CHAPTER VI
The gong for the sixth round struck, and both men advanced to meet
each other, their bodies glistening with water. Ponta rushed two-
thirds of the way across the ring, so intent was he on getting at
his man before full recovery could be effected. But Joe had lived
through. He was strong again, and getting stronger. He blocked
several vicious blows and then smashed back, sending Ponta reeling.
He attempted to follow up, but wisely forbore and contented himself
with blocking and covering up in the whirlwind his blow had raised.
The fight was as it had been at the beginning--Joe protecting, Ponta
rushing. But Ponta was never at ease. He did not have it all his
own way. At any moment, in his fiercest onslaughts, his opponent
was liable to lash out and reach him. Joe saved his strength. He
struck one blow to Ponta's ten, but his one blow rarely missed.
Ponta overwhelmed him in the attacks, yet could do nothing with him,
while Joe's tiger-like strokes, always imminent, compelled respect.
They toned Ponta's ferocity. He was no longer able to go in with
the complete abandon of destructiveness which had marked his earlier
efforts.
But a change was coming over the fight. The audience was quick to
note it, and even Genevieve saw it by the beginning of the ninth
round. Joe was taking the offensive. In the clinches it was he who
brought his fist down on the small of the back, striking the
terrible kidney blow. He did it once, in each clinch, but with all
his strength, and he did it every clinch. Then, in the breakaways,
he began to upper-cut Ponta on the stomach, or to hook his jaw or
strike straight out upon the mouth. But at first sign of a coming
of a whirlwind, Joe would dance nimbly away and cover up.
Two rounds of this went by, and three, but Ponta's strength, though
perceptibly less, did not diminish rapidly. Joe's task was to wear
down that strength, not with one blow, nor ten, but with blow after
blow, without end, until that enormous strength should be beaten
sheer out of its body. There was no rest for the man. Joe followed
him up, step by step, his advancing left foot making an audible tap,
tap, tap, on the hard canvas. Then there would come a sudden leap
in, tiger-like, a blow struck, or blows, and a swift leap back,
whereupon the left foot would take up again its tapping advance.
When Ponta made his savage rushes, Joe carefully covered up, only to
emerge, his left foot going tap, tap, tap, as he immediately
followed up.
Ponta was slowly weakening. To the crowd the end was a foregone
conclusion.
"Oh, you, Joe!" it yelled its admiration and affection.
"It's a shame to take the money!" it mocked. "Why don't you eat 'm,
Ponta? Go on in an' eat 'm!"
In the one-minute intermissions Ponta's seconds worked over him as
they had not worked before. Their calm trust in his tremendous
vitality had been betrayed. Genevieve watched their excited
efforts, while she listened to the white-faced second cautioning
Joe.
"Take your time," he was saying. "You've got 'm, but you got to
take your time. I've seen 'm fight. He's got a punch to the end of
the count. I've seen 'm knocked out and clean batty, an' go on
punching just the same. Mickey Sullivan had 'm goin'. Puts 'm to
the mat as fast as he crawls up, six times, an' then leaves an
opening. Ponta reaches for his jaw, an two minutes afterward
Mickey's openin' his eyes an' askin' what's doin'. So you've got to
watch 'm. No goin' in an' absorbin' one of them lucky punches, now.
I got money on this fight, but I don't call it mine till he's
counted out."
Ponta was being doused with water. As the gong sounded, one of his
seconds inverted a water bottle on his head. He started toward the
centre of the ring, and the second followed him for several steps,
keeping the bottle still inverted. The referee shouted at him, and
he fled the ring, dropping the bottle as he fled. It rolled over
and over, the water gurgling out upon the canvas till the referee,
with a quick flirt of his toe, sent the bottle rolling through the
ropes.
In all the previous rounds Genevieve had not seen Joe's fighting
face which had been prefigured to her that morning in the department
store. Sometimes his face had been quite boyish; other times, when
taking his fiercest punishment, it had been bleak and gray; and
still later, when living through and clutching and holding on, it
had taken on a wistful expression. But now, out of danger himself
and as he forced the fight, his fighting face came upon him. She
saw it and shuddered. It removed him so far from her. She had
thought she knew him, all of him, and held him in the hollow of her
hand; but this she did not know--this face of steel, this mouth of
steel, these eyes of steel flashing the light and glitter of steel.
It seemed to her the passionless face of an avenging angel, stamped
only with the purpose of the Lord.
