Contents and Introduction

by Les Weil

  His manager and trainer were uneasy and watchful: they would hope to protect him. They kept silence for fear of offending him. He shook himself, and went on. It was a satisfaction to him to hear the footsteps of his companions, alertly following. In his feet he could sense the vibrations of the massive building, as the great black trains moved in and out, and the thought came to him that he would like to travel ...

  He had three fights in the next six months, and he won them coldly: he did not wish to be moved to that fury which was his highest discipline, and he guessed that he had become interested in saving something of himself to be used outside the ring. The third fight ended in a knockout, and the victim died the same night, of a brain hemorrhage.

  The fighter visited the hospital, talked about a benefit fight (for the widow), and listened to his counselors, who assured him that he must not blame himself. He had no idea of blaming himself: he felt a vague oppression, and he wondered whether there were other things he might do with his life. He considered a career in business (and his money had given him a start: he owned a laundry and a dry-cleaning establishment).

  He relaxed his training, and had no fights; he looked around him, and found that he was interested in a pretty girl who was a singer in a night club. She looked unhappy, and she smiled prettily for him. He was ready for an attachment -he wanted to extend his range; he pursued her, won her, and learned about her enough so that he could love her. Her life had been difficult.

  He took her on a trip to Hawaii, and on his return he began a little career of being seen in nightclubs and theaters. He took pleasure in dressing for the theater; he liked his appearance in a tuxedo, and found amusement in the occasional notices in the newspapers. He allowed himself a passion for music (he especially favored Duke Ellington). Listening, a part of himself went out and joined the troubled air; and then he could be dreaming of the past, in clear tones of black and grey.

  He got along with his wife: he kept a straight face, and told lies. Her expression occasionally suggested a concern for him, and this was a flattery that he disliked; he went his way, doing what he wanted to do (uncertain what he wanted). He could feel his body grow soft: he accepted no fights, and in six months' time, his weight had gone up to 175 pounds, and he was hearing from the Boxing Commissions that he ought to defend his title. He began to hear reports that he was planning to retire. His manager grew anxious, and was afraid to speak: several times the fighter met his manager's concern with a stare like that which he used on his opponents in the ring.

  He decided that he wanted to live ("Before I'm too old," he said to himself), and be gave up his routine of training in favor of occasional exercise in a private gym.

  Absorbed in his new enterprise, he met with indifference the action of the National Boxing Association in taking away his title. He avoided reporters; when pressed, he said, "No comment"; and he really had nothing to say.

  He permitted himself to eat foods that had always been denied him. Ice cream was a delight; candy a thing he had never known. He learned to like beer, and whiskey suited him; he found pleasure in the mental unease of intoxication, and he rarely had a headache -he could sit quietly for many hours, rich in feeling, confident that he had been augmented by a choice no one had forced him into.

  On his twenty-eighth birthday, he had a mistress, a new body (the old one, burgeoned), new friends, and a reputation that he could not understand: people looked at him inquiringly, and started away from his questioning. His wife was kind, and very obliging; she seemed afraid of him. He was at large in a set of circumstances that seemed rightly his own property, and he learned a boredom greater than any he had ever known.

  He missed the excitement of fighting, and the animal joy of training -his mornings were vacant: he was ready to work, and could not, for he was committed to pleasure; and so it seemed inevitable to him that, late in the autumn of 1936, he should one day agree to a fight that was suggested to him. He had no distinct reason for doing this; he was a fighter, and he was willing to fight - something moved inside him; his body was learning to talk. His manager brought the offer, and the fighter would not keep up a conversation, for he felt a vague sense of shame.... his manager was pleased and secretive.

  The fighter told himself that he was ready to work; he took up hard training (having six weeks in which to get ready), moderated his pleasures, and within a month he was down to 164 pounds; he then had a difficult time in losing four more pounds, and finally succeeded, on the day of the fight, in the sweating room of a Turkish bath. That night he lost the fight, on a ten-round decision, and came to a terrible rage.

  His body had gone slack; after the seventh round, he had been weak, and in the eighth he had been cut, hard, in the left eyebrow. In the tenth, he had been hanging on, like a scared boy. He felt betrayed, and so he was anxious to do something -he resolved to dismiss his mistress, and he did this, calling her from a telephone in the dressing room. He understood that he must make a comeback, and so, on the following day, he left the city for his training camp in New Jersey, and there he set to work.

  On Sundays his wife visited the camp, and she comforted him. He was glad to have her; she was convenient, familiar, and reassuring; she knew how to respect his training, and she urged him on, for she was capable of fierceness.

  Three months after his defeat (only the second defeat in his professional career), he fought again -a rated man, whom he defeated in ten rounds, and the newspaper critics were severe (they blamed his temporary retirement from the ring). In the next seven months, he fought five times; he won the first three by decision, and the last two by knockout, and it was then possible to get a match with the champion.

  The fighter defeated the champion by a knockout in eight rounds -a performance that his admirers have never let him forget. He was a little more discreet than he had been before his temporary retirement: he had to protect the large new scar in his left eyebrow, emblem of the fight he had lost (the scar was a delicate, cartilaginous lump inadequately masked by the hairs of the eyebrow). The fighter otherwise held to his patterns, and felt strong; and once again he could look forward to dominating his division.

