Love and Learn (Witwer)/Chapter 7
A couple or three days ago me and Hazel, suddenly getting a rush of gray matter to the head, decided we should begin overhauling ourselves, mentally and—excuse me—physically. Our first imitation was to appear au naturel before some assorted and exorbitant specialists on this and that, passing the critical eyes of the medicos with flying colors. In fact there was plenty color flying in our cheeks when we left!
Well, as the charming doctors enthusiastically corroborated the report of our pier glass, we saw no reason to attempt improving two such physical masterpieces as ourselves, so we took up the subject of mental culture by hauling off and buying a set of the literary classics. Incidentally we ran into a booklegger from who Hazel bought a few suppressed gems at twenty-five dollars each and delivery right to your home in the original covers. Most of them were just one-half of one percent to me, really!
Being on the wagon as far as moonshine novels are concerned, I personally began getting scholarly with a cunning little volume entitled "Evangeline" from the busy pen of Harry Longfellow. None of it rhymes but it's much better than the film. Hazel said it was apple sauce to her and a steal on veronal for narcotic purposes. Still, as I twice caught Hazel cheating by passing up the dignified immorals—no, I don't mean immortals—for a copy of "Racy Stories," I can't give her much as a critic.
However, in wading gamely through "Evangeline" I came across the following:
Really, I was a bit surprised to find that Mr. Longfellow was superstitious, everybody speaks so well about him. But mentioning horseshoes reminds me of Mike McGann and Mike McGann reminds me of so many things that—well, I'll tell you about Miguel and the equine's boots.
If you laugh it's your own fault!
We stumbled across Mike McGann on the way back from Europe. Our meeting with the highly entertaining Michael was a bit unconventional and that sort of thing, I mean to say, as the jolly old Londoners remark—in books. Hazel insisted on coming back by the via of Great Britain, in the hope that the cute Prince of Wales would peg her and forget about Buckingham Palace.
"There's a boy that's going to get somewhere," says Hazel. "I predict a great future for him if he works hard and tends to his knitting!"
The good-looking H. R. H. Edwards is sitting pretty at that, now isn't he?
Well, we did see the Prince of Wales at the Shawftsbury Theater, but though by actual count he once glanced in our direction, Mr. Wales was Hazel-proof, in spite of the fact that Hazel is the real McCoy and has been a disturbance amongst the annoying sex since she tossed away her rattle for a powder puff. So having failed to panic royalty and being as homesick as Robinson Crusoe, we checked out of London and started for the Gem of the Ocean.
A bone-chilling, foggy drizzle was falling and by the time we slid into Southampton it was coming down the same way it does at Niagara Falls. Hazel, the demon shopper, became crazily infatuated with a silk and lace shawl in a shop window and insisted on buying it, in spite of my advice to the opposite. Really, we had more trunks as it was than a herd of elephants! They were all full of stuff to delight the customs boys and while me and Hazel have singly and together smiled our way out of many a critical situation, these hard-boiled customs inspectors can't be bribed with mere eye work. They have too strong a sense of duty, if you know what I mean. That's just a near pun, so don't bother with it.
Anyway, Hazel has a bad habit of being as close as a tie game when it comes to circulating her own dimes, even if she has been the reason for lots of other people's gulden changing hands. Haggling over the price of this shawl ate up so much time that when we were about to leave the store and a hoarsely fatigued saleslady, we discovered to our horror that we had just twenty minutes to make our boat!
We dashed madly outside in the downpour of rain and gazed wildly around for a taxi. There was exactly one in sight and we yelled at it just as a similar yell came from across the street. The cab skidded dizzily to a stop and lifting our skirts we braved the elements and such male eyes as were passing, including the taxi chauffeur's. I yanked open the door of the cab, telling the goofy-looking driver to keep his eyes front, and just as me and Hazel are about to step excitedly in an undersized and equally excited youth starts inside through the opposite door.
We hesitate in amazement and then the damp and angry Hazel finds her voice.
"Get back in line, Dizzy," she tells the surprised stranger. "This is our cab!"
"That's what you think!" sneers the butter-in. "I was on the runnin' board of this boiler before it stopped. Run along, I'm busy. This here taxi's engaged!"
"Try and get it!" snaps Hazel, fit to be tied.
"Try and stop me!" grins this modern Chesterfield.
"If you were a gentleman," says Hazel, curling her cheery lip, "you wouldn't argue with a lady!"
"People which lives in gasoline tanks shouldn't throw matches," comes back our opponent coolly. "If you was a lady you wouldn't butt in where you wasn't invited!"
