John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

That will be an American eagle per wager, I say to them, doubling the ante, and the tilt is no longer even. Just to cover the play I start at three to two for the Indian, and by the time the crowd thins I am up at five to one with only the most diehard of Anglo-Saxons still taking the miner without a hedge.

The boys begin to stomp their feet for action, quieting only when Captain Sturdevant struts to the middle of the squared circle, looking raw without his swagger stick, and raises his mitts for silence.

It goes dead quiet, only Atkins’s boxing brogans, also shipped from Denver by the captain and a size too big for the rock-knocker’s feet, shuffling nervous on the canvas while he throws little jabs and rolls his shoulders in preparation of having his block knocked off of them, molesting the silence. The Chief stands with his knuckles dragging on the floor, still as a mountain and nearly as big.

This fight, announces the captain without raising his voice, will continue until one man is unable to answer the bell. Throws will be allowed, but gouging, biting, low blows, obnoxious use of hands and elbows, and lollygagging in the ring will be punished — and here he pauses to gander meaningfully at each of the sluggers — will be punished by time in the stockade. I want a show from both of you fellows — come out fighting and may the best man win.

The bit about the throws is a raw deal and I stifle the urge to give it the hoot. Throws have not been allowed since Pegasus was a two-year-old, and it dawns on me that maybe the brass have their own pool going, with the captain down heavy favoring the Chief. I have seen a referee tackle a slugger in Idaho Springs once because he was in the satchel and concerned about his percentage, but tonight I am covered, I am in fact sitting pretty with a pile of Mexican silvers and American eagles already bagged and nothing riding on the outcome.

The bonger is tapped and the melee commences. Atkins steps out sharp, throwing leather in flurries and putting lots of mustard on it, with relish on top, but the Indian covers with his big slabs of arm and the assault does not amount to much. The volunteers are on their feet and shouting in the way of all suckers, thrilled to witness a contest of skill and science and probable slaughter. Atkins wears himself out by the end of the round and just before the bonger sounds again the big redskin decides he is crowding too close and lifts him up under the arms and tosses him halfway across the ring. The rock-knocker lands on his keister and the boys all give this the hoot while the Chief circles around the ropes hollering a war whoop strictly from Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Extravaganza. This gets a rise out of the more fervent of the Anglo-Saxons in the crowd and between rounds a few of them come to me and double their bets, which more than covers the five-to-one play on the Chief.

Corporal Grissom is the Chief’s second, assigned to the duty by Captain Sturdevant, and he is absent without leave, leaning with his back to the ropes and jawing with a pal up in the cheap seats while his fighter plops on the stool.

Private Neely is busy in the other corner spitting water in Atkins’s kisser and then greasing it with lard and yapping strategy at him, though the only strategy available is the one adopted by El Supremo Aguinaldo and his outfit and this Atkins cannot implement because the captain will plug him before he gets halfway to the door. What Private Neely knows about boxing I know about flower arrangement, if you do not count what wreath to choose when a fellow sporting man is planted, and Atkins is not paying mind to him, only peeping across the ring at the Chief like a spring hen peeps a butcher with a meat cleaver in his mitt.

The second and third go pretty much like the first, the lead miner throwing and the redskin catching where it does not sting, only there is no mustard left on Atkins’s punches now, arm-weary already or maybe the croakers really did pump some poison into him which they say is the only way to kill the French ache if the quicksilver does not kill you first. In the fourth the Indian goes finally on the warpath, swinging haymakers left and right, sidearm jobs that no matter how Atkins tries to block with his elbows still nearly knock him crabwise off his feet, the boys up and hollering for blood and they will see some only the Chief needs to raise his artillery a notch, happy to bat his former pal around the ring till Atkins ducks when he should not duck and catches one on the side of his noggin that puts him on one knee. The Chief seems confused and backs off, looking around at all the volunteers who have cocoanuts riding on him screaming to finish the job, even the captain waving him in for the kill, but he only frowns like he suddenly does not savvy the white man’s tongue and then Atkins is saved, or perhaps doomed, by the bell.

A dozen chalk-eaters crowd me then, desiring to hedge their previous indiscretions and get on the Indian at five to one, but I inform them that the bank is closed. The fifth begins with the rock-knocker looking like his pins are not completely beneath the rest of his corpus and suddenly there is Private Neely pulling at my coat with his mitts full of scratch and wearing a face that will make a hangman weep.

He makes me promise, says Private Neely. He wants to blow the rest of this at whatever the tilt is.

On himself? I query, judging that the whack on the noggin has relieved the miner of what little sense he possesses to begin with. Let us remember that this is an individual who tumbles for a doll he meets in the clap shack.

He makes me promise, explains the second, on my mother’s grave.

Inform him that your mother is still living.

Please, he counters, waving the rock-knocker’s boodle under my nose. Now this is paper money, the green variety that Uncle Sammy puts the ink on, the variety that is accepted in the sort of San Francisco sporting houses I shall soon be a patron of, the kind that spends plenty but does not wear a hole in your pockets the way a pile of golden eagles will. The miner has been a stalwart companion to me as far back as Denver and I am as sentimental as the next character, crying at weddings of dolls I have a yen for, the christening of screaming infants and the planting of dear friends who die owing me cocoanuts — but this waving green I cannot resist.

It is five to one, I announce, snatching the cabbage.

Could you crank that up to six? queries the second. My slugger is on his last legs out there.

This is not an exaggeration, as I have not removed my peepers from the ring, where Atkins is being pounded like a boardinghouse steak, the Indian unloading with both paws into his barely protected middle, the rock-knocker staggering backward without throwing a counter, the boys hollering their lungs raw and Sturdevant, hands folded behind his back, strolling around them with a little smile on his kisser like he is admiring the roses. I will sit through an evening of Manila googoo chicken fights before I stay put for a mismatch, but I am holding the bank and have my own pile of cocoanuts riding on it now, so I cover the play six to one in the notebook and hold my water.

Private Neely hurries back to the corner and I see Atkins look over to him after he dives into a clinch with the big Indian hoisting him clear off his toes and squeezing the wind out of him, and the second gives Atkins the thumbs up as if to give him heart. As if heart can help a cornered coon against a grizzly bear.

The Chief tries to throw Atkins clear out of the ring and nearly makes the point, the miner snatching the ropes to keep himself out of the laps of the Company D Minnesotas and then sprawling onto the canvas. While he crawls back onto his pins the Chief goes into his war dance again, whooping and chopping one hand down like it is the hatchet he will bury in Atkins’s skull. It does not appear to be a good night for Anglo-Saxon progress.