Leonard Gardner - Fat City

Lucero continued fighting on the ropes, sometimes half seated on the middle strand. Yet not until the end of the second round when Tully drove a left deep into the belly and heard him grunt did he realize Lucero’s sluggishness might be something other than trickery.

Water streamed down Tully’s head. His trunks were stretched open and a cold shock poured over his genitals. Ruben’s hands were on his face like a barber’s, tilting it, wiping, patting, smearing on fresh Vaseline. The taped bottle rose to Tully’s lips and he rinsed his mouth, turned and spat into the bucket.

“I hurt him in the gut.”

“Don’t trade with him. Move him around.”

“He’s weak in the gut.”

Lucero waited in his corner and Tully closed with him, punching to the body. Held, Tully slapped a right to the kidney and broke away, the thumbs and laces of his gloves passing deftly over Lucero’s eyes as he thrust him off. Stepping out of range, he dropped his guard, but Lucero did not pursue. Stalling, Tully bounced and feinted, and standing flatfooted with his arms at his sides while scattered booing sounded in the gallery, he exposed his chin in invitation. Lucero came forward, but as Tully moved farther away, he checked and waited. He would not lead, and so, reluctantly, Tully again moved toward him, dropping his left to hook to the body. In a white concussive blaze he was falling. On his back, struggling to stay upright on horizontal legs, he looked up at the lights and the brown and blue gathered drapery way up at the apex of the ceiling where a giant gold tassel hung, the whole scene shattered by a zigzag diagonal line, like a crack in a window. He did not remember rising, or how he got through the round. All he remembered were the lights, the gold tassel and the shattered drapery, then the eye-smarting shock of ammonia in Lucero’s corner, where he had followed him after the bell and where Ruben had come to lead him back to his own stool. The zigzag line cut the ropes. Cold water cascaded over his head. He felt the drag of a cotton swab through a wound over his eye. When he looked up at Ruben’s face he could not see his chin. There was a sparkling vagueness to everything, and pains shifted from the top of his head to his temples and the base of his skull. The ammonia passed again under his nose and now he could see Ruben’s chin, but it was off to one side of his face.

“How you feel?” The referee, with a jagged line pulsing in his face and his chin out of alignment, was scrutinizing him.

“Okay.”

“He’s fine,” said Ruben. At the bell he thrust Tully up off the stool.

Lucero rushed across the ring, and Tully set himself, covered, was battered and then had hold of the struggling arms. He leaned and held, kept his cut away from Lucero’s head, butted him once and was pulled off. He was struck again and once more had Lucero by the arms. The referee tugged and pushed; they were separated. Urged on by the crowd, the Mexican charged, and Tully retreated, ducking, weaving, rolling with punches. Near the end of the round the jagged line was gone from his vision, and Lucero, breathing through the mouth, had slowed. Tully hit him hard in the stomach just before the bell.

In the rounds that followed, Lucero slowed even more, fighting now as if not primarily to win but mainly to last, lashing out when pressed, often not punching at all when Tully jabbed him at long range. Satisfied to gain points with little punishment, Tully hit and moved away. In the tenth round Lucero’s pace quickened, but Tully slammed him with a steady report, and after the bell Lucero stood holding the top rope in exhaustion, his face tilted down toward the canvas.

At the announcement that Tully had won, Ruben pulled him to his feet, grasped him around the thighs, and staggering, lifted him up to a reception of moderate applause and scattered but passionate jeering. The towel fell from Tully’s head as the two reeled sideways across the ring, Tully’s arms rising and falling like wings in an attempt to right his balance. His feet thumped back to the canvas, and Lucero, eyes swollen to slits and nostrils caked with blood, embraced him around the neck. Head to head, grinning through bloody lips, they faced the photographer from the local press, Tully’s weary arm held up by the referee and Ruben at his back attempting to drape him with the purple satin robe, his heavy face looming over Tully’s shoulder toward the camera.

The ring lights were already off, the crowd no longer seated and the aisles congested when Lucero, again in the black robe with the sequin image, stood with bowed head and raised fists to final meager applause from his disappointed countrymen. He left the ring followed by Tully, and separated by several yards the two plodded with their handlers back to the dressing rooms.

His nose thick and sore, a row of adhesive butterflies closing the wound on his swollen brow, Tully walked out to the lobby, where the night’s boxers and their managers had congregated. Arcadio Lucero, now in camel’s-hair overcoat and yellow gaiter shoes with cowboy heels, his dark face puffed and solemn, stood with Gil Solis, Ruben, Babe and Owen Mackin. An elderly man with a hearing aid and a large twisted nose, Mackin was patting him on the shoulder, shouting: “You good boy. We like. You good boy.” And seeing Tully he shouted: “You put on a good fight, Billy.”

“He was great tonight,” said Ruben.

“You get it?” Tully asked.

“Everything’s fine.”

“What’s it come to?”

Ruben raised an assuring hand. “It’ll be all right, we’ll take care of it in a minute.” He leaned toward Tully’s face. “Looks good. That’ll heal up fine, it’s nothing.” Then he spoke again to Owen Mackin. “Few weeks he’ll be set to go again. It’ll be a sell-out next time. This guy’s great. I defy anyone to say this guy’s not great. First fight in two years and he got himself in perfect condition. He don’t smoke, did you know that? Never touches tobacco. This fight was just what he needed. He’s ready for anybody now. We got a winner here. He’s the most colorful lightweight in Northern California. What did you think of my kid in the opener? Wasn’t he fantastic? Ernie, come over here.”

“Let’s go,” said Tully.

“We’ll go. Just a minute.”

Ernie Munger, who had been waiting near the entrance with Faye, ambled over with his hand on her back, her gray jacket unbuttoned and her belly tremendous in a yellow maternity dress. She stopped a few steps from the group, and Ernie came on alone with his hands in his pockets. “I better be going.”

“You did great. Wasn’t this kid something? First pro fight and he’s cool as ice in there. This kid’s got heart.”

“Guess I better get rolling.”

Taking out his wallet, Ruben stepped aside with Ernie.

“Don’t give it all to them baby doctors,” said Gil Solis, his strained combative face grotesquely smiling, his narrow eyes fierce.

Tully watched Ernie and his wife go out through the open doors. Beyond a dark plot of city lawn and fallow flower beds, a line of headlights was passing through the fog up El Dorado Street.

“I got a good boy there. Home early with the wife. He’s got all the moves. He’s got class. Ask Tully. He’s the guy that discovered him. Am I right?”

“He’s okay.”

Ruben gave him a pat on the back. “But this boy here — off two years and he’s as sharp as he ever was.”

“Guess we’ll be going,” said Gil, his pitted cheeks scored with deep merciless lines, like a bayed ferocious monkey’s. “Vámonos, eh?”

Lucero shrugged, shifted his bag, and with an amiable show of white chipped teeth, offered his hand all around.

Outside in the cold, Ruben told Tully he had earned $241. “You been off too long. Next time you’ll draw three times that.”