Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  To-morrow, he told himself as he went on, he would give that youth a promotion which would astonish him, and dumfound some of the sleek-haired college boys who were in the institution. But his kindly message brought no cheer to Allan. The latter only said to himself: “He pities me. It’s almost better to be tongue lashed than to be pitied!”

  And as soon as he had finished his work, he headed straight for the gymnasium.

  2. NATURAL MUSCLE

  ALLAN HAD KNOWN the gymnasium for years. It was only two blocks from the room which he had kept ever since he began to work in the bank. It was on the second floor over a series of shops, and on the windows was painted in great letters: “Casey, the man maker.” Smaller inscriptions begged the passers-by to enter and become a man — the real man — the man in himself which he had never known before. There was a huge picture, too. It showed “the man before” and “the man after.” The “man before” had stooped shoulders, hollow chest, and his weight slumped down about his hips in folds. The “man after” was the same face, but how different a body! The breast thrust out like the breast of a pouter pigeon; the waist pinched in; and the upper lip of this magnificent gentleman was adorned with a little tuft of black mustache. From beneath, Allan, on this evening, looked up at that picture and wondered if such miracles were possible. It might be to the childlike mind of Vincent Allan, anything might be.

  He saw a pair of youths walk into the entrance; he heard them bound up the stairs toward the gymnasium. Oh, to be winged with strength like them!

  He climbed in turn, slowly, heavily, as he did everything. He rarely ran, even for a street car. As a matter of fact, there was little in life for which he really cared; for he accepted the facts which confronted him, things to be overcome with weary mental exertion, and when he had accomplished what lay just before him, he had very little enthusiasm left for the minor details of existence. He accepted himself, and had always accepted himself, as a person so mentally deficient that he could do nothing but hammer away at the nearest goal with unfailing energy and devotion; otherwise he would perish.

  So, quietly, his gentle blue eyes rounded with curiosity, he entered the gymnasium. Instantly the stale odor of perspiration was in his nostrils. A burly Negro lounged in the chair near the door.

  “What’ll you have, boss?” he asked, surveying Vincent Allan with reddened little eyes.

  “I wish to have permission,” said Allan, “to work in this gymnasium. Do you think it could be arranged?”

  He said it appealingly. Even an office boy was a human being to Vincent Allan, and had a place in the world worthy of respect. But the Negro, being an office boy, had of course learned to despise all who did not despise him. His fat lip curled as he slouched from his chair.

  “Ah, dunno,” he said. “You’ll see Mistah Casey.”

  He knocked open a door at one side and leaned to peer inside.

  “Ain’t in,” he said tersely. “Sit down in here a minute. Ah’ll give him a call.”

  Vincent Allan stepped into the offIce, selected a chair in the corner, and sat down, with his hat on his knees. Then he began to observe things one by one while the husky voice in the distance was bellowing: “Casey! O-o-oh Casey!”

  What Allan saw was a series of pictures of stalwart young men dressed in trunks only, some with flags tied around their waists, in various attitudes of striking terrible blows. Their faces exhibited scowling ferocity; their muscles seemed to quiver with life even in the photographs. They were variously signed: “To my pal, Paddy Casey;” “To the king of ’em all, Paddy Casey;” “To him that taught me, Paddy Casey;” “To the best that ever wore the green, Paddy Casey.” Even to these formidable fellows Paddy Casey was apparently a man of men.

  There now entered the room a little chap not more than three or four inches above five feet in height, but so broad, so solid, so heavily muscled that he rolled in his walk like the gait of a sailor along a pitching deck. He wore white trousers and a gymnasium shirt over which his coat had been huddled and was still wrinkled with the haste with which it had been donned. Mr. Casey entered with a broad smile of cheerful and respectful greeting which a doctor might have envied. Some of the respect disappeared as he encountered the mild eye and the shrinking form of Vincent Allan. The latter, discovering that this was the great Mr. Casey himself, declared that he had read the stimulating offer which was written in such large letters upon the windows of the Casey gymnasium and that he desired with all his heart to become such a man as Mr. Casey could make of him.