Ponta attempted one of his old-time rushes, but was stopped on the
mouth. Implacable, insistent, ever menacing, never letting him
rest, Joe followed him up. The round, the thirteenth, closed with a
rush, in Ponta's corner. He attempted a rally, was brought to his
knees, took the nine seconds' count, and then tried to clinch into
safety, only to receive four of Joe's terrible stomach punches, so
that with the gong he fell back, gasping, into the arms of his
seconds.
Joe ran across the ring to his own corner.
"Now I'm going to get 'm," he said to his second.
"You sure fixed 'm that time," the latter answered. "Nothin' to
stop you now but a lucky punch. Watch out for it."
Joe leaned forward, feet gathered under him for a spring, like a
foot-racer waiting the start. He was waiting for the gong. When it
sounded he shot forward and across the ring, catching Ponta in the
midst of his seconds as he rose from his stool. And in the midst of
his seconds he went down, knocked down by a right-hand blow. As he
arose from the confusion of buckets, stools, and seconds, Joe put
him down again. And yet a third time he went down before he could
escape from his own corner.
Joe had at last become the whirlwind. Genevieve remembered his
"just watch, you'll know when I go after him." The house knew it,
too. It was on its feet, every voice raised in a fierce yell. It
was the blood-cry of the crowd, and it sounded to her like what she
imagined must be the howling of wolves. And what with confidence in
her lover's victory she found room in her heart to pity Ponta.
In vain he struggled to defend himself, to block, to cover up, to
duck, to clinch into a moment's safety. That moment was denied him.
Knockdown after knockdown was his portion. He was knocked to the
canvas backwards, and sideways, was punched in the clinches and in
the break-aways--stiff, jolty blows that dazed his brain and drove
the strength from his muscles. He was knocked into the corners and
out again, against the ropes, rebounding, and with another blow
against the ropes once more. He fanned the air with his arms,
showering savage blows upon emptiness. There was nothing human left
in him. He was the beast incarnate, roaring and raging and being
destroyed. He was smashed down to his knees, but refused to take
the count, staggering to his feet only to be met stiff-handed on the
mouth and sent hurling back against the ropes.
In sore travail, gasping, reeling, panting, with glazing eyes and
sobbing breath, grotesque and heroic, fighting to the last, striving
to get at his antagonist, he surged and was driven about the ring.
And in that moment Joe's foot slipped on the wet canvas. Ponta's
swimming eyes saw and knew the chance. All the fleeing strength of
his body gathered itself together for the lightning lucky punch.
Even as Joe slipped the other smote him, fairly on the point of the
chin. He went over backward. Genevieve saw his muscles relax while
he was yet in the air, and she heard the thud of his head on the
canvas.
The noise of the yelling house died suddenly. The referee, stooping
over the inert body, was counting the seconds. Ponta tottered and
fell to his knees. He struggled to his feet, swaying back and forth
as he tried to sweep the audience with his hatred. His legs were
trembling and bending under him; he was choking and sobbing,
fighting to breathe. He reeled backward, and saved himself from
falling by a blind clutching for the ropes. He clung there,
drooping and bending and giving in all his body, his head upon his
chest, until the referee counted the fatal tenth second and pointed
to him in token that he had won.
He received no applause, and he squirmed through the ropes,
snakelike, into the arms of his seconds, who helped him to the floor
and supported him down the aisle into the crowd. Joe remained where
he had fallen. His seconds carried him into his corner and placed
him on the stool. Men began climbing into the ring, curious to see,
but were roughly shoved out by the policemen, who were already
there.
Genevieve looked on from her peep-hole. She was not greatly
perturbed. Her lover had been knocked out. In so far as
disappointment was his, she shared it with him; but that was all.
She even felt glad in a way. The Game had played him false, and he
was more surely hers. She had heard of knockouts from him. It
often took men some time to recover from the effects. It was not
till she heard the seconds asking for the doctor that she felt
really worried.
They passed his limp body through the ropes to the stage, and it
disappeared beyond the limits of her peep-hole. Then the door of
her dressing-room was thrust open and a number of men came in. They
were carrying Joe. He was laid down on the dusty floor, his head
resting on the knee of one of the seconds. No one seemed surprised
by her presence. She came over and knelt beside him. His eyes were
closed, his lips slightly parted. His wet hair was plastered in
straight locks about his face. She lifted one of his hands. It was
very heavy, and the lifelessness of it shocked her. She looked
suddenly at the faces of the seconds and of the men about her. They
seemed frightened, all save one, and he was cursing, in a low voice,
horribly. She looked up and saw Silverstein standing beside her.
