Each Man's Son (23 page)

 

Twenty-Four

E
VER SINCE HIS FIGHT
with Packy Miller, Archie seemed to have been living in a steam bath. It had been hot in Utica, where he had gone in hope of a fight which had not materialized. It had been hotter still in Buffalo, where something peculiar had happened to him on the street, and he had come to himself in a precinct station with a kindly man in police uniform bending over him and asking his name. Now he was in Montreal, had been here a fortnight, and it was the hottest place he had ever known in his life.

As Archie walked down the curving slope of Beaver Hall Hill his open pores were saturating his only suit of clothes. The worsted between his shoulderblades showed a dark patch of sweat and he could feel the cloth clinging stickily to the insides of his thighs. He walked through Victoria Square and turned into St. James Street, entered a large, cement-fronted building and rode up five floors in an elevator to the office of Raoul Picotte, the chief boxing promoter in the Province of Quebec.

He gave his name to a dark-haired girl and sat down in the outer office waiting for Picotte to receive him. Over his head was a framed photograph of a hockey team, with Picotte standing at the end of a line of bulky players, wearing a fur cap. Two stenographers sat behind a wooden railing with idle machines in front of them and chattered in French while
Archie waited. He sat there still and loose in his sweaty clothes. He looked over the girls' heads through the window to the gray flank of a large grain elevator. Though the distance between himself and the elevator was barely a hundred yards, it looked flat and its edges seemed fuzzy.

The door of the inner office opened and a well-groomed man with iron-gray hair stood there. Raoul Picotte had carefully manicured hands and small feet in pointed shoes. When Archie saw him he thought he must have come to the wrong office, for he had never seen a fight promoter who looked like this.

“So you're Archie MacNeil?” Picotte's English was perfect. “Come inside.”

Archie went through the open door and took a chair facing Picotte's desk. It looked more familiar here, for the walls were hung with photographs of boxers in fighting stances. They all looked indistinct to Archie, but he recognized Jack Johnson by his color and Jack Dillon by the stance he had studied for years. Picotte sat behind his desk and looked Archie over with a long, appraising stare.

“So you think you deserve a chance at Eugene Masson's Canadian title, eh?”

“It iss what I came here for.”

“It's a pity you did not come two years ago when I wanted you.”

“I am here now. Iss that not good enough for you?”

Picotte smiled. “Tell me, Archie–why did you break up with Downey?”

“Because he iss a son of a bitch.”

Picotte gave him a penetrating stare. “Have you ever seen Eugene fight?”

“I ha? been in the States four years. How whould I be seeing him fight, when he hass fought no place but here?”

Picotte smiled again. “Just tell me something, Archie–what gives you the idea you're worth a shot at Eugene's title?”

A slow anger kindled the redness around Archie's eyes. “While he picked the safe ones, I wass fighting the best there iss. By Chesus, in one year I fought more than he did in hiss whole life.”

“There's not much argument about that,” said Picotte dryly. He opened a silver case and extracted a cigarette. While lighting it, he said with his eyes screwed up against the smart of the smoke, “Eugene's fast. Nobody has ever knocked him out.”

“Sure he hass neffer been knocked owt. Why should he be knocked owt, when he fights nobody with a punch and does nothing but dance?”

Picotte's shrewd eyes softened. He got up and went to the window. “Come over here, Archie.”

Archie got up and joined him. His suit was still clinging to his skin and he felt dull and heavy in the head. He remembered having felt that way in Buffalo before he woke up in the police station. What he needed was a spell of training and regular meals to get the lead out of his bones. He had never been in so bad a shape as he was in now. It took most of what he had to get out of bed in the morning, and the last two weeks of stevedoring had left him exhausted. He did not notice how Picotte's shrewd eyes watched him as he lumbered around the corner of the desk.

“Ever been in Montreal before, Archie?”

“I ha? been here two weeks already.”

“This is quite a city.” He pointed to a square building nearby with the words O
GILVIE
O
ATS
written in white letters around a black water tank on its roof. “What does that sign say, Archie?”

Archie stared, following the pointing finger. “What sign whould you be meaning?”

“Right in front of you where I'm pointing. Can't you see it?”

“That iss pretty far away,” Archie said.

Picotte went back to his desk, and Archie, slouching around after him, slumped in his chair.

“It iss time Masson met a man willing to fight,” Archie said. “What iss the Canadian title worth, with him holding it?”

Picotte picked up his cigarette and leaned back in his chair, the cigarette between his fingers and a wreath of smoke drifting away from it. “Tell me something else, Archie–how long is it since you've seen a doctor?”