  By this time Mr. Casey had proceeded so far in his analysis of his visitor that he discarded all unnecessary forms.

  “If you come here, kid,” he barked at Allan, “you come to work. This ain’t no rest resort, and I ain’t no magician.”

  He had definitely placed Allan as an undesirable. Paddy Casey wanted two classes only. First came the rich who were wealthy enough to pay for their follies and to whom whole gymnasiums might be sold, eventually. Second were the youngsters who had in them the making of distinguished athletes — heavy young men with ropy muscles who might do as wrestlers one of these days — light-footed young gentlemen with heft in their shoulders who might become famous in the ring if Paddy Casey could give them that mysterious little touch of divine fire. Such being the interests of Paddy, he considered time spent upon such as Vincent Allan as time wasted. And, of course, he was right. As for the sign which spoke from his windows, that had been painted for him when he began his gymnasium career, and though the purposes of the gymnasium had changed greatly since those early days, Paddy, for the sake of luck, would not have altered his sign. When young men came to Paddy’s gymnasium he regarded them carefully, and if he observed either that they were rough and tough or that they possessed the spark of that divine fire of conquest which is sometimes inborn and which is sometimes passed from hand to hand, he would keep them with him and try to make them, as he boasted, “men.” But he saw in Vincent Allan one who was not rough and tough and who had no fire at all. Certainly not a likely candidate.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he asked Allan sharply.

  “I’m fat,” said the latter, growing brightest red. “I want to get down to my right weight.”

  The stubby fingers of Mr. Casey sank into the shoulder of his visitor. There they worked deep and deeper into the flesh, while he felt for those rubbery cords which are muscle. He found nothing. The whole mass seemed without a central core. It was of one consistency — thick, almost sticky. And Paddy Casey dropped his hand with an exclamation of disgust.

  “There ain’t no chance!” he said. “I can’t help you!”

  Then, as the dismay in the face of poor Vincent touched even his hard heart a little he added: “I’ll tell you what you’re up against, kid. You ain’t took no exercise. You got no muscle. You just got meat with the fat grained right in through it. I dunno how you could ever get it out. Look how soft you are! The devil, kid, I could drive my fist clean through you. It’d bust your heart tryin’ to get into shape. You go home and forget it. You’ve waited too long!”

  The whole body of Vincent Allan was quivering a little. Like a jellyfish, thought Casey.

  “I could work very steadily,” Allan was saying. “I have great patience, Mr. Casey. And — I shall not mind physical exhaustion, you know.”

  “Huh!” said Casey, and hesitated in the act of turning finally away. What held him there, unwilling, was the steady glance of the youth. Casey had never before seen any one so young who persisted in looking him straight in the eye in spite of personal embarrassment.

  “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll put you through a try-out. I got a standard. If you come up to that, all right. If you can chin yourself five times and dip three times and do some other things, you’ll be good enough to get in. Tumble into that room, yonder. Yank off your clothes. Put on that pair of trunks and them gym shoes. Then the first door on the right.”

  Young Allan undressed in a dream through which the terrible judgment
kept ringing: “You ain’t got no chance!” That was exactly it, and he had often felt it about himself. He was handicapped both physically and mentally compared to the adroitness of others. And on this day, two men had seen through him with a single fiery glance.

  When he was togged out at last in the trunks and the gym shoes, he went obediently through the prescribed door and found himself in a long chamber with a lofty ceiling at one end of which a strong-bodied young man was whirling around and around a bar, making himself into a pin wheel. He ceased with a violence which threatened to tear the arms from their sockets, gave himself a violent wrench, and came into a sitting posture on the bar around which he had been spinning. It was a miracle, to Vincent Allan, that one’s balance could be maintained with such an exquisite nicety, and withal so carelessly.

  In the meantime, Mr. Casey hurried in accompanied by a beetle-browed gentleman who carried the signs of his profession with him — a pair of boxing gloves swinging from one hand.

  “Here you are,” said Casey. “He don’t look so bad. He ain’t got no belly, y’see? Feel his arm. Bud!”

