He attempted to follow up, but wisely forbore and contented himself
with blocking and covering up in the whirlwind his blow had raised.
The fight was as it had been at the beginning–Joe protecting, Ponta
rushing. But Ponta was never at ease. He did not have it all his
own way. At any moment, in his fiercest onslaughts, his opponent
was liable to lash out and reach him. Joe saved his strength. He
struck one blow to Ponta’s ten, but his one blow rarely missed.
THE GAME
26
Ponta overwhelmed him in the attacks, yet could do nothing with him,
while Joe’s tiger-like strokes, always imminent, compelled respect.
They toned Ponta’s ferocity. He was no longer able to go in with
the complete abandon of destructiveness which had marked his earlier
efforts.
But a change was coming over the fight. The audience was quick to
note it, and even Genevieve saw it by the beginning of the ninth
round. Joe was taking the offensive. In the clinches it was he who
brought his fist down on the small of the back, striking the
terrible kidney blow. He did it once, in each clinch, but with all
his strength, and he did it every clinch. Then, in the breakaways,
he began to upper-cut Ponta on the stomach, or to hook his jaw or
strike straight out upon the mouth. But at first sign of a coming
of a whirlwind, Joe would dance nimbly away and cover up.
Two rounds of this went by, and three, but Ponta’s strength, though
perceptibly less, did not diminish rapidly. Joe’s task was to wear
down that strength, not with one blow, nor ten, but with blow after
blow, without end, until that enormous strength should be beaten
sheer out of its body. There was no rest for the man. Joe followed
him up, step by step, his advancing left foot making an audible tap,
tap, tap, on the hard canvas. Then there would come a sudden leap
in, tiger-like, a blow struck, or blows, and a swift leap back,
whereupon the left foot would take up again its tapping advance.
When Ponta made his savage rushes, Joe carefully covered up, only to
emerge, his left foot going tap, tap, tap, as he immediately
followed up.
Ponta was slowly weakening. To the crowd the end was a foregone
conclusion.
“Oh, you, Joe!” it yelled its admiration and affection.
“It’s a shame to take the money!” it mocked. “Why don’t you eat ‘m,
Ponta? Go on in an’ eat ‘m!”
In the one-minute intermissions Ponta’s seconds worked over him as
they had not worked before. Their calm trust in his tremendous
vitality had been betrayed. Genevieve watched their excited
efforts, while she listened to the white-faced second cautioning
Joe.
“Take your time,” he was saying. “You’ve got ‘m, but you got to
take your time. I’ve seen ‘m fight. He’s got a punch to the end of
the count. I’ve seen ‘m knocked out and clean batty, an’ go on
punching just the same. Mickey Sullivan had ‘m goin’. Puts ‘m to
the mat as fast as he crawls up, six times, an’ then leaves an
opening. Ponta reaches for his jaw, an two minutes afterward
Mickey’s openin’ his eyes an’ askin’ what’s doin’. So you’ve got to
watch ‘m. No goin’ in an’ absorbin’ one of them lucky punches, now.
I got money on this fight, but I don’t call it mine till he’s
counted out.”
Ponta was being doused with water. As the gong sounded, one of his
seconds inverted a water bottle on his head. He started toward the
centre of the ring, and the second followed him for several steps,
THE GAME
27
keeping the bottle still inverted. The referee shouted at him, and
he fled the ring, dropping the bottle as he fled. It rolled over
and over, the water gurgling out upon the canvas till the referee,
with a quick flirt of his toe, sent the bottle rolling through the
ropes.
In all the previous rounds Genevieve had not seen Joe’s fighting
face which had been prefigured to her that morning in the department
store. Sometimes his face had been quite boyish; other times, when
taking his fiercest punishment, it had been bleak and gray; and
still later, when living through and clutching and holding on, it
had taken on a wistful expression. But now, out of danger himself
and as he forced the fight, his fighting face came upon him. She
saw it and shuddered. It removed him so far from her. She had
thought she knew him, all of him, and held him in the hollow of her
hand; but this she did not know–this face of steel, this mouth of
steel, these eyes of steel flashing the light and glitter of steel.
It seemed to her the passionless face of an avenging angel, stamped
only with the purpose of the Lord.
Ponta attempted one of his old-time rushes, but was stopped on the
mouth. Implacable, insistent, ever menacing, never letting him
rest, Joe followed him up. The round, the thirteenth, closed with a
rush, in Ponta’s corner. He attempted a rally, was brought to his
knees, took the nine seconds’ count, and then tried to clinch into
safety, only to receive four of Joe’s terrible stomach punches, so
that with the gong he fell back, gasping, into the arms of his
seconds.
Joe ran across the ring to his own corner.
“Now I’m going to get ‘m,” he said to his second.
“You sure fixed ‘m that time,” the latter answered. “Nothin’ to
stop you now but a lucky punch. Watch out for it.”
Joe leaned forward, feet gathered under him for a spring, like a
foot-racer waiting the start. He was waiting for the gong. When it
sounded he shot forward and across the ring, catching Ponta in the
midst of his seconds as he rose from his stool. And in the midst of
his seconds he went down, knocked down by a right-hand blow. As he
arose from the confusion of buckets, stools, and seconds, Joe put
him down again. And yet a third time he went down before he could
escape from his own corner.
Joe had at last become the whirlwind. Genevieve remembered his
“just watch, you’ll know when I go after him.” The house knew it,
too. It was on its feet, every voice raised in a fierce yell. It
was the blood-cry of the crowd, and it sounded to her like what she
imagined must be the howling of wolves. And what with confidence in
her lover’s victory she found room in her heart to pity Ponta.
In vain he struggled to defend himself, to block, to cover up, to
duck, to clinch into a moment’s safety. That moment was denied him.
Knockdown after knockdown was his portion. He was knocked to the
canvas backwards, and sideways, was punched in the clinches and in
the break-aways–stiff, jolty blows that dazed his brain and drove
THE GAME
28
the strength from his muscles. He was knocked into the corners and
out again, against the ropes, rebounding, and with another blow
against the ropes once more. He fanned the air with his arms,
showering savage blows upon emptiness. There was nothing human left
in him. He was the beast incarnate, roaring and raging and being
destroyed. He was smashed down to his knees, but refused to take
the count, staggering to his feet only to be met stiff-handed on the
mouth and sent hurling back against the ropes.
In sore travail, gasping, reeling, panting, with glazing eyes and
sobbing breath, grotesque and heroic, fighting to the last, striving
to get at his antagonist, he surged and was driven about the ring.
And in that moment Joe’s foot slipped on the wet canvas. Ponta’s
swimming eyes saw and knew the chance. All the fleeing strength of
his body gathered itself together for the lightning lucky punch.
Even as Joe slipped the other smote him, fairly on the point of the
chin. He went over backward. Genevieve saw his muscles relax while
he was yet in the air, and she heard the thud of his head on the
canvas.
The noise of the yelling house died suddenly. The referee, stooping
over the inert body, was counting the seconds. Ponta tottered and
fell to his knees. He struggled to his feet, swaying back and forth
as he tried to sweep the audience with his hatred. His legs were
trembling and bending under him; he was choking and sobbing,
fighting to breathe. He reeled backward, and saved himself from
falling by a blind clutching for the ropes. He clung there,
drooping and bending and giving in all his body, his head upon his
chest, until the referee counted the fatal tenth second and pointed
to him in token that he had won.
He received no applause, and he squirmed through the ropes,
snakelike, into the arms of his seconds, who helped him to the floor