Meanwhile the taxi driver is a neutral but much interested audience. Covered from head to foot by the British equivalent of a slicker, the rain meant nothing in his young life! He was likewise nobody's fool. With great presence of mind he shoves the meter over to "Waiting Time" so that no matter who wins the argument he won't be the loser!
"You're nothing but a little English cur!" says Hazel calmly to the other occupant of the taxi.
He immediately busts out laughing. "Ha, ha!" he chortles. "The funny part is that I ain't English at all!"
It was our turn to grin.
"But you admit being a cur?" asks Hazel scornfully.
"I don't admit nothin'!" says the little fellow warily. "You got to see Silent Sam Shapiro, my manager. He does all my business."
Don't you love that?
Well, while all this trifling small talk is being had, both of us and the pest are taking unwilling shower baths of typical cold Southampton rain.
We're making no progress at all, with Hazel and her tête-à-tête getting along like a couple of headache powders in a glass of water. So I took a hand.
"Listen, young man!" I says, smiling sweetly, "we've got about fifteen minutes to catch a boat for America and"
"Why didn't you say you was Amuricans?" interrupts the stranger. "I would of worked different!"
"Did you expect us to wave flags, you little boob?" snorts Hazel. "Hurry up and get away from that door—we're late!"
"Stop squawkin' and leave me alone, will you?" complains our young friend. "So you're Amuricans, hey? Well, well, well! So am I. I come from Noo Yawk. Where did you cuteys blow in from? Ain't this Southampton a fearful slab?"
"Shut up!" almost screams the nervous Hazel, with a hasty glance at her watch. "If you don't go away from this cab I'll"
"Oh, be yourself, good-lookin' and quit gettin' rosy with me!" says the Noo Yawker peevishly. "I'm shovin' off for Broadway on the same scow you're goin' back on. Flop down there and we'll all take this taxi!"
Once in the cab and out of the flood, introductions came easily. I identified myself and the still seething Hazel, and our companion broke down and confessed to being Mike McGann, an aspirant for the batamweight boxing championship. When Hazel had digested that startling information she sniffed contemptuously and turned on the ice for Michael. The combination of "Mike McGann" and "prize-fighter" murdered her interest and Mike just couldn't sell himself to Hazel.
On the other hand I didn't find the not bad-looking Michael hard to take at all. It's a cold fact that he had the earmarks of a fighter, both of 'em being rather soggy and swollen—but now that the transportation problem had been solved he really seemed to have quite a winning personality. To get my troubled mind off the way our taxi was skidding all over the slippery wet pavements I engaged Mike in conversation. It wasn't a hard trick.
"What were you doing in Europe, Mr. McGann?" I asked, with a show of interest that burnt Hazel up.
"Who—me?" says Mike. "Oh, I just been acin' around. A week ago I win a brawl at the National Sportin' Club. What a swell trap that is and how they put on dog—nothin' but dress suits and dukes! They thought I was a mug but that ain't what they think now! I knock off a boloney by the name of Drummer Tansy with one cuff in the pan. The second time I feint him he become a canvas inspector, goin' down without bein' hit and takin' the count! The big mackerel had fifteen pounds on me, too. Them milk-fed English scrappers is just giggles to me, no kiddin'. All they got is their trunks!"
"You hate yourself, don't you?" sneers the bored Hazel, yawning and looking out the taxi window at the rain.
"No, I don't hate myself, sweetness," says Mike, not a bit ruffled. "But when a guy's good he might as well admit it!"
I gave Michael his laugh and then I remarked that it surprised me to find out that a boy of his small size—he didn't weigh a grain over 118—should be a pugilist. I had the idea that most boxers were built à la Dempsey. This appeared to slightly steam Mons. McGann.
"So you think it's funny a little guy should be a box-fighter, hey?" he says indignantly. "Where d'ye get that stuff? The greatest battlers the world has ever saw was little guys and if you don't think so you're crazy! Ain't you ever saw a pitcher of Napoleon?"
"Do you compare yourself with Napoleon?" inquires Hazel, with withering scorn. It was wasted on Mike.
"Why not? The French is as good as we are, ain't they?" he says.
That won and Hazel threw up her hands with a whinney of resignation!
Deliberately turning his back on the outraged Hazel, Michael then began promoting himself with me. After he told me that I was as soothing to the eyes as boric acid and I told him to behave or I'd give him the last lesson first, he explained the weights in the different classes of pugilism. His life-long ambition was to become champion in his own division, the bantam-weight, and according to Mike that ambition would be realized shortly after he arrived in New York. Honest to Brooklyn, he had more confidence in himself than a deep-sea diver ducking his head in a bathtub!
Plenty amused by Miguel's English and quaint philosophy, I looked forward to lots of guffaws on what wotld otherwise be a brutal boat ride back home, as I'm no sailor. I was not disappointed regarding Mike's entertainment value. Believe me, he certainly gave us service!
