Entrapment and Other Writings (6 page)

If I’d never crossed the street that night after he lost to Bruno Meleska to talk to the tramp, I’d be settin on top of the world this minute, instead of where I am.

Of all the money that lad made at gambling and fighting, even stealing for all I might have known and setting such an example to his younger brothers as more than once made me wish him out of the house to stay, he never so much as once brought a dollar home or bought his mother so much as a flimsy house dress. All he ever brought me home was that night-cat Marge of his, to sleep with him in the roomer’s bed after the roomer had went off to work. And leave me to make their sheets up afters. Then back they’d go to their boozing and helling and whoring back of White City soon. As ever the streets were darkening and the little lights coming on.

So ‘tis just as well I say, for he was the sort of lad who’d strike his own mother, once the will took him. And I say Father Ryan was right in washing his hands of the lad, his own father and brothers was right in throwing him out when his breath smelt of the drink. And the lad would best have died in his cradle in Cork. And I’m a church woman in good standing that’s saying this.

I thank the Virgin not one of his brothers are fighters and gamblers, they’re good boys every one and it was Mary’s blessing, nothing less, that made him the one to go. I thank the Saviour he’ll not be bringing home that little simpering thing to sleep with him in the roomer’s bed, be leaving the sheets for me to make up afters and then to have her crossing herself like a nun and saying a Novena at my own table soon as ever it’s getting dark in the streets again.

I was fit that night. Hadn’t had me a drop all day nor a woman all the week. Feeling good too I was and knowing I could win, and weighed myself in feeling high as any lark.

It weren’t till the night and the great lights comin on in the streets, and the little sign-lights in between beginnin their flickerin off and on, and everythin else gettin dark again, like the only way I remember Cork, as though nothing might ever be light again. Then I sat alone in the hotel room recalling what a fool I been all my days, and what foolish things I’m still after doin. The foolish women always in my way, the foolish drink and all. And all the while the great night comin on the other side of the little window. And the foolish way I’ve wasted my strength on those streets.

What small difference could it make after all then, I asked myself, did myself or this I-talian lad win tonight? I asked it out loud, being there so alone by myself, and it seemed in that moment there was no other human voice in that whole great hotel. Nor anythin quite human on the street below. Nor in that whole great city. And how my own mother no longer cared in her heart, as she used to when I was a child in Cork and her only one, did I die on the street this very night.

And the whole great city I’d never been in before and nobody in it any longer knowin or carin. And my own manager, for all I could tell, bettin my own money against me, and me with no certain way of finding him out for sure. I looked then once at myself in the cracked dresser mirror. And even to myself then, I saw I looked like a ragged stranger. The unclane kind you send his ways before he finishes his whimperin just for the very foul look of him. And none of them, not even Sol Singer, knowin the sort of thing I wanted the whole time. And myself with no real way of showing them at all.

It was a sort of place I wanted, all my own mind you, a kind of a room I must have been inside of, one time or another far back, a very small sort of room it must have been and I a very small sort of child. For I first recall wishing to be back within it with mother, when we were yet in Cork. A small room, surely, quiet in there and warm, with
no small sign-lights going on and off in the street below. And no way of getting dark in there as though nothing at all could be light again.

Surely it was only for the wanting of such a place that I loved the drink instead. It would take four good preliminaries in New York, Sol would say, and me in the best shape of my career, to pay the rent of a month of such a place as often as I told him I wanted, the best way I could tell him. And how it was all he could do to keep getting me on once or twice a month at White City. Had he just not brought me along that fast, had it just not been for the drink and that holy-talkin Marge, perhaps then I might well have gotten those New York fights and even won them too. Then I would have set up in contracting with the old man, I should of clane forgot the drink. I should of set with my feet on the desk like Judge Costello hisself and never be after gettin my mouth bust open of a Monday night off some Chicago Av’noo Polack for twelve dollars and expenses, just because a crowd likes to see an Irishman take it. I would’ve got myself married to some quiet sort from around St. Columbanus. But no one like that holy Marge—how is a man supposed to respect a woman he has his own way with all the time, any night of the week, every night he has nothing to do and time on his hands, in the park or the fun-house at Riveriew or out at Danceland when they dim the lights? I had my way with Marge the first night ever I seen her, up at the Merry Gardens it was, and many’s the night since I’ve wished I’d not gone dancin that night. The very righteous way she’d carry on about gettin married and all, when all I wanted was peace and quiet and some little way of livin, of gettin along just from day to day without gettin my puss bust in of a Monday. But she cared for nothing, nothing at all; save the gossiping tongue of that Father Ryan.

Pa was the first started saying I wouldn’t ever be nothin but a poolroom pug because of the drink, that everybody should try to be champ of whatever line he was in, and he never would stop to figure out how maybe I loved the drink only after I grew to know.

Speciale wasn’t tough, he wasn’t even a little tough. He was strong, he was strong in both hands. But no way so strong as myself.
It was the smart lads who beat me, the strong ones with nothing but strong in their hands were the very ones I fought best. I could be mean with the foulest of them, and cared more for fighting the ill-tempered low-hitting lads than ever I did for the easy-natured, claner ones. I liked this Speciale. Just for the low surly look of him.

