The Professional Read online

  It was a fine, clean morning. The sun was just starting up over the hills across the lake, and it was the kind of morning that, they always say, makes you wish you would get up early more often. The lake was still in the shadows, but our shore was becoming sunlighted now and, when we got outside and I breathed in the clear, still, night-chilled air it made me think of a drink of mountain spring water.

  As we walked up the driveway Eddie was pulling on an old gray sweater over his heavy khaki shirt, and we could see Barnum and Booker Boyd and Cardone and Penna waiting by the road. Barnum was saying something to Boyd and Penna was scaling rocks into the hillside across the road and Cardone was just standing, muffled up and with his hands in his trouser pockets.

  “I’m ready,” Eddie said. “Who’s gonna lead?”

  “I’ll lead,” Penna said. “I’ll lead us to a nice soft spot where we can all lay down.”

  “You lead,” Barnum said to Eddie.

  “Not today. This is my first day.”

  “You lead,” Barnum said to Boyd.

  Booker Boyd said nothing, but he walked across the road, with Eddie and Penna and Cardone following him, and that was the way they started out. They ran in a line at an easy trot—Booker Boyd and Eddie and Penna and then Cardone—on the gravel at the edge of the blacktop, running north and to face any cars that might come down the road, running in step and their arms all moving and their bodies all swaying together. We watched them moving like that up the first rise, growing smaller until they reached the top and then disappeared over it.

  “They’ll be back in forty-five minutes, maybe an hour,” Jay said.

  “More like an hour,” Barnum said, “the way they run and walk and run.”

  “It’s like I said,” Jay said. “In the old days we used to think nothin’ of runnin’ ten miles. I was tellin’ Hughes, here, that.”

  “They run far enough,” Barnum said, “if they run. That Penna, he don’t like to run. He like to walk and talk.”

  “Eddie’ll make ’em run,” Jay said. “In a few days Eddie’ll get his legs under him and they’ll have to run to keep up with him.”

  “Eddie’s a good boy,” Barnum said.

  “People think a fight is won in the ring,” Jay said to me. “You know where a fight is won? Right here. Right here on the road and in the gym.”

  “I know.”

  “No use talkin’ about it,” Barnum said.

  “Hey!” Jay said, stopping and pointing. “What’s that?”

  We had started down the driveway and we stopped. Where Jay was pointing a small olive-green bird with white-marked brownish wings had fluttered to a halt on the red twig end of a small, scrubby swamp maple. It was about thirty feet from us, the bird riding up and down on the swaying twig.

  “It might be a goldfinch,” I said, “but it isn’t.”

  “It looks like a canary,” Jay said. “Ain’t it a canary?”

  “You see that reddish cap? It’s probably a ruby-crowned kinglet.”

  “Yeah?” Jay said.

  As soon as I said it, the bird was gone. It had taken off among some pines, the yellow-green of its belly showing when it spread its wings in flight.

  “It was a ruby-crowned kinglet. The reason its head was red is that it’s either making a show for a dame or it’s got an argument going with another male.”

  “You know about birds?” Jay said. “How do you know that?”

  “I don’t really know about birds. I just get it out of a book by John Kieran.”

  “John Kieran? You mean the guy used to be a sports writer?”

  “That’s right. He used to write the sports column in the Times.”

  “I remember the guy. I know him very good. Used to come around the fight camps years ago.”

  “That’s right.”

  “He used to be on that radio program. You know that program?”

  “Information Please.”

  “That’s right. They asked them guys questions, and he used to answer.”

  “Sure.”

  “Was he as smart as they made him out?”

  “Certainly. Nobody made him out. He’s smart.”

  “He’s that smart? I mean, he used to answer all them questions.”

  “Sure. Nobody goes around, Jay, fixing radio or television quiz programs.”

  “And he knows about birds, too, hey? I remember the guy.”

  “Here come Schaeffer now,” Barnum said.

