by Nancy Radke
Jerry came closer, clenching with him. “Round two,” Jerry whispered. “We’ll give them at least one round.”
“Two,” he said. Could he believe him? Stormy winced every time he hit Jerry, and he kept pulling his punches to the head. Body blows were different, and he let them land hard. Jerry handled them fine.
The bell rang and he went back to his corner.
“What’s going on?” Arne asked handing him a drink. “You’re giving him time to recover.”
“Just giving people their money’s worth. I’m making it last a little while.” He wouldn’t have to guess about Jerry too much longer.
He glanced over at Stormy. She kept looking behind her, up the isle, wringing her hands. Had something happened to Hugo? He should be with her, guarding her. Kyle saw her take out her cell phone and speak into it. She nodded. Hung up. Hugo?
The bell sounded and he and Jerry faced off again. Jerry looked okay, but he wasn’t bothering to protect his head like he should, so Kyle jabbed him in the face. That brought Jerry’s hands up, so he looked more like he was boxing correctly.
They danced around a few seconds, then he punched Jerry, a right jab to the jaw, not very hard, and Jerry went down.
Kyle saw the stricken look on Stormy’s face. She was worried, even though he had told her the plan. He walked over to his corner and waited.
The referee counted to ten before Jerry started to get up, fell back and then got up again. It was pretty good acting. Hopefully it was just acting.
Just then Hugo joined Stormy ringside. She smiled and said something to him. He smiled and waved his hand as if to chase away her fears.
Relieved, Kyle walked to the center of the ring as Jerry headed towards his corner. The referee lifted Kyle’s hand as the championship belt was placed around him and people cheered. He was glad it was over. Stormy was smiling and Hugo was next to her. He figured Hugo could take care of her in the crowd, although now that the fight was over, she probably wasn’t in any more danger.
A sudden, collective gasp went over the crowd, and the room turned silent. Kyle looked around to see what happened and realized that Jerry had collapsed.
He tried to get to him, but the doctor was there first. Stormy was holding Amy and staring at him, her stricken expression telling him he had failed. If Jerry died, would she ever forgive him?
He had been so sure that this would work. Why hadn’t he pursued the idea of demanding that his doctor examine Jerry? Why had he thought he could do it this way?
As he looked out on the crowd, he saw Leon giving a discreet thumbs up to someone...a well-known gambler, who smiled and returned Leon’s signal. So that was why Leon had told him Stormy was trying to trick him. His anger built. He’d deal with him shortly.
He glanced back to his corner. Arne was picking up the gear and getting ready to leave, seemingly unaware of what was happening. Arne probably wasn’t involved. He was not a wheeler-dealer like Leon was.
The announcer was trying to talk to him, but Kyle shook him off. “Later,” he said.
They were bringing in a stretcher, and he was momentarily forgotten. Good.
He climbed through the ropes. With Arne following, he pushed his way through the murmuring crowd to his dressing room.
Once there, he held out his hands for Arne to take off the gloves.
“What happened?” Arne said. “You weren’t hitting him that hard.”
“We’ll find out,” Kyle said, his stomach churning. Jerry hadn’t said he was going to continue acting like he’d been hurt. It must be real.
If Jerry died, it was all over. He’d lost Stormy. She wouldn’t want to marry the man who killed her brother.
At that moment, Leon raced in, all smiles. “Great fight, Champ,” he said, giving Kyle a thump on the back.
Kyle glared at him, disgusted. “You’re fired.”
“What?” Leon’s change of expression was almost funny.
“I told you when I hired you, I’d have no dealing with gamblers.”
“Now look...”
“No, you look. I’ll have you black-listed so no one else will hire you. You won’t even be able to manage a car lot. Get out of here.” Kyle released all his built-up anger and worry and doubt upon Leon.
Arne’s face was one of complete bafflement. He looked at Kyle for an answer.
