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 uppercut 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 breakaways—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.

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