About half-way to the dock our taxi suddenly came to a slithering stop, with a screech and burning of emergency brakes. To the accompaniment of some choice cockney oaths from our chauffeur, a muttered curse from Mike that was at least clean and faint screams from me and Hazel, we're all tumbled together in a heap by the unexpected halt. As the taxi slides on again Hazel sticks her head out the window in the rain and remarks that we almost ran over a cat.
"A cat, hey?" says Mike tensely, grabbing Hazel's arm. "What color, kid?"
"It was a black cat," answers Hazel frigidly, removing Michael's hand from her arm the same way she'd pick up an overripe tomato. "And my name is Miss Killian—not kid!"
"Your name will be mud now!" he tells Hazel. "Can you imagine a black cat crossin' our path? Ain't that a tough break, when we're late and everything? I betcha we miss the boat or crash into somebody or the wheels'll come off this tin can we're in, or else"
"Or else they won't!" butts in Hazel testily. "Be still, you little crape-hanger. I think there's a touch of undertaker in you!"
"I wouldn't be surprised," answers the future bantam-weight champion. "Layin' 'em out cold and stiff is my business! If you're a good girl I might let you see me fight when we get to Noo Yawk."
"I'm not in the habit of going around with prize-fighters, thank you!" snaps Hazel.
"Well, a round is all I generally let 'em go with me!" says Mike.
"I wish you would stop talking to me—I don't like you!" says Hazel furiously.
"See if I care!" answers Mike with an untroubled grin. "If you don't quit speakin' out of turn I'll street you from my taxi and let this English rain make a burn out of your permanent wave!"
Honestly, the lovely but torrid-tempered Hazel, used to having the boys jump through hoops at her command, was commencing to get red-headed at being unable to do anything with Michael's delivery. I stepped into the breach with a change of conversation, to ward off violence!
"Do you really believe a black cat crossing your path is bad luck, Mr. McGann?" I ask him.
"Absolutely!" says Mike emphatically, now on what I was soon to find out was his favorite subject. "And before this day's over you'll be believin' it, too. One or all of us is due for a piece of grief. I never seen that sign fail! Why, listen here, kid, about a year ago I was out in"
But really, I don't want to detain you too long. While Hazel alternately yawned and giggled and I let out careful inches on a smile, Miguel seriously told us of various cruel and unusual misfortunes that had befell himself and friends as the direct result of ebony kittens scampering across their right of way. Honestly, he put us both in hysterics when he wound up his mournful anecdotes by taking a well-worn rabbit's foot from his pocket and rubbing it vigorously to offset Mr. Black Cat's bad luck!
Me and Hazel were beating a continual nervous tattoo on the floor of the taxi with our slippers as the minutes ticked off and traffic jams kept us crawling toward the pier in that horrible rain. And yet they like it over there! I remember when I once bitterly complained of the smoky haze in London, a shop-girl, sick and tired of trying to sell me a hat, told me that the British fog was "far better than the glare of your beastly American sun!"
Still, I suppose it's natural for people to brag about the climate in their home town, no matter what it is. Perhaps even in Hades the natives go around boasting to the new arrivals about the total absence of snow and the beautiful warm climate all the year round!
Well, when we finally arrived at the dock we had much less than ten minutes to get aboard the boat. Mike nearly swooned when in paying the fare he discovered that our chauffeur was cross-eyed. That and the black feline sealed our doom beyond a doubt, he gloomily assured us, and in spite of the scarcity of time he forced us to stand still till he'd repeated "Bread and butter, bread and butter!" ten times to foil the jinx. Mike was a hot sketch, really!
All Michael's baggage was already aboard the ship, his manager having attended to that. Our trunks were below decks, but our suitcases—"boxes" as they call 'em in the United Kingdom—had been forwarded ahead and were still on the dock. We quickly identified them and Mike shooed us up the gangplank, telling us he'd bring our hand luggage along as there were no porters in sight. At first Hazel strenuously objected, on the grounds that Miguel was trying to put over a fast one. She informed me in a loud aside that Mike was probably a clever crook who had framed our meeting and everything else in order to abduct our suitcases. She said she'd as soon put him in charge of something worth money as she'd put a rabbit in charge of a leaf of cabbage!
However, I managed to chase her protestingly aboard, telling the obliging Mike to do his stuff and make it snappy.
