“Gentlemen, if I may direct your attention — now entering the squared circle — from the mists of County Cork — European Catchweight Champion and challenger for the Heavyweight crown — the Gaelic Goliath — Young McGiiiiiiiiinty!”
Smokey holds the ropes apart and Hod ducks in to more jeers than applause. He stands trying to look above the men’s howling faces and sees the red-haired girl from the little room leaning against the far wall with her arms crossed. He wishes she wasn’t there.
“Hey Soapy!” cries a man from within the mass of spectators. “Where’d you dig this stiff up?”
Laughter then, overtaken by excited chatter and then cheers as Choynski steps in from the street wrapped in a bearskin, his manager shoving a path clear to the ring. “And his opponent—” cries the Kid, turning to gesture theatrically toward the arriving fighter, “—for the first time in the north country — a battler of great renown — the California Terror — the Hebrew Hercules — Chysanthemum Joe Co-wiiiiiinski!”
Wild applause and foot stomping as Smokey pulls Hod over to meet Choynksi and his manager in the center of the ring, each man’s second watching the other as the little gloves are pulled on and laced, Hod expecting something heavier with padding in them. These are more to protect your own knuckles than the other man’s face.
Choynski half-turns to raise an arm and acknowledge the cheers, while Hod hangdogs down at the tobacco-stained floor.
“This evening we will be witnessing an open-rounded exhibition of the scientific art of self-defense, fought under the Queensbury rules,” the Kid continues to some booing by the more vicious element in the crowd. “Rounds of three minutes with a one-minute respite in between, a downed fighter taking a ten-count from the referee—” indicating the character the men in the Parlor called Reverend Bowers, “—shall constitute a knockout and end the bout.”
“Just call it now, Reverend, and save the dub a beating!” calls a man by the woodstove at the back. More laughter.
“Gentlemen — a show of appreciation for our two warriors!”
More applause then. “Two,” says a man behind Hod’s corner.
“He won’t survive the first,” says another.
“Four ounces.”
“Piker.”
“All right, eight then.”
“You’re on. He falls like timber in the first.”
There is more betting, none venturing that Hod will last beyond three rounds, and then a sourdough raps a blacksmith’s hammer against a hunk of metal pipe hung on a rope and Hod is pushed into battle.
There is no run to this deal. Choynski steps up and whap! whap! hits Hod twice in the face before he can cover it with his forearms and elbows and thump! delivers a short-armed hook to his ribs that hurts a lot worse. Choynski steps back and begins to casually pick openings, shooting his right fist into Hod — head, body, head, head — Hod turtling in and backstepping to the rope, which stretches too much to hold his weight. He stumbles sideways, loses his balance and tumbles forward to grab the fighter around the neck and hang on. Choynski catches Hod and pulls him in, pressing foreheads. There is already booing, and somebody’s shoe whizzes over the rope to thump Hod in the back.
“You better throw some leather, son,” Choynski mutters in his ear before pushing him away, “or these people are gonna string us up.”
Hod goes after him, left, right, left, right, putting everything he has into each swing, hitting shoulder, arm, hip, and once, painfully, the top of the man’s skull.
“You’re looping,” Choynski tells him as he ducks in and steps past. “Hit in a straight line and corkscrew your wrist—” Whap! whap! he demonstrates, snapping Hod’s head back with two effortless lefts. “Put some shoulder in it.”
Hod brings his elbows in and tries to punch straight, Choynski catching the hits on his glove or flicking his head safely to the side at the last moment. By the time the pipe is rapped and he falls back onto the barstool Smokey sets out, Hod’s arms feel like he’s been jacking bedrock for a full shift.
Smokey takes a mouthful of water, then sprays it onto Hod’s face. “Keep your mouf close,” he says. “You like to bite your tongue off.”
“I’m just about blown.”
“That’s cause you holdin your wind every time he hit you or you tries to hit him. Just breathe through it. Don’t want no air trapped in your lungs for them body punches.”
There are men screaming at him over the ropes, telling him he’s a faker and a dub, telling him to lay down, telling him to stay on his feet one more round, telling him he couldn’t punch a dent in a pat of butter.
The pipe is banged again and the stool pulled from under him. He wades in, his arms held further out in front of him. Choynski leaves off from his outfighting, ducking under and in to pound Hod in the ribs. Hod tries to keep breathing, to block the blows with his elbows. He can feel that the other man isn’t putting everything into it, punches landing with no weight behind them. The men around them are booing again and Choynski hits him with a sudden uppercut beneath the chin that staggers him back to the ropes where hands catch him and shove him forward into a shot square in what Smokey called the mark and sure enough Hod’s legs go to water and he dives forward to hug Choynski’s neck.
“Easy, son,” says the battler, bending his knees to support Hod’s weight. “You got to last six.”
“Six rounds?” The idea seems unbearable.
“Your Mr. Smith has some bets down. It’s six or we don’t get paid. You ready?”
“I think so.”
Choynski pushes him free then and snaps two punches, pulled a little so they only sting, to the right side of his face. Hod staggers back, only half acting, and cheers erupt. He steps back in, throwing straight punches with no kick in them, and Choynski smiles and feints and throws some of the same back at him. It is an exhibition, an exhibition of a scientific art he knows nothing about but is willing to pretend at as long as they stay in the center of the ring away from the blood-thirsty sons of bitches surrounding it. Choynski pops him on the nose with his left, a big blue spark before his eyes, but it triggers Hod’s cocked right hooking back over to catch the battler on the side of the jaw.
“Attaboy,” grins Choynski, dancing sideways. “Let em fly.”
Hod thrashes at him left and right and then the round ends and there are cheers and complaints and paper money and gold dust passing hands as he flops down on the stool straining for wind.
“He says I got to last six rounds to get paid.”
“They don’t tell me noner that,” says Smokey, spreading some kind of grease on Hod’s eyebrows and cheekbones with his thumbs. “Can you see out that eye?”
Hod’s left eye is swollen, closing to a slit. “Sort of.”
Smokey presses a chunk of ice to it, looks over to where Jeff Smith and his crew sit on a board-and-barrel bleacher. “If it six, you need to rest some in the middle of the rounds. Just get in tight and lean on the man. He be happy to lean back.”
The pipe gongs and they are on again and the boxing lesson continues, sparring back and forth, Choynski hitting Hod with a flurry of half-strength punches whenever the fanatics beyond the ropes get too restless. Hod’s arms are leaden and a couple times he has to backstep, dropping them to his sides to shake them out, Choynski closing but not too fast, before they can go at it again. Hod’s nose begins to bleed, dripping down over his chin and smearing into the sweat on his chest, and he has to breathe through his mouth. But he stays up through the third and the fourth, only in danger in the fifth when he catches the eye of the girl in the green, still watching through the cloud of cigar and woodsmoke that fills the room, and Choynski tags him with another uppercut that knocks him back on his keister.