Steel Read online

  “I said shut up.”

  “Oh … you dumb—” Pole swallowed. “If I towel ya off, they’ll know,” he said.

  “They ain’t seen a B-two in years,” Kelly broke in. “If anyone asks, tell ’em it’s an oil leak.”

  “Sure,” said Pole disgustedly. He bit his lips. “Steel, ya’ll never get away with it.”

  The last part of his sentence was drowned out as, suddenly, they were among the crowd, walking down the sloping aisle toward the ring. Kelly held his knees locked and walked a little stiffly. He drew in a long, deep breath and let it out slowly. He’d have to breathe in small gasps and exhalations through his nose while he was in the ring. The people couldn’t see his chest moving or they’d know.

  The heat burdened in around him like a hanging weight. It was like walking along the sloping floor of an ocean of heat and sound. He heard voices drifting past him as he moved.

  “Ya’ll take ’im home in a box!”

  “Well, if it ain’t Rattlin’ Maxo!”

  And the inevitable, “Scrap iron!”

  Kelly swallowed dryly, feeling a tight drawing sensation in his loins. Thirsty, he thought. The momentary vision of the bar across from the Kansas City train station crossed his mind. The dim-lit booth, the cool fan breeze on the back of his neck, the icy, sweat-beaded bottle chilling his palm. He swallowed again. He hadn’t allowed himself one drink in the last hour. The less he drank the less he’d sweat, he knew.

  “Watch it.”

  He felt Pole’s hand slide in through the opening in the back of the covering, felt the mechanic’s hand grab his arm and check him.

  “Ring steps,” Pole said out of a corner of his mouth.

  Kelly edged his right foot forward until the shoe tip touched the riser of the bottom step. Then he lifted his foot to the step and started up.

  At the top, Pole’s fingers tightened around his arm again.

  “Ropes,” Pole said, guardedly.

  It was hard getting through the ropes with the covering on. Kelly almost fell and hoots and catcalls came at him like spears out of the din. Kelly felt the canvas give slightly under his feet and then Pole pushed the stool against the back of his legs and he sat down a little too jerkily.

  “Hey, get that derrick out o’ here!” shouted a man in the second row. Laughter and hoots. “Scrap iron!” yelled some people.

  Then Pole drew off the covering and put it down on the ring apron.

  Kelly sat there staring at the Maynard Flash.

  The B-seven was motionless, its gloved hands hanging across its legs. There was imitation blond hair, crew cut, growing out of its skull pores. Its face was that of an impassive Adonis. The simulation of muscle curve on its body and limbs was almost perfect. For a moment Kelly almost thought that years had been peeled away and he was in the business again, facing a young contender. He swallowed carefully. Pole crouched beside him, pretending to fiddle with an arm plate.

  “Steel, don’t,” he muttered again.

  Kelly didn’t answer. He felt a desperate desire to suck in a lungful of air and bellow his chest. He drew in small patches of air through his nose and let them trickle out. He kept staring at the Maynard Flash, thinking of the array of instant-reaction centers inside that smooth arch of chest. The drawing sensation reached his stomach. It was like a cold hand pulling in at strands of muscle and ligament.

  A red-faced man in a white suit climbed into the ring and reached up for the microphone which was swinging down to him.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “the opening bout of the evening. A ten-round light heavyweight bout. From Philadelphia, the B-two, Battling Maxo.”

  The crowd booed and hissed. They threw up paper airplanes and shouted “Scrap iron!”

  “His opponent, our own B-seven, the Maynard Flash!”

  Cheers and wild clapping. The Flash’s mechanic touched a button under the left armpit and the B-seven jumped up and held his arms over his head in the victory gesture. The crowd laughed happily.

  “Jesus,” Pole muttered, “I never saw that. Must be a new gimmick.”

  Kelly blinked to relieve his eyes.

  “Three more bouts to follow,” said the red-faced man and then the microphone drew up and he left the ring. There was no referee. B-fighters never clinched—their machinery rejected it—and there was no knock-down count. A felled B-fighter stayed down. The new B-nine, it was claimed by the Mawling publicity staff, would be able to get up, which would make for livelier and longer bouts.

  Pole pretended to check over Kelly.