Hazel's flock of hat-boxes caused all the excitement, and really within the next few minutes there was enough of that commodity to satisfy the most exacting! A shopper by birth, Hazel has attended all the sales in the world except the one Columbus took, and in Paris she just ran wild. The perspiring Michael was forced to make two trips with Hazel's baggage and just as he raced across the pier with his second armful of millinery the dear old gangplank was being drawn in. Honestly, from then on it was all slapstick, lacking nothing but a director, a camera and a couple of union-pie-throwers!
Hurling the hat-boxes aboard, Mike made a praiseworthy but wild leap for the deck, lustily cheered by the delighted mob on the dock and the heavily thrilled me and Hazel. However, he turned out to be a very much better pitcher than he was a broad jumper. The hat-boxes landed K. O. but with Mike it was different! By an odd coincidence he missed the gangplank from here to Baluchistan and hit the water with a fearful splash. Me and Hazel were only two of the scores who shrieked and "Oh-ed!" while the laughing deck-hands fished him out of the water and pulled him aboard, limp, soaked and bedraggled. Try and keep an Irishman down with plain water!
Accompanied by a frantic young gentleman who we afterwards learned was Silent Sam Shapiro, Mike's manager, me and Hazel rushed down to where the water-logged Mr. McGann lay prostrate on the deck. The ship's doctor and some admiring volunteers were busy trying to bring him back to normalcy. Michael looked like a total loss when Silent Sam pushed his way through and scowled down at his unconscious meal ticket.
"The dizzy little stiff!" remarks Silent Sam indignantly to the world at large. "We got sixty thousand dollars' worth of box fights signed up and can you imagine this bozo takin' a chance like that with my cut of the sugar?"
"You unfeeling wretch!" explodes Hazel, to my surprise. "He might have been drowned!"
"He'd just as soon play a dirty trick like that on me as not!" agrees Silent Sam. "When I first took hold of him he was as homeless as a poker chip, yet he ain't got a ounce of gratitude in his system for what I done for him. They don't make 'em no selfisher!"
We both glare at him and at that minute Michael opens his eyes, staring around vacantly. Then he sees me and a glint of recognition brightens his face.
"I told you that black cat and that cross-eyed banana which run that taxi would gum this trip for me!" he gulps almost triumphantly through chattering teeth. "Somebody catch me a cuppa hot coffee, I'm as cold as a pawnbroker's heart!"
Well, on the voyage home Michael McGann and his talkative manager, Silent Sam Shapiro, clung to us like bathing suits, honestly. While Michael was recovering from his spectacular dive into the briny, Silent Sam told us something about him. He was rushing his visible means of support back from unamended Europe to get him "off the gin and on the gym," as he put it. Yes, McGann was his real name and Silent Sam wouldn't let him put "One-Round," "Kid," "Hurricane" or anything like that in front of it. Why? Look at the records of fistiana, says Samuel, and you'll see that few boxers called "Fighting" this or "Knockout" that ever held a title. The good ones are all plain Jack Dempsey, Harry Greb, Mickey Walker, Benny Leonard, Johnny Dundee, etc.
Sam also related how a couple of years before he had paid one Beansy Mullen five hundred dollars for Mike's contract and thought he got a bargain. The sport writers told him it was the same kind of a bargain as paying five hundred dollars for a doughnut would be. Samuel admitted that he and Mike wore straw hats in the winter-time for a while, but added he could sell Mike now for twenty-five thousand dollars easily.
"Sell him?" I ask, frowning. "Aren't you ashamed of yourself to hold that boy in slavery—to take part of his money when he does all the fighting?"
"How d'ye get that way?" says this master mind in amazement. "Managin' a leather-pusher's a tough racket. I got to figure out wise fights for Mike and rate him along, whilst all he's got to do is go in there with a pair of nice silk trunks on and take his pastin'!"
Hazel clucks her tongue and I curled my lip at him.
"Just what did you do during the war, Mr. Shapiro?" I ask him.
"I claimed exemption!" says Samuel promptly. "On the grounds of double pneumonia. When I come out of the hospital I couldn't make the weight for the trenches. But I give my wife to my country without a whimper! I sent her across as a Red Cross nurse and"
"You're married?" I interrupted.
"Not right now," says Sam. "My noble wife figured I wouldn't be able to cope with that pneumonia so she hauled off and threw a divorce at me. I heard she wed a Frenchman."
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" I says.
"Why?" asks Sam. "It was the Frog's own fault, wasn't it?"
At that Hazel flung aside all pretense and laughed her head off. Honestly, anyone who can keep Hazel giggling seems to be able to have her friendship for the asking. So Silent Sam, being a gold mine of chuckles, found little difficulty in playing around with Hazel on the voyage back home.