  Schaeffer and Polo were coming out of the hotel. Schaeffer had on a gray flannel sweatsuit, the pants legs drawn tight around the tops of his shoes. He had a towel around his neck, tucked into the top of the sweatsuit, and Polo seemed small beside him.

  “Where’s everybody?” Schaeffer said, when he got up to us.

  “Gone,” Jay said. “They must be gone five minutes. Where you been?”

  “Where’s he been?” Polo said, looking disgusted. “In the sack. I woke him quarter after six. I woke him six-thirty. Five minutes later I come back out of the bathroom and he’s asleep again.”

  “I slept good.”

  “You always sleep good,” Polo said.

  “If you hurry you might even catch them guys,” Jay said. “Eddie ain’t gonna take it too hard his first day.”

  “Can’t you see him catchin’ them?” Polo said.

  “I won’t run today, hey, Polo? I’ll work twice as hard in the gym and run harder tomorrow.”

  “Nothin’ doin’. You run today.”

  “I wanted to run with the other guys. I don’t wanna run alone.”

  “C’mon. You run. Maybe tomorrow you get up when I tell you.”

  They walked up the driveway. We stood there and watched them for a moment, the big heavyweight, depressed now, and the little manager, disgusted.

  “You see what fighters are like today?” Jay said.

  “That ain’t no fighter,” Barnum said.

  “He says he’s a fighter, don’t he?” Jay said. “I mean he fights. He gets paid. He makes out he’s a fighter. Don’t he?”

  “No use talkin’ about him,” Barnum said.

  I went in and took a shower and shaved. About forty minutes after the fighters had started out I looked for Jay and found him in the kitchen, talking to Girot’s wife, who was busy working and only half listening. We walked back up the driveway, where Barnum was waiting by the road. After a while we saw Booker Boyd come trotting down the hill on our side of the road. Eddie was about a hundred yards behind him with Cardone right behind Eddie. By the time Eddie and Cardone reached us, Penna was just coming into sight over the top of the hill.

  “You took it too hard your first day,” Jay said. “You’ll be stiff.”

  “Not bad,” Eddie said, breathing and sweating. “God, Jay, I fought less than a month ago. I’m in pretty good shape already.”

  “I bet you took it too hard. You wanna bet?”

  In their room Jay helped Eddie out of his sweater and threw him a towel. While Eddie sat on his bed, wiping his face and neck, Jay knelt down and took Eddie’s heavy shoes off and then Eddie swung his legs up and lay back on the pillow.

  “Now you just take it easy and cool out,” Jay said.

  “I know, Jay,” Eddie said.

  “Well, it don’t hurt to tell you.”

  “Who put this here?” Eddie said.

  There was a small white plastic radio on the gray-painted lamp table between the two beds.

  “Girot lent it to you,” Jay said. “His wife give it to me this morning. She says Girot wants you to have it while you’re here.”

  “Hey, that’s nice,” Eddie said, motioning for me to see the radio. “I was thinking of getting one before I came up, and then I got all fouled up with things the last couple of days.”

  “So Girot likes you,” Jay said.

  “He’s a nice guy, isn’t he?” Eddie said, turning on the radio. “I’ll have to thank him. He’s all right.”

  “You’re all right with him, too,” Jay said. “You don�
�t give him no trouble. He wants you to win this fight.”

  “Don’t we all,” Eddie said.

  As the radio warmed up, Eddie tuned it in. An announcer was finishing the news, and then a disk jockey came on with some records. While Eddie lay there listening and perspiring, Jay went downstairs and in about five minutes he came back, carrying a cup of steaming hot tea with lemon in it. Eddie sipped that, slowly, and then he waited about ten minutes before he got out of his road clothes and took a shower.

  “How often do you shave in camp?” I said when he came back.

  “Every other day,” he said. “Then I always shave at night before I go to bed. I mean, when I shave.”

  “So his face won’t be sore if he boxes that next day,” Jay said. “You see, in camp you got to do everything with a reason. You just don’t do things. You got to have a reason.”

  “Sure, Jay,” I said.