He, too, seemed frightened. He rested a kindly hand on her
shoulder, tightening the fingers with a sympathetic pressure.
This sympathy frightened her. She began to feel dazed. There was a
bustle as somebody entered the room. The person came forward,
proclaiming irritably: "Get out! Get out! You've got to clear the
room!"
A number of men silently obeyed.
"Who are you?" he abruptly demanded of Genevieve. "A girl, as I'm
alive!"
"That's all right, she's his girl," spoke up a young fellow she
recognized as her guide.
"And you?" the other man blurted explosively at Silverstein.
"I'm vit her," he answered truculently.
"She works for him," explained the young fellow. "It's all right, I
tell you."
The newcomer grunted and knelt down. He passed a hand over the damp
head, grunted again, and arose to his feet.
"This is no case for me," he said. "Send for the ambulance."
Then the thing became a dream to Genevieve. Maybe she had fainted,
she did not know, but for what other reason should Silverstein have
his arm around her supporting her? All the faces seemed blurred and
unreal. Fragments of a discussion came to her ears. The young
fellow who had been her guide was saying something about reporters.
"You vill get your name in der papers," she could hear Silverstein
saying to her, as from a great distance; and she knew she was
shaking her head in refusal.
There was an eruption of new faces, and she saw Joe carried out on a
canvas stretcher. Silverstein was buttoning the long overcoat and
drawing the collar about her face. She felt the night air on her
cheek, and looking up saw the clear, cold stars. She jammed into a
seat. Silverstein was beside her. Joe was there, too, still on his
stretcher, with blankets over his naked body; and there was a man in
blue uniform who spoke kindly to her, though she did not know what
he said. Horses' hoofs were clattering, and she was lurching
somewhere through the night.
Next, light and voices, and a smell of iodoform. This must be the
receiving hospital, she thought, this the operating table, those the
doctors. They were examining Joe. One of them, a dark-eyed, dark-
bearded, foreign-looking man, rose up from bending over the table.
"Never saw anything like it," he was saying to another man. "The
whole back of the skull."
Her lips were hot and dry, and there was an intolerable ache in her
throat. But why didn't she cry? She ought to cry; she felt it
incumbent upon her. There was Lottie (there had been another change
in the dream), across the little narrow cot from her, and she was
crying. Somebody was saying something about the coma of death. It
was not the foreign-looking doctor, but somebody else. It did not
matter who it was. What time was it? As if in answer, she saw the
faint white light of dawn on the windows.
"I was going to be married to-day," she said to Lottie.
And from across the cot his sister wailed, "Don't, don't!" and,
covering her face, sobbed afresh.
This, then, was the end of it all--of the carpets, and furniture,
and the little rented house; of the meetings and walking out, the
thrilling nights of starshine, the deliciousness of surrender, the
loving and the being loved. She was stunned by the awful facts of
this Game she did not understand--the grip it laid on men's souls,
its irony and faithlessness, its risks and hazards and fierce
insurgences of the blood, making woman pitiful, not the be-all and
end-all of man, but his toy and his pastime; to woman his mothering
and caretaking, his moods and his moments, but to the Game his days
and nights of striving, the tribute of his head and hand, his most
patient toil and wildest effort, all the strain and the stress of
his being--to the Game, his heart's desire.
Silverstein was helping her to her feet. She obeyed blindly, the
daze of the dream still on her. His hand grasped her arm and he was
turning her toward the door.
"Oh, why don't you kiss him?" Lottie cried out, her dark eyes
mournful and passionate.
Genevieve stooped obediently over the quiet clay and pressed her
lips to the lips yet warm. The door opened and she passed into
another room. There stood Mrs. Silverstein, with angry eyes that
snapped vindictively at sight of her boy's clothes.
Silverstein looked beseechingly at his spouse, but she burst forth
savagely:-
"Vot did I tell you, eh? Vot did I tell you? You vood haf a
bruiser for your steady! An' now your name vill be in all der
papers! At a prize fight--vit boy's clothes on! You liddle
strumpet! You hussy! You--"
But a flood of tears welled into her eyes and voice, and with her
fat arms outstretched, ungainly, ludicrous, holy with motherhood,
she tottered over to the quiet girl and folded her to her breast.
She muttered gasping, inarticulate love-words, rocking slowly to and
fro the while, and patting Genevieve's shoulder with her ponderous hand.
