“ ‘You must be pretty strong,’ says I.
“He just nodded, measuring off the muslin. “ ‘Funny, too, because you don’t get much exercise in a job like this,’ says I.
“ ‘I don’t need it,’ he says, looking at me. ‘I’ve always been strong. I’m an athlete. I was amateur champion of Columbus once.’
“ ‘Champion of what?’ I asked.
“ ‘Why, just champion,’ he says. ‘Lightweight champion. I licked everybody in town under a hundred and forty pounds.’ ”
At this point the grocer broke off his narrative to ask the other abruptly:
“How much do you weigh, Jonas?”
“About a hundred and thirty-seven,” Simmons replied. His voice was rather low.
“I thought so. Well, this Notter got started talkin’. Bill Ogilvy came up and he told both of us about how he was champion down at Columbus. That was some years ago. There was one man he knocked clear out of the ropes, he said, and he was unconscious for two days. Of course I was thinkin’ of you all the time.
“Finally I says to him, ‘Well, Mr. Notter, I’m mighty glad you come to Holtville. You’ve come just in time to give us a boxing match at our Merchants’ Association Annual Picnic’
“ ‘But there’s nobody in Holtville to box with,’ he says.
“ ‘Oh yes there is,’ says I, ‘there’s Jone Simmons that runs the hardware store. He knocks a punching bag two hours every day. You ought to see him! He’ll box with you and welcome.’
“ ‘Well,’ says he, ‘I’d just as soon knock his block off as anybody else’s, but I have to be here in the store every day and evening too, and I wouldn’t have time to train.’
“ ‘That’s all right, Mr. Notter,’ Bill Ogilvy puts in. ‘I reckon I can hold the fort here an hour or so every day so you can have time for training. I’ll be more than paid for it by seeing you and Jone Simmons box.’
“So we fixed it up,” the grocer concluded. “Bill and I didn’t know anything about the rules or anything, but Mr. Notter helped us. It’s to be a match for ten rounds, with six ounce gloves. I told ’em you’d have some in the store. To tell the truth, Jonas, I don’t like this fellow from Columbus very much, and I’ll be right glad to see you kind of hurt him a little.”
The grocer finished. A silence followed. Simmons had opened a showcase and was carefully picking an assortment of files and wrenches from a box and putting them into another one exactly similar. The operation appeared to interest him intently.
“What kind of a lookin’ man is this Mr. Notter?” he asked finally, without looking up.
“Oh, medium-like,” was the reply. “About your size, I guess; maybe a little bigger. He’s got a mustache and he looks kind of pinched in the face, but he’s got a good muscle on him. He rolled up his sleeve and showed us.
I should say he’s about thirty-eight or nine, maybe a little older.”
Simmons was silent.
“Of course you’ll have to train,” continued the grocer. “He’s goin’ to.”
“Of course,” Simmons agreed. His tone was entirely without enthusiasm. After a moment he added thoughtfully: “You know, Peter, maybe it wouldn’t be wise to have a boxing match at the picnic after all. It’s a mighty brutal thing, and all the children will be there — it’s a bad example—”
“But it’s not exactly a fight,” the grocer protested. “It’s an exhibition. It’s more like science. You ain’t exactly goin’ to hurt each other.”
Simmons shook his head dubiously. “I don’t know. Of course I know it’s science, but you must remember there might be an accident. For instance, say I aim an uppercut for his cheek and it happened to hit his jaw instead. The jaw’s a dangerous spot, Peter. It might kill him.”
“Shucks, you’re not going to hit as hard as all that,” the grocer snorted. “You ain’t going to be mad.”
“No,” Simmons agreed slowly, “no, we’re not going to be mad.”
“It’ll do me children good,” declared Peter Boley heartily. “I’ve often heard you say every boy ought to know how to fight without pullin’ hair and kickin’. I tell you, Jonas, it’ll be the greatest attraction we ever had at Holtville. I stopped in at Riley’s, and Harry Vawters on the way up and told ’em about it, and they each gave five dollars more for the refreshment fund. Why, people’ll come from all over the county just to see it. Holtville is going to be proud of you, Jonas!”
And at that, fired by this flattery and rosy vision of the glory to come, Simmons closed the showcase with a bang.
“All right, Peter,” said he, firmly. “I’ll begin training tomorrow.”
By the following afternoon the boxing match between Jone Simmons and Bill Ogilvy’s new clerk was the only topic of conversation on Holtville’s street.
Almost at once, much to Peter Boley’s painful surprise, opposition made itself felt. The Ladies’ Reading Circle, at their weekly meeting on the following Wednesday, passed resolutions condemning the projected match in unmeasured terms. The most striking phrase of the document was that which referred to the affair as a “brutal, inhuman and degrading exhibition of the lowest instinct in man.”
In a body, reinforced by the pastor of the Methodist Church, they carried the resolution, carefully typewritten by the pastor, to Peter Boley in his capacity as Chairman of the Entertainment Committee of the Merchants’ Association at Holtville.
Poor Boley was flabbergasted out of speech. By pure luck Harry Vawter, the druggist, happened to be there at the time, and he spoke as follows:
“Ladies, this isn’t going to be a fight. It is a scientific exhibition by two gentlemen, one of whom has been known and respected in this city for three years. There will be blows struck, but purely in the interests of science. There may even be a bloody nose, but that happens when your little boy falls against the woodbox, so it cannot justly be termed brutal. Mr. Boley and myself, as a majority of the Entertainment Committee, must respectfully refuse your request.”
The indignant ladies departed to argue the matter with their husbands over the supper table, where they met with no better success.
The following morning about nine o’clock the citizens of Holtville were astonished to see a man with his legs bare to his knees and his arms and shoulders entirely so, clad apparently in white muslin drawers and an abbreviated shirt of the same material, run down the length of Main Street at a goodly pace, looking neither to right nor left, and turn at the end into the lane that led to the country. His hair streamed in the wind behind him and his bristly moustache poked ahead.
Holtville gasped.
“It’s Mr. Notter getting up his wind,” explained Slim Pearl, the barber, standing in the door of his shop with a shaving mug in his hand. “Looks like he’d have to take off eight or nine pounds.”
Jone Simmons, letting down the awning in front of his hardware store, stopped and turned to watch the runner go by. Then, happening to encounter the grin on the face of Peter Boley, whose grocery was next door, he hastily turned away and set to work fastening the awning ropes.
An hour later the grocer came in to find his neighbor, naked to the waist, standing before the punching bag with a frown on his face and a book in his hand.
“One thing I’d like to know,” said Boley as he sat down on a nail keg, “how does it help a man to fight to go runnin’ around the country in his underwear?”
The reply was a terrific smash of Simmons’s fist on the punching bag.
“I think that’s it,” said he, disregarding the other’s question. “It says that a full swing on the ear should be landed with one foot drawn back and the body weight thrown all on one side. Watch, Peter. Does this look right?”