  The experience of boredom returned: it came to his side in the intervals of his routine; and he opposed it with deliberate activity. He trained grimly -he worked hard because he distrusted pleasure, and pleasure became a casual incident, that he might allow or deny as it pleased him. He grew harsh; he was content with his

  system, and ready to defend it; the years passed, and his reputation included a final term -durability, for he had kept his powers a long time.

  In 1939, two of his fights were difficult, and in 1940 he kept his title on a split decision, in a bout at Madison Square Garden. In 1943, at the age of 35, he began to think about retiring, and the decision was made for him by the times -it was necessary for him to enter the military service. He gave up his title and served two years in the Army, as a boxing instructor; and when he emerged, he accepted several fights because he was curious to see what he could do. He won three fights; and experience was his weapon. He felt unkind to the young men he faced, whom ignorance retarded, and he wanted to say to them that they might learn the techniques that would defeat him.

  Then, in the late summer of 1946, he was badly beaten by a young fighter on the way up; he won a rematch (and was praised in the newspapers), and then lost a third bout -he was cut over both eyes, and was hanging on in the late rounds; in his dressing room afterwards, as he surveyed the condition of his face (the left eyelid had swollen down over the eye), he made up his mind to retire; his wife agreed; and he has held to his resolution.

  Now he is free to live, and his choice is to carry on as before. Every morning he runs in the park; in the afternoons he takes a workout at the Athletic Club, where he is a member, and once a week he plays golf. He finds golf boring; but it is a duty, and so he clings to it. He had a heart attack three years ago, and another last year: the specialists have explained that many athletes have this problem
, and they have prescribed a diet.

  The fighter keeps his weight at 165 pounds; he is a reticent man of middle-class appearance, and is getting bald across the front of his head; from a little distance it is hard to distinguish him from other men of the same age and same financial importance (he is wealthy). Up close, there are some marks of the past, naturally. His eyebrows are scanty: the hairs are slick, growing in a scar tissue that is hostile to life. His eyes express a resolute indifference -they are the eyes of a champion, after all, who had been a critic of weakness.

  Quiet now. The fighter and his wife live comfortably in a very expensive apartment: they have no children -the fighter's seed his went into his courage, and, perhaps, he had never wanted to be a father . . . . He is idle, he has a place in the life of the city: and the air in the park is pleasant, where he goes trotting along under the misty trees.

  A Kansas Girl

  Edward Loomis

  Mary Rollins was born in Topeka, in a high white frame house shaded by elms. There was a verandah on the front of the house, and in back there a screened porch where the rough coats were hung up to dry.

  Later she lived in Wellington, Salina, and some smaller towns, as her father's career required. He was a high school teacher of mathematics and Latin, obliged to follow his opportunities, and therefore a wanderer. Mary and her sister (two years younger) knew him as tall and energetic, bending down to look at them; he was kind, his voice was coaxing and musical, and his study (which changed very little from house to house) welcomed them with exotic devices -there was a globe, a bookcase with glass doors, and a rolltop desk in which there was a pigeonhole reserved for each girl; in front of the window was a portrait bust of Shakespeare, a cloudy yellow marble.

  Their mother was downstairs, in an apron; she was entirely reliable, and to her Mary conducted her difficulties. Mary was a gentle little girl, quick with delighted expectation, and her parents loved her, astonished at a nature which could improve them.

  The family life kept to one kind of place in every town it visited -not far from a school, and close to the Methodist Church. These were the constants. On Sundays, at nine o'clock, the little girls went off by themselves to the Methodist Church; they walked solemnly, and were meticulously arrayed. The superintendent of the Sunday School greeted them at the back door -he would have his own children in some of the classes. There followed the Bible lesson, a lecture, singing in unison, and a little shy pleasure at seeing friends.

  At ten-thirty, the children were permitted to go out on the front lawn to wait for their parents, who could be expected to arrive within ten minutes, approximately. Some of the boys began to be restless. Mary and her sister sidled into their obscure freedom, confident that soon they would be called back. There was music in the high old trees, as the organist began her concert, and the air was friendly.

  When the parents arrived, it was possible to rush at them in vigorous joy (though with care for Sunday clothes), and be reeived indulgently. The world was indulgent, a prospect of trees and white houses and broad streets. In wet weather (good for the farmers, on whom everything depended), the streets were miry -in winter, the bare trees had a providential, scriptural appearance.

  Inside the church, the heavy quiet stirred the folds of its garment for the little family. Mary was humble; she understood that she was in God's House, and that she must not expect God to be always present there -his influence was present, in his place. There were signs of it. Her parents were uneasy; the choir was anxious to sing; the minister's zone was empty, and his felt absence had a form, in the stillness.

  The services were slow, and Mary sometimes grew bored, but she never relaxed her vigilance; she maintained herself in readiness for a spiritual event.

