Ed Gorman: Blood Game

The second round immediately put the fight back in the sideshow category. Sovich threw three left hooks, each one of which caught Rooney square on the jaw. The second time he dipped to one knee and shook his wide, ugly head to clear it of cobwebs. With this, he brought the white crowd alive. They started yelling “Nigger,” and when whites yelled “Nigger,” the fight was only starting.

The third round was more even. Rooney landed two fair punches on Sovich’s shoulders and one on Sovich’s head. These blows did not seem to hurt Sovich especially, but they did infuriate him. Sovich had been hoping that the colored boy would have been set down for good by now. He rallied, of course, pasting Rooney with several powerful body shots, one of which lifted Rooney half an inch off the canvas.

By this time the temperature had risen to ninety-seven degrees. In the fourth round, Sovich took complete command again. Two ringing shots to the head and three quick kidney punches once more brought Rooney to one knee. For the first time the referee began seriously evaluating Rooney’s demeanor and behavior. He paid special attention to Rooney’s eyes.

In the fifth round, Rooney shocked everyone, most especially himself, by slamming a roundhouse right to Sovich’s forehead and pushing him back into the ropes, where he followed up with some solid but not spectacular body blows.

Sovich got out of the round, but barely.

“What the hell’s going on in there, Victor?” John T. Stoddard asked in the corner while they waited for the next round to begin.

Sovich’s entire torso was heaving. “Must be the heat.”

“Do I need to remind you how much we’ve got riding on this?”

“You think he’s going to beat me?” Sovich managed a smile that did not quite convince either himself or Stoddard of his skills at the moment.

“Forget about giving them a show. Just put him to the canvas. You understand?”

The bell rang.

“You understand?” Stoddard shouted into Sovich’s ear.

“Yes,” Victor Sovich said, spitting a mouthful of saliva and blood next to Stoddard’s shoe. “Yes, you son of a bitch. I understand.”

He rushed back to the center of the ring, determined to get the fight over with and soon.

Sovich felt angiy. He liked it when he felt angry. Such a feeling always proved good for him and most unfortunate for his opponent. Especially if the opponent was colored.

At the top of the sixth, Sovich landed two smashing rights to Rooney’s stomach. Rooney dropped backward to the canvas, landing on his bottom.

The white crowd shouted, screamed, cheered, and stamped its feet. They wanted to see one hell of a lot more of this kind of action.

The temperature was now ninety-eight degrees.

The fight continued.

Reynolds watched the first five rounds and then began working his way toward the office, making stops at a beer tent, a beef tent, and a foul-smelling latrine. Sweating had kept him sober, kept him intent on the plan that now seemed not only ingenious but inevitable. Just outside the office door where Guild sat, Reynolds would collect papers and rags and set a fire. There being only one way out, Guild would have to come to the door to find out what was going on. Reynolds would then shoot him in the arm, sneak in during all the confusion, grab as much money as possible, and escape. He had spent most of the past half hour looking at a route for himself that ran adjacent to a railroad bed running east. A fast creek ran below a small forest of poplar and pines, and he could easily wade into the water and move unseen downstream.

Now he was getting almost excited about using a gun.

He found the rags and paper he needed in a storeroom in the back of the office building. He soaked these in kerosene that was also conveniently stored in the same room and then proceeded up to the front of the building.

* * *

“Your father’s going to have a nice payday, son.”

“It sure looks that way.”

“Though the fight isn’t going exactly as he planned, I bet.”

“No. I’d have thought Victor would have put Rooney away by now.”

“You can’t always tell with colored people.” The gate man, one of the first people John T. Stoddard had hired in this town, touched his hand to the brim of his Stetson in a sort of half salute and then moved down the fencing to help out a man who looked both confused and irritated, standing half drunk in the heat and the hard white sunlight.

Stephen Stoddard turned back to the fight. At this point, midway in the ninth round, Rooney seemed as startled as any of the spectators. Not only was Victor Sovich not putting the black man to the canvas, he was beginning to lose the fight. Rooney had just delivered some slashing blows to the head and was now moving in with some heavy body punches.

The crowd did not know how to respond. It was as if a bishop had climbed into the ring and had begun singing dirty ditties.

It was very confusing. Rooney was supposed to be flat on his back at this point.

Stephen Stoddard wondered what Guild would make of all this. Guild usually had something interesting to say about nearly everything. Stephen decided to go tell him.

He wadded newspaper and rags into a single mass of flammable material and set it in front of the door.

He knelt next to it, taking a lucifer from his pocket as he did so. Calculating the direction the smoke would take, he pushed the material a little east of the door itself.

He struck the lucifer.

He sat back to wait for the smoke to start oozing beneath the door and for Guild to come out and see what was going on.

He had his gun drawn.

He was trembling so badly he had to hold his weapon steady with his other hand.

“What the hell you doing in there?” Victor’s trainer shouted following the end of the ninth round.

“Heat,” Sovich managed to say.

“Heat my ass. Your arms are dragging. You got to keep them up. You got to keep him from hitting you. That’s the problem, Victor. He keeps hitting you, and you’re not doing a goddamn thing about it.”

The bell rang for the next round.

His trainer watched Sovich rise ponderously to his feet. He wavered, then wobbled as he put one glove on the ropes and started to walk to the center of the ring.

What the hell was going on here?

Guild, still seated at the rolltop desk with his feet up, thought he smelled something peculiar. Then he decided it was nothing more than all the combined odors, good and bad, of this afternoon.

The rags did not bum properly. Reynolds watched in frustration and anger as the flame reached the kerosene only to have it sputter out before any useful amount of smoke could be generated.

He snatched up the rags and ran back down the stairs to the storeroom for more kerosene.

The knock startled Guild, who had just been on the verge of falling asleep. He had started dreaming about the little girl he’d killed and was grateful to be awakened.

With his.44 in hand, he moved to the door and said, “Yes. Who is it?”

“Me. Stephen.”

“I thought your old man didn’t want you in here.”

“You hear about the fight?”

Now that Guild listened, the crowd sounded almost surly. He wondered what was going on.

“Victor’s losing.”

“What?”

“Rooney seems to be getting stronger and Victor seems to be getting weaker.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“Let me in, Leo. I brought some lemonade for both of us.”

Guild shook his head and opened the door. He kept his.44 ready.

Stephen Stoddard stood in the open doorway with a pitcher of lemonade and two glasses.

“Figured you could use a break,” Stephen said. “Probably gets pretty boring in here.”