While Silent Sam Shapiro devoted his restless energy to building himself up with the temporarily receptive Hazel, Mr. McGann tried his luck with me. Always for anyone who is trying to get somewhere, I gave Mike a lot of my time. Really, he was a good egg and one thing alone he did for me made him solid. It's a hobby of mine to fall a prey to seasickness, once aboard the lugger. Well, after watching my antics the first day out Michael instructed me in a before breakfast exercise that to my surprise and gratitude cured me.
Apropos of nothing, the most amusingly interestirfg thing about Michael McGann to me was his absolute serfdom to superstition. Mike saw a "sign," good or bad—usually bad—in everything that happened during his waking hours and when he slept he found omens in his dreams. Neither me nor you nor nobody else could hope to remember all of Mike's "signs," but I'll put out a few of 'em here so you can get a sparse idea.
According to Michael, it was bad luck for a third person to walk between two others; to be the first man to enter the ring for a bout; to sing before breakfast; to fight or do anything of importance on Friday, the thirteenth; to step into a ring without his old cap and faded bathrobe; to break a mirror; to walk under a ladder; to spill salt; to open an umbrella in a room; to put a hat on a bed; to whistle in the dressing-room before a fight; to return to the starting point before reaching his objective without first counting nine; to dream of snakes; or what have your Really, Mike's "bad luck signs" came under the head of countless, and during the journey he went out of his way to call my attention to such of 'em as came up. His solemn warnings to Hazel had her continually on edge and kept Silent Sam busy apologizing for his gloomy little employee.
Regarding good luck tip-offs, Mike was a bit uncertain, as he was always looking for the worst of it. Four-leaf clovers, picking up pins, touching hunchbacks on the back, having a mole on the right shoulder and finding horse-shoes just about made up his list of "favorable" occurrences. As for a rabbit's foot, well—ask the man who owns one! Mike's catalog of good luck omens didn't contain many pages, but he was a constant reader of those it did.
"Don't mind that little clown," says Silent Sam one day when Hazel complained about Mike riding her for humming on deck before breakfast. "My athalete's stopped so many wallops around the ears I think it's gave him a slight touch of insanity, what I mean!"
The night before we moored at New York, Mike and Silent Sam oiled the steward for a private table for four and we had a very formal dinner party. Among other things, one question was all cleared up that eventful evening. Hazel had expressed a few doubts as to Michael's ability as a fighter, but she never did that thing again!
Our dinner was going along beautiful when the fireworks went off. Me and Hazel wore our most pulse-quickening décolletés, while the compactly built Mike and the nice looking Sam were very restful to the iris in perfectly fitting tuxedos. Many a glance of honest admiration flashed at our table and don't think it didn't! In passing me the cream, Hazel happened to accidentally knock over the salt shaker and a lot of it spilled on the table-cloth. The rest of us didn't even notice it, but honestly the superstitious Mike's eyes bulged out a foot! He seemed positively horrified and told Hazel she would surely meet with awful misfortune if she didn't immediately throw some of the salt over her left shoulder. Impressed in spite of herself by Michael's gravity, Hazel obediently shook the salt container vigorously over her dazzling white shoulder and then the fun waxed fast and furious!
That salt hit an amazed diner behind us right in the eye and Silent Sam Shapiro threw back his head and laughed like a hyena. Mike contributed a guilty grin, but honestly me and Hazel were terrified! The redfaced victim rose and approached our table with mayhem in one eye and hot-blooded murder in the other. Equally flushed and plenty upset, Hazel began to stammer an embarrassed apology, but he cut her off quite nastily. Well, my girl friend's temper compares favorably with a wounded wildcat's and hot words flew back and forth like sparrows. When the unwillingly salted passenger intimated that Hazel and a lady were two different things, Michael McGann laid down his napkin and stood before him. The comparison in size was ridiculous, really. Mike wasn't a hair over five foot two and scaled under 120 pounds, but every ounce of him was fighter! Hazel's vis-à-vis was almost a six-footer, but he was likewise middle-aged, puffy-jowled and paunched.
"Listen, you big parsnip!" says Mike, all business and looking it, "that stuff about this girl not bein' no lady is out, get me? I think I'll put you out too, just to be nasty!"
Whack! One of Michael's iron fists slammed into the big man's highly amazed tummy. Clunk! The other fist was buried to the wrist in the same place. This was repeated twice with lightning-like rapidity, and with a grunting gasp Mike's prey bent double at the waist, bringing his chin down just in time to keep an engagement with two terrible blows to that part of his anatomy. He fell with the usual dull thud, as if hit with a sledge! Confusion took complete charge for a few moments, during which our gay little party hurriedly scurried out on deck.