  At Christmas, exalted hymns were in the air, a deep red tone of joy. The hush grew promising: a distant attention convened in the firmament, and Mary was moved to hurry, under its urging, so that she might be ready for obligations. The seasonal decorations hung in long arcs of green and red; the adults were wheedling and vague.

  The weather lightly gripped her slender legs: that which held the dry snow on the cedar boughs was blurring into the divinity, at its upper reaches. The winter clouds were slow, in their familiar positions - athwart a gable, aslant to the cottonwood and elm.

  In such a weather, Jesus had been born, and in his vigilance her life was secure and calm.

  The seasons changed to her delight, and late in the spring there were picnics, lenient festivals in a cottonwood grove. In the high summer, on a Sunday, there might be a family reunion -these were at the picnic ground near Council Grove, on the Kaw River, too muddy and uncertain for little girls to be allowed in above their ankles. The elders were ponderous and slow, who in their youth had lived in Virginia or Pennsylvania -one of the distant uncles had been at the siege of Vicksburg, and had stories to tell of Grant and Sheridan.

  School was a discipline that Mary found congenial; and it brought her along at the development expected of her. She was an excellent pupil -the teachers were fond of her. When she was twelve years old, her father made her a gift of Longfellow's poems; on her fifteenth birthday, he gave her a leather-bound edition of Tennyson. She was an advanced reader. Somewhat surprised, and perplexed, she read in her father's Shakespeare; and she read the Bible. By the time of her third year in high school, she had been through the Bible twice, and was well along in yet another reading.

  She graduated from the Alta Vista high school, where her father had been teaching for three years, and her graduation present was the money she would need for tuition and books at Baker University, saved over a period of many years. Mary was touched, remembering the frugalities of her parents; she cried, and then kissed her father and embraced her mother.

  At Baker she was the leading scholar, a slender, sturdy girl, plain and neat; who walked quickly and smiled readily, and during her junior year she fell in love -she elected a boy from Emporia whose father was a Methodist minister: they attended church together, and were members of the campus Epworth League. He gave her a red rose on her birthday (picked from his landlady's bush), and from time to time he wrote her shy little notes.

  A senior, he graduated in the spring, and it was understood that he would write -and so it happened, through the summer and into the next year of school. Mary was tranquil and sober, awaiting the consequences which seemed unavoidable and normal: she would be married, she would have children, and go to church with her husband.

  Then her lover moved from Emporia to Kansas City, took a position with a life insurance company (selling), and slackened his attention to his letters. They grew gentle, and he escaped her. She missed him, as she perceived what was happening -at a distance, she could feel something turn over and lunge away, disturbing the peripheries of her life. She passed a few days in a nervous melancholy during which she wept often, and then she recovered rapidly.

  She graduated first in her class, and went out into the world to teach, and her father encouraged her, who by this time was the principal of the high school in Alta Vista. Her first school was in the country, near White City, and she was the sole proprietor. She had eighteen children, she taught all the grades except the fourth and seventh, and she was happy. Now and then an inquiring courtesy came her way from one of the young farmers living nearby, and she answered gravely.

  During her second year, her sister fled the dormitory at Baker to marry a young engineer (educated at Kansas State), and there was a family crisis until her father's consent could be gained -this occurred, and the sister went to Chicago with her husband. Mary then decided to live at home for a while -her father was lonely, and her mother was ailing.

  During the summer, the family moved to Groverville, where her father was to be superintendent of schools, and Mary took over the fourth and fifth grades. She was a help to her mother, and her mother needed assistance - in February she took to her bed, and in June she died, of a cancer; and then for the daughter there was a husband's grief to deal with, and it al
armed her, for it derived from the mystery of carnal love. Sensing a secret, she kept her eyes down.

  She understood that she must continue at home for a while: her father had faded away from vigor -he appeared to be startled, and Mary knew that she could help him; and she had a powerful desire to be obliging, for she remembered a father's kindness to a little girl. She could remember herself, wistfully staring, uncertain -and her father tenderly solicitous, quick to her call on a dark night, the ponderous tread creaking along the corridor toward her room.

  At first there was an awkwardness in the house, as Mary took up the housekeeping duties: the awkwardness passed, and Mary learned the pleasure of having a house of her own. She was a good cook; her father praised her. She was very busy, and cheerful. After her second year at Groverville, her father transferred her to the high school, and in the following year it was decided that she should go to summer school in order to work for a master's degree in English literature; she chose the University of Colorado because she wanted to see the Rocky Mountains.

  She liked the campus and the work, and it happened that one of the men in her Chaucer class (a high school teacher from Denver) paid her some attentions; at the end of the first week, he informed her that he had been married and divorced. He continued asking her out to dinner on Saturday nights, and during the week he escorted her on long walks through the dark green avenues of the little city.

  She was then twenty-six years old, and she could suffer a virgin's uncertainty when her new friend looked at her (the corners of her mouth knew how to tremble). Feeling incomplete, she hoped for a change that would make her decisive; and she watched for signs that might instruct her. She was a pleasant-looking young woman -she knew that she would make an agreeable wife: she would resemble her own mother, who had been much loved.