“He’s got a deal with the devil—the head gambler he said he’d never do business with,” Kyle told Arne, then turned back to Leon. “Get out. Now.”
After Leon left, Kyle hastily showered and pulled on his clothes. The doctors would need some time to stabilize Jerry, so he knew he would not get any information right away.
He shrugged into his jacket. “Arne, go celebrate. You did a super job of getting me ready, as usual.”
“Where you going?”
“To see Jerry. I’ve never killed anyone before, and I hope I haven’t now.”
“Wasn’t your fault,” Arne said.
It reminded Kyle of what he’d said to Stormy. He knew better, of course. He could have just refused to fight Jerry. Why hadn’t he?
He grabbed his wallet and hurried out of the room, barreled past the waiting media crowd with their microphones, and ran down the long white tunnel to the outside stage door. He knew where the main Las Vegas hospital was, and he drove there as soon as he got his car.
“Jerry Drake?” he asked the front desk lady.
The pleasant-looking woman smiled and said in a soft, calming voice which she must use on hundreds of people, “Are you a relative?”
“No. He’s a boxer. I was the one he was fighting.”
“Oh. Well, he’s being examined. You’ll have to wait. I think his family is with him.”
“Is he still alive?”
“Yes. At least he was when we admitted him.”
Kyle let out his breath, which he realized he’d been holding, and sat down in the waiting room. The TV was set to a news channel and it showed the last few minutes of the fight, then Jerry going down. Getting up. Going down again.
It looked pretty bad.
He sat there for quite awhile before he realized he still had the cellphone that Hugo had given him. He dialed the number.
“Hugo? How is he?”
“He’s fine. Where are you?”
“In the waiting area. They wouldn’t let me come in. What happened?”
“The doctor examined Jerry and found the soft spots. Jerry had the doctor call in the boxing commissioners. He explained that he still had one more fight to his contract and that there was no medical clause. Well, the boxing commissioners assured him that they would get hold of his contract immediately and make it null and void. They told him they don’t want a death at one of their fights. And they apologized to Stormy. They are going to make sure those promoters can’t put on any more events. They said they will take all their contracts away.”
“Wonderful. How is Stormy?”
“Just fine and dandy,” a female voice said behind him.
He spun around. Stormy was there, with Hugo. “Thanks to you,” she added.
Relieved, he caught her to him, and she kissed him. Home run!
Hugo smiled, looking like a benevolent older brother. “Jerry faked the collapse. It forced the doctor to examine him, publicly. The doctor said that if you had hit him harder, he'd be dead. He can’t quite figure out how he survived fighting you. But Jerry is officially retired.”
“Wonderful,” Kyle said. “I’m retiring, too. I came too close to killing someone. When I started boxing I was young and realistic, I thought all I had to do was fight strong and win and that was all there was to it. Now I realize what a mess it can be...corrupted, with my manager involved with gamblers. Besides I don’t want to fight my brother-in-law.”
Stormy laughed. “Brother-in-law? He’d only be that if...” She stopped. Looked at Kyle. Nodded her head. “You’re right. You wouldn’t want to fight your brother-in-law. The gamblers would never be able to get anyone to bet on the
match.”
She flung her arms around his neck and hugged him, ecstatic, and he swung her off her feet, round and round in a circle.
Hugo laughed at them. “I see that we’ll be planning a wedding soon,” he said as Kyle stopped spinning her. “After we explain to the police why she’s still alive. Perri would love to be matron of honor. And I’m sure their Sisters of Spirit group will be there in force. They all came for our wedding.”
Kyle looked at him over Stormy’s head. “And I’d want for you to be my best man. I owe you, Hugo. We both owe you.”
“Good. You can name your first son after me. There aren’t enough Hugos in this world.”
“Not many like you, that’s for sure.”
Hugo stuck out his hand and Kyle took it. “Welcome to the family, cousin.”
