Each Man's Son

by Hugh Maclennan

  He held her as she lay warm, satisfied and relaxed as a cat, and he was still holding her when she fell asleep. He took his arms away gently and lay on his back, loving her and wishing he had given her a son. He thought of all the children who played and brawled in the colliery rows while his own house was empty. He thought of young Alan MacNeil and of McCuen, who followed all the sports, saying in the hospital that Alan’s father was on the way downhill but was soon going to have a crucial fight with some American light-heavyweight in some New Jersey town. The town’s name came to him, Trenton, and he knew he had seen it years ago from a train window on the route from New York to Philadelphia. It was an old place, but it had as much smoke and iron-oxide red as Broughton and it ought to be one place in America where a broken-down Highlander like Archie MacNeil could feel at home.

  Eleven

  ARCHIE MACNEIL felt at home nowhere any more, so Trenton seemed as good and as bad a place to be as any other. He thought of nothing but the fight with Packy Miller that was coming up a week from Friday. Even after the many beatings he had taken, fighting was still all he wanted to do. Now he was in Mooney’s gymnasium training hard.

  It was a small gymnasium which had once been a livery stable. The stalls had been cleaned out and a large central space had been cleared, but dried manure which had seeped under the flooring was still there, so the place smelled of the manure in addition to sodden boxing gloves, sweaty training suits, liniment, steam from the showers and the cigars smoked by the trainers and hangers-on. A skylight over the ring and a row of windows just under the roof gave the boxers all the light they ever had for their work.

  This afternoon the semi-pros and preliminary boys, all of them wearing black combination training suits, had stopped skipping rope and pounding the light bags along the left wall to watch Archie stalk his sparring partner, Ed Wagner, in the ring. A sense of excitement had been building up during the past hour, for the day was going as all the other days of Archie’s training had gone before. He had been picked as a trial horse for Trenton’s native son, Packy Miller, and now for five days he had battered his partners with such expert savagery that the original odds on Miller had dropped considerably. More loafers than usual had paid ten cents apiece to watch the fighters train and the gym smelled of their sweat and sounded with the steady shuffling of their shoes on the bare floor. The only seats in the place, besides the stools provided for the boxers in the ring, were occupied by two men with a professional interest in Archie, one as fat as the other was thin.

  The fat man was Sam Downey, who had traveled quite a distance in the four years since he had appeared in Cape Breton with his tongue hanging out for any kind of meal ticket. He now had five other boxers on his string beside Archie MacNeil; it was thought that he was getting steadily closer to the big promoters in New York. Laughin’ Sam, the sports writers called him, because he had a nervous tick that gave him a falsetto laugh. In a profession where mutilation of features is taken for granted, Downey’s face was still remarkable. At some point in his career his nose had been bitten off, and as his face was now fat and pale, that smudge of a nose with the scar of someone’s incisor in the healed flesh gave him an appearance extreme enough to frighten children. Perhaps to offset the face, he dressed invariably in light-colored worsteds and large cravats with high stiff collars. He wore a large gray hat squarely on the top of his head, and while it stayed in place, which it did through all the hours of the day, he smoked cigars neatly without chewing their ends.

  The thin man who sat hunched over next to Downey was the trainer, Charley Moss, a one-time lightweight contender who had abandoned his dreams of glory fifteen years before. It was believed around the gymnasiums that the stop watch he held in his hand remained there even in his sleep. As a trainer, he had converted his old razor-edge intensity into a churlish sullenness which made his boys think he hated them as well as every aspect of the boxing business.

  He nodded towards the ring. “Eight days to go, and look at the son of a bitch. He’s going to take Miller before the fifth.”

  Downey’s left hand stroked his paunch, which bulged in pale gray worsted between his legs. “Hell,” he said, “what can you tell about how good he is with nuttin better than Wagner to work on? That Dutchman’s been fighting too long. Most of the time he don’t even know where he is.”

  Moss kept his eyes on the ring. “Wagner threatened to quit this morning,” he said.

  “Yeh? Does he think he can eat better some place else?”

