Ed Lacy - Breathe No More My Lady

“Any job offers?” I asked, forcing myself to finish the beer.

“I can't get anything in teaching. I had an offer to ghost a series of general mathematics textbooks, but now that's out. At my age I can't get anything but a job as a messenger and—”

“That's ridiculous.”

He shook his head as he wiped beer foam from his mouth. “I may not even get that until this new publicity dies down. It pays about $45 and my wife can get a clerk job, so we'll be comfortable. In two years I'll start drawing my pension from Brooks.”

“There must be something a man of your intellectual background can do. Let me speak to Bill Long, my boss, and see—”

Brown smiled as he shook his head again. “If Longson is afraid of an ad backfiring, they'll never consider me. I doubt if I would either, if the positions were reversed. Of course, I'm willing to do ghosting, but even that makes hiring me a risk.” He got off the bed to drop his empty beer can in a waste basket. “Well, Mr. Connor, have I been of any help to you, re: Matt Anthony?”

“I don't know, your picture of him is an entirely new one.”

“Take pity on Matt Anthony, he's a lost soul, an intellectual fourflusher—like so many others these days. But he's no killer.”

“If he's a phony, why were you two friends?”

“Friends is a meaningless word. In the last dozen years we saw each other maybe two times—for a few minutes. Oh, Matt has a lively sense of humor and... a kind of charm-Even his blustering is interesting. Of course when I first met him, as an instructor at Brooks, he was a rather earnest young man. I even liked a few of his earlier stories. There was one about a young Mexican kid who can drop-kick a milk carton, a remarkable feat—although no one can understand how remarkable except the kid who—”

“I read that. It's the boy's sole claim to being somebody. It was a terrific story.”

“No, it wasn't. It was veneer stuff but a good beginning. In those days I saw a great deal of Matt. We not only taught in the same school but Matt spent much time in our house. He became, well, interested in me when he learned I'd once been a professional fighter.” Brown tapped his broken nose with a long finger. “The badge of the trade.”

“You really were a pro pug?”

“Really,” he said, faint sarcasm in his voice. “You sound like Matt.”

“Come on, now, Hank, you must admit a professor who's been a leatherpusher is unusual.”

“Unusual as what? Fighting is only a job, and a bad one at that. I had about a dozen bouts when I was 19— which was a very long time ago. I wasn't working my way through college or anything like that. I enjoyed boxing, hit hard for a bantamweight. You've never heard of Al Nelson but he became a contender, went on to fight Lynch and Herman, the other top man. I kayoed Nelson in two rounds. I suppose I had dreams of being a champion myself. My manager was a very wise and worldly man named Danny Bond. He died a number of years ago. He was broke and I buried him. A sentimental gesture. Danny wouldn't let a boy go on if he didn't have true ability. I didn't have it—I was never hungry enough.”

“What's that mean?” I got up to throw the beer can away and sat down quickly—there wasn't enough room for the two of us to move about.

“You have good shoulders—are you a fight buff, Mr. Connor?”

“Norm is the name. No, I'm a handball player, of sorts.”

“Perhaps I should tell you what I mean, it might help you understand what writers like Matt never understood—that pro boxing is an act of desperation. In my case I simply wasn't desperate enough. After I knocked out Al Nelson, I fought him again some three months later. I was a bug on physical culture. Al entered the ring completely out of shape. It wasn't any secret he had done most of his conditioning in a bar. I had him groggy at the end of the first round. The next thing I knew, I was on the dressing room table and Danny was stroking my battered face with an ice bag.”

“You were flattened?”

“Aha, but in the 5th round. As Danny tried to tell me, I stopped a right cross and was out on my feet for four rounds. So was Al. Yet fat and puffing Al Nelson, his blood full of whiskey, was staggering around the ring in the 5th, while with all my better conditioning, I was flat on my face. I couldn't understand that until Danny said sadly, 'He was hungrier than you, Henry, that gave him more of a fighting heart. You got some book learning, there's other things you can do beside box. But, rummy Al, even if his noggin was fogged, he knew he had to win to get another fight. And if he doesn't fight he just won't eat.' Odd what sticks in a mind: I never forgot those words. And I never boxed again—as a pro. That's why Matt, London, Hemingway, even old G. B. Shaw, they can't catch the true picture offering because they fail to understand it isn't glory that males men fight, but hunger. You can't pretty up the brutal.”

“Then you think only former pugs can write about the ring?”

“No, no. But a writer can't write about anything—that is, real writing, unless he understands his subject. Most of those who write about the ring, the bull fighters, about war, they get sidetracked in the obvious violence. They try to put their own personal desire to escape from life into their boxers, and that's false because a boxer hasn't time to think of escape, he can only worry about eating. My, I'm off on a lecture.”

“Please continue. I think this is what I'm after.”

“I don't mind, although literature isn't my dish. But I've been giving much thought to the Matt Anthonys. We live in a highly disillusioned world of greed and violence and we try to escape the banality of life through narcotics, TV quiz programs, abstract study, drinking, speeding, advertising (a mock bow in my direction), making money for money's sake, travel. The longing for death, for suicide, of course is the strongest drug of all. In fact, for the intellectual—and I use the word loosely—the desire for self-destruction becomes a stabilizing personal philosophy. In short, nothing matters, he believes in nothing. They feel secure only when they are involved in romantic and daring action, with the basic motive being a secret hope that this time it will end in death. At the same time they lack the nerve to flaunt conventions. A drunk speeds at 100 miles an hour, a Matt Anthony sails the ocean alone, charges with a machine gun —all conventional ways of dying.”

“Wait up, you can't place them all on the same level. A drunken brawl is one thing, a war correspondent taking a gun is a form of bravery.”

Brown flashed his old teeth in a quick smile. “Courage, bravery have become confused words without much meaning. Take Matt Anthony rushing the Nazis with a machine gun during the war—was that an act of heroism or cowardice? I think it was merely a subconscious attempt to take his own life. You see it in his writing, even in his hack junk... in all such writing.”

“I never saw anything like that.”

“Those writers who are preoccupied with courage and violence, it is but a thin veil for their own personal escape. Not even that, for even the most confused must admit there isn't any escape from death. And if one wishes to find death, it is always waiting.” Brown hesitated, walked over to the small window and stared out. “Perhaps I am not making myself too clear. Look: we call hunting and bull fighting, for example, sports. We find them exciting because death is concerned. But the reality of the situation is that this is all a cowardly fallacy. With modern rifles there is little danger to the hunter. Even in the bull ring the matador first, and with great care, tires the bull, teaches him to follow his cape before he attempts the kill.”

“But matadors are gored to death and hunters killed.” I cut in.