In the shadow and safety of a life-boat, Mike coolly wiped his skinned knuckles with a gaudy silk handkerchief and seemed to take the incident as a matter of course, blaming it on Hazel for spilling the salt in the first place. He knew something would happen, he says, but got no further! Me and Hazel, furious at the undesirable attention we had attracted, fled to our cabin, leaving Mike and Sam flat.
Well, that was the last we saw of Mike McGann and Silent Sam on the boat. The fifth and sixth horsemen of the Apocalypse weren't even in sight the next morning when we docked at Manhattan, and I naturally thought they'd passed right out of our lives. Far be it from such! I hadn't been back on the job at the St. Moe a week when Michael and Samuel appeared on the scene. I tried to give them the air but that was a case of no can do, so I finally forgave 'em for what they did on the ship and in a couple more weeks they'd won a pardon from Hazel, too.
About that time me and Hazel were faced by a serious problem. We were getting a bit overweight as the result of the high life, the lolling around on chaise lounges and the rich foodstuffs we enjoyed on that wonderful trip abroad. The mere thought of double chins, washladies' busts and scrubladies' hips had us scared silly! We went on a diet, we took various reducing dopes, we walked miles, rowed boats and rode horseback in Central Park, took electric treatments—well, really, all we didn't try was cutting the surplus poundage off with a knife. At the end of three weeks I had picked up four more pounds and Hazel had accumulated seven!
As in the matter of my seasickness, the versatile Mike McGann again came to the rescue. He made us buy regulation gymnasium suits—except that ours were naturally silk—and put us through a course of scientific reducing exercises on the roof of our apartment house daily. Michael knew what it was all about, as he'd frequently had to "make weight" for a fight. In two weeks me and Hazel had both regained our usual sylph-like mid-season forms, and we only stopped our open-air athletics when we discovered the windows of the surrounding apartment-houses filled with enthusiastic male spectators armed with field-glasses!
This platonic friendship between us and the boys continued smoothly, and I was genuinely interested in little Mike's dogged climb to the top in the fistic profession, which he called the "toughest game in the world." He won a couple of bouts in New York and once we went with him to see Frankie White, the bantam-weight champion, defend his title, as Mike was to be Frankie's next opponent. Before the main bout that evening Michael was introduced from the ring to the noisy crowd. There was a gentleman sitting next to us wearing a beautiful fur coat, and with great presence of mind Mike coolly borrowed the gorgeous garment to be introduced in, so that he'd "look like he meant somethin'," as he explained to the smiling owner. The hilarious mob was duly appreciative of the fur-coated challenger—especially the gallery!
A month later Mike and Sam left for New Orleans, where Mike was to engage in the battle of his career—a twenty-round quarrel with Frankie White for the bantam-weight championship of terra firma. As Michael left Manhattan at a convenient hour me an' Hazel went to the station to wish him luck. I gave him a four-leaf clover to wear on his belt in the ring, and he was speechless with pleasure, but the next instant he gravely rejected Hazel's offering of a good luck swastika pin, on the grounds that anything pointed in the line of gifts breaks friendship. He promised to call me on long-distance immediately after the fight and tell me what happened, though the result was already a foregone conclusion to him. Mike modestly said that he'd lay Frankie like linoleum.
However, the day of the bout I didn't wait for Michael's phone call. Me and Hazel had gone crazy and bet five hundred dollars each on him at three to one odds and we were an inch from the grave with anxiety. I got a newspaper on the wire and found that our Mike had knocked out the unfortunate Frankie White in the fifth round and his visiting card now read, "Michael McGann, Bantam-weight Champion of the World."
"I liked that boy from the first minute I saw him!" lies the joyful Hazel as she collected her fifteen hundred dollar winnings.
Well, to my great surprise no message of any nature came from the victorious Michael via New Orleans, and it was a week after he became emperor of all the bantams and returned to New York before I got word from him. Mike unexpectedly called on me at our flat one evening while Hazel was at the show shop doing her evening chores. Honestly, I was astounded at the change in his appearance and manner as I shook his limp hand. Instead of being pardonably proud of his brand new title, Mike looked peaked and sank into a chair with a gloomy sigh. You can picture my further astonishment when I congratulated him on being a champion, only to see him burst into tears!
"What on earth is the matter?" I asked him anxiously.
"That title ain't worth a dime to me, kid!" he moans. "Not a thin dime!"
"How come?" I gasped.
"Kid," he says, "this is a tough world! I cop the champeenship in my twelfth fight—ain't that a crime?"
"I don't make you at all!"
"You don't, hey?" groans Michael. "Well, then, listen—my first fight as champ will be my thirteenth battle, won't it? How in the name of Lloyd's George can I win that one?"