Archie thrust out his jaw and his bronze hair bristled above his scarred face as he looked angrily at Picotte. “Why whould you be asking me that?”

“Because your left eye is completely blind, and your right eye is losing its sight, too.”

Archie slumped back again. “I can see good enough with one eye to look after Masson.”

Picotte got up again and came around the desk. This time Archie did not move. Picotte put his hand on Archie's shoulder and felt the pack of muscle, nodded admiringly, then leaned back against his desk and surveyed the fighter with crossed arms. His jaw looked lean and shrewd as he tightened his lips over the tip of his burning cigarette.

“Archie,” he said in the voice of a man talking to a child, “you've done your fighting. Why not hang up the gloves for good?”

Archie stared back without moving. His body was still trim and powerful, but after his fight with Packy Miller, the scar tissue over his eyes had become infected and it was still rough and angry-looking. The flesh over his cheekbones was battered and mashed, his nose was a sponge with hardly any unbroken bone left in it and his ears were like the handles of a jug.

“Listen, Mr. Picotte, since my last fight I ha? improved. I ha? been thinking about things. Look–I whill show you.” He got up and sprang into a fighting stance, crouching and holding his fists close together before his chin with the elbows guarding his heart and solar plexus. He danced around the office, snapping out quick, vicious, short punches. “You see,
Mr. Picotte,” he said, stopping suddenly. “With the big punch I ha?, it iss not necessary to fight so open. From now on I whill fight out of a crouch and wear them down with the short ones. I whill save my strength for the big punch when they are ready.”

As he slumped back into his chair he realized he had made no impression. “So you whill not make the match for me with Masson?”

Picotte took the cigarette from his lips and snubbed it out in an ash tray. Eying its ruin, he said, “I still have some conscience.”

“Then maybe you ha? something else for me? A semifinal or a preliminary, maybe?”

Picotte shook his head.

Archie stared at him, trying to think. Then he got to his feet. “All right. You can go to hell.”

“Sit down again.” Picotte's voice was quiet and authoritative. “I want to talk to you some more.”

Archie hesitated, but finally he did as he was told. He watched dully while Picotte put his hand into his breast pocket and took out his wallet. He watched Picotte count out five ten-dollar bills, eye the ceiling while he made a rapid calculation, replace one of the bills and leave four tens lying on the table.

“Are you married, Archie?”

“I ha? a wife.”

“How long since you've seen her?”

“Four years.”

“That's a long time.”

“I whill go home when I am the champion.”

Picotte smiled. “What does a championship mean? Who even remembers some of the champs? But everyone remembers Sam Langford from your own province. Everyone remembers old Peter Jackson from Australia and Peter Mahar from Ireland. What's a championship?” He pushed the four bills across the table. “One night two years ago you earned a
lot of money for me, though you don't know it, maybe. Let me pay your way home. That's where you ought to go now, Archie–home.”

Murky thoughts blundered through Archie's mind as he sat there watching the dapper French-Canadian with his money. What was the idea of offering him money? Who had ever offered him anything for nothing in all his life?

“So you think you can get me owt of Montreal that way and keep Masson for the easy ones? Whell, I am no fool. Downey used to giff me money like that, in bills too, but I found owt what he wass up to.”

Picotte's shrewd eyes narrowed. “Did he? So that was how Downey worked you, eh? In New York they call him the son of the original bitch.” He pushed the four bills so far in Archie's direction that they protruded over the edge of the table. “You need this money bad, Archie. Take it.”

“How whould you be knowing if I need it or not? And what makes you think I take money I ha? not worked for? Do I look like a bum?”

Picotte smiled. “Listen, boy–don't make it too easy for me to take this back. I like money. But I told you before–I owe you something. You remember Timmy O'Leary? The night you stopped O'Leary I was there. I didn't think you had a chance, but you were a Canadian and I backed you at one to four. From what they told me afterwards, I made more on that fight than you did yourself. That forty dollars is 10 per cent. Call it your commission on the deal, if that makes you feel any better.”

Archie glared at him. “There iss a place where you can put that money, and you whould be knowing where it iss. All I want iss a chance to show what I can do again.”

“The night you whipped O'Leary,” Picotte went on, ignoring him, “you were great. Any man in the world you could have taken. Jack Dillon, Philadelphia Jack O'Brien–it would have made no difference, you would have whipped them. Nobody can take that night away from you, Archie.” Picotte
gave another encouraging smile. “Take that fare money and go home to your wife. She doesn't care if you're the champion or not. Four years is a long time to leave a woman alone.”

