Gladiator - Philip Wylie (readnow .TXT) 📗

met. “Where’s your mamma?” “Got your bottle, baby?” “Put the poor little bastard back in his carriage.” “What’s this⁠—a fight or a freak show?” Laughter.

It was like cold water to Hugo. His face set. He looked at Ole. The Swede’s fist moved back like the piston of a great engine into which steam has been let slowly. Then it came forward. Hugo, trained to see and act in keeping with his gigantic strength, dodged easily. “Atta boy!” “One for Johnny-dear!” The fist went back and came again and again, as if that piston, gathering speed, had broken loose and was flailing through the screaming air. Hugo dodged like a beam of light, and the murderous weapon never touched him. The spectators began to applaud his speed. He could beat the Swede’s fist every time. “Run him, kiddo!” “It’s only three rounds.”

The bell. Ole was panting. As he sat in his corner, his coal-scuttle gloves dangling, he cursed in his native tongue. Too little to hit. Bell. The second round was the same. Hugo never attempted to touch the Swede. Only to avoid him. And the man worked like a Trojan. Sweat seethed over his big, blank face. His small eyes sharpened to points. He brought his whole carcass flinging through the air after his fist. But every blow ended in a sickening wrench that missed the target. The crowd grew more excited. During the interval between the second and third rounds there was betting on the outcome. Three to one that Ole would connect and murder the boy. Four to one. One to five that Hugo would win fifty dollars before he died beneath the trip-hammer.

The third round opened. The crowd suddenly tired of the sport. A shrill female voice reached Hugo’s cold, concentrated mind: “Keep on running, yellow baby!”

So. They wanted a killing. They called him yellow. The Swede was on him, elephantine, sweating, sucking great, rumbling breaths of air, swinging his fists. Hugo studied the motion. That fist to that side, up, down, now!

Like hail they began to land upon the Swede. Bewilderingly, everywhere. No hope of guarding. Every blow smashed, stung, ached. No chance to swing back. Cover up. His arms went over his face. He felt rivets drive into his kidneys. He reached out and clinched. They rocked in each other’s arms. Dazed by that bitter onslaught of lightning blows, Ole thought only to lock Hugo in his arms and crush him. When they clinched, the crowd, grown instantly hysterical, sank back in despair. It was over. Ole could break the little man’s back. They saw his arms spring into knots. Jesus! Hugo’s fist shot between their chests and Ole was thrown violently backward. Impossible. He lunged back, crimson to kill, one hand guarding his jaw. “Easy, now, for the love of God, easy,” Hugo said to himself. There. On the hand at the chin. Hugo’s gloves went out. Lift him! It connected. The Swede left the floor and crumpled slowly, with a series of bumping sounds. And how the hyenas yelled!

They crowded into his dressing-room afterwards. Epstein came to his side before he had dressed. “Come out and have a mug of suds, kid. That was the sweetest fight I ever hope to live to see. I can sign you up for a fortune right now. I can make you champ in two years.”

“No, thanks,” Hugo said.

The man persisted. He talked earnestly. He handed Hugo a hundred-dollar bill. Hugo finished his dressing. Izzie wormed his way in. “Fifty dollars I won yet! Didn’t I tole you, Mr. Epstein!”

“Come here, Izzie!”

The little man ran to shake Hugo’s hand, but it was extended for another reason. “I want that fifty you won,” he said unsmilingly. “When a bird tracks along for a free feed and lets another guy fight for him and has a roll big enough to stop up a rainspout, he owes money. That lunch will set you back just exactly what you won on me.”

There was laughter in the room. Izzie whimpered. “Ain’t you got a hundred all ready that I got for you? Ain’t it enough that you got it? Ain’t I got a wife wit’ kids yet?”

“No, it ain’t, yet.” Hugo snapped the fingers of his extended hand. The other hand doubled significantly. Izzie gave him the money. He was almost in tears. The others guffawed.

“Wait up, bo. Give us your address if you ever change your mind. You can pick up a nice livin’ in this game.”

“No, thanks. All I needed was railroad fare. Thank you, gentlemen⁠—and⁠—goodbye.”

No one undertook to hinder Hugo’s departure.

VIII

Greatness seemed to elude Hugo, success such as he had earned was inadequate, and his friendships as well as his popularity were tinged with a sort of question that he never understood. By the end of winter he was well established in Webster as a great athlete. Psi Delta sang his praises and was envied his deeds. Lefty and Chuck treated him as a brother. And, Hugo perceived, none of that treatment and none of that society was quite real. He wondered if his personality was so meagre that it was not equal to his strength. He wondered if his strength was really the asset he had dreamed it would be, and if, perhaps, other people were not different from him in every way, so that any close human contact was impossible to him.

It was a rather tragic question to absorb a man so filled with life and ambition as he. Yet every month had raised it more insistently. He saw other men sharing their inmost souls and he could never do that. He saw those around him breaking their hearts and their lungs for the university, and, although it was never necessary for him to do that, he doubted that he could if he would. Webster was only a school. A sentiment rather than an ideal, a place rather than a goal of dreams. He thought that he was cynical. He thought that