  We went down to the dining room, where the fighters and Polo and Barnum were having breakfast at the long table. The room was bright now with the sun coming in the windows facing the lake and with the white tablecloths.

  “I see Paul made it,” Eddie said, looking at Schaeffer and winking at Polo.

  “You surprised?” Polo said. “He makes all the meals.”

  “What?” Schaeffer said, spooning in his soft-boiled eggs.

  “Nothing,” Penna said. “Don’t let nothin’ bother you. Just eat.”

  “Pass me that sugar bowl, will you, Al?” Eddie said.

  After his double orange juice, Eddie had a bowl of dry cereal with half a banana and cream on it. Then he had two soft-boiled eggs with toast and a cup of tea. When he had finished we walked out through the bar into the lobby where Girot was standing behind the high hotel desk, leaning on it and reading a morning tabloid.

  “Girot,” Eddie said.

  “Yes, Eddie?”

  “I want to thank you, bon ami, for the loan of that radio.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “For you I’d do it. Those other fighters I wouldn’t give anything for.”

  “Thanks, anyway.”

  “I mean it, Eddie,” Girot said, and then he shrugged his shoulders and you could see that he was embarrassed. “I have here the morning papers, if you want to read them.”

  “Thanks,” Eddie said. “I was going to drive down into town for them.”

  That afternoon Eddie went into the gym. With Jay hovering around him with a towel over his shoulder and talking at him, Eddie exercised on the mat and skipped rope and shadowboxed a couple of rounds.

  7

  Who wants to go to the movies?” Penna said.

  We were finishing dinner. Eddie and Schaeffer and Cardone were still working on their stewed fruit, and we had been listening to Jay. He had been telling about a friend who had bought a chicken farm in the Berkshires, and the way Jay told it, it was a paradise in which only the chickens worked.

  “What’s playing?” Eddie said.

  “Eight Belles,” Penna said. “It’s a good picture. It’s about the Navy. It’s one of them musicals.”

  I had seen a picture spread on it in one of the Sunday papers, and it had appeared to be about as much like the Navy as the Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera was like the season at La Scala.

  “I’ll go,” Schaeffer said.

  “How about you, Polo?”

  “If he goes, I gotta go.”

  “You don’t trust him?”

  “I trust him. I trust him to stop off at that bean wagon later and have four hamburgers and two Cokes.”

  “You want to go?” Jay said to Eddie.

  “No thanks.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. I just want to take a walk, and go to bed early.”

  “Then I won’t go,” Jay said.

  “Go ahead, Jay,” I said. “I’ll walk with Eddie.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Go ahead,” Eddie said. “Frank will walk with me.”

  “I’d like to see it,” Jay said. “I was in the Navy.”

  “Not that kind of a Navy,” I said.

  “You were in the Navy?” Penna said. “What Navy?”

  “Whatta you mean, what Navy?”

  “What war?”

  “The World War. The First World War.”

  “It must have been some war.”

  “We won it, didn’t we? Wait’ll they get you in the Army or Navy. I could tell you some things about the Navy.”

  “You kill any Germans, Jay? Or were you just floppin’ around on one of them South Sea islands with the broads?”

  “He was in the Brooklyn Navy Yard,” Eddie said. “Right, Jay?”

  “Some admiral,” Penna said.

  “You want to go?” Jay said to Cardone.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, Cardone,” Penna said. “Live it up.”

  “All right,” Cardone said.

  “You had it pretty good, hey, Jay?” Penna said. “You worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and lived around the corner. You get any medals?”

  “I didn’t live in Brooklyn then. I lived in Harlem.”

  “You lived in Harlem?” Penna said.

  I looked at Barnum and Booker Boyd at the end of the table. Barnum had stood up and Boyd was getting up, but it was always impossible to tell how much of the table talk they followed anyway.

  “Sure,” Jay said. “It was still mostly white in them days. There wasn’t a lot of colored people in Harlem.”

  “Go on,” Penna said.

  “Ain’t that right?” Jay said, turning to Barnum.

