4.

He packed some clothes and his .45, and took all of the mustering-out money he hadn’t spent and walked out of the apartment leaving the door unlocked and the key on the hall table. He had been in the Marines for a while with a guy named Anthony Mastrangelo, whose older brother was a bookie. After he left his apartment he went to see him. They had drinks in the North End in a bar named Spag’s.

“You’re a strong guy,” Anthony had said. “How ’bout you be a fighter. My brother Angelo could fix you up with some easy fights.”

“How easy?”

“Easy enough to win,” Anthony had said.

“These guys going in the tank?”

“Sure.”

“And?”

“And we build you a rep,” Anthony said.

“And?”

“And we get you couple big money fights, and maybe me and Angelo bet some side money and...” Anthony made a waffling gesture with his right hand.

They were drinking I.W. Harper on the rocks.

“What makes you think I can do it?”

“In the Corps,” Anthony said, “I seen you kick the crap out of a couple guys. That big Polack from Scranton, what was his name?”

“Starzinski.”

“And the guy from Birmingham, Alabama?” Anthony said.

“I go in the tank sometimes, too?”

Anthony drank the rest of his whisky and gestured at the bartender. He smiled.

“ ’Course,” he said.

“Okay.”

They hired a trainer and got him ready. He learned quickly, and after a time no one wanted to spar with him because he seemed not to feel pain, and he came at everyone with a kind of expressionless ferocity that scared even some of the thick-scarred aging Negroes who’d been doing this most of their lives. When they thought he was ready they put him in with a string of palookas. Burke never knew if the fights were fixed or not. It didn’t matter. In every fight he went out and attempted to kill his opponent. He won eighteen fights in a row and they began to have trouble getting him matches. Other fighters began to avoid him. Finally they put him in with a tall fighter named Tar Baby Johnson, who had a 35–22 record. For seven rounds Burke went implacably after him, absorbing every punch that Tar Baby threw. He landed very few of his own. Those he did land were mostly on Tar Baby’s arms. In the eighth round Tar Baby knocked Burke out with a combination that Burke never saw. Fighters who had beaten Tar Baby Johnson then agreed to fight Burke. Anthony and Angelo dodged them for a while and Burke pulverized several other fighters who fought as Burke did, straight ahead, getting by on toughness. But eventually they had to take another opponent who could box, another rangy black man named Kid Congo, who looked positively delicate opposite Burke’s thick white muscularity. Burke was KO’d in the fifth.

“There’s fighting,” Anthony said to him, “and there’s boxing. You could beat both these guys up in some alley someplace. You’re like a fucking wolverine. But, you got no future in the sweet science.”

Sitting in the reeking cinder block room, holding the ice bag against his face, Burke nodded. It hurt. Burke didn’t pay much attention to the fact that it hurt. Most things hurt. Burke was used to it.

“It’s our fault,” Anthony said. “We shouldn’t have put you in with the Tar Baby yet. We was supposed to build you up until you got a rep, and then bet heavy and maybe you take a dive for us. But the Tar Baby fucked that up. Make big money on a dive you need to be a heavy favorite, you know?”

Burke shrugged. He got dressed slowly. The scars from Bloody Ridge had faded into insignificant white lines across his belly. His face was swollen. One eye was closed. On the other side of the dressing room, Kid Congo was holding ice against his forearms where Burke’s heavy punches had landed. The arms were swollen. He saw Burke looking and grinned.

“You got the heaviest punch I ever seen,” he said.

“I know.”

“But you can’t box for shit.”

“I know.”

“He’d kick your ass on the street,” Anthony said to Kid Congo.

“Don’t know if he would or not,” Kid Congo said. “But kicking my ass on the street ain’t what this all about.”

Anthony said, “Watch how you talk, black boy.”

“He’s right,” Burke said to Anthony.

Anthony shrugged. Kid Congo slipped into his pink shirt and nodded at Burke and walked out of the dressing room.

“You know my brother Angelo books some bets now and then,” Anthony said.

Burke nodded again.

“He could probably use you to collect some of the proceeds.”

“Okay.”

“Most of the time they’ll just give it right up,” Anthony said. “Even if they don’t want to, you’ll scare them and they’ll do it.”

“And if they don’t?”

Anthony shrugged.

“You reason with the fuckers,” he said. “Money’s good. Hours are good. Better than getting knocked on your ass every few weeks by guys like Tar Baby Johnson and this coon. Okay?”

Burke shrugged.

“Okay.”

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