  “Steel, it’s your last chance,” he begged.

  “Get out,” said Kelly without moving his lips.

  Pole looked at Kelly’s immobile eyes a moment, then sucked in a ragged breath and straightened up.

  “Stay away from him,” he warned as he started through the ropes.

  Across the ring, the Flash was standing in its corner, hitting its gloves together as if it were a real young fighter anxious to get the fight started. Kelly stood up and Pole drew the stool away. Kelly stood watching the B-seven, seeing how its eye centers were zeroing in on him. There was a cold sinking in his stomach.

  The bell rang.

  The B-seven moved out smoothly from its corner with a mechanical glide, its arms raised in the traditional way, gloved hands wavering in tiny circles in front of it. It moved quickly toward Kelly who edged out of his corner automatically, his mind feeling, abruptly, frozen. He felt his own hands rise as if someone else had lifted them and his legs were like dead wood under him. He kept his gaze on the bright unmoving eyes of the Maynard Flash.

  They came together. The B-seven’s left flicked out and Kelly blocked it, feeling the rock-hard fist of the Flash even through his glove. The fist moved out again. Kelly drew back his head and felt a warm breeze across his mouth. His own left shot out and banged against the Flash’s nose. It was like hitting a door knob. Pain flared in Kelly’s arm and his jaw muscles went hard as he struggled to keep his face blank.

  The B-seven feinted with a left and Kelly knocked it aside. He couldn’t stop the right that blurred in after it and grazed his left temple. He jerked his head away and the B-seven threw a left that hit him over the ear. Kelly lurched back, throwing out a left that the B-seven brushed aside. Kelly caught his footing and hit the Flash’s jaw solidly with a right uppercut. He felt a jolt of pain run up his arm. The Flash’s head didn’t budge. He shot out a left that hit Kelly on the right shoulder.

  Kelly back-pedaled instinctively. Then he heard someone yell, “Get ’im a bicycle!” and he remembered what Mr. Waddow had said. He moved in again, his lips aching they were pressed together so tightly.

  A left caught him under the heart and he felt the impact shudder through his frame. Pain stabbed at his heart. He threw a spasmodic left which banged against the B-seven’s nose again. There was only pain. Kelly stepped back and staggered as a hard right caught him high on the chest. He started to move back. The B-seven hit him on the chest again. Kelly lost his balance and stepped back quickly to catch equilibrium. The crowd booed. The B-seven moved in without making a single mechanical sound.

  Kelly regained his balance and stopped. He threw a hard right that missed. The momentum of his blow threw him off center and the Flash’s left drove hard against his upper right arm. The arm went numb. Even as Kelly was sucking in a teeth-clenched gasp the B-seven shot in a hard right under his guard that slammed into Kelly’s spongy stomach. Kelly felt the breath go out of him. His right slapped ineffectively across the Flash’s right cheek. The Flash’s eyes glinted.

  As the B-seven moved in again, Kelly side-stepped and, for a moment, the radial eye centers lost him. Kelly moved out of range dizzily, pulling air in through his nostrils.

  “Get that heap out o’ there!” some man screamed.

  “Scrap iron, scrap iron!”

  Breath shook in Kelly’s throat. He swallowed quickly and started forward just as the Flash picked him up again. Taking a chance, he su
cked in breath through his mouth hoping that his movements would keep the people from seeing. Then he was up to the B-seven. He stepped in close, hoping to out-time electrical impulse, and threw a hard right at the Flash’s body.

  The B-seven’s left shot up and Kelly’s blow was deflected by the iron wrist. Kelly’s left was thrown off too and then the Flash’s left shot in and drove the breath out of Kelly again. Kelly’s left barely hit the Flash’s rock-hard chest. He staggered back, the B-seven following. He kept jabbing but the B-seven kept deflecting the blows and counterjabbing with almost the same piston-like motion. Kelly’s head kept snapping back. He fell back more and saw the right coming straight at him. He couldn’t stop it.

  The blow drove in like a steel battering-ram. Spears of pain shot behind Kelly’s eyes and through his head. A black cloud seemed to flood across the ring. His muffled cry was drowned out by the screaming crowd as he toppled back, his nose and mouth trickling bright blood that looked as good as the dye they used in the B-fighters.

