I shook my head. “Yeah, he certainly has to win this one — or else!”
Chapter Three
Champs Don’t Quit
Nothing can ever duplicate the atmosphere of a championship bout. I had taken two trips up into the mountains to the training camp. Len looked good. Very good.
He had come into the ring first. Gowal had made him wait while the crowd grew impatient. At last Gowal had come down the aisle. He went over the top rope in his usual flashy style, taped hands raised and clasped, that false grin of his shining out at the crowd.
I was in the press row and from time to time I turned to look back across the sea of faces. The faces at the Roman Amphitheatre must have looked like those faces. Eager, sweaty, nervous, blood-hungry. Sharp faces, with the bestial quality not far below the surface. The crowd made a low humming like some vast dynamo slowly building up its power.
The staring eyes of the television cameras peered down through the smoke at the brilliantly lighted ring. To the public this was just another championship fight. They didn’t know what was back of it, how the lives of four people were inextricably tied up in the outcome of the fight.
They came out for the instructions, not looking at each other. The referee finished, slapped them on the shoulders and they went back to their comers. The handlers stripped off the robes that had been slung over their shoulders. They poked the mouth-guards in with the awkward gloves, chewed down on them, rubbed their feet in the rosin and stretched their arms on the top ropes.
Stone Gowal looked like what he was. A fighting machine. A big, fast, dangerous man without an ounce of pity. He had climbed to the top with his fists and they were all he had. Len Kennedy looked rangy and taut and clean. His skin was a clear pink as compared with the haired and grayish texture of Stone’s body.
They came out at the bell, and circled cautiously. Len came in with two jolting left jabs, caught Gowal’s jab in his right glove, moved quickly to the left, and reversed, ripping a good left hook to Gowal’s middle, but taking a right high on the head in return.
Gowal was moving as he usually did. Always inching forward, looking flat-footed, but capable of moving quickly in any direction. Gowal thought he saw an opening and threw the right. Len stepped inside with another left hook to the pit of Gowal’s stomach.
At the bell I watched Max go up on the apron of the ring, talk into Len’s ear. Len nodded, looking perfectly cool. I looked for Billy Lee. Though it was against her custom to attend the bouts, I knew that she’d be in on this one. She had an aisle seat in the fourth row almost directly behind Len Kennedy. Her eyes were narrowed and her lips compressed.
Gowal, at the bell, tried to fool Len. He came out slow, and, as soon as he was within range he led with a right that, if it had landed, might have ended the fight right there. When you’re as good as those boys, leading with the right is not dangerous.
All Len caught was the breeze, but he had come so close to catching the whole works that it made his face pale. He moved in behind his fine left jab and gave it to Gowal three times over the left eye. Gowal nailed him with a very hard left jab, half hook and half jab. Len’s knees sagged and Gowal came in fast. But Len had tricked him. He rocked Gowal with a left, a right and a left to the head and Gowal, surprisingly, hung on. I moved up to the edge of my seat. Before the ref could break them, Gowal had rubbed his laces up across Len’s nose. The referee warned him and Gowal put on an expression of injured innocence. On him that look was as out of place as a pink ribbon on a grease gun.
Len’s next left jab opened up a streak of red over that bad eye. Gowal shook his head impatiently and countered with two left jabs of his own and a right cross that Len took on his shoulder. Len came in and planted two more on that bad eye, was dropped by a short right. He calmly took the nine count, came up and moved away fast as Gowal rushed him. When Gowal made his second rush, Len bounced off the ropes, tagged that bad eye with a screaming right hook.
After the bell Gowal’s seconds worked frantically over that eye. It was cut deep.
The bell for the third brought Gowal out of his comer like a raging lion. Take three to get in one. That was his formula for the kill. He snowed Len under with a hail of gloves. Len ducked and weaved and rolled and shot back whenever he got a chance, but he couldn’t withstand that mad fury that Gowal had turned on. He went down, off balance, with a right that hit him over the ear. He came up on one knee, shaking his head to clear it, waiting for the nine count. The crowd was screaming. Gowal stood in a neutral corner, his arms outstretched on the ropes, his chest heaving. He kept his eyes on Len. The moment Len came up, Gowal was all over him again.
Len, with his chin on his chest, suddenly stopped rolling and weaving and walked right into Gowal’s rhythm. Suddenly it was a tank-town amateur bout. Two huskies that didn’t know anything except to stand and trade leather.
Blood covered the left half of Gowal’s face. Len’s mouth slowly disintegrated into a bloody smear. Left, right, left, right. With each blow Gowal made a gasping sound that seemed to tear his throat.
And miraculously Len was no longer pinned in the corner. He was coming out, inch by inch. Gowal was giving ground! Len’s punches were landing cleaner. The bell clanged, and clanged again, but they kept punching until the referee managed to get them apart. They went back to their corners like men walking in their sleep.
Len gulped air through his torn mouth. Max had his lips close to Len’s ear. Gowal slumped in his corner, his good eye nearly shut.
They came out at the bell, marched stolidly to the middle of the ring and started again where they had left off.
At last Gowal wavered, stumbled and went down heavily. Len had to be pushed away by the referee. At five Gowal was on his knees, blinking through the blinding haze of lights. He was up at nine. Len went in, took three in the mouth and knocked Gowal down again. This time Stone Gowal came up with a little more trouble. His face was no longer human.
Len couldn’t hit him. He measured him, the right poised, the left outstretched, barely touching Gowal’s chest. The referee knew he should stop it. I could see it by his face. But he was looking toward one of the big guns in the syndicate who sat ringside, and he was licking his lips in indecision.
The great fighting heart of Stone Gowal hadn’t quit.
Len, his left still against Gowal’s chest, turned his head and yelled something at the referee.
Maybe it was some dim instinct, the last vestige of conciousness. The last bolt of fury. The last spasm of deadly anger.
Len turned his face back to Gowal in time to meet a right that nearly tore his head off. As he fell, he fell against Gowal and they both went down. The bug-eyed referee started the count, looking from Gowal to Len and back to Gowal. Stone Gowal crawled over to the ropes and hauled himself to his feet.
Len Kennedy didn’t stir.
And so the story comes out wrong. The bum licks the hero. Maybe too many times life makes it come out that way.
By the time I managed to get to Len’s room, Billy Lee was already there.
Len was still dazed. But after Billy Lee put her hands on those sweaty shoulders and kissed that broken mouth, he came out of it a little. The press gang was over talking to the winner — and still the champion of the world.
There is only a little bit more of it. Len wanted to fight again. But it took him three weeks to completely wake up mentally, and Max talked him out of it. Max tore up the contract. Max has two new boys. A middle and a lightweight.