Spring Street | Page 6

there in the dressing rooms. Do you know why he was here fighting, tonight? He was here to get enough money to pay for his father's funeral. He had to have the money given to the winner and he lost. He didn't tell his poor little mother he was coming out here. He wanted to surprise her.
"Now, boys, the only surprise he'll take home to her is a battered face unless you want to surprise him with--"
A silver dollar spun through the smoke-filled air and hit the canvas at Murray's feet. That started it. For a full two minutes the air was thick with flying coins. They clinked and rolled around in the ring. Bills weighted with coins caromed along the canvas floor.
Murray and a few others collected the money and counted it, standing in the ring.
"Is it enough?" asked a voice from the crowd.
Murray looked up with a broad smile. His hat, held in his hands, was brimming with the money picked from the floor of the ring.
"Five hundred and fifty-six dollars and sixty cents," he said.
"Where's the kid?" someone demanded.
"That's the idea, show us the kid," shouted the crowd.
* * * * *
When John was brought back into the ring, embarrassed, awkward, trying to smile through his swollen lips, the "house" was quiet. Murphy pushed him to the center, where Murray was waiting for him.
"That's for you, Mr. Gallant, with the compliments of the boys out here who know a good, game kid when they see one and whose hearts are always in the right place," he said, handing him the hat full of money.
He felt the tears coming back in his eyes.
"I don't--I can't----" he said hoarsely.
"Oh, yes, you can," interrupted Murray. "You take it and forget about it."
The crowd cheered. A thick-shouldered individual pushed himself through the ropes into the ring.
"For the keed, Meester Murray," said the newcomer, handing him a $20 bill. "Hee's a gude keed, maybe I help."
It was Battling Rodriguez. He crossed over and taking John's hand grinned out at the crowd.
John felt the tears coming again and was thankful when Murray led him to a corner and helped him down out of the ring.
"One of the newspaper men wants to speak to you," he said. "Here's your man, Morton."
He shook hands with the newspaper man.
"You're not a fighter by profession, though you're game enough to be a champion. How are you fixed for a job?" asked Morton.
"I need one," John replied.
"Tell you what you do, then," said the other, who seemed to take John's answer for granted. "You come down and see me tomorrow and I'll see if I can't find something for you to do. How would you like to get into newspaper work?"
How would he like it? John felt that nothing in the world would he like better.
"Tomorrow, then, ask for me," said Morton, turning to watch the two boxers who entered the ring to fight the main event.
As he went up the aisle men reached out and shook hands with him. Some of them dropped money into the hat brimming with bills and coins that he still held in his hand. He filled his pockets with the money and handed the hat to Murphy to be returned to that prince of men, Charlie Murray.
* * * * *
With the money given him by the crowd, the $20 bill Battling Rodriguez added to it and the $50 he received as the loser's end of the purse in his bout, he had more than $625 as he boarded the car from Vernon to the city to return home. His happiness was dimmed, however, by the thought of facing his mother, who, he knew, would be waiting up for him.
When he transferred at Seventh and Spring streets and boarded another car a woman gasped at the sight of his face. Murphy had used every trick known to a professional second to doctor his battered features, but nothing could hide the swollen lips, the cut over his eye and the eye that was puffed so that there was only a thin slit between the lids to see through.
He decided that it would be easier upon his mother for him to tell her everything. Then it would be over and done with. She would not worry then as she would if he told her some impossible story.
She was in her chair in the living room when he returned home. He threw himself at her feet.
"Mother," he said, "please."
"My boy," she said, waiting for him to lift his face from her lap.
He felt he could not raise his head. They sat silent for a while and then she put her hands on each side of his head and lifted his face to hers. He shut his eyes. He could not stand to see her look