  The rope checked his fall, pressing in rough and hard against his back. He swayed there, right arm hanging limp, left arm raised defensively. He blinked his eyes instinctively, trying to focus them. I’m a robot, he thought, a robot.

  The Flash stepped in and drove a violent right into Kelly’s chest, a left to his stomach. Kelly doubled over, gagging. A right slammed off his skull like a hammer blow, driving him back against the ropes again. The crowd screamed.

  Kelly saw the blurred outline of the Maynard Flash. He felt another blow smash into his chest like a club. With a sob he threw a wild left that the B-seven brushed off. Another sharp blow landed on Kelly’s shoulder. He lifted his right and managed to deflect the worst of a left thrown at his jaw. Another right concaved his stomach. He doubled over. A hammering right drove him back on the ropes. He felt hot salty blood in his mouth and the roar of the crowd seemed to swallow him. Stay up!—he screamed at himself. Stay up goddamn you! The ring wavered before him like dark water.

  With a desperate surge of energy, he threw a right as hard as he could at the tall beautiful figure in front of him. Something cracked in his wrist and hand and a wave of searing pain shot up his arm. His throat-locked cry went unheard. His arm fell, his left went down and the crowd shrieked and howled for the Flash to finish it.

  There was only inches between them now. The B-seven rained in blows that didn’t miss. Kelly lurched and staggered under the impact of them. His head snapped from side to side. Blood ran across his face in scarlet ribbons His arm hung like a dead branch at his side. He kept getting slammed back against the ropes, bouncing forward and getting slammed back again. He couldn’t see any more. He could only hear the screaming of the crowd and the endless swishing and thudding of the B-seven’s gloves. Stay up, he thought. I have to stay up. He drew in his head and hunched his shoulders to protect himself.

  He was like that seven seconds before the bell when a clubbing right on the side of his head sent him crashing to the canvas.

  He lay there gasping for breath. Suddenly, he started to get up, then, equally as suddenly, realized that he couldn’t. He fell forward again and lay on his stomach on the warm canvas, his head throbbing with pain. He could hear the booing and hissing of the dissatisfied crowd.

  When Pole finally managed to get him up and slip the cover over his head the crowd was jeering so loudly that Kelly couldn’t hear Pole’s voice. He felt the mechanic’s big hand inside the covering, guiding him, but he fell down climbing through the ropes and almost fell again on the steps. His legs were like rubber tubes. Stay up. His brain still murmured the words.

  In the ready room he collapsed. Pole tried to get him up on the bench but he couldn’t. Finally, he bunched up his blue coat under Kelly’s head and, kneeling, he started patting with his handkerchief at the trickles of blood.

  “You dumb bastard,” he kept muttering in a thin, shaking voice. “You dumb bastard.”

  Kelly lifted his hand and brushed away Pole’s hand.

  “Go—get the—money,” he gasped hoarsely.

  “What?”

  “The money!” gasped Kelly through his teeth.

  “But—”

  “Now!” Kelly’s voice was barely intelligible.

  Pole straightened up and stood looking down at Kelly a moment. Then he turned and went out.

  Kelly lay there drawing in breath and exhaling it with wheezing sounds. He couldn’t move his right hand and he knew it was broken. He felt the blood trickling from his nose and mouth. His body throbbed with pain.

  After a few moments he struggled up on his left elbow and turned his head, pain crackling along his neck muscles. When he saw that Maxo was all right he put his head down again. A smile twisted up one corner of his lips.

  When Pole came back, Kelly lifted his head painfully. Pole came over and knelt down. He started patting at the blood again.

  “Ya get it?” Kelly asked in a crusty whisper.

  Pole blew out a slow breath.

  “Well?”

  Pole swallowed. “Half of it,” he said.

  Kelly stared up at him blankly, his mouth fallen open. His eyes didn’t believe it.

  “He said he wouldn’t pay five C’s for a one rounder.”

  “What d’ya mean?” Kelly’s voice cracked. He tried to get up and put down his right hand. With a strangled cry he fell back, his face white. His head thrashed on the coat pillow, his eyes shut tightly.

  “No,” he moaned. “No. No. No. No. No.”

  Pole was looking at his hand and wrist. “Jesus God,” he whispered.