I stared at him for a minute and then sat down beside him, not knowing whether to bust out laughing or to be sorry for this poor little superstition-bound egg. I tried to argue him out of his silly belief that he couldn't possible win bout number thirteen, but I might as well have tried to argue Bryan into coming out for the saloons! I really did want to help the melancholy Mike, however, so I racked my brain for a solution to his problem, being satisfied it was a real problem to a person of Michael's peculiar mental make-up. Finally the old brain-pan cooked up a scheme that I was positive would ward off the jinx.
"Look here, Mike," I says, shaking him out of his dismal trance, "if I help you ruin your hoodoo, will you follow my instructions?"
"I'll folley 'em anyways," says Mike. "I like you!"
I blushed thanks and continued:
"Very well. Pack your boxing gloves and go way out to some hick hamlet where they never saw or heard of you in their lives. Throw away your real name and use another one while you're there. Then take on some amateur for a bout—Silent Sam can arrange that part of it. You'll win that fight easily, but as it won't be for your championship and will never show in the records—in short, not an official bout—it won't count if you should lose, get me? On the other hand, if you win, why, that will take the place of your thirteenth fight and your first real battle to defend your title will be your fourteenth! What do you say about that?"
Michael, who hadn't missed a syllable, devoted a full minute to the sport of thinking. Then he rose and shook my hand, a smile on his face.
"I'll proposition Sam on the thing," he tells me. "I suppose I'm crazy to do this, as the guy says before twistin' the lion's tail, but—I'm goin' to do just like you said and see what happens!"
It took Michael just an hour to sell Sam, who escorted his mournful champion out to the sovereign state of Washington a few days later as "Knockout Sweeney."
Three weeks passed in review before Mike and Sam returned to Broadway and if you missed seeing Michael you never saw a wreck in your life, not even if you were aboard the Hesperus! Honestly, our little pal's face looked as if he'd deliberately held it against a particularly vicious buzz-saw over the week-end. Silent Sam told me the story while the battered Mike stood disconsolately by. Following my well meant advice, Sam had matched Mike with some unknown preliminary boy whose name they didn't even remember correctly. Nobody knew who Mike was, which was the only part of my scheme that was a success. Their intended victim turned out to be a surprise of the first water, giving Michael a terrible beating and all but knocking him out!
"This little tramp wouldn't untrack himself!" snarls Samuel. "He wouldn't fight—just went in there and dogged it. He didn't hit that tomato twice in the entire"
"How could I take that lucky stiff?" butts in Mike with his first show of interest. "How could I bounce him when he's got a mole on his right shoulder. Nobody can beat no guy with a mole on his right shoulder!"
That incident sort of disgusted me with Mike McGann and I firmly refused to see or talk to him any more. I guess it was two or three months before I heard of him again and then one day, idly glancing through the sporting page at the switchboard, I read where Mike was to defend his championship against one Half-Round O'Cohen at Madison Square Garden. Shortly afterwards Michael and Samuel arrived in person. In some unknown manner Silent Sam had coaxed Hazel into going to dinner with him between shows, had worked fast and won her over again for the time being. She helped him plead for Michael with me and—well, I made it a party of four. Mike kept his personality in high that evening and before we separated he'd managed to foist ringside tickets to his coming bout with Half-Round O'Cohen on me and Hazel.
On the afternoon of the big fight Michael bounded into me in an almost hysterical condition. He blurted out that he wasn't going through with the match as he'd just discovered he hadn't one chance in a million to win!
"We weigh in at two o'clock for the boxin' commission," wails Michael, wringing his valuable hands, "and when this Half-Round O'Cohen comes out to hop on the scales I like to drop dead! Who d'ye think he is?" I shook my shapely head. "He's the gil with the lucky mole on his right shoulder which made me like it out in Washington!"
Oo-la-la!
With a kind of gloomy humor Mike added that when Mr. O'Cohen in turn recognized him as the "Knockout Sweeney" he had thoroughly whipped months before, O'Cohen foamed at the mouth and uttered strange cries. No wonder. He'd been champion of the world for nearly six months and didn't know it!
Going further into the subject, Mike went on to tell me of a regular shower of bad luck omens that had hit him that fatal day. He'd broken a mirror, accidentally walked under a ladder, lost his rabbit's foot and also the lucky bathrobe he'd worn into the ring since he first began smacking people for pennies. In despair, he scurried to a fortune teller and the best she could do was to warm him to beware of a dark man.
"Well, don't speak to any dark men today, then," I says.
"It ain't a question of speakin' to 'em. I got to fight one of 'em!" groans Mike. "This O'Cohen's a Mexican and he's so dark he looks like Goimany's future!"