  “He’s had hell beat out of him all week.” Charley’s forehead wrinkled as he saw Wagner’s head snap back from a left. He was glad that Archie’s right cross that followed was a graze, for had it landed it would have knocked the Dutchman cold. He turned back to Downey. “This don’t make sense. You want me to stop it?”

  Downey shook his head while his left hand continued to stroke the gray worsted. “No. I want to see some more of Archie.” A moment later his voice piped an octave higher, “I’ve seen him look good like this before.”

  “Sure you did. And you saw him win his fights, too.”

  “So what if he’s got one win more? He’s been through for two years. One win more, what difference will it make? The stupid bastard. He’s through.”

  Moss gave Downey a quick look and a jerk of wrinkles appeared on his forehead as he took in the meaning of Downey’s words. He wasn’t surprised. No one surprised Charley Moss. If Archie were the only fighter Downey had, the fat man would be chortling about how wonderful his boy from Cape Breton was. But with five other fighters, Downey was a businessman now.

  Moss went over to the ring apron with his watch in his hand, pulled back the striker of the gong and let it slam even though his watch said there were twenty-two seconds left in the round. Suddenly he was angry at everybody–at Archie for turning a training bout into a grudge fight, at Downey for being Downey, at himself for continuing to work for such a man. As the boxers moved into their corners he vaulted into the ring and crossed to Archie’s corner.

  “Take it easy and quit showing off,” he snarled.

  Then he ducked through the ropes and jumped to the floor, landing lightly on his toes. In spite of his opinion of his own profession, his heart was still in the canvas-covered rings where arguments could always be settled and a man needed more than a fast tongue to survive–if the promoters would let things take their course.

  “That boy of yours is sure rough on his partners,” said a voice behind him. Charley’s forehead jumped into the crease of angry wrinkles again. He turned and recognized the speaker as a sports writer who worked for one of the Newark papers. He was the first out-of-town reporter to have a look at Archie before this fight.

  “What’s your boy trying to do, Charley–leave all his fight in the gym?”

  Charley’s reply was drowned in a thunder of noise as the men in black training suits began pounding the bags on the far wall. He sat down again next to Downey and the reporter sauntered after him. Downey leaned close and began to talk to Moss with his hand cupped against Charley’s ear. As Moss listened against the thunder of the drumming bags his face grew sullen as well as angry. He looked at his watch, got up again and went towards the ring, and the roar of the bags stopped abruptly as the men in black turned to watch.

  The voice of the reporter came through the silence. “MacNeil’s a hell of a lot better than you fellows have been giving out about him. I wouldn’t give Miller even money to go the distance.”

  Moss rang the gong and looked up at the ring. If this fellow printed what he thought, the odds on Miller would drop. Everyone read the Newark paper in Trenton. Downey wouldn’t mind, but what bothered Moss was that he minded himself. He didn’t like MacNeil as a man, but when he was good he loved him as a fighter. When he had first begun to train Archie he had been sure he had a coming champion. Archie was too open in those days, he took more punches than he needed to take, but he was fast and he had that rippling strength that made him deadly when his timing was on. In th
e early days he had known too little about boxing, but Moss had corrected most of his early faults. He had trained balance into him and taught him to move in one piece. He had taught him how to bob and weave and had let his natural instinct strictly alone. MacNeil’s natural instinct was to go in and finish it as quickly as possible, no clubbing or gouging, but fast, lancing blows. In his early days, Archie’s terrible eagerness to fight had reminded Moss of Terry McGovern, the boy Moss still honored as the darling of them all.

  Charley stood by the apron with his right hand rubbing abrasively at his blue jaw, studying Wagner impassively. Wagner was the bull type of fighter and he had been selected as a partner for Archie because he was short and strong and was supposed to resemble Packy Miller. He was muscle-bound, his hair grew so low on his forehead it was only two inches over his eyebrows, and his expression was so stupid a man could doubt legitimately whether he was even capable of feeling pain. Downey was right when he said the Dutchman was no good. Archie belonged to the cat family and even a third-rate tiger couldn’t help looking pretty good against a bull.

