Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara Read Free Book Online Page B

flattered Bob Hooker, editor of the Standard, into giving her a job on the staff of the Standard. She told him he was a real man for his editorial on his dead dog. She became the pest of the Standard office on her own hook, and was being built up big by Bob Hooker, who regarded himself as the William Allen White-Ed Howe-Joseph Pulitzer of Gibbsville. He began to regard Lydia as the local Sophie Irene Loeb, and paid her $35 a week, with three exceptions the highest journalistic salary in the town. Lydia was always being sent down in the mines, much against the wishes of the miners, who think it is unlucky for a woman to enter a mine; or riding in locomotive cabs, or spending a night in prison, or interviewing visiting celebrities, such as George Luks (who later wanted to know where in the name of God they dug her up) and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and Gifford Pinchot (five times). Lydia s secret favorite adjective for herself was keen; and she went around looking keen during all her waking hours. She felt sorry for prostitutes on all occasions; she thought milk for babies ought to be pure; she thought Germany was not altogether responsible for the World War; she did not believe in Prohibition ( It does not prohibit, she often said). She smoked cigarettes one right after the other, and did not care who knew it; and she never was more than five minutes out of the office before she was talking in newspaper argot, not all of it quite accurate. She had a hell of a time with the spelling of names. She went out to cover the prizefights with Doug Campbell, sports editor of the Standard. No nice women ever went to prizefights in Gibbsville, no matter what they did in New York, and Lydia s story the next day began: I went to the boxing match last night. I went to the boxing match, and to be completely frank and honest, I enjoyed myself. What is this taboo that man-made convention has placed upon women going to boxing matches? Can it be that men are just a little selfish, depriving women of the fun and beauty of the boxing match? And 1 use the word beauty advisedly, after long and careful consideration. For there was beauty in McGovern s Hall last night. Let me tell you about it. To you women who cannot attend boxing matches because of the aforementioned masculine taboo that has been placed on attendance at the fights by women, permit me a few words of explanation. The principal contest of the evening, like all good things, is called the wind-up and it comes last. It follows the introductory bouts which are known as preliminaries or prelims I believe they were called by my friend Mr. Doug Campbell, popular sports editor of the Standard, who escorted me to McGovern s Hall and showed me the ropes. In the prelims one sees the lesser known lights of the boxing fraternity, and it is considered a kind of obscurity to be relegated to the prelims. But it was in a prelim that I saw real beauty. A mere strip of a lad, hardly more than a boy he was, and his name is Tony Morascho. Doug Campbell informed me that it was the d�ut of Tony Morascho but I sincerely trust it will not be Tony s last, for there was beauty personified, grace in every ripple of his lithe young frame, symmetry and rhythm and the speed of a cobra as it strikes the helpless rabbit. Beauty! Do you know El Grecco, the celebrated Spanish artist? Surely you do. Well, there was El Grecco, to the life. & That was how Al Grecco got his name. He could not live the name down. The gang at the poolroom and at the gym called him El Grecco, and for a gag Packy McGovern billed him as Al Grecco on the next card. The name followed him into prison was, in fact, waiting for him there; Lantenengo County Prison was ruled by a warden who, though no deep student of penology, believed in permitting his wards to have newspapers, cigarettes, whiskey, assignations, cards anything, so long as they paid for it. And so when Al Grecco was sent up on the poorbox burglary matter he was not altogether unknown at the