Four hours of combined pleading and threats by me. Hazel and Silent Sam were required to get Michael to start for the abattoir. The seats he's presented to me and Hazel were right up against the ropes and directly in his corner and we nervously smiled our moral support to a little fellow who certainly needed it if ever anyone did.
Michael used the privilege of a champion to cause a long delay which put the impatient attendance on edge, but he absolutely refused to enter the ring before Half-Round O'Cohen did—not if the customers cried their eyes out!
"The first man in the ring is always the last man to leave it!" says Mike stubbornly.
The wild-eyed promoter rushed to the boxing commission seated at the ringside and talked a bit. Under threat of being barred from working at his trade in New York State if he didn't behave, Michael entered the ring. He looked every inch a beaten man as he wearily flopped down on the little stool in his corner.
"Good luck, Mike—we hope you win!" I called up to him excitedly.
"I ain't got a Chinaman's chance!" whispers Michael, pushing away a busy handler and leaning over the ropes to us. "I just counted exactly thirteen sport writers sittin' around the ring!"
O'Cohen's seconds came over to examine the bandages on Michael's hands. One of 'em is humming, "Oh, one thing I know and you can believe it, the first in the ring is the last to leave it!"
Mike moaned aloud and Silent Sam chased the grinning singer over to the other corner.
Introduction—challenges—wild and deafening applause—jeers—the bell!
Oh, that horrible first round! Hazel covered her face with her hands, but honestly the raw brutality of it fascinated me! Apparently hypnotized by the "lucky" mole on his opponent's right shoulder and the knowledge that this fellow had defeated him before, Michael took a terrible punching. Even a pantingly muttered "Bread and butter, bread and butter!" couldn't save him, though it highly amused the cruelly grinning O'Cohen. The mob, always with a winner in boxing as in anything else, stood on their chairs and howled for O'Cohen to "knock him for a loop!" He certainly tried, but Michael was game—beneath the bludgeonings of O'Cohen his head was bloody but unbowed! Occasionally Mike lashed out desperately with both gloves, but there was little heart in the efforts, both the delighted O'Cohen and the enraged crowd being quick to sense it. The dark-skinned challenger drove the tottering champion all around the ring, beating him from pillar to post till finally the tired Michael fell into a clinch in his own corner, right above me and Hazel.
"C'mon, you yellah false alarm, like it!" sneered O'Cohen, pounding Mike's reddened body with horrible blows.
"Oh, oh—why don't they stop it?" weeps Hazel.
The gong ending that fearful first round found Mike on the floor, the referee counting over him and the place in an uproar. Mike's seconds ran out and dragged him to his corner, where they worked over him furiously. Ammonia was held under his nose, he was sponged and fanned, caustic was applied to his innumerable cuts, a half orange was thrust into his gaping mouth. Silent Sam, a wreck himself, leaned down over the ropes and looked at me, sorrowfully shaking his head.
"If this kid's old man could see him takin' this pastin' without even punchin' back, he'd turn over in his grave!" he says.
"Was his father a fighter too?" I asked, for want of something to say.
"No," says Sam, "the old gent was a blacksmith."
"A blacksmith?" I repeated thoughtfully.
A wild idea struck me and I immediately went into action! Jumping up, I leaned over and pinched Mike's sagging arm, which dangled through the ropes. He looked down at me hopelessly.
"You little quitter!" I hissed. "You believe in signs, eh? Well, you're letting this fellow beat you just because of that mole on his shoulder—which I think is nothing but a wart myself—and you come from the luckiest family in the world!"
"What d'ye mean, lucky?" says Mike listlessly.
"What was your father?" I ask him.
"A blacksmith," says Mike.
"Fine!" I says. "Now what does a blacksmith—what did your father work with all day long?"
Mike frowns thoughtfully for an instant. Then his battered little face brightens in one big smile.
"I got you, kid!" he yells joyfully.
To the consternation of Silent Sam, Mike laughs loud and wildly. His shoulders straighten and with firmly set jaw he glares across the ring at the jubilant O'Cohen, who saw the world's championship within his grasp. The bell clanged suddenly for the second round, and honestly Mike shot from his stool like a bullet from an automatic! He was in the startled O'Cohen's corner before that gentleman had taken a step forward. Bang! Biff! Slam! Sock! Before a now maniacal crowd, Half-Round O'Cohen crashed to the canvas, face down, from four perfectly timed and perfectly murderous punches! The referee counted up to seven, took another searching look at the body and then held up Mike's glove to the hysterical mob. So that was all settled!
Michael shoved away his lunatical admirers who swarmed into the ring about him and leaned down to me with a bloody, happy grin.
"Kid—you're the eagle's ice skates!" he gasps. "If you hadn't put me hep I'd never of remembered that my old man handled nothin' all his life but—horseshoes!"