singin' an' buzzin'. An' everything lovely with both of us, with
a noise like a draw decision in sight. Twenty rounds is the
distance, you know.

"An' then his bad luck comes. We're just mixin' into a clinch
that ain't arrived yet, when he shoots a short hook to my
head--his left, an' a real hay-maker if it reaches my jaw. I make
a forward duck, not quick enough, an' he lands bingo on the side
of my head. Honest to God, Saxon, it's that heavy I see some
stars. But it don't hurt an' ain't serious, that high up where
the bone's thick. An' right there he finishes himself, for his
bad thumb, which I've known since he first got it as a kid
fightin' in the sandlot at Watts Tract--he smashes that thumb
right there, on my hard head, back into the socket with an
out-twist, an' all the old cords that'd never got strong gets
theirs again. I didn't mean it. A dirty trick, fair in the game,
though, to make a guy smash his hand on your head. But not
between friends. I couldn't a-done that to Bill Murphy for a
million dollars. It was a accident, just because I was slow,
because I was born slow.

"The hurt of it! Honest, Saxon, you don't know what hurt is till
you've got a old hurt like that hurt again. What can Billy Murphy
do but slow down? He's got to. He ain't fightin' two-handed any
more. He knows it; I know it; The referee knows it; but nobody
else. He goes on a-moving that left of his like it's all right.
But it ain't. It's hurtin' him like a knife dug into him. He
don't dast strike a real blow with that left of his. But it
hurts, anyway. Just to move it or not move it hurts, an' every
little dab-feint that I'm too wise to guard, knowin' there's no