Archie rubbed his forehead roughly with his right palm and wondered what it was, the queer feeling that came over him so often these days. Picotte looked blurred and he felt dizzy and slow.

“You whill not fool me that easy,” he said, and got up and blundered out of the office.

A few minutes later he was in St. James Street, walking back to Victoria Square with his hands in his pockets. This was a god-forsaken city in the heat. It was almost as bad as Trenton. He reached the square and found an empty bench under a tree and sat watching the carriages and motor cars and horse-drawn drays moving noisily around the oblong island of grass where he sat in the center. He glanced up at the statue of Queen Victoria, but the pigeons had made such a mess of her face that he did not know who she was. He felt in his pocket and took out his money to count it. All he had was two dollars and seventy cents left from a fortnight of stevedoring. Next week he would keep out of the taverns and save his pay, but this was a godforsaken town and he liked nobody in it. Next week if the foreman gave him any more of his lip he would have to show him what he could do, and that would be the end of his job on the docks.

Archie sprawled on the bench with the sun in his face. The heat made him drowsy and the drowsiness sent his mind a long way back behind the arenas and gymnasiums and cigar-smoking, gravel-voiced crowds among which he had lived these past years. He remembered Mollie the way he had seen her the first time. He remembered her strange, exciting timidity, her gentleness and how she had made him laugh and how good he had felt to know that a girl like Mollie would take up with the son of a man like his father. For a
moment he felt a pang of guilt for having left her alone. Then he remembered her letter saying she never wanted to see him again. By Jesus, he thought, and passed his hand over his scars. “By Chesus,” he muttered aloud, “I ha? taken it here in my flesh and body, and who iss she to complain?”

 

Twenty-Five

L
ABOR DAY
marked the end of summer but not an end to the unusually warm season, and Alan went back to school. About the same time Ainslie's practice became so crowded that he had time for nothing but work. There were many operations and more people than usual lying sick in their homes. Each morning he set out with the mare at seven-thirty and seldom returned before midnight. He ate his lunch in the hospital or went without it, and Margaret was instructed how to dispense the routine quotas of medicine to the miners who called at the surgery to receive them.

Then finally a break came in the rush of work, and Ainslie managed to be at home one night for dinner. When the meal was over he pushed back his chair and said, “How do you think Alan is faring at school? He's probably wasting his time. I'd better take a walk and drop in on him this evening, because I see no prospect of being here for lunch for a while yet.”

Margaret watched him search his pockets for his tobacco and matches. “I wouldn't do that if I were you,” she said.

“It won't hurt,” he said. “I need a different kind of exercise.” He began to hum out of tune as he went into the kitchen to get some matches.

When he returned to the dining room, she said, “Alan hasn't been eating his lunches here since school began.”

He stopped humming and looked at her. “Why not?”

“His mother wants him at home.”

For a moment he looked relieved. “I'll set her straight on that. School or no school I want him here every day. It's the only way I can be sure he's being properly fed.”

“But his mother has forbidden him to come here for any reason.”

Slowly his face became an angry red. He watched her for a moment, as though testing her words in his mind to be certain he had heard them correctly, then he turned and left the room. Margaret waited, heard him stop by the front door, and then she got up and followed him.

“Please, Dan–don't go up there,” she said as he was about to close the door behind him.

He waited but he did not return to the hall. She opened the door wide and stood on the step above him. Still he refused to turn, but she knew his curiosity was greater than his anger, so she said, “If you'll stop to think instead of rushing off into the night, you'll realize that you've brought this on yourself. Mollie has decided to take her boy back and there isn't a thing in the world you can do about it.”

“That's nonsense!” he said.

“Perhaps. But it might have been easier for you if you had consulted her in the first place, instead of simply giving her orders as though she were a patient.”

“She wants the boy's good as much as I do.”

He had turned around and was trying to read her face.

“I'm sure she does,” Margaret said. “But you haven't come to an agreement, have you, on what
is
Alan's good?” She pretended to pluck some lint off his shoulder. “Mollie happens to think it will be best for Alan if she leaves here and marries that Frenchman, Louis Camire.”

For half a second she wondered if her husband might be going to faint. His eyes became round and large and his face paled as slowly as it had flushed. But there was nothing she
could do to help him, though she knew she was more sorry for him than she had ever been before.

He turned his back again and looked down the dark drive.

“Are you sure?” he said tonelessly.

“Yes, I'm sure.”

He brushed her restraining hand from his shoulder and went out into the darkness and she could hear the sound of his feet going down the gravel drive.