  Bud took the round arm of Vincent Allan in his immense grasp. Under the pressure of his digging finger tips the thin satin of the skin turned white, then glowed red.

  “There ain’t nothin’ there,” said Bud, almost whispering the awful intelligence to his companion. “Nothin’ but that fat stuff — and then the bone!”

  “That’s it,” said Casey.

  “All right,” Bud said sharply to Allan. “Take hold of that bar. Turn your hand in to your face — palm in. Catch tight hold, and chin yourself.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Vincent Allan.

  “The devil!” said the instructor. “It means pull yourself up till your chin is on top of the bar. Go ahead — five times, kid!”

  Vincent Allan looked up to the bar with a sigh. Then he fastened his left hand about it and began to draw himself up. There was a shout of laughter and something about two hands — he was not quite sure of what he had heard, so he relaxed.

  “Go on,” cried Paddy Casey, his face working with amusement. “Go on and pull yourself up with one arm.”

  There were others interested. He could hear the youth who sat on top of the horizontal bar at the farther end of the room shouting, and at his call half a dozen others ran into the doorway. All began to laugh the instant they saw. And Vincent Allan wished himself in the center of the earth to cover his shame.

  However, he resolutely laid hold of the bar above him and tightened his arm muscles. That one small arm could lift all the weight of his body seemed absurd, but the more he tested its power the more he found to respond. Something began to live and quiver and then writhe up and down his arm and through the flesh of the shoulder; it sent a tremor through all his body — and then he felt himself come clear off the floor!

  There was a sharp yell — like so many dogs barking in unison. They all rushed closer to him so that he almost felt they were about to attack him, and then he saw that they had come near only to wonder. In the background of his mind he heard the voice of Paddy Casey saying over and over: “My heaven, am I seein’ straight?”

  “Look!” cried Bud. “What you and me called fat, was muscle. Natural muscle, Paddy. Will you look at it come to life? How did he get it?”

  The whole group had gathered on the left side of Vincent Allan, and there they gazed with open mouths, clutching one another, elbowing each other’s ribs while Allan raised himself slowly and surely above them. His chin came above the top of the bar.

  “Is this high enough?” asked Allan quietly.

  “Yes!” gasped out Paddy. “Come down now.”

  Down came Allan, smoothly and without a jar, while all the mysterious twists and worms of muscle disappeared from his arm and left it as round and as smooth and as soft as the arm of a woman. But there he hung with his knees twisted to one side so that they might not touch the floor. One could realize, suddenly, the great length of his arm; he reminded those startled watchers of an ape in the zoo, hanging with equal ease.

  Then again the arm began to flex, the bulges and the swift rivulets of strength leaped into being; there was life in his arm like the life which tangles and recrosses in a river flowing down a rapids — a thousand currents leaping toward an end. But these things were seen by glimpses under the delicate skin of Vincent Allan. His whole arm swelled to what seemed twice its former size, and under the surface there were ridges, shadowings, and rippling bulges to suggest the presence of the individual muscles. Five times he hung the full length of his arm; five times he raised himself without a swing or a jerk, but with a fluent smoothness, until his chin was above the height of the bar. Then he dropped lightly to the floor.

  “Is five times enough?” asked Vincent Allan.

  3. THUNDER IN BOTH FISTS

  HE WAS AMAZED to hear peals of laughter while they patted one another on the back. “This is on you, Paddy!” they said.

  “I been made a fool of,” said Paddy courageously, though he grew a deep crimson. “But,” he said to Allan, “you had me beat, pal. How could I know that you was a professional? And where you been showin’ your stuff? On the other side of the pond?”

  “What stuff?” asked Vincent Allan. “And I haven’t the slightest idea of what you mean, Mr. Casey.”

  He said it so earnestly that even the bystanders did not laugh.

  “S’ help me,” gasped out Casey, “it’s real. It ain’t no fake!”

  The spectators nodded.

  “Look here,” said Casey, “what d’you do with yourself?”

  “I work in a bank, Mr. Casey,” said Vincent Allan.

