And it had to be quick. Mace was coming in faster, with a shade more confidence.
Harv feinted, lanced the jab at Mace’s eyes, bouncing it twice with the old jolt. Then, with a full pivot he planted the right under Mace’s heart, solidly. The opening was there for a fraction of a second. He hooked Mace flush in the jaw, felt the man slacken, followed it up with a straight right to the jaw and another left. The sawdust had run out of Mace. He pawed, off balance and Harv, plodding in, down on the floor now, heels and toes, slammed left, right, left — measured the husky kid and bounced the right off the button.
He danced back to the neutral corner, suddenly conscious of the high-pitched scream from thousands of throats. Morr picked up the count at four. Mace lay like an abandoned doll. But at five he quivered. Harv, with sudden fear, leaned heavily on the ropes, sucking the air deep into his lungs. At seven Mace pushed himself up, got his knees under him. At nine he was on one knee, shaking his head. At ten he came up like a dazed bear, standing stupidly with his hands at his sides.
He got his hands up as Harv came in. Harv brushed his gloves aside, drove a straight right down the middle. It didn’t hit properly, but it knocked Mace down. Mace was on his knee at seven, still shaking his head, a shade stronger.
As Harv came in again, Mace stumbled to one side, pawing at Harv. This time it had to be perfect. Mace moved back against the ropes. Harv Westa measured him, summoned up the last bit of steam, made him sag toward the floor with the left under the ear, then brought a right up through the middle. The mouthguard flew out in a fine bloody spray and Mace dropped heavily onto his face.
At eight he hadn’t stirred. The bell rang at the count of nine.
Harv sat, limp and spent, on the stool. Gus said, his voice breaking. “He’ll never come out. He’ll never come out.”
Harv watched Mace, watched the drunken way he lolled on the stool, watched him stiffen as the salts were held under his nose, watched the beginnings of coordination as they slapped his face and doused him with water.
As the bell rang, they pushed him to his feet. He was still shaking his big head. Harv came over fast, put his last hopes into a right hook to the jaw that landed with the impact of a bullet hitting wet concrete.
He went over to the neutral corner and he knew that Mace would, incredibly, impossibly, get back up onto his feet.
At ten, Mace was up and moving doggedly forward. Harv tried desperately to avoid the clinch, but the stronger man fell against him, hugged him tight, found from some inner store of instinct the ability to whale his heavy right hand against Harv’s aching side.
Morr separated them and Harv clipped Mace with a left hook to the mouth before Mace fell into the clinch again.
After the clinch, when he tried to go in again, the big whistling right appeared out of nowhere and Harv stumbled back, dulled with the impact, fighting for control. And then Mace was grinning at him, moving doggedly forward, and Harv knew that the fight was over. Maybe the fans didn’t know it yet. But he knew it and Mace knew it.
He tapped Mace with two feeble jabs, collected a right thump under the heart at the bell.
“Take Stew’s advice,” Joe yelled into his ear.
Stew’s advice. Once he clips you, stay down.
The bell rang for the ninth. Mace came over fast, almost to Harv’s corner, suddenly eager, strong in his recovery, in his knowledge that this was the time. Harv forced weary muscles to obey commands born of years in the ring. Roll with that one, get inside the right, hang on, move around him, reverse, back up, step in and jab, then weather the storm. Rock and roll, slip and turn, threaten with a right-that you know is dead, but maybe Mace doesn’t know it. Hang on in the clinch. Sag against him and stay loose for those pawing blows that tear you apart.
Move away from the left, and inside the right. Duck your head into that one move to the right, always to the right to take the sting out of that enormous right hand of his. Cotton in your mouth, a running pain in your side, and you can’t stay up on your toes because the tendons in your legs have turned to red-hot wires. But you stay up on your toes and you grin and you cuff him with your dead arms and it is like being in a phone booth with a man trying to hit you with an axe. Sooner or later he’ll manage to do it.
And the one-minute rest had to do what ten hours couldn’t do, and somehow he got onto his feet and into the center of the ring.
Mace had grown to be larger than life size and Harv felt as though they were fighting under water, fighting in the dreamy bottom of some steaming aquarium. He saw the glove coming up, saw it grow, tried to move away, not fast enough, and then his lip hurt because it was between the mouthguard and the canvas of the ring floor and the light hurt his eyes.
There was some good reason for getting up, but he couldn’t remember exactly what it was. The ring was a stone being spun on the end of a string and the spinning made him heavier against the floor. The floor had to be pushed down, pushed away.
And then he stood on legs whose knees threatened to bend both ways. He tottered like a marionette without strings and the right hand came looming toward him again, blotting the world into darkness.
Somehow he was on the stool and Lanny was back again. He remembered Lanny Morr from way back when Lanny was bending over him asking him something. With painful clarity he forced the words out, saying, “I’m fine, Lanny. Fine.”
The mouthpiece was shoved back and Gus yelled into his ear, “Thirteen coming up. Stay down, kid. Stay down!”
The blows were pain no longer. They were muffled by the vast distance. Harv was way back inside himself, marveling at the tangled pictures his eyes were relaying to his brain.
He couldn’t remember who it was who kept hitting him. A strong kid. A very strong kid and it was funny the way the strong kid seemed to be sobbing each time he threw a punch. Funny to sob like that. About what?
Then his cheek was against the canvas and he saw out there the three chairs in a row. Mag in the middle one, the boy on one side and the girl on the other. All solemn-faced and accusing. The boy knew how to throw the right now, he guessed.
Throw a right for the kid. Show him the right way. So they came to look at the old man fighting fifteen kids? Sure, they send out a new fresh one for each round. Fifteen twins. No, twins meant two.
He was on his feet again. Show the kid the way it was done. Too tired to get a right up to the height of the jaw. Have to be in the middle. He squinted through puffed eyes at the figure who moved in on him. Brace the feet, half turn and drive. See, kid? That way you get the shoulder and back in it. Right in the middle. Right against that hard brown diaphragm with the moist dark curling hair. Boom. See, kid? Pivot and slam it home. Watch your old man. You waste your strength if you bring it all the way around.
If that fellow’d stop hitting me around the head, I could show you better. Now with the left, same system, kid. Back and shoulders in it. Pick up a rhythm. Same way you’d do it on the heavy bag. Chin on your chest and keep watching that spot you want to hit. Left, right, left, right. See how solid? And as you force him back, you can take a step each time and that helps with the pivot.
One, two, three, four, five. Now he doesn’t back up any more, boy. He’s nailed against the ropes. Six, seven, eight. And now he isn’t hitting me any more, boy. He isn’t knocking your old man silly any more. Now when he bends over in the middle, he brings his jaw down. See, boy, he bends over because his stomach hurts. And then we move it up just a little and we bounce them off his jaw. One, two, three. And that’s all, kid. He can’t take as many there as he can in the middle.