“Well, you know what he’s did since. The only beatin’ in his record was by Tracy in Milwaukee before I got hold of him, and he’s licked Tracy three times in the last year.
“I’ve gave him all the best of it in a money way and he’s got seven thousand bucks in cold storage. How’s that for a kid that was in the gutter two years ago? And he’d have still more yet if he wasn’t so nuts over clo’es and got to stop at the good hotels and so forth.”
“Where’s his home at?”
“Well, he ain’t really got no home. He came from Chicago and his mother canned him out o’ the house for bein’ no good. She give him a raw deal, I guess, and he says he won’t have nothin’ to do with her unlest she comes to him first. She’s got a pile o’ money, he says, so he ain’t worryin’ about her.”
The gentleman under discussion entered the café and swaggered to Tommy’s table, while the whole room turned to look.
Midge was the picture of health despite a slightly colored eye and an ear that seemed to have no opening. But perhaps it was not his healthiness that drew all eyes. His diamond horseshoe tie pin, his purple cross-striped shirt, his orange shoes and his light blue suit fairly screamed for attention.
“Where you been?” he asked Tommy. “I been lookin’ all over for you.”
“Set down,” said his manager.
“No time,” said Midge. “I’m goin’ down to the w’arf and see ’em unload the fish.”
“Shake hands with my brother Dan,” said Tommy.
Midge shook with the Holyoke Haley.
“If you’re Tommy’s brother, you’re OK with me,” said Midge, and the brothers beamed with pleasure.
Dan moistened his lips and murmured an embarrassed reply, but it was lost on the young gladiator.
“Leave me take twenty,” Midge was saying. “I prob’ly won’t need it, but I don’t like to be caught short.”
Tommy parted with a twenty dollar bill and recorded the transaction in a small black book the insurance company had given him for Christmas.
“But,” he said, “it won’t cost you no twenty to look at them fish. Want me to go along?”
“No,” said Midge hastily. “You and your brother here prob’ly got a lot to say to each other.”
“Well,” said Tommy, “don’t take no bad money and don’t get lost. And you better be back at four o’clock and lay down a w’ile.”
“I don’t need no rest to beat this guy,” said Midge. “He’ll do enough layin’ down for the both of us.”
And laughing even more than the jest called for, he strode out through the fire of admiring and startled glances.
The corner of Boylston and Tremont was the nearest Midge got to the wharf, but the lady awaiting him was doubtless a more dazzling sight than the catch of the luckiest Massachusetts fisherman. She could talk, too—probably better than the fish.
“O you Kid!” she said, flashing a few silver teeth among the gold. “O you fighting man!”
Midge smiled up at her.
“We’ll go somewheres and get a drink,” he said. “One won’t hurt.”
In New Orleans, five months after he had rearranged the map of Bud Cross for the third time, Midge finished training for his championship bout with the Dutchman.
Back in his hotel after the final workout, Midge stopped to chat with some of the boys from up north, who had made the long trip to see a champion dethroned, for the result of this bout was so nearly a foregone conclusion that even the experts had guessed it.
Tommy Haley secured the key and the mail and ascended to the Kelly suite. He was bathing when Midge came in, half an hour later.
“Any mail?” asked Midge.
“There on the bed,” replied Tommy from the tub.
Midge picked up the stack of letters and postcards and glanced them over. From the pile he sorted out three letters and laid them on the table. The rest he tossed into the wastebasket. Then he picked up the three and sat for a few moments holding them, while his eyes gazed off into space. At length he looked again at the three unopened letters in his hand; then he put one in his pocket and tossed the other two at the basket. They missed their target and fell on the floor.
“Hell!” said Midge, and stooping over picked them up.
He opened one postmarked Milwaukee and read:
Dear Husband:
I have wrote to you so manny times and got no anser and I dont know if you ever got them, so I am writeing again in the hopes you will get this letter and anser. I dont like to bother you with my trubles and I would not only for the baby and I am not asking you should write to me but only send a little money and I am not asking for myself but the baby has not been well a day sence last Aug. and the dr. told me she cant live much longer unless I give her better food and thats impossible the way things are. Lou has not been working for a year and what I make dont hardley pay for the
