The Harder They Fall by Budd Schulberg Page A

on the bridlepath together almost every Sunday.
    ‘How about the Duchess?’
    That was Ruby. Anybody who had been around the place very long knew whom you meant.
    ‘I just took her over to ten o’ clock mass. She ’n this big fella from the Argentine.’
    ‘Oh, he went, too? What does he look like?’
    ‘Well, if anyone tags him he’s got a long way to fall.’
    ‘See you later, Jock.’
    ‘You bet, Mr Lewis.’
    ‘That’s Jock Mahoney,’ I told Beth as we walked up toward the large lawn that stretched between the main house and the garage, over which Jock, the missus and the seven kids lived in five small rooms. ‘A good second-rate light-heavyweight in the days when Delaney, Slattery, Berlenbach, Loughran and Greb were first rate. Very tough. Could take a hell of a punch.’
    ‘He doesn’t talk as if he has a brain full of scrambled eggs,’ Beth said.
    ‘They don’t all come out of it talking to themselves,’ I said. ‘Take McLarnin, fought the toughest – Barney Ross, Petrolle, Canzoneri – and his head’s as clear as mine.’
    ‘This morning probably clearer,’ Beth said.
    I was still thinking about Mahoney. Old fighters will always get me. There is nothing duller than an old ball player or an old tennis star, but an old fighter who’s been punched around, spilt his blood freely for the fans’ amusement only to wind up broke, battered and forgotten has got the stuff of tragedy for me.
    ‘The only thing soft about Mahoney is the way he laughs,’ I said. ‘All you have to do is look at him and he laughs. That’s usually a sign you’re a little punchy. The timeBerlenbach tagged him with the first punch he threw in the third round, Jock was out so completely he went over to Berlenbach’s corner and flopped down. But the way he was grinning and laughing, you’d’ve thought he was home in an easy chair reading the funny papers.’
    ‘That’s what I don’t like about it,’ Beth said. ‘The way they laugh.’
    ‘When they laugh, Beth, it usually means they’re hurt,’ I said. ‘They just want to show the other guy that they aren’t hurt, that everything’s okay.’
    ‘I read something about laughter once,’ Beth said. ‘The idea was that laughter is just a display of superiority. Laughing when somebody slips on a banana peel, for instance, or gets a face full of pie. Or take the whole line of Scotch-Jewish-Darky jokes. The thing about them that makes people laugh is the warm feeling that they aren’t as tight as the Scotchman, as beaten down as the Negroes and so on.’
    ‘But if we follow that theory,’ I said, ‘shouldn’t the fellow who does the laughing be the one who throws the punch, not the one who catches it?’
    ‘It’s not that simple,’ Beth insisted. ‘Maybe the guy who gets hurt laughs to hang on to his superiority – or is that what you said in the first place?’
    ‘That’s the trouble with you psychologists,’ I said. ‘You can take either side and sound just as scientific.’
    We had reached the lawn nearest the house, where a row of round metal tables had been set out with brightly coloured beach umbrellas rising through the centres. Lying on the grass in the shade of one of these umbrellas was aslight, middle-aged man with grey hair and a sickly white face, eyes closed in the heavy stupefaction of alcoholic sleep. A folded
Racing Form
he had used as an eyeshade had slipped off his forehead. He was snoring strenuously through a badly broken nose, the only punished feature in an otherwise unmarked face.
    ‘There’s Danny McKeogh,’ I said. Around Stillman’s they call it ‘McCuff’.
    ‘Is he alive?’ Beth asked.
    ‘Slightly,’ I said.
    ‘He’s got a sad face,’ Beth said.
    ‘He’s one of the right guys in this business,’ I said. ‘He’d give you his shirt if you needed it, even if he didn’t have a shirt and had to go borrow one off somebody else. Which has happened.’
    ‘A generous member of this profession? I didn’t know there