THE END
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Hugo and Perri first meet in the book, Songs for Perri, Sisters of Spirit #5
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The PRETTIEST GAL on the MOUNTAIN
The PRETTIEST GAL on the MOUNTAIN
(The Traherns Series)
I hitched my creaky old rocker out onto the wooden porch of my old home and set a bit, watching the early summer sun fall down over the Tennessee mountains. There was no one around to ask me to get them a bite to eat, or for help, or for anything. I was all alone on the mountain.
Mallory Buchanan hadn’t been gone two days and already I missed that gal. I missed the knowledge of her being there, just a few miles away on the other side of the mountain. She should be almost in Kentucky, if she took the most direct trail to Missouri.
Mally was the last of ‘em, God bless ‘er. With my husband, Jacob, gone five years now, alive or dead I had no way of knowing, and all my boys off to this war between the states or the western lands, I had a whole mountain to myself. I was used to loneliness, but this here went a mite too far.
“Well, Abigail Courtney, what you gonna do now?” My voice sounded strange. I was used to talking to the animals, but not much to myself.
I had the rest of the summer to answer my question. I needed to be off this mountain before winter, for I sure as shootin’ wouldn’t live through another one. Last winter had just about done me in. Mally had come over to help me drag in some firewood. Said she had thought about me, and wondered how I was, so left off nursing her sick mother and come to see if I was still kickin’.
The wood had froze to the ground, complements of an ice storm, and we hacked at it until we had enough broke loose I could rebuild my fire. It had gone out two days before, and I hadn’t been able to cook or keep warm. I had finally decided I was going to have to pull down some of the barn siding, when she came.
When Mally and her mom had been next door, we women would get together to do the heavy lifting and hauling. Now they were gone. Although I didn’t need them at the moment, I sure would later on. Should I even try to keep farming through the summer? Sooner or later I was gonna have to leave.
The mountain farm had been my home ever since my man Jacob had brought me here as a new bride, and tears watered my eyes at the thought of leaving it. He’d built it strong to withstand the mountain storms. A strong house for a strong man. It had stood against the storms for many years, but things needed done to it that a woman couldn’t rightly do. There’d been a few shingles blown off and the door didn’t quite close snug anymore, so the wind howled as it passed through. Two windows needed repair, and a new post put on the porch roof.
Also, I’d lived here so long, I figured the rest of the world had passed me by whilst I was raising my brood. I had no idea what the world was like, apart from the small settlements at the base of the mountains.
I had me a dilemma. I was too old to pick up and move out and too young to stay. I was still in my forties. A woman needs a man, just as a man needs a woman. But I was too old to put up with another man—and didn’t want to—and too young to want to live alone any longer.
The breeze blowing past was cooler than before and I looked over that way at some gathering clouds, black and billowing.
“Storm blowin’ up and you ain’t got yer pigs in. Or the cow milked. Best rustle along and get things rounded up.”
Trouble was, I was tireder than a three-legged mule with the field only half-way plowed. I’d been trying to cut fence poles with a dull axe. When the raiders come last winter, one of them had relieved me of my whet stone. There’s nothing more dangerous than a dull axe, for it tends to bounce rather than cut. You had to swing it harder to dent the wood, and if it bounced onto your leg, you landed yourself in a heap of trouble.
I had walked over to Mally’s old house yesterday and gathered a few of the blankets she’d left. Mally had also left a sharp axe, along with a good whetting stone, and I latched onto them like a tick onto a dog. First thing this morning I’d taken that stone to my tools, sharpening my hoe, my knife, my axe and my sickle. Then I’d whacked away at the trees with great zeal, got several poles cut and blisters to show for them.
The cow bawled and I forced myself to move. I grabbed my bucket with the big dent in it where she’d put her foot last week, and took it down to where she was waiting impatiently.
Old Aggie was standing next to the milking station, ready to have her grain while I milked.
“Too bad, old girl. There ain’t any more.” I had some, but I needed it for seed.