  Then the red joy of prophecy descended upon Paddy Casey. His eyes bulged and his throat was so full of emotion that his voice was small.

  “You ain’t no bank clerk!” he said in that whispering passion of the seer. “You ain’t no bank clerk. Know what you are, kid? You’re the champeen of the world. The champeen heavyweight of the world! The champeen heavyweight of all time of the whole world. Or call me a walleyed fool!”

  So solemn was this utterance that the others were shaken and awed to quiet by it. As for Vincent Allan, so much had happened in so few seconds that he only knew those who had come to mock had remained to admire, though why they admired he could not quite make out. He had done or said something remarkable. That was all he knew.

  “Don’t fill the kid’s head full of the bunk,” said Bud.

  “Why bunk?”

  “Suppose he ain’t got no speed?”

  “Is he muscle bound? Ain’t he loose and soft all over? Why, Bud, he’s as fast as a cat! Did you ever box, kid?”

  “Never,” said Allan.

  “Get the gloves on. Bud. You got twenty pounds and three inches reach on the kid, but I’ll bet on him.”

  “He ain’t never boxed,” said Bud, scowling. “Did you hear him say that?”

  “He ain’t never chinned himself, either,” said Mr. Casey, and there was much laughter, while a little quiver ran through the body of big Bud.

  So the gloves were tied upon the hands of Bud and of Allan and they were brought to an eighteen-foot ring whose resined canvas was smeared and spattered with innumerable dark stains. Allan shuddered when he guessed their nature.

  “We’re going to make this real,” said Casey.

  “He ain’t never held up his hands” protested Bud, very red. “Am I one to make a choppin’ block out of—”

  “Shut up and do what I tell you. We got to see if he can take it, don’t we, before we can start in campaignin’? Shut up and do what I tell you. You fight four regular three-minute rounds, and I bet on the kid!”

  The “kid” was placed upon a stool which swung into the ring from one corner of it. There Mr. Casey knelt behind him and placed a hand upon his shoulders.

  “Look at Bud,” commanded Casey.

  “Yes,” said Vincent Allan, and his mild blue eyes looked steadily across the ring toward Bud, who sat on a simil
ar stool with his elbows on his knees, glaring at Allan and meantime kneading the toe of each glove into the palm of the other as though he wished to pack them on more firmly.

  “How does he look to you?”

  “He seems very angry,” said Allan. “What have I done to him?”

  “It ain’t what you’re going to do to him that makes him angry; it’s what he’s going to do to you, kid! Lemme tell you! He’s going to try to smear you over this ring so darned loose that I’ll have to scrape you together after he’s through with you.”

  “Ah?” said Allan.

  “Are you scared?”

  Allan looked inward upon his secret soul. “My stomach feels a little empty,” he said thoughtfully, at the last. “And — and I’m a little chilly, all at once.”

  There was a slow growl of disapprobation from Casey.

  “Look here,” said Casey. “You can’t box none. If Bud wants to hit you, he’ll hit you. The only thing for you to do is to get in at him and hit him right back. You understand?”

  “Ah?” said Allan.

  “That’s it. Plough in and before he can hit you the second time, belt him. You won’t be able to get at his jaw. He’s too smart for that. But sink a fist into his ribs. That’s all you got to do. Hit him as hard as you can in the ribs, and that’ll be the end of the fight.”

  “But,” said Allan, amazed, “he’s much larger than I am.”

  “Size ain’t nothin’, kid,” said Casey. His thick, muscular hand began to pat the shoulder of Vincent Allan — whose sticky softness now had so much meaning. “Look at the old yarn about David and Golier. Look at old Bob Fitzsimmons. That baby didn’t weigh no more’n a hundred and sixty-five and they didn’t come too big for him. You got five pounds on old Bob, and — lemme whisper to you — you’re twice as strong as old Bob ever was. If only you can learn to hit, kid!”

  Half a hundred people had collected by magic. Someone struck a gong.

  “All right, kid,” said Casey. “Sop that big bum in the ribs and we’ll call it a day’s work.”