“Yes,” said Melvin. “We started in a logging camp up there and are working our way back down to New York City.” He pointed at one young man wearing red boxing trunks. “That is El Rey,” he said. “We’re preparing him for the pros.”
“Did he win?” asked Harold. He took a kerchief out of his back pocket and wiped the sweat off his forehead and neck.
“El Rey has not lost,” Melvin said. The gold chains around his neck caught the sun. He wore a thick gold bracelet on his left wrist, along with a gold watch and some rings.
Harold considered this a minute. “What weight class are you looking for?” he said.
“El Rey will fight anyone, he doesn’t care, as long as there are gloves and a ring and limed rounds. No headgear. No kicking. Regular boxing.”
Harold nodded and his beard moved. “Well, usually before a fight, there’s another match, there’s more than one fight on the card. Got anybody else who wants to fight?”
“Yes,” Melvin said. He turned to the men who had come out of the trucks. “Hector will fight. He is El Rey’s sparring partner.” One of the men raised his hand and began to take off his warm-up jacket.
“Fine,” Harold said. “That’s fine. We’ll get something going here, just give me a minute.” He turned around and pointed at Gary. “Take a sledge and a tape and some of those long iron stakes by the shed and make me a ring here.” Harold turned to Melvin. “How big do you want?”
“Twenty feet is good,” Melvin said. “We’ve got gloves with us, sixteen ounces, for better protection. Do you need them?”
“Yeah,” Harold said. “I don’t have any boxing gloves sitting around.”
Gary held a stake as I pounded the top of it with a sledgehammer. The sawdust jumped around the base as it went into the ground. We used the tape to measure out twenty feet for the next stake, and snapped a plumb line to make sure the thing was square. The blue chalk dust hung in the hot air after the line drew taut. We drove in all four stakes this way and tied a white rope all the way around.
Harold and Melvin held a private conference on the hood of the closest four-by-four and then Harold came back over to us. Everybody was standing near the pay shack, looking at the ring. Harold ran a hand through his hair and spoke as he walked toward us.
“I put two hundred fifty dollars on it, so let’s see what happens,” he said. “If you want to bet, go give it to him.” He pointed at Melvin. “No odds, just straight win by time or knockout.” A couple of guys walked over and gave Melvin some money, but I wanted to wait.
Harold turned to George Hack. George was a big man, a drinker and a bar brawler. He generally ran the skidder if we were in the woods and he always worked on the big saws on any cutting job. He played football for Saint Jay High School and still talked frequently about it, although it was years ago and I’d seen him knock the daylights out of Jimmy Conrad, the bouncer over at Suedon’s Bar on Main Street. We prepped the ring area with a rake, and George went into shed and came out without a shirt on, just a pair of jeans, his work boots, and the sixteen-ounce boxing gloves on his hands. Some of his flab hung over his jeans. Hector was smaller than George, but there was no fat there. Hector had on boxing trunks and shoes laced up to his knees. His gloves. Melvin agreed to take the first round as referee. He wore a white towel around his neck.
The bell rang and both men came out of their corners toward the middle of the sawdust ring. George took a wild swing that hit nothing. He almost slipped. He was already sweating. Hector set him up fast. Two quick left-handed jabs, one to the face, one to the body, and all the time, the right fist was waiting, held back, the pressure building, as George’s hands chased Hector’s up then down, still back, the bombsight zeroed in on George’s left ear, then boom! Right on George’s ear, clean, solid, through, and George’s knees buckled and his head bounced when it hit the sawdust. George wasn’t even conscious and yet, tears were coming out of his eyes. Two guys jumped into the ring and pulled George into the back of a pickup truck. As they turned him over, sawdust stuck to his chest and his face and his crotch, which was soaked. He’d wet himself from the shot to the head.
Harold suddenly pulled me off to one side, behind the pay shack. “Go get me Tom Kennedy,” he said in a low voice. He handed me a hundred-dollar bill. “Tell him there’s more to go with that.”
“Let me fight El Rey,” I said.
Harold shook his head. “I want to win,” he said. “You can’t take an ax handle out there in the ring with you.” He talked out of the side of his mouth and then turned toward me. “Besides,” he looked straight at me, “you don’t have the life in front of you that Tom does.”
I took the money and walked along the stream that made the back border of the wood lot. It brought me out at the end of Langmore Street and Kennedy lived one over, on Hartsel Avenue. I walked down the cracked sidewalk, full of frost heaves.
Tom Kennedy was Harold’s main tree climber, for any residential job that went up over a hundred feel. At least, that’s what everyone at the wood lot would say, but I’d only seen him at the woodlot once. I heard more about him through Bill than anything else. In reality, Tom Kennedy managed to collect weekly pay from Harold just for staying away from the wood lot. His temper and drinking were two of the things I first heard about when I came to Saint Jay. Tom Kennedy was also a local fighting legend. I’d heard stories about him from Bill, and the last I’d seen him at the wood lot, he’d yelled at Harold like I’d never heard anybody do, ever. You could tell he was a mean drunk just from the force of his words. Told Harold to suck it, then stood there and waited for Harold to say something. Harold didn’t say anything. I was nervous going to get Tom Kennedy.
He sat on the wood porch of his big house, drinking a beer. Bill told me Tom’s father had been the first Irish cop to leave Boston and tried to bring some big-city justice to the force here in Saint Johnsbury. Tom had tried to be a cop too, for a little while, but something went wrong and after a short time, he simply wasn’t a cop anymore. He didn’t wear the uniform and he didn’t drive the car anymore; he just faded out of that life into another.
There were kids running around, some his, some his girlfriend’s. Some belonged to other people and I thought that ten years from now, those same kids wouldn’t even hang out with anyone named Kennedy. Tom sat there on the front porch, drinking a beer. I walked up the sidewalk to the bottom step of the porch.
“Hi, Tom,” I said.
“Hi yourself,” he said. “What does Harold need done?” He tilted his head back and drained his beer, tossing the can on the porch. His reddish hair looked bronze in the sun.
I took the hundred-dollar bill out of my pocket and handed it to him. “There are some men from New York City over at the wood lot, looking to fight.” I indicated the money. “Harold says there’s more after that.”
“What type of men?” he asked. “Niggers?”
“No,” I said. “Hispanic men. From New York City.”
Tom made a noise I took as a laugh. “They aren’t from here,” he said. “They’re not local. There’s no Spanish Vermonters.” He looked at me. “How tough are they?” He touched his own check. “Some black guys got hard faces, their faces can break your hands. And they take people’s crap all the time, so they can get pretty mean. Hispanic guys aren’t like that.”
“The one guy just sent George Hack to the hospital,” I said. “Hurt bad.”
“George Hack?” he said. “George Hack couldn’t fight my sister.”
“Well he went down pretty hard,” I said. I thought of the tears coming out of Hack’s eyes, that he pissed himself.
“Did you think George Hack was tough?” he asked. He started lacing up his work boots.
“Maybe,” I allowed.
“George Hack was a fat slob,” Tom said. “I should go over to the hospital and beat him in his bed just for losing so bad.” He pushed on his right ear with the flat of his hand and I heard the cartilage crack. “He couldn’t box,” he said.