  “What?” Barnum said. They had started to walk from the table.

  “I was sayin’ when I used to live in Harlem years ago there was mostly whites lived up there. Ain’t that right?”

  “That’s right,” Barnum said, nodding once.

  “Is that right?” Penna said. “I never knew that.”

  “There’s a lot of things you don’t know,” Jay said. “I could tell you a lot of things you don’t know.”

  “Don’t bother,” Penna said.

  Eddie and Penna played a couple of games of pinball and, when the others were ready to go, Eddie walked them out to the lobby. He handed the car keys to Penna, but Jay grabbed them out of Penna’s hand and gave them to Polo, and they left, arguing.

  Eddie and I went upstairs and I got a jacket and walked into Eddie’s room, where he was putting on a new light-tan sailcloth windbreaker. I think that if he had worn a burlap sack he would have looked good in it, but perhaps that is merely the way Eddie seemed to me. I mean that the perfect proportions of that body and the skills trained into it would still, in my mind’s eye, have been there behind anything, the way the art of one or two great writers I have worshiped has made even what were called their bad books seem, to me, for that same reason, good.

  “We’ll walk up about a mile,” Eddie said, “and then turn around. All right?”

  “It’s fine with me.”

  It had been a day of sun, but now the sky was clouding and a mist was rising from the lake. We walked across the road and started north, walking side by side on the gravel beside the blacktop until a car would come bearing down on us. Then we would step off into the gravel and walk single file as the car sprayed the trees and road and then us with its light and its sound as it rushed by.

  “When I used to walk with Graziano,” I said, “he used to challenge the cars.”

  “He’d what?”

  “He’d stop in the road and spread his feet and shake his fists at the cars and curse and make them go around him. It used to scare hell out of me.”

  “He wouldn’t let them hit him.”

  “Of course not, but it used to scare me anyway. It would be before some big fight with $100,000 or maybe $200,000, in the till already. I used to think how the Garden people would die if they could see it, with some nameless guy in the night bearing down on the great Graziano at fifty
miles an hour, unknowingly heading toward sudden fame.”

  “Rock was a character. Why do you think he did it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe in revolt against training, against some guy making fifty dollars a week but riding in a rattletrap while he, who was going to make another eighty thousand or a hundred grand or whatever it was, had to walk.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Do you mind the roadwork, and the walking like this?”

  “No, not any more. I used to, some, but I really don’t mind it any more.”

  “What changed your mind?”

  “When I started out I was a real eager kid. Good fighters were heroes to me, and I did everything Doc told me. Then, after a while, it got to be, you know, routine.”

  “You won a few fights.”

  “That’s right. I don’t mean I got cocky, but you know.”

  “Doc would never let you get cocky.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “So what made you accept training?”

  “That’s a good word for it, accept. That’s what you do. You have a few tough fights where you don’t think you can get out of your corner after eight rounds. I think that does something to the way you look at it.”

  “It doesn’t for a lot of fighters.”

  “It did for me. At one time there, maybe you remember, Doc gave me a couple of those tough ones right in a row. That does it. At least, I think that’s what does it. You’ve got it in your mind.”

  “What made you want to be a fighter?”

  “Everything, I guess. I always liked to fight. That was a pretty tough neighborhood, and we used to get in street fights. We had this gang, and there was this kid, Tony, and he was a little older and kind of the leader and he and I used to handle everybody. I don’t know why, but we just did. I just liked it.”

  “Did you have a temper then?”

  “Sure. Like my old man. What they call a Dutch temper, but I lost that, even away back in the amateurs. You fight a kid, even in the amateurs, and you’ve got no argument with him, really.”

  “Fighting has cured a lot of tempers.”

  “That and my old man. Like I told you, he used to blow off at me and at my mother, and make her cry. I don’t mean he was a bad guy. Afterward I could see it made him feel lousy himself. He just had that hot temper, and even before he died I made up my mind I wasn’t going to get that way. Then I started fighting.”