He hit me with an overhand right when I came out—caught me square on the side of the jaw with everything in the house behind it, and I shook it off before he got hisself set again from the force of his own great blow. I snapped his head back with a short left, not to hurt him but just to show him he couldn’t be hurting myself. He must have struck me twelve-fifteen times with that overhand right, me stopping a few in the air with Elbows McFadden’s old trick, and then just letting them come on. That gave me the chance to hit him and to show him I cared not at all for the strength he had in his hands. That made him a little wild the rest of the round.

That’s how them I-talians are, and the Blackamoors as well: they get a little mixed in their minds, or scared a little, and they no longer hit so sharp. They start throwing all that they have, that’s why they burn out so fast. ‘Tis the Jew fighters that kape their heads: it’s when they’re losing that they fight better and better. But to do it he has to first lose the first four rounds, or get hisself knocked down once or twice. Then he gets up so very calm, and begins, once in a while, to swing. But he never swings once till he’s counted it first: he never pulls that trigger, as they say, till he sees it’s likely to ring the jackpot. And so it is, with a fighter like that, he has his fight hopelessly lost and as yet he’s hardly swung his hands—then of a sudden he does, and the fight is all over right then.

I never felt so calm in all my life as after that first round, when the crowd thought I was hurt. I wasn’t, and Sol knew I wasn’t, and Speciale knew I wasn’t too. I wasn’t near so tired as him, settin across from him with my head thrun back listenin at him givin me the line about roughin him against the ropes and gettin the old thumb in his eye and the heel of the glove across his teeth comin out of the clinch. I opened my eyes at the warning buzzer and stood up
too soon, just to show how fresh I was, and Sol took off the stool and I looked straight up to get the bends out of my neck—and way up there in the rafters, up there in the great dark with but one small light shinin on it and small flags flying about it, a sign said
PARK AS LONG AS YOU LIKE IN A LOT OF YOUR OWN
.

And all the little flags waved a little, like there was a breeze up there you couldn’t even feel down where me and Speciale was. Then the lights was shinin hot on my back and Speciale was thrown that overhand right, mixin low lefts at my short-ribs, and I knocked him down with one I slung from the fourth row flush into his gut. When he got up I knocked him down with two straight lefts into his teeth. He spat out his mouthpiece at six, his front teeth was come too loose to gulp it well, and he come up at nine. The boo-boo birds in the back of the park, the iron-throated lads, begun yellin I should finish him while I was able.

I could not. He was too fast to find, and still too strong. He went into his shell and stayed there, and I threw what I had, and it wasn’t enough. Beside, I wanted to get back to the corner to take another look at the sign with the little light on it and the small cool breeze going past. It had to do with the thing I always wanted, I needed to see it once more.

Sol squatted before me then, workin on my legs and so not seein where my eyes were:
PARK AS LONG AS YOU LIKE IN A LOT OF YOUR OWN
. I had never thought of it that way before, and surely it was the very thing I’d been wantin all my days and yet not knowin, peace and quiet and a place all my own where I could just lay on my back all the day doin nothin just so long as I liked, and not a scoldin holy voice anywhere near. More than havin a system on the dice or the horses and being married to a wife not named Marge.

“What’s eatin on you?” Sol asks me, lookin up worried-like but not slowin his rubbin, “What are you holdin out on me for when the fellow is out on his feet? I don’t know what it is you’re dreamin of, Blackie, but it’s unfair to myself.” And he starts in a-tellin the many fine things he is soon to do for me, him and myself is going to
take in a few night-clubs this very night if I just finish this boy the next round. But even going out on a binge sounded sort of fake to me then, surely I had no heart left in me at all, not even for the drink.

“You act like you’re scared,” Sol tells me, “the wobblier he gets the scareder you look. Are you sick, Blackie? Are you drunk?” And he had the impudence then to smell my breath.

Then he looked pretty scared hisself.

But
I
just looked straight up at them rafters at that cool small breeze stirrin all them little flags and said just with my lips, like I used to in Cork when I was a tot and so’s Sol couldn’t hear, “Yes, I’m so scared I’m sick, but I like it that way.” Then I crossed myself for the first time since Father Ryan forbade me the church, and went out under the lights laughin to myself. And Speciale hit me with a hand like a housebrick clane between the eyes.

I could hear them yellin, I could feel them standin up, in the rows out there in the dark. They was all far away and goin farther. And I knew I could shake it off, like any other time. Only I didn’t, for that high wind that seemed closer. I liked it, that feelin, it was like the boo-boo birds was going far away for the last time, like this time they was never coming back at all, and I was happy to feel them going—and then I seen myself just as plain, like I was one of the boys way up in the bleachers myself, lookin through opera glasses—I was down there under the great lights in pants with a shamrock on one corner, leanin all my weight on Speciale to make him shove me off and my pants hangin too low and my head wobbling blow-like side to side and my hands too low ever to get them up in time again.

Then all the sounds came back like a great wave. I felt clear just one moment, with everything right up close as never before. The great lights swelled up all over the whole house, till the place was filled with one big white hot light shinin straight down through my eyes, so even them being closed didn’t keep out the whiteness and the burnin. Then some good fellow pulled the switch, I heard him pull it, far back in my head. And all the lights everywhere in the
world began going out one by one till there wasn’t but one little flickering one, for all the world like a vigil light, right over the ring, and no sound, not a whisper even, nobody around at all, and nothing to do save to keep watchin that one small flickering thing. But I let the big cool wind come down and blow it out like a puff. Then it was just me and the big cool dark and no wind near at all, as still, as small and safe and warm as the place where I laid as a small sick child.