  Kelly’s eyes opened and he stared up dizzily at the mechanic.

  “He can’t—he can’t do that,” he gasped.

  Pole licked his dry lips.

  “Steel, there—ain’t a thing we can do. He’s got a bunch o’ toughs in the office with ’im. I can’t…” He lowered his head. “And if—you was t’go there he’d know what ya done. And—he might even take back the two and a half.”

  Kelly lay on his back, staring up at the naked bulb without blinking. His chest labored and shuddered with breath.

  “No,” he murmured. “No.”

  He lay there for a long time without talking. Pole got some water and cleaned off his face and gave him a drink. He opened up his small suitcase and patched up Kelly’s face. He put Kelly’s right arm in a sling.

  Fifteen minutes later Kelly spoke.

  “Well go back by bus,” he said.

  “What?” Pole asked.

  “We’ll go by bus,” Kelly said slowly. “That’ll only cost, oh, fifty-sixty bucks.” He swallowed and shifted on his back. “That’ll leave almost two C’s. We can get ’im a—a new trigger spring and a—eye lens and—” He blinked his eyes and held them shut a moment as the room started fading again.

  “And oil paste,” he said then. “Loads of it. He’ll be—good as new again.”

  Kelly looked up at Pole. “Then we’ll be all set up,” he said. “Maxo’ll be in good shape again. And we can get us some decent bouts.” He swallowed and breathed laboriously. “That’s all he needs is a little work. New spring, a new eye lens. That’ll shape ’im up. We’ll show those bastards what a B-two can do. Old Maxo’ll show ’em. Right?”

  Pole looked down at the big Irishman and sighed.

  “Right, Steel,” he said.

  TO FIT THE CRIME

  “I’ve been murdered!” cried ancient Iverson Lord, “brutally, foully murdered!”

  “There, there,” said his wife.

  “Now, now,” said his doctor.

  “Garbage,” murmured his son.

  “As soon expect sympathy from mushrooms!” snarled the decaying poet. “From cabbages!”

  “From kings,” said his son.

  The parchment face flinted momentarily, then sagged into meditative creases. “Aye, they will miss me,” he sighed. “The kings of language, the emperors of the tongue.” He closed his eyes. “The lords of splendrous symbol, they shall know when I have passed
.”

  The moulding scholar lay propped on a cloudbank of pillows. A peak of silken dressing gown erupted his turkey throat and head. His head was large, an eroded football with lace holes for eyes and a snapping gash of a mouth.

  He looked over them all; his wife, his daughter, his son and his doctor. His beady suspicious eyes played about the room. He glared at the walls. “Assassins,” he grumbled.

  The doctor reached for his wrist.

  “Avaunt!” snapped the hunched-over semanticist, clawing out. “Take off your clumsy fingers!”

  He threw an ired glance at the physician. “White-collar witch doctors,” he accused, “who take the Hypocratic Oath and mash it into common vaudeville.”

  “Iverson, your wrist,” said the doctor.

  “Who knuckle-tap our chests and sound our hearts yet have no more conception of our ills than plumbers have of stars or pigs of paradise.”

  “Your wrist, Iverson,” the doctor said.

  Iverson Lord was near ninety. His limbs were glasslike and brittle. His blood ran slow. His heartbeat was a largo drum. Only his brain hung clear and unaffected, a last soldier defending the fort against senility.

  “I refuse to die,” he announced as if someone had suggested it. His face darkened. “I will not let bleak nature dim my light nor strip the jewel of being from my fingers!”

  “There, there,” said his wife.

  “There, there! There, there!” rasped the poet, false teeth clicking in an outrage. “What betrayal is this! That I, who shape my words and breathe into their forms the breath of might, should be a-fettered to this cliché-ridden imbecile!”

  Mrs. Lord submitted her delicate presence to the abuse of her husband. She strained out a peace-making smile which played upon her features of faded rose. She plucked feebly at mouse-gray curls.

  “You’re upset, Ivie dear,” she said.

  “Upset!” he cried. “Who would not be upset when set upon by gloating jackals!”

  “Father,” his daughter implored.

  “Jackals, whose brains like sterile lumps beneath their skulls refuse to emanate the vaguest glow of insight into words.”