“ ‘That was all that I hoped to do: make it hurt so much to beat me black-and-blue, which all of those big guys could do, they’d go beat someone else black-’n-blue when they felt like doin’ that, and then they would leave me alone. I threw lefts, I threw rights, I threw elbows and butted, I kicked and I bit and I grabbed, and I took hold of ears and I yanked ’em, yanked ’em as hard as I could. Closed my eyes and then I got hit on ’em? I didn’t care; I would’ve got hit on ’em anyway, if they had’ve been open, I mean, and I swung as hard as I could. If I missed? Okay, then I’d swing again. And of course the real advantage, edge I had on them there, with the kids that were beatin’ me up, was that they didn’t know howtah fight either. So every so often I would get lucky, knock one of them into next week. And word of that will get around. You fight stupid long enough, get a few good shots in, pretty soon you’re not fighting no more. Guys still see you, you go out for somethin’, but they also leave you alone.
“ ‘So that’s how it happened, how I got my name, that summer, when I was seven. “He’s in another one, down the beach there, and it’s just like the last time was too—he’s bombin’ lefts, bombin’ rights, all over the place. Bomber loses; he don’t give up.” I knew they said about me. And also what they didn’t say, too: ‘Yeah, throwing hands. And gettin’ killed, most of the time. Yeah, but also winnin’, just often enough, to keep the old spark of hope bright.’
“And that, Harry, I think, is what we’ve got to do. No one said we were gonna have fun here. The pitch was, as I seem to recall it, that what we do here is important. What we do here is worthwhile. And that is our real reward.”
“Then, then you mean, Master,” Dell’Appa said, “you mean that the monster lives? That he will walk in the world then, and they will know then, what we have done here? He will be called … Fronken-schteen?”
“Yes, my son, and God love you,” Dennison said. “And this is also really the year that the Boston Red Sox win the whole goddamned-fuckin’ World Series. Oh, and do not forget this, either: Life sucks, and then you die.”
“Words to live by,” Dell’Appa said.
ALSO BY GEORGE V. HIGGINS
The Friends of Eddie Coyle
Cogan’s Trade
A City on a Hill
The Friends of Richard Nixon
The Judgment of Deke Hunter
Dreamland
A Year or So with Edgar
Kennedy for the Defense
The Rat on Fire
The Patriot Game
A Choice of Enemies
Style Versus Substance
Penance for Jerry Kennedy
Imposters
Outlaws
The Sins of the Fathers
Wonderful Years, Wonderful Years
The Progress of the Seasons
Trust
On Writing
Victories
The Mandeville Talent
Defending Billy Ryan
Bomber’s Law
Swan Boats at Four
Sandra Nichols Found Dead
A Change of Gravity
The Agent
At End of Day
GEORGE V. HIGGINS
George V. Higgins was the author of more than twenty novels, including the bestsellers The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Cogan’s Trade, The Rat on Fire, and The Digger’s Game. He was a reporter for the Providence Journal and the Associated Press before obtaining a law degree from Boston College Law School in 1967. He was an Assistant Attorney General and then an Assistant United States Attorney in Boston from 1969 to 1973. He later taught Creative Writing at Boston University. He died in 1999.
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