  Up in the ring, his red hair bristling, his jutting jaw held low, moving smoothly and in one piece, Archie was setting Wagner for the right cross. Around Archie’s eyes was the redness that always showed when he was angry. Wagner must have said something or done something today to have made Archie hate him so much. Wagner was dirty in his habits and there was a queer fastidiousness about MacNeil. Anyway, Moss thought, it never took much to make Archie feel that he had been insulted. He watched impassively as a left knocked Wagner’s head back and Archie flashed in with a volley of punches which seemed to bounce off the Dutchman’s head as he covered up. A right to the body made a bang that echoed from the back wall of the gym, and Moss turned away from the ring, knowing Wagner wouldn’t last the round.

  “Listen, Charley–” Again Downey was leaning over to talk into Moss’s ear. “All it needs is a graze to open those eyes, and Miller’s a crowder. By the fourth Archie’s sure to be blinded, so what’s the use?”

  Moss brushed away the fat hand next to his ear. “Listen, Mr. Downey. Let’s get this straight. Packy Miller’s nuttin but a roundhouse slugger. Your boy up there’s worth two of him, even now.”

  Downey ignored the anger in Charley’s voice. “I never said Miller was good. I said he was young and he’s still got his legs. I said he was the kind the crowd goes for.”

  Moss gave the fat man a long stare of angry contempt and when Downey let out his falsetto laugh he turned away to watch the ring.

  “Okay,” he said, without expression. “You’re the boss. Only don’t expect me to talk him into throwing it because that dumb bastard wouldn’t throw a fight even to keep out of jail.”

  When Moss got up and walked around to the far side of the ring, the reporter was at his elbow again.

  “I want to do a story on MacNeil. What was Archie like when you first got hold of him?”

  “Not too smart,” Moss said, and the words came from the depths of his experience and resentments. Not too smart. And yet before he got hurt he had had everything else. Everything but the calculation that makes the real killers, the coldness under the surface of the nice guys like Gentleman Jim Corbett and the mean ones like Kid McCoy.

  “He comes from some place up in Canada, doesn’t he?” the reporter said. “Irish, isn’t he?”

  “MacNeil’s Scotch.”

  “That’s too bad. The Scotch never seem to get anywhere in this game. The Irish, the Jews, the Negroes, the Italians–sometimes even the Poles. Miller’s Polish, you know. Some day I’m going to do a piece about the racial origins of boxers.”

  Moss looked at him coldly. “You don’t say.”

  Then his eyes went up to the ring. Wagner had been retreating and protecting his jaw and Moss knew from his stance that his legs had gone rubbery and he had reached the point of not caring. It was stupid–a grudge fight in training eight days before the main go. But what difference did it make? Downey was going to fix MacNeil.

  “It looks like he’s got him now,” the reporter said, but Moss was not listening.

  His eyes were on the ring in critical appraisal. On his toes within range, all of a piece and swaying, Archie waited for Wagner to make the first move. The Dutchman obliged. He lowered his left for a hook and lurched forward. A current of force shot up through Archie’s calves, thighs and buttocks, gathered power through his swinging lumbar muscles, merged itself into the enormous leverage of his forward-driving shoulder and transmitted the full weight of his 172 pounds into the ram of his arm. It came out solid with a flick of the wrist, beating Wagner’s hook by at least six inches. The crack of Archie’s glove on Wagner’s jaw was like a bat hitting a baseball and Wagner was unconscious before the back of his head hit the floor.

  Moss grinned broadly. The sweet, lovely son of a bitch! He wondered how Downey liked it. It was going to take a good deal of fixing to keep Archie from finishing this Trenton Polack that Downey had his eye on, even if it was the one good fight left in Archie’s system. Moss jumped into the ring and gave Archie a slap across the back and then bent down over Wagner. The Dutchman’s eyes were already beginning to open and it occurred to Moss that they looked no more glassy now than they did normally.

  “Okay, MacNeil,” Charley said. “You’re through for today.”

