The crowd was sparse but vocal. Loud enough that “Lil” Arthur forgot the raging storm outside. The crowd kept yelling, “Kill the nigger,” and had struck up a chorus of “All coons look alike to me” — a catchy little number that “Lil” Arthur liked in spite of himself.
The yelling, the song, was meant to drop his spirits, but he found it fired him up. He liked being the underdog. He liked to make assholes eat their words. Besides, he was the Galveston Champion, not McBride, no matter what the crowd wanted. He was the one who would step through the ropes tonight the victor. And he had made a change. He would no longer allow himself to be introduced as “Lil” Arthur. When his name had been called, and he had been reluctantly named Galveston Sporting Club Champion by the announcer, the announcer had done as he had asked. He had called him by the name he preferred from here on. Not “Lil” Arthur Johnson. Not Arthur John Johnson, but the name he called him, the name he called himself. Jack Johnson.
So far, however, the fight wasn’t going either way, and he had to hand it to McBride, the fella could hit. He had away of throwing short, sharp punches to the ribs, punches that felt like knife stabs.
Before the fight, Jack, as McBride had surely done, had used his thumbs to rearrange as much of the cotton in his gloves as possible. Arrange it so that his knuckles would be against the leather and would make good contact with McBride’s flesh. But so far McBride had avoided most of his blows. The man was a master of slipping and sliding the punches. Jack had never seen anything like that before. McBride could also pick off shots with a flick of his forearms. It was very professional and enlightening.
Even so, Jack found he was managing to take the punches pretty well, and he’d discovered something astonishing. The few times he’d hit McBride was when he got excited, leaned forward, went flat-footed, and threw the uppercut. This was not a thing he had trained for much, and when he had, he usually threw the uppercut by coming up on his toes, twisting his body, the prescribed way to throw it. But he found, against all logic, he could throw it flat-footed and leaning forward, and he could throw it hard.
He thought he had seen a bit of surprise on McBride’s face when he’d hit him with it. He knew that he’d certainly surprised himself.
It went like that until the beginning of the fourth round, then when McBride came out, he said, “I’ve carried you enough, nigger. Now you got to fight.”
Then Jack saw stuff he’d never seen before. The way this guy moved, it was something. Bounced around like a cat, like the way he’d heard Gentleman Jim fought, and the guy was fast with those hands. Tossed bullets, and the bullets stunned a whole lot worse than before. Jack realized McBride had been holding back, trying to make the fight interesting. And he realized something else. Something important about himself. He didn’t know as much about boxing as he thought.
He tried hooking McBride, but McBride turned the hooks away with his arms, and Jack tried his surprise weapon, the uppercut, found he could catch McBride a little with that, in the stomach, but not enough to send McBride to the canvas. When the fifth round came up, Jack was scared. And hurt. And the referee — a skinny bastard with a handlebar moustache — wasn’t helping. Anytime he tied McBride up, the referee separated them. McBride tied him up, thumbed him in the eye, butted him, the referee grinned like he was eating jelly.
Jack was thinking maybe of taking a dive. Just going down and lying there, getting himself out of this misery next time McBride threw one of those short ones that connected solid, but then the bell rang and he sat on his bench, and Uncle Cooter, who was the only man in his corner, sprayed water in his mouth and let him spit blood in a bucket.
Uncle Cooter said, “I was you, son, I’d play possum. Just hit that goddamn canvas and lay there like you axed. You don’t, this shithead gonna cut you to pieces. This way, you get a little payday and you don’t die. Paydays is all right. Dyin’ ain’t nothin’ to rush.”
“Jesus, he’s good. How can I beat him?”
Uncle Cooter rubbed Jack’s shoulders. “You can’t. Play dead.”
“There’s got to be a way.”
“Yeah,” Uncle Cooter said. “He might die on you. That’s the only way you gonna beat him. He got to just die.”
“Thanks, Cooter. You’re a lot of help.”
“You welcome.”
Jack feared the sound of the bell. He looked in McBride’s corner, and McBride was sitting on his stool as if he were lounging, drinking from a bottle of beer, chatting with a man in the audience. He was asking the man to go get him a sandwich.
Forrest Thomas was in McBride’s corner, holding a folded towel over his arm, in case McBride might need it, which, considering he needed to break a good sweat first, wasn’t likely.
Forrest looked at Jack, pointed a finger, and lowered his thumb like it was the hammer of a revolver. Jack could see a word on Forrest’s lips. The word was: POW!
The referee wandered over to McBride’s corner, leaned on the ring post, had a laugh with McBride over something.
The bell rang. McBride gave the bottle of beer to Forrest and came out. Jack rose, saw Beems, eyes blacked, looking rough, sitting in the front row. Rough or not, Beems seemed happy. He looked at Jack and smiled like a gravedigger.
This time out, Jack took a severe pounding. He just couldn’t stop those short, little hooks of McBride’s, and he couldn’t seem to hit McBride any kind of blow but the uppercut, and that not hard enough. McBride was getting better as he went along, getting warmed up. If he had another beer and a sandwich, hell, he might go ahead and knock Jack out so he could have coffee and pie.
Jack decided to quit trying to hit the head and the ribs, and just go in and pound McBride on the arms. That way, he could at least hit something. He did, and was amazed at the end of the round to find McBride lowering his guard.
Jack went back to his corner and Uncle Cooter said, “Keep hittin’ him on the arms. That’s gettin’ to him. You wreckin’ his tools.”
“I figured that much. Thanks a lot.”
“You welcome.”
Jack examined the crowd in the Sporting Club bleachers. They were not watching the ring. They had turned their heads toward the east wall, and for good reason. It was vibrating. Water was seeping in, and it had filled the floor beneath the ring six inches deep. The people occupying the bottom row of bleachers, all around the ring, had been forced to lift their feet. Above him, Jack heard a noise that sounded like something big and mean peeling skin off an elephant’s head.
By the time the bell rang and Jack shuffled out, he noticed that the water had gone up another two inches.
8:46 P.M.
Bill held the lantern in front of him at arm’s length as he crouched at the top of the stairs. The water was halfway up the steps. The house was shaking like a fat man’s ass on a bucking bronco. He could hear shingles ripping loose, blowing away.
He went back to the bedroom. The wind was screaming. The windows were vibrating; panes had blown out of a couple of them. The baby was crying. Angelique sat in the middle of the bed, trying to nurse the child, but Teddy wouldn’t have any of that. Bess was facing a corner of the room, had her head pushed against the wall. The horse lashed her tail back and forth nervously, made nickering noises.
Bill went around and opened all the windows to help take away some of the force of the wind. Something he knew he should have done long ago, but he was trying to spare the baby the howl of the wind, the dampness.
The wind charged through the open windows and the rain charged with it. Bill could hardly stand before them, they were so powerful.
Fifteen minutes later, he heard the furniture below thumping on the ceiling, floating against the floor on which he stood.
9:00 P.M.
My God, thought Jack, how many rounds this thing gonna go? His head ached and his ribs ached worse and his insides felt as if he had swallowed hot tacks and was trying to regurgitate them. His legs, though strong, were