I wiped her udder down with an old rag, straightened up the one-legged milking stool, put the bucket between my knees and commenced to milk.
I put my head in her flank while I watched the milk shoot into the bucket, a hard shot of milk with each squeeze. Squirt, squirt, squirt, squirt. The rhythm was always soothing. I did my best thinking, milking cows.
Jacob used to give our cats milk, a squirt to their open mouths. I had never perfected the art. Also, our cats were all gone, probably eaten by the wolves. Even our ole hound dog, the one Jacob had trained, had passed away last fall.
I missed that dog. He was a good hunter. Jacob would take him out and bring back meat every time. Sometimes ducks. Sometimes deer. With Jacob gone, that dog would still go out and bring me back a quail or a duck. He’d just hunt on his own. I never had to feed him.
I had hid Old Aggie all during the war, taking her down into a hidden root cellar and staying with her while the raiders passed through. I’d hear ‘em comin’ and have just enough time to grab Aggie’s collar and hurry her over to the cellar. They’d stole my chickens and ridden over my young corn. Of the rest of the animals, only the pigs survived, hiding in the tangled brush as pigs know how to do. I didn’t even have a gun to defend myself if they’d have found me.
I’d been living on Aggie’s milk for many days now. I had no mule, but I wondered if maybe I could get her to pull a plow, just enough to put in the last of my seed grain that I’d refused to eat. I had been able to train her pretty quick to lead with that collar, which was just a strap around her neck.
This farm needed a man. Mine had all skedaddled. You’d think a woman who had raised five strapping boys would have had at least one stay to help her. But they wouldn’t stay. Each had gotten bit by the wandering bug, and when the restlessness was too great, they’d pack a kit, promise to come back, and vanish down the trail. The first two had left within a month of Jacob’s leaving, and later that year, when Paralee turned sixteen, he took off too.
I stripped the last milk out onto the ground, picked up my bucket and kicked the milk stool over by the gate.
The bucket was only half full, but it would supply my wants. Aggie trotted out into the pasture, and like all cows, promptly pu
t her head through the fence to check out the grass on the other side. I’d been repairing that fence, and she seemed to be able to find the weak spots and work on it until she pushed it down again.
I’d gotten most of the poles put back up, but needed some new posts. Until then, I really didn’t have a way to keep her inside, except she wasn’t much to wander far. But I had to have a fence up before I put in any crops, because she would eat them right down to the nubbin.
I took the milk back to the house, poured it through a cloth into a bowl, covered it with another cloth and put it in the cooler. Jacob had made the cooler by running a hollow log from our spring so that water would drip over a tin container he’d bought from some ship that was being outfitted in Norfolk. He was always so good with his hands. The water kept the sides cool. I loved that cooler, especially during the summer. Everything stayed fresh.
Then I went back to the pasture to get Aggie and the pigs. Aggie walked into the barn with no trouble, but the pigs didn’t want to go in, ducking and dodging until I finally just closed the barn door and hoped those pigs would have enough sense to take shelter when the storm hit.
I pulled my rocker inside and shoved my shoulder against the cabin door just as the storm front hit, slamming into the side of the hill like it was trying to whallop me one. I barely got the bar dropped. It brought heavy rain with it, and I prayed that Mally was off the mountain where she was supposed to be.
The chill entered the room something fierce, and I built me a fire, small, but it gave off some heat and I put the kettle on to fix me some coffee. Once I was the only one cutting and splitting the firewood, I wasn’t so generous with the size of the fires. Putting on a coat was easier than cutting down a tree.
I’d had to cut up some of my fence poles for firewood during the deep snow. I’d need to cut wood all summer long to have enough to last the winter again. How was I to do that and also tend a crop?
If I left here and went down into the settlements, what would I do? With the war over, there would only be widows there, a few broken soldiers, and ruined farms. The war hadn’t landed lightly on the South.