A Moment in the Sun by John Sayles Read Free Book Online Page B

to cheers and catcalls. Smokey walks Hod around the already drunken throng in the hall, then back through the packed, whiskey-reeking bar into a tiny room screened off by a dirty American flag hung over a narrow doorway. A skinny girl, still in her teens, lies on a cot staring at the ceiling. She sits up to look at them blankly. She wears a sleeveless green chemise and has her red hair pinned up with an emerald-colored brooch.
    “Sorry, Miss,” says Hod.
    She looks at the negro. “Boxin over?”
    “Just about to start, the real one.” Smokey points to Hod. “He got to change.”
    She nods and stands, glancing at Hod as she steps out of the crib. “He aint no fighter.”
    “Nemmine her,” says Smokey, tossing a pair of stained trunks onto the cot. He holds up a pair of high-topped leather shoes. “These aint gonna fit you, is they?”
    “Don’t appear so.”
    “Put them of yours back on when you ready, then.” Smokey watches as Hod strips down, turning away when he peels his long underwear off. There are postcards of naked women stuck all over the walls, naked women holding tennis rackets, astride bicycles, lounging on divans, naked women staring right at you.
    “These are big, too,” says Hod, holding the waist of the trunks out with his thumbs.
    “You put this in there, protect your privates.” Smokey hands him a molded triangle with padding stuffed in it. “Then pull them drawstrings tight. You sure you been in the ring?”
    Hod wedges the protector into the trunks, then wriggles his hips to get it to sit right. “There wasn’t any ropes. The other miners just crowded around in sort of a circle.”
    Smokey shakes his head. “Makin you toe the line with Chrysanthemum Joe.”
    “He somebody?”
    The colored man snorts. “He put that left hand of his on your chin, you find out quick who he is. Beat Kid McCoy twice .”
    “What you think I ought to do?” Hod is more worried about the crowd, raw-faced and shouting around the ring, of being humiliated, than of the soft-spoken man from the Pack Train Restaurant.
    Smokey strikes a pose—arms slightly bent and extended out before him, loose fists held palms toward the ground, left hand and foot slightly forward of the right, right elbow tucked in close to the ribs. “You stand like this,” he says, “then you try catch his hits with your gloves or duck your head away from them. With Joe they gonna come in bunches, so stay on your toes, keep movin. This here,” he taps the spot between the ribs just below his breastbone, “this is your mark . You let him hit you sharp on that mark, your knees gonna buckle right under you. So you keep this elbow down here ready to block him, throw it across your mark when he try at it.”
    “That leaves my head open on the right.”
    Smokey smiles, showing a few missing teeth. “Don’t it though? That’s what beau tiful about the game. Whatever a man do, it open him up to something comin back.”
    “So if I think he’s gonna—”
    “Last thing you want to do out there is any think in, son. It’s all time and distance, time and distance, and then you just got to have a feel for it.”
    “You were a fighter?”
    Smokey begins to wrap Hod’s left hand in a tight, complicated cross-pattern with a roll of cloth bandage. “Bare-knuckle days. My last bout I went twenny-eight rounds with Peter Jackson when he come over from Australia. Near kilt each other.”
    Hod looks down at his heavy shoes. “These gonna be all right?”
    Smokey nods. “Got a nice tread on em. Wood floor, slicked up with blood—”
    Hod feels a little dizzy. He tries to focus on one of the postcards. A naked woman with dimpled knees and a feathered hat poses, chin up and eyes to the heavens, before a backdrop of a distant, smoking volcano.
    “Should I try to hit him back?”
    “Try to hit him first and then get away. Hit him, hold him, wrestle him around. Just don’t get him mad at you.”
    There is a roar from the dance floor as one or