There were Irish names in the ring that made old men's hearts flutter
and young men wish they had been born years before. Old John L.
Sullivan (God rest the gallant battered bones!) and Tom Sharkey of
Dundalk, who never knew when he was beaten, and old Peter Maher, who
was somewhere in the house. And there was another name in the mist of
past days, the name of a middle-weight champion who had been greatest
and most gallant of them all, the elder Jack Dempsey, the Non-pareil.
None like him, none! Irish of the Irish, most gallant of them all, he
sleeps in a green grave in the West somewhere, and in all men's hearts.
And Irish had thought humbly to fill the Non-pareil's shoes, to fight
as hard as he fought, to win as chivalrously, to lose as well, and in
his corner as he fought the ghost of the great Nonpareil would be. And
the roar of the house as he would walk out at the referee's call, the
champion, Irish-American, in his tights of green, and around his waist
the starry Western flag.
Ah, well!
The shrill cut of the whistle, and the chief second leaned forward and
wiped his face.
"Fift' round, Irish. Keep at him, boy!"
The gong, and the hushed house.
He noticed now that the Italian fighter was no longer resting his left
hand semi-casually on his hip, kept up no longer his poise of an
Argentine dancer. The Buffalo man's left hand was extended like an
iron bar, his shoulder hunched to his jaw for a shield, his head sunk
low, as a turtle's head is half-drawn under its carapace; his feet well
apart. The man's oily black hair was a tangled mop, and on his ribs
were red blotches. His lips were set in a wide line. His black,
ophidian eyes snapped and glowed. His poised right hand flickered like
a snake's tongue.
And he was punching, punching as hard as he could, hitting squarely
with knuckles and every ounce of weight--careless of the economy of the
ring that tells a man to save his hands, for a boxer's hands are a
boxer's life, and every hurt sinew, every broken knuckle, every jarred
delicate bone counts in the long run. The Italian was hitting, hitting
like a trip-hammer, hitting for his title.
They faced each other, the Italian poised, drawn like a bowstring,
aiming like a sharpshooter, Irish, jigging on his toes, careless of
guarding, feinting with the right hand, breaking ground, feinting with
the left, feinting with the right again, and then a sudden plunging
rush. The jar to his neck as the Italian's straight left caught him
flush on the mouth, the whirling crash of infighting, the wrestling