  Archie put a towel around his shoulders and jumped down to the floor. He paid no attention to Wagner; it was an aspect of his nature that Moss had always respected. Archie didn’t like Wagner and when he didn’t like a man he never pretended that he did. It wasn’t smart, Moss knew, to have this kind of integrity in the boxing game because crowds were alienated by it. Fight crowds were not only cruel, they were also sentimental, and it gave them a pleasant feeling to see a fighter cut a man to pieces and then embrace him afterwards. Take the O’Leary fight, for instance. Archie had liked Tim O’Leary and after knocking him out he had helped bring him around. But when he had no respect for an opponent and knocked him out, he walked off and left him lying.

  As Archie went to his dressing room the Newark reporter stopped him and began asking questions. Some of the loafers crowded around to shake his hand, but Archie pushed through them and went on to his shower. Moss turned back to Wagner, who was now on his feet, standing like an ox and saying he was through. Charley left him to fend for himself and jumped down from the ring. The gymnasium was a roar of noise again. Downey beckoned him to follow and led the way towards the office in one of the corners of the former stable. When Downey sat down in the swivel chair behind the littered desk and lit a cigar, Moss shut the door and waited.

  “What I say still goes, Charley.”

  Moss shrugged his shoulders. “He’s your property.”

  “He’s got eight days to go.” Downey leaned back, his cigar working in his mouth, and stroked his paunch. “Eight days can seem a mighty long time to a boy with an edge like he’s got.”

  Moss waited.

  “Is Wagner quitting? You told Archie to go easy on him, didn’t you?”

  “You heard me tell him.”

  “Well, I’m sick of Archie. Who does he think he is? Look what I’ve done for him.”

  “All he’s got to do,” Moss said, “is look in the mirror to see what you done for him.”

  Downey took out his wallet and opened it. “Here, give him this dough and then leave him strictly alone. Eight days can seem a mighty long time to a boy like him. Tonight you and me’re going to New York. I got a new boy I want you to start working with tomorrow.”

  Moss leafed through the bills and put them into his right-hand pocket. “This is one Archie wants to win,” he said. “Don’t be surprised if he does, is all I got to say about this deal. If you got any money on the line you’re taking a chance.”

  “I’ll take it.” Sam Downey pushed himself back from the desk.

  “Will I tell him to come up to New York with us?”

  “You can tell him to go to California if he feels like it, so long as
he shows up here for the fight.”

  Moss went out through the gym to the dressing rooms. Archie was in the shower and the reporter was on a bench making notes in a small brown notebook.

  “It’s always a good story,” the Newark man said, “when a fighter makes a come-back.”

  Moss could hear Archie splashing and singing under the shower. He went out again and found the Dutchman in the dressing room next door sitting in a stupor with the sweat cold on his naked body and his ring shoes still on his feet. Wagner looked up without expression when Moss spoke to him and Moss tossed him a towel. He caught it and draped it slowly around his shoulders. Moss shrugged and left him, and when he returned to Archie’s room he saw him standing naked rubbing himself vigorously while he answered the questions the reporter shot at him with his usual childlike seriousness. It took another while before the reporter had all the notes he wanted and got up to leave. He shook Archie’s hand and saluted Moss as he went out the door. Archie had his shirt and trousers on now and Moss went over to him and held out Downey’s hundred dollars.

  “The boss told me to give you this dough.”

  Archie sat down on the bench and reached for his socks. “I wass going so good today all I need is another partner. Wagner iss no better than an ox.”

  “He’s quit,” Moss said. “Do you know what that means? It means you’ve knocked yourself clean out of partners. It means from now on you’re strictly on your own.”

  Archie looked up. “What the hell are you saying?”

  Under the scar tissue was the sadness, the fighter’s sadness, in Archie’s eyes. Nearly all of them got it if they stayed in the game long enough. Even an imbecile like Ed Wagner showed that look sometimes. Again Moss thought of animals. Even ferocious animals had that look in their eyes when they were sick.

  “I can beat the hell owt of Miller.” Archie’s voice had the incredulous, protesting tones of